Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 4 (1925-04).djvu/91

 the realization that it was not my niece alone who was drawing me from the vicinity of that lighted window, but Boris, who tugged at his leash, whimpering softly. I let myself be drawn away, and followed Portia until we emerged from the path that led to Queens Boulevard, down which we went in the direction of home.

“The man’s mad over her!” exploded Portia, as we regained the boulevard. “Now I can account for his exclamation. He was furious with jealousy, and his position as her chauffeur restrained him from interrupting her flirtation with Owen. In that moment he forgot himself and said what he would not have breathed, had he known that you had such a keen car and such a good memory. Oh, I begin to see! I begin to understand!”

“The poor old woman!” I exclaimed indignantly. “Why does she remain with such a cruel mistress?”

“A serf, perhaps. Or an old nurse. Such a woman will bear all kinds of abuse from the mistress who was once a child she nurtured at her breast,” explained Portia.

Just then we passed the lower end of the princess’ grounds, and both dogs began behaving uneasily. Boris pulled and twisted at his leash so that I had hard work to hold him in; Andrei sniffed and whined.

“I wonder—” murmured Portia. Then, as if with a sudden thought that did not affect her agreeably, she said in a low, cautiously modulated voice, “The quicker we get home the better. The dogs are so uneasy that it disturbs me. Suppose that cage of wolves happened to be less strong than I hope it is?”

The supposition certainly was one to lend wings to our feet. I said immediately, “Let’s run, Portia!”

“Can you?” answered she, as if gratified. “Come on, then!”

The dogs pulled us strongly toward home, the moment they found we were going to race them. We passed the Burnham house grounds at a run and went tearing along the boulevard toward Gilman Street in a way that surely would have ruined any reputation for dignity either of us might have hoped to sustain in the neighborhood, had we been seen. Fortunately we met no one, the night being very crisp and sharp. Too, we kept to the farther side of the street from the lamps, which are in front of the store-block only, the other side of the boulevard being as yet nothing but wide fields, except for the Burnham house.

We reached home out of breath; even the dogs were panting hard. After Portia unleashed them, they seemed quite contented to walk sedately beside us when we went up to our rooms, instead of leaping up playfully as they usually did. Boris insisted upon sleeping on the fur rug in my room that night; perhaps because he felt we were better acquainted after our long run together that evening. As for Andrei, he accompanied Portia to her room, where both dogs usually slept nightly on a rug before her door. She left him there, and half an hour later passed my door on her way to the laboratory, wearing a black silk bungalow apron, I should call it, with a girdle of silk cord. Portia called it her working uniform.

My sleep was broken that night. Twice I waked with the uncomfortable feeling that I was not alone in the room, and turned on the electric light quickly to find nothing but the dog, which lifted wide open eyes to me. It was as if some malign influence had come with me from the old Burnham house. I think Portia looked upon it from another standpoint, for when I mentioned it to her at lunch she looked rather serious and observed that she really shouldn’t have exposed me to those influences without preparation. Evidently she was of the