Smith—“Indade Miss, Oi followed wid wan on the soule ave his plexus.”Smith—“Indade Miss, Oi followed wid wan on the soule ave his plexus.”
Smith—“Indade Miss, Oi followed wid wan on the soule ave his plexus.”
“Sure—and I beg yees pardon fir sayin’ it, darlints, but that’s just what he towld me and niver a wink whint wid it, the blackguard!
“I up and axed him who he’d be refarrin’ to, because I had in my moind a sartin lady wid trouble ave her own.
“He says, says he, wid a snarl, ‘None ave yees business.’
“Widout thinkin’ whether he meant anything by it or not, I tould him he was a gintleman and a liar, too. So I did.”
“You insulted him!” exclaimed Hazel, astounded.
“Indade I did, Miss, in foine style, sure”—and he spoke softly to Hazel—“he got it right betwix the two eyes, and I followed it wid wan on the soule ave his plexis.”
“You did!” Hazel exclaimed, amazed, yet with an irrepressible smile that flickered about her pretty mouth.
“I did!” he replied gravely.
“Is the soul of one’s plexus in his eyes, Smith?” interrogated Hazel.
“Sure, some say it do be the cramps; but I think it do be trouble ave the bowels, Miss,” he answered.
“Poor man!” exclaimed Constance, and she looked at Smith reproachfully.
He quickly turned to her with a disgusted look on his face, and slowly exclaimed, “Yis mam!”
During the silence that followed Smith realized that he had spoken hastily and rude, and the disgust so palpably in evidence quickly merged into a look of grave concern.
His native wit, however, came to his aid in a singular apology.
“While the fellow hunted for a soft spot on the pavement, I called up a nearby doctor to help him,” he said.
“You shall be repaid,” Constance assured him in an absent manner.
“Plaise God, it will not be the ‘dago’ who’ll do it!” he solemnly replied, and then he softly asked.
“Be there any more arders, mam?”
“No, Smith, you must be in need of rest. Thank you for all your kindness,” and Constance turned from him with grief, unaffected, still on her face. “God bless yees!” he replied, and then as he turned to leave the room, said to himself, “I shud loike to see the wan—bad luck to him—who brought all this trouble on the poor missus,” and he shut his teeth tight in silent rage.
After he had gone Constance pressed her hand down on the top of her head and said distractedly, “Still no word of encouragement; no relief to this strain that seems to be tearing my brain asunder!”
Under the circumstances, inaction, to one of Hazel’s temperament, was anything but pleasant, and the young girl was to be condoned rather than censured for desiring to get away from the distress that pervaded the house. Moreover, she felt that something must be done to relieve the strain that weighed so heavily upon Constance.
“Don’t you think I had better see Mrs. Harris, dear?” she said, with a wistful look of sympathy at Constance. “Perhaps she may have something to tell.”
“Very well,” replied Constance. “Do, dear, if you think some good may come from your visit. Virginia may be home soon and I shall not be alone.”
“I shall get my wraps.”
After Hazel had left the room, Constance, dispirited and sadly out of harmony with Smith’s simple recital of his search for Dorothy, stepped out on the piazza, as though the air of the close room oppressed her.
The sky was cloudy, the air raw and cold.
Dorothy’s pet canary, with its bill thrust under its wing, rested on the perch of its cage, glum and inert, immediately before her.
“Poor thing!” she exclaimed tenderly. “Sweet, sweet! Look up, pet!”
The dainty little beauty, with a throat of silky mellowness, looked curiously about, gave a “cheep” of recognition and then again buried its bill under its wing.
“Even my darling’s pet will not be comforted.” And tears stole into her eyes as she turned away from the bird. “Oh, Sam, I’ve been so anxious to hear from you! Have you found my darling?”
Sam had approached the steps unseen by her, and when she turned away from the bird he stood directly in front of her, though at a little distance.
Her mind at once recalled his words, which rang in her ears as she sank to the ground on that fateful night of the reception, and it was therefore the first and most natural question uppermost in her mind when she saw him.
He started back in evident surprise and answered confusedly:
“Well—I—I am sure, Mrs. Thorpe, if I had found her, I should only be too glad to—to tell you.”
“And you have no tidings of her? But—come in, I am sure something important brought you here.”
She entered the house, followed by Sam, who muttered to himself, “She’s conjuring tears already, but I’m proof, were they to fall like rain. I guess so!”
Upon entering the room he looked at her steadfastly and quizically.
There was something in his look, too, that bore the imprint of effrontery.
She stared at him and asked timidly with alarm in her voice. “Oh, what do you know of her?”
“I—I—beg your pardon, Mrs. Thorpe, but—well, the truth is, I called to know if you have any information of her.”
“How can you ask that question of me?” replied Constance brokenly, while again the tears welled up in her eyes.
“You see, madam—ahem! You won’t be offended with me, for God knows I do not mean any offense to you, but—ahem—you see, madam, you are the unhappy cause of as fine a hearted gentleman as was ever born being a broken-spirited, a—a—blighted man!”
“Sam!” she affrightedly exclaimed. “What are you saying?”
“This,” continued he, with dauntless determination, “and I’ll tell you the truth. You are the talk of the town, and they say you—you—you’ve secured the child from your husband.”
Her face became ashy white as the meaning of John’s absence from home dawned on her mind. She staggered, then sank into a chair. Presently she looked up with a sort of dazed, wandering expression and tried to smile through watery eyes. “My cup of woe is very full, Sam! Please don’t jest with me!”
He wiped the perspiration from his brow, for he felt his resolution to accomplish what he had set out to do was fast crumbling.
He rushed on, “I am not jesting. No, I guess not! I know I am paining you, but I have a duty to do which I shall do, as I have always done through my life. And as this affair occurred at my uncle’s place, they say he knows more about it than he cares to tell, which he doesn’t. And I have come to see if you really don’t know something of the whereabouts of Dorothy, as that would relieve my uncle and aunt of much embarrassment—at least—I guess so!”
Her lips trembled with the pathos of her reply: “Did I know of the fate of my child, heaven could not bless me with a more joyful desire—to let you know, to let your aunt know, that Dorothy is—is safe. As it is, I would to heaven that I were dead and with my darling.” And her head fell forward on the table as a burst of heart-rending agony shook her frame.
It was evident Sam was uneasy and much affected by her distress. He coughed and tried to clear his throat again and again. “Ahem!—you must excuse me, Mrs. Thorpe—ahem! But—but, Lord—Lord! I can’t bear to hear you take on that way. Ahem! Ahem! I’m rough and thoughtless in my way, and it seems harsh and brutal to speak to you as I have done—I guess so!—and if any man in my hearing says you have hidden your child—why, by Heavens, I’ll knock the lie back through his teeth.”
Sam had forgotten his resolution to resist the influence of a woman’s tears; moreover, he felt convinced he was standing in the presence of a true, atrociously wronged and much slandered woman, and in his eagerness to undo the wrong he had done her by practically charging her with the wrecking of her husband’s happiness and connivance at the child’s disappearance, had lost control of that gentleness he felt due to the weaker sex, especially this bereaved woman. He stammered an apology in a soft regretful tone of voice.
“I—I—beg your pardon. I—I could not help it. These expressions will slip out now and again, won’t they? I guess so. I am satisfied you are deeply grieved about Dorothy, and I’m interested in her, too. The fact is, I was so anxious on my aunt’s account that I have behaved like a brute. Now please understand me, you are not friendless, for I shall do my best for you, and if Dorothy is out of water I’m going to find her. I’m off now, so good-bye!”
And he was gone—glad to get away from the distress that raised a lump in his throat which all his labored coughing could not dislodge.
Sam had entered her presence a scoffer. He had made up his mind that her grief was as deceitful as her reputed double life. He departed, her firm friend and almost choked with disgust at his own readiness to believe the foul reports, magnified by gossiping busybodies.
Gradually Constances’ emotion subsided. She sat upright in the chair. A significant dryness had come into her eyes as she stared at the wall with profound abstraction. Out of the haze John Thorpe’s picture gradually emerged.
Suddenly she exclaimed in strangely low tones, almost a whisper—tones in which a woman’s life was projected on the horoscope of faithfulness, immutable as the “Rock of Ages”:
“John! John! You are breaking my heart!”
Then her mind began to settle upon one object—to see her husband, John Thorpe.
“It must be some mistake!” she muttered. “It cannot be so. John would never treat me thus. I will have Smith seek him and deliver a message at once.”
She went to her desk and wrote a hasty note, requesting John to come home to her immediately. With the sealed note in her hand, she hurried out to find Smith. She found him fast asleep on an old couch just inside the coach-house door, and remembering his tired look, softly said: “Poor man! How fatigued he must be! After all, what matters it for a few hours?” And then, instead of arousing him, she took his coat off the rack and gently covered him, murmuring in a broken voice that betrayed the pathos of her trouble: “Asleep, with the peace of God resting on his face. Heaven bless and reward your faithful heart. Sleep on.”
Returning to the house, she sat down at the table to think of a possible something she had done to cause John’s unkind behavior.
A shadow darkened the doorway. She turned mechanically. A tall, grave and elderly gentleman, with stooping shoulders and bared head, stood in the entrance.
Constance arose. He approached her and said softly: “I beg to apologize for the intrusion. The door being open, and seeing you within, I entered unannounced.”
“Oh, Mr. Williams! Have you any tidings of Dorothy?”
“I regret not being able to bring any tidings of your child. The river has been carefully dragged for a considerable distance in front of ‘Rosemont.’ I fear she is drowned and the body carried down to the Columbia.”
“My poor darling!”
“There is yet hope, however, that your child lives. An old cripple—a disreputable looking vagabond—was seen lurking about the grounds the night she was lost. He has not been seen since. Detectives are baffled in tracing him. He may have abducted your child. It’s the only hope that she is alive, though I admit, a frail one.”
“Heaven give me strength to hope it is so. But who could be so cruel as to steal away my little darling? No, no, she is drowned!”
“I have to announce a disagreeable errand,” and he paused, not quite satisfied of the propriety of the moment for so serious a declaration as he was about to make; but he at length continued hesitatingly:
“As—as your—legal adviser—.” Again he paused.
Constance looked at him timidly. A cold, creepy fear of something dreadful about to happen chilled her. Her blanched face and beseeching eyes warned him of very grave consequences.
“What is it, Judge?” she whispered with parched lips, “speak out; tell me what you have come for.”
“Are you strong enough?—I think—perhaps—I had better defer—”
“Oh, yes, my strength is not great—but—the suspense—I cannot bear. Let me hear—what it is.” He hesitated no longer.
“As your attorney, I have been served with a notice of an application for a divorce, by John Thorpe, from his wife, Constance.”
With bowed head he laid the document on the table.
She clasped her hand to her head, clutched the back of a chair for support, for the suddenness and weight of the blow staggered her. She, however, managed to bear herself bravely up.
“And—could—he really believe this of me?” she said distractedly.
“He has, at the same time, placed at your disposal in the National Bank a sum of money for your immediate wants.” He paused. A solemn quietness pervaded the room.
At length he continued in a low, grave tone: “I am prepared to receive instructions. Shall I give notice of your intention to resist his application for divorce?”
Still leaning on the chair for support, and without lifting her bowed head, or raising her downcast eyes, she said in a voice barely articulate with the huskiness and tremor of threatened physical collapse, “Please leave me for awhile. Providence has seen fit to afflict me so sorely that I must beg a little time to try to think. But, stay!” And her voice gathered a little strength in an effort to keep from breaking down altogether:
“I desire to receive nothing from John. I shall not reply to his complaint, and you will return the money he has placed to my credit in the bank. Now, please leave me; I desire to be alone.”
During his professional experience, the “Judge” had been a witness to many painful scenes, and familiarity had calloused somewhat his sense of sympathy. But as he gazed upon the white, spiritually chaste face of this frail woman, a conviction that a great wrong was being done to her forced and crowded itself upon his brain.
“Someone must answer for it before a higher than human court,” he thought, and then with bent head he left her, feeling that he would value beyond price the power to effect a little gleam of sunshine to heal her broken heart.
“Dorothy! Dorothy!” he muttered, and he passed out from her presence with words of Tennyson on his lips:
“Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,The sound of a voice that is still!”
After he had gone, Constance remained motionless. She was strangely quiet, yet wrapt in thoughts of bitterest shame and grief, the world had little left for her to care for.
A sense of gloom enveloped her. Its shadow bore heavily upon her oppressed spirits, smothering by its weight the stifled cry of her heart’s anguish.
It was therefore with a wondrously calm voice, pregnant with tragic pathos, that she at length broke the stillness: “I am sure of the cause of John’s absence now, and the very worst has come to me. What now can compensate me for the humiliation of being thought by him so shameless and debased? Oh, how wretched I am!” and with a moan, she placed her hand on the top of her head.
“Oh, heaven spare my reason—yet—what is reason to me now? Or—life? My darling is drowned. John has left me, and with them hope and happiness are gone forever.”
It was then a strange, uncanny, desperate flash leapt into her eyes. Suddenly she withdrew her hand from the top of her head, but instantly pressed it to her brow.
In a moment her appearance underwent a great change. Under the continuous strain, the strands of grief and despair had at last snapped asunder and up rushed an exultation that instantly overwhelmed all opposition to a suddenly conceived and terrible purpose. She whispered with an earnestness intense as it was significant: “There is a way out.” Then she suddenly burst into a frenzy of pathetic joy as she thought of the phial of laudanum in the medicine chest in her room.
“A passage to my darling beyond!”
She did not see Virginia standing in the doorway, nor did she pause as some do to take a last farewell look at earth and sky. Her mind was set upon the swift accomplishment of an object.
Upon reaching her room, she took up the phial of laudanum and then, as she fell on her knees, locked her hands together, and her voice softened into tenderness—softened in inexpressibly sweet and plaintive tones, as she cried out in a whisper of her soul’s anguish:
“Rock of Ages, cleft for me!”
She was standing in the shadow of the valley of death.
Strangely coincident, the inspiring notes of the “Star Spangled Banner” softly broke upon the air from a piano in the music room below. As the grand strains swelled upward, they were met with a break in the clouds through which the sun poured down a flood of dazzling glory.
At that moment Dorothy’s pet canary began to sing. The delicate little feathered thing, that had nestled its bill under its wing in the raw cold of the morning, felt the warm influence of the sunshine that fell upon it, and looked up, twittered, lifted its voice in surprised gladness, and then in response to the soft strains that were pealing forth from the music room, broke into song.
Higher and higher it swelled, cleaving the air with its exultant melody.
Oh! the wild soaring flight of that joyous song!
Through the partly closed window it burst and flooded the room with its gladness and cheer. Death stayed his hand.
The little silken feathered throat of her darling’s pet had turned aside the “Grim Sickle.”
She heard it. Out over the entrancing beauty of Autumn-dyed vegetation, her sad eyes wandered—wandered wistfully over nature bathed in the splendor of the sun’s radiance. She heeded the call, and then, appalled at her contemplated sin, she cowered—bowed down—lower, lower. In tones of resignation—tones tremulous with awe of the Omnipotent, she said: “Have pity upon me, Merciful Heaven!”
And then very softly Virginia knelt beside her, gently encircling her waist with her arm, and looked into her spiritual face with eyes overflowing with tears. In a broken voice, scarcely articulate through a great sob, she said: “Oh, Constance! Constance, dear, I am punished enough already!”
After Hazel had completed her attire for a visit to Mrs. Harris, she descended the stairs with the same feeling of gloom and depression upon her.
Slow and hesitating as was her action—as though undecided as to the propriety of leaving Constance, and while drawing on her gloves, she aimlessly wandered into the music room and listlessly sat on the piano stool. Then, with her head turned looking out of the window, she let her fingers ramble over the keys of the instrument. Then she saw Virginia pass up the walk and enter the house, but after the lapse of a few moments and her cousin not appearing, Hazel entered the drawing room to greet her—but too late. Through the open door she heard a step on the main stairs above. Hazel followed. On passing the table the divorce bill caught her eye. For a moment she paused and picked it up; then laid it down, her breath coming in gasps, for she instantly realized a crisis of a very grave moment had appeared. She ran upstairs, surmising that Virginia was connected with the “divorce bill,” for she had not seen Mr. Williams.
And then she heard Virginia’s voice. Softly she stole to the door and looked in. There, kneeling on the floor, were Constance and Virginia, looking into each other’s eyes, Constance drawn back in timid alarm, and Virginia blinded with tears, clasping the hand that held the laudanum phial, her free arm thrown lovingly around Constance’s waist.
Hazel silently drew back, an overpowering emotion suffusing her eyes with tears. “Poor Constance! Her trouble thickens fast. What will the end be?”
Rutley had found time during the frantic appearance of Constance at the “fete,” to threaten Virginia with public exposure if she failed to keep their secret. It was that threat that induced her to pause in a momentary conceived intention to demand an explanation from her brother. The passionate earnestness—the uncontrollable fury she discovered in her brother—produced an awe, and aroused her to a sense of some terrible mistake, and of the far-reaching effect her conspiracy with Rutley was likely to have. Each moment, instead of exultation, increased her sorrow at the course she had pursued.
Between fear of publicity of the part she had played, coupled with her hatred of Corway, and consequent satisfaction in her triumph at his discomfiture—at the same time alarmed at her brother’s imminent danger in a probably tragic affair—all contributed to indecision, and she realized to her dismay that she had placed herself in the power of a man who had proved himself a master “Iago.”
Her intuition caused her to shrink from him. He comprehended and pressed closer. Despite her powerful will and keen perception, and possession of those womanly attributes of sympathy and kindness to suffering humanity, she felt herself incapable, just then, of defying him.
The cry of Constance that Dorothy was in the water scattered the quarreling party, which rushed to the river’s edge.
Virginia and Mrs. Harris remained with Constance, but Rutley made it his business to keep his eyes on her and under pretense of searching the grounds, remained near by, in order to restrain her from approaching her brother.
Her opportunity to undo all, which under a more prompt determination would have succeeded—was lost, simply because it had taken her some time to care for Constance, and also to arrive at a fixed conclusion, irrespective of the threats or cajoling of Rutley—and then John Thorpe disappeared. Two days she diligently searched for him, surmising that he was searching for Dorothy, but all her efforts to locate him were fruitless. She had just returned from a stubborn search of the hotels, when she heard the frenzied cry of, “A passage to my darling beyond.” She recognized the voice and stole through the doorway, just in time to see Constance pass upstairs.
As Virginia entered the room, she passed the table on which lay the divorce paper. The printed word attracted her attention, and at once arrested her onward course. She picked it up. “John Thorpe, from his wife, Constance.” Horror and dismay swept across her face with lightning rapidity. Here, then, was the key to Rutley’s horrible revenge. Now she knew that Constance was made to stand for Hazel.
The document dropped from her nerveless hand, and with wildly beating heart she flew up the stairs after Constance. Noiselessly she opened the door. Before her—on her knees, with bowed head, the phial of laudanum between her clasped hands, was the woman who had received the terrible blow intended for Corway.
Virginia’s heart seemed to still its beating. Her blood seemed to be congealing to ice as she stood incapable of motion, and listened to the piteous appeal from that pure, broken heart.
In a moment she understood it all—the intent—the arresting hand of fate—the startled submission of a meek and contrite spirit to the Divine will, and below—the divorce paper.
Satisfied that Constance would not again attempt an act of self-destruction, and unequal, in her present frame of mind, to the task of ministering comfort to the woman whose grief must be partially laid to her door—for it must be remembered that Virginia had not in any manner contributed to the abduction of Dorothy, and was as much at a loss to account for the child’s disappearance as her mother—she withdrew, her mission unfilled—her atonement inconceivably harder to accomplish. She seemed overcome with a suffocating sensation. She must have air. Out of the house she mechanically passed. Down the steps and around the grounds—under the silent falling vine and russet and golden-colored leaves she hurried, neither looking to the right nor to the left.
Born on her father’s Willamette Valley farm, yet this city home, of her childhood and of her womanhood, now so enchantingly beautiful in its Autumn glory, its fragrant coying whisper had no charm to impede her onward flight, no power to lift her bowed head.
She was thinking of the one within. “And it is all my fault. I feel sure of that, for it would have been impossible for Rutley to have angered John so much with any other name. I must have been mad ever to have confided in him that it was Constance’s ring.
“Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do? God forgive me!” she moaned, as she sought solace under a maple. But there was no rest for her. She returned to the house. Mechanically she opened the door and with one longing heartsore purpose—to seek the seclusion of her apartment—to throw herself on the couch and bury her face in her hands in a vain hope to get relief in tears. But there, just inside the door, on the hall table, she saw through moist-swollen eyes, something white.
She picked it up. It was a letter addressed to her, in a coarse scrawl. She fled to her room, there she sat on a chair near the window and opened the letter. The characters were bold, but slovenly written, and almost illegible, and then somehow the light did not appear strong or bright as it should be. She bent over close to the window—no better, save that she could make out the word “Virginia.”
Becoming more interested, she turned on the electric light, and even then her eyes seemed weak, and the letters so run together as to appear blurred. She took up a magnifying glass that lay on the table, and by its aid was at last able to decipher the note.
Virginia, ther party as sends er this kin tell yer somethink about er party yer wud lie ter knows, perwiden yer meets me nere the top of the long steps at or eleven ternight—alone, mind yer—alone in ther city park. Yerl be safe if alone.
Virginia, ther party as sends er this kin tell yer somethink about er party yer wud lie ter knows, perwiden yer meets me nere the top of the long steps at or eleven ternight—alone, mind yer—alone in ther city park. Yerl be safe if alone.
She was at once convinced that the note had a deep significance. She turned it over and over and read and re-read it again and again.
It was clearly meant for a clandestine meeting—with whom? Ha!
The handwriting was evidently disguised, for it was quite different from that on the envelop, and the illiteracy plainly intended to deceive. Nevertheless the information might be of inestimable value—perhaps John, maybe of Dorothy.
Her mind was almost in a state of frenzy at her impotent efforts to undo the mischief she had wrought, and even this “straw” gave a certain measure of relief, by offering work for solution.
“I will go!” she said aloud. Having made up her mind to take the risk, her spirits lightened perceptibly.
As the envelop bore no postmark, she at once plied the housemaid with questions. Who delivered the letter? How had it come on the hall table? The questions were put in a quiet, indifferent manner, so as not to excite curiosity.
At the usual time the maid had taken it from the private mail box, which was of iron and old-fashioned, and fastened to the porch buttress, and she guessed that the mail carrier had brought it with the other mail. Virginia spoke kindly to the girl, and after casually commenting on the beautiful sunshine, returned to her room and prepared for the adventure. She utterly disregarded in her mind that the mail carrier had brought the letter. Since it was not postmarked, it could not have passed through the postoffice.
Some one had sneaked in some time during the night or early in the morning and placed it in the box. That was her decision.
That night, heavily veiled, she entered the park, alone. She was familiar with the contour and walks and knew the location of the long steps, but in her agitation, she thoughtlessly took to the walk on the left of the main entrance.
The darkness was not deep. Above could be seen stray fleecy clouds, flitting athwart the vast realms of space, while the atmosphere near the earth’s surface was laden with a thin vapor. Down low on the horizon, above the line of hills, swung the half-moon, aglow with soft pale light, while the nearby electric arcs were scarcely affected by the haze that enveloped them. Every element seemed to have conspired to make the night a fit one in its baneful purpose.
As she proceeded, endeavoring to control her fears, though her heart beat wildly with misgivings, the stillness of the night was broken only by the sound of her own footfalls on the cement pavement, and ever and anon were mingled with the distant attenuated sounds of belated cosmopolitan life. At times her walk would be rapid, then slow and hesitating, almost a halt, as she approached some indefinite object, and as the clouds sped hurriedly across the face of the moon, grotesque shadows loomed up suddenly, shying her into moments of terror until discovered to be fantastic bushes or other odd-shaped growths.
Her sustained, keen, alert watchfulness preyed severely upon her tense nerves. At length she arrived at the place she thought designated in the note. She stepped off the walk onto the grass, and stood under the deeper darkness of a cedar. The stillness was profound; so much so that she fancied she could hear the throb of her own tumultuous heart.
And to add to the unseasonable moment, the weird, uncanny howl of a jackal, confined in the park menagerie, pierced the night air and caused cold shivers to race up and down her frame.
“It’s a lonely spot,” she whispered to herself. “And this is the top of the long walk. Now the time—yet! I can see no one. I do not feel safe.”
Just then a man moved slowly from the shadows near the fountain. He leisurely walked toward the reservoir. She watched him for a moment, until the pale moonlight again faded away, and darkness shut him from view. Then, as if by inspiration, she suddenly remembered that the note directed her to the top of the “long steps.” In her excitement, she had taken the wrong direction, and was then at the top of the long walk.
Cautiously as possible, she crept down the bank, crossed the bridge, that spanned the park’s main artery, and though confusing in the darkness, she at last found her way to the appointed place without meeting or seeing anyone, but with nerves almost snapping asunder, and so fatigued that her limbs trembled.
She sat on a bench near a clump of small firs to get a little rest, and while peering through the darkness, which at that point was faintly illumined by the mass of distant lights spread over the city before and beneath her, she made out the figure of a man walking leisurely on the drive below where she was sitting.
She arose to her feet, and silently stepped in the deep shadow of a clump of trees, and watched him. She took him to be the same man she had seen a little while before near the fountain. As she watched him, another man, who had been concealed in the grove of trees, recently trimmed out to make way for the traditional group of Indians in bronze, “The Coming of the White Man,” and which now graces the spot—stole up with cat-like tread behind her, and then, quite close, halted, and silently stood regarding her.
Virginia was watching the stranger on the road, almost directly below her, with such intense eagerness as to be quite unconscious of the dark shadow behind her.
“Perhaps I am being watched,” she thought. “I will go down the steps.” She turned about, and was terrified to discover a roughly-clad man at her elbow. Her heart seemed to stop its beat.
“What do you mean? Who are you?” she gasped.
The man lifted his hat, bowed and softly said: “Bees a-note a da fraid, Signora de Virginia. Eesa nota-a do you-a da harm. I come to da meet-a you.”
His easy, respectful manner reassured her. Relieved, she said: “Then it was you who sent me the note this morning?”
“He, he, he, he,” he chuckled low, but exultantly. “Eesa tole-a da self a-da letta would-a da fetch a-you.”
“What do you want—what am I—who are you?”
He turned his head aside, and muttered to himself. “She doesn’t recognize me as the old cripple,” and evaded a direct answer by asking her: “Donna you da know-a me?”
“Your voice sounds like”—and she thought of the old cripple who intruded on Mr. Harris’ grounds a few nights since. “Yes—what”— And she halted, unable to frame her thoughts into words.
He laughed low and gutturally. “He, he, he, he, eesa be a da fine-a artiste. Make-a da boss actor—like-a Salvina—bime by, eh?”
“You—you—you kidnapped little Dorothy,” she almost shrieked, forgetting her fear, and searching him with glittering eyes.
Jack Shore, for it was he, chuckled gleefully.
“You make-a da wild-a guessa, Signora, Eesa not-a da old-a cripple.”
“You were in disguise, a beggar. I gave you money. What have you done with the child?”
“What-a da child-a?” he asked, gruffly.
“Dorothy Thorpe!”
“He, he, he, he,” he again chuckled, and sharply turned on her: “Who tole-a you, Eesa gott-a da kid?”
“What did you want to meet me here for? Was it not to tell me where Dorothy is?”
“Oh, he, he, he, he,” he laughed. “Eesa jessa da thought-a youda like-a see me—alone—at night, Signora.” And he watched her from the corners of his eyes, as, with bent head, he muttered:
“Turnoppsis, carrotsis, ca-babbages, black-a da boots, steal-a da chil. Anyting dees-a gett-a da mon. Go back a da sunny Italy!”
“What was your motive for kidnapping the child?” she asked, without heeding his significant answer.
“Da mon!” he promptly replied. Up to that moment he had equivocated.
“You are frank,” she rejoined, and then asked: “Is Dorothy safe?”
“Youse-a da bet she’s a da safe,” he proudly replied.
“Ah!” It was a sigh of glad relief that she uttered, for she believed the man’s statement to be true, and with the information her spirits rose.
“How many of you are there in this?” she quietly asked.
“Eesa not-a da beeze, jess-a da myself.”
“You told me you sent the note requesting this meeting. Who wrote it? It was not you!” she demanded.
Jack was not expecting so pointed a question and was thrown somewhat off his guard by her abrupt eagerness. He answered thoughtlessly—or, it may have been, indifference to the importance.
“Eesa my good-a da friend.”
“So there are at least two of you in this ‘over the road’ business?”
Chagrined, he thought how easily he had been trapped. “Hang it! I didn’t mean to make a break like that.” And then he exclaimed, between his teeth, for he realized too late the slip of his tongue.
“See-a da here. Da mon. Eesa want. How much-a you-a da give to gett-a back-a da kid? Speak a da quick.”
Virginia perceived he was getting angry and restless.
It was about that time that Sam, who was lying on his stomach in a slight depression, peered over the rise in the ground a short distance from the two. He was a little too far away to hear distinctly, except occasional words, as their voices were pitched in a low key.
“How much will I give?” replied Virginia, surprised, and then her voice lowered again.
“You are a poor man, no doubt, but you have your liberty, which is priceless, and I warn you of the severe penalty for the offense you are committing. It is most dangerous business.”
“Liberty, wid out-a da mon! Eesa be damn! Say, Signora, yous-a come-a down wid a da handsome da mon—Eesa take de kid—wid da longa golda hair so nicey da shiney, and da bigg-a da brown eyes.”
“Dorothy, I am sure!” she thought.
“Well, what do you call the handsome mon?”
“Eesa note-a bees-a da hard. Eesa cheap at-a da twenty thous.”
“Twenty thous—what!”
“Bigg-a da round flat dollairs!”
“Twenty thousand dollars!” angrily exclaimed Virginia, for the moment forgetting herself, and then again her voice fell almost to a whisper.
“You dare ask that from me! Knowing that I have but to call and the police would hound you to prison.”
Jack swiftly wheeled about and rolled his eyes in alarm. The word police startled him, and for the moment he verily believed they were within call, a circumstance he at once set down to his lax watchfulness, but he soon felt reassured, and, turning upon her said, sarcastically:
“Oh, that-a beesa a lettle a da game-a. He, he, he, he,” he laughed low and gleefully, in strange contrast to the white of his eyeballs, which shone with sinister effect as he leered at her.
“Two play-a dees-a da trick, Signora! Wouldn’t yous-a look-a da well bees-a compan-e-on ove-a mine, in a da pen, eh, Signora. He, he, he, he,” he again laughed.
“Eesa don-a da know some-a da ting about eesa da Duc, eh! Eesa don-a da hear a da game between ee mand a da Signora da Virginia, eh! Sacremento!” He fairly ground out the last word between his teeth.
Virginia shuddered and then involuntarily exclaimed: “Villain!”
Jack turned upon her swiftly, ceremoniously bowed, and again leered at her. Then, with a most offensive smirk playing about his mouth, said: “Tank-a da Signora, my a da pard.”
Her face burned with the red that flushed up. She felt that even the darkness could not conceal her flaming cheeks. She bent her head in humiliation and shame at the all too well merited rebuke.
For a moment there followed intense stillness. She thought of what he had possibly heard at the Harris reception. “His disclosure would incriminate me with Rutley. Still, it matters not. My duty to my God, my home and Constance is to make reparation for the wrong I have done.”
She broke the silence in an assumed, haughty tone. “Well, as you are poor and in need, I will give you five hundred dollars upon return of the child; but if you do not comply by noon tomorrow I shall inform the police.”
“Eesa bett-a note!” he replied, with an unmistakable menace in his voice. “Eef yourse da squeal on a da ma, Signora—look-a da out!” And so saying, he slowly drew his finger across his throat.
The action was most significant. “Eesa bett-a da keep a da mum! Understand-a! Youse-a geeve a me a da twenty da thouse-a dollair, youse-a take a da kid—but youse-a da squeal!” and he drew close and hissed at her—“Bett-a da look a for her eesa mong a da weeds in a da Willamette.”
His attitude was so threatening, and his speech uttered with such savage earnestness, that it drove all courage from her heart. Again she felt, as once before, at the Harris reception, how puny a thing she was in the presence of a strong, masculine rascal.
She, however, quickly mastered the momentary sickening alarm that had seized her, and assuming a bold, threatening manner, in which she astonished herself, for she felt anything but defiant just then, said in a voice low and determined:
“Scoundrel! If you harm that child, I, myself, will weave the rope to hang you!”
Jack leered at her. “So Signora”—laughed, laughed low and derisively. “Ha, ha, ha, Signora lak-a da job, eh? Eesa mak-a da boss a hang-a man, eh?”
Jack could not repress a smile of admiration at her courage, and his lips quivered to exclaim: “God, she is game!”
“An-a deesea lettle white-a da hands-a,” he sneered. “Stain ’em all a da red, eh?” and he chuckled low, as though amused. “Oh, ha, ha, ha.” Suddenly he changed his tone and again continued threateningly. “Now look-a da ere. Eef-a youse-a da want a kid, gett-a da mon a da quick—twenty da thous, for eesa tink a da move-a da way. May bees gett-a da organ en-a da monk, go down South Amereek. Eef youse-a danna da squeal, da kid bees-a da safe; but effe youse-a da tell a po-lis, eesa mak-a da me a devil,” and he again drew close to her and hissed out between his teeth.
“When eesa be lik-a dat, Eesa does a da murda,” and so saying, he thrust his hand inside his double-breasted short coat, and partially drew out a glittering knife. “Eesa you da see?”—and he leaned over to her, a sinister glint shooting from the corner of his eye—“Eesa slit more’s a da one-a windpipe.” As he replaced the knife, a low whistle sounded off toward the right. It startled him, for he muttered as if alarmed. “Ha, some one is watching me.” And without another word or moment of delay, glided off southward, and disappeared in the darkness.
Sam having seen the glitter of a knife against the dim city lights, unconsciously gave a low whistle of warning, and sprang to his feet. He believed Virginia was in imminent peril.
For a moment he stood irresolute, unwilling to uncover his identity to her or to in any wise have her think he had been shadowing her. Then feeling satisfied she was not hurt, he sped away on the track of the Italian.
Virginia was alone. She, also, had seen the figure of a man suddenly loom up on the right and then hasten after the supposed Italian.
The terror that now had seized her, the strain that gave artificial courage, so worked upon her nerves as to produce a trembling of her limbs, and to avoid a threatened collapse she sank down on the grass.
Her strength gradually returned, her agitation quieted and she began to think with lucidity. She had been followed by whom? Most likely a detective in the pay of her brother.
“Thank God!” His unknown presence at a perilous moment had been sweetly welcome. “Dorothy is not dead,” she thought. “Thank Heaven for that, too; but she is in the hands of a murderous scoundrel, who would not hesitate to shed innocent blood were his own safety jeoparded.”
An attempt at rescue by the police would, no doubt, result in the death of Dorothy. She must act alone, act at once. Having arrived at that conclusion, she arose to her feet. To get Dorothy home was the first thing to be done—the mother’s life depended upon that.
How could she get twenty thousand dollars to pay the ransom? She bent her head in thought. She had been instrumental in the ruin and disgrace of her only brother’s happy home. If it was in human power to restore happiness to that home, she would do it. The Italian is in desperate need of money. She could hypothecate her income; sell her jewels.
“I will offer him all I can possibly obtain—then, if he will not release Dorothy,” and her voice took on a soft, strange, resolute calmness. “God helping me, I will take her from him, even though,” and she looked at her own little white hands, “these do become stained red in the work.”
Then she made her way out of the park, and returned to her home.
Sam had followed Virginia and stood unseen within ten yards of her when that morning she sat under the maple after she had left Constance. He noted how absorbed she was in thought—noted her grave, white, shocked face, and her bowed head. His sympathy went out to her. Oh, what wouldn’t he then have given to be able to clasp her in his arms, to comfort her—the woman he so madly loved! Though free and impulsive in his manner with other women, to her he was as coy and modest and respectful as a boy of fifteen.
He lingered near the premises for a time, from an impelling sympathy to be near her in her trouble, and hoping she would re-appear, but in that he was disappointed.
He returned again in the evening, resolved to call on her. He ascended the piazza steps and crossed to the door, but somehow at the moment could not muster courage to push the button. After meditating for a moment, he turned and softly passed along the piazza. On reaching the south extension he halted, for the sound of a door softly closing caught his ear, and then he saw Virginia emerging from the side entrance, closely veiled. In a moment Sam was all alertness.
He wondered at her veiled appearance at that hour, about half past ten, and at her avoiding the main front entrance. He followed at a distance and saw her enter a Washington and Twenty-third street car. He boarded the next one that came along.
Fortunately the interval between the two cars was short, there having been a breakdown on Fifth and Washington streets, resulting in the cars being bunched. Sam stood at the front end of the car beside the motorman, and in the darkness—the front inside blinds being down—was able to keep a sharp lookout at the car just ahead.
At the intersection of Washington and Twenty-third streets, the forward car stopped, and he distinctly saw a woman alight. “Virginia!” he muttered, and as his car passed on, he saw her walking toward the park entrance. One block further along Twenty-third street Sam alighted, and rapidly retraced his steps to Washington street. On rounding the corner, and coming into view of the park entrance, where blazed an arc light, he caught sight of her again, entering the gateway.
Sam briskly covered the distance, keeping well under the line of shadows.
“Did you notice the path a lady took, who entered the park a minute since?” he inquired of a park policeman.
“Yes; that way!” and the policeman waved his hand to the left.
“Thank you,” and Sam followed the direction indicated. A strange foreboding hurried him on. He was then fully aroused to something extraordinary about to happen. He walked on the grass whenever possible to muffle the sound of his footfalls, and soon was rewarded by making out the dim form of a woman some distance ahead, being still in the range of the gate arc light. There was no mistaking the figure. From that moment he never lost sight of her.
To avoid suspicion of shadowing her, he took a diverging path and boldly clambered over the hill, and proceeded toward the children’s playgrounds, apparently away from her. Passing on and in the direction of the reservoirs, he at length stopped at the fountain.
He was the “man near the fountain” whom she discovered while she was standing under the cedar.
Sam had stopped but a moment when, to his amazement, he discovered Virginia suddenly had disappeared down the hillside. He at once followed her, and was the man she again saw on the driveway beneath her. Again she disappeared, and he shrewdly suspected, into the deep shadow of the clump of firs nearby.
He was straining his eyes diagonally up the slope, trying to penetrate the gloom, when a low scream of terror assailed his ears, and was quickly followed by a low, reassuring masculine voice. He determined to get near them. He threw himself flat against the bank and, shielded some by the unmowed grassy slope, dragged himself along for about fifty feet, to where the driveway, rounding westward, divided them from the long flight of steps. He passed within fifty feet of the couple, then cautiously pulled himself near the summit. The ridge was strategically of great value. It enabled him to flank them unseen.
He immediately availed himself of its cover and sneaked slowly and cautiously along the side of the crest to a point which he judged to be near enough to them, and then he peered above the summit. The couple were between him and the dim city lights. He strained his ears to catch their words, and drew himself closer, inch by inch, fearing discovery, yet desperately anxious to catch the purpose of the meeting, and when he saw the glittering knife, his alarm gave expression in the low whistle.
When he sprang on in pursuit of Jack, it was with a determination to ascertain who he was, where he lived, and, if possible, to gain some knowledge of his purpose in this meeting with Virginia at such an unseasonable time and place.
The few words of low-spoken conversation he had heard gave him no clue to the real object of the meeting; but he was convinced that some grave and momentous purpose was involved to have induced Virginia to keep so perilous an appointment alone.
“Did she make the appointment?” The thought was no sooner uttered than it gave place to another equally as suggestive, for just then thoughts raced through Sam’s brain with amazing rapidity. “Or, rather, was she not compelled to meet the stranger by some power which he had obtained over her—some secret of her life which she feared—a deathly fear, of disclosure, and which this man knew, and its power he knew only too well, how to wield.”
The more he thought about it, the more the mystery, for such it appeared to him, deepened. He determined to fathom it. Inured to a rough, open-air life on the Texas plains, his constitution was hard and tough, and well seasoned for the job presented—and, it must be confessed, it was to his liking.
Sam felt his blood tingle as his enthusiasm rose to the prospect of a genuine adventure, and he hurried along, over the soft, yielding grass, to catch sight of the fellow ahead. A clump of low bushes suddenly confronted him. It was an unusually dark spot, and then, for the first time, he thought of the ugly knife the stranger had displayed, and realized that he himself was unarmed.
He almost halted—wary of running into an ambush, and cautiously made a wide detour, meanwhile alert for any sudden surprise from the direction of the bush. Discovering no sign of a crouching figure there, he hastened on, and finally caught sight of a moving shadow, as it crossed a faint shaft of light shot from a window of a dwelling on Ford street, to his left.
“Ah, I guess so. That’s the party,” he muttered to himself, and from that moment Sam was as keen on the trail as a sleuth on the scent, never losing sight of his quarry, but himself avoiding, as he believed, discovery.
Occasionally, as the moon cleared from an obscuring cloud, he could make out the man halting under the shelter of a fir or clump of saplings, evidently to listen for sounds of a pursuer, and then, seemingly satisfied, again move on.
So far the direction of his course was toward the reservoir, but of a sudden he turned, and sharply cutting across Sam’s front, swiftly entered the deep gloom of a cluster of cedars, where he was lost to the eyes of the pursuer.
It was plain that his man intended to avoid exit by the main gate, or by Park avenue, a circumstance to cause Sam keen chagrin, for he hoped by an adroit move to get a good square look at the fellow’s face as he would pass under the entrance arc light.
To the right, a foot path wound its way to the main gate. To the left of a cluster of dark firs stretched a comparative level, past the bear pit, and right down to the deer corral; but what park features lay beyond and between the firs and corral, he could not determine. In his effort to mislead Sam, the fugitive had doubled on his track, and at that moment was but a short distance west of the starting point. Sam reasoned that this man would not cross that smooth, grassy plot, nor emerge from his retreat and go down the path, but most likely would take a direct course through the cluster of firs, and under the shelter of their dark shadow strike the fence directly opposite, and so reach the Barnes road, a hundred yards or so west of the park gate.
It was obvious that time was an important factor. There being no possible place of concealment between his present position and the firs, he must either go back and take a circuitous route, or boldly approach by the path. He chose the latter. Skirting the firs—for he dared not enter the cluster’s gloomy precincts in his defenseless condition—he soon passed them and discovered a succession of odd-looking shrubs, trained to fantastic growths by the gardener. They afforded excellent cover right down past the bear pit to the deer corral fence, which ran along the brow of the hill; farther down, a second fence, which still exists, bounded the deer corral and separated the park from the Barnes road. A little further along and against the upper picket fence (since removed), a mass of tangled ivy and Virginia creeper foliage, revelled in wild luxuriance.
The vines had seized upon and had grown about and over some dwarf locust trees, forming a series of natural bowers, rather picturesque by daylight, but at night, dismally dark and forbidding.
Sam hesitated, which was well for him, for under the shadow of these dark vines, Rutley and Jack Shore had met by previous arrangement. They were silently watching him.
“I cannot shake him off. He tracks me like a bloodhound,” Jack informed his companion, in a whisper.
“The meddlesome fool!” replied Rutley. “If he will not stop following you—why—he carries his life in his hands.”
“No, no! Not that. We don’t want any killing in ours, Phil, anything but that. Who is he?”
“Sam Harris. I saw him follow Virginia and was sure he would run foul of you.”
“The simpleton is harmless anyway. He is moving to the fence. See him? Hist!”
After studying the wild growth for a few moments, Sam decided to approach it by way of the fence. There he suddenly dropped to his knees and crept noiselessly—very close beside the fence, toward the tangle. As he neared it he could make out its black cavernous recesses. Twice he paused, his eyes strained with the utmost tension of watchfulness against a surprise, for he now fully believed that the man he was attempting to shadow was a desperate character.
However, he crept nearer, hardly stirring a blade of grass, so cautious was his progress—so silent his movements. He listened intently, scarcely breathing, lest its sound should betray his presence. His hands gently touched a vine to part the leaves—instantly he was greeted with a hiss and a rattle, and then something glittered close to his eyes, which in the moment of his startled alarm he believed to be the glitter of a reptile’s fangs. It caused him to bolt suddenly with a panicky feeling at his heart, and then it brought from Jack a soft chuckle of merriment.
“He’s not as plucky as the girl. We must throw him off the scent at any cost,” whispered Rutley, “or we will be trapped.” Suddenly he laid his hand on Jack’s arm and continued with a low, sardonic laugh: “I have it, Jack. You lead him down on the Barnes road; I’ll meet him there,” and without any further delay Rutley slipped down the steep slope to his automobile, which lay in the deep shadow of the canyon walls, a little further to the west, where he waited with the evil purpose in his heart for the climax.
Sam was no coward. He had faced dangerous situations fearlessly, but that hiss and rattle, in the stillness of a dark, lonely and forbidding place, fairly raised his hair, and lent a lightness to his feet that amazed him, when he halted and noted the distance covered in the few moments of his flight.
“One of those deadly reptiles got out of the park zoo,” he thought, “sneaked his way into that jungle—I guess so!” and he wiped the beads of perspiration from his face as he added aloud: “An almighty close call! But,” and he looked up at the dark sky, and then around and about, and as gathering confidence returned to him, continued: “I shall not give up yet, not yet. I guess not.”
Yet it was apparent his pursuit of the stranger had signally failed, and he stood motionless wondering what course then best for him to adopt.
True, he was in a dilemma, and instinctively realized that to remain in the park was useless. So, without forming any practical conclusion, and for the purpose of keeping active, he again moved toward the fence. It was then he conceived the notion to climb over the fence and make a short descent to the gate, in order to catch sight of Virginia, for she could not be far away yet, and to follow her and secretly to protect her on her return to her home. With that object in mind, he climbed the fence, and, securing a position on its top, looked cautiously about. He was some distance to the west of the tangle of vines, from which he was screened by the foliage of a small tree that grew nearby.