CHAPTER I.
The Girl With the Scar.
"Young woman, well-bred, educated, stranger in city, and without relatives, desires situation as companion or social secretary with lady of established reputation and position. Good oral reader, pianist, quick and accurate household accountant, intelligent amanuensis, willing and obliging. Amount of salary optional. Address Miss Betty Shaw, 160 Wakefield Avenue."
The girl read the advertisement for the twentieth time, then dropped the newspaper upon the shabbily ornate center table with a shrug of impatience, a frown gathering between her level brows.
The boarding house parlor was shrouded in gloom, and outside the window whirling snowflakes showed white against the deepening dusk. A little heap of torn envelopes and a card or two upon the mantel bore evidence that the naïve appeal had evoked response, yet it was with a hopeless gesture that the girl turned from them and began pacing the floor, her brooding eyes fixed as though they would pierce the shadows which crept about her.
All at once she paused tense and alert with lifted chin and quickened breath. The throbbing purr of a motor had pulsed upon the stillness of the snow-enwrapped street, and halted with a dull grinding of brakes before the door.
She darted to the window and peered eagerly out between the dingy curtains. A massive limousine stood at the curb, its bulk looming blackly against the lesser darkness, with broad diagonal lines of white striping the lower body, and a rakish torpedo-shaped hood. It was just such a car as a person of somewhat bizarre taste and the wealth with which to gratify it might have chosen, yet had it been a veritable juggernaut its effect upon the girl could have been no more sinister. She recoiled from the window, her hands clenched, her breast heaving tumultuously, and shadowed as it was, her face seemed distorted into a mere mask of malevolent fury akin to triumph.
Then the small hands relaxed, and with a visible effort at control, she turned toward the door, as laggard feet shuffled along the passageway and a murmur of voices arose.
"'Nother lady to see you, Miss." A frowsy head appeared in the doorway and the girl advanced to meet the summons.
"Ask her to come in, please, Susan." Her voice was guilelessly soft and low. "No, wait, I must light the gas—"
But the servant had already disappeared and in her place stood a tall, commanding figure, swathed in furs and heavily veiled. For a moment the girl hesitated, then with a steady hand she struck a match and a flare of light streamed from the gas jet. In the full flow of its radiance, she turned and faced her visitor.
The woman in the doorway took a step forward and paused involuntarily, with a slight murmur of shocked surprise. The girl before her was slender and of quite a usual type, with soft brown hair and moderately large blue eyes, but a spreading blood-red scar with five curved streaks reaching out from it like an angry clutching hand covered her left cheek from brow to neck.
If the girl observed the other's momentary loss of poise she gave no sign. Her level brows were arched ingenuously, her expression childlike in its bland candor, but the smile which parted her lips did not reach her shadowed, inscrutable eyes.
"Won't you take this chair? You wished to see me regarding my advertisement for a position?"
The woman advanced and sank into the seat indicated, loosening her furs deliberately before she replied. The heavy veil still obliterated her features, but through its meshes her eyes glowed fixedly.
"Yes." She inclined her head slightly. "You are Miss Shaw?"
The girl nodded in turn.
"I have had no previous experience, but it has become necessary for me to earn my own living and I have not had any specialized training. I am quite alone in the world—"
The woman leaned suddenly forward.
"May I ask why you stated that in your advertisement, Miss Shaw? You are very young and doubtless inexperienced, but you must have realized that to announce yourself as alone and friendless would invite unsuitable and even dangerous response."
The girl glanced at the cards on the mantel and then back to her visitor in wide-eyed amazement.
"Why, no!" she exclaimed. "I wanted to make it clear that I could give no references except social ones from my own home town, and that my object was not so much a matter of salary as a home of refinement where I could feel safe and sheltered. It is dreadful to be adrift, with no one to take a personal interest, but back in Greenville there was nothing for me to do."
"Greenville?"
"In Iowa. My mother and I moved out there to live with an uncle of hers when my father died. I was a little girl then. Last year Uncle Will died, and six months ago, my mother." She glanced down at the simple black gown. "There is no one left belonging to me, and very little money, so I came back to the city where I was born to try to find a position. I have been here only a few days, but it is more difficult than I had thought. You are looking for a companion or secretary? I did not put it in the advertisement, but I am quite capable of taking charge of a household and managing servants. If—if you have children I can amuse them, too, they always take to me."
The woman's eyes searched the flushed, eager face but seemed to linger, repelled yet fascinated, on the sinister scar.
"You—er, you have had an accident?" she asked.
"Accident?" The girl repeated. Then with a smile of understanding quite free from bitterness she touched her cheek. "You mean—this? It is a birthmark and everyone around me is so accustomed to it that I scarcely ever think of it. It must be awfully unpleasant to strangers, though. I suppose it—it would be a drawback——"
Her tone was wistful, almost pleading, and she paused with a catch in her breath. There was a long minute of silence before her visitor spoke.
"Not unpleasant. It will merely be necessary, as you so sensibly say, for one to become accustomed to it. I am not sure that it is a disadvantage—" she caught herself up abruptly. "You spoke of social references from Greenville. You have friends there to whom I can write, if we come to an understanding? You realize that I, too, must be careful about whom I take into my household in so intimate a relationship as that of companion."
"Of course," the girl assented quickly. Then she hesitated. "You live here in the city?"
"On the North Drive. I am Mrs. Atterbury." The woman spoke as if the mere mention of her name sufficed to establish her status, and with a deliberate gesture she threw back her veil. The face revealed to the girl's frankly curious gaze was colorless, the thin, arched nose and firm, straight lines of her lips as immobile as if carved from marble. Only the eyes, sloe-black and glittering, gave a semblance of life to the flawless, masklike expression. The smooth, dark hair was coiled tightly about her head and brought low over the ears, but did not cover them sufficiently to conceal their peculiar formation. Small and delicately pink, they were lobeless and narrowed toward the top so sharply that the girl wondered if beneath the hair they might not be pointed, like a cat's.
As if intuitively aware of the other's scrutiny, the woman drew her furs more closely about her neck and spoke hurriedly.
"I forgot for a moment that you were a stranger here. My husband was one of the most prominent financiers in the city, but since his death I have lived very quietly, receiving only a few old friends quite informally. I am childless, and, like you, alone in the world." She paused, with a slight suggestion of a smile and the girl's intent gaze shifted and dropped. "My home is one which you would perhaps consider luxurious, but it needs a youthful presence. I want the companionship of a bright, cheerful young girl, gently reared, who can amuse and interest me, and assist in the occasional entertainment of my guests. Practically the only duty you would have would be to attend to my correspondence, which is large as I have financial interests and property all over the country. I would require your time unreservedly, however. That is why I prefer a stranger, with no affiliations to distract her. For such services I am willing to pay well, but there are certain conditions I should impose."
The girl had listened without a change of expression, but now she glanced up quickly.
"Mourning depresses me. Would you be willing to lay it aside and dress in colors, such colors as I choose for you?"
"Oh, yes. I thought of that, in any event."
"Do you speak any foreign language?"
The girl shook her head.
"There were no foreigners in Greenville but the Italian road builders."
"You are prepared to place yourself absolutely at my disposal? There will, of course, be hours when I will not need you, but I shall want you within call. Moreover, if I make you a member of my household I shall feel responsible for you. You must not attempt to go about the city alone without consulting me first. That is understood?"
The girl's eyes narrowed and for an instant her lips compressed, but she replied quietly:
"Of course. I appreciate the interest you take in me, Mrs. Atterbury, and I am grateful for it. I shall do my best to please you."
A few details followed.
"Then we will consider the matter settled." The women glanced at the jeweled watch on her wrist. "How long will it take you to pack?"
"You mean you wish me to go with you at once?" The girl's face had whitened until the scar stood out in cruel clarity upon her cheek. "I had thought of taking a few days to prepare—"
"Anything you need can be purchased tomorrow." There was a hardened note of dominance in the cold voice which brooked no denial. "I am a person of quick decisions, as you will discover, Betty—that is your name, isn't it? I came to take you home with me if I found you suitable, but I cannot keep my car waiting long in this storm."
Betty rose submissively.
"I have no trunk, only two bags. It will take me only a few minutes to pack, if you will excuse me."
Mrs. Atterbury sat immovable until the sound of the girl's footsteps had died away upon the creaking stairs far overhead. Then she rose and gliding swiftly to the mantel, glanced over the cards and notes of her predecessors. Tossing them aside contemptuously, her eyes fell upon an open desk between the windows. A sheet of note-paper half covered with writing lay upon it and picking it up she scanned it deliberately, nodding in evident satisfaction.
"'Reverend Doctor Slade,'" she repeated aloud. "Greenville, Iowa."
A quarter of an hour later, two figures emerged from the dingy vestibule and descended to the waiting car, the girl cringing in her thin black cloak against the icy blast which swirled about them, the older woman erect as if the very elements themselves could not compel her to bow her head.
With her foot upon the step the girl hesitated and her eyes swept the bleak snowy darkness in swift terror, like a trapped animal. The look was gone as quickly as it had come, however, and into her face crept a trace of the sinister, resolute triumph which had crossed it while she waited behind the curtains of her window for the entrance of this woman in whose hands she had placed herself.
In silence she seated herself beside her new employer, the footman closed the door with a snap and they glided swiftly away through the snow-muffled streets. Few words were spoken during the brief journey, and they were mere commonplaces, but beneath the casual banality ran an undercurrent of sharp tension almost tangible enough to be felt. It was as if, unconsciously, they were adversaries, pausing by tacit consent to take breath for a second encounter. The girl lay back relaxed with half-closed eyes, the woman sat with her veiled face averted, and each seemed buried in her own thoughts, yet each was aware of the sly, furtive glances of mutual speculative appraisal which passed between them.
The droning wind arose to a shrieking gale when they turned into the North Drive, the merging strands of electric light breaking into widely detached clusters as compact rows of brick and stone gave place to exclusive residences, each sequestered within its private park. The whistles of the river boats rose eerily above the blast of the storm and the girl shuddered and drew the straggling fur collar more closely about her throat.
"You must have warmer clothing." The woman spoke without turning her head. "You will need one or two dinner frocks also. That can be arranged tomorrow, and I will supply them, as you are disposing of your mourning at my request. We are home at last."
The car swerved from the broad avenue and turning in between two high gate-posts, followed a short winding drive to a brilliantly lightedporte-cochère. Light streamed, too, from the opened doorway, upon the threshold of which stood a thick-set man in the conventional black of a butler.
"Welch," Mrs. Atterbury spoke with curt authority, "Miss Shaw will take Miss Harly's place. Show her to her room, please." Turning, she added to her companion: "We dine at seven. You need not change."
The butler bowed obsequiously, but his beady eyes surveyed the girl deliberately from head to foot in a coolly impudent stare before he picked up her bags and started for the staircase.
The hall was square and of spacious dimensions, with a gallery encircling the second floor landing, from which rare tapestries were hung. The leaping flames of the hearth played upon their soft, mellow hues and glancing off in darting rays from the brass andirons, turned the dull brown of the leather wall paneling into burnished gold.
Betty Shaw mechanically noted the general effect as she followed her surly guide. There was little surprise and no curiosity in her gaze, which had flown straight to the door opposite the hearth. As she reached the foot of the stairs this door was flung violently open, and a man sprang forward, confronting her employer.
"Good God, where have you been?" he demanded, his voice grating harshly with anxiety. "'Ranza has been trying to locate you all the afternoon. She saw him, but he has broken! He's going to—"
No countering exclamation from the woman had interrupted him, yet he paused with a strangling gasp, as if a hand had been laid suddenly upon his throat.
Betty glanced over her shoulder. Mrs. Atterbury stood silently drawn up to her full height regarding the intruder with eyes which blazed from a face that might well have given pause. The impassivity which had masked it was gone, the brows were drawn and knotted and the lips curled back in a distortion of silent rage so that her strong, white teeth gleamed menacingly in the firelight. The girl caught one swift glimpse of the man who cringed in the doorway, then turned and fairly fled up the stair.
The hall was dimly lighted but a rosy glow came from an opened door around a turning, and approaching, Betty found herself in a veritable bower of a room, spacious but cozy, with flowered chintz draperies and soft, rose-shaded lamps.
"If you want the maid, Miss, there's the bell." Welch had deposited her bags beside the dressing-table, and was again surveying her with his curiously intent, lowering gaze. "Should you be liking a cup of tea, now,—"
"Thank you. I shall require nothing before dinner." Her quiet tone was in itself a dismissal, yet the man still lingered as if on the point of further speech. Before her steady eyes, however, his own shifted and fell, and turning, he shambled from the room.
Betty waited until his stealthy, cat-like footsteps had passed well down the hall, then closed her door softly and began a minute examination of her apartment. It faced the side of the house, with two long French windows opening on a narrow balcony. A door in each wall led presumably to connecting rooms, but upon examination the first proved to be fastened, evidently by a bolt on the farther side, for the keyhole was plugged with a hard substance resembling sealing wax. The opposite door disclosed a well-appointed bathroom, with no opening other than a ventilator, high up in the wall.
Completing her simple preparations for dinner, the girl sank in a low chair before the glowing coals in the English grate and chin in hand, lost herself in a reverie. The eager, childishly trustful expression had vanished when she found herself alone and in its place had crept a hardened, crafty look which robbed her face of its youthful charm. The scar leaped again into prominence, and seemed to throb as if its clutching fingers were tightening in a relentless grip, and in her somber eyes abiding passion brooded.
The silver tones of a gong echoing up from below aroused her and she sprang to her feet, her clenched hands pressed to her burning temples. For an instant she stood swaying in the intensity of some all but overmastering emotion. Then her hands fell to her sides, revealing again the mask of disingenuousness.
But behind it there lurked, not wholly concealed, an air of joyous triumph, and she glanced exultantly about her as if out of all the world, the shelter of this roof had been her goal, and in winning her way into the household she had brought some deep-laid plan to consummation.
While she hesitated at the stair's foot, Mrs. Atterbury's voice summoned her to the drawing-room, where she found beside her employer a sallow little woman, dull-eyed and slender to the point of angularity, who was presented as Madame Cimmino. As Betty responded timidly to the conventional greeting another figure came forward from a shadowed corner and paused, smiling and urbane.
"Betty, this is an old friend, Mr. Wolvert." An odd smile twisted Mrs. Atterbury's attenuated lips. "Don't make love to Miss Shaw, Jack. She seeks sanctuary with me from the world, the flesh and the devil."
"Dear lady!" He raised a deprecating hand before extending it to the shrinking girl. "You malign me! Let me assure you of your immunity from evil here, Miss Shaw. Our hostess tolerates no serpents in her garden, as you will find."
The man's tone was smooth and unctuous, but there was an undercurrent deeper than mere mockery in the careless words, and Mrs. Atterbury's eyes glittered dangerously, although she shrugged in cold distaste.
"Shall we go in? Cook times her soufflés to the instant and she is the only mortal before whom I quail. Come, Speranza."
Madame Cimmino laid her hand lightly on Jack Wolvert's arm as she passed him, but his gaze was riveted upon the girl, and followed her slim figure curiously until the curtains fell behind her.
"She is attractive, this new little one, eh?" Madame Cimmino had halted in the doorway and there was a hard ring in her voice. "It is an added charm, perhaps, that brand upon her face!"
"Don't be absurd, 'Ranza." The man frowned impatiently. "There's something queer about that girl, something oddly reminiscent. I could almost swear I had seen her before, or at least heard her voice."
During the simple but perfectly served meal, Betty unobtrusively studied the two guests seated at either hand. Madame Cimmino was evidently of Latin birth, although her quick, impulsive speech was interlarded with ejaculations in many tongues. Huge opal hoops dragged at the lobes of her ears and her brown, clawlike hands were loaded with rings which glistened barbarically in her ceaseless gesturing. She ignored the newcomer as far as courtesy permitted, snubbed Wolvert with a proprietary air, which failed to carry weight before his bland equanimity, but showed an anxious almost fawning deference to her hostess.
Wolvert made a half-playful attempt to draw out the little companion, but finding no encouragement in her shy, monosyllabic replies, he devoted himself to his dinner, and Betty found opportunity to observe him at her leisure. He was a man of approximately forty, lean and wiry with olive skin and curiously light eyes in grotesque contrast with his crisply curling, black hair and small, military mustache. The man's whole personality seemed oddly at variance. His hands were slender and shapely, with the tapering, sensitive fingers of an artist, yet the high Slavic cheekbones, spreading nostrils and heavy jaw belied a finer sensibility, and his face in repose was saturnine.
Regarding him, Betty could scarcely bring herself to believe that he was the same man who had burst upon the scene at the moment of her arrival with his impassioned outcry. The inexplicable words still rang in her ears. "'Ranza," was evidently Madame Speranza Cimmino, but why had she tried so frantically to ascertain Mrs. Atterbury's whereabouts during the long afternoon? Who was the man she had seen, and what was the meaning of the phrase that he had broken?
Dinner concluded, they returned to the drawing-room, and after a brief desultory conversation Betty was dismissed, to her infinite relief. Wolvert sprang forward gallantly to open the door for her departure and stood staring after her until she disappeared around the turning at the stair's head, the same puzzled, questioning look in his eyes with which he had regarded her at their meeting.
Her light extinguished, Betty lay motionless and seemingly relaxed, but her sleepless eyes were fixed as though they would pierce the darkness, and her ears strained for the slightest sound. The storm swirled unabated outside the windows, and the tall clock on the stairs droned out the hours at all but interminable intervals.
Midnight came, and with it the hum of a high-powered motor on the drive. A subdued murmur of voices floated up to her from the hall, the front door closed with a thud and the motor snorted its way through the piling snowdrifts to the gate. A few minutes later there was a faint silken rustle of skirts past her door, then the cat-like tread of Welch as he went his final rounds and darkness and utter silence reigned supreme.
One o'clock struck, then two, and as the echo of the second stroke died away, Betty threw back the covers, and slipping from bed stole to her dressing bag. She fumbled for a moment and then a tiny, thread-like ray of light leaped from her hand. With the electric torch carefully shielded, she enveloped herself in a dark kimona, thrust her feet into soft felt slippers, and unbolting her door, crept silently out into the hall. The gleaming strand of light wavered, then steadied and moved slowly along to the turning into the gallery. Its pale afterglow lingered like a nimbus for a minute and then vanished, and darkness descended once more about the sleeping house.