Carshaw could no longer sit still. He paced restlessly about the wet grass to ease his anxious heart. And so another quarter of an hour wore slowly. Then the sound of a fast-moving car broke the silence. Down the road a pair of dragon-eyes blazed. The car came like the chariots of Sennacherib, in reckless flight. Soon it was upon him. He drew back out of the road toward his own racer.
Though rather surprised at this urgent flight he had no suspicion that Winifred might be the cause of it. As the car dashed past he clearly saw on the front seat two men, and in the tonneau he made out the forms of two women. The faces of any of the quartet were wholly merged in speed and the night, but some white object fluttered in the swirl of air and fell forlornly in the road, dropping swiftly in its final plunge, like a stricken bird. He darted forward andpicked up a lady’s handkerchief. Then he knew! Winifred was being reft from him again. He leaped to his own car, started the engine, turned with reckless haste, and in a few seconds was hot in chase.
The two automobiles rushed along the Boston Post Road, heading for Bridgeport. The loud rivalry of their straining engines awoke many a wayside dweller, and brought down maledictions on the heads of all midnight joy-riders.
Carshaw knew the road well, and his car was slightly superior to the other in speed. His hastily evolved plan was to hold the kidnappers until they were in the main street of Bridgeport. There he could dash ahead, block further progress, risking a partial collision if necessary, and refer the instant quarrel to the police, bidding them verify his version of the dispute by telephoning New York.
He could only hope that Winifred would bear him out as against her “aunt,” and he felt sure that Voles and his fellow-adventurer dare not risk close investigation by the law. At any rate, his main object at present was to overtake the car in front, which had gained a flying start, and thus spoil any maneuvering for escape, such as turning into a side road. In his enthusiasm he pressed on too rapidly.
He was seen, and his intent guessed. The leading car slowed a trifle in rounding a bend; as Carshaw careened into view a revolver-shot rang out, and a bullet drilled a neat hole in the wind-screen, making a noise like the sharp crack of a whip. Simultaneously came a scream!
That must be Winifred’s cry of terror in his behalf. The sound nerved him anew. He saw red. A second shot, followed by a wilder shriek, spat lead somewhere in the bonnet. Carshaw set his teeth, gave the engine every ounce of power, and the two chariots of steel went raging, reckless of consequences, along the road.
There must be a special Providence that looks after chauffeurs, as well as after children and drunkards, for at some places the road, though wide enough, was so dismal with shadow that if any danger lurked within the darkness it would not have been seen in time to be avoided.
“Drunkenness” is, indeed, the word to describe the state of mind of the two drivers by this time—a heat to be on, a wrath against obstacles, a storm in the blood, and a light in the eyes. Voles would have whirled through a battalion of soldiers on the march, if he had met them, and would have hissed curses at them as he pitched over their bodies. He knew how to handle an automobile, having driven one over the rough tracks of the Rockies, so thiswell-kept road offered no difficulties. For five minutes the cars raged ahead, passed through a sleeping village street and down a hill into open country beyond.
No sound was made by their occupants, whose minds and purposes remained dark one to the other. Voles might have fancied himself chased by the flight of witches who harried Tam o’ Shanter, while Carshaw might have been hunting a cargo of ghosts; only the running hum of the cars droned its music along the highway, with a staccato accompaniment of revolver-shots and Winifred’s appeals to heaven for aid. Meantime, the rear car still gained on the one in front. And, on a sudden, Carshaw was aware of a shouting, though he could not make out the words. It was Mick the Wolf, who had clambered into the tonneau and was bellowing:
“Pull up, you—Pull up, or I’ll get you sure!”
Nor was the threat a waste of words, for he had hardly shouted when again a bullet flicked past Carshaw’s head.
Just then a bend of the road and a patch of woodland hid the two cars from each other; but they had hardly come out upon a reach of straight road again when another shot was fired. Carshaw, however, was now crouched low over the steering wheel, and using the hood of the car as a breast-work; though, since hewas obliged to look out, his head was still more or less exposed.
He bated no whit of speed on this account, but raced on; still, that firing in the dark had an effect upon his nerves, making him feel rather queer and small, for every now and again at intervals of a few seconds, it was sure to come, the desperado taking slow, cool aim with the perseverance of a man plying his day’s work, of a man repeating to himself the motto:
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.”
Those shots, moreover, were coming from a hand whose aim seldom failed—a dead shot, baffled only by the unconquerable vibration. And yet Carshaw was untouched. He could not even think. He was conscious only of the thrum of the car, the spurts of flame, the whistle of lead, the hysterical frenzy of Winifred’s plaints.
The darkness alone saved him, but the more he caught up with the fugitive the less was this advantage likely to stand him in good stead. And when he should actually catch them up—what then? This question presented itself now to his heated mind. He had no plan of action. None was possible. Even in Bridgeport what could he do? There were two against one—he would simply be shot as he passed the other car.
It was only the heat of the hunt that had created in him the feeling that he must overtake them, though he died for it; but when he was within thirty yards of the front car, and two shots had come dangerously near in swift succession, a flash of reason warned him, and he determined to slacken speed a little. He was not given time to do this. There was an outcry on the car in front from three throats in it.
A mob of oxen, being driven to some market, blocked the road just beyond a bend. The men in charge had heard the thunder of the oncoming racers, with its ominous obbligato of screams and shooting. They had striven desperately to whack the animals to the hedge on either side, and were bawling loud warnings to those thrice accursed gunmen whom they imagined chased by police. Their efforts, their yells, were useless. Sixty miles an hour demands at least sixty yards for safety. When Voles put hand and foot to the brakes he had hardly a clear space of ten. An obstreperous bullock was the immediate cause of disaster. Facing the dragon eyes, it charged valiantly!
Mick the Wolf, running short of cartridges, was about to ask Voles to slow down until he “got” the reckless pursuer, when he found himself describing a parabola backward through the air. He landed in the roadway, breaking his left arm.
Voles had an extraordinary lurid oath squeezed out of his vast bulk as he was forced onto the steering-wheel, the pillar snapping like a carrot. Winifred and Rachel Craik were flung against the padded back of the driving seat, but saved from real injury because of their crouching to avoid Mick the Wolf.
Voles was as quick as a wildcat in an emergency like this. He was on his feet in a second, with a leg over the door, meaning to shoot Carshaw ere the latter could do anything to protect himself. But luck, dead against honesty thus far, suddenly veered against crime. Carshaw’s car smashed into the rear of the heavy mass composed of crushed bullock and automobile no longer mobile, and dislocated its own engine and feed pipes. The jerk threw Voles heavily, and nearly, not quite, sprained his ankle. So, during a precious second or two, he lay almost stunned on the left side of the road.
Carshaw, given a hint of disaster by the slightest fraction of time, and already braced low in the body of his car, was able to jump unobserved from the wreck. As though his brain were illumined by a flash of lightning, he remembered that the signal handkerchief had fluttered from the off side of the flying car, so he ran to the right, and grabbed a breathless bundle of soft femininity out of the ruin.
“Winifred,” he gasped.
“Oh, are you safe?” came the strangled sob. So that was her first thought, his safety! It is a thrilling moment in a man’s life when he learns that his well-being provides an all-sufficing content for some dear woman. Come weal, come woe, Carshaw knew then that he was clasping his future wife in his arms. He ran with her through a mob of frightened cattle, and discovered a gate leading into a field.
“Can you stand if I lift you over?” he said, leaning against the bars.
“Of course! I can run, too,” and, in maidenly effort to free herself, she hugged him closer. They crossed the gate and together breasted a slight rise through scattered sheaves of corn-shucks. Meanwhile, Voles and the cattlemen were engaged in a cursing match until Rachel Craik, recovering her wind, screamed an eldrich command:
“Stop, you fool! They’re getting away. He has taken her down the road!”
Voles limped off in pursuit, and Mick the Wolf took up the fierce argument with the drivers. At that instant the wreck blazed into flame. Rachel had to move quickly to avoid a holocaust in which a hapless bullock provided the burnt offering. The light of this pyre revealed the distant figures of Winifred and Carshaw, whereupon the maddened Voles tried pot shots at a hundred yards. Bullets cameclose, too. One cut the heel of Carshaw’s shoe; another plowed a ridge through his motoring cap. Realizing that Voles would aim only at him, he told Winifred to run wide.
She caught his hand.
“Please—help!” she breathed. “I cannot run far.”
He smothered a laugh of sheer joy. Winifred’s legs were supple as his. She was probably the fleeter of the two. It was the mother-instinct that spoke in her. This was her man, and she must protect him, cover him from enemies with her own slim body.
Soon they were safe from even a chance shot. On climbing a rail fence, Carshaw led the girl clearly into view until a fold in the ground offered. Then they doubled and zigzagged. They saw some houses, but Carshaw wanted no explanation or parleying then and pressed on. They entered a lane, or driveway, and followed it. There came a murmuring of mighty waters, the voice of the sea; they were on the beach of Long Island Sound. Far behind, in the gloom, shone a lurid redness, marking the spot where the two cars and the bullock were being converted into ardent gasses.
Carshaw halted and surveyed a long, low line of blackness breaking into the deep-blue plain of the sea to the right.
“I know where we are,” he said. “There’sa hotel on that point. It’s about two miles. You could walk twenty, couldn’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Winifred unthinkingly.
“Or run five at a jog-trot?” he teased her.
“Well—er—”
She blushed furiously, and thanked the night that hid her from his eyes. No maid wishes a man to think she is in love with him before he has uttered the word of love. When next she spoke, Winifred’s tone was reserved, almost distant.
“Now tell me what has caused this tornado,” she said. “I have been acting on impulse. Please give me some reasonable theory of to-night’s madness.”
It was on the tip of Carshaw’s tongue to assure her that they were going to New York by the first train, and would hie themselves straight to the City Hall for a marriage license. But—he had a mother, a prized and deeply reverenced mother. Ought he to break in on her placid and well-balanced existence with the curt announcement that he was married, even to a wife like Winifred. Would he be playing the game with those good fellows in the detective bureau? Was it fair even to Winifred that she should be asked to pay the immediate price, as it were, of her rescue? So the fateful words were not uttered, and the two trudged on, talking with much common sense, probing thedoubtful things in Winifred’s past life, and ever avoiding the tumult of passion which must have followed their first kiss.
In due course an innkeeper was aroused and the mishap of a car explained. The man took them for husband and wife; happily, Winifred did not overhear Carshaw’s smothered:
“Not yet!”
The girl soon went to her room. They parted with a formal hand-shake; but, to still the ready lips of scandal, Carshaw discovered the landlord’s favorite brand of wine and sat up all night in his company.
Steingall and Clancy were highly amused by Carshaw’s account of the “second burning of Fairfield,” as the little man described the struggle between Winifred’s abductors and her rescuer. The latter, not so well versed in his country’s history as every young American ought to be, had to consult a history of the Revolution to learn that Fairfield was burned by the British in 1777. The later burning, by the way, created a pretty quarrel between two insurance companies, the proprietors of two garages and the owner of a certain bullock, with Carshaw’s lawyer and a Bridgeport lawyer, instructed by “Mr. Ralph Voles,” as interveners.
“And where is the young lady now?” inquired Steingall, when Carshaw’s story reached its end.
“Living in rooms in a house in East Twenty-seventh Street, a quiet place kept by a Miss Goodman.”
“Ah! Too soon for any planning as to the future, I suppose?”
“We talked of that in the train. Winifred has a voice, so the stage offers an immediate opening. But I don’t like the notion of musical comedy, and the concert platform demands a good deal of training, since a girl starts there practically as a principal. There is no urgency. Winifred might well enjoy a fortnight’s rest. I have counseled that.”
“A stage wait, in fact,” put in Clancy, sarcastically.
By this time Carshaw was beginning to understand the peculiar quality of the small detective’s wit.
“Yes,” he said, smiling into those piercing and brilliant eyes. “There are periods in a man’s life when he ought to submit his desires to the acid test. Such a time has come now for me.”
“But ‘Aunt Rachel’ may find her. Is she strong-willed enough to resist cajoling, and seek the aid of the law if force is threatened?”
“Yes, I am sure now. What she heard and saw of those two men during the mad run along the Post Road supplied good and convincing reasons why she should refuse to return to Miss Craik.”
“Why are you unwilling to charge them with attempted murder?” said Steingall, for Carshaw had stipulated there should be no legal proceedings.
“My lawyers advise against it,” he said simply.
“You’ve consulted them?”
“Yes, called in on my way here. When I reached home after seeing Winifred fixed comfortably in Miss Goodman’s, I opened a letter from my lawyers, requesting an interview—on another matter, of course. Meaning to marry Winifred, if she’ll take me, I thought it wise to tell them something about recent events.”
Steingall carefully chose a cigar from a box of fifty, all exactly alike, nipped the end off, and lighted it. Clancy’s fingers drummed impatiently on the table at which the three were seated. Evidently he expected the chief to play Sir Oracle. But the head of the Bureau contented himself with the comment that he was still interested in Winifred Bartlett’s history, and would be glad to have any definite particulars which Carshaw might gather.
Clancy sighed so heavily on hearing this “departmental” utterance that Carshaw was surprised.
“If I could please myself, I’d rush Winifred to the City Hall for a marriage license to-day,” he said, believing he had fathomed the other’s thought.
“I’m a bit of a Celt on the French and Irish sides,” snapped Clancy, “and that means an ineradicable vein of romance in my make-up.But I’m a New York policeman, too—a guy who has to mind his own business far more frequently than the public suspects.”
And there the subject dropped. Truth to tell, the department had to tread warily in stalking such big game as a Senator. Carshaw was a friend of the Towers, and “the yacht mystery” had been deliberately squelched by the highly influential persons most concerned. It was impolitic, it might be disastrous, if Senator Meiklejohn’s name were dragged into connection with that of the unsavory Voles on the flimsy evidence, or, rather, mere doubt, affecting Winifred Bartlett’s early life.
Winifred herself lived in a passive but blissful state of dreams during the three weeks. Perhaps, in her heart of hearts, she wondered if every young man who might be in love with a girl imposed such rigid restraint on himself as Rex Carshaw when he was in her company. The unspoken language of love was plain in every glance, in every tone, in the merest touch of their hands. But he spoke no definite word, and their lips had never met.
Miss Goodman, who took an interest in the pretty and amiable girl, spent many an hour of chat with her. Every morning there arrived a present of flowers from Carshaw; every afternoon Carshaw himself appeared as regularly as the clock and drank of Miss Goodman’s tea.They were weeks ofNirvanafor Winifred, and, but for her fear of being found out and her continued lack of occupation, they were the happiest she had ever known. Meantime, however, she was living on “borrowed” money, and felt herself in a false position.
“Well, any news?” was always Carshaw’s first question as he placed his hat over his stick on a chair. And Winifred might reply:
“Not much. I saw such-and-such a stage manager, and went from such an agent to another, and had my voice tried, with the usual promises. I’m afraid that even your patience will soon be worn out. I am sorry now that I thought of singing instead of something else, for there are plenty of girls who can sing much better than I.”
“But don’t be so eager about the matter, Winifred,” he would say. “It is an anxious little heart that eats itself out and will not learn repose. Isn’t it? And it chafes at being dependent on some one who is growing weary of the duty. Doesn’t it?”
“No, I didn’t mean that,” said Winifred with a rueful and tender smile. “You are infinitely good, Rex.” They had soon come to the use of Christian names. Outwardly they were just good friends, while inwardly they resembled two active volcanoes.
“Now I am ‘infinitely good,’ which is reallymore than human if you think it out,” he laughed. “See how you run to extremes with nerves and things. No, you are not to care at all, Winnie. You have a more or less good voice. You know more music than is good for you, and sooner or later, since you insist on it, you will get what you want. Where is the hurry?”
“You don’t or won’t understand,” said Winifred. “I know what I want, and must get some work without delay.”
“Well, then, since it upsets you, you shall. I am not much of an authority about professional matters myself, but I know a lady who understands these things, and I’ll speak to her.”
“Who is this lady?” asked Winifred.
“Mrs. Ronald Tower.”
“Young—nice-looking?” asked Winifred, looking down at the crochet work in her lap. She was so taken up with the purely feminine aspect of affairs that she gave slight heed to a remarkable coincidence.
“Er—so-so,” said Carshaw with a smile borne of memories, which Winifred’s downcast eyes just noticed under their raised lids.
“What is she like?” she went on.
“Let me see! How shall I describe her? Well, you know Gainsborough’s picture of the Duchess of Devonshire? She’s like that, full-busted,with preposterous hats, dashing—rather a beauty!”
“Indeed!” said Winifred coldly. “She must be awfully attractive. Averyold friend?”
“Oh, rather! I knew her when I was eighteen, and she waselancéethen.”
“What doeselancéemean?”
“On the loose.”
“What doesthatmean?”
“Well—a bit free and easy, doesn’t it? Something of that sort. Smart set, you know.”
“I see. Doyou, then, belong to the smart set?”
“I? No. I dislike it rather. But one rubs with all sorts in the grinding of the mill.”
“And this Mrs. Ronald Tower, whom you knew at eighteen, how old was she then?”
“About twenty-two or so.”
“And she was—gay then?”
“As far as ever society would let her.”
“How—did you know?”
“I—well, weren’t we almost boy and girl together?”
“I wonder you can give yourself the pains to come to spend your precious minutes with me when that sort of woman is within—”
“What, not jealous?” he cried joyously. “And of thatpasséecreature? Why, she isn’t worthy to stoop and tie the latchets of your shoes, as the Scripture saith!”
“Still, I’d rather not be indebted to that lady for anything,” said Winifred.
“But why not? Don’t be excessive, little one. There is no reason, you know.”
“How does she come to know about singing and theatrical people?”
“I don’t know that she does. I only assume it. A woman of the world, cutting a great dash, yet hard up—that kind knows all sorts and conditions of men. I am sure she could help you, and I’ll have a try.”
“But is she the wife of the Ronald Tower who was dragged by the lasso into the river?”
“The same.”
“It is odd how that name keeps on occurring in my life,” said Winifred musingly. “A month ago I first heard it on Riverside Drive, and since then I hear it always. I prefer, Rex, that you do not say anything to that woman about me.”
“I shall!” said Rex playfully. “You mustn’t start at shadows.”
Winifred was silent. After a time she asked:
“Have you seen Mr. Steingall or Mr. Clancy lately?”
“Yes, a couple of days ago. We are always more or less in communication. But I have nothing to report. They’re keeping track of Voles and Mick the Wolf, but those are birdswho don’t like salt on their tails. You know already that the Bureau never ceases to work at the mystery of your relation with your impossible ‘aunt,’ and I think they have information which they have not passed on to me.”
“Is my aunty still searching for me, I wonder?” asked Winifred.
“Oh, don’t call her aunty—call her your antipodes! It is more than that woman knows how to be your aunt. Of course, the whole crew of them are moving heaven and earth to find you! Clancy knows it. But let them try—they won’t succeed. And even if they do, please don’t forget that I’m here now!”
“But why should they be so terribly anxious to find me? My aunty always treated me fairly well, but in a cold sort of a way which did not betray much love. So love can’t be their motive.”
“Love!” And Carshaw breathed the word softly, as though it were pleasing to his ear. “No. They have some deep reason, but what that is is more than any one guesses. The same reason made them wish to take you far from New York, though what it all means is not very clear. Time, perhaps, will show.”
The same night Rex Carshaw sat among a set which he had not frequented much of late—in Mrs. Tower’s drawing-room. There were several tables surrounded with people of variousAmerican and foreign types playing bridge. The whole atmosphere was that of Mammon; one might have fancied oneself in the halls of a Florentine money-changer. At the same table with Carshaw were Mrs. Tower, another society dame, and Senator Meiklejohn, who ought to have been making laws at Washington.
Tower stood looking on, the most unimportant person present, and anon ran to do some bidding of his wife’s. Carshaw’s only relation with Helen Tower of late had been to allow himself to be cheated by her at bridge, for she did not often pay, especially if she lost to one who had been something more than a friend. When he did present himself at her house, she felt a certain gladness apart from the money which he would lose; women ever keep some fragment of the heart which the world is not permitted to scar and harden wholly.
She grew pensive, therefore, when he told her that he wished to place a girl on the concert stage, and wished to know from her how best to succeed. She thought dreamily of other days, and the slightest pin-prick of jealousy touched her, for Carshaw had suddenly become earnest in broaching this matter, and the other pair of players wondered why the game was interrupted for so trivial a cause.
“What is the girl’s name?” she asked.
“Her name is of no importance, but, if youmust know, it is Winifred Bartlett,” he answered.
Senator Meiklejohn laid his thirteen cards face upward on the table. There had been no bidding, and his partner screamed in protest:
“Senator, what are you doing?”
He had revealed three aces and a long suit of spades.
“We must have a fresh deal,” smirked Mrs. Tower.
“Well, of all the wretched luck!” sighed the other woman. Meiklejohn pleaded a sudden indisposition, yet lingered while a servant summoned Ronald Tower to play in his stead.
Carshaw knew Winifred—that same Winifred whom he and his secret intimates had sought so vainly during three long weeks! Voles and his arm-fractured henchman were recuperating in Boston, but Rachel Craik and Fowle were hunting New York high and low for sight of the girl.
Fowle, though skilled in his trade, found well-paid loafing more to his choice, for Voles had sent Rachel to Fowle, guessing this man to be of the right kidney for underhanded dealings. Moreover, he knew Winifred, and would recognize her anywhere. Fowle, therefore, suddenly blossomed into a “private detective,” and had reported steady failure day after day. Rachel Craik had never ascertained Carshaw’sname, as it was not necessary that he should register in the Fairfield Inn, and Fowle, with a nose still rather tender to the touch, never spoke to her of the man who had smashed it.
So these associates in evil remained at cross-purposes until Senator Meiklejohn, when the bridge game was renewed and no further information was likely to ooze out, went away from Mrs. Tower’s house to nurse his sickness. He recovered speedily. A note was sent to Rachel by special messenger, and she, in turn, sought Fowle, whose mean face showed a blotchy red when he learned that Winifred could be traced by watching Carshaw.
“I’ll get her now, ma’am,” he chuckled. “It’ll be dead easy. I can make up as a parson. Did that once before when—well, just to fool a bunch of people. No one suspects a parson—see? I’ll get her—sure!”
Voles was brought from Boston. Though Meiklejohn dreaded the man, conditions might arise which would call for a bold and ruthless rascality not quite practicable for a Senator.
The lapse of time, too, had lulled the politician’s suspicions of the police. They seemed to have ceased prying. He ascertained, almost by chance, that Clancy was hot on the trail of a gang of counterfeiters. “The yacht mystery” had apparently become a mere memory in the Bureau.
So Voles came, with him Mick the Wolf, carrying a left arm in splints, and the Senator thought he was taking no risk in calling at the up-town hotel where the pair occupied rooms the day after Carshaw blurted out Winifred’s name to Helen Tower. He meant paying another visit that day, so was attiredde rigueur, a fact at which Voles, pipe in mouth and lounging in pajamas, promptly scoffed.
“Gee!” he cried. “Here’s the Senator mooching round again, dressed up to the nines—dust coat, morning suit, boots shining, all thefrills—but visiting low companions all the same. Why doesn’t the man turn over a new leaf and become good?”
“Oh, hold your tongue!” said William. “We’ve got the girl, Ralph!”
“Got the girl, have we? Not the first girl you’ve said that about—is it, my wily William?”
“Listen, and drop that tone when you’re speaking to me, or I’ll cut you out for good and all!” said Meiklejohn in deadly earnest. “If ever you had need to be serious, it is now. I said we’ve got her, but that only means that we are about to get her address; and the trouble will be to get herself afterward.”
“Tosh! As to that, only tell me where she is, an’ I’ll go and grab her by the neck.”
“Don’t be such a fool. This is New York and not Mexico, though you insist on confounding the two. Even if the girl were without friends, you can’t go and seize people in that fashion over here, and she has at least one powerful friend, for the man who beat you hollow that night, and carried her off under your very nose, is Rex Carshaw, a determined youngster, and rich, though not so rich as he thinks he is. And there must be no failure a second time, Ralph. Remember that! Just listen to me carefully. This girl is thinking of going on the stage! Do you realize what thatmeans, if she ever gets there? You have yourself said she is the living image of her mother. You know that her mother was well known in society. Think, then, of her appearing before the public, and of the certainty of her being recognized by some one, or by many, if she does. Fall down this time, and the game’s up!”
“The thing seems to be, then, to let daylight into Carshaw,” said Voles.
“Oh, listen, man! Listen! What we have to do is to place her in a lonely house—in the country—where, if she screams, her screams will not be heard; and the only possibility of bringing her there is by ruse, not by violence.”
“Well, and how get her there?”
“That has to be carefully planned, and even more carefully executed. It seems to me that the mere fact of her wishing to go on the stage may be made a handle to serve our ends. If we can find a dramatic agent with whom she is in treaty, we must obtain a sheet of his office paper, and write her a letter in his name, making an appointment with her at an empty house in the country, some little distance from New York. None of the steps presents any great difficulty. In fact, all that part I undertake myself. It will be for you, your friend Mick, and Rachel Craik to receive her and keep her eternally when you once have her. You may then be able so to work upon her as to persuadeher to go quietly with you to South America or England. In any case, we shall have shut her away from the world, which is our object.”
“Poor stuff! How about this Carshaw? Suppose he goes with her to keep the appointment, or learns from her beforehand of it? Carshaw must be wiped out.”
“He must certainly be dealt with, yes,” said Meiklejohn, “but in another manner. I think—I think I see my way. Leave him to me. I want this girl out of New York State in the first instance. Suppose you go to the Oranges, in New Jersey, pick out a suitable house, and rent it? Go to-day.”
Voles raised his shaggy eyebrows.
“What’s the rush?” he said amusedly. “After eighteen years—”
“Will you never learn reason? Every hour, every minute, may bring disaster.”
“Oh, have it your way! I’ll fix Carshaw if he camps on my trail a second time.”
Meiklejohn returned to his car with a care-seamed brow. He was bound now for Mrs. Carshaw’s apartment.
If he was fortunate enough to find her in, and alone, he would take that first step in “dealing with” her son which he had spoken of to Voles. He made no prior appointment by phone. He meant catching her unawares, so that Rex could have no notion of his presence.
Mrs. Carshaw was a substantial lady of fifty, a society woman of the type to whom the changing seasons supply the whole duty of man and woman, and the world outside the orbit of the Four Hundred is a rumor of no importance.
She had met Senator Meiklejohn in so many places for so many years that they might be called comrades in the task of dining and making New York look elegant. She was pleased to see him. Their common fund of scandal and epigram would carry them safely over a cheerful hour.
“And as to the good old firm of Carshaw—prosperous as usual, I hope,” said Meiklejohn, balancing an egg-shell tea-cup.
Mrs. Carshaw shrugged.
“I don’t know much about it,” she said, “but I sometimes hear talk of bad times and lack of capital. I suppose it is all right. Rex does not seem concerned.”
“Ah! but the mischief may be just there,” said Meiklejohn. “The rogue may be throwing it all on the shoulders of his managers, and letting things slide.”
“He may—he probably is. I see very little of him, really, especially just lately.”
“Is it the same little influence at work upon him as some months ago?” asked Meiklejohn, bending nearer, a real confidential crony.
“Which same little influence?” asked the lady, agog with a sense of secrecy, and genuinely anxious as to anything affecting her son.
“Why, the girl, Winifred Bartlett.”
“Bartlett! As far as I know, I have never even heard her name.”
“Extraordinary! Why, it’s the talk of the club.”
“Tell me. What is it all about?”
“Ah, I must not be indiscreet. When I mentioned her, I took it for granted that you knew all about it, or I should not have told tales out of school.”
“Yes, but you and I are of a different generation than Rex. He belongs to the spring, we belong to the autumn. There is no question of telling tales out of school as between you and him. So now, please, you are going to tell meall.”
“Well, the usual story: A girl of lower social class; a young man’s head turned by her wiles; the conventions more or less defied; business yawned at; mother, friends, everything shelved for the time being, and nothing important but the one thing. It’s not serious, perhaps. So long as business is nottoomuch neglected, and no financial consequences follow, society thinks not a whit worse of a young man on that account—on one condition, mark you! There must beno question of marriage. But in this case thereisthat question.”
“But this is merely ridiculous!” laughed Mrs. Carshaw shrilly. “Marriage! Can a son of mine be so quixotic?”
“It is commonly believed that he is about to marry her.”
“But how on earth has it happened that I never heard a whisper of this preposterous thing?”
“Itisextraordinary. Sometimes the one interested is the last to hear what every one is talking about.”
“Well, I never was so—amused!” Yet Mrs. Carshaw’s wintry smile was not joyous. “Rex! I must laugh him out of it, if I meet him anywhere!”
“That you will not succeed in doing, I think.”
“Well, then I’ll frown him out of it. This is why—I see all now.”
“There you are hardly wise, to think of either laughing or frowning him out of it,” said Meiklejohn, offering her worldly wisdom. “No, in such cases there is a better way, take my word for it.”
“And that is?”
“Approach the girl. Avoid carefully saying one word to the young man, but approachthe girl. That does it, if the girl is at all decent, and has any sensibility. Lay the facts plainlybefore her. Take her into your confidence—this flatters her. Invoke her love for the young man whom she is hurting by her intimacy with him—this puts her on her honor. Urge her to fly from him—this makes her feel herself a martyr, and turns her on the heroic tack. That is certainly what I should do if I were you, and I should do it without delay.”
“You’re right. I’ll do it,” said Mrs. Carshaw. “Do you happen to know where this girl is to be found?”
“No. I think I can tell, though, from whom you might get the address—Helen Tower. I heard your son talking to her last night about the girl. He was wanting to know whether Helen could put him in the way of placing her on the stage.”
“What! Is she one of those scheming chorus-girls?”
“It appears so.”
“But has he had the effrontery to mention her in this way to other ladies? It is rather amusing! Why, it used to be said that Helen Tower was hisbelle amie.”
“All the more reason, perhaps, why she may be willing to give you the address, if she knows it.”
“I’ll see her this very afternoon.”
“Then I must leave you at leisure now,” said Meiklejohn sympathetically.
An hour later Mrs. Carshaw was with Helen Tower, and the name of Winifred Bartlett arose between them.
“But he did not give me her address,” said Mrs. Tower. “Do you want it pressingly?”
“Why, yes. Have you not heard that there is a question of marriage?”
“Good gracious! Marriage?”
The two women laid their heads nearer together, enjoying the awfulness of the thing, though one was a mother and the other was pricked with jealousy in some secret part of her nature.
“Yes—marriage!” repeated the mother. Such an enormity was dreadful.
“It sounds too far-fetched! What will you do?”
“Senator Meiklejohn recommends me to approach the girl.”
“Well, perhaps that is the best. But how to get her address? Perhaps if I asked Rex he would tell it, without suspecting anything. On the other hand, he might take alarm.”
“Couldn’t you say you had secured her a place on the stage, and make him send her to you, to test her voice, or something? And then you could send her on to me,” said the elder woman.
“Yes, that might be done,” answered HelenTower. “I’d like to see her, too. She must be extraordinarily pretty to capture Rex. Some of those common girls are, you know. It is a caprice of Providence. Anyway, I shall find her out, or have her here somehow within the next few days, and will let you know. First of all, I’ll write Rex and ask him to come for bridge to-night.”
She did this, but without effect, for Carshaw was engaged elsewhere, having taken Winifred to a theater.
However, Meiklejohn was again at the bridge party, and when he asked whether Mrs. Carshaw had paid a visit that afternoon, and the address of the girl had been given, Helen Tower answered:
“I don’t know it. I am now trying to find out.”
The Senator seemed to take thought.
“I hate interfering,” he said at last, “but I like young Carshaw, and have known his mother many a year. It’s a pity he should throw himself away on some chit of a girl, merely because she has a fetching pair of eyes or a slim ankle, or Heaven alone knows what else it is that first turns a young man’s mind to a young woman. I happen to have heard, however, that Winifred Bartlett lives in a boarding-house kept by Miss Goodman in East Twenty-seventh Street. Now, my name must not—”
Helen Tower laughed in that dry way which often annoyed him.
“Surely by this time you regard me as a trustworthy person,” she said.
So Fowle had proven himself a capable tracker, and Winifred’s persecutors were again closing in on her. But who would have imagined that the worst and most deadly of them might be the mother of her Rex? That, surely, was something akin to steeping in poison the assassin’s dagger.
“
Are you Miss Winifred Bartlett?” asked Mrs. Carshaw the next afternoon in that remote part of East Twenty-seventh Street which for the first time bore the rubber tires of her limousine.
“Yes, madam,” said Winifred, who stood rather pale before that large and elegant presence. It was in the front room of the two which Winifred occupied.
“But—where have I seen you before?” asked Mrs. Carshaw suddenly, making play with a pair of mounted eye-glasses.
“I cannot say, madam. Will you be seated?”
“What a pretty girl you are!” exclaimed the visitor, wholly unconscious of the calm insolence which “society” uses to its inferiors. “I’m certain I have seen you somewhere, for your face is perfectly familiar, but for the life of me I cannot recall the occasion.”
Mrs. Carshaw was not mistaken. Some dim cell of memory was stirred by the girl’s likeness to her mother. For once Senator Meiklejohn’s scheming had brought him to the edge ofthe precipice. But the dangerous moment passed. Rex’s mother was thinking of other and more immediate matters. Winifred stood silent, scared, with a foreboding of the meaning of this tremendous visit.
“Now, I am come to have a quiet chat with you,” said Mrs. Carshaw, “and I only hope that you will look on me as a friend, and be perfectly at your ease. I am sorry the nature of my visit is not of a quite pleasant nature, but no doubt we shall be able to understand each other, for you look good and sweet. Where have I seen you before? You are a sweetly pretty girl, do you know? I can’t altogether blame poor Rex, for men are not very rational creatures, are they? Come, now, and sit quite near beside me on this chair, and let me talk to you.”
Winifred came and sat, with tremulous lip, not saying a word.
“First, I wish to know something about yourself,” said Mrs. Carshaw, trying honestly to adopt a motherly tone. “Do you live here all alone? Where are your parents?”
“I have none—as far as I know. Yes, I live here alone, for the present.”
“But no relatives?”
“I have an aunt—a sort of aunt—but—”
“You are mysterious—‘a sort of aunt.’ And is this ‘sort of aunt’ with you here?”
“No. I used to live with her, but within the last month we have—separated.”
“Is that my son’s doings?”
“No—that is—no.”
“So you are quite alone?”
“Yes.”
“And my son comes to see you?”
“He comes—yes, he comes.”
“But that is rather defiant of everything, is it not?”
A blush of almost intense carmine washed Winifred’s face and neck. Mrs. Carshaw knew how to strike hard. Every woman knows how to hurt another woman.
“Miss Goodman, my landlady, usually stays in here when he comes,” said she.
“All the time?”
“Most of the time.”
“Well, I must not catechise you. No one woman has the right to do that to another, and you are sweet to have answered me at all. I think you are good and true; and you will therefore find it all the easier to sympathize with my motives, which have your own good at heart, as well as my son’s. First of all, do you understand that my son is very much in love with you?”
“I—you should not ask me—I may have thought that he liked me. Has—he—told you so?”
“He has never mentioned your name to me. I never knew of your existence till yesterday. But it is so; he is fond of you, to such an unusual extent, that quite a scandal has arisen in his social set—”
“Not about me?”
“Yes.”
“But there is nothing——”
“Yes; it is reported that he intends to marry you.”
“And is that what the scandal is about? I thought the scandal was when you did not marry, not when you did.”
Mrs. Carshaw permitted herself to be surprised. She had not looked for such weapons in Winifred’s armory. But she was there to carry out what she deemed an almost sacred mission, and the righteous can be horribly unjust.
“Yes, in the middle classes, but not in the upper, which has its own moral code—not a strictly Biblical one, perhaps,” she retorted glibly. “With us the scandal is not that you and my son are friends, but that he should seriously think of marrying you, since you are on such different levels. You see, I speak plainly.”
Winifred suddenly covered her face with her hands. For the first time she measured the great gulf yawning between her and that dear hope growing up in her heart.
“That is how the matter stands before marriage,”went on Mrs. Carshaw, sure that she was kind in being merciless. “You can conceive how it would be afterwards. And society is all nature—it never forgives; or, if it forgives, it may condone sins, but never an indiscretion. Nor must you think that your love would console my son for the great social loss which his connection with you threatens to bring on him. It will console him for a month, but a wife is not a world, nor, however beloved, does she compensate for the loss of the world. If, therefore, you love my son, as I take it that you do—do you?”
Winifred’s face was covered. She did not answer.
“Tell me in confidence. I am a woman, too, and know—”
A sob escaped from the poor bowed head. Mrs. Carshaw was moved. She had not counted on so hard a task. She had even thought of money!
“Poor thing! That will make your duty very hard. I wish—but there is no use in wishing! Necessity knows no pity. Winifred, you must summon all your strength of mind, and get out of this false position.”
“What am I to do? What can I do?” wailed Winifred. She was without means or occupation, and could not fly from the house.
“You can go away,” said Mrs. Carshaw,“without letting him know whither you have gone, and till you go you can throw cold water on his passion by pretending dislike or indifference—”
“But could I do such a thing, even if I tried?” came the despairing cry.
“It will be hard, certainly, but a woman should be able to accomplish everything for the man she loves. Remember for whose sake you will be doing it, and promise me before I leave you.”
“Oh, you should give me time to think before I promise anything,” sobbed Winifred. “I believe I shall go mad. I am the most unfortunate girl that ever lived. I did not seek him—he sought me; and now, when I—Have you no pity?”
“You see that I have—not only pity, but confidence. It is hard, but I feel that you will rise to it. I, and you, are acting for Rex’s sake, and I hope, I believe, you will do your share in saving him. And now I must go, leaving my sting behind me. I am so sorry! I never dreamed that I should like you so well. I have seen you before somewhere—it seems to me in an old dream. Good-by, good-by! It had to be done, and I have done it, but not gladly. Heaven help us women, and especially all mothers!”
Winifred could not answer. She was choked with sobs, so Mrs. Carshaw took her departurein a kind of stealthy haste. She was far more unhappy now than when she entered that quiet house. She came in bristling with resolution. She went out, seemingly victorious, but feeling small and mean.
When she was gone Winifred threw herself on a couch with buried head, and was still there an hour later when Miss Goodman brought up a letter. It was from a dramatic agent whom she had often haunted for work—or rather it was a letter on his office paper, making an appointment between her and a “manager” at some high-sounding address in East Orange, New Jersey, when, the writer said, “business might result.”
She had hardly read it when Rex Carshaw’s tap came to the door.
About that same time Steingall threw a note across his office table to Clancy, who was there to announce that in a house in Brooklyn a fine haul of coiners, dies, presses, and other illicit articles, human and inanimate, had just been made.
“Ralph V. Voles and his bad man from the West have come back to New York again,” said the chief. “You might give ’em an eye.”
“Why on earth doesn’t Carshaw marry the girl?” said Clancy.
“I dunno. He’s straight, isn’t he?”
“Strikes me that way.”
“Me, too. Anyhow, let’s pick up a few threads. I’ve a notion that Senator Meiklejohn thinks he has side-stepped the Bureau.”
Clancy laughed. His mirth was grotesque as the grin of one of those carved ivories of Japan, and to the effect of the crinkled features was added a shrill cackle. The chief glanced up.
“Don’t do that,” he said sharply. “You get my goat when you make that beastly noise!”
These two were beginning again to snap at each other about the Senator and his affairs, and their official quarrels usually ended badly for the other fellow.
Winifred, pale as death, rose to receive her lover, with that letter in her hand which made an appointment with her at a house in East Orange; a letter which she believed to have been written by a dramatic agent, but which was actually inspired by Senator Meiklejohn. It was the bait of the trap which should put her once more in the power of Meiklejohn and his accomplices.
During a few tense seconds the girl prayed for power to play the bitter part which had been thrust upon her—to play it well for the sake of the man who loved her, and whom she loved. The words of his mother were still in her ears. She had to make him think that she did not care for him. In the last resort she had to fly from him. She had tacitly promised to do this woeful thing.
Far enough from her innocent mind was it to dream that the visit of Rex’s mother had been brought about by her enemies in order to deprive her of a protector and separate herfrom her lover at the very time when he was most necessary to save her.
Carshaw entered in high spirits. “Well, I have news—” he began. “But, hello! What’s the matter?”
“With whom?” asked Winifred.
“You look pale.”
“Do I? It is nothing.”
“You have been crying, surely.”
“Have I?”
“Tell me. What is wrong?”
“Why should I tellyou, if anything is wrong?”
He stood amazed at this speech. “Odd words,” said he, looking at her in a stupor of surprise, almost of anger. “Whom should you tell but me?”
This touched Winifred, and, struggling with the lump in her throat, she said, unsteadily: “I am not very well to-day; if you will leave me now, and come perhaps some other time, you will oblige me.”
Carshaw strode nearer and caught her shoulder.
“But what a tone to me! Have I done something wrong, I wonder? Winnie, what is it?”
“I have told you I am not very well. I do not desire your company—to-day.”
“Whew! What majesty! It must be somethingoutrageous. But what? Won’t you be dear and kind, and tell me?”
“You have done nothing.”
“Yes, I have. I think I can guess. I spoke of Helen Tower yesterday as of an old sweetheart—was that it? And it is all jealousy. Surely I didn’t say much. What on earth did I say? That she was like a Gainsborough; that she was rather a beauty; that she waselancéeat twenty-two. But I didn’t mean any harm. Why, it’s jealousy!”
At this Winifred drew herself up to discharge a thunderbolt, and though she winced at the Olympian effort, managed to say distinctly:
“There can be no jealousy where there is no love.”
Carshaw stood silent, momentarily stunned, like one before whom a thunderbolt has really exploded. At last, looking at the pattern of a frayed carpet, he said humbly enough:
“Well, then, I must be a very unfortunate sort of man, Winifred.”
“Don’t believe me!” Winifred wished to cry out. But the words were checked on her white lips. The thought arose in her, “He that putteth his hand to the plow and looketh back—”
“It is sudden, this truth that you tell me,” went on Carshaw. “Is it a truth?”
“Yes.”
“You are not fond of me, Winnie?”
“I have a liking for you.”
“That’s all?”
“That is all.”
“Don’t say it, dear. I suffer.”
“Do you? No, don’t suffer. I—can’t help myself.”
“You are sorry for me, then?”
“Oh, yes.”
“But how came I, then, to have the opposite impression so strongly? I think—I can’t help thinking—that it was your fault, dear. You made me hope, perhaps without meaning me to, that—that life was to be happy for me. When I entered that door just now no man in New York had a lighter step than I, or a more careless heart. I shall go out of it—different, dear. You should not have allowed me to think—what I did; and you should not have told me the truth so—quite so—suddenly.”
“Sit down. You are not fair to me. I did not know you cared—”
“You—you did not know that I cared? Come, that’s not true, girl!”
“Not so much, I mean—not quite so much. I thought that you were flirting with me, as I—perhaps—was flirting with you.”
“Who is that I hear speaking? Is it Winifred? The very sound of her voice seems different. Am I dreaming? She flirting with me? I don’t realize her—it is a different girl! Oh!this thing comes to me like a falling steeple. It had no right to happen!”
“You should sit down, or you should go; better go—better, better go,” and Winifred clutched wildly at her throat. “Let us part now, and let us never meet!”
“If you like, if you wish it,” said Carshaw, still humbly, for he was quite dazed. “It seems sudden. I am not sure if it is a dream or not. It isn’t a happy one, if it is. But have we no business to discuss before you send me away in this fashion? Do you mean to throw off my help as well as myself?”
“I shall manage. I have an offer of work here in my hands. I shall soon be at work, and will then send the amount of the debt which I owe you, though you care nothing about that, and I know that I can never repay you for all.”
“Yes, that is true, too, in a way. Am I, then, actually to go?”
“Yes.”
“But you are not serious? Think of my living on, days and years, and not seeing you any more. It seems a pitiable thing, too. Even you must be sorry for me.”
“Yes, it seems a pitiable thing!”
“So—what do you say?”
“Good-by. Go—go!”
“But you will at least let me know where you are? Don’t be quite lost to me.”
“I shall be here for some time. But you won’t come. I mustn’t see you. I demand that much.”
“No, no. I won’t come, you may be sure. And you, on your part, promise that if you have need of money you will let me know? That is the least I can expect of you.”
“I will; but go. I will have you in my—memory. Only go from me now, if you—love—”
“Good-by, then. I do not understand, but good-by. I am all in, Winnie; but still, good-by. God bless you—”
He kissed her hand and went. Her skin was cold to his lips, and, in a numb way, he wondered why. A moment after he had disappeared she called his name, but in an awful, hushed voice which he could not hear; and she fell at her length on the couch.
“Rex! My love! My dear love,” she moaned, and yet he did not hear, for the sky had dropped on him.
There she lay a little while, yet it was not all pain with her. There is one sweetest sweet to the heart, one drop of intensest honey, sweeter to it than any wormwood is bitter, which consoled her—the consciousness of self-sacrifice, of duty done, of love lost for love’s sake. Mrs. Carshaw had put the girl on what Senator Meiklejohn cynically called “the heroictack”; and, having gone on that tack, Winifred deeply understood that there was a secret smile in it, and a surprising light. She lay catching her breath till Miss Goodman brought up the tea-tray, expecting to find the cheery Carshaw there as usual, for she had not heard him go out.
Instead, she found Winifred sobbing on the couch, for Winifred’s grief was of that depth which ceases to care if it is witnessed by others. The good landlady came, therefore, and knelt by Winifred’s side, put her arm about her, and began to console and question her. The consolation did no good, but the questions did. For, if one is persistently questioned, one must answer something sooner or later, and the mind’s effort to answer breaks the thread of grief, and so the commonplace acts as a medicine to tragedy.
In the end Winifred was obliged to sit up and go to the table where the tea-things were. This was in itself a triumph; and her effort to secure solitude and get rid of Miss Goodman was a further help toward throwing off her mood of despair. By the time Miss Goodman was gone the storm was somewhat calmed.
During that sad evening, which she spent alone, she read once more the letter making the appointment with her at East Orange. Now, reading it a second time, she felt a twingeof doubt. Who could it be, she wondered, whom she would have to see there? East Orange was some way off. A meeting of this sort usually took place in New York, at an office.
Her mind was not at all given to suspicions, but on reading over the letter for the third time, she now noticed that the signature was not in the handwriting of the agent. She knew his writing quite well, for he had sent her other letters. This writing was, indeed, something like his, but certainly not his. It might be a clerk’s; the letter was typed on his office paper.
To say that she was actually disturbed by these little rills of doubt would not be quite true. Still, they did arise in her mind, and left her not perfectly at ease. The touch of uneasiness, however, made her ask herself why she should now become a singer at all. It was Carshaw who had pressed it upon her, because she had insisted on the vital necessity of doing something quickly, and he had not wished her to work again with her hands. In reality, he was scheming to gain time.
Now that they were parted she saw no reason why she should not throw off all this stage ambition, and toil like other girls as good as she. She had done it. She was skilled in the bookbinding craft; she might do it again. She counted her money and saw that she had enoughto carry her on a week, or even two, with economy. Therefore, she had time in which to seek other work.
Even if she did not find it she would have not the slightest hesitation in “borrowing” from Rex; for, after all, all that he had was hers—she knew it, and he knew it. Before she went to bed she decided to throw up the singing ambition, not to go to the appointment at East Orange, but to seek some other more modest occupation.
About that same hour Rex Carshaw walked desolately to the apartment in Madison Avenue. He threw himself into a chair and propped his head on a hand, saying: “Well, mother!” for Mrs. Carshaw was in the room.
His mother glanced anxiously at him, for though Winifred had promised to keep secret the fact of her visit, she was in fear lest some hint of it might have crept out; nor had she foreseen quite so deadly an effect on her son as was now manifest. He looked care-worn and weary, and the maternal heart throbbed.
She came and stood over him. “Rex, you don’t look well,” said she.
“No; perhaps I’m not very well, mother,” said he listlessly.
“Can I do anything?”
“No; I’m rather afraid that the mischief is beyond you, mother.”
“Poor boy! It is some trouble, I know. Perhaps it would do you good to tell me.”
“No; don’t worry, mother. I’d rather be left alone, there’s a dear.”
“Only tell me this. Is it very bad? Does it hurt—much?”