“Where’s the use of talking? What cannot be cured must be endured. Life isn’t all a smooth run on rubber tires.”
“But it will pass, whatever it is. Bear up and be brave.”
“Yes; I suppose it will pass—when I am dead.”
She tried to smile.
“Only the young dream of death as a relief,” she said. “But such wild words hurt, Rex.”
“That’s all right, only leave me alone; you can’t help. Give me a kiss, and then go.”
A tear wet his forehead when Mrs. Carshaw laid her lips there.
The next day Winifred set about her new purpose of finding some other occupation than that connected with the stage, though she rose from bed that morning feeling ill, having hardly slept throughout the night.
First, she read over once more the “agent’s” letter, and was again conscious of an extremely vague feeling of something queer in it when she reflected on the lateness of the hour of the rendezvous—eight in the evening. She decided to write, explaining her change of purpose, and declining the interview with this nebulous “client.” She did not write at once. She thought that she would wait, and see first the result of the day’s search for other employment.
Soon after breakfast she went out, heading for Brown’s, her old employers in Greenwich Village, who had turned her away after the yacht affair and the arrest of her aunt.
As she waited at the crossing where the cars pass, her eyes rested on a man—a clergyman, apparently—standing on the opposite pavement.He was not at the moment looking that way, and she took little notice of him, though her subconsciousness may have recognized something familiar in the lines of his body.
It was Fowle in a saintly garb, Fowle in a shovel hat, Fowle interested in the comings and goings of Winifred. Fowle, moreover, in those days, floated on the high tide of ease, and had plenty of money in his pocket. He not only looked, but felt like a person of importance, and when Winifred entered a street-car, Fowle followed in a taxi.
There was a new foreman at Brown’s now, and he received the girl kindly. She laid her case before him. She had been employed there and had given satisfaction. Then, all at once, an event with which she had nothing more to do than people in China, had caused her to be dismissed. Would not the firm, now that the whole business had blown over, reinstate her?
The man heard her attentively through and said:
“Hold on. I’ll have a talk with the boss.” He left her, and was gone ten minutes. Then he returned, with a shaking head. “No, Brown’s never take any one back,” said he; “but here’s a list of bookbinding firms which he’s written out for you, and he says he’ll give you a recommendation if any of ’em give you a job.”
With this list Winifred went out, and, determined to lose no time, started on the round, taking the nearest first, one in Nineteenth Street. She walked that way, and slowly behind her followed a clergyman. The firm in Nineteenth Street wanted no new hand. Winifred got into a Twenty-third Street cross-town car. After her sped a taxi.
And now, when she stopped at the third bookbinder’s, Fowle knew her motive. She was seeking work at the old trade. He was puzzled, knowing that she had wished to become a singer, and being aware, too, of the appointment for the next night at East Orange. Had she, then, changed her purpose? Perhaps she was seeking both kinds of employment, meaning to accept the one which came first. If the bookbinding won out that might be dangerous to the rendezvous.
In any case, Fowle resolved to nip the project in the bud. He would go later in the day to all the firms she had visited, ask if they had engaged her, and, if so, drop a hint that she had been dismissed from Brown’s for being connected with the crime committed against Mr. Ronald Tower. A bogus clergyman’s word was good for something, anyhow.
From Twenty-third Street, where there was no work, Winifred made her way to Twenty-ninth Street, followed still by the taxi. Herethings turned out better for her. She was seen by a manager who told her that they would be short-handed in three or four days, and that, if she could really produce a reference from Brown’s he would engage her permanently. Winifred left him her address, so that he might write and tell her when she could come.
She lunched in a cheap restaurant and walked to her lodgings. Color flooded her cheeks, but she was appalled by her loneliness, by the emptiness of her life. To bind books and to live for binding books, that was not living. She had peeped into Paradise, but the gate had been shut in her face, and the bookbinding world seemed an intolerably flat and stale rag-fair in comparison.
How was she to live it through, she asked herself. When she went up to her room the once snug and homely place disgusted her. How was she to live through the vast void of that afternoon alone in that apartment? How bridge the vast void of to-morrow? The salt had lost its savor; she tasted ashes; life was all sand of the desert; she would not see him any more. The resolution which had carried her through the interview with Carshaw failed her now, and she blamed herself for the murder of herself.
“Oh, how could I have done such a thing!”she cried, bursting into tears, with her hat still on and her head on the table.
She had to write a letter to the “agent,” telling him that she did not mean to keep the rendezvous at East Orange, since she had obtained other work, and with difficulty summoned the requisite energy. Every effort was nauseous to her. Her whole nature was absorbed in digesting her one great calamity.
Next morning it was the same. Her arms hung listlessly by her side. She evaded little domestic tasks. Though her clothes were new, a girl can always find sewing and stitching. A certain shirtwaist needed slight adjustment, but her fingers fumbled a simple task. She passed the time somehow till half past four. At that hour there was a ring at the outer door. In the absorption of her grief she did not hear it, though it was “his” hour. A step sounded on the stairs, and this she heard; but she thought it was Miss Goodman bringing tea.
Then, brusquely, without any knock, the door opened, and she saw before her Carshaw.
“Oh!” she screamed, in an ecstasy of joy, and was in his arms.
The rope which bound her had snapped thus suddenly for the simple reason that Carshaw had promised never to come again, and was very strict, as she knew, in keeping his pledged word. Therefore, until the moment when herdistraught eyes took in the fact of his presence, she had not the faintest hope or thought of seeing him for many a day to come, if ever.
Seeing him all at once in the midst of her desert of despair, her reason swooned, all fixed principles capsized, and instinct swept her triumphantly, as the whirlwind bears a feather, to his ready embrace. He, for his part, had broken his promise because he could not help it. He had to come—so he came. His dismissal had been too sudden to be credible, to find room in his brain. It continued to have something of the character of a dream, and he was here now to convince himself that the dream was true.
Moreover, in her manner of sending him away, in some of her words, there had been something unreal and unconvincing, with broken hints of love, even as she denied love, which haunted and puzzled his memory. If he had made a thousand promises he would still have to return to her.
“Well,” said he, his face alight for joy as she moaned on his breast, “what is it all about? You unreliable little half of a nerve, Winnie!”
“I can’t help it; kiss me—only once!” panted Winifred, with tears streaming down her up-turned face.
Carshaw needed no bidding. Kiss her once! Well, a man should smile.
“What is it all about?” he demanded, when Winifred was quite breathless. “Am I loved, then?”
Her forehead was on his shoulder, and she did not answer.
“It seems so,” he whispered. “Silence is said to mean consent. But why, then, was I not loved the day before yesterday?”
Still Winifred dared not answer. The frenzy was passing, the moral nature re-arising, stronger than ever, claiming its own. She had promised and failed! What she did was not well for him.
“Tell me,” he urged, with a lover’s eagerness. “You’ll have to, some time, you know.”
“You promised not to come. You promised definitely,” said Winifred, disengaging herself from him.
“Could I help coming?” cried he. “I was in the greatest bewilderment and misery!”
“So you will always come, even if you promise not to?”
“But I won’t promise not to! Where is the need now? You love me, I love you!”
Winifred turned away from him, went to the window and looked out, seeing nothing, for the eyes of the soul were busy. Her lips were now firmly set, and during the minute that she stood there a rapid train of thought and purpose passed through her mind. She had promisedto give him up, and she would go through with it. It was for him—and it was sweet, though bitter, to be a martyr. But she recognized clearly that so long as he knew where to find her the thing could never be done. She made up her mind to be gone from those lodgings by that hour the next day, and to be buried from him in some other part of the great city. She would never in that case be able to ask him for help to keep going, without giving her address, but in a few days she would have work at the new bookbinder’s. This well settled in her mind, she turned inward to him, saying:
“Miss Goodman will soon bring up tea. Come, let us be happy to-day. You want to know if I love you? Well, the answer is yes, yes; so now you know, and can never doubt. I want you to stay a long time this afternoon, and I invite you to be my dear, dear guest on one condition—that you don’t ask me why I told you that awful fib the day before yesterday, for I don’t mean to tell you!”
Of course Carshaw took her again in his arms, and, without breaking her conditions, stayed with her till nearly six. She was sedately gay all the time, but, on kissing him good-by, she wept quietly, and as quietly she said to her landlady when he was gone:
“Miss Goodman, I am going away to-morrow—for always, I’m afraid.”
Soon after this six o’clock struck. At ten minutes past the hour Miss Goodman brought up two letters.
Without looking at the handwriting on the envelopes, Winifred tore open one, laying the other on a writing-desk, this latter being from the agent in answer to the one she had written. She had told him that she did not mean to keep the appointment at East Orange, and he now assured her that he had certainly never made any appointment for her at East Orange. The thing was some blunder. New York impresarios did not make appointments in East Orange. He asked for an explanation.
Pity that she did not open this letter before the other—or the other was of a nature to drive the existence of the agent’s letter—of any letter—out of her head; for days afterward that all-important message lay on the table unopened.
The note which Winifred did read was from the bookbinding manager who had all but engaged her that day. He now informed her that he would have no use for her services. The clergyman in the taxi had followed very effectively on Winifred’s trail.
She was stunned by this final blow. Her eyes gazed into vacancy. What she was to do now she did not know. The next day she had to go away into strange lodgings, with hardlyany money, without any possibility of her applying again to Rex, without support of any sort. She had never known real poverty, for her “aunt” had always more or less been in funds; and the prospect appalled her. She would face it, however, at all costs, and, the bookbinding failing her, her mind naturally recurred, with a gasp of hope, to the singing.
There was the appointment at East Orange at eight. She looked at the clock; she might have time, though it would mean an instant rush. She would go. True, she had written the agent to say that she would not, and he might have so advised his client. But perhaps he had not had time to do this, since she had written him so late. In any case, there was a chance that she should meet the person in question, and then she could explain. Suddenly she leaped up, hurried on her hat and coat, and ran out of the house. In a few minutes she was at the Hudson Tube, bound for Hoboken and East Orange.
Of course it was a mad thing to leave an unopened letter on the table, but just then poor Winifred was nearly out of her mind.
When Carshaw came, with lightsome step and heart freed from care—for in some respects he was irresponsible as any sane man could be—to visit his beloved Winifred next day, he was met by a frightened and somewhat incoherent Miss Goodman.
“Not been home all night! Surely you can offer some explanation further than that maddening statement?” cried he, when the shock of her news had sent the color from his face and the joy from his eyes.
“Oh, sir, I don’t know what to say. Indeed, I am not to blame.”
Miss Goodman, kind-hearted soul, was more flurried now by Carshaw’s manner than by Winifred’s inexplicable disappearance.
“Blame, my good woman, who is imputing blame?” he blazed at her. “But there’s a hidden purpose, a convincing motive, in her going out and not returning. Give me some clue, some reason. A clear thought now, the right word from you, may save hours of useless search.”
“How can I give any clues?” cried the bewildered landlady. “The dear young creature was crying all day fit to break her heart after the lady called—”
“The lady! What lady?”
“Your mother, sir. Didn’t she tell you? Mrs. Carshaw was here the day before yesterday, and she must have spoken very cruelly to Winifred to make her so downcast for hours. I was that sorry for her—”
Now, Carshaw had the rare faculty—rare, that is, in men of a happy-go-lucky temperament—of becoming a human iceberg in moments of danger or difficulty. The blank absurdity of Miss Goodman’s implied assertion that Winifred had run away—though, indeed, running away was uppermost in the girl’s thoughts—had roused him to fiery wrath.
But the haphazard mention of his mother’s visit, the coincidence of Winifred’s unexpectedly strange behavior and equally unexpected transition to a wildly declared love, revealed some of the hidden sources of events, and over the volcano of his soul he imposed a layer of ice. He even smiled pleasantly as he begged Miss Goodman to dry her eyes and be seated.
“We are at loggerheads, you see,” he said, almost cheerfully. “Just let us sit down and have a quiet talk. Tell me everything you know, and in the order in which things happened.Tell me facts, and if you are guessing at probabilities, tell me you are guessing. Then we shall soon unravel the tangled threads.”
Thus reassured, Miss Goodman took him through the records of the past forty-eight hours, so far as she knew them. After the first few words he required no explanations of his mother’s presence in that middle-class section of Manhattan. She had gone there in her stately limousine to awe and bewilder a poor little girl—to frighten an innocent out of loving her son and thus endangering her own grandiose projects for his future.
It was pardonable, perhaps, from a worldly woman’s point of view. That there were other aspects of it she should soon see, with a certain definiteness, the cold outlines of which already made his mouth stern, and sent little lines to wrinkle his forehead. He had spared her hitherto—had hoped to keep on sparing her—yet she had not spared Winifred! But who had prompted her to this heartless deed? He loved his mother. Her faults were those of society, her virtues were her own. She had lived too long in an atmosphere of artificiality not to have lost much of the fine American womanliness that was her birthright. That could be cured—he alone knew how. The puzzling query, for a little while, was the identity of thecruel, calculating, ruthless enemy who struck by her hand.
There was less light shed on Winifred’s own behavior. He recalled her words: “You want to know if I love you—yes, yes—I want you to stay a long time this afternoon—don’t ask me why I told you that awfulfib—”
And then her confession to Miss Goodman: “I am going away to-morrow—for always, I’m afraid.”
What did that portend? Ah, yes; she was going to some place where he could not find her, to bury herself away from his love and because of her love for him. It was no new idea in woman’s heart, this. For long ages in India sorrowing wives burned themselves to death on the funeral pyres of their lords. Poor Winifred only reversed the method of the sacrifice—its result would be the same.
“But ‘to-morrow’—to-day, that is. You are quite sure of her words?” he persisted.
“Oh, yes, sir; quite sure. Besides she has left her clothes and letters, and little knick-knacks of jewelry. Would you care to see them?”
For an instant he hesitated, for he was a man of refinement, and he hated the necessity of prying into the little secrets of his dear one. Then he agreed, and Miss Goodman took him from her own sitting-room to that tenanted byWinifred. Her presence seemed to linger in the air. His eyes traveled to the chair from which she rose with that glad crooning cry when he came to her so few hours earlier.
On the table lay her tiny writing-case. In it, unopened, and hidden by the discouraging missive from the bookbinder’s, rested the note from the dramatic agent, with the thrice-important clue of its plain statement: “I have made no appointment for you at any house near East Orange.”
But Miss Goodman had already thrown open the door which led to Winifred’s bedroom.
“You can see for yourself, sir,” she said, “the room was not occupied last night. Nor that she could be in the house without me knowing it, poor thing. There are her clothes in the wardrobe, and the dressing-table is tidy. She’s extraordinarily neat in her ways, is Miss Bartlett—quite different from the empty-headed creatures girls mostly are nowadays.”
Miss Goodman spoke bitterly. She was fifty, gray-haired, and a hopeless old maid. This point of view sours the appearance of saucy eighteen with the sun shining in its tresses.
Carshaw swallowed something in his throat. The sanctity of this inner room of Winifred’s overwhelmed him. He turned away hastily.
“All right, Miss Goodman,” he said; “we can learn nothing here. Let us go back to yourapartment, and I’ll tell you what I want you to do now.”
Passing the writing-desk again he looked more carefully at its contents. A small packet of bills caught his eye. There were the receipts for such simple articles as Winifred had bought with his money. Somehow, the mere act of examining such a list struck him with a sense of profanation. He could not do it.
His eyes glazed. Hardly knowing what the words meant, he glanced through the typed document from the bookbinder. It was obviously a business letter. He committed no breach of the etiquette governing private correspondence by reading it. So great was his delicacy in this respect that he did not even lift the letter from the table, but noted the address and the curt phraseology. Here, then, was a little explanation. He would inquire at that place.
“I want you to telegraph me each morning and evening,” he said to the landlady. “Don’t depend on the phone. If you have news, of course you will give it, but if nothing happens say that there is no news. Here is my address and a five-dollar bill for expenses. Did Miss Bartlett owe you anything?”
“No, sir. She paid me yesterday when she gave me notice.”
“Ah! Kindly retain her rooms. I don’t wish any other person to occupy them.”
“Do you think, sir, she will not come back to-day?”
“I fear so. She is detained by force. She has been misled by some one. I am going now to find out who that some one else is.”
He drove his car, now rejuvenated, with the preoccupied gaze of one who seeks to pierce a dark and troubled future. From the garage he called up the Long Island estate where his hacks and polo ponies were housed for the winter. He gave some instructions which caused the man in charge to blink with astonishment.
“Selling everything, Mr. Carshaw!” he said. “D’ye really mean it?”
“Does my voice sound as if I were joking, Bates?”
“No-no, sir; I can’t say it does. But—”
“Start on the catalogue now, this evening. I’ll look after you. Mr. Van Hofen wants a good man. Stir yourself, and that place is yours.”
He found his mother at home. She glanced at him as he entered her boudoir. She saw, with her ready tact, that questions as to his state of worry would be useless.
“Will you be dining at home, Rex?” she asked.
“Yes. And you?”
“I—have almost promised to dineen famillewith the Towers.”
“Better stop here. We have a lot of things to arrange.”
“Arrange! What sort of things?”
“Business affairs for the most part.”
“Oh, business! Any discussion of—”
“I said nothing about discussion, mother. For some years past I have been rather careless in my ways. Now I am going to stop all that. A good business maxim is to always choose the word that expresses one’s meaning exactly.”
“Rex, you speak queerly.”
“That shows I’m doing well. Your ears have so long been accustomed to falsity, mother, that the truth sounds strangely.”
“My son, do not be so bitter with me. I have never in my life had other than the best of motives in any thought or action that concerned you.”
He looked at her intently. He read in her words an admission and a defense.
“Let us avoid tragedy, mother, at least in words. Who sent you to Winifred?”
“Then she has told you?”
“She has not told me. Women are either angels or fiends. This harmless little angel has been driven out of her Paradise in the hope thather butterfly wings may be soiled by the rain and mud of Manhattan. Who sent you to her?”
“Senator Meiklejohn,” said Mrs. Carshaw defiantly.
“What, that smug Pharisee! What was his excuse?”
“He said you were the talk of the clubs—that Helen Tower—”
“She, too! Thank you. I see the drift of things now. It was heartless of you, mother. Did not Winifred’s angel face, twisted into misery by your lies, cause you one pang of remorse?”
Mrs. Carshaw rose unsteadily. Her face was ghastly in its whiteness.
“Rex, spare me, for Heaven’s sake!” she faltered. “I did it for the best. I have suffered more than you know.”
“I am glad to hear it. You have a good nature in its depths, but the canker of society has almost destroyed it. That is why you and I are about to talk business.”
“I am feeling faint. Let matters rest a few hours.”
He strode to the bell and summoned a servant. “Bring some brandy and two glasses,” he said when the man came.
It was an unusual order at that hour. Silently the servant obeyed. Carshaw looked out of the window, while his mother, true to hercaste, affected nonchalance before the domestic.
“Now,” said he when they were alone, “drink this. It will steady your nerves.”
She was frightened at last. Her hand shook as it took the proffered glass.
“What has happened?” she asked, with quavering voice. She had never seen her son like this before. There was a hint of inflexible purpose in him that terrified her. When he spoke the new crispness in his voice shocked her ears.
“Mere business, I assure you. Not another word about Winifred. I shall find her, sooner or later, and we shall be married then, at once. But, by queer chance, I have been looking into affairs of late. The manager of our Massachusetts mills tells me that trade is slack. We have been running at a loss for some years. Our machinery is antiquated, and we have not the accumulated reserves to replace it. We are in debt, and our credit begins to be shaky. Think of that, mother—the name of Carshaw pondered over by bank managers and discounters of trade bills!”
“Senator Meiklejohn mentioned this vaguely,” she admitted.
“Dear me! What an interest he takes in us! I wonder why? But, as a financial magnate, he understands things.”
“Your father always said, Rex, that trade had its cycles—fat years and lean years, you know.”
“Yes. He built up our prosperity by hard work, by spending less than half what he earned, not by living in a town house and gadding about in society. Do you remember, mother, how he used to laugh at your pretty little affectations? I think I own my share of the family brains, though, so I shall act now as he would have acted.”
“Do you wish to goad me into hysteria? What are you driving at?” she shrieked.
“That is the way to reach the heart of the mystery—get at the facts, eh? They’re simple. The business needs three hundred thousand dollars to give it solidity and staying power; then four or five years’ good and economical management will set it right. We have been living at the rate of fifty thousand dollars a year. For some time we have been executing small mortgages to obtain this annual income, expecting the business to clear them. Now the estates must come to the help of the business.”
“In what way?” she gasped.
“They must be mortgaged up to the hilt to pay off the small sums and find the large one. It will take ten years of nursing to relieve them of the burden. Not a penny must come from the mills.”
“How shall we live?” she demanded.
“I have arranged that. Your marriage settlement of two thousand five hundred dollars a year is secured; that is all. How big it seemed in your eyes when you were a bride! How little now, though your real needs are less! I shall take a sufficient salary as assistant manager while I learn the business. It means two thousand dollars a year for housekeeping, and I have calculated that the sale of all our goods will pay our personal debts and leave you and me five thousand each to set up small establishments.”
Mrs. Carshaw flounced into a chair. “You must be quite mad!” she cried.
“No, mother, sane—quite sane—for the first time. Don’t you believe me? Go to your lawyers; the scheme is really theirs. They are good business men, and congratulated me on taking a wise step. So you see, mother, I really cannot afford a fashionable wife.”
“I am—choking!” she gasped. For the moment anger filled her soul.
“Now, be reasonable, there’s a good soul. Five thousand in the bank, twenty-five hundred a year to live on. Why, when you get used to it you will say you were never so happy. What about dinner? Shall we start economizing at once? Let’s pay off half a dozen servants before we sit down to a chop! Eh, tears! Well,they’ll help. Sometimes they’re good for women. Send for me when you are calmer!”
With a look of real pity in his eyes he bent and kissed her forehead. She would have kept him with her, but he went away.
“No,” he said, “no discussion, you remember; and I must fix a whole heap of things before we dine!”
Carshaw phoned the Bureau, asking for Clancy or the chief. Both were out.
“Mr. Steingall will be here to-morrow,” said the official in charge. “Mr. Clancy asked me to tell you, if you rang up, that he would be away till Monday next.”
This was Wednesday evening. Carshaw felt that fate was using him ill, for Clancy was the one man with whom he wanted to commune in that hour of agony. He dined with his mother. She, deeming him crazy after a severe attack of calf-love, humored his mood. She was calm now, believing that a visit to the lawyers next day, and her own influence with the mill-manager and the estate superintendent, would soon put a different aspect on affairs.
A telegram came late: “No news.”
He sought Senator Meiklejohn at his apartment, but the fox, scenting hounds, had broken covert.
“The Senator will be in Washington next week,” said the discreet Phillips. “At present, sir, he is not in town.”
Carshaw made no further inquiry; he knew it was useless. In the morning another telegram: “No news!”
He set his teeth, and smilingly agreed to accompany his mother to the lawyers’. She came away in tears. Those serious men strongly approved of her son’s project.
“Rex has all his father’s grit,” said the senior partner. “In a little time you will be convinced that he is acting rightly.”
“I shall be dead!” she snapped.
The lawyer lifted his hands with a deprecating smile. “You have no secrets from me, Mrs. Carshaw,” he said. “You are ten years my junior, and insurance actuaries give women longer lives than men when they have attained a certain age.”
Carshaw visited Helen Tower. She was fluttered. By note he had asked for atête-à-têteinterview. But his first words undeceived her.
“Where is Meiklejohn?” he asked.
“Do you mean Senator Meiklejohn?” she corrected him.
“Yes; the man who acted in collusion with you in kidnapping my intended wife.”
“How dare you—”
“Sit down, Helen; no heroics, please. Or perhaps you would prefer that Ronald should be present?”
“This tone, Rex—to me!” She was crimson with surprise.
“You are right: it is better that Tower should not be here. He might get a worsedouchethan his plunge into the river. Now, about Meiklejohn? Why did he conspire with you and my mother to carry off Winifred Bartlett?”
“I—don’t know.”
“Surely there was some motive?”
“You are speaking in enigmas. I heard of the girl from you. I have never seen her. If your mother interfered, it was for your good.”
He smiled cynically. The cold, far-away look in his eyes was bitter to her soul, yet he had never looked so handsome, so distinguished, as in this moment when he was ruthlessly telling her that another woman absorbed him utterly.
“What hold has Meiklejohn over you?” he went on.
She simulated tears. “You have no right to address me in that manner,” she protested.
“There is a guilty bond somewhere, and I shall find it out,” he said coldly. “My mother was your catspaw. You, Helen, may have been spiteful, but Meiklejohn—that sleek and smug politician—I cannot understand him. The story went that owing to an accidental likeness to Meiklejohn your husband was nearly killed. His assailant was a man named Voles. Voles was an associate of Rachel Craik, the womanwho poses as Winifred’s aunt. That is the line of inquiry. Do you know anything about it?”
“Not a syllable.”
“Then I must appeal to Ronald.”
“Do so. He is as much in the dark as I am.”
“I fancy you are speaking the truth, Helen.”
“Is it manly to come here and insult me?”
“Was it womanly to place these hounds on the track of my poor Winifred? I shall spare no one, Helen. Be warned in time. If you can help me, do so. I may have pity on my friends, I shall have none for my enemies.”
He was gone. Mrs. Tower, biting her lips and clenching her hands in sheer rage, rushed to an escritoire and unlocked it. A letter lay there, a letter from Meiklejohn. It was dated from the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, Atlantic City.
“Dear Mrs. Tower,” it ran, “the Costa Rica cotton concession is almost secure. The President will sign it any day now. But secrecy is more than ever important. Tell none but Jacob. The market must be kept in the dark. He can begin operations quietly. The shares should be at par within a week, and at five in a month. Wire me the one word ‘settled’ when Jacob says he is ready.”
“Dear Mrs. Tower,” it ran, “the Costa Rica cotton concession is almost secure. The President will sign it any day now. But secrecy is more than ever important. Tell none but Jacob. The market must be kept in the dark. He can begin operations quietly. The shares should be at par within a week, and at five in a month. Wire me the one word ‘settled’ when Jacob says he is ready.”
“At five in a month!”
Mrs. Tower was promised ten thousand ofthose shares. Their nominal value was one dollar. To-day they stood at a few cents. Fifty thousand dollars! What a relief it would be! Threatening dressmakers, impudent racing agents asking for unpaid bets, sneering friends who held her I. O. U.’s for bridge losses, and spoke of asking her husband to settle; all these paid triumphantly, and plenty in hand to battle in the whirlpool for years—it was a stake worth fighting for.
And Meiklejohn? As the price of his help in gaining a concession granted by a new competitor among the cotton-producing States, he would be given five shares to her one. Why did he dread this girl? That was a fruitful affair to probe. But he must be warned. Her lost lover might be troublesome at a critical stage in the affairs of the cotton market.
She wrote a telegram: “Settled, but await letter.” In the letter she gave him some details—not all—of Carshaw’s visit. No woman will ever reveal that she has been discarded by a man whom she boasted was tied to her hat-strings.
Carshaw sought the detective bureau, but Steingall was away now, as well as Clancy. “You’ll be hearing from one of them” was the enigmatic message he was given.
Eating his heart out in misery, he arranged his affairs, received those two daily telegramsfrom Miss Goodman with their dreadful words, “No news,” and haunted the bookbinder’s, and Meiklejohn’s door hoping to see some of the crew of Winifred’s persecutors. At the bookbinder’s he learned of the visit of the supposed clergyman, whose name, however, did not appear in the lists of any denomination.
At last arrived a telegram from Burlington, Vermont. “Come and see me. Clancy.” Grown wary by experience, Carshaw ascertained first that Clancy was really at Burlington. Then he instructed Miss Goodman to telegraph to him in the north, and quitted New York by the night train.
In the sporting columns of an evening paper he read of the sale of his polo ponies. The scribe regretted the suggested disappearance from the game of “one of the best Number Ones” he had ever seen. The Long Island estate was let already, and Mrs. Carshaw would leave her expensive flat when the lease expired.
Early next day he was greeted by Clancy.
“Glad to see you, Mr. Carshaw,” said the little man. “Been here before? No? Charming town. None of the infernal racket of New York about life in Burlington. Any one who got bitten by that bug here would be afflicted like the Gadarene swine and rush into Lake Champlain. Walk to the hotel? It’s a finemorning, and you’ll get some bully views of the Adirondacks as you climb the hill.”
“Winifred is gone. Hasn’t the Bureau kept you informed?”
Clancy sighed.
“I’ve had Winifred on my mind for days,” he said irritably. “Can’t you forget her for half an hour?”
“She’s gone, I tell you. Spirited away the very day I asked her to marry me.”
“Well, well. Why didn’t you ask her sooner?”
“I had to arrange my affairs. I am poor now. How could I marry Winifred under false pretenses?”
“What, then? Did she love you for your supposed wealth?”
“Mr. Clancy, I am tortured. Why have you brought me here?”
“To stop you from playing Meiklejohn’s game. I hear that you camp outside his apartment-house. You and I are going back to New York this very day, and the Bureau will soon find your Winifred. By the way, how did you happen onto the Senator’s connection with the affair?”
Taking hope, Carshaw told his story. Clancy listened while they breakfasted. Then he unfolded a record of local events.
“The Bureau has known for some time thatSenator Meiklejohn’s past offered some rather remarkable problems,” he said, dropping his bantering air and speaking seriously. “We have never ceased making guarded inquiries. I am here now for that very purpose. Some thirty years ago, on the death of his father, he and his brother, Ralph Vane Meiklejohn, inherited an old-established banking business in Vermont. Ralph was a bit of a rake, but local opinion regarded William as a steady-going, domesticated man who would uphold the family traditions. There was no ink on the blotter during upward of ten years, and William was already a candidate for Congress when Ralph was involved in a scandal which caused some talk at the time. The name of a governess in a local house was associated with his, and her name was Bartlett.”
Carshaw glanced at the detective with a quick uneasiness, which Clancy pretended not to notice.
“I have no proof, but absolutely no doubt,” he continued, “that this woman is now known as Rachel Craik. She fell into Ralph Meiklejohn’s clutches then, and has remained his slave ever since. Two years later there was a terrific sensation here. A man named Marchbanks was found lying dead in a lakeside quarry, having fallen or been thrown into it. This quarry was situated near the Meiklejohn house. Mrs.Marchbanks, a ward of Meiklejohn’s father, died in childbirth as the result of shock when she heard of her husband’s death, and inquiry showed that all her money had been swallowed up in loans to her husband for Stock Exchange speculation. Mrs Marchbanks was a noted beauty, and her fortune was estimated at nearly half a million dollars. It was all the more amazing that her husband should have lost such a great sum in reckless gambling, seeing that those who remember him say he was a nice-mannered gentleman of the old type, devoted to his wife, and with a passion for cultivating orchids. Again, why should Mrs. Marchbanks’s bankers and guardians allow her to be ruined by a thoughtless fool?”
Clancy seemed to be asking himself these questions; but Carshaw, so far from New York, and with a mind ever dwelling on Winifred, said impatiently:
“You didn’t bring me here to tell me about some long-forgotten mystery?”
“Ah, quit that hair-trigger business!” snapped Clancy. “You just listen, an’ maybe you’ll hear something interesting. Ralph Vane Meiklejohn left Vermont soon afterward. Twelve years ago a certain Ralph Voles was sentenced to five years in a penitentiary for swindling. Mrs. Marchbanks’s child lived. It was a girl, and baptized as Winifred. She was looked afteras a matter of charity by William Meiklejohn, and entrusted to the care of Miss Bartlett, the ex-governess.”
Carshaw was certainly “interested” now.
“Winifred! My Winifred!” he cried, grasping the detective’s shoulder in his excitement.
“Tut, tut!” grinned Clancy. “Guess the story’s beginning to grip. Yes. Winifred is ‘the image of her mother,’ said Voles. She must be ‘taken away from New York.’ Why? Why did this same Ralph vanish from Vermont after her father’s death ‘by accident’? Why does a wealthy and influential Senator join in the plot against her, invoking the aid of your mother and of Mrs. Tower? These are questions to be asked, but not yet. First, you must get back your Winifred, Carshaw, and take care that you keep her when you get her.”
“But how? Tell me how to find her!” came the fierce demand.
“If you jump at me like that I’ll make you stop here another week,” said Clancy. “Man alive, I hate humbug as much as any man; but don’t you see that the Bureau must make sure of its case before it acts? We can’t go before a judge until we have better evidence than the vague hearsay of twenty years ago. But, for goodness’ sake, next time you grab Winifred, rush her to the nearest clergymanand make her Mrs. Carshaw, Jr. That’ll help a lot. Leave me to get the Senator and the rest of the bunch. Now, if you’ll be good, I’ll show you the house where your Winifred was born!”
East Orange seemed to be a long way from New York when Winifred hastened to the appointment at “Gateway House,” traveling thither by way of the Tube and the Lackawanna Railway.
More and more did it seem strange that a theatrical agent should fix on such a rendezvous, until a plausible reason suggested itself: possibly, some noted impresario had chosen this secluded retreat, and the agent had arranged a meeting there between his client and the great man whose Olympian nod gave success or failure to aspirants for the stage.
The letter itself was reassuringly explicit as to the route she should follow.
“On leaving the station,” it said, “turn to the right and walk a mile along the only road that presents itself until you see, on the left, a large green gate bearing the name ‘Gateway House.’ Walk in. The house itself is hidden by trees, and stands in spacious grounds. If you follow these directions, you will have no need to ask the way.”
The description of the place betokened that it was of some local importance, and hope revived somewhat in her sorrowing heart at the impression that perhaps, after all, it was better she had failed in finding work at the bindery.
Notwithstanding the charming simplicity of her nature, Winifred would not be a woman if she did not know she was good-looking. The stage offered a career; work in the factory only yielded existence. Recent events had added a certain strength of character to her sweet face; and Miss Goodman, who happened to be an expert dressmaker, had used the girl’s leisure in her lodgings to turn her nimble fingers to account. Hence, Winifred was dressed with neat elegance, and the touch of winter keenness in the air gave her a splendid color as she hurried out of the station many minutes late for her appointment.
Would she be asked to sing, she wondered? She had no music with her, and had never touched a piano since her music-master’s anxiety to train her voice had been so suddenly frustrated by Rachel Craik. But she knew many of the solos from “Faust,” “Rigoletto,” and “Carmen”; surely, among musical people, there would be some appreciation of her skill if tested by this class of composition, as compared with the latest rag-time melody or gushing cabaret ballad.
Busy with such thoughts, she hastened along the road, until she awoke with a start to the knowledge that she was opposite Gateway House. Certainly the retreat was admirable from the point of view of a man surfeited with life on the Great White Way. Indeed, it looked very like a private lunatic asylum or home for inebriates, with its lofty walls studded with broken glass, and its solid gate crowned with iron spikes.
Winifred tried the door. It opened readily. She was surprised that so pretentious an abode had no lodge-keeper’s cottage. There were signs of few vehicles passing over the weed-grown gravel drive, and such marks as existed were quite recent.
She was so late, however, that her confused mind did not trouble about these things, and she sped on gracefully, soon coming in full view of the house itself. It was now almost dark, and the grounds seemed very lonely; but the presence of lights in the secluded mansion gave earnest of some one awaiting her there. She fancied she heard a noise, like the snapping of a latch or lock behind her. She turned her head, but saw no one. Fowle, hiding among the evergreens, had run with nimble feet and sardonic smile to bolt the gate as soon as she was out of sight.
And now Winifred was at the front door,timidly pulling a bell. A man strolled with a marked limp around the house from a conservatory. He was a tall, strongly built person, and something in the dimly seen outline sent a thrill of apprehension through her.
But the door opened.
“I have come—” she began.
The words died away in sheer affright. Glowering at her, with a queer look of gratified menace, was Rachel Craik!
“So I see,” was the grim retort. “Come in, Winnie, by all means. Where have you been all these weeks?”
“There is some mistake,” she faltered, white with sudden terror and nameless suspicions. “My agent told me to come here—”
“Quite right. Be quick, or you’ll miss the last train home,” growled the voice of Voles behind her.
Roughly, though not violently, he pushed her inside, and the door closed.
He snapped at Rachel: “She’d be yelling for help in another second, and you never know who may be passing.”
Now, Winifred was not of the order of women who faint in the presence of danger. Her love had given her a great strength; her suffering had deepened her fine nature; and her very soul rebelled against the cruel subterfuge which had been practised to separate her from her lover.She saw, with the magic intuition of her sex, that the very essence of a deep-laid plot was that Rex and she should be kept apart.
The visit of Mrs. Carshaw, then, was only a part of the same determined scheme? Rex’s mother had been a puppet in the hands of those who carried her to Connecticut, who strove so determinedly to take her away when Carshaw put in an appearance, and who had tricked her into keeping this bogus appointment. She would defy them, face death itself rather than yield.
In the America of to-day, nothing short of desperate crime could long keep her from Rex’s arms. What a weak, silly, romantic girl she had been not to trust in him absolutely! The knowledge nerved her to a fine scorn.
“What right have you to treat me in this way?” she cried vehemently. “You have lied to me; brought me here by a forged letter. Let me go instantly, and perhaps my just indignation may not lead me to tell my agent how you have dared to use his name with false pretense.”
“Ho, ho!” sang out Voles. “The little bird pipes an angry note. Be pacified, my sweet linnet. You were getting into bad company. It was the duty of your relatives to rescue you.”
“My relatives! Who are they who claimkinship? I see here one who posed as my aunt for many years—”
“Posed, Winnie?”
Miss Craik affected a croak of regretful protest.
Winifred’s eyes shot lightnings.
“Yes. I am sure you are not my aunt. Many things I can recall prove it to me. Why do you never mention my father and mother? What wrong have I done to any living soul that, ever since you were mixed up in the attack on Mr. Ronald Tower, you should deal with me as if I were a criminal or a lunatic, and seek to part me from those who would befriend me?”
“Hush, little girl,” interposed Voles, with mock severity. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You are hurting your dear aunt’s feelings. She is your aunt. I ought to know, considering that you are my daughter!”
“Your daughter!”
Now, indeed, she felt ready to dare dragons. This coarse, brutal giant of a man her father! Her gorge rose at the suggestion. Almost fiercely she resolved to hold her own against these persecutors who scrupled not to use any lying device that would suit their purpose.
“Yes,” he cried truculently. “Don’t I come up to your expectations?”
“If you are my father,” she said, with astrange self-possession that came to her aid in this trying moment, “where is my mother?”
“Sorry to say she died long since.”
“Did you murder her as you tried to murder Mr. Tower?”
The chance shot went home, though it hit her callous hearer in a way she could not then appreciate. He swore violently.
“You’re my daughter, I tell you,” he vociferated, “and the first thing you have to learn is obedience. Your head has been turned, young lady, by your pretty Rex and his nice ways. I’ll have to teach you not to address me in that fashion. Take her to her room, Rachel.”
Driven to frenzy by a dreadful and wholly unexpected predicament, Winifred cast off the hand her “aunt” laid on her shoulder.
“Let me go!” she screamed. “I will not accompany you. I do not believe a word you say. If you touch me, I shall defend myself.”
“Spit-fire, eh?” she heard Voles say. There was something of a struggle. She never knew exactly what happened. She found herself clasped in his giant arms and heard his half jesting protest:
“Now, my butterfly, don’t beat your little wings so furiously, or you’ll hurt yourself.”
He carried her, screaming, up-stairs, and pushed her into a large room. Rachel Craik followed, with set face and angry words.
“Ungrateful girl!” was her cry. “After all I’ve done for you!”
“You stole me from my mother,” sobbed Winifred despairingly. “I am sure you did. You are afraid now lest some one should recognize me. I am ‘the image of my mother’ that horrible man said, and I am to be taken away because I resemble her. It is you who are frightened, not I. I defy you. Even Mrs. Carshaw knew my face. I scorn you, I say, and if you think your devices can deceive me or keep Rex from me, you are mistaken. Before it is too late, let me go!”
Rachel Craik was, indeed, alarmed by the girl’s hysterical outpouring. But Winifred’s taunts worked harm in one way. They revealed most surely that the danger dreaded by both Voles and Meiklejohn did truly exist. From that instant Rachel Craik, who felt beneath her rough exterior some real tenderness for the girl she had reared, became her implacable foe.
“You had better calm yourself,” she said quietly. “If you care to eat, food will soon be brought for you and Mr. Grey. He is your fellow-boarder for a few days!”
Then Winifred saw, for the first time, that the spacious room held another occupant. Reclining in a big chair, and scowling at her, was Mick the Wolf, whose arm Carshaw had broken recently.
“Yes,” growled that worthy, “I’m not the most cheerful company, missy, but my other arm is strong enough to put that fellow of yours out o’ gear if he butts in on me ag’in. So just cool your pretty lil head, will you? I’m boss here, and if you rile me it’ll be sort o’ awkward for you.”
How Winifred passed the next few hours she could scarcely remember afterward. She noted, in dull agony, that the windows of the sitting-room she shared with Mick the Wolf were barred with iron. So, too, was the window of her bedroom. The key and handle of the bedroom lock had been taken away. Rachel Craik was her jailer, a maimed scoundrel her companion and assistant-warder.
But, when the first paroxysms of helpless pain and rage had passed, her faith returned. She prayed long and earnestly, and help was vouchsafed. Appeal to her captors was vain, she knew, so she sought the consolation that is never denied to all who are afflicted.
Neither Rachel Craik, nor the sullen bandit, nor the loud-voiced rascal who had dared to say he was her father, could understand the cheerful patience with which she met them next day.
“She’s a puzzle,” said Voles in the privacy of the apartment beneath. “I must dope out some way of fixin’ things. She’ll never cometo heel again, Rachel. That fool Carshaw has turned her head.”
He tramped to and fro impatiently. His ankle had not yet forgotten the wrench it received on the Boston Post Road. Suddenly he banged a huge fist on a sideboard.
“Gee!” he cried, “that should turn the trick! I’ll marry her off to Fowle. If it wasn’t for other considerations I’d be almost tempted—”
He paused. Even his fierce spirit quailed at the venom that gleamed from Rachel Craik’s eyes.
Atelegram reached Carshaw before he left Burlington with Clancy. He hoped it contained news of Winifred, but it was of a nature that imposed one more difficulty in his path.
“Not later than the twentieth,” wired the manager of the Carshaw Mills in Massachusetts. Carshaw himself had inquired the latest date on which he would be expected to start work.
The offer was his own, and he could not in honor begin the new era by breaking his pledge. The day was Saturday, November 11. On the following Monday week he must begin to learn the rudiments of cotton-spinning.
“What’s up?” demanded Clancy, eying the telegram, for Carshaw’s face had hardened at the thought that, perhaps, in the limited time at his disposal his quest might fail. He passed the typed slip to the detective.
“Meaning?” said the latter, after a quick glance.
Carshaw explained. “I’ll find her,” he added, with a catch of the breath. “I mustfind her. God in Heaven, man, I’ll go mad if I don’t!”
“Cut out the stage stuff,” said Clancy. “By this day week the Bureau will find a bunch of girls who’re not lost yet—only planning it.”
Touched by the misery in Carshaw’s eyes, he added:
“What you really want is a marriage license. The minute you set eyes on Winifred rush her to the City Hall.”
“Once we meet we’ll not part again,” came the earnest vow. Somehow, the pert little man’s overweening egotism was soothing, and Carshaw allowed his mind to dwell on the happiness of holding Winifred in his arms once more rather than the uncertain prospect of attaining such bliss.
Indeed, he was almost surprised by the ardor of his love for her. When he could see her each day, and amuse himself by playing at the pretense that she was to earn her own living, there was a definite satisfaction in the thought that soon they would be married, when all this pleasant make-believe would vanish. But now that she was lost to him, and probably enduring no common misery, the complacency of life had suddenly given place to a fierce longing for a glimpse of her, for the sound of her voice, for the shy glance of her beautiful eyes.
“Now, let’s play ball,” said Clancy whenthey were in a train speeding south. “Has any complete search of Winifred’s rooms been made?”
“How do you mean?”
“Did you look in every hole and corner for a torn envelope, a twisted scrap of paper, a car transfer, any mortal thing that might reveal why she went out and did not return?”
“I told you of the bookbinder’s note—”
“You sure did,” broke in Clancy. “You also went to the bookbinder s’teen times. Are you certain there was nothing else?”
“No—I didn’t like—how could I peer and pry—”
“You’d make a bum detective. Imagine that poor girl crying her eyes out in a cold dark cell all because you were too squeamish to give her belongings the once over!”
Carshaw was not misled by Clancy’s manner. He knew that his friend was only consumed by impatience to be on the trail.
“You’ve fired plenty of questions at me,” he said quietly. “Now it’s my turn. I understand why you came to Burlington, but where is Steingall all this time?”
“That big stiff! How do I know?”
In a word, Clancy was uncommunicative during a whole hour. When the mood passed he spoke of other things, but, although it was ten at night when they reached New York, he racedCarshaw straight to East Twenty-seventh Street and Miss Goodman.
There, in a few seconds, he was reading the agent’s genuine note to Winifred—that containing the assurance that no appointment had been made for “East Orange.”
The letter concluded: