



Produced by Don Kostuch. (This text was produced from files
obtained from The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)





[Transcriber's note: The original unedited text file came
from http://www.archive.org/details/nobody00jacogoog]


NOBODY

LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE




[Illustration: "Miss Manwaring! For the Love of Mike--"]





NOBODY

By LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE

AUTHOR OF "The Lone Wolf,"

"The Brass Bowl," "Cynthia of the Minute,"

"The Destroying Angel," Etc.





With Frontispiece

By W. L. JACOBS





A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers

New York

Published by Arrangement with GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY



Copyright, 1914,

By LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE

Copyright, 1915,

By GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

_This novel was originally published serially,
under the title of "An Outsider."_





CONTENTS

CHAPTER

    I  ANARCHY

   II  BURGLARY

  III  ACCESSARY AFTER THE FACT

   IV  BLACKMAIL

    V  CONSPIRACY

   VI  ALIAS MANWARING

  VII  FRAUD

 VIII  A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

   IX  PICAROON

    X  LEGERDEMAIN

   XI  THE THIRD DEGREE

  XII  MACHIAVELLIAN

 XIII  MARPLOT

  XIV  MAGIC

   XV  FALSE WITNESS

  XVI  THE PLANT

 XVII  EXPOSE

XVIII  BREAKING JAIL







NOBODY




CHAPTER I

ANARCHY



"What you gonna have?"

To this inquiry the patron made no response; head bent, nose between
the pages of the magazine, she pored sedulously over a legend attached
to one of the illustrations.

After a decent pause in waiting the waitress renewed her demand with a
sharper accent:

"Say, lis'en; what you want?"

"White satin, veiled with _point d' Angleterre_,'" Miss Manvers
replied distinctly, if without looking up, aware simply of something
imperative in the starched but humid presence at her elbow.

Pardonably startled, the waitress demanded with the rising inflection:
"_Wha-a-at?_"

"'The court train,'" Miss Manvers pursued in abstraction, "'is lined
with lace and dotted with bouquets of orange-blossoms--'"

She checked herself suddenly, looked up shyly, and essayed a pale,
apologetic smile.

"I'm sorry; I didn't realise--"

But now the waitress had caught a glimpse of the illustration and was
bending over the patron's shoulder for a better look.

"Gee!" she commented sincerely. "Ain't that a dream?"

"Yes," Miss Manvers admitted wistfully, "it's a dream, right enough!"

"That's so, too." Deftly, with a large, moist, red hand, the waitress
arranged knife, fork, spoon, and paper serviette on the unclothed
brown board before Miss Manvers. "That's the worst of them fashion
mag'zines," she complained; "they get your goat. Sometimes after
readin' some of that dope I can't hardly remember orders right, just
for wishin' somebody'd come along and hang some of them joyful rags
onto me!"

Then, catching the eye of the manager, she straightway resumed her
professional habit of slightly wilted hauteur--compounded in equal
parts of discontent, tired feet, heat-fag and that profound disdain
for food-consuming animals which inevitably informs the mind of every
quick-lunch waitress.

"What you gonna have?" she demanded dispassionately.

"Ham-and, please."

"Plate of ham-and. Cawfy?"

"Yes, iced coffee and"--Miss Manvers hesitated briefly--"and a
napoleon."

Reciting the amended order, the waitress withdrew.

For the next few moments the customer neglected the fashion magazine
which she had found--apparently a souvenir of some other
absent-minded patron--on the seat of the chair next that one of her
own casual choice.

She stared blankly at the smudged and spotted bill of fare propped up,
in its wooden frame, against an armour-plate-china sugar-bowl. She was
deeply intrigued by the mystery of human frailty as exemplified by her
reckless extravagance in ordering that superfluous bit of pastry. Miss
Manvers's purse contained a single coin of silver, the quarter of a
dollar; being precisely the sum of her entire fortune. Her ham and
beans would cost fifteen cents, the coffee and the napoleon five cents
each. In other words, she would be penniless when she had paid her
score--and Heaven only knew for how long afterward.

Her lips moved without sound in her worn and pallid face. "What's the
difference?" she bully-ragged her conscience. "I might as well be
broke as the way I am!"

The argument was painfully reasonable; that inmate of New York
who has but five cents has nothing.

On the other hand, there was nothing whatever to be advanced in
extenuation of her folly in thus inviting indigestion--a passion for
pastry is its own punishment no less than any other infatuation to
which mortal flesh is prone. Sally was morally certain she would
suffer, and that severely, before nightfall.

"Well, what of it?" she grumbled sullenly. "If I die for it, it's
cheap at the price! And, no matter what happens, it can't be any
hotter afterward than it is now."

Somehow soothed by this cynical reflection, she sat up, mopped her
flushed forehead with a handkerchief of which she was not proud, and
drank thirstily of her tumbler of ice-water.

The grateful draft reminded her that she had actually been athirst
ever since noon. It was now almost three o'clock--thanks to which fact
she might eat in the comparative comfort of a lunchroom which boasted
no patron other than herself. But she was little appreciative of this
boon; she comprehended her surroundings with just a little languid
resentment of their smug cleanliness and their atmosphere impregnated
with effluvia of cheap edibles. But if these seemed offensive she
would have been willing to overlook them on certain
conditions--as she proved when the waitress reappeared with her order.

"I don't suppose--" Miss Manvers began, but hesitated.

"What say?"

"I don't suppose you need any more girls here?"

"Lookin' for a job?" the waitress inquired brilliantly. "I dunno--I'll
ask the manager, if you want."

Miss Manvers nodded a barely audible "Please!" She munched drearily
for a few minutes, staring out through the front windows wherein, from
dawn till dark, a white-clad chef industriously browned the wheats and
cast sinkers; beyond their wide expanse of plate-glass, stenciled with
the name of the establishment in reverse, a vista of sun-smitten
street danced drunkenly through the reek from the sheet-iron griddles.
Miss Manvers wondered dully if the sidewalks were really less hot than
those same griddles.

"The manager says nothin' doin'," the waitress reported. "But you can
leave your name and add-ress if you wanta."

"Thanks," said Miss Manvers; "but what's the use?"

"That's right, all right," the other sympathised. "Besides, take it
from me, this ain't the kind of a job you could make good at. You
gotta be a horse like me to stand it,'specially days like this."

"Yes, I was thinking of that--"

"Believe me or not, nobody ain't got no idear what hot is without
they've juggled hash in one of these joints on a summer day. The
kitchen back there is honest' somethin' fierce. Three of our girls
fainted dead away in the noon rush."

"Oh, I know," Miss Manvers sighed; "I've tried it before--and failed."

The entrance of another customer prevented further confidences, and
Miss Manvers was left to resume her scanning of the fashion magazine.

If its distracting quality was unquestionable, it hardly contributed
comfort to her mood.

"In selecting her personal apparel," she read, "the bride-to-be must,
of necessity, be guided by