Then Mr. Magee sat down in the big leather chair before the fire, and caught his breath. Here he was at last. The wild plan he and Hal Bentley had cooked up in that Forty-fourth Street club had actually come to be. “Seclusion,” Magee had cried. “Bermuda,” Bentley had suggested. “A mixture of sea, hotel clerks, and honeymooners!” the seeker for solitude had sneered. “Some winter place down South,” — from Bentley. “And a flirtation lurking in every corner!” — from Magee. “A country town where you don’t know any one.” “The easiest place in the world to get acquainted. I must be alone, man! Alone!” “Baldpate Inn,” Bentley had cried in his idiom. “Why, Billy — Baldpate Inn at Christmas — it must be old John H. Seclusion himself.”
Yes, here he was. And here was the solitude he had come to find. Mr. Magee looked nervously about, and the smile died out of his gray eyes. For the first time misgivings smote him. Might one not have too much of a good thing? A silence like that of the tomb had descended. He recalled stories of men who went mad from loneliness. What place lonelier than this? The wind howled along the balcony. It rattled the windows. Outside his door lay a great black cave — in summer gay with men and maids — now like Crusoe’s island before the old man landed.
“Alone, alone, all, all alone,” quoted Mr. Magee. “If I can’t think here it will be because I’m not equipped with the apparatus. I will. I’ll show the gloomy old critics! I wonder what’s doing in New York?”
New York! Mr. Magee looked at his watch. Eight o’clock. The great street was ablaze. The crowds were parading from the restaurants to the theaters. The electric signs were pasting lurid legends on a long suffering sky; the taxis were spraying throats with gasoline; the traffic cop at Broadway and Forty-second Street was madly earning his pay. Mr. Magee got up and walked the floor. New York!
Probably the telephone in his rooms was jangling, vainly calling forth to sport with Amaryllis in the shade of the rubber trees Billy Magee — Billy Magee who sat alone in the silence on Baldpate Mountain. Few knew of his departure. This was the night of that stupid attempt at theatricals at the Plaza; stupid in itself but gay, almost giddy, since Helen Faulkner was to be there. This was the night of the dinner to Carey at the club. This was the night — of many diverting things.
Mr. Magee picked up a magazine. He wondered how they read, in the old days, by candlelight. He wondered if they would have found his own stories worth the strain on the eyes. And he also wondered if absolute solitude was quite the thing necessary to the composition of the novel that should forever silence those who sneered at his ability.
Absolute solitude! Only the crackle of the fire, the roar of the wind, and the ticking of his watch bore him company. He strode to the window and looked down at the few dim lights that proclaimed the existence of Upper Asquewan Falls. Somewhere, down there, was the Commercial House. Somewhere the girl who had wept so bitterly in that gloomy little waiting-room. She was only three miles away, and the thought cheered Mr. Magee. After all, he was not on a desert island.
And yet — he was alone, intensely, almost painfully, alone. Alone in a vast moaning house that must be his only home until he could go back to the gay city with his masterpiece. What a masterpiece! As though with a surgeon’s knife it would lay bare the hearts of men. No tricks of plot, no—
Mr. Magee paused. For sharply in the silence the bell of his room telephone rang out.
He stood for a moment gazing in wonder, his heart beating swiftly, his eyes upon the instrument on the wall. It was a house phone; he knew that it could only be rung from the switchboard in the hall below. “I’m going mad already,” he remarked, and took down the receiver.
A blur of talk, an electric muttering, a click, and all was still.
Mr. Magee opened the door and stepped out into the shadows. He heard a voice below. Noiselessly he crept to the landing, and gazed down into the office. A young man sat at the telephone switchboard; Mr. Magee could see in the dim light of a solitary candle that he was a person of rather hilarious raiment. The candle stood on the top of the safe, and the door of the latter swung open. Sinking down on the steps in the dark, Mr. Magee waited.
“Hello,” the young man was saying, “how do you work this thing, anyhow? I’ve tried every peg but the right one. Hello — hello! I want long distance — Reuton. 2876 West — Mr. Andy Rutter. Will you get him for me, sister?”
Another wait — a long one — ensued. The candle sputtered. The young man fidgeted in his chair. At last he spoke again:
“Hello! Andy? Is that you, Andy? What’s the good word? As quiet as the tomb of Napoleon. Shall I close up shop? Sure. What next? Oh, see here, Andy, I’d die up here. Did you ever hit a place like this in winter? I can’t — I — oh, well, if he says so. Yes. I could do that. But no longer. I couldn’t stand it long. Tell him that. Tell him everything’s O. K. Yes. All right. Well, good night, Andy.”
He turned away from the switchboard, and as he did so Mr. Magee walked calmly down the stairs toward him. With a cry the young man ran to the safe, threw a package inside, and swung shut the door. He turned the knob of the safe several times; then he faced Mr. Magee. The latter saw something glitter in his hand.
“Good evening,” remarked Mr. Magee pleasantly.
“What are you doing here?” cried the youth wildly.
“I live here,” Mr. Magee assured him. “Won’t you come up to my room — it’s right at the head of the stairs. I have a fire, you know.”
Back into the young man’s lean hawk-like face crept the assurance that belonged with the gay attire he wore. He dropped the revolver into his pocket, and smiled a sneering smile.
“You gave me a turn,” he said. “Of course you live here. Are any of the other guests about? And who won the tennis match to-day?”
“You are facetious.” Mr. Magee smiled too. “So much the better. A lively companion is the very sort I should have ordered to-night. Come up-stairs.”
The young man looked suspiciously about, his thin nose seemingly scenting plots. He nodded, and picked up the candle. “All right,” he said. “But I’ll have to ask you to go first. You know the way.” His right hand sought the pocket into which the revolver had fallen.
“You honor my poor and drafty house,” said Mr. Magee. “This way.”
He mounted the stairs. After him followed the youth of flashy habiliments, looking fearfully about him as he went. He seemed surprised that they came to Magee’s room without incident. Inside, Mr. Magee drew up an easy chair before the fire, and offered his guest a cigar.
“You must be cold,” he said. “Sit here. ‘A bad night, stranger’ as they remark in stories.”
“You’ve said it,” replied the young man, accepting the cigar. “Thanks.” He walked to the door leading into the hall and opened it about a foot. “I’m afraid,” he explained jocosely, “we’ll get to talking, and miss the breakfast bell.” He dropped into the chair, and lighted his cigar at a candle end. “Say, you never can tell, can you? Climbing up old Baldpate I thought to myself, that hotel certainly makes the Sahara Desert look like a cozy corner. And here you are, as snug and comfortable and at home as if you were in a Harlem flat. You never can tell. And what now? The story of my life?”
“You might relate,” Mr. Magee told him, “that portion of it that has led you trespassing on a gentleman seeking seclusion at Baldpate Inn.”
The stranger looked at Mr. Magee. He had an eye that not only looked, but weighed, estimated, and classified. Mr. Magee met it smilingly.