CHAPTER IVAS MARY SEES HERSELF
AsClifford went out it seemed to him, for the moment, that his efforts thus far had resulted only in bringing him into contact with affairs far removed from his main business. But the next moment experience reminded him that nothing in life was irrelevant. Might not these seemingly unrelated fragments be revealed as closely articulated parts of a great drama of life whose working-out lay in the unvisioned future?
Anyhow, he had new questions to put to himself. What was behind Loveman’s suave statement that he knew nothing of Mary Regan? And what behind Bradley’s offer of partnership? They meant something: and the more Clifford thought, the more was he convinced that Loveman was in whatever business might be brewing; and since Loveman was in it, it was safely and adroitly based upon the weakness, vanity, or ambition of our common human nature.
The sense, though he had little definite basis for it, that Mary was vitally concerned in this impenetrable business, that she was perhaps the chief victim of its hidden workings and of its dangers, grew in Clifford with every moment. He simply had to find her!
Hoping against hope, Clifford daily expected a note from Mary Regan—for he could not wholly discount her promise—but no note came. And though Uncle George, Slant-Face, and Lieutenant Jimmie Kelly, in their divers manners, were all looking for Mary, none during the next four days reported a trace of her. Nor did Commissioner Thorne, with his larger resources, turn up a single clue. She seemed to have vanished utterly.
All these days Clifford himself kept doggedly to the tedious routine of centering his personal endeavors upon Peter Loveman—following that dapper gentleman from home to office, to court-rooms, to restaurants on Broadway or the Avenue for his substitute for afternoon tea, to his home again to dress, then to the long evening’s schedule of pleasures—taking rest only during the periods when Loveman was held in court, or during the five hours between three and 8A.M.that Loveman allowed himself for sleep.
On the seventh afternoon, while Loveman was tied up in court, and while Clifford was spending an hour at home, a note was delivered him by messenger. It read:—
See me at headquarters at your earliest convenience.Thorne.
See me at headquarters at your earliest convenience.Thorne.
See me at headquarters at your earliest convenience.
Thorne.
Clifford considered. Then he sent back the message, “Will try to come at five.” It was now three o’clock; Loveman would be out of court at half-pastthree or four. He had decided that the best procedure was to follow Loveman from court to club or restaurant, and then if the lawyer seemed settled, as usually was the case, he could safely slip down to Police Headquarters.
At four o’clock Clifford saw Loveman leave the Criminal Courts Building and step into the closed car he had seen Loveman and Mary Regan enter seven nights earlier in front of the Grand Alcazar. Clifford, at a discreet distance, followed in a taxi. The big car, after twisting about through the region of clubs and restaurants, deposited Loveman before a great hotel on Fifth Avenue, The Grantham. Clifford, following him in, saw Loveman address the perfect young blonde who sat at a switchboard within a grilled enclosure, wait while the blonde announced his name through the telephone, then saw him make for the elevators.
Clifford waited several minutes, then himself approached the deity of the switchboard. “I want to get in touch with Mr. Loveman at once, and I believe he’s calling here.”
“Yes, on Mrs. Gardner—twelfth floor, Apartment M. Shall I ’phone up you’re here?”
“I guess I’ll not interrupt him. I’ll catch him when he comes down.” The blonde, Clifford had at once divined, was the sort not averse to talk. “I wonder if this is the Mrs. Gardner I know,” he said easily. “What’s she like?”
“Never really seen her,” returned the blonde.“Has all her meals in her suite. Goes out only at night—about nine, when everything’s dead here—just for an hour’s motor ride. She’s always in black, and veiled. Guess she’s a widow.”
A little more chat and Clifford drifted into the hotel bar, from which he could watch the elevators. He sipped his Vichy with a casual, lounging air that required his best acting. Could that Mrs. Gardner be Mary Regan? And if she was Mary Regan, was she also truly Mrs. Gardner?
Half an hour passed; then Loveman came out of one of the elevators. Clifford had a moment’s fear that the blonde would tell him that a caller had made inquiry for him; but the blonde was answering the questions of a guest and did not see Loveman go out. Clifford allowed a few more minutes to pass, then he approached the blonde’s cage with a brisk air.
“There’s something Mr. Loveman forgot to say to Mrs. Gardner, and he asked me to come back and tell her. Just say it’s Mr. Loveman calling again.”
The girl spoke through the telephone as directed; then, “You’re to go right up.”
Tingling with suspense, Clifford shot up to the twelfth floor and rang the bell of Apartment M. The door was promptly opened, and without waiting for the maid to cry a warning because of this suddenly altered Mr. Loveman, Clifford walked quickly past her through a little hallway into a sitting-room. At a window, looking down into the Avenue stood aslender figure in a gown of gold-brown chiffon velvet, softly touched with fur. She was Mary Regan.
“Sit down, Mr. Loveman,” she said, not turning. And then after a pause she added a bit impatiently, but in that distant, composed tone she had so often used toward him in other days: “Well, what else is there? Haven’t I already promised to follow your instructions in every detail?”
Clifford did not reply, and his silence caused her to turn. At sight of him the tint of autumn rose left her dark face.
“Mr. Clifford!” she breathed.
“Good-afternoon—” He hesitated; the last time he had spoken to her, six months before, he had called her Mary. “Good-afternoon, Miss Regan.”
And then the fear that was in him caused him quickly to add, “Or should I say Mrs. Gardner?”
“I am still Mary Regan.” She moved nearer. “You here! The name you sent up was Mr. Loveman.”
“I used Mr. Loveman’s name because I thought if I sent my own you would refuse to see me.”
“Why?”
He had searched her out primarily to learn the danger she was in and to save her from it, but here he was in the first moment speaking of himself. “I reasoned that you did not want to see me from the fact that you have been in town a week and have sent me no word. And I thought, after your promise—”
He could not finish. She motioned him to be seated, herself took a chair, and there was a moment’s pause. Pale, a strained composure in her face, she was wondrously striking in the gold-brown velvet with its margin of fur; she seemed to have matured, yet to have grown no older; and never before had she seemed more poignantly desirable to him. The old questions that had haunted him for six months, surged up and he was almost choked with the immanence of the answer to them. Had there come the change that they had talked about? Had she reached the decision that he had so long been waiting for?
At length she spoke, and the contralto warmth and color of her voice were subdued to a neutral monotone. “I could have sent you word,” she said. “But I have no excuse to offer, and prefer not to explain.”
“You know what I’ve been hoping for—and waiting for,” he said with difficulty. “You have not forgotten that last night in Washington Square?”
“No. And you have not forgotten the point I then insisted upon—that I wanted to go off, alone, to examine myself and try to learn whether I was really the sort of woman you declared me to be.”
“I remember. And now that you have been away, and come back?”
Her voice was steady. “I have learned I am not that kind of woman.”
“No?”
“I have learned that I do not look upon life—that is life for myself—in the way you thought I would.”
“Just what do you mean?”
“I know now that I am by nature more worldly than you believed me.”
He grew suddenly sick at her even words. “I was hoping that you would have decided that you cared for me.”
“I am and always shall be grateful to you for the things you did for me, and I shall always appreciate your high opinion of the qualities you believed to exist in me. You were kind and generous—and I shall never forget.”
“But you have no other feeling—toward me?”
She shook her head.
“Then this is final—as far as my hopes are concerned,” he whispered dryly. He was dazed; too dazed to note that she had grown even more pale than a few moments before and that her hands were gripping folds of the velvet gown.
Presently he tried to pull himself together. He remembered the main purpose of his presence here.
“But at least you will let me help you?”
“Certainly—if I need you.”
He leaned closer. “You never needed me more than now!”
“For what reason?”
“You are in danger—great danger!”
She started, and gazed at him with a sharp penetrationwhich even at that moment struck him as peculiar. “In what danger?”
Her question took him back. In his intensity he had forgotten that he knew so little that was definite.
“I thought you would know,” he confessed. And then, with a ring of certainty, “If you do not know yourself to be in danger, then why are you in hiding?”
She ignored his last sentence. “I am in no danger of which I am conscious.”
He seized upon the one point he was certain of. “But you have been seeing Peter Loveman. I hope you are not letting him get control of your affairs.”
“Mr. Loveman has merely been giving me some friendly advice. He is a very able lawyer.”
“There is no abler lawyer in New York than Peter Loveman. But Peter Loveman cannot be trusted.”
“I am not trusting him—very far.” She spoke with that supreme self-confidence that had always characterized her. “And I believe I can take care of myself.” This last she added coldly, yet not unkindly.
Clifford felt himself baffled. And then, suddenly, he remembered another possible source of danger to her—or at least of danger to that Mary Regan he had believed her to be. Could she, as the worldly-wise old Uncle George had suggested, have felt the pull of old associations, old points of view, and have reverted—
But even as he was thinking of this, she with her remarkable keenness had read his mind. “Don’tworry about that. I have no intention of going back to the sort of things I once tried to do, and you stopped me from doing.”
“I’m glad of that,” he said simply. And then he added, “But still I feel you are in some great vague danger.”
“What?” she queried as before. “I am here of my own choice. I go and come as I please. Whatever I may now be doing I do of my own free will.”
“Then you have a plan?”
She was silent a long moment, all the while gazing at him steadily. Then she replied, “I have.”
“May I ask what it is?”
“You have earned the right. As Robert Clifford, the man, you might not approve of it. As Robert Clifford, detective, you can find nothing wrong. Beyond this I can tell you nothing—now.”
He felt shut out—placed at a far distance—and felt the dizzy sickness once more come on him. He had met her again, after long waiting, after long search—and this was the poor ending of it all!
He saw her glance furtively at a gilded clock. Awkwardly he arose.
“I’ve kept you too long,” he mumbled.
She made no polite denial, but also stood up. He started out—and found he could not go.
He turned. “Please tell me two other things. First, why are you in hiding?”
“That I must be excused from answering.”
“Is it part of your plan?”
She hesitated, then nodded.
“And your calling yourself Mrs. Gardner—is that, too, a part of your plan?”
“Yes—to the extent that I am temporarily using it to hide behind. Now you must go—please!”
“Good-bye—I won’t bother you any further.”
Sick, bewildered, and with as great a fear as when he entered, Clifford started out. But at that moment there was a ring at the doorbell.
“Why didn’t you go before!” cried Mary; and then, seizing his arm, “Wait, you mustn’t go now!”
“Why?”
“It would be misunderstood.”
“Then you know who that is?”
“Yes.”
“Is it Peter Loveman?”
“No.” Her dark eyes gazed at him very straight; she spoke rapidly. “You are an old acquaintance—you met me in Paris before the war broke out—that’s all you really know about me. Except that my name is Mary Regan.”
“I’ll play the part,” said Clifford.
“Sit there by the window.”
Clifford obeyed, more dazed than ever, and wonderingly watched Mary. She stood in the middle of the room, tensely composed. The maid had answered the bell, and Clifford now heard a man’s voice in the hall—a familiar voice. The next moment the visitor was through the doorway, and Clifford beheld that likable young man-about-town, Jack Morton.
But Jack Morton saw only Mary, and his face flushed with delight. “Mary!” he cried and crossed to her with open arms. Without hesitation she stepped forward and her lips met his.
Clifford experienced such a swift onrush of dizziness and sickness that he barely kept his seat.
After a moment Mary drew away from Morton. “Jack, I want to introduce an old acquaintance to you—Mr. Clifford.”
“Bob Clifford—you here!” cried Morton. “You know Miss Regan?”
Clifford remembered his lines. “I met Miss Regan in Paris before the outbreak of the war.”
Mary held her pale face steadily upon Clifford. “I suppose, Jack, Mr. Clifford might as well know the truth.”
“After what he’s seen I guess he knows it.” Young Morton, a glowing smile on his pleasant face, held out his hand. “Congratulate me, Bob!”
Clifford took the hand. “You—you are married?”
“We are going to be—as soon as it’s safe.”
“Safe?”
“You see my—”
“Mr. Clifford does not need to know that,” Mary quickly interrupted.
“Why—” Clifford stared; gulped. “I did not even know you were acquainted.”
“We were not, till three months ago.” Morton grinned happily. He slipped his arm about Mary and Mary allowed it to remain. “Remember mytelling you the other night about my being away, far from the madding crowd?—in a place where they don’t raise a thing but isolation? Well, that’s where I met Mary—at Pine Mountain Lodge. Wasn’t that some coincidence, Bob?”
Clifford agreed that it was. He looked searchingly at Mary; but her pale, proud face met his eyes with a steadfast gaze that was blank of any offer to apologize or explain.
“Here’s wishing you luck, Morton,” Clifford said with a control that surprised himself. He gave Mary Regan a look that was quite as composed as her own. “And you, Miss Regan, I hope that all your best dreams come true.”
He maintained his control until he had managed a very decent exit. But out in the corridor, he leaned against the wall, a very sick man, with ejaculations and questions stabbing him through and through. This, then, was what his long waiting had come to, his hopes and his dreams of a different Mary Regan! This affair with Jack Morton, a good enough fellow of his sort, that was her plan!... Yes, but what lay behind that plan?... And did she care for Morton?... And why had she not frankly written him of her purpose?... And Peter Loveman, where did Loveman come in?... And Bradley, guide and protector of young Morton, what might be Bradley’s part?... And what kind of person, after these months, was really behind that exterior which Mary Regan had presented him?...
In bitter revulsion Clifford straightened up and walked away. What she was, and what she was doing, and what she had got herself in for, these matters were now none of his affairs. For him Mary Regan was a closed incident.