Dear Miss Lexy:Please excuse me for addressing you like this, but I don’t know your other name. I forgot to ask you.I waited in the park for you all afternoon. When it got dark, I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I went to the house and asked for Miss Enderby. The servant told me she had gone away to the country with her mother this morning.Please tell Miss Enderby that I understand. I am sorry she didn’t tell me before that she had changed her mind, instead of letting me wait like that; but it’s finished now. Please tell her she can count on me to hold my tongue, and never to bother her again in any way.We are sailing to-night, or I should have tried to see you to-morrow. In case you have any message for me, you can address me at the company’s office, J. J. Eames & Son, 99 State Street. I expect to be back in about six weeks.Very truly yours,Charles Houseman.
Dear Miss Lexy:
Please excuse me for addressing you like this, but I don’t know your other name. I forgot to ask you.
I waited in the park for you all afternoon. When it got dark, I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I went to the house and asked for Miss Enderby. The servant told me she had gone away to the country with her mother this morning.
Please tell Miss Enderby that I understand. I am sorry she didn’t tell me before that she had changed her mind, instead of letting me wait like that; but it’s finished now. Please tell her she can count on me to hold my tongue, and never to bother her again in any way.
We are sailing to-night, or I should have tried to see you to-morrow. In case you have any message for me, you can address me at the company’s office, J. J. Eames & Son, 99 State Street. I expect to be back in about six weeks.
Very truly yours,Charles Houseman.
“Sailing to-night!” cried Lexy. “Then he’s gone! He’s gone!”
“So you are still of the same mind?” inquired Mrs. Enderby.
“More so, if anything,” Lexy answered seriously.
It was after breakfast the next morning. Mr. Enderby had gone to his office, and Mrs. Enderby and Lexy were alone in the dining room. There was an odd sort of friendliness between them. Lexy felt no constraint in asking questions.
“There isn’t any letter this morning, is there, Mrs. Enderby?”
“There is not.”
“Then I suppose you’re going to tell Mr. Enderby?”
“This evening.”
“And then?”
“Then I shall be guided by his advice,” Mrs. Enderby replied blandly.
Lexy could have smiled at this. She knew how likely Mrs. Enderby was to be guided by her husband; but she kept the smile and the thought to herself.
“I don’t want to interfere with your plans—” she began.
“I have no plans.”
“I mean, if you’re going to take steps to find her—”
“My child,” said Mrs. Enderby, “it is clear that you wish to amuse yourself with a grand mystery. I tell you there is no mystery, but you do not believe me. I ask you to say nothing of this matter, but you refuse. So I say to you now—go your own way, proceed with your mystery. I do not think you can hurt me very much.”
Lexy flushed.
“I don’t want to hurt any one,” she declared stiffly. “I just want to help your daughter.”
“Proceed, then!” said Mrs. Enderby.
Lexy rose.
“Then I’ll say good-by, Mrs. Enderby,” she said. “My trunk’s packed. I’ll send for it this afternoon.[Pg 324]”
“And where are you going in such a hurry?”
“I’m going to Wyngate,” said Lexy.
“Ah!” said Mrs. Enderby. “It is a pretty place, is it not?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.”
“Pardon me—you saw it yesterday. It is a small village through which we passed on the way to Miss Craigie’s house.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Now that you do know, perhaps you will spare yourself the trouble of going there,” said Mrs. Enderby. “I assure you you will not find Caroline there. I myself made certain inquiries. No such person has arrived in Wyngate.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“But I observe by your face that you are not convinced,” Mrs. Enderby went on. “‘This Mrs. Enderby, she is a stupid old creature,’ you think to yourself. ‘I shall go there myself, and I shall discover that which she could not.’”
Lexy reddened again.
“I don’t mean it that way,” she said. “It’s only that we look at this from different points of view, and I feel—I feel that I’ve got to go.”
“Very well!” said Mrs. Enderby, and she, too, rose. “You will please to come to my room with me. There is part of your salary to be paid to you.”
Lexy followed her, still flushed, and very reluctant. She wished she could afford to refuse that money.
“But I’ve earned it,” she thought; “and goodness knows I’ll need it!”
Mrs. Enderby sat down at her desk and took out her check book. While she wrote, Lexy looked out of the window.
“The amount due to you, including to-day, is thirty-two dollars,” said Mrs. Enderby. “Here is a check for it.”
“Thank you,” said Lexy.
“One minute more! Here, my child, is another check.”
Lexy stared at it, amazed. It was for one hundred dollars.
“But, Mrs. Enderby, I can’t—”
“You will please take it and say nothing more. I give you this because I shall give you no reference. I shall answer no inquiries about you. You understand?”
“But I don’t want—”
Mrs. Enderby pushed back her chair, and rose. She crossed the room to Lexy, put both hands on the girl’s shoulders, and then did something far more astonishing than the gift of the check. She kissed Lexy on the forehead.
“Good-by, and God bless you, little honest one!” she said, with a smile. “I think we shall not see each other again, but I shall sometimes remember you. Go, now, and bear in mind that you can always trust Miss Craigie. She is an imbecile, but she can be trusted.Adieu!”
Lexy’s eyes filled with tears.
“Au revoir!” she said stoutly; and then, with one of her sudden impulses, she put both arms around Mrs. Enderby’s neck and returned her kiss vigorously. “I’m sorry!” she said. “I’m awfully sorry!”
This was their parting. Lexy was thankful that it had been like this, very glad that she could leave the house in good will and kindliness. It strengthened her beyond measure. She wanted to help Caroline, and she wanted to help Mrs. Enderby, too.
“And I will!” she thought. “I know that I’m right and she’s wrong! She’s rather terrible, too. Sometimes I think she’d almost rather not find out the truth, if it was going to make what she calls a scandal. She will have it that Caroline’s gone away of her own free will, to get married; and if it’s anything else, she doesn’t want to know. She is hard, but there’s something rather fine about her.”
There was no one in the hall when Lexy left, and this was a relief, for she supposed that Mrs. Enderby had told the servants, or would tell them, that Miss Moran had been discharged.
She went out and closed the door behind her. A fine, thin rain was falling—nothing to daunt a healthy young creature like Lexy; yet she wished that the sun had been shining. She wished that she hadn’t had to leave the house in the rain, under a gray sky. Somehow it made her only too well aware that she was homeless now, and alone.
As was her habit when depressed, she set off to walk briskly; and by the time she reached the Grand Central her cheeks were glowing and her heart considerably less heavy. She learned that she had nearly three hours to wait for the next train to Wyngate; so she bought her ticket, checked her bag, and went out again.
In a near-by department store she bought a little chamois pocket. Then she went to the bank, cashed both her checks, and, putting the bills into her pocket, hung it around her neck inside her blouse. It[Pg 325]was very comfortable to have so much money.
Then, only as a forlorn hope, she rang up the offices of J. J. Eames & Son, on State Street.
“I don’t suppose they keep track of their passengers,” she thought; “but it can’t do any harm.”
So, when she got the connection, she asked politely:
“Could you possibly tell me where Mr. Charles Houseman has gone?”
“Certainly!” answered an equally polite voice at the other end of the wire. “Just a moment, please! You mean Mr. Houseman, second officer on the Mazell?”
“I don’t know,” said Lexy, surprised. “Has he blue eyes?”
There was an instant’s silence. Then the voice spoke again, a little unsteadily.
“I—I believe so.”
“He’s laughing at me!” thought Lexy indignantly, and her voice became severely dignified.
“Can you tell me where the—the Mazell has gone?”
“Lisbon and Gibraltar. We expect her back in about five weeks.”
“Thank you!” said Lexy. “And that’s that!” she added, to herself. “So he’s a sailor! I rather like sailors. Well, anyhow, he’s gone.” She sighed. “Carry on!” she said.
She went into a tea room on Forty-Second Street and ordered herself a very good lunch.
“Much better than I can afford,” she thought. “Goodness knows what’s going to happen to me! Here I am, without visible means of support. I suppose I’m an idiot. Lots of people would say so. They’d say I ought to be looking for a new job this instant; but I don’t care! I’m not going back on Caroline. Mrs. Enderby won’t do anything, and Mr. Houseman’s gone away, and there’s nobody but me. Perhaps I can’t do very much, but, by jiminy, I’m going to try!”
There was still an hour to spare, and she passed it in a fashion she had often scornfully denounced. She went shopping—without buying. She wandered through a great department store, looking at all sorts of things. Some of them she wanted, but she resolutely told herself that she was better off without them.
Then, at the proper time, she went back to the Grand Central, recovered her bag, bought herself two or three magazines and a bar of chocolate, and boarded the train. For all that she tried to be so cool and sensible, she could not help feeling a queer little thrill of excitement. Her quest had begun, and she could not in any way foresee the end.
Now it certainly was not Lexy’s way to take any great interest in strange young men. There was not a trace of coquetry in her honest heart, and she had always looked upon the little flirtations of her friends with distaste and wonder.
“I’mnot romantic!” she had said more than once.
She believed that. She would have denied indignantly that her present mission was romantic. She thought it a matter-of-course thing which she was in honor bound to do for her friend Caroline Enderby. She felt that she was very cool and practical about it, and a mighty sensible sort of girl altogether.
Certainly she saw the young man on the train, for her alert glance saw pretty well everything. She saw him, and she thought she had never set eyes on a handsomer man.
He was very tall, and slenderly and strongly built. He was dressed with fastidious perfection, and he had an air of marked distinction. In short, he was a man whom any one would look at—and remember; but Lexy, the unromantic girl, thought him inferior to the blue-eyed Mr. Houseman. She preferred young Houseman’s blunt, sunburned face to the dark and haughty one of this stranger. She simply was not interested in dark and haughty strangers, however distinguished and handsome. She looked at this one, and then returned to her magazines.
She had a weakness for detective stories, and she was reading one now—reading it in the proper spirit, uncritical and absorbed. Whenever the train stopped at a station, she glanced up, and more than once, as she turned her head, she caught the stranger’s eye. She wondered, later on, why she hadn’t had some sort of premonition. People in stories always did. They always recognized at once the other people who were going to be in the story with them; but Lexy did not. Even toward the end of the journey, when she and the stranger were the only ones left in the car, she was not aware of any interest in him.[Pg 326]
Even when he, too, got out at Wyngate, Lexy was not specially interested. It was only a little after five o’clock, but it was dark already on that rainy afternoon, and the only thing that interested her just then was the sight of a solitary taxi drawn up beside the platform. Bag in hand, she hurried toward it, but the stranger got there before her. When she arrived, he was speaking to the driver.
There was no other taxi or vehicle of any sort in sight, no other lights were visible except those of the station. It was a strange and unknown world upon which she looked in the rainy dusk, and she felt a justifiable annoyance with the ungallant stranger. He jumped into the cab and slammed the door.
“Driver!” cried Lexy. “Will you please come back for me?”
But before the driver could answer, the door of the cab opened, and the stranger sprang out.
“Ibegyour pardon!” he said, standing hat in hand before Lexy. “I’m most awfully sorry! Give you my word I didn’t notice. I should have noticed, of course. Absent-minded sort of beggar, you know! Please take the cab, won’t you? I don’t in the least mind waiting. Please take it! Allow me!”
He tried to take her bag. His manner was not at all haughty. On the contrary, it was a very agreeable manner, and the impulsive Lexy liked him.
“Why can’t we both go?” said she.
“Oh, no!” he protested. “Please take the cab! Give you my word I don’t mind waiting.”
“It’s a dismal place to wait in,” said Lexy. “We can both go, just as well as not.”
The driver approved of Lexy’s idea. It saved him trouble.
“Where do you want to go, miss?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Lexy. “I suppose there’s a hotel, isn’t there?”
“I say!” exclaimed the stranger. “Just what I’d been asking him, you know! He says there’s no hotel, but a very decent boarding house.”
“Mis’ Royce’s,” added the driver. “She takes boarders.”
“All right!” said Lexy cheerfully. “Miss Royce’s it is!”
The stranger took her bag, and put it into the taxi. He would have assisted Lexy, but she was already inside; so he, too, got in. He closed the door, and off they went.
“Iamsorry, you know,” he said, “shoving ahead like that; but I didn’t notice—”
“Well, please stop being sorry now,” requested Lexy firmly.
“Right-o!” said he. “You won’t mind my saying you’ve been wonderfully nice about it?”
“No, I don’t mind that a bit,” replied Lexy. “I like to be wonderfully nice.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Will you allow me to introduce myself?” said the stranger. “Grey, you know—George Grey—Captain Grey, you know.”
“Captain of a ship?” asked Lexy, with interest. She thought she would like to talk about ships.
“Oh, no!” said he, rather shocked. “Army—British army—stationed in India.”
“I knew you were an Englishman.”
“Did you really?” said he, as if surprised. “People do seem to know. My first visit to your country—six months’ leave—so I’ve come here to see my sister—Mrs. Quelton. She’s married to an American doctor.”
Lexy thought there was something almost pathetic in his chivalrous anxiety to explain himself.
“I’m Alexandra Moran,” she said.
“Thank you!” said Captain Grey. “Thank you very much, Miss Moran!”
There was no opportunity for further polite conversation, for the taxi had stopped and the driver came around to the door.
“Better make a run fer it!” he said. “I’ll take yer bags.”
So Captain Grey took Lexy’s arm, and they did make a run for it, through the fine, chilly rain, along a garden path and up on a veranda. The door was opened at once.
“Miss Royce?” asked Captain Grey.
“Mrs. Royce,” said the other. “Come right in. My, how it does rain!”
They followed her into a dimly lit hall. She opened a door on the right, and lit the gas in what was obviously the “best parlor”—a dreadful room, stiff and ugly, and smelling of camphor and dampness. Captain Grey remained in the hall to settle with the driver, and Lexy decided to let her share of the reckoning wait for a more auspicious occasion. She went into the parlor with Mrs. Royce.[Pg 327]
“You and your husband just come from the city?” inquired the landlady.
“He’s not my husband,” replied Lexy, with a laugh. “I never set eyes on him before. There was only one taxi, and we were both looking for a hotel. The driver said you took boarders, and that’s how we happened to come together.”
“I don’t take boarders much, ’cept in the summer time,” said Mrs. Royce. She was a stout, comfortable sort of creature, gray-haired, and very neat in her dark dress and clean white apron. She had a kindly, good-humored face, too, but she had a landlady’s eye. “People don’t come here much, this time of year,” she went on. “Nothing to bring ’em here.”
These last words were a challenge to Lexy to explain her business, and she was prepared.
“I passed through here the other day in a motor,” she said, “on my way to Adams Corners, and I thought it looked like such a nice, quiet place for me to work in. I’m a writer, you know, and I thought Wyngate would just suit me.”
“I was born and raised out to Adams Corners,” said Mrs. Royce. “Guess there’s no one living out there that I don’t know.”
“Then perhaps you know Miss Craigie?”
“Miss Margaret Craigie? I should say I did! If you’re a friend of hers—”
“Only an acquaintance,” said Lexy cautiously.
“Set down!” suggested Mrs. Royce, very cordial now. “I’ll light a nice wood fire. A writer, are you? Well, well! And the gentleman—I wonder, now, what brings him here!”
“He told me he’d come to see his sister,” said Lexy. “Mrs. Quelton, I think he said.”
“Quelton!” cried the landlady. “You didn’t say Quelton? Not the doctor’s wife?”
“Yes,” said the captain’s voice from the doorway. “Nothing happened to her, has there? Nothing gone wrong?”
Mrs. Royce stared at him with the most profound interest, and he stared back at her, somewhat uneasily.
“No,” said she, at last. “No—only—well, I’m sure!”
There was a silence.
“Could we possibly have a little supper?” asked Lexy politely.
“Yes, indeed you can!” said Mrs. Royce. “Right away!” But still she lingered. “Mrs. Quelton’s brother!” she said. “Well, I never!”
Then she tore herself away, leaving Lexy and Captain Grey alone in the parlor.
“Seems to bother her,” he said. “I wonder why!”
Lexy was also wondering, and longing to ask questions, but she felt that it wouldn’t be good manners.
“People in small places like this are always awfully curious,” she observed.
“Yes,” said he; “and Muriel may be a bit eccentric, you know. I rather imagine she is, from her letters. I’ve never seen her.”
“Never seen your own sister!”
Lexy would certainly have asked questions now, manners or no manners, only that Mrs. Royce entered the room again, to fulfill her promise to make a “nice wood fire.” Amazing, the difference it made in the room! The ugliness and stiffness vanished in the ruddy glow. It seemed a delightful room, now, homely and welcoming and safe.
“It’s real cozy here,” said Mrs. Royce, “on a night like this. I’m sorry the dining room’s so kind of chilly.”
“Oh, can’t we have supper here, by the fire?” cried Lexy. “Please! We’ll promise not to get any crumbs on your nice carpet, Mrs. Royce!”
“I guess you can,” replied the landlady benevolently.
And so it happened that the ancient magic of fire was invoked in Lexy’s behalf. Probably, if she and Captain Grey had had their supper in the chilly dining room, they would have been a little chilly, too, and more cautious. They might not have said all that they did say.
It was an excellent supper, and Captain Grey and Lexy thoroughly appreciated it. They ate with healthy appetites, and they talked. Mrs. Royce, from the kitchen, heard their cheerful, friendly voices, and their laughter, and she didn’t for one moment believe that they had never met before. Listening to them, she wore that benevolent smile once more, and felt sure that she had encountered a very charming little romance.
It was all Lexy’s doing. It was Lexy’s beautiful talent, to be able to create this atmosphere of honest and happycamaraderie. Before the meal was finished, Cap[Pg 328]tain Grey was talking to her as if they had known each other since childhood, and he didn’t even wonder at it. It seemed perfectly natural.
Mrs. Royce came in to take away the dishes.
“Going to set here a while?” she asked, looking at the two young people with a smile of approval. “I’ll bring in some more wood.” She hesitated a moment, and the landladyish glimmer again appeared in her eyes. “If it was me,” she observed, in the most casual way, “the fire’d be enough light. If it was me, now, I wouldn’t want that gas flaring and blaring away—and burning up good money,” she added, to herself.
“You’re right,” Lexy cheerfully agreed. “We’ll turn it down.”
The rain was falling fast outside, driving against the windows when the wind blew; and inside the young people sat by the fire, very content.
“Queer thing!” said Captain Grey meditatively. “Never been in this place before—never been in this country before—and yet it’s like coming home!”
“I know that feeling,” said Lexy. “I’ve had it before. I think only people who haven’t any real homes of their own ever have it.”
“But haven’t you any real home?” he asked, evidently distressed.
“No,” she answered; “but please don’t think it’s tragic. It’s not.”
“You haven’t impressed me as tragic,” he admitted.
Lexy laughed.
“Thank goodness!” she said. “I do want to keep on being—well, ordinary and human, even when outside things seem a little tragic.”
“Miss Moran!” he said, and stopped.
It was some time before he spoke again. Lexy took advantage of his abstraction to study his face by the firelight. When you come to understand it a little, it wasn’t a haughty face at all, but a very sensitive and fine one.
“Miss Moran!” he said again. “About being ordinary and human—of course, one wants to be that; but the thing is—I don’t know quite how to put it, but if you have a feeling, you know—I mean a feeling that something is wrong—” He paused again. “I mean,” he went on, “if you have a feeling like that—a sort of—well, call it uneasiness—the question is whether one ought to laugh at it, or take it as”—once more he stopped—“as a warning,” he ended.
A strange sensation came over Lexy.
“I’ve been thinking a good deal about that very thing lately,” she replied. “I believe feelings like thatarea warning. I’m sure it’s wrong—foolish and wrong—to disregard them. Even if every one else, even if your own mind tells you it’s all nonsense, you mustn’t care!”
“I think you’re right,” he gravely agreed. “I’ve been trying to tell myself that I’m an utter ass, but all the time I knew I wasn’t. I knew—I know now—that there’s something—”
An unreasoning dread possessed Lexy. She felt for a moment that she didn’t want to hear any more.
“I’d like to tell you about it, if you wouldn’t mind,” he said. “Somehow I think you could help.”
For an instant she hesitated.
“Please do tell me,” she said at length. “I’d be glad to help, if I can.”
“It’s this,” he said. “Do you mind if I smoke? Thanks!”
He took a cigarette case from his pocket. As he struck a match, she could see his face very clearly in the sudden flame; and, for no reason at all, she pitied him.
“It’s this,” he said again. “It’s about my sister.”
“The sister you’ve never seen?”
The sensation of dread had gone, and she felt only the liveliest interest. She wanted very much to hear about Captain Grey’s sister.
“It wasn’t quite true to say I’d never seen her,” he explained, in his painstaking way. “I have, you know; but not since I was six years old and she was a baby. Our mother died when Muriel was born, out in India. An aunt took the poor little kid to the States with her, and I stayed out there with my father.”
He drew on his cigarette for a minute.
“She’s twenty-one now,” he said. “Last picture I had of her was when she was fourteen or so. A pretty kid—a bit more than pretty—what you’d call lovely.”
He was silent for a little, staring into the fire.
“When I was at school in England, it was arranged that she was to come over; but she didn’t, and we’ve never met again. Twenty-one years—it’s a long time.”
“Yes, it is,” said Lexy gently, for something in his voice touched her.[Pg 329]
“We’ve written to each other, on and off. I’m not much good at that sort of thing, but I thought her letters were—well, rather remarkable, you know; but I dare say I’m prejudiced. She’s the only one of my own people left.”
“You poor, dear thing!” thought Lexy, with ready sympathy, but she did not say anything.
“Anyhow,” he presently continued, “I got an impression from her letters that she was rather an extraordinary girl. She was studying music—said she was going on the concert stage—awfully enthusiastic about it; and then she married this doctor chap. She never said much about him, only that she was very happy; but—well, I don’t believe that.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Anyhow, she was married about two years ago, and a few months after her marriage she began writing oftener—almost every mail. She was always wanting me to come over here and see her; and lately, in her last letters, I—somehow I fancied she wanted me rather badly. It—it worried me, so I arranged for leave. On the very day when I wrote that I would be coming over this month, I had a letter from her, asking me not to make any plans for coming this year. She said she’d taken up her concert work again, and would be too busy to enjoy the visit, and so on. I’d already made my plans, you see, so I went ahead. Then, about a fortnight later, after she’d got my letter, I suppose, I had a cable. ‘Don’t come,’ it said. I cabled back, but she didn’t answer.”
He looked anxiously at Lexy, but she said nothing. She sat very still, curled up in a big chair, staring into the fire with an odd look of uncertainty on her face.
“You know,” he went on, “I’ve tried to think that she was simply too busy, or something of that sort. But, Miss Moran, didn’t this woman’s manner rather make you think there was something a bit—out of the way?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Lexy, in a casual tone which very much disconcerted him.
“I’ve been making a fool of myself!” he thought, flushing. “Why the devil didn’t I keep my old-woman notions to myself? Now she’ll think—”
But Lexy was not thinking that Captain Grey was a fool. She was only very much afraid of being one herself, and was engaged in a severe struggle against this danger. That dread, that vague and oppressive dread, had come back, and she was fighting to throw it off. She wanted to be, shewouldbe, her own normal, cheerful self again, living in a normal, everyday world.
“All this about his sister, and about Caroline!” she thought. “It’s really nothing—nothing serious. Our both being here in Wyngate—that’s nothing, either. It’s just a coincidence. If the gas wasn’t turned down, I wouldn’t feel like this.”
She would have risen and turned up the gas, only that she was ashamed to do so. The fire was blazing merrily, shedding a ruddy light upon the homely room, the most commonplace room in the world. There was Captain Grey sitting there smoking—just an ordinary young man come to visit his sister. There was herself—just Lexy Moran, well fed and warm and comfortable, with more than a hundred dollars in a bag round her neck. She could hear Mrs. Royce moving about in the kitchen, humming to herself in a low drone.
“I willnotbe silly!” she told herself.
And just then a train whistled—a long, melancholy shriek. Lexy had a sudden vision of it, rushing through the dark and the rain. She had a sudden realization of the outside world, vast, lonely, terrible, stretching from pole to pole—forests, and plains, and oceans. The monstrous folly of pretending that everything was snug and warm and cozy! Things did happen—only cowards denied that.
“Captain Grey!” she cried abruptly. “What you’ve told me—it is queer; and it’s even queerer when I think what has brought me here to this little place. Both of us here, in Wyngate! I think I’ll tell you.”
And she did.
He listened in absolute silence to the tale of Caroline Enderby’s disappearance. Even after Lexy had finished, it was some time before he spoke.
“I’ll try to help you,” he said simply.
“Oh, thank you!” cried Lexy, with a rush of gratitude. She wanted some one to help her, and she could imagine no one better for the purpose than this young man. He would help her—she was sure of it. Even the fact of having told him most wonderfully lightened her burden. She gave an irrepressible little giggle.
“We have almost all the ingredients for a first-class mystery story,” she said; “ex[Pg 330]cept the jewel—the famous ruby, or the great diamond.”
“It’s an emerald, in this case,” said Captain Grey.
Lexy straightened up in her chair, and stared at him.
“You don’t really mean that?” she demanded. “There isn’t really an emerald?”
He smiled.
“I’m afraid it hasn’t much to do with the case—with either of the cases,” he said; “but there is an emerald—my sister’s.”
“It didn’t come from India?”
“It did, though!”
“Don’t tell me it was stolen from a temple! That would be too good to be true!”
“I’m sorry,” he said; “but as far as I know, it’s never been stolen at all, and its history for the last eighty years hasn’t been sinister. One of the old rajahs gave it to my grandfather—a reward of merit, you know. When my father married, it went to my mother. She never had any trouble with it. She never wore it, because she didn’t like it.”
“Why?”
“Well, you see, it’s an ostentatious sort of thing, and she wasn’t ostentatious.” He paused a moment. “My father told me, before he died, that he wanted Muriel to have it when she was eighteen; and so, three years ago, I sent it over to her.”
“But how?”
“You’re a good detective,” said he, smiling again. “You don’t miss any of the points. It was a bit of a problem, how to send the thing; but I had the luck to find some people I knew who were coming over here, and they brought it. So that’s that!”
“An emerald!” said Lexy. “This is almost too much! I think I’ll say good night, Captain Grey. I need sleep.”
As she followed Mrs. Royce up the stairs, she saw Captain Grey still sitting before the fire, smoking; and it was a comforting sight.
Lexy slept late the next morning. It was nearly nine o’clock when she opened her eyes. She lay for a few minutes, looking about her. The gray light of another rainy day filled the neat, unfamiliar little room, and outside the window she could see the branches of a little pear tree rocking in the wind.
“I’m here in Wyngate,” she said to herself. “I was bent on coming here to find Caroline; and now, here I am, and how am I going to begin?”
She got up, and washed in cold water, in a queer, old-fashioned china basin painted with flowers. She brushed her shining hair, and dressed, feeling more hopeful every minute.
“One step at a time!” she thought. “The first step was to come here; and the next step—well, I’ll think of it after breakfast. Perhaps Captain Grey will have thought of something.”
But Captain Grey had gone out.
“Jest a few minutes ago,” Mrs. Royce informed her. “He was down real early—around seven, and he waited and waited for you. At half past eight he et, and off he went.”
“Did he say when he’d be back?”
“No,” said Mrs. Royce. “He didn’t say much of anything. He’s a kind of quiet young man, ain’t he? Well, he’d ought to get on with his sister, then.”
“Is she very quiet?” asked Lexy.
“Quiet!” repeated Mrs. Royce. “Set down an’ begin to eat, Miss Moran. I’ve fixed a real nice tasty breakfast for you, if I do say it as shouldn’t. Corn gems, too. Mis’ Quelton quiet? I should say she was! Quiet as”—she paused—“as the dead,” she went on, and the phrase made an unpleasant impression upon Lexy. “An’ her husband, too. I never saw the like of them. They never come into the village, an’ nobody ever goes out there to the Tower. About twice a week the doctor drives into Lymeswell—the town below here—and he buys a lot of food an’ all, an’ he goes home. I can see him out of my front winder, an’ the sight of him, driving along in that black buggy of his—it gives me the shivers!”
“But if he’s a doctor—”
“Don’t askmewhat kind of doctor he is, Miss Moran! He don’t go to see the sick—that’s all I know.”
“But his wife—what is she like?”
“Miss Moran,” said the landlady, with profound impressiveness, “I guess there ain’t three people in Wyngate that’s ever set eyes on her!”
“But how awfully queer!”
“You may well say ‘queer,’”said Mrs. Royce. “There she stays, out in that lonely place—never seeing a soul from one month’s end to another. She’s a young woman, too—young, an’ just as pretty as a picture.[Pg 331]”
“Then you are—”
“I’m one of the few that has seen her,” said Mrs. Royce, with a sort of grim satisfaction. “That’s why I take a kind of special interest in her. I seen her the night the doctor brought her here to Wyngate a young bride. That’ll be three years ago this winter, but I remember it as plain as plain. There was a terrible snowstorm, and he couldn’t git out to his place, so he had to bring her here, and she sat right in this very room, just where you’re sitting.”
Instinctively Lexy looked behind her.
“I feel that same way myself—as if she was a ghost,” said Mrs. Royce solemnly. “Near three years ago, and her living only three miles off, an’ I’ve never set eyes on her again. I’ve never forgotten her, though, the sweet pretty young creature!”
“But why do you suppose she lives like that?”
Mrs. Royce came nearer.
“Miss Moran,” she said, “that doctor is crazy. I’m not the only one to say it. He’s as crazy—hush, now! Here’s that poor young man!”
The “poor young man” came into the room, with that very nice smile of his.
“Good morning!” he said. “I say, I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you a bit longer, Miss Moran.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” said Lexy. “I’d have felt awfully guilty.”
“I went out to telephone,” he explained. “Thought I’d tell Muriel I was here, you know; but they have no telephone. Dashed odd, isn’t it, for a doctor not to have a telephone in the house?”
“I don’t think he’s a real doctor—a physician, I mean,” said Lexy. She glanced around and saw that Mrs. Royce had gone. Springing up, she crossed the room to Captain Grey. “Has Mrs. Royce—has any one said anything to you?” she asked, almost in a whisper.
“No!” answered the young man, startled. “Why? What’s up?”
“Mrs. Royce says—I suppose I really ought to tell you.”
“No doubt about it!”
“Mrs. Royce says Dr. Quelton is crazy!”
Captain Grey took the news very coolly. Lexy observed that he suppressed a smile.
“Oh, that!” he said. “But you know, Miss Moran, in these little villages any one who’s at all out of the ordinary is called crazy. I’ve noticed it before. I can soon find out for myself, though, can’t I? I thought, if you didn’t want me this morning, I’d go over there—pay a call, you know. I understand it’s three miles from here, so I shouldn’t be very long. I’d come back here for lunch.”
“But, Captain Grey, you mustn’t think I expect you to—”
“It’s not that,” he said. “Only you said you’d let me help you in your little job, and I want to!” He smiled down at her. “So,” he said, “I’ll be back for lunch;” and off he went.
Lexy went to the window and looked out. She saw Captain Grey striding off up the muddy road, perfectly indifferent to the rain, and curiously elegant, in spite of his wet weather clothes. She was thinking of him with great friendliness and appreciation; but she was not thinking of him in the least as Mrs. Royce imagined she was thinking.
Mrs. Royce stood in the doorway, watching Lexy watch Captain Grey, smiling and even beaming with benevolence; but she would have been disappointed if she had suspected what was in Lexy’s head.
“He’s awfully nice,” thought Lexy, “and awfully handsome, and I’m certain that he’s absolutely trustworthy and honorable, but—”
But somehow he wasn’t to be compared to Mr. Houseman. She knew practically nothing about Mr. Houseman. She had talked with him for five or ten minutes in the park, and his conversation had been entirely about Caroline Enderby. He had shown himself to be quick-tempered and sadly lacking in patience. He had written Lexy a stiff, offended, boyish letter, and then he had disappeared. There was no sensible reason in the world why she should think of him as she did, no reason why she should hope so much to see him again; but she did.
“Well, now!” said Mrs. Royce, at last. “You’ll be wanting a nice quiet place for your writing.”
“Writing!” said Lexy. “I never—” She stopped herself just in time, remembering her shocking falsehood of the night before. “I never care much where I write,” she ended.
“Well, I’ve fixed up the sewing room for you,” said Mrs. Royce. “I’ve put a nice strong table in there with drawers, where you can keep your papers an’ all.”
“You’re a dear!” said Lexy warmly.[Pg 332]
She said this because she thought it, and without the least calculation. She liked Mrs. Royce, and when she liked people she told them so. That was what made people love her.
Mrs. Royce was completely won.
“I’m real glad to do it for you,” she said. “I won’t bother you, neither, while you’re working. I know how it is with writing. My cousin, now—her husband was writing for the movies, an’ he was that upset if he was disturbed!”
Still conversing with great affability, Mrs. Royce led the reluctant writer upstairs to the small room prepared for her, and shut her in. Lexy sat down in a chair before the workmanlike table, and grinned ruefully. She had said she was a writer, and now she had to be one.
“Well,” she reflected, “here’s a chance to write to Mr. Houseman, anyhow.”
She never had the least difficulty in writing letters. For one reason, she never bothered about them unless she had something to say, and then she said it, briefly and lucidly, and was done. She told Mr. Houseman all she knew about Caroline’s disappearance, and explained that she had gone out to Wyngate in the hope of picking up some trace of her.
“Of course,” she wrote, “I don’t know whether I’ll still be here when you get back. If I’ve gone, I’ll leave my address with Mrs. Royce, in case you should want to communicate with me.”
This was admirable, so far; but, reading it over, Lexy was not satisfied. She remembered the misery, the trouble and anxiety, in Mr. Houseman’s blue eyes. She imagined him sailing the seas, bitterly hurt because he thought Caroline had changed her mind. She thought of him coming back and getting this letter, to revive all his alarm for Caroline. This wasn’t, after all, a business letter. She took up her pen again, and added: