Munsey's Magazine/Volume 86/Issue 4/The Unwritten Story/Chapter 20
XX
The news struck Wyatt almost a knockout blow when, dropping around to police headquarters early next morning for what he might pick up on the blotter, his good friend Lieutenant Corrigan told him of the events on Beacon Hill.
Rather indifferently Wyatt had learned of a bootlegger being shot on Bulfinch Street, and of a negro fight in a house on Hammond Street, Roxbury. Even though the Hammond Street combat had possessed some rather unusual features, Wyatt had considered it beneath his notice. A chauffeur and a West Indian mulatto, it seems, had quarreled. The chauffeur had razored the mulatto so terribly that he was dying in the Massachusetts General Hospital; but the mulatto had put a bullet through the chauffeur's aorta, so that that worthy had bled to death even before the Dudley Street Station police had arrived.
The officers had found the house deserted, save for the dead man and the dying. It was a vulgar, commonplace affair. Its only odd touch had been the finding of a skull, blood-stained and grinning, in a corner behind a stove. Odd, yes—but, after all, only one more of the incomprehensible events of Boston's Little Africa. It had left Wyatt unmoved.
But the news from 42 A Beacon Street had struck him between the eyes and left him pale and gasping.
“What's the matter with you now?” Corrigan demanded with blank amaze. “Just because a queer old bird like that gets his? Of course, we're followin' up the skull. There was one stole from old Lockwood's lib'ary last night—maybe the same one, eh? We ain't identified the chauffeur yet, and the West Indies nigger's never come to enough so he can talk; but still we might hang somethin' on that skull, an'—sure, now, what's wrong? You're as white as paper, an'—”
Wyatt delayed to hear no more, but turned and fled.
Pemberton Square lies a scant third of a mile from the Lockwood mansion. Rarely had a taxi made better time for an equal distance in that section of Boston than did the one that Wyatt hailed as he ran out into the square.
As Wyatt scrambled out of the taxi, at his destination, and paid the chauffeur—stopping for no change—he saw indications that the murder was already known to at least some few. A little group had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the massive granite steps; and among them, at first glance, his heart sank at recognizing two or three of his confreres in the newspaper game.
Though the story had not yet “broken,” it being now too late for any of the morning sheets, he knew that before long special editions would flare with it. Terror possessed him—terror at thought of how this ghastly thing might crash on Disney Forrester. If the whole truth came out, abysmal depths of shame and misery would open before her feet. He had a sick mental vision of flaming headlines—“Imposture! Fraud!”—wrecking her life as well as her mother's.
For a moment he stood irresolute, looking up at the house of the purple-paned windows, whereat the others, too, were staring, as if through brick walls and close-drawn shades to fathom the grim tragedy within.
“Hello, Roddy, old boy!” he heard a voice. Turning, he saw Pete Lindley, of the Globe. “This is hot dog, isn't it? Looks like a big story was breaking here. You old buzzard, I see you're right on the carrion, every time!”
“What—what d'you know about this?” Wyatt demanded, trying for self-control, though his lips trembled. “What d'you know?”
“Nothing that I'll tell you!”
“He's a generous guy, Pete is!” laughed Rundlett, of the Herald; “and you might as well try to break into Gibraltar with a can opener as to get in here, but—”
Wyatt swung away from them and mounted the granite steps. His head felt queer and empty, his legs detached. With a shaking finger he pressed the electric button of the bell. He noted that it was slightly chipped, and wondered what had chipped it. Some one was calling out to him, but the bell engrossed his attention. Then, all at once, he found himself confronted by a policeman, who stood in the open doorway.
Wyatt started to walk in, but the representative of the law barred his entrance.
“What d' you want?”
“I'm a friend of the family.”
“They're all friends o' the family. Beat it, now!”
Disregarding the order, Wyatt caught the officer by his sleeve, and with a white intensity whispered:
“For God's sake, man, is Miss Forrester here? She—I—I'm going to marry her! I've got to know where she is!”
“Oh, that's it, eh?” exclaimed the officer, his Celtic heart softened by the vivid truth that outstood. “No, she ain't here, an'—but, well, come on in with ye!”
Wyatt slipped into the big hall, and the door quivered shut. Lindley, Rundlett, and one or two more of the profession were left outside, cursing, and wondering what magic word had been the open sesame.
“Where is she, officer?”
The Celt shrugged competent. shoulders.
“How would I know? Ye mean the old man's—”
'Granddaughter, yes. She's here?”
“She is not, then! How many times I got to tell ye the same thing?”
“Does she—know about this?”
“Sa-a-ay! What d'ye think I am—an information bureau? Ask the doctor!”
“Doctor?”
“Sure—Dr. Mayhew.”
The officer jerked a thumb at the stairway. A second, and Wyatt was racing up it. An incongruous figure of energy he made, in that silent house of death.
He swung, panting a little, into the library, and stopped short at sight of Dr. Mayhew's obese figure, as the old physician sat brooding before cold ashes in a hearth now fireless. Save for him, the library was empty. The coroner had come and gone. Gone, too, was the limp body that had lain upon the rug.
“Dr. Mayhew?”
The old man turned his head, and in rather a dazed way peered at this super-heated young man. Mayhew had aged ten years. The skin of his face hung baggy. His eyes were lackluster, vacant. No more would he play chess and drink tea with the friend of his whole lifetime. The hand of death, striking down Lockwood, had brushed him, too.
Still, at sight of this intruder, a little flame of anger burned in his glance.
“Who the devil are you?” he demanded. “I'll have no damned reporters—”
“Doctor, for Heaven's sake, tell me!” Wyatt entreated, advancing. “Disney—where is she? Does she know?”
“Disney! Rather familiar, aren't you, young man?”
“As if that mattered now! As if anything mattered, but keeping her from all the shock we can! Where is she?”
“Young man, there's a devil of a lot that matters besides that! You young cubs! Death has smitten this house, and yet all you think of is—”
“But don't you see?” Wyatt's hand quivered out in desperate appeal. “We've got to spare her, to protect her from—”
“You seem to have rather a close personal interest in Miss Forrester. You might at least introduce yourself!”
“I'm Rodman Wyatt, and if I'm not engaged to Disney, I—well, I don't know who is! So you see—”
“I see that you're as bad as a reporter, or worse; and God knows they're the most accursed breed that ever infested honest people's affairs!” The old doctor, quite out of breath with growing indignation, got up and obesely confronted Wyatt. “You and your dramatics!”
“Don't you see, doctor, it 'll be awful if the poor girl gets her first knowledge of this from the papers? If she ever finds out about—”
“Show some respect for the house of death, sir!”
“You seem to be in charge here now, doctor. Where's Mrs. Forrester? Can't I see her for a moment?”
“Bless my soul, sir, but you're as near insane as ever I saw a man!” the doctor ejaculated. “The house of death, I tell you! My best friend, Mr. Lockwood, lying dead in his bed, sir! His housekeeper paralyzed, liable to pass away at any minute—you're in a house of affliction, and this is no place for you and your foolish romancing. I know little where Miss Forrester is, and care less. You'd better take your departure at once, sir—at once, or I shall—”
“Wait a minute!” said a voice that Wyatt did not recognize, so different was it from the last time when he had heard it. “Wait, please!”
He turned, to find himself confronting Mrs. Forrester, who stood there in the library door. Altered as her voice was, her face showed even greater changes. Grief and horror and the profoundly devastating shocks of the past few hours had terribly engraved themselves upon it. Wyatt, who last remembered her as she had sat at a little tea table in the drawing-room, when he had come in for a cup with Disney before the fire, could not help starting at sight of her.
“Mrs. Forrester,” he began, “I realize that I'm intruding here. Words can't express my sympathy, but perhaps my actions can. I'm trying to find your daughter to keep her from knowing—all the truth. Where is she? You'll tell me, won't you?”
“Would you, if you were in my place?” she asked in a curiously toneless voice. “If this sort of thing had happened to you, and a reporter got into your house, would you—”
“What's that?” cried the old doctor. “This man a reporter? If he is, by Heaven, I'll soon have him out of here!”
“But you don't understand at all!” Wyatt protested. “I'm not trying to get a story. I'm trying, my God, to kill one—to keep the sensation of the year out of print; because, don't you see—”
“Damned strange kind of reporter!” Dr. Mayhew growled. “”rs. Forrester, do you know this fellow? Do you trust him?”
“If what he says is true, we've got to!”
“True?” cried Wyatt. “Of course it's true!”
“If he can—suppress certain things—if he can tell your daughter, first—” the doctor hesitated.
“It's what I'm not going to tell her that matters!” Wyatt drove his contention home, lowering his voice so that no word should reach the officer downstairs. “See here now! This is no time to beat round the bush. I've followed this affair from the very beginning, from the very first time Mr. Lockwood met Veazie; and when that unspeakable black scoundrel brought you here, Mrs. Forrester—”
“You knew I was an—impostor?”
“One of his victims, let's say.”
“Yes, but an impostor, too! God knows what hell it's been! I had to play the part, to keep him from—”
“Never mind! I know Veazie, so you needn't explain. What's past is past. Just one thing matters now—we've got to keep Disney from knowing it.”
“Keep her from knowing it?” exclaimed Mrs. Forrester, a shade paler. “Why, the whole world will know it!”
“Yes, once the damned reporters get hold of it!” the doctor cut in.
“They're not going to get hold of it,” insisted Wyatt, speaking with tense rapidity. “Who knows it? The housekeeper, Veazie, the doctor here, you, and I—that's five people. Miss Grush is silenced. Veazie—I'll fix him! The doctor—”
“I'm dumb as an oyster,” Mayhew asserted; “but not for your sake, Mrs. Forrester, nor for your daughter's, nor this young interloper's. It's my dead friend I'm thinking of now, and—”
“The motive doesn't matter,” Wyatt masterfully hurried on. “You're out, doctor; so then, Mrs. Forrester, that leaves just you and me. Wild horses wouldn't drag it out of me. As for you—”
“But I—I've got to tell her—don't you see? Even though he didn't make that new will he spoke about the last time you were here, and we're left penniless, I won't have such a deception on my conscience. I've got to tell her!”
“Why?”
“I've done wrong, and that's my punishment.”
“I know a greater one.”
“What could be greater?”
“Your silence!”
The woman stared at him for a moment with uncomprehending eyes, and then stammered:
“You—you mean—”
“I mean that that's the burden you've got to bear all the rest of your life. You've got to know that you've acted a lie, and never confess it. If you loved that girl one half as much as I do—yes, one-tenth—you'd understand!”
“Damn me, but the young scoundrel's right, at that!” exclaimed Dr. Mayhew. “The young Machiavelli! He's right, woman! For you to smash a girl's ideals, her faith in her mother—that's a blacker sin than any you've committed!”
For the space of five heartbeats Mrs. Forrester stood motionless, with eyes of pain that searched Wyatt's face. Then she nodded, whispering:
“Yes, yes—I understand!”