Read Ebook: The Mystery of Murray Davenport: A Story of New York at the Present Day by Stephens Robert Neilson

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Ebook has 1274 lines and 63763 words, and 26 pages

"You know everybody in newspaper circles. Do you know a man named Murray Davenport?"

"I believe there is such a man--an illustrator. Is that the one you mean?"

"I suppose so. Where can I find him?"

"I give it up. I don't know anything about him. I've only seen some of his work--in one of the ten-cent magazines, I think."

"I've got to find him, and make his acquaintance. This is in confidence, by the way."

"All right. Have you looked in the directory?"

"Not yet. The trouble isn't so much to find where he lives; there are some things I want to find out about him, that'll require my getting acquainted with him, without his knowing I have any such purpose. So the trouble is to get introduced to him on terms that can naturally lead up to a pretty close acquaintance."

"No trouble in that," said Tompkins, decidedly. "Look here. He's an illustrator, I know that much. As soon as you find out where he lives, call with one of your manuscripts and ask him if he'll illustrate it. That will begin an acquaintance."

"And terminate it, too, don't you think? Would any self-respecting illustrator take a commission from an obscure writer, with no certainty of his work ever appearing?"

"Wouldn't the editor consider that rather presumptuous?"

"Be easy, Barry. That looks like a practical scheme; but suppose he turned out to be a bad illustrator?"

"I don't think he would. He must be fairly good, or I shouldn't have remembered his name. I'll look through the files of back numbers in my room to-night, till I find some of his work, so I can recommend him intelligently. Meanwhile, is there any editor who has something of yours in hand just now?"

"That's all right, then. Rogers mayn't have given it out yet for illustration. We'll call on him to-morrow. He'll be glad to see me; he'll think I've come to pay him ten dollars I owe him. Suppose we go now and tackle the old magazines in my room, to see what my praises of Mr. Davenport shall rest on. As we go, we'll look the gentleman up in the directory at the drug-store--unless you'd prefer to tarry here at the banquet of wit and beauty." Mr. Tompkins chuckled again as he waved a hand over the scene, which, despite his ridicule of the pose and conceit it largely represented, he had come by force of circumstances regularly to inhabit.

Mr. Larcher, though he found the place congenial enough, was rather for the pursuit of his own affair. Before leaving the house, Tompkins led the way up a flight of stairs to a little office wherein sat the foreign old woman who conducted this tavern of the muses. He thought that she, who was on chaffing and money-lending terms with so much talent in the shape of her customers, might know of Murray Davenport; or, indeed, as he had whispered to Larcher, that the illustrator might be one of the crowd in the restaurant at that very moment. But the proprietress knew no such person, a fact which seemed to rate him very low in her estimation and somewhat high in Mr. Tompkins's. The two young men thereupon hastened to board a car going up Sixth Avenue. Being set down near Greeley Square, they went into a drug-store and opened the directory.

"Here's a Murray Davenport, all right enough," said Tompkins, "but he's a playwright."

"Probably the same," replied Larcher, remembering that his man had something to do with theatres. "He's a gentleman of many professions, let's see the address."

It was a number and street in the same part of the town with Larcher's abode, but east of Madison Avenue, while his own was west of Fifth. But now his way was to the residence of Barry Tompkins, which proved to be a shabby room on the fifth floor of an old building on Broadway; a room serving as Mr. Tompkins's sleeping-chamber by night, and his law office by day. For Mr. Tompkins, though he sought pleasure and forage under the banners of literature and journalism, owned to no regular service but that of the law. How it paid him might be inferred from the oldness of his clothes and the ricketiness of his office. There was a card saying "Back in ten minutes" on the door which he opened to admit Larcher and himself. And his friends were wont to assert that he kept the card "working overtime," himself, preferring to lay down the law to companionable persons in neighboring caf?s rather than to possible clients in his office. When Tompkins had lighted the gas, Larcher saw a cracked low ceiling, a threadbare carpet of no discoverable hue, an old desk crowded with documents and volumes, some shelves of books at one side, and the other three sides simply walled with books and magazines in irregular piles, except where stood a bed-couch beneath a lot of prints which served to conceal much of the faded wall-paper.

Tompkins bravely went for the magazines, saying, "You begin with that pile, and I'll take this. The names of the illustrators are always in the table of contents; it's simply a matter of glancing down that."

"This isn't bad work," said Tompkins. "I can recommend 'M.D.' with a clear conscience. His women are beautiful in a really high way,--but they've got a heartless look. There's an odd sort of distinction in his men's faces, too."

"A kind of scornful discontent," ventured Larcher. "Perhaps the story requires it."

Mr. Larcher sat looking dubious. If Murray Davenport was an unusual sort of man, the more wonder that a girl like Edna Hill should so strangely busy herself about him.

ONE OUT OF SUITS WITH FORTUNE

Two days later, toward the close of a sunny afternoon, Mr. Thomas Larcher was admitted by a lazy negro to an old brown-stone-front house half-way between Madison and Fourth Avenues, and directed to the third story back, whither he was left to find his way unaccompanied. Running up the dark stairs swiftly, with his thoughts in advance of his body, he suddenly checked himself, uncertain as to which floor he had attained. At a hazard, he knocked on the door at the back of the dim, narrow passage he was in. He heard slow steps upon the carpet, the door opened, and a man slightly taller, thinner, and older than himself peered out.

"Pardon me, I may have mistaken the floor," said Larcher. "I'm looking for Mr. Murray Davenport."

"'Myself and misery know the man,'" replied the other, with quiet indifference, in a gloomy but not unpleasing voice, and stepped back to allow his visitor's entrance.

A little disconcerted at being received with a quotation, and one of such import,--the more so as it came from the speaker's lips so naturally and with perfect carelessness of what effect it might produce on a stranger,--Larcher stepped into the room. The carpet, the wall-paper, the upholstery of the arm-chair, the cover of the small iron bed in one corner, that of the small upright piano in another, and that of the table which stood between the two windows and evidently served as a desk, were all of advanced age, but cleanliness and neatness prevailed. The same was to be said of the man's attire, his coat being an old gray-black garment of the square-cut "sack" or "lounge" shape. Books filled the mantel, the flat top of a trunk, that of the piano, and much of the table, which held also a drawing-board, pads of drawing and manuscript paper, and the paraphernalia for executing upon both. Tacked on the walls, and standing about on top of books and elsewhere, were water-colors, drawings in half-tone, and pen-and-ink sketches, many unfinished, besides a few photographs of celebrated paintings and statues. But long before he had sought more than the most general impression of these contents of the room, Larcher had bent all his observation upon their possessor.

The man's face was thoughtful and melancholy, and handsome only by these and kindred qualities. Long and fairly regular, with a nose distinguished by a slight hump of the bridge, its single claim to beauty of form was in the distinctness of its lines. The complexion was colorless but clear, the face being all smooth shaven. The slightly haggard eyes were gray, rather of a plain and honest than a brilliant character, save for a tiny light that burned far in their depths. The forehead was ample and smooth, as far as could be seen, for rather longish brown hair hung over it, with a negligent, sullen effect. The general expression was of an odd painwearied dismalness, curiously warmed by the remnant of an unquenchable humor.

"This letter from Mr. Rogers will explain itself," said Larcher, handing it.

"Mr. Rogers?" inquired Murray Davenport.

Looking surprised, Davenport opened and read the letter; then, without diminution of his surprise, he asked Larcher to sit down, and himself took a chair before the table.

"I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Larcher," he said, conventionally; then, with a change to informality, "I'm rather mystified to know why Mr. Rogers, or any editor, for that matter, should offer work to me. I never had any offered me before."

"That wasn't offered me; I begged for it," said Davenport, quietly.

"Well, in any case, it was seen and admired, and consequently you were recommended to Mr. Rogers, who thought you might like to illustrate this stuff of mine," and Larcher brought forth the typewritten manuscript from under his coat.

"It's so unprecedented," resumed Davenport, in his leisurely, reflective way of speaking. "I can scarcely help thinking there must be some mistake."

"But you are the Murray Davenport that illustrated the 'Heart in Peril' story?"

"Oh, there's nothing extraordinary about that. Editors often seek out new illustrators they hear of."

Larcher smiled. "Well, I hope your incredulity won't make you refuse to do the pictures."

"Oh, no," returned Davenport, indolently. "I won't refuse. I'll accept the commission with pleasure--a certain amount of pleasure, that is. There was a time when I should have danced a break-down for joy, probably, at this opportunity. But a piece of good luck, strange as it is to me, doesn't matter now. Still, as it has visited me at last, I'll receive it politely. In as much as I have plenty of time for this work, and as Mr. Rogers seems to wish me to do it, I should be churlish if I declined. The money too, is an object--I won't conceal that fact. To think of a chance to earn a little money, coming my way without the slightest effort on my part! You look substantial, Mr. Larcher, but I'm still tempted to think this is all a dream."

Larcher laughed. "Well, as to effort," said he, "I don't think I should be here now with that accepted manuscript for you to illustrate, if I hadn't taken a good deal of pains to press my work on the attention of editors."

"Oh, I don't mean to say that your prosperity, and other men's, is due to having good things thrust upon you in this way. But if you do owe all to your own work, at least your work does bring a fair amount of reward, your efforts are in a fair measure successful. But not so with me. The greatest fortune I could ever have asked would have been that my pains should bring their reasonable price, as other men's have done. Therefore, this extreme case of good luck, small as it is, is the more to be wondered at. The best a man has a right to ask is freedom from what people call habitual bad luck. That's an immunity I've never had. My labors have been always banned--except when the work has masqueraded as some other man's. In that case they have been blessed. It will seem strange to you, Mr. Larcher, but whatever I've done in my own name has met with wretched pay and no recognition, while work of mine, no better, when passed off as another man's, has won golden rewards--for him--in money and reputation."

"It does seem strange," admitted Larcher.

"What can account for it?"

"Do you know what a 'Jonah' is, in the speech of the vulgar?"

"Yes; certainly."

"Well, people have got me tagged with that name. I bring ill luck to enterprises I'm concerned in, they say. That's a fatal reputation, Mr. Larcher. It wasn't deserved in the beginning, but now that I have it, see how the reputation itself is the cause of the apparent ill luck. Take this thing, for instance." He held up a sheet of music paper, whereon he had evidently been writing before Larcher's arrival. "A song, supposed to be sentimental. As the idea is somewhat novel, the words happy, and the tune rather quaint, I shall probably get a publisher for it, who will offer me the lowest royalty. What then? Its fame and sale--or whether it shall have any--will depend entirely on what advertising it gets from being sung by professional singers. I have taken the precaution to submit the idea and the air to a favorite of the music halls, and he has promised to sing it. Now, if he sang it on the most auspicious occasion, making it the second or third song of his turn, having it announced with a flourish on the programme, and putting his best voice and style into it, it would have a chance of popularity. Other singers would want it, it would be whistled around, and thousands of copies sold. But will he do that?"

"I don't see why he shouldn't," said Larcher.

Whether the man still spoke seriously, Larcher could not exactly tell. Certainly the man's eyes were fixed on Larcher's face in a manner that made Larcher color as one detected. But his weakness had been for an instant only, and he rallied laughingly.

"Many thanks, but I'm not superstitious, Mr. Davenport. Anyhow, my article has been accepted, and nothing can increase or diminish the amount I'm to receive for it."

"But consider the risk to your future career," pursued Davenport, with a faint smile.

"Oh, I'll take the chances," said Larcher, glad to treat the subject as a joke. "I don't suppose the author of 'A Heart in Peril,' for instance, has experienced hard luck as a result of your illustrating his story."

"Let us hope that the good luck of the magazine will spread to you, as a result of your contact with it."

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