THE SHADOW
BY
ARTHUR STRINGER
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1913
Copyright, 1913, by
The Century Co.
Published, January, 1913
THE SHADOW
I
Blake, the Second Deputy, raised hisgloomy hound’s eyes as the door openedand a woman stepped in. Then he droppedthem again.
“Hello, Elsie!” he said, without looking ather.
The woman stood a moment staring at him.Then she advanced thoughtfully toward histable desk.
“Hello, Jim!” she answered, as she sank intothe empty chair at the desk end. The rustlingof silk suddenly ceased. An aphrodisiacodor of ambergris crept through the Deputy-Commissioner’soffice.
The woman looped up her veil, festooningit about the undulatory roll of her hat brim.Blake continued his solemnly preoccupiedstudy of the desk top.
“You sent for me,” the woman finally said.It was more a reminder than a question. Andthe voice, for all its quietness, carried no senseof timidity. The woman’s pale face, wherethe undulating hat brim left the shadowy eyesstill more shadowy, seemed fortified with acalm sense of power. It was something morethan a dormant consciousness of beauty,though the knowledge that men would turnback to a face so wistful as hers, and theirjudgment could be dulled by a smile so narcotizing,had not a little to do with the woman’sachieved serenity. There was nothing outwardlysinister about her. This fact had alwaysleft her doubly dangerous as a law-breaker.
Blake himself, for all his dewlap and histwo hundred pounds of lethargic beefiness, felta vague and inward stirring as he finally liftedhis head and looked at her. He looked intothe shadowy eyes under the level brows. Hecould see, as he had seen before, that they wereexceptional eyes, with iris rings of deep grayabout the ever-widening and ever-narrowingpupils which varied with varying thought, asthough set too close to the brain that controlledthem. So dominating was this pupil thatsometimes the whole eye looked violet, andsometimes green, according to the light.
Then his glance strayed to the woman’smouth, where the upper lip curved outward,from the base of the straight nose, giving herat first glance the appearance of pouting.Yet the heavier underlip, soft and wilful, contradictedthis impression of peevishness, deepenedit into one of Ishmael-like rebellion.
Then Blake looked at the woman’s hair. Itwas abundant and nut-brown, and artfully andscrupulously interwoven and twisted together.It seemed to stand the solitary pride of a lifeclaiming few things of which to be proud.Blake remembered how that wealth of nut-brownhair was daily plaited and treasuredand coiled and cared for, the meticulous attentivenesswith which morning by morningits hip-reaching abundance was braided andtwisted and built up about the small head, anintricate structure of soft wonder which midnightmust ever see again in ruins, just as thenext morning would find idly laborious fingersrebuilding its ephemeral glories. This rebuildingwas done thoug