



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