When the late lowering dawn seeped in at the windows, Willa raised herself wearily and crept to her desk. Her face with the tears dried upon it was ghastly in the morning light, but her eyes held a look of grim determination. Seating herself, she took up her pen and wrote without hesitation:
"My Dear Mr. Thode:
"I beg that you will not call this evening, that I may be spared the painful necessity of having you shown the door. In the light of my present full comprehension of your motives, I no longer wonder that even you hesitated at the moment of your odious proposal. The only possible reparation you can make for the humiliation you have brought upon me in my inmost thoughts is to so arrange that I need never look upon your face again.
"In all sincerity,"WILLA MURDAUGH."
The letter finished, she sealed and stamped it; then her worn-out body slumped in the chair and her head bowed upon her folded arms on the desk.
The collapse lasted but a moment, however. The same dogged determination which had forced her weary spirit to the pronouncement of the verdict upon her love, drove her yet indomitably on. As she lifted her head her gaze mechanically fell upon the calendar before her and a slow, infinitely sad smile curled her lips. It was the beginning of the third day since Starr Wiley had issued his ultimatum. He must carry his threat into execution or admit it to have been sheer bluff. Curiously, she looked upon the impending crisis with the impassivity of a bystander. What did it matter now?
Then realization came back in a full tide and she sprang to her feet. The weary plodding search which had taken her half over the city in the past few agonizing days had been fruitless, yet must it still continue until definite news of Tia Juana could be learned. Dan Morrissey had been faithful, but his ardent spirit outran his detective skill and his initiative advanced no farther afield than a daily round of the hospitals and temporary shelters of the city's driftwood, and a hopeless concentration on the neighborhood from which the aged woman had so mysteriously vanished.
Willa herself had no more comprehensive plan; she had advertised discreetly in Spanish in the "personal" column of a morning newspaper and followed every tentative line of investigation which presented itself to her, but messages to each stage of the journey back to Limasito and exhaustive questioning of the few individuals with whom Tia Juana had come in contact in New York were alike unproductive of result.
Hopelessness was stealthily enveloping her spirit, but she resolutely fought it down. She must not give up, she would not until Tia Juana was safe. She had been instrumental in bringing the aged woman to an alien land, and she was responsible for whatever misfortune might have come upon her. Then, too, there was her purpose still to be achieved; that at least remained to her.
At breakfast Angie addressed her in honeyed tones, scrutinizing her hungrily meanwhile for evidence of the result of her maneuver, but Willa was stonily noncommittal. The meal progressed in a constrained silence which was broken only by the shrill summons of the telephone.
Señora Rodriguez's staccato voice came over the wire in such an outpouring of hysteria that at first Willa could make nothing of it, but at length one phrase smote her ears:
"It is the jorobadito, José, who has disappeared now!"
"What?" Willa faltered. "You mean that José has gone also? It cannot be, Señora Rodriguez! There must be a mistake! He would not go unless he were abducted!"
"No, Señorita; there was no abduction!" the Spanish woman cried. "The little José was all of yesterday most thoughtful. Scarcely could I arouse him to eat, and as his fever abated I allowed him to sit in the sun upon the glass-enclosed back porch and did not urge upon him the medicine he hates. Last night as he went to bed he kissed my hand quite suddenly, a thing he has not done before, though always was he courteous. This morning he was gone as the old Señora went, without warning.—Señorita, I am a poor woman, but I would give half I possess to have the pobrecito back for he is frail and weak to be alone in this great city and he has not a peso with him. Moreover, he brought me luck. What can I do, Señorita, to find him once more?"
Willa cut the woman's protestations short, and, calling up the garage—their prearranged rendez-vous—instructed Dan to meet her at the bridge.
Intent on the new calamity, she gave no heed as to the probability of having been overheard by Angie, but hurriedly departed.
The deeply concerned Dan broke all records and narrowly escaped arrest in getting her to the Rodriguez home, but nothing further could be elicited from its dismayed chatelaine. Her sincerity, however, was self-evident; she could have had no hand in the disappearance of the little hunchback.
The day was spent in a feverishly renewed search which brought no surcease of anxiety and at its end Willa dragged herself with leaden feet to her room. Her head seemed bursting and she shook as with an ague as she dressed for the tedious dinner and the still more tedious game of bridge which was the program of the evening. She dared not absent herself, explanations enough would be demanded of her for the day's broken engagements, but she looked forward to the hours ahead with a dread foreboding which she could not name.
It was merely nerves, she assured herself; she was worn-out mentally and physically with the continued strain and ceaseless effort and she forced her thoughts resolutely away from the false but ecstatic happiness which might have been hers on that evening save for the discovery of Kearn Thode's perfidy.
The arrival of the expected guests commanded her descent to the drawing-room, dinner somehow dragged through its almost interminable length and the bridge-tables were made up, when a diversion occurred.
The door-bell pealed, and Welch obeyed its summons, then came and called Ripley Halstead quietly from his place. No premonition warned Willa, even when her cousin returned visibly perturbed and excused himself for the evening, pleading an unanticipated business conference.
The tables were readjusted and the game went on to its close. Then came supper, and when the last of the guests had departed the hands of the clock were on the stroke of twelve and Willa turned with a sigh of relief to ascend to her room.
Midway the stairs, she was halted by hearing her name called in strange, stunned accents, and, turning, saw Ripley Halstead standing in the library door, regarding her with dazed, half-incredulous eyes, as though she were a changeling.
Instantly the truth came to her, and with head held high and a slight scornful smile upon her lips she descended and approached him.
The long table in the center of the library was strewn with large legal-looking documents, and beside it sat Mason North, his rotund body sagged in the chair, his good-natured face drawn and haggard. Opposite him stood Starr Wiley, his bruised lips twisted into a leer of triumph.
The girl looked gravely from one to the other and then turning to her cousin, waited submissively for him to speak.
"Willa, my dear——" he paused, clearing his throat nervously—"I have something to tell you which will be a painful shock to you. It has utterly unnerved me. I—I would not have dreamed that such an astounding discovery could come to pass and at this late date it is particularly distressing——"
"Better permit me to tell her, Ripley." Mason North rose heavily to his feet and stood with one pudgy hand braced upon the table as if for support. "The mistake was mine in too eagerly grasping the obvious as proof.—My dear Wil—my dear girl, I am profoundly grieved, but it has been brought to our attention that—that there are grave doubts as to your identity! In fact, belated but seemingly irrefutable documentary evidence appears to prove that you—you are not Willa Murdaugh!"
The girl stood like a statue, but from behind her Mrs. Halstead gasped convulsively, and there came a little squeal in Angie's treble tones.
"Sit down, my dear." Ripley Halstead drew forward a chair and Willa sank obediently into it, her eyes never leaving those of the attorney.
The others came in and seated themselves unbidden; all but Vernon. He took up his stand behind Willa's chair and for a moment his hand brushed her shoulder as if to assure her of his presence in case of need.
"It is only just that an immediate and detailed explanation be made to you," North continued. "I am sure it is unnecessary for me to express my regret and sympathy, but I want you to realize that I am as entirely at your service in every way as I was prior to this discovery.
"When I found you in Limasito and retraced your history from the time the man known as 'Gentleman Geoff' adopted you supposedly in Topaz Gulch, I overlooked one significant phase in his peregrinations. Willa Murdaugh's parentage and the circumstances of her birth were in every particular as I have told you; Ralph Murdaugh died when the baby was two years old, his wife lost her life in a fire two years later and the child was actually adopted by Gentleman Geoff and taken with him on his wanderings.
"Now it has transpired that the first heavy snow of the following winter caught him midway between two mining camps far up in the Rockies, near Flathead Lake, Montana. Does that name recall any memories to you?"
Willa shook her head, mutely, and the attorney after a moment's pause went on:
"It is scarcely likely that it would, for you yourself could have been no more than five years old at the time. However, Gentleman Geoff and the little Willa were lost in the blizzard, and, after suffering untold horrors, he finally made his way to the cabin of a trapper, named——" he hesitated and glanced down at the papers beneath his hand—"named Frank Hillery. This trapper Hillery's wife had run away with another man some years before, leaving him with a little daughter on his hands, a child of about five years, called Louise."
Again he paused, coughing. The Halsteads, mother and daughter, sat spell-bound, but Willa was outwardly the coolest person in the room. The story in its every detail was stamping itself indelibly upon her mind and for the moment even the presence of Starr Wiley was forgotten.
"When he reached the trapper's cabin, Gentleman Geoff was blinded by the snow, delirious and half frozen. Hillery took him in, unwrapped the fur pack he carried on his back and discovered the body of little Willa. She had died from exposure."
Vernon uttered a sharp exclamation, and the girl seated before him clasped her hands tightly, but no other sign greeted Mason North's announcement. He passed his hand across his brow and drew a deep breath.
"Hillery buried the child and nursed Gentleman Geoff through a long illness. It was well into the following spring when he was able to proceed on his journey, and when he did, he took the trapper's little daughter, Louise, with him, and called her 'Billie' as he had nicknamed the other. His future wanderings never took him back over the same route or to any of the places where the real Willa had been known, consequently the substitution was never discovered until these papers came to light. No one had visited the trapper's lonely cabin during the period of Gentleman Geoff's presence there. Hillery deserted it the following summer and went southward to Arizona where he eventually died six months ago. Undoubtedly, those who had known him and passed the cabin clearing took it for granted that the little grave was that of his daughter, Louise, but these documents, found among Frank Hillery's private papers after his death, bear witness in crude but unmistakable fashion to the agreement between the two men and the adoption of little Louise by Gentleman Geoff."
Mason North seated himself once more with a gesture of relief that the bomb was exploded, and all eyes turned to Willa.
"How is it, then, that I remember the fire in which my mother was destroyed?" She was wholly innocent of an intention to defend her position, but asked her question in the first bewildering shock, unconscious of the fact which her form of speech betrayed, that she could not all at once disassociate herself from the identity she had accepted only a few short weeks before. "Why, I even recall vaguely a song which the woman I supposed must have been my mother used to sing all the time, though I cannot quite bring it back to my mind. I am sure if I heard it once, I should remember!"
The attorney visibly hesitated, and it was Ripley Halstead who replied as gently as possible:
"Often one believes that one can recall experiences of their very early years which they have actually learned from hearsay, from countless repetition in their presence."
"But Dad never spoke of that time in Nevada; he never once referred to it to the very hour of his death! I recall vaguely being lost in the snow and I have often heard Dad speak of Hillery's kindness and care; he used to say that the trapper had saved both our lives. A number of people in Limasito have heard the story from his own lips, Jim Baggott and Henry Bailey and Rufe Terwilliger—but Rufe is dead now, he was killed in El Negrito's raid——"
She paused as if a hand had closed suddenly about her throat, while a tiny patch of color crept into each cheek and her eyes, large and luminous and swiftly keen, sought Starr Wiley's. Her clasped hands tightened, then relaxed and a little smile hovered about her lips once more; a coolly calculating, somewhat grim little smile. The story had engrossed her for the moment to the exclusion of all else, but mention of the raid recalled her sharply to the presence of its instigator.
Wiley's vague threats were plain to her now, his purpose practically achieved. He had kept his word, he had exposed her, but was her early memory indeed tricking her? Was this latest revelation true, and had he actually stumbled upon authentic records, or manufactured them to avenge himself upon her and eliminate her from his path? Willa's mind still groped in a quandary, but every instinct within her arose to combat.
"Why would Dad have mentioned Hillery at all, if he did not intend that I should ever learn the truth?" she asked quietly. "Indeed, why did he adopt the trapper's little daughter and call her by the other's name?"
"Well," Ripley Halstead replied after a swift glance at the attorney as if for help, "probably he had grown fond of the dead child and wanted another to take her place."
"He undoubtedly did!" It was the first time Starr Wiley spoke in the girl's presence and a short ugly laugh accompanied the remark. "Not wholly because he had taken a liking to Willa Murdaugh, however. Why blink the facts, Mr. Halstead? It is plain on the face of it that he must have looked up the real Willa's parentage and connections, and realized that the storm had robbed him of a potential heiress in whose probable inheritance he would sometime have shared——"
"That is a lie." Willa's tones rang out without passion but clarion clear in her absolute certitude. "Anyone who knew Dad ever so slightly would testify to its falseness. Why did he not keep himself informed of my grandfather's changing attitude and come forward and claim the inheritance when the search for me began? Whether I am Willa Murdaugh or not, there can be at least no reason why I should remain to hear the memory of the finest man who ever lived defiled by such a base imputation. If you will excuse me now——"
She half rose from her chair, but Starr Wiley forestalled her.
"Your pardon—I will go." He bowed with an undercurrent of mockery in his suave manner. "Naturally, Miss Billie, you resent my interference in your career and I deplore the fact that the onerous duty should have fallen upon my shoulders. However, it was a duty, no matter how repugnant, and I could do no less than place the facts before Mr. North and Mr. Halstead. I am sure my attitude requires no defense and I trust, when you will have had time to think matters over calmly, you will not blame me too bitterly. Believe me, I would have spared you, gladly, had it been compatible with my sense of the right. It is long past midnight, and I will leave you, if you will permit me, Mr. North."
He turned deferentially to the attorney, but not before Willa had caught the significance with which he mentioned the hour. Twelve o'clock had struck, indeed, as he had prophesied, for this latter-day Cinderella, and the pumpkin coach had vanished. The story differed only in that there was no fairy prince to find her once again; he had vanished, too, stripped of his splendor, but before the magic hour. Or, rather, he had never existed save in the exalted fancy of the girl back there in Limasito!
Cinderella must pick up her slipper herself, and go forth into the world.
After Starr Wiley's departure Mason North placed the documents in Willa's hands, explaining each in turn and she forced herself to a stern concentration on them that she might master every detail. Already she was gathering her forces, although no definite purpose outlined itself in the chaos of her thoughts. Only a blind, as yet unreasoning, repudiation of the story to which she had just listened sprang full-grown to life within her and the very strength of her conviction urged her to examine well the evidence against herself.
It consisted of the marriage-certificate of Frank Hillery and Louise Henson, dated December 12, 1895; the birth-certificate of Louise Francis Hillery, October 3, 1897, several maps of the Flathead Lake territory with trails marked upon them in red ink, the death-certificate of Frank Hillery, dated April 16, 1916, and a huge sheet of foolscap paper scrawled with labored characters in wavering lines. At the bottom two signatures were appended, the first in the same painstaking hand as the body of the document, but at the second Willa's breath caught again in her throat and her eyes blurred.
The letters before her, in the same angular heavily down-stroked writing she knew so well, formed the name of Gentleman Geoff, but a word had been added; one that she had never seen or heard before. Abercrombie! Gentleman Geoff Abercrombie!
Had that been indeed the unmentioned surname of the man who had reared her as his own? Why, then, had he, who had given her all else, not given her, too, the name to bear?
The document set forth in brief that Frank Hillery, being of sound mind and sole guardian of his daughter, Louise Frances, did give her to Geoffrey Abercrombie, known as "Gentleman Geoff," for absolute adoption; the said Gentleman Geoff promising to bring her up in all ways as his own child and to leave her whatever he might die possessed of. It was dated March 12, 1902.
"You will permit me to have photographic copies of each of these papers, Mr. North?" Willa asked, when the last had been laid aside.
"Certainly, my child." The attorney's voice was suspiciously husky. "Allow me to assure you that there will be no hurry, of course. It will take some weeks to verify and substantiate this evidence, and in the meantime——"
"Willa shall remain with us, of course," Ripley Halstead said with deep feeling. "This is a most unwelcome revelation to me, I may say to all of us. We have grown greatly attached to Willa and come to look upon her as quite one of ourselves.—There is no reason, my dear, why you should not stay on indefinitely. I am sure my wife will be glad to second me in this."
"Of course." Mrs. Halstead spoke through tightened lips. "This has been a most regrettable mistake, and one which will entail a hideous amount of notoriety, but that cannot be helped now. It is an almost overwhelming shock, but it explains many things which I have found incomprehensible. After all, this poor young girl is the worst sufferer, and she will be welcome here as long as she cares to stay."
Angie gasped, but made no comment and it was Vernon alone who echoed his mother's assurance in sincere enthusiasm.
"Thank you," Willa said simply. "You are all more than kind, but you realize, of course, that I should feel like an interloper; my place is no longer here."
"But, my dear, it will not do to be too hasty! Suppose that these documents are not—suppose no mistake was made in the original identification——?" The attorney was halted by her steady gaze.
"Mr. North, you are convinced already. Why delay the inevitable?" She rose. "However, we won't discuss it further now, if you don't mind. I—I feel very tired."
"Of course, dear child! We have kept you up till an unconscionable hour!" Mason North approached her with outstretched hand. "Remember that you will always find a friend in me. Come to me at any time."
"Thank you. May I send for the photographic copies of the documents to-morrow?" Willa turned to the others in a grave dignity not without its pathos. "You have all been very good to me; whatever happens I shall never forget that. I wish now that I had been more amenable to your advice and suggestions, but it is too late to think of that. Good-night."
Her head was still high as she walked to the door, but when it had closed behind her, she paused trembling as though suddenly bereft of her strength.
In the silence, Angie's querulous tones rose sharply from the other side of the door.
"I felt all along that something was wrong! I knew that wild uncouth thing couldn't be a Murdaugh, in spite of the common mother——"
Willa put her hands to her ears and fled madly up the stairs to her room where she sank limply upon the couch. Exhausted in mind and body with the storm of emotion which had swayed her and the strain of the protracted effort of self-control, she fell asleep at last with one determination firmly fixed in her mind. The roof which had reluctantly sheltered her should do so no longer.
She awakened in the early morning and lay for a moment in drowsy bewilderment before full realization came. Then she sprang from her bed, dressed hastily in her plainest clothes, and, packing a small bag with necessities, stole softly down the stairs.
She shivered as she let herself out into the cold, bleak morning. As yet no plan had formed in her mind save to find a temporary abode in some quiet neighborhood until the search for Tia Juana was ended in some conclusive fashion. That was still the first of the duties confronting her and the change in her fortunes did not swerve her an iota from the charge she had laid upon herself. Later there would be two points to be achieved; the one which had actuated her from the beginning, and another which was even now beating upon her consciousness.
When Dan Morrissey came whistling into the garage an hour later, he stopped short in amazement at the sight of his employer seated just inside the entrance with her bag at her feet.
"Good-morning, Dan. Is the car in order?"
"Yes, Miss. Good-morning." He stared blankly, and then with a start he recovered himself. "Just a minute, Miss! I'll have her out in no time."
"I will wait for you at the Broadway corner. Bring my bag, please."
Willa had scarcely reached the appointed place, however, when Dan came chugging up behind her and in a moment they were speeding away from the vicinity of the garage.
"I have decided to leave home, Dan," she announced without preamble. "I want to live quietly under cover until we have found Tia Juana and José. It is important that none of the family nor their friends shall know where I have gone. Do you know of any place where I can arrange to board for a time? The more simple it is, the better."
"Well," Dan remarked, reflectively, "you wouldn't be wanting a plain, poor kind of a home after all the grandeur you're used to, or I could take you to my sister, Miss. She's married to a shipping clerk and lives in a little two-family house up on Washington Heights. It's quiet and clean and nobody'd think of looking for you there, but I guess maybe you'd want something a bit more high-toned."
"No, it sounds splendid! Just what I am looking for." Willa paused. "But do you think she will take me in? You see, I can't explain very well."
"Explain nothin'!" Dan reddened swiftly. "Excuse me, Miss. Delia's no more of a hand at askin' questions than me, and she's a good judge of people. She can tell you're a lady in a minute, and she'll make you more than welcome if you can put up with the plainness of everything. I'll have you there in ten minutes."
Dan was as good as his word, and Willa found that he had spoken truly. His sister proved to be a thin, pleasant-faced woman with a humorous curve to her lips and alert twinkling brown eyes. She was ready and willing to take Dan's employer as a lodger and the terms were quickly arranged.
Willa gave Dan his instructions, and then shut herself in the clean, sunny room which had been allotted to her and looked the situation collectedly in the face.
The more she thought of the astounding tale of the previous night and strove in vain to find the slightest corroboration of it in her memory, the more deep sank the roots of her conviction of its fallacy. She had not realized how desperate Wiley's determination was to oust her from his path, nor dreamed that he would risk forged testimony, but now at length she had measured the strength of her adversary and her own courage rose in a dauntless tide to meet his challenge.
In the beginning the Murdaugh name had meant nothing to her and the inheritance merely a means to an end, but now with Angie's scornful words heard through the closed door ringing in her ears, she made up her mind to fight! Not for the sake of position or name or wealth, but for the "common" brave-hearted mother whose child she felt herself to be beyond peradventure of a doubt, and about whose memory all unconsciously a worshiping love had sprung in her heart.
Meanwhile, pursuant to instructions, Dan had presented himself at the imposing offices of North, Manning and Gilchrist, armed with the note which Willa had written hastily in his sister's home.
Mason North looked up after perusing it, and favored the messenger with a keen scrutiny.
"H'm! This letter calls for the delivery to you of certain rather important documents, young man. I should like to be sure of your identification before placing them in your hands."
"Well, Sir, I've my bank-book here, and some letters——"
The attorney waved them aside.
"I don't mean quite that. You have been long in Miss Murdaugh's employ?"
Dan was conscious of a movement in the corner behind him and turned to find a mild, round-faced young man rising from the safe he had been in the act of closing and regarding him with vast interest. Dan returned the compliment respectfully.
"How long have you worked for Miss Murdaugh?"
The question was reiterated with a touch of asperity.
"For some time, Sir. Ever since she caught the French maid trying to spy on her under the orders of Mrs. Halstead." Dan repeated carefully but with evident satisfaction the message which had been given him. "Miss Murdaugh told me to tell you, Sir, that I was one of the investments she had made with Gentleman Geoff's money. She said you would understand."
Mason North nipped at his mustache reflectively and turned to the younger man. "Winthrop, I wish you'd go and attend to that Erskine matter for me!"
Winnie departed in obvious reluctance and only when the door had closed behind him did his father resume:
"In what capacity are you employed by Miss Murdaugh?"
"Confidential agent, she said I was to tell you." Dan could scarcely suppress a grin of importance. "She told me to remind you that she asked you particular last night if she might send for the copies of the papers, not call for them herself, and you said 'yes.' And you'll excuse me, Sir, but I'm not to answer any more questions."
The attorney shrugged and turned to the telephone, but Dan interposed quietly:
"Miss Murdaugh ain't at home, Sir. She's waiting for me and she says she'll not set foot in the house until I bring her the copies of the papers."
"Very well." Mason North capitulated, and, opening a drawer in his desk, handed over a rolled package. "Here you are. I shall want a receipt, of course."
He made out one, which Dan signed, and with a nod turned to leave, when the attorney halted him on the threshold.
"Ask Miss Murdaugh if she can find it convenient to call here this afternoon; tell her I would like to talk things over with her and will expect her between four and five o'clock."
"Very good, Sir."
Dan departed, colliding violently as he did so with an elderly gentleman who entered the inner office and banged the door behind him.
"Mason, have you heard from her? Do you know where she has gone?"
"Who?" North rose hurriedly. "What is it, Ripley? What has happened?"
"Willa. She's gone!" Ripley Halstead dropped despondently into a chair beside the desk. "Here's the note the poor, proud little thing left behind her. Mason, I feel as if, between us, we've given her a beastly, rotten deal."
But the attorney did not heed the final observation. He pressed the button in his desk excitedly and when a wondering clerk appeared he barked:
"That young man who just went out of here! Follow him, stop him!"
"Too late, Sir. He went down in the express elevator as I stepped out of the local."
North seated himself again with a gesture of hopelessness.
"All right; never mind, then. Ripley——" as the door closed once more—"if you'd been five minutes sooner I could have located her. Why under the sun didn't you telephone me?"
"Her absence was only discovered as I was leaving the house and I came straight to you." Halstead stared. "What young man were you speaking of?"
"Her messenger. He came with a note from Willa authorizing him to bring her the photographic copies of those documents, and like a fool I gave them to him! We've lost our chance of tracing her, and heaven only knows what difficulties that headstrong wilful child will get into by herself," groaned North. "I took her away from her home and friends in Mexico on this mistaken matter of her inheritance and I feel responsible for her. I'm fond of the child, too; I like her independent spirit even if it did raise the deuce with us, and if any harm comes to her——"
"I won't let myself think of that!" Ripley Halstead's kind face had grown suddenly haggard. "I have a good deal of respect for her clear-headed ability to take care of herself; nevertheless, I sha'n't feel easy until she is found. I've taken more comfort in her than in my own daughter, Mason. My wife doesn't need Willa's share of the Murdaugh money and I wish young Wiley had never unearthed the truth!"
The attorney had picked up the little note.
"'My dear Mrs. Halstead,' he read.
"'I hope you will forgive me for leaving you so unceremoniously. I do not mean to be rude or seem ungrateful, but I am afraid that in your hospitality you would urge me to remain until the documents are verified at least, and I really cannot do so. If I have been an impostor, it was an unconscious one. Nevertheless, I could not endure a false position. Will you permit me once more to thank you and your family for all your kindness to me, and believe me to be,
"'Ever gratefully yours,"'BILLIE ABERCROMBIE.'"
"——Poor little girl! I say, where did she get that 'Abercrombie' from?"
"Don't you see?" Ripley Halstead bent forward.
"That's the name on that document; the name of the man who adopted her, 'Gentleman Geoff.' She won't claim 'Murdaugh' and doesn't accept 'Hillery,' so she's chosen the one name she's sure of. Do you suppose that means she is going to contest the validity of this new claim?"
"Possibly." North shook his head. "It would be a losing fight for her, though, Ripley. There isn't a chance in the world that Wiley's discovery could be anything but authentic. No one profits by the affair except your own family and no one could have any possible incentive for faking the story. It's too bad the truth didn't come out before, and I'll always blame myself for my negligence, but as long as a mistake was made, it is lucky for us that Wiley stumbled on those records now instead of later, when the fortune was in her hands."
His mission accomplished, Dan was returning to the garage to put the car up and proceed on foot to his daily round of the hospitals and bureaus of inquiry, when half-way down the block a shrill voice piped at him.
"Hot tomales! Very fine hot tomales. Try one, Mister!"
Idly he glanced toward the curb. A diminutive, ragged vender crouched there beside a bright, new hand-cart which contained a huge pot simmering above a charcoal fire, and bore a sign with the legend "Hot Tomales, 5 cents," in obviously home-made lettering.
His mind intent on his errand of the morning, Dan gave it but passing heed and drove on into the garage, yet as he busied himself about the car, the incident kept recurring to his mind. Hot tomales were a queer commodity for a street-seller to deal in; Dan didn't know exactly what they were, but he believed them to be some sort of Spanish or Mexican concoction——
At this point in his cogitations he stopped work abruptly and stood staring into vacancy.
There had been something appealingly familiar even in that fleeting glimpse of the tattered crouched figure, and could it be that it had been hunchbacked?
With an excited cry he dropped the wrench from his hand and sprang out into the street. Cart and vender were gone, but in the gutter lay a crushed, greasy mess which had been a tomale. It was still smoking and as Dan stirred it with his foot, he saw that a wisp of sodden paper clung to it.
Seizing it, he smoothed it out and read the two jerkily penciled words:
"Mañana. José."
"I say, hello there! Wait a minute, Kearn!" Winnie Mason called as he brought his roadster to a halt with a sudden grinding of brakes. It was two days later and a cutting east wind skirled about the driveway of the Park, rattling the naked branches of the trees like the fleshless arms of a legion of skeletons.
The tall figure on the path waited, but his face was averted and there was a listless, dispirited droop to his whole form which was not lost upon the quick, sympathetic gaze of his friend.
"I'll back her up… Now get in, old man, and we'll take a little spin. Jolly glad I ran across you, but what brings you out on a blustering rotten afternoon like this? You're not very fit yet, you know, after that bout of fever you had in Mexico, in spite of the lacing you managed to give Starr Wiley."
"I came to try and walk off a brace of blue devils that have been camping on my trail," Thode explained, climbing into the car with manifest reluctance. "You won't find me very good company, Win, but you've brought it on yourself."
"What's the matter, anyhow?" the other demanded. "It's not like you to load up with a grouch. Has one of those blasted oil wells sprung a leak?"
Thode shrugged.
"I wouldn't care if every gusher in Mexico went up in smoke!" he affirmed, drearily. "I've had a nasty stab in the back, the kind of thing a man doesn't get over in a hurry, that's all. Don't let's talk about it."
"You're not the only one. I say, you'll keep this to yourself, of course, but I've got to tell some one, and you were her friend down there. She told me about that magnificent ride of yours for the troops at the time of the raid, and she just about thought you were ace high. She's such a plucky little thing herself, confound it? That's what makes it so devilish hard, now."
"What are you talking about?" Thode looked up with the first gleam of interest he had shown. "Not Miss Murdaugh?"
Winnie nodded.
"Only she isn't Miss Murdaugh at all, according to Starr Wiley. He's dug up proof that the real Willa Murdaugh died and she is just a trapper's daughter from the wilds somewhere, whom that gambler adopted in order to bilk the estate later. The governor told me all about it, he was so wrought up he couldn't keep it to himself."
"Not Willa Murdaugh!" repeated Thode in stunned accents. "And Starr Wiley brought forward the proof? You'd better tell me all about it, Win, now that you've started."
Nothing loth, Winnie complied and the other heard him through in silence, until he told of Willa's disappearance the morning after the revelation, and the little note she had left behind her.
"I swear I thought the governor would spill over when he read it to me," Winnie concluded. "It was sort of fine for her to go away like that. I don't care who she really is, she's the most wonderful girl I know. She wouldn't even sign herself 'Murdaugh' after they questioned her right; she used the name of the gambler chap who'd been so good to her."
"How did she learn it?" Thode asked quickly. "He was known only as 'Gentleman Geoff' in Limasito. I'm certain she herself never heard the name there."
"It was signed to the adoption agreement he and the trapper, Hillery, made out when he took her in place of the real Willa. The governor showed me the paper and there it was in black and white: Geoff Abercrombie."
"Abercrombie!" Kearn Thode seized the other's arm in a convulsive grip which made the steering-wheel jerk. "You're sure—you're sure of the name, Win?"
"Dead sure! I'll get the governor to show you the document if you like. But why the excitement? You nearly landed us up against that rock, then."
"Never mind the rock!" exclaimed Thode. "I'm going to take you up on that; I'd give a good bit to see that paper and the signature."
"I'll fix it." Winnie shot a quick glance at his companion. "I say, you don't think it's phony, do you? The governor says it is absolutely the straight goods."
"It isn't that," Thode hastened to explain cautiously. "But I knew Gentleman Geoff personally, you know. It isn't etiquette to ask a man for more of a name than he chooses to give below the border, but I had a hazy idea of Gentleman Geoff's identity and the name in my mind was not Abercrombie. It was just a suspicion of my own and I had nothing to substantiate it, but the old chap interested me and I've always been curious about him. I wonder if he could possibly have been related to the Abercrombies of the Coast?"
"Whoever he was, he must have been rather a fine old codger himself for he brought Will—his adopted daughter up splendidly," Winnie observed with enthusiasm. "There isn't a girl in our set that can come anywhere near her, and I think it is a dashed shame that she's thrown out on her own. She took the whole business like a thoroughbred, walking calmly out like that and leaving them to haggle over the details."
"And she has utterly disappeared?" asked Thode. "No one knows where she is?"
"Nobody but your Uncle Sherlock!" Winnie grinned, and thumped himself upon the chest. "I did a little detecting on my own and I found her all right. She doesn't know yet that anyone has discovered her whereabouts and I don't mean to pass it on to the Halsteads or the governor, either. She's her own mistress now and if she wants to go away by herself, it's no one's concern but hers."
"I can't imagine you in the role of a gumshoe!" The other laughed outright, and it was Winnie's turn to gape in amazement.
The change which had come over his companion was too marked to go unnoted; the listless, disheartened mood was gone and in its place the old eager alertness manifested itself, intensified by a sort of half-suppressed excitement.
"I turned the trick, anyway," Winnie remarked complacently after a pause. "You see, old man, I'd heard about the way she'd held on to the money Gentleman Geoff left her and I've caught glimpses of her more than once riding around town in a speedy gray car with a nifty chauffeur. I knew the Halstead bunch didn't know anything about it so I kept quiet. I recognized the chauffeur in the chap she sent to the governor's office for photographic copies of the documents Wiley dug up, but the governor sent me away just when things promised to be interesting.
"I scouted around outside the building and there, sure enough, drawn up at the curb across the way, was the gray car. I slipped over and took its number. Later, when we heard about her going away, I didn't say anything, but I looked up the record of the car. The license had been taken out under a man's name; the chauffeur's, maybe, but I traced it to a garage up on the West Side. I took this car up there two days ago, and whenever he took his own out I was right on the job after him.
"He found out that I was shadowing him, of course, and he tried like blazes to shake me off, but I was foxy and beat him at his own game yesterday. He drove up to a certain house and she came out herself, as if she'd been waiting for him. I jotted down the address, and beat it as hard as I could. It's lucky I found her when I did, because the car was moved to another garage this morning and I lost its trail."
"What are you going to do?" inquired the other. "Call on her to extend your sympathy? That's about the last thing on earth that Gentleman Geoff's Billie wants, under any circumstances."
He uttered the name with an unconscious note of tenderness in his voice which would have been illuminating to Winnie North, but that young man was busied at the moment with embarrassing thoughts of his own. His face at the other's abrupt question had turned a bright pink, but he replied steadily:
"I don't want to intrude upon her, but I'd like to tell her that I'm standing by in case of need.—I'll tell you what I'll do; I'll drop her a line and ask her if I may bring you up to call, shall I? She can tell you all about this thing better than I——"
Thode shook his head decisively.
"No. I am an old friend, as you say, and if she should want to see me she knows how to reach me. I'm going away in a few days, at any rate."
"Away?" Winnie said impulsively. "Why, old man, you're not returning to Mexico, are you? I thought you were going to stay around town for a month or two."
"No!" There was a determined ring, not without a touch of grimness, in his tones. "I'm going to take Horace Greeley's advice once more: 'Young man, go West.' I'll hit the trail for the setting sun——"
"And find your pot of gold, like the old fairy tale of the rainbow's end? By Jove, but you fellows are dreamers!" Winnie laughed, then touched his friend's shoulder persuasively. "Why don't you stay on here where the money is and work this end of the game for a change? You engineer chaps get out and do all the hard work, and the smug brokers who sit tight in their offices down on the Street reap all the profits. Get in on the ground floor, old man, and let the other fellow do the prospecting."
Thode laughed also.
"Without a working capital? Besides, I know nothing and care less about the manipulations of the financial end of it; the prospecting is all I'm cut out for and it's more fascinating than the market game could possibly be! However, I'm not going West for the elusive pot of gold this trip; I'm going for something far more important, on a little private hunch of my own. You'll wish me luck, I know, old man?"
"I will indeed, whatever your hunch is," Winnie responded heartily. "That stab in the back hasn't downed you, after all. I knew it wouldn't, after you got your second wind! You look like a different chap than you were an hour ago——"
"I feel it!" laughed the other, but again that undernote of grimness rang in his tone. "It's done me a lot of good, this little talk with you, Win. You'll never realize just how you've bucked me up."
Winnie puzzled over the significance of the last remark after he had dropped his friend at the Park entrance and turned north again. Could the stab in the back to which Thode referred have come from Starr Wiley, and had their conversation given Thode a clue to a way of striking back at his enemy? Not through Willa and the lost inheritance, of course; that was a bona-fide discovery, even if Wiley had been the instrument in bringing it to light. However, the fact that Wiley had stumbled upon the documents while in Arizona might have given Thode a lead on some ulterior project out there in which Wiley was trying to cut the ground out from under his feet.
In going over their conversation in retrospect, an idea came which Winnie determined impulsively to act upon. Willa's car had been removed from the garage to which he had traced it, but that did not necessarily mean that it had been taken to another. What if she had sold the car, in preparation for a return to Mexico? He felt that she must not go before he had seen her. Heretofore he had not, as he said, intruded upon her retreat, but he could not bear the thought of her departure without at least her knowing what he had to tell her.
He would go to her now, without giving her an opportunity to refuse to see him! She might be angry, and Willa's anger was something to be reckoned with, but he would make her hear him out!
Darkness had already fallen as he drew up before the neat little house with its twin front doors. He rang the bell of the one to the right and when the tall pleasant-faced woman appeared in answer to his summons, he asked without hesitation for Miss Abercrombie.
The woman eyed him somewhat doubtfully, but ushered him into a tiny immaculate parlor.
"Please, tell her it is Mr. Winthrop North. I haven't a card with me, but be sure about the first name. Say that I have an important message for her and no one knows that I have come."
"Yes, Sir." The woman hesitated. "I'm thinking you've made a mistake and got hold of the wrong Miss Abercrombie, but I'll find out."
In a moment, however, there was a rustle of silk on the narrow stairs and Willa entered. Her eyes sought his in a defensive, questioning stare as she held out her hand.
"Your visit is a surprise, Winnie. I thought—I was not aware that any of my friends knew where I was."
"No one does but me. I followed your chauffeur. Please, don't be angry! I was so afraid I should lose you; that you would return to Limasito before I had an opportunity to see you, that I was desperate."
"Why should you want to see me?" Willa demanded, frankly. "I don't mean to be ungracious, Winnie, we've grown to be awfully good friends in these two months, but I've been through so much just lately that the Willa Murdaugh episode seems far away, and all the people I knew then are like dream people. I—I'm starting in all over again, you see, and I meant to do it with a clean, blank sheet."
"But surely you don't mean to put us all behind you? Our friendship, our admiration, all the happy times we've had together—oh, Willa, you can't drop it all like this!" he stammered. "You can't go back now, you belong to us!"
She smiled.
"You're very good to say so, Winnie, but remember I'm not Willa any more! My place is gone, or rather it never was mine. I do believe in your friendship, but how many of the rest bothered with me because of myself alone? It was the Murdaugh position they accepted, the Murdaugh interests. I'm not cynical, but I try to look things squarely in the face. How many would admit within their circle the waif adopted by a gambler?"
Winnie drew a deep breath.
"Then why not make a place for yourself, or rather step into one which is waiting for you? It doesn't carry the prestige of the Murdaugh name or money, but it's solid and substantial and assured, and all that love can bring to make for happiness goes with it, too. Why don't you marry me, dear?"
Willa started up in unutterable amazement. The mild round face of the boy before her seemed all at once to have taken on a deeper, more mature expression, strengthening and ennobling it, and a wistful light which there was no mistaking glowed in his eyes.
"Winnie!"
"Oh, I know it sounds silly and presumptuous of me! You've known real men in your life, men who have fought and accomplished things and I've been just an idler. You couldn't care for me now, but if you'll give me half a chance I'll prove myself! I know I could do big things, too, if I had you with me, and I—I love you most tremendously, dear! I've cared ever since that very first night when you broke into Vernon's game in that splendid fearless way and drove Cal Shirley out as a cheat. I never saw a girl with such spirit and I've worshiped you more and more! Willa, won't you let me go to my father and tell him it's all right, that you will stay? He may not have found the Murdaugh heiress in Limasito, but I'd like to tell him that he found my wife!"
Willa's eyes blurred and a rich color dyed her cheeks as she replied softly:
"Dear Winnie! I'll always love you for this, and respect you, too, even though what you suggest is impossible.—'Presumptuous'? You don't know what a big, fine thing you just proved yourself capable of!" Her voice was not quite steady. "Willa Murdaugh was eligible, even a catch, I suppose, but now, when I am stripped of everything that counts in your world and nothing is left me but a past which would bar me from polite society if I tried to batter down its prejudices alone, you offer to brave its opinion, to give me the greatest thing a man can give to a woman. It's splendid of you! I—I can't tell you how wonderful it seems to feel that there are still men like you in the world. But, Winnie, I couldn't marry you! I'm awfully fond of you, but not in that way and one of the things I couldn't accept in the creed of your world would be to marry a man I didn't love. Even if I did care, I don't believe that I could bring myself to accept your sacrifice, but I shall never forget your generosity."
"Don't, please!" Winnie thrust out his hand in a passionate gesture of negation. "The generosity would have been on your part and the sacrifice, too! What does it matter who your own people were? You are yourself, the bravest, finest, truest girl in all the world! I knew you couldn't care, but, oh, I hoped that if there was no one else you would try to like me enough to give me an opportunity of proving to you that I could make you happy anyway. I would be so awfully good to you, and so proud! It is you who would be giving all, not me, and I should try all the rest of my life to be worthy of you. Willa, dearest, won't you think it over, and let me come again?"
She shook her head with a sad little smile.
"I am leaving to-night, Winnie, and going far away. I may return sometime, quien sabe?—but I have played a lone hand ever since Dad was killed and I've got to go on to the end. You're wonderfully kind, wonderfully dear, but I have a long trail to follow and I must travel it alone."
"You're leaving to-night!" He turned and walked to the window where he stood for some minutes gazing out at the blank darkness before him in silence. When he broke it at length and turned again, his face was very pale but composed.
"You will write and let me know where you are and that all is well with you?"
"Perhaps," Willa said gently. "At any rate you will know that I shall think of you always and value your friendship as the one worth-while thing in all this experience. I wish I could have cared for you, Winnie, in that way, but it couldn't be."
"I understand." His voice was very low. "Remember that I am your friend, if I can be nothing more, and I shall be waiting. If you ever want me, or need me, you will have only to send me a word and I shall come if it is half across the world.—I'm going, now. Don't be afraid that I shall tell anyone where I found you. I can't bear to say it, but it is 'good-bye', Willa. I—I hope, wherever you are, that nothing but happiness will come to you. Good-bye, best and sweetest and dearest——"
His voice broke, and Willa held out both her hands.
"Good-bye, Winnie. You're going to be happy, too, some day. I'll always be proud of your friendship and what you have offered me. Our trails may cross again some day, and if they do I shall be glad, indeed. Till then, good luck and every wish of my heart to you, my pal!"
Winnie pressed her hands, then dropped them and stumbled from the room. In the machine, he turned and waved. Willa stood in the window, her slender form outlined against the light behind her, her small head proudly erect, and it seemed to the boy's blurred, exalted gaze as if an aura of golden haze like a halo surrounded it. A passing glance and he was swept along into the darkness ahead, the vision and the memory of her all that remained to him.