CHAPTER XIX.
The Honor of the Name.
Chief McCormick's honest face beamed as he sat back in his office chair and regarded the pale young girl before him with the frank, genuine admiration of one colleague for another.
"It was wonderful! I couldn't have engineered it better myself. You've pulled off the greatest stunt in years, Miss Shaw."
"Westcote," she corrected him, smilingly. "I'm glad to drop my friend's name at last, and sail under no more false colors. But I did very little, Mr. McCormick. If it hadn't been for Herbert I would have been murdered as poor George Breckinridge was, and the man called 'Mike' would have escaped."
"'Herbert,' eh?" The detective glanced quizzically at the self-conscious young man who stood beside the girl's chair. "I suppose congratulations are in order, but first let us get down to business. You used the name of some friend, Miss Westcote?"
"And her birthmark. It proved to be a frightful nuisance, wearing off and having to be renewed every day. That was what ultimately betrayed me, you know. But I want to tell you my story from the beginning; I know you will respect my confidence and you have earned it by your kindness in saving me from the police.
"My real name is Ruth Westcote, and I am the daughter of Alden Westcote, a retired broker. My mother died years ago, and we lived alone together in Bruce Manor, an exclusive colony on Long Island. As I grew up I noticed that father was aging rapidly and seemed breaking in spirit and it was borne in upon me that something was preying on his mind. I watched him and observed that his nervous depression reached an acute state regularly every three months on the arrival of certain visitors who came late at night and were received privately in his study.
"When I insisted upon knowing their errand he put me off on the plea of a confidential business transaction which I would not understand, and he had become so unapproachable of late that I dared not press the matter, although it worried me to distraction.
"One night about three months ago—it was the eighth of December, and the first big snowstorm of the year—I returned home late. I had been spending a day or two with a girl friend who lived on the South Shore and was motoring back in my own little car when I stuck in a snowdrift and the engine froze. A chauffeur came along with a big limousine just as I was on the point of freezing, myself, and took me home. I noticed the huge bulk of another limousine with gaudy wide stripes standing beneath ourporte-cochèreand there was a light in father's study window. My heart sank, for it was about the time for those mysterious visitors to call once more. I had never seen them, but I had heard their voices raised in dispute on several occasions.
"To my surprise, that night it was the murmur of a woman's voice which drifted out to me as I started up the stairs to my room, and on a sudden impulse I turned and ran down to the library to wait until she had gone. She seemed to be urging father to something and once I thought I heard him groan. A low choking cough interrupted her constantly and when at last the door opened and she came out into the hall, I could see at a glance from where I was standing behind the library portieres, that she was very ill.
"Father followed her from the study but he did not speak to her again; instead he turned and groped his way up the stairs, bowed and shaking as if he had received a blow.
"The woman tottered toward the door, but she had taken only a few steps when she reeled, gasping, with her hands tearing at her breast, and would have fallen if I had not rushed out and caught her. I managed to get her to the couch in the library and brought her the water she begged for, but I knew the meaning of her terrible thirst. I had had pneumonia myself and no matter what misfortune her visit had brought to father, I could not help being sorry for her.
"She was a tall, dark, willowly creature and must have been very handsome in her youth. Her eyes were bright with fever and the hectic patches on her thin cheeks heightened their glitter, but she had a hardened expression which made the general effect she produced coarse and repellent.
"She seemed half delirious and kept moaning that she must go, but it would have been death to her to face the storm, even if she had not been too weak to rise from the couch. I told her that she would have to remain and let me send for a doctor, and at length she realized herself the futility of further effort.
"'Who are you?' she gasped, clinging to my hand. I told her and she stared long at me before she spoke again.
"'I have a letter here, a message from your father which must be delivered tonight, or the consequences for him will be disastrous. I cannot go; I feel as if I were dying! Will you take my place? Your father must not know, he would sacrifice himself and his own vital interests rather than have you brave the storm. My car is waiting. Can you do this? Remember, it means much to him!'
"Her eyes were burning into mine and something in her deadly earnestness decided me. I nodded and she fell back in relief. When she had gathered her remaining strength together, she went on:
"'You have only to permit my chauffeur to take you to a certain house and deliver this letter to the man servant who opens the door. The chauffeur will explain what is necessary to him, and then bring you home immediately. I will accept your hospitality for tonight because I must, but I shall be able to go in the morning. No doctor is necessary and I forbid you to send for one. I will not see him! You must lose no time, but go at once. Call my chauffeur in and I will give him his instructions.'
"I aroused the housemaid to prepare a bed and get the stranger into it without disturbing father, and then I started on my journey. I shall never forget that ride! For hours we plowed through drifts and over hummocks, the car swaying and rocking like a ship and the intense cold penetrating my very bones.
"The miles seemed endless and I was so numb and dazed that I scarcely realized when we entered the city, the string of lights were a meaningless blur.
"We drew up at last before a big house and I managed to descend, although my limbs were half frozen. The door opened before I could ring, and the man servant stared at me as if he saw a ghost, but the chauffeur called sharply to him and he ran down bareheaded in the snow and talked to him. Then he returned and conducted me into the hall where a great hearth fire was burning, and I gave him the square, blank, sealed envelope which the woman had handed to me. He took it and ascended the stairs, to return presently with a goblet of mulled wine. His manner was respectful enough, but I thought the way he stared at me was very strange and he was evidently relieved when he conducted me outside and saw me once more safely in the car.
"I slept nearly all the way home and the chauffeur had difficulty in rousing me. The dawn had come, clear, but intensely cold, as I stumbled up to bed.
"When I awakened, the woman was raving in delirium and I was compelled to call a doctor in spite of her prohibition. Of course, I had to tell father of our strange guest and he flared out in fury and would have driven her from the house if he could. I was horrified, for he is the dearest, most tender-hearted man in the world, but no inkling of the truth came to me. He asked if she had sent anything back to town by her chauffeur, and he looked utterly crushed when I told him the man had taken a letter to deliver for her.
"The doctor looked very grave when he came and said he would send a nurse, but when she arrived I had to dismiss her. Mr. McCormick, I sat by that woman for an hour and I knew that no one else must learn from her lips what she disclosed in her delirium!
"There was no hope for her from the first, but she lingered, and I nursed her day and night, not even allowing the housemaid to relieve me for an hour. Her raving filled me with loathing and bitter resentment, but she was a fellow creature dying and I could not help doing all that was possible, in sheer humanity.
"The night before she died consciousness returned to her and she realized everything and knew the end was approaching. She tried brokenly to thank me for the kindness I had shown her, and in gratitude told me the whole truth.
"Years ago, when father was in a desperate financial strait, he forged a check. Oh, if it is hard for me to tell you now, think how hard it must have been for me to learn of it from that wretched woman's lips. Father had great provocation, for the man whose name he used had defrauded him, but the dreadful fact remained. He made full restitution anonymously long ago, and the other man is dead, but somehow the forged check and a letter proving father's guilt had fallen into the hands of a blackmailing gang, through a dishonest law clerk, who found them in going over the man's private papers to settle up his estate.
"The blackmailers had for years preyed on father and he was broken and on the verge of ruin from the continued strain. Imagine how I felt when I realized that I had been used as a tool to deliver to his enemies the very money wrung from my own father!
"The check and letter denouncing him were in the possession of this Mrs. Atterbury, who was the leader of the greatest band of criminals ever organized in America. Their operations covered every state in the Union and they had extorted hundreds of thousands from unhappy victims all over the country. It was to Mrs. Atterbury's house that I had been sent, but the dying woman would not tell me the address. She admitted, however, that it was the meeting place for the sub-leaders of the gang and the incriminating documents were kept there.
"A wild idea came to me to get into that house somehow and destroy that check and letter which held father in such hideous bondage, and the woman's next words showed me the way.
"It appeared that Mrs. Atterbury always employed a private secretary who was not a member of the gang as a blind, and chose a girl who was alone and friendless. If she proved really stupid but trustworthy, she was frequently sent to collect money from victims so that if she later became suspicious she would be technically guilty with the rest and they could hold that as a weapon over her. That had not yet occurred, because Mrs. Atterbury dismissed each one after a short period and replaced her with another young and fairly unintelligent stranger. The time had come for the present incumbent to be sent away before she learned too much, and I made up my mind to take her place, if I could.
"The woman was sinking rapidly and I begged her to tell me her name.
"'I have come into your life unknown and in a cruel, base fashion; let me go out of it a stranger. A stranger, that is it! Once I was called Lucille and that will do for the end; Lucille L'Etrangere! Only, if you have still more compassion left for me in your warm, young heart, save me from burial at their hands! Put me away quietly somewhere, I beg of you, in an unmarked grave!'
"She died at dawn and then I went down and had it out with father. I hope never to live through another such hour! His grief and shame were pitiful, but he seemed relieved, too, that I knew the truth at last. He had been driven to the wall, and was almost mad.
"He arranged for the woman's burial in a little forgotten graveyard nearby. The coroner was an old friend and everything was managed very quietly and without question.
"When it was over I told father that I would be able to save him from further persecution if he would consent to go to a sanitarium and spread the rumor that his mind was permanently wrecked so that the gang would cease their activities in his direction until my purpose was accomplished. I withheld the details of my plan, for he would never have consented to my facing the danger, but his tortured mind was on the verge of giving way and he agreed helplessly to my proposal.
"In the meantime I had received a letter from an old school friend, Betty Shaw, who is like me in type and coloring, but has a huge birthmark like a clutching hand upon her cheek. She had moved West ages ago, but when her mother died she went to Chicago to earn her living, and there received a proposal from an old sweetheart who is now in British Columbia. Her letter was to tell me that she had gone out there to marry him, and I resolved to take her name and imitate her appearance, so that if I succeeded in gaining a position with Mrs. Atterbury and she wrote for reference out to the Western town where Betty had lived, my supposed identity could be established beyond question.
"I closed our house, leaving no address, painted the scar on my face and, as Betty Shaw, went to a cheap boarding house in the city. From there I inserted an advertisement in the papers, asking for a position as secretary and emphasizing my friendlessness as much as I dared.
"It succeeded, for Mrs. Atterbury herself was one of the applicants for my services. I cannot describe my sensations when I saw the very car in which I had made that memorable trip draw up before the door! I went back with her to the house I had visited that night, but the man servant I had interviewed was gone and I have never encountered him since.
"Much of the rest of my story must have been told to you by Herbert; how I searched every night that I dared for the check and letter, and how I found the murdered man on the floor of the dining-room.
"There was a little dressmaker whom Mrs. Atterbury hired during the first days of my stay to make some things for me, and she tried to warn me that I was in danger of being led into a trap, and begged me to go. She was afraid to explain, however, and her visits soon ceased. No one else tried to help me but her.
"I felt that I was being watched and tested, and although I was on my guard I came very near betraying myself more than once.
"When at last they were convinced that I was as stupid as I tried to appear, I was sent on my first errand to collect money from another victim. Looking back now, I can scarcely realize the mood in which I accepted such a horrible task, but my own suffering and the threatened disgrace to my father had hardened me to the troubles of others. That initial experience was at the opera, and a man in the next box handed me an envelope; he had a round, plump face and a little downy mustache, and a woman companion spoke of him as 'Toddie.'"
"J. Todhunter Crane!" exploded McCormick, interrupting for the first time. "They had him on a fraudulent government contract and could have got to him for a huge sum in time! But go on, please."
She told of her meeting with the beautiful golden-haired woman in the art shop and her response to Herbert's advertisement for an Egyptian translator. During this portion of her recital the young gentleman in question carefully avoided the eyes of his chief and the latter forebore to interrupt again, but when the girl told of her fruitless visit to the Café de Luxe and subsequent encounter with the blonde lady of the art shop at the Hotel Rochefoucauld, he could not contain himself.
"Mrs. Haddon Cheever!" he ejaculated. "Young wife of a rich, jealous, old husband, and the Atterbury crew got hold of a bunch of silly letters she wrote to that Willie-boy who tried to stall you in the Carnival Room. Ten thousand cold she handed over to you in the hotel!"
"I had another disquieting experience on the same afternoon at the Café de Luxe. The girl from whose house I returned home on the night of the storm came up and greeted me, and I was obliged to cut her, fearing some spy would hear her call me by my own name. She was one of my most intimate friends, and I felt ashamed.
"I had other worries, too. The man Wolvert, whom you have just placed in custody, had begun to annoy me with his attentions and would not be snubbed. Then I seemed to be forever dodging people I knew! On my second visit to the museum, Herbert introduced me to a dear old professor whom I had met previously in Cairo, where I was studying under the great Mallory. He remembered me, in spite of the birthmark, and he was suspicious enough to trap me later with a papyrus I had seen, but I admitted nothing.
"My search for the incriminating documents continued whenever an opportunity presented itself, but I seemed no nearer finding them. One night I came face to face with Wolvert in the library, but I reached Mrs. Atterbury first with a plausible story and she believed me.
"The next place to which I was sent to receive the blackmail was the very last I could have anticipated—a church. It was the aristocratic St. Jude's, on Brinsley Square, and the envelope containing the money was presented to me on the collection plate!"
She described the event in detail and when she had finished the detective asked eagerly:
"It was a fat, smug-faced little man, with heavy pouches under his eyes and a cocky air about him? That's Hobart Wallace, or I'm a Dutchman! Among the papers we found in Mike Hannigan's bag when we nabbed him at the Porter Street address on your plucky tip, were two hundred shares in a fake copper mine with his endorsement. He would have let himself be bled dry rather than have an inkling of that reach the press!"
"I was sent on one more errand," the girl continued, "to the courtroom where the Huston trial was in progress. I recognized the prisoner as the young chauffeur who had rescued me in the storm and brought me home the night the strange woman came, and as I listened to the testimony and learned that the murder of his wife had been committed on that night and his life depended on the alibi which I alone could supply, I faced the worst moment of all! Seated with him was poor Miss Pope, the dressmaker, who had risked everything to warn me to leave Mrs. Atterbury. I met her afterward in the corridor, and when she told me that Huston was her half-brother, all she had in the world to care for, and I heard his story from her lips, I did not know what to do! My father's good name was very dear to me, but here was a human life at stake. All that night I fought my battle, but in the morning I wrote a letter to Huston's lawyers, signing my real name and assuring them that I would appear if necessary and testify on a certain date. I had just placed the letter in the postbox that morning when I met you on the North Drive, Herbert."
She turned to Ross and he answered her with a quick pressure of her hand, but his eyes twinkled as he remarked:
"You haven't told the Chief yet who paid the blackmail to you in the courtroom, dear!"
"It was the judge, himself," she exclaimed. "He dropped the envelope in my lap as he passed out to his chambers when court adjourned."
"Judge Garford!" McCormick started in his chair. "What on earth could they have on him? It doesn't seem possible!"
"Don't forget there was more than a suspicion of bribery in connection with the Taylor case," Ross reminded him. "The opposition made a lot of it at the last election. The Atterbury crowd may have held some evidence of that over his head."
"Lord! They didn't mind who they tackled, did they?" McCormick chuckled. "It took just one little woman, though, to put the whole bunch out of business! Go on, Miss Westcote; I am anxious to hear the rest."
The girl told her story to the end, and when she had finished dusk was fast settling down outside the office windows. The Chief's eyes sparkled with admiration as she told of her desperate venture in the music room and the chloroforming of Wolvert, but his bluff, kindly face grew grave when he learned of the concerted rush upon her by the conspirators and the blast of the whistle which meant life or death to the girl who had dared all, and won out in the face of inconceivable odds.
"You ought to have taken me into your confidence, Ross." He turned reproachfully to his operative. "When you came to me with all that inside dope about the murder of 'the Comet' and the rest of it, and told me to round the boys up for a raid on the North Drive at the signal of a whistle, I agreed to let you boss the job, but if you'd given me an inkling that this young lady was in danger at the hands of that pack of thugs—!"
"You might have pulled them too soon and spoiled her game, Chief." Ross smiled slyly. "Besides, you had said something about being tarred with the same brush, remember, and I wanted to prove to you who was crooked and who wasn't."
McCormick reddened.
"My boy, I told you I'd be the first to apologize, and I do, most heartily. But what could I think? You were shielding the young lady with the scar at every turn, double-crossing me, and—say!" He broke off and faced the girl. "Did you ever hear of a peppery old lady named Madame Dumois?"
"Oh, yes!" She dimpled, delightfully. "Herbert is going to produce me in—in a little while!"
Then her face clouded and she shuddered.
"There is one question I have not dared to ask, although it has beaten into my brain day and night since that awful hour. Who killed George Breckinridge?"
"Jack Wolvert," the Chief responded slowly. "He has confessed, and will pay the penalty of his crime."