The Popular Magazine/Volume 30/Number 6/Undercurrents
Undercurrents
By Henry C. Rowland
Author of “The Apple of Discord,” “Footprints,” Etc.
(A Complete Novel)
CHAPTER I.
Breaking Away.
First, a word about my father. He was genial but selfish, and, though strong as an ox, he placidly refused to contribute to the support of his family. In addition to supporting him, I had to support an invalid sister and an aimless, irresponsible brother, who worked at long intervals, but invariably lost each position through what father was pleased to describe as “constitutional inertia.”
How I was able to provide for this helpless family would take too long in the telling. Enough to say that, thanks to a powerful physique and a natural talent for mechanics, I did accomplish it, and managed to educate myself as a mechanical and hydraulic engineer besides. My father was very proud of me, and liked to hold forth to his friends on the abilities of his son, which he was pleased to consider as an inheritance from himself. It was a singular fact that nobody ever seemed to expect of father any effort beyond his edifying conversation. He came of a race of scholars, and was himself a polished, scholarly man, finely educated, well read, and he had spent fifteen years of his life in the United States consular service. The death of his political godfather retired him with the next change of administration, and he returned home at the age of fifty to renew his acquaintance with his motherless children for whose provision he had made arrangements with a relative. He had managed to save three or four thousand dollars, probably through the impossibility of spending it where he had last been stationed on the Persian Gulf, and with this he rented a small cottage where for a year we lived happily enough.
His money gone, father made one or two sporadic efforts to write for different journals and periodicals. Then, finding that by strict economy the family could live upon my earnings—for I had shown a precocious talent for mechanics, and, being huge for my age, had at fifteen the sole charge of a pumping station—he relapsed into a life of graceful ease, piecing out our scant income by the occasional sale of some special article. My sister had not yet been obliged to go to the sanitarium, and was able to assist with the housework. She broke down several years later and at about the same time my inefficient Brother Charles married a penniless young woman and proceeded to acquire a family. Driven to the wall, they came to live with us, bringing with them the wife's father, an amiable dotard, who pottered about our little garden.
At this time I was twenty-five and practically the sole support of the entire family. I had even managed to save a little, as through friends of my father I had secured a good position from the city council which did not prevent a considerable amount of private work. But this small fund soon faded and disappeared.
I cannot say that I had ever felt inclined to rebel at the burden which for sixteen years I had been obliged to carry. This drudging for others had got to be a second nature. Work was never lacking, and I was sufficiently well paid for it to make both ends meet and maintain the household with decency and a few minor comforts. Our city was a prosperous and growing one, and it is even possible that if I had possessed any marked business ability I might in time have been able to undertake in addition to present responsibilities the support of a wife and children of my own. But our family came of professional and scientific forbears; doctors, clergymen, men of letters, and there was no record of any financial ability. Even then I might have got ahead if only I could have had a little capital at my command.
In the matter of a trolley line on which I did most of the work and afterward a big land reclamation work, had I been able to take stock instead of money for my compensation I might have found myself in easy circumstances not many years later. But money was the pressing need. All went in rent and food and clothing, and when at thirty years of age I paused to take stock of my position, it was practically no better than it had been ten years before. I had been unable to save a cent, which was the more discouraging as the opportunities for the investment of a little capital were being brought constantly to my attention, and I felt that with even five thousand dollars I might yet win clear.
About this time the city was completing the construction of a big building, one floor of which was to be equipped as a public library and reading room. For this a librarian would be required, also a superintendent for the building itself. As I stood well with the party then in office, I quietly set about securing these two positions for my father and Charles, which in consideration of certain political services rendered, as well as a friendly feeling, I had no great difficulty in doing. Both positions were sufficiently well paid, and it seemed to me that if I had had the opportunity of choosing occupations for these two members of my family, I could not have imagined anything more suited to their tastes and abilities. Father was, as I have said, a scholarly man, fond of books and the discussion of books. Charles was possessed of no mean executive ability, and, as I had often discovered, enjoyed directing the work of others. These two positions would have made them both quite independent of me and enabled me to get the start for which I had worked so hard in vain.
Will you believe it when I say that both declined these positions which I had used all of my diplomacy to secure? Father protested mildly that he was too old to take up any active occupation, and that he feared the confinement indoors would prove injurious to his health. Charles objected on the ground that the management of a modern office building—for some of the upper stories were to be devoted to. city and private office suites—was a position which required a considerable technical knowledge which he did not possess, and that also he feared that he lacked: the qualities necessary for the enforcement of discipline over those beneath him. He was at this time engaged in a futile effort to invent a nonpuncturable automobile tire. Both seemed rather hurt at my effort to get them steady and remunerative work.
But it was here that the worm turned.
“Very well,” I answered quietly, “in that case, you will all have to get along as best you can for the next two years without my support. I am going away.”
They stared at me, father in dismay and plucking at his beard in a senile fashion which his years and physical strength did not warrant; Charles with a sort of disbelieving resentment.
“Douglas, my boy,” father exclaimed, “you can't be serious!”
“I am, though, dad,” I answered. “I've been doing some pretty hard thinking, and I've come to the conclusion that this thing can't go on. I am thirty years old and no farther ahead than I was ten years ago. With our present expenses, it is impossible for me to put anything aside, and I must have a little capital or make up my mind to stick to the treadmill for the rest of my life.”
“Ah, Douglas,” said father, in a hollow voice, “you will not be burdened with the support of your old dad for very much longer.”
“What good is it going to do you to go away, Douglas?” asked Charles. “You've got a good thing here with the city—and, I must say, I think it's pretty tough to double cross me just when I need some help in promoting my tire?”
“Then you'll have to get it somewhere outside,” I answered. “As for my object in going away, I got a letter from Professor Denton the other day, telling me of an American concern that wants a good hydraulic engineer to build a plant for placer mining in the Mazaruni gold fields. They've had three down there in the last four months, and they have all died of fever.”
“Good Lord!” father exclaimed. “You don't mean to say that you contemplate risking your life in such a pesthole as that?”
“The pay is ten thousand dollars a year, and all found,” I answered. “In two years, if I live, I'll be able to come back with a bit of capital. Then, if some more of these good things come along such as I've had to let go by for the last ten years, I'll be in a position to profit by them, as most of my friends have done.”
“But how are we to get along without you, Douglas?” father asked; “and how about Miriam?”
“I have enough in hand to pay up Miriam's expenses at the sanitarium for the next year,” I answered. “After that, you and Charles will have to look after her until I get back.”
“But how are we”
“There are these two positions I've worked and sweated and pulled wires for the last three months to get you,” I answered. “Take them or leave them. I've done my part for sixteen years, dad. Now it's up to you and Charles to help me out for a couple of years, at least. I've never kicked before, because there never seemed to be any work that either of you would care to tackle. But these two jobs are unusually good ones. The hours are easy, the work light, and both are well paid. Positions like them are usually given as a sort of reward for past services to people who have worked for the party.”
Father shook his head. “That alone would be enough to deter me, Douglas,” he said. “You know we have never agreed in our political opinions.”
I turned to my brother. “How about you, Charles?” I asked.
“Oh, I might try it,” he answered doubtfully; “but I don't believe that I could give satisfaction. Inventing things is more my line.”
“All right,” I answered, rising, “then you can get to work and invent some way of taking care of the family until I get back.”
And I went out to send a telegram to the Mazaruni Gold Mining & Development Co.
CHAPTER II.
A Million at Stake.
The thirty-six hours of train travel to New York gave me the first uninterrupted opportunity for thought which I had had for many a day. I cannot say that I enjoyed it. My leave-taking had been something in the nature of that of a shipmaster who abandons his dismasted vessel and the folk aboard her for whose safety he is responsible, putting off in the only boat to seek succor on some vague and distant shore.
This was the feeling with which my family had subtly managed to inspire me, and their manner of doing so had proven to me that there existed in their hearts not one slightest atom of gratitude or appreciation for my efforts of many past years; no more, in fact, than might be found in the heart of a spoiled child for the sacrifices of loving parents. The reason was plain enough: They had grown accustomed for so long a time to my efforts in their behalf that their imaginations were unable to picture anything different. They took it for granted that I should continue to provide for them as I had always done, and anything different on my part seemed to them monstrous, cruel, and undeserved.
Casting backward in my mind I could see that I had made a great mistake. I had pauperized these people who were the nearest and dearest to me. And it seemed to me that I had gained nothing for myself in doing it. In many ways, I was as ignorant as a Georgia “cracker”; in some, more so. I had never been five hundred miles from my birthplace. I had never seen the ocean. Pleasures of almost every sort were totally unknown to me, except by hearsay. There had never been any woman in my life. I had scarcely ever tasted liquor. I had never smoked.
Life for me had been nothing more than the steady grind of work, and there had been the urgent need at home for every penny earned. I had become a working machine, as grim and dogged and persistent as a steam drill. My immediate circle of acquaintances respected but did not love me. Many people considered me mean to the point of stinginess. I had joined no lodge or club or fraternity, nor did I ever enter a church. I had avoided everything of a social character which entailed the avoidable necessity of spending a cent.
My only personal expenditures had been for food and clothes. I made it a point to eat well and to dress well, for these things I considered in the light of profitable investments. My professional work finished, I went home and dug in the garden, silent but not morose. I was too healthy ever to be morose.
In the evenings I had often sat and listened to my father's descriptions of his travels and experiences, though without any great amount of interest, as these things had always seemed so far removed from the conditions of my own life. I liked also to shoot and fish, but usually went alone, these outings seeming justifiable as they freshened my mind and were usually attended with success in the matter of our larder.
In fact, I had been from boyhood rather a silent, solitary person, and my family were secretly afraid of me. There had been at times certain girls and women who had tried to “draw me out,” but these invariably grew discouraged after a certain period of vain effort. I had often wondered why, because I liked the society of women and was never unresponsive. Perhaps it was because I never accepted invitations, nor offered any.
My chief enjoyment, I think, had been in books, these for the most part histories, or the biographies of successful men. I was also a great reader of newspapers. Looking back, I can see that between the ages of twenty and thirty my one absorbing aim and ambition was to improve my condition, mentally and financially, and by my financial condition I mean principally that of the people dependent on me.
It was in a thoroughly bitter frame of mind that I arrived in New York. In fact, I had been in a bitter mood from the time that I had decided to go to British Guiana and build their plant for the American syndicate, and this emotion had been fomented even more by my leave-taking with my family. But if they had been taught to depend upon me, so had it also become a part of my nature to be depended upon. After all, as I thought it over, I was evidently destined for one of the workers in the hive, though the parallel ceased before the stinging of the drones.
On reaching New York, I went immediately to the offices of the Mazaruni company, where I was received by the secretary, a crisp, straightforward Englishman, who was thoroughly informed from personal knowledge of the conditions which existed at my proposed field of labor. He made no attempt to conceal from me the drawbacks of work in the gold fields.
“A white man might be able to stick on there by exercising the greatest precautions,” he told me; “but so far it has cost the lives of three of our chief engineers, while two others bolted down the river and got away alive, though in pretty rotten shape.”
“A sort of malaria?” I asked.
“Yes, and other beastly things. The soil appears soaked full of miasmatic poisons, and the minute it's disturbed they get in their work. The labor consists of negroes, supposedly immune, and East Indian coolies, and 'red' Indians, as they call the aborigines down there. They all get bowled over, more or less. On the other hand, I spent six weeks there myself, and never had a touch of anything, but I was jolly careful about the night air, and keeping dry, and my drinking water and mosquito nets and all that sort of thing. None of our men had your physique, Mr. Walcott, and I fancy their habits weren't of the best. A man's tempted to drink in that stew pan, and if he does it's all up with him. I never touched anything but tea while I was there, and that may have had something to do with it. You see, I'm not holding anything back. My conscience wouldn't let me send a man down there without giving him due warning. What are your reasons for wanting to tackle it, if you don't mind my asking?”
Finding him so friendly and honestly disposed, I told him precisely how I was situated. He glanced at me curiously once or twice, and the expression of his face was more of a compliment than anything he could have said.
“I see,” said he briefly, when I had finished. “Well, then, go ahead and tackle it, if you like. And if you care to have a six months' advance, I think that it can be managed. We know all about you, Mr. Walcott. Professor Denton told us of how you went down through that cañon prospecting for the feeder tunnel; also, how you got your men out of that cave-in, standing there chucking clay into the blow-outs with the pressure jumping from one atmosphere to four every other minute. You're the man for us, if you care to take it on.”
So the matter was arranged, and I spent the afternoon with him and a couple of engineers going over the plans and specifications for the plant. This was the fifteenth of May, and my steamer was to sail at ten o'clock the morning of the seventeenth. Mr. Stuart, the secretary, was obliged to leave for Chicago the next morning, so he wished me good-by and good luck, and before I left handed me a check for five thousand dollars, my first: six months' advance. This I was very glad to have, as it was my intention to send it to a friend at home, a bank president, with instructions to hold it in reserve and to draw upon it only in the case of my people falling into actual want.
It was in a pretty depressed frame of mind that I went back to my hotel, although I was at the same time conscious of a sort of apathy which dulled other emotions. I felt immeasurably tired, discouraged, and strangely indifferent. The fact that I was consigned for the next two years to a fever-ridden jungle where no white man had been able to survive the climate for more than a few brief months said nothing to me. To tell the truth, I did not greatly care whether I should survive it myself or not. I was tired.
The accumulated fatigue of many years of grinding work with no play seemed suddenly to heap itself on my shoulders with a crushing weight. There was no reason to suppose that I would be able to support the climate of the Mazaruni any better than had my predecessors who, although lacking perhaps in my physique, had been men, so Mr. Stuart told me, more or less seasoned to the tropics. But I did not care. If I went under, then my family would have to do as other people without resources have been compelled to do, and if I were able to see the job through, it meant a start in life and a brighter prospect for us all.
Mr. Stuart had intimated that if I succeeded the company would undoubtedly see fit to pay me a premium in their stock, over and above my pay, and he assured me that once the hydraulic system was in operation this stock might speedily attain a value impossible to estimate, as the formation was unquestionably one of the richest in the world. It was at least a consolation to feel that I should be working for an honest and liberal concern.
I slept like a log that night, and, having all of the following day at my disposal, I rose early and, after a good breakfast, went out to look about the city. It was a gorgeous morning, bright and mild, and the car which I boarded at random brought me presently to Central Park. Wishing to see a little of the city's playground, I got down, and, following the first path which I struck, I strolled past some little lakes and came out on a broad driveway, where I dropped on a bench in the sun to glance at the morning paper.
There were few people in the park at that hour. An occasional motor car sped past, and now and then a couple on horseback cantered along the equestrian path on the other side of the driveway, or it might be some portly gentleman with his hat crammed down to his ears pounding by on a hard trot for the sake of his liver.
There was already the odor of spring in the air, and presently a big gray squirrel approached my bench in graceful bounds, pausing occasionally to sit up and survey me questioningly. I laid down my paper, and watched him, wondering at the same time how I should spend my day. I had absolutely nothing to do, as Mr. Stuart had told me that I could buy such few things as I might happen to need much better in Georgetown than in New York, and for about a quarter of the price.
I was just about to stroll on when I saw approaching slowly and close to the curb a long touring car, in which were a gentleman and lady and a chauffeur. The chauffeur had turned in his seat, and appeared to be talking excitedly to the man in the tonneau, who was of middle age, with a pale, saturnine face and a black mustache and Vandyke beard shot with gray. Even at the distance of a hundred yards or more I could see that there was some violent dispute between him and the chauffeur, for he was gesturing angrily with his gloved hand, while the pallor of his face looked as if it might be due to anger and excitement. The woman, who was veiled, sat very straight and rigid, her hands clasped tightly in front of her.
As it approached the place where I sat, the car moved slower and. slower, the driver steering with one hand and throwing occasional, swift glances ahead, then turning again to resume his discussion with the man behind him at whom he kept thrusting his flattened hand, palm downward, and as though to drive in his remarks. His face was crimson, his pointed under jaw thrust out, and his smooth-shaven mouth set in a sort of snarl.
Almost abreast of me he snapped about in his seat, reached for his speed lever, then switched off the current and leaped down to the curb. I thought for a moment that he was going to strike the older man, and I raised a little on my bench. At the same moment his words reached me distinctly, now that the hum of the motor had ceased.
“Say,” said he, “I got enough o' you—see? I got your number, all right, all right. Say, if you wasn't such a slabsided old skate, d'ye know what I'd do for you? I'd hand you one on the smeller, that's what! Now you can take your car and go to , that's what you c'n do!” And, turning on his heel, he strode off toward the city in the direction from which the car had come, and passed me muttering curses.
The two in the car sat perfectly still for a moment, the man gnawing at the edge of his mustache, and the girl's hands moving nervously. The man rose to his feet and looked around, his eyes resting for a moment on me. He drew out his watch, glanced at it, and gave an impatient exclamation. What had happened seemed plain enough; he had quarreled with his chauffeur, and the latter, with the independence of his class, had stopped the car and gone off in a rage, leaving his employer to get out of the difficulty as best he might.
An Eastern man in my position would probably have sat still and minded his own business, but I came of a section where it was the custom to offer assistance to anybody in trouble without waiting to be asked. I understood motors, and was accustomed to drive the big machine which belonged to the engineers' department of my city. So without hesitating longer, I got up and walked to where the car was standing.
“I beg your pardon,” said I; “perhaps I can be of some service to you.”
The man gave me a quick, keen look. His face was not a pleasant one, the nose being long and sharp and the eyes cold, light in color, and rather watery. His mouth, too, looked thin-lipped and cruel under its thin fringe of gray mustache. It was a shrewd, intelligent face, and its general lines suggested the unscrupulous. money getter; the forecloser of mortgages, and general commercial vulture.
He did not answer immediately, and, a little embarrassed, I glanced at the woman. Her light veil was doubled, with the sun striking full upon it, and all that I could see of her features was a pair of intense blue eyes which seemed to burn through the veil. Yet for some reason I felt sure that she was young and very pretty. The general shape of her head and face seemed to indicate it.
“Our chauffeur has left us in the lurch,” said the man, in a harsh, whining voice.
“That's the way it looked to me,” I answered. “If you are in any hurry I'll drive you to the nearest garage, and you can get somebody to take you where you want to go.”
His face struggled for a pleasanter expression, which I liked less than his former one, as it gave him a look which reminded me of a treacherous collie which smirks a little before it snaps.
“You are very kind,” said he. “That would be a great service—a very great service. You must know, sir, that I am a surgeon and on my way to perform an important operation on a patient who lives some way out in the suburbs. Most unfortunately, I lost my temper with my chauffeur for his slovenly manner of driving. The fellow resented what I said to him, with this result.”
“If that's the case,” I answered, for what he told me put quite a different face on the matter, “you might as well let me take you to where your patient lives.”
He shot me a quick, almost suspicious look. It seemed to me, too, that the woman moved uneasily.
“Would it not be an inconvenience?” he asked.
“Not in the least,” I answered. “I am merely a transient in New York, and sailing to-morrow morning for South America, where I have some engineering work to do. I have nothing on my hands for to-day.”
His face appeared to lighten. “In that case,” said he, “I shall not hesitate to avail myself of your very kind offer.”
I nodded, and, switching on the current, started the motor. The car was of a type familiar to me, and a moment later we were gliding swiftly toward the upper end of the park, the surgeon leaning forward occasionally to indicate the route.
Not being familiar with the locality, I would be unable to describe the course we took, but before long the city gave way to rather pretty suburbs thickly settled, with new and attractive villas, and I caught an occasional glimpse of what I correctly judged to be the beginning of Long Island Sound. The car was high-powered, smooth-running, and I drove as fast as was prudent; and before long the country grew more open and the towns farther apart. The surgeon, leaning forward, told me that we had not much farther to go. A little later we turned sharply to the right and took a road which appeared to lead toward the Sound.
The last town was perhaps a mile and a half behind us when all at once the motor began to miss. For a brief moment or two it fired erratically, then stopped. I turned to the side of the road and braked gently, then looked back.
“What's the matter?” asked the surgeon sharply.
“Sounds like a lack of gasoline,” I answered, and got down to investigate. Sure enough, the tank was empty.
Under the circumstances, I could scarcely blame the man for being angry, but the look of his white, vindictive face as he got out of the car was nothing short of murderous. It was one of those pale, quiet rages which are all the more ominous for their stillness. For a moment he stood gnawing at his straggling mustache with his yellow teeth, then glanced at his watch.
“I am nearly an hour late, now,” said he. “The place is only about a mile farther on. I shall walk. Might I trouble you still more by asking you to try to get some gasoline and follow me as soon as possible? My instruments and dressings are in that box on the back of the car.”
“Certainly,” I answered, “but it may take a little time, as the town is some distance back. However, somebody is apt to pass with a rig of some sort, and, if so, I'll ask them to take on your things if you will give me the address. They could scarcely refuse in a case like this.'
He nodded. “That is a good idea. Perhaps I may get a lift, myself. The patient is a Mr. Millsboro, and his residence is the first big place straight down this road on the end of the point.” He turned to the woman. “You had better wait and come with the car,” said he, and with another word of thanks to me he slipped out of his fur-lined coat, threw it into the tonneau, and started off briskly down the road.
The woman had not spoken a word, and as I looked up at her she raised her veil and drew it back over the brim of her hat. I saw that I had been right in thinking that she was pretty, though this is scarcely the word to describe the pale, intense face that was turned to me. Neither could it have been called beautiful, according to any of the usual standards of feminine charm. It was an unusual face, and might have belonged to a very handsome, high-spirited boy, with widely spaced eyes of so dark a blue that for the moment they looked black, a short, well-shaped nose, and a mouth of singular firmness. I had never seen a woman's face which appealed to me more, but my first glance showed me that the girl—for she could not have been more than twenty-three—was in a state of downright terror. There was no mistaking the strained, almost wild, look about her eyes, and when she tried to speak her lips trembled so that she had difficulty in forming her words.
“What's the matter?” I exclaimed, and stepped to the door of the car.
“Has he gone?” she whispered, and her voice was dry and shaking.
“Yes,” I answered. “What is it?”
She drew in her breath deeply, then let it out with a sort of shudder.
“He—he mustn't perform that operation!” Her voice was almost a whisper.
“Why not?” I asked.
She twisted about and glanced over her shoulder. The surgeon had disappeared around a bend. She turned to me again.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Walcott,” I answered, “and I am a hydraulic engineer. What are you so frightened about?”
She seemed to hesitate, and at the same moment there came the jingle of a bell and I looked around to see a young fellow in working clothes coming around the bend on a bicycle. I stepped out into the road and raised my hand. He drew up and slipped down from his wheel.
“Do you want to earn a dollar?” I asked.
“Don't mind,” he answered. “What's the trouble?”
“We've run out of gasoline. Can you ride on to the town and get me a couple of gallons?”
“Sure.”
I gave him the money, and he mounted and went on. Then I turned to the girl. She appeared to have pulled herself together and was staring at me intently.
“Well,” said I, “if I can be of any service to you”
“You can,” she answered, “if only you will.”
“I'll do anything in reason,” I answered, a little shortly, having always had a dislike of theatrical business.
“Then,” said she, leaning forward, “as soon as that boy comes back with the gasoline I want you to turn the car around and take me back to the city as fast as you can.”
I stared at her for a moment, then shook my head.
“Not unless you tell me why,” I answered. “How about this patient?”
“Doctor Feldsburg must not operate,” she said. “Listen. I have good reason to suppose that he does not intend that Mr. Millsboro shall recover from the operation.” And she leaned back, breathing rapidly.
“You are making a mighty serious charge,” said I slowly.
“Don't you suppose that I know it?” Her voice was almost shrill. It was plain enough that her nerves were stretched to the point of snapping. “Won't you take my word for it?” she cried.
“I have no doubt that you believe what you say,” I answered; “but it's a pretty serious thing to ask me to run off with the man's car and all of his surgical gear. What if the patient were to die?”
“He is less apt to die if he is not operated on,” she retorted. “Mr. Millsboro is a man of seventy, and he has been in the condition that he is now for two weeks. Oh”—she threw out her hands with a sort of desperation—“I wonder if I ought to tell you?”
“Do as you think best,” I answered, and added, after a moment's pause: “But you will have to tell me a good deal more than you already have if you want me to do what you ask.”
She looked at me fixedly, and as I watched her closely I could see that she was not thinking of what I had just said; was scarcely thinking at all, for that matter, but seemed to be concentrating all of her will on the effort to contain herself; to check an all but uncontrollable breakdown. Her mouth, which for all of its firmness had an indescribable sweetness of expression, quivered, and as she stared tensely, looking at but evidently scarcely seeing me, her eyes suddenly filled.
There was something terribly pathetic in this silent struggle, and it seemed to inspire me with a sense of protectiveness such as I had never felt before. Whatever the situation, it was plain enough that the girl was suffering, bravely and silently and hopelessly, too. Moreover, I judged that she had been for some time under a nervous strain, for there were dark rings under her eyes, and her features seemed to tell of many days and nights passed with little food or rest.
“You had better tell me, I think,” said I gently. “A good many people have brought their troubles to me at different times, and I do not know of anybody who ever regretted it.”
The effect of my words was startling. Her tears gushed over. She caught her breath in a little strangled sob, then recovered herself with an effort, and a tinge of color crept into her cheeks.
“You'll think me a hysterical fool,” said she, “but I've been so awfully worried and with nobody that I could ask for help. I don't know anybody here. I'm a trained nurse, and this is my first private case. I'm going to tell you everything—if I may. You're strong, and you're good. Anybody could see that you are good. Perhaps you were sent to help me.”
“Perhaps,” I answered. “My mission in life seems to have been to help people.”
“So has mine. I've had an awful time. You see, my people are terribly poor, and I've always had to take care of them—since I was a little girl. We live out West. I've been only three weeks here in the East. I came in answer to an advertisement of Doctor Feldsburg. He is a terrible man—and his son is even worse. If I'd known what they were, I should never have come”
“But about this operation business,” I interrupted gently, for the girl was almost incoherent as she rambled on.
“Yes. Doctor Feldsburg has this poor old man absolutely in his power; under his influence. His son hypnotizes him, I think. Now, this is what happened: Mr. Millsboro is worth I don't know how many millions, and is an old bachelor with no immediate family. A week ago he decided to make a will, and Doctor Feldsburg came out here with a lawyer. The will was made, and immediately afterward Doctor Feldsburg and the lawyer, who seemed to be a decent sort of man, came out of the room and sent for me. You can imagine my surprise when they both began to congratulate me, and told me that Mr. Millsboro, having no direct heirs, had left me a million dollars!”
“Good Lord!” I exclaimed.
“Yes. They told me that he had done this from appreciation of my care of him and his high regard for my character and a lot of the same sort. Of course, I was dumfounded, for, while he had always been very kind, he had never seemed to show any especial interest in me.”
She paused to stare at me questioningly.
“Go on,” I said; “what then?”
“I couldn't believe it. But they showed me the will, and I had heard and read of such cases, so naturally I was tremendously excited. I went in to thank Mr. Millsboro for what he had done, but he seemed dazed and unable to understand what I was talking about. When I told this to Doctor Feldsburg, he shrugged his shoulders and said that the old gentleman was very weak, and that the fatigue of making the will had been too much for his strength. He told me to go in and give him an injection of strychnine, which I did. He also told me, after the lawyer had left, not to say anything more about the will, as he did not want the patient to be reminded of his low condition.”
“I think that I begin to understand,” said I. “What then?”
“What do you think that you understand?” she asked quickly.
“I'll tell you later. Go ahead.”
“Well, two days later, Doctor Feldsburg with his son and another doctor whose name is Ratznoff came out at about half past two. At three I was to give Mr. Millsboro his medicine, and just as I was pouring it out the three of them came into the room. I did not know that they were in the house. Doctor Feldsburg, seeing me with the glass in my hand, took it from me and held it to the light.
“'What is that?' he asked, in a sharp voice. “I told him that it was the medicine he had ordered. He gave me a peculiar look which I didn't understand; then tasted the medicine and poured it back into the bottle.
“'I don't think that is precisely what I ordered,' said he, and looked at me again.
“His manner was so queer that I got embarrassed, and very likely showed it. The other two doctors seemed a little puzzled, too.
“Doctor Feldsburg gave me another odd look, and said: 'We will discontinue all medication for the present, Miss Stanley,' and then all three of them examined the patient and went out.
“Of course, I was confused, and did not know what to think. A little later a maid came in and said that Doctor Feldsburg wished to see me. All three of them were in the library, and there was something in their expressions that frightened me.”
“You poor child!” said I, and dropped my hand for a second on the back of hers. I was pretty well able to guess at what was coming. Her face lightened at my touch, and for the first time I realized that the girl was actually lovely.
“You can imagine my feelings,” she went on, “when Doctor Feldsburg told me that as I seemed to be getting rather overtired and nervous he had decided to relieve me from the case and that he had telephoned for another nurse, who would be out in a couple of hours. He added—and it seemed to me with a sort of sneer—that as I was now a prospective heiress there was really no necessity for my continuing to wear myself out.
“By this time I was too upset and bewildered to say anything, so I went back with him in his car to New York, where he left me at a nurses' home. He told me to say nothing about the case, but to come to his office the following day at five, as he wanted to talk with me.”
“Shall I tell you what he said the next day?” I asked.
Her blue eyes opened wide.
“What do you mean?”
“I'll tell you directly,” I answered. “Here comes our man with the gasoline,”
CHAPTER III.
The Easiest Way.
When I had filled the tank and sent off the workman, glad to have earned a dollar so easily—for he had not had to go all the way back to the town after the gasoline—I said to Miss Stanley:
“The case is plain enough. These scoundrelly Feldsburgs have rigged up what crooks call a 'plant.' They induced the old gentleman to make a will in your favor, then doctored the medicine which you were to give him, probably dosing it with some poison which, while not strong enough to have killed him immediately, might have done for him if continued for several days. Then Feldsburg brings in an outside physician, who no doubt had nothing to do with the plot, and in his presence takes the medicine out of your hand as you were about to administer it. He tells this doctor about the will, and asks him to have the medicine analyzed. This is done, and the result of the analysis incriminates you. Now, he does not intend that Mr. Millsboro shall recover, and when he dies and you come in for the money he means to blackmail you, probably to the tune of half the inheritance; maybe more.”
“You are a good detective, Mr. Walcott,” said the girl unsteadily. Her eyes had never left my face as I talked.
“One doesn't need to be much of a detective to see through the devilish business,” I answered. “Now, tell me the rest of it.”
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. A good deal of the fright had gone out of her face, and her square little chin was set in a way that I was glad to see, for it told me that in spite of her horror at the position in which she found herself there was plenty of fight in her as well as fear. As I realized what she must have suffered, I felt like sitting down beside her and soothing her as one might a plucky, frightened child. Poor girl! There had been nobody to whom she dared turn.
“You see,” I said, to give her a little more time, “these two devils naturally have not dared to use their influence on the old man for their own direct advantage, inasmuch as they had charge of the case. They needed a cat's-paw.”
She nodded. “When I went to see Doctor Feldsburg the next day,” said she, “I was shown into his consulting room, where he and his son, Doctor Lorenz Feldsburg, were sitting. Doctor Lorenz is even more awful than his father. He is a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a very white skin and a black beard and mustache. His eyes always sent shudders through me, they are so big and brilliant and always moving from place to place until he speaks to you. Then they fix and glow. He is like a black panther, and he walks about with no more noise than a cat. As soon as I came in Doctor Feldsburg shut the door, then offered me a chair.
“His manner was very quiet; gentle, almost. He began by telling me that he had learned something of my circumstances and knew that the temptation to a woman in my position must have been a tremendous one. He told me that the analysis of the draft which he and Doctor Ratznoff had found me in the act of giving to Mr. Millsboro showed the presence of phosphorus, which, if taken through a period of several days, would have caused death from a fatty degeneration of different internal organs. He asked me where I had got the idea of administering phosphorus.”
I must have moved restlessly, for she paused and looked at me with a white, strained face.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I scarcely know. Every time I tried to speak I caught Doctor Lorenz's eyes fixed on me, and there was something in his look which seemed to make me dumb. Of course, I tried to say that I had not touched the medicine. But I was so confused and bewildered—for I had never thought of such a terrible position—that if I had been in a courtroom I am sure that everybody would have been sure that I was guilty. I might have been able to talk to Doctor Feldsburg if Doctor Lorenz had not been there. But he upset me. There was an expression in his face that I didn't understand—or, at least, I didn't want to understand it. I had had a horror of him from the first time that I had seen him. He came out every day to see Mr. Millsboro, and from the very beginning he had a way of looking at me and—and—trying to touch me—either with his hand or his shoulder or his elbow, that made my blood run cold. He reminded me of the vampire in Stevenson's story, 'Olalla,' I think it was. When he smiled at me, it made me feel faint.”
She stared at me for an instant, and I noticed that her lovely face—for it was undeniably lovely—had gone white again.
“I think I know the breed,” said I reassuringly, though this was absolutely untrue. I had never known such a person as she described Doctor Lorenz to be, and if I had met with such a character in my scant readings I would have tossed the book aside and turned to something more sound and sane. “What happened next?”
She passed her hand across her forehead. “It's hard to tell. The whole thing seemed so frightfully unreal—like a nightmare. I remember hearing Doctor Feldsburg say in that soft, whining voice which he uses to his patients that I really need not have listened to temptation, as Mr. Millsboro could not live at the most more than a few weeks longer. He said that there was an adhesion of the intestines, and that the only chance of prolonging his life was by an operation, though he had grave doubts of his being able to survive one. Nevertheless, he had about made up his mind to operate. He finished by telling me that I need have no fear about the result of my act, as he did not intend to take any action in the matter for two reasons: The first, because he felt very sorry for me, arid the second, for a personal reason which his son would explain to me. Then he excused himself and went out, leaving me alone with Doctor Lorenz”
Her voice faded, and I could feel myself getting tense and rigid.
“And I suppose that this hyena of a Lorenz proceeded to make love to you?” I growled.
“You seem to know everything, Mr. Walcott. That is just what he did. He came and leaned over my chair and purred like a big black cat. I can't remember all that he said. I doubt if I heard it—but I remember his telling me that he had fallen in love with me at first sight and that some deeper consciousness had told him that I was his perfect affinity, and I don't know what besides. But I did pull myself together enough to ask him if he really believed that I had tried to poison Mr. Millsboro. He answered very quickly that he did not. He said that his father's prescription contained some sort of a phosphate, and that perhaps, owing to some of the other ingredients, the stuff might have undergone a chemical change and liberated free phosphorus. I asked him if he had told his father that, and he said that he had, but that Doctor Feldsburg insisted that such a thing was chemically impossible, and absolutely refused to believe that I had not tried to poison Mr. Millsboro, for fear that he might get well and make another will.
“It was all terribly confusing—and—and before I realized it, he was kissing my hands and trying to persuade me to marry him secretly that very day. I felt sick and faint, and he offered me something in a tumbler, but I had sense enough to refuse it and managed to get out of the place. I think that I ran most of the way back to the nurses' home. I was nearly out of my head.
“That same night Doctor Feldsburg called there to see me. I had managed to get myself together a little by that time, so I went down to see him. His manner was quite different to what it had been in the afternoon. He told me that I was demoralizing his son, and that he had neither the time nor the patience to put up with my 'cheap intrigues,' as he expressed it. But I was getting angry myself by this time, and when he saw that I was in danger of losing my temper he quieted down.
“In the end he told me that he was assured in his own mind that I had tried to poison Mr. Millsboro, and that he had evidence enough to send me to prison, but that he was willing to spare me for the sake of his son, who had told him that if he took any action against me it would mean a permanent break between them.
“Doctor Feldsburg said that I might take my choice between marrying Lorenz and being tried for attempted murder. Then, almost in the same breath, he told me that he had decided to operate on Mr. Millsboro for an advancing intestinal obstruction, and that he was willing to reinstate me on the case provided I would consent to marry Lorenz. He made no bones about telling me that while his confidence in my moral character was naturally very much impaired, he had no choice in the matter, as his son absolutely insisted that I should be morally supported by his father. Of course, I hated the idea of working under Doctor Feldsburg, but it struck me that he would scarcely dare make any charges against me after taking me back on the case—and I was pretty badly scared, though I tried not to show it. So I lied.”
“You agreed to marry Lorenz?” I asked.
“Yes. All this happened the day before yesterday. But last night I got thinking it over, and I began to understand. Doctor Feldsburg thinks that I am absolutely in his power; or, at least, that I think I am. If Mr. Millsboro dies, I shall inherit a million dollars. According to Doctor Feldsburg's plan, Mr. Millsboro shall not survive the operation, I shall marry Lorenz, and there will be a million dollars to divide in the Feldsburg family. Now do you understand why I want you to take me back to the city?”
“Yes,” I answered slowly; “but I can't quite see how that is going to get you out of the woods.”
“Then what can I do, Mr. Walcott?”
“Its a difficult situation,” I answered. “You might go straight to the district attorney and tell him the whole story. It seems plain enough that you are the victim of a conspiracy.”
“But if I were to do that,” she objected, “the Feldsburgs would certainly charge me with the attempt to poison Mr. Millsboro. Doctor Ratznoff would be called as a witness and testify that he was present when Doctor Feldsburg took the medicine away from me as I was in the act of giving it to the patient, and that he himself analyzed the stuff, or had it analyzed. Then the lawyer would testify that he had drawn up the will in my favor, and that I had been made acquainted with the fact. How could I prove that Doctor Feldsburg himself put a poisonous dose of phosphorus in the bottle? These three men are physicians in good standing, so far as I have been able to discover, while it would be easy to prove that I was terribly in need of money. My people are nearly destitute, Mr. Walcott.”
I pondered the situation for a moment. The poor girl was certainly in the toils.
“I do not believe,” said I finally, “that Feldsburg would take any action against you if he could be convinced that come what might of it you would never marry his son. He would scarcely dare to blackmail you directly. You don't want this money, under the circumstances, do you?”
Her blue eyes flashed. “After what has happened, I would sooner die than touch a penny of it!” she cried. “The worst of the business is that even if I were to be tried and not found guilty I would be ruined professionally. Nobody would ever employ a nurse who had been indicted for attempted poisoning.” She clasped her hands and stared at me hopelessly.
“If Doctor Feldsburg were certain in his own mind that there was no chance of you ever marrying his son,” said I, “he would not get you indicted. In the first place, such a case would hurt him professionally, as well as it would you; in the second, he would have nothing to gain by it but his revenge on you for not doing what he wished, and he would not care to pay as dearly as that for revenge—especially as he knows that you are acting purely in self-defense. Besides, it would be to his interest to keep Mr. Millsboro alive as long as possible. The old gentleman is no doubt a very profitable patient.” I thought deeply for a moment. “See here, Miss Stanley,” I said, “do you mind if I ask you a very personal question?”
She shook her head. “Ask me anything you like. It is only too kind of you to be willing to help me at all. And you do believe in me, don't you, Mr. Walcott?”
“Of course I do. What I want to ask is this: Is there any man whom you would be willing to marry immediately? Any man whom you could marry immediately?”
If I had asked her whether she would mind walking down and jumping into the Sound, she could not have looked for the instant more surprised. Her blue eyes opened very wide, and so did her pretty mouth. But her wits were quick, and she caught at once what was passing in my mind. She shook her head with a pathetic little smile.
“No,” she answered; “there is nobody. I have always had to work too hard to think of a husband, Mr. Walcott. Besides, there are not many men nowadays who would care to burden themselves with a girl who has to support a feeble old father and an invalid mother and her younger brothers and sisters. We shall have to think of something else, I'm afraid.”
“Thats a pity,” I answered, “because, you see, if you could only marry at once it would spike Feldsburg's guns. I thought that, perhaps there might be somebody. Besides, you need a protector, and I have got to sail for South America to-morrow morning, and it's rather doubtful if I ever come back.”
“Why?” she asked, and looked rather startled.
I told her briefly of the conditions which I had to face on the Mazaruni, and how the men who had tried to stick it out had died of fever. “Our lives have been somewhat similar, Miss Stanley,” I concluded. “My people have been dependent on me since my boyhood. I am taking this new job because it seems to offer the only chance of getting ahead. I did not much mind until now that I have heard your story. If it could possibly be managed, I'd stop over a steamer to try to help you through the trouble. But I've promised to go at once, and I've got in my pocket a check for five thousand dollars, a six months' advance on my pay. I can't go back on my agreement.”
“Of course you can't!” she cried, and there was a warm light in her eyes which for some reason set my heart to pounding like a full-powered circulating pump. “You've helped me tremendously, Mr. Walcott. There's no use in my trying to tell you how much, because I've never been very good at saying things. I want you to give me your address so that I can write and tell you how the whole horrid business turns out. I think that I'll manage somehow. You've given me courage. Let us go on now to Mr. Millsboro's, and I'll just tell Doctor Feldsburg that I've been thinking it over and that I have decided not to take a cent of Mr. Millsboro's money and that I shan't marry Doctor Lorenz, and that they can go ahead and do their—their”
“Damnedst,” I suggested.
“Yes,” she answered, and actually smiled. “But we can't stay here any longer. Doctor Feldsburg will commence to wonder what's happened us and come to look for us in Mr. Millsboro's car.” She stared at me for an instant with her curious, intent look. “I wish, though, that you weren't going to that awful place. You are so big and strong that it's terrible to think of your getting full of fever. Isn't there anything else?”
“Afraid not,” I answered, and stepped forward to start the motor. “There are worse things than fever,” I said, looking at her over the top of the hood. “I was pretty sorry for myself, last night, but I'm not thinking much about it, just now. Your own fix is so much worse.”
I gave the crank a twist, and the motor started with the soft, purring whir which is always a delight to the machinist. And then, as I stepped back to cut down the gas, an odd thing happened. At least, it was odd for me, because it was what people call an inspiration. I never took much stock in inspirations. I had known of engineers who had them sometimes, and business men, and promoters. De Lesseps was one of these inspired persons—and his inspiration cost the lives of hundreds of laborers and engineers on the Isthmus, and the fortunes of thousands of thrifty families in France. My father was sometimes inspired to write poems or political articles which were usually published—without pay—in a local agricultural periodical.
My own personal feeling toward inspirations had always been about as sympathetic as that of a watchdog for a tramp, and I had always been ready and prepared to back my compasses and logarithms and tables of stresses against any inspiration that was ever shot from the blue. I had seen bridges built on inspiration as the nucleus for a log jam on the bed of a creek and dams constructed from the same source—although in the particular case I have in mind it was the cement which was inspired—melting like an ice jam in the spring.
No, I never was much of a believer in inspirations, nor shall be so long as they can be bought over almost any bar for seventy-five cents a quart. But the one that I had at this particular moment was not bought over a bar—or, if so, it was the bar at the mouth of the Essequibo River, which I had heard about but never seen.
I cut down the gasoline, and stood for a moment looking at Miss Stanley.
“I've got an idea,” I said.
She looked back at me expectantly.
“Well?”
“Why not marry me?” I asked. “That would fix Feldsburg, all right.”
“What!”
“Just that,” I answered, and hurried on to explain. “If you are willing to accept the protection of my name until you get out of this fix we can turn right around, go straight to the town hall of this last place, and be married in twenty minutes. Then you can take the train back to the city, and I will take the car to Mr. Millsboro's and have a few minutes' conversation with Doctor Feldsburg. Or you can come with me, if you wish. I think that I can manage to persuade him that the less trouble he tries to make for my wife the better it will be for him. I shall also give him to understand that we believe him to have influenced Mr. Millsboro's will for his own ultimate profit, and that you are going to file an assignment of the proposed inheritance to his nearest heirs. Afterward, you can do that and send Feldsburg a copy of the act. I shall then say good-by to you, and if the climate of the Mazaruni does not annul your marriage, you can quickly have it done by any court.”
“Are you crazy, Mr. Walcott?”
“What is there crazy about the plan?” I asked. “I am simply offering you the use of my name to help you out of your trouble as I might offer to lend you anything else. What difference can it make to me? I'm off for a two years' exile in a fever hole with no great certainty about coming back. Nothing would be easier than for you to get the marriage annulled. You have only to claim that through personal reasons I left you immediately after the civil ceremony and never contributed a cent to your support.”
“But it would not be right to you,” she protested, her eyes fastened on my face with a look which it would have puzzled me to understand, if I had taken the trouble to try.
“My goodness!” I answered, almost impatiently, “what earthly difference can it make to me—beyond the satisfaction I should have in feeling that I had been of service to an innocent girl in trouble? I'm merely an obscure member of the many millions of working masses. Besides, my whole function in life is to help others. I discovered that fact long ago.”
“I think that you are right,” said she softly, and her eyes filled.
“Well, then, what do you say? It seems to me that there is really nothing else for you to do.”
She did not seem able to answer. I started the motor, slipped in behind the wheel, and started to turn the car. Her hand dropped on my shoulder.
“Mr. Walcott—stop—I can't”
“Why can't you?” I asked, and backed the car to the edge of the ditch.
“It's too much. I mustn't let you.” Her voice was trembling. “Why should you sacrifice yourself for a stranger?”
“I'm not sacrificing myself,” I answered, and reached for the speed lever, “and, besides, I don't feel as if you were a stranger. If you happened to be drowning in that creek down there it would be fitting and proper for me to jump in after you, wouldn't it, even though I'm not a very good swimmer? Well, the fix that you're in now is even worse—and I'm going to try to get you out of it in what seems to be the best and easiest way. I think that you'd better leave it to me, Miss Stanley.” And I went into the speed ahead.
CHAPTER IV.
The Case Against Jean.
There was something almost ominous about the ease with which we were made man and wife in the eyes of the law of the State of New York. But there was another quality about the business, too, and one upon which I had not counted. This was the amazing rush of tenderness which came over me as we went silently down the steps of the courthouse, and at their foot the girl paused to stare with swimming eyes at the gold circlet which I had bought at a little jeweler's across the street.
I thought that I could guess what was passing in her mind. It was a sad wedding for a girl, this being hurried off by an utter stranger to a justice of the peace and for the sake of protecting her from the machinations of a pair of unscrupulous scoundrels who had got her entangled in their coils. I dropped my hand on her arm, and she looked up at me in a startled, questioning way.
“Don't be downhearted, Jean,” I said gently, and at my use of her Christian name her eyelids fluttered; “some day you'll have a happier marriage than this.”
She shook her head without answering, and I thought that she drew a little closer to me. Her eyes dropped again to the ring on her finger, and rested there as though fascinated. Mine followed them. There was a curious attraction in that little golden emblem. It held my gaze, and as she slowly drew her glove over the small, pretty hand I gave an involuntary sigh.
“I shall never say those words again,” said Jean, without looking up, “and I do not mean to have the marriage annulled,” she added, in so low a tone that I barely caught the words, “unless you want me to.”
Without regard for any who might have been watching us, I took her two hands and turned her so that she stood facing me. She was a tall girl, and as I now noticed for the first time, superbly made, with a light, strong figure which seemed incapable of any movement not filled with supple grace.
“Listen to me, Jean,” I said quietly, and loosed her hands again. “The step which we have just taken was made entirely for your protection and the result of my own suggestion, and does not entail the slightest obligation on your part to give me so much as another thought. Once out of the woods, you are to think of yourself as just as free as you ever were. This is merely a civil contract to shield you for the time being. It's a bit solemn, of course, to stand before a dignitary and pledge yourself as you have done, but the act was forced upon you not only for your own sake but that of your family, and this poor old man whose very life may depend on it. You must consider the whole affair from that point of view.”
Jean did not answer, and we walked down to the car in silence. I helped her in, then asked:
“Shall I take you to the station?”
“No,” she answered, “I want to go with you.”
“Very well,” I answered. “Perhaps that would be better.”
I started the motor, and we went swiftly back over the road to the Millsboro estate. The whole momentous performance had taken little over an hour as I learned to my intense surprise on glancing at the clock beside the oil feeds. It seemed almost ridiculous that so much could have happened in so short a time. It occurred to me that I had lived less in thirty years than in the last thirty minutes. And as the big gates of the Millsboro estate reared themselves in front of us, I reflected that the next half hour might bring a good deal of concentrated life also.
As I drew up under the porte-cochère, Doctor Feldsburg, with a man-servant at his elbow, came out of the front door. He looked at me with his collie-dog smirk.
“I was beginning to wonder what had happened you,” said he.
“If you have a few minutes to spare,” I answered, “I should like to explain the cause of our delay. I think it might interest you.”
His vulpine look flitted from my face to Jean's.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “Did you meet with any further accident?”
“No,” said I, “it was pure design.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, and he showed himself completely at a loss. I got out of the car and offered my hand to Jean. She gave me a quick glance, then turned her back to us.
“I'm afraid that I don't quite understand,” said the doctor. “What has happened?”
“A lot,” I answered. “It may take some minutes for the telling.”
He must have been struck by the harshness of my tone, for I was a poor actor and found it impossible to conceal my antipathy for the man. His foxy face grew sharper in expression.
“Come in,” said he. “I can spare you a few minutes. My son has not yet arrived.”
I moved aside to make room for the butler and a manservant who had unstrapped the box of surgical supplies and were carrying it up the steps. It appeared to be heavy, for the butler grunted a little. I noticed the man as he passed, and was struck by the peculiar pallor of his face, which was like that of the belly of a dead fish.
“Take that to the upper bathroom,” said Doctor Feldsburg, and motioned to Jean and myself to enter.
The house, as I had already observed, was an old one, and might have been one of the early aristocratic residences of that section, dating back almost to colonial days. It was square and spacious, with a mansard roof and tower. There was a wide central corridor, and the rooms which opened off it were spacious and high-ceilinged. The main stairway at the farther end of the hall was steep and narrower than one finds in modern houses of the same size, and the furniture was old, heavy, and ugly in design.
“Come in here, if you please,” said Doctor Feldsburg, and led the way to the entrance of a formal-looking reception room. On the threshold he paused. “You had better go up and lay out our things,” said he, looking at Jean. “I expect Doctor Lorenz at any moment. He had to stop to see a patient in the Bronx. We shall begin as soon as he arrives.”
“I think that Miss Stanley had better be present at our interview,” I remarked.
He raised his bristling eyebrows, but before he could answer there came the swish of a skirt on the stairs, and a woman in the dress of a trained nurse hurried down the hall.
“Will you come upstairs for a moment, Doctor Feldsburg?” she asked, in a quick, nervous voice. “Mr. Millsboro insists upon seeing you.”
Doctor Feldsburg frowned and jerked his head impatiently toward the reception room.
“Wait in there, please,” said he curtly, and followed the nurse, who had already hurried off. We entered the room, and Jean looked at me with a frightened face.
“Don't you think he's like a wolf?” she asked.
“More of a coyote, I should say,” I answered.
“What are you going to tell him?” she asked.
“You'll hear in a few minutes,” said I.
She moved her shoulders restlessly. I saw that she was dreading the talk ahead, and so I said encouragingly:
“Don't be uneasy, Jean. Remember that I'm running this business now.”
“Don't you think it might be better not to say anything about our being married until we hear what he says when he learns that I have decided to act on your advice and decline to inherit Mr. Millsboro's money?” she asked.
“No, I don't,' I answered. “The sooner he learns that you can't marry his scoundrel of a son the better.”
“He can learn that later, if it becomes necessary,” she answered nervously. “You see, I don't want to have you dragged into the horrid business if it can possibly be avoided. Please do as I ask.”
“All right,” I answered rather shortly, for the darkened, gloomy place and the delay were getting on my nerves, also. “Just leave it to me for the moment. I'll say what seems best.”
We waited in a tense, expectant silence. Jean was sitting on the edge of a big, straight-backed chair against the wall, and suddenly there came from behind her a rattling and scuffing in the wall and the sound of a bit of plaster rolling down. She sprang up with a little choking gasp.
“A rat,” said I.
“Yes. This house is overrun by them. Charles, the butler, says that it is the fault of the construction. These old houses were built of brick and sheathed over with wood and plaster, leaving a space between. There was a rat in my room one night, and it frightened me nearly to death. I loathe the beasts. I told Charles to set some traps, but he said that traps were no good, as he had tried them. So I got some rat poison and”
There was the sound of a footstep outside the door, and Doctor Feldsburg appeared. He looked from one to the other of us with an impatience which he made no great effort to conceal.
“Well, Mr.”
“Walcott,” I supplied.
“Well, Mr. Walcott, I am at your service. Please be as brief as possible. We have a good deal to do.”
“All I have to say is this,” I answered. “While we were delayed on the road Miss Stanley saw fit to take me into her confidence, and told me that you had accused her of trying to poison her patient after he had made a will leaving her the bulk of his estate. She told me all of the circumstances, including the offer of marriage made her by your son. As a result, I have advised her to get out of the case immediately and to lose no time in making an assignment of this legacy to Mr. Millsboro's nearest heirs. She has decided to act on my advice.”
Doctor Feldsburg did not move a muscle, except to look slowly from Jean to me. His expression wore a look of contemptuous irony.
“Indeed!” said he sneeringly. “Well?”
“That's all,” I answered. “I now propose to take Miss Stanley back to New York, where she will call on Mr. Millsboro's lawyer, if you will kindly give her his address, and have the assignment executed and put on file. If her action is questioned, she will say that she is taking the step because she does not believe that considering the mental condition of the testator she would be morally justified in becoming chief beneficiary.”
Doctor Feldsburg shrugged impatiently. “Very well,' said he snappishly. “Miss Stanley is quite at liberty to act as she thinks would be best for her own interests. I wish, however, to give her this warning: I have conclusive proof that she was prevented by me from administering a toxic dose of phosphorus to my patient. Whether she had already done this or not previously, I cannot yet be sure, although the condition of the patient now appears to indicate it. Mr. Millsboro is at this moment in a very critical condition, and if in the case of his death the autopsy shows indications of phosphorus poisoning, I shall have Miss Stanley indicted for murder in the first degree.”
He snapped out these last words like the bark of a fox. There was something singularly venomous in the click of his teeth under the thin, gray mustache which bristled straight out from the sides of his narrow muzzle at the corners of the long, low-bridged nose. Standing in front of the cold, empty hearth with my feet apart, I looked down at him as he sagged back in the recess of his big, brocaded armchair, and I understood the sensations of a hound in the face of a cornered coyote. Only this coyote was far from cornered.
“Just hold on a minute, Doctor Feldsburg,” said I. “You seem inclined to bank a little too much on a young girl's timidity and inexperience. You may find that Miss Stanley is not quite so friendless as you thought.”
“What do you mean?” he snarled.
“Your son, Doctor Lorenz Feldsburg, has some reputation as a psychologist, hasn't he?” I demanded.
“What's that got to do with it?”
“A lot,” I answered. “He has been attending Mr. Millsboro. The old man makes a will, leaving the bulk of his fortune to a nurse whom he has scarcely noticed, in his weakened condition. A day or two later you claim to find the nurse in the act of administering poison. You relieve her from duty on the case, and after the dose which you took from her hand has been analyzed you accuse her of attempted poisoning, but offer to do nothing in the matter if she will consent to marry your son. You even go so far as to reinstate her and bring her out here to assist at an operation.”
Feldsburg gave Jean a vindictive glare.
“Little fool!” he muttered.
“Fool yourself,” I retorted, “and a criminal fool, or I'm a lot mistaken, You'd look nice in court, wouldn't you?”
He bristled like a rabid animal, and made a motion as though to rise, then seemed to get his temper in hand, though with an obvious effort. I thought, too, that I saw a sudden gleam of fear in his shifty eyes, though whether this came from my own threatening attitude—for I was angry enough to have taken him by his hairy throat and shaken him—or whether it was from my words, I could not tell. In any case, I did not believe that there was any courage at all in the man. He impressed me as a sly, cunning animal, intelligent enough and dangerous to any weak creature.
“My advice to you,” I growled, “is to leave Miss Stanley alone.”
He sprang from his chair and stepped in front of me, shaking his finger in my face.
“And my advice to you, young man,” said he, “is to get out of here as quick as you can.” And he glanced through the open window, for the day was mild and the butler had seen fit to air the musty old place. “If my son were to arrive, I should not answer for the consequences. Do you realize the insinuations that you are making against two prominent practitioners of the highest standing?”
“I do,” I answered, “and if I leave this house without your agreement not to persecute this poor girl any further it will be to go with her straight to the district attorney.”
This appeared to sober him. He stood for a moment, frowning to himself, then said:
“It is beneath my dignity to offer you any explanations. But since you appear to insist on meddling in what is none of your affair, I am willing to stretch a point for the sake of avoiding scandal. Miss Stanley has apparently withheld from you a highly important bit of evidence. Might I ask you to step to that desk in the corner and as soon as you hear me speak at the telephone in the next room, hold the receiver of this one to your ear?”
“What's all this?” I demanded.
“Kindly do as I ask. I wish you to overhear a conversation which I expect to have. It may convince you that your sympathies are misdirected.”
I glanced at Jean questioningly, but her face was as blank as my own. Walking to the telephone, I seated myself on the edge of a chair and waited. Feldsburg stepped out of the room. A moment later I heard his voice, coming from some distance. I picked up the receiver, and held it to my ear, when his words became audible as he gave a number. There was a short pause, then: “Hello!”
“Hello!” answered Feldsburg's voice. “Is this the Central Drug Store?”
“Yes”
“This is Mr. Millsboro's.”
“Yes.”
“I want to know if you have any rat poison. The house is overrun with rats.”
“Yes, we've got two kinds—one minute, please.” The druggist must have turned his head a little, for I heard him say: “Jim, didn't you sell some” and the rest was a mumble. Then, a moment later: “Hello!”
“Hello!”
“I think you've got some out there. The trained nurse from Mr. Millsboro's bought it here a couple of days ago.”
“Is that so? It doesn't seem to have done any good. What is in the stuff?”
“Oh, it's a preparation of phosphorus. You've got to give it a little time; but it's the best. The rats die out of the house, you see. When the stuff begins to work, they hunt water, and that finishes 'em. The other preparations are apt to kill 'em in the walls, and then you've got a job for the plasterers.”
“I see. Thank you.”
“Good-by.”
There was a little click. I laid down the receiver and sat for a moment staring at the wall. Then I looked at Jean.
“What is it all about?” she asked.
“Why didn't you tell me about the rat poison?” I asked.
“Rat poison!”
“Hush,” I whispered; “here comes Feldsburg.”
He entered the room with his quick, nervous step.
“You had no difficulty in hearing?” he asked.
“No,” I answered.
“Then I will ask you to come with me for a few minutes. Miss Stanley can wait for us here.”
I glanced at Jean, who was staring at us with a puzzled, frightened face, then turned to follow Feldsburg. He led the way to a small room in the rear of the house—a sort of alcove which might at one time have been used as a conservatory, for it was closed in with glass and had a.southern exposure which commanded a view of the approach to the house. Doctor Feldsburg motioned me to a chair and touched a bell. As he did so I saw what appeared to be a railroad station taxi enter the gate and roll up the drive to the front door.
“There is my son now,” said the doctor, and at the same moment the butler appeared. I noticed again the peculiar livid pallor of the man's face.
“Ask Doctor Lorenz to wait for me a few minutes,” said Feldsburg. “Say that I am engaged.”
“Very good, sir,” said the man, and withdrew, closing the door behind him.
Doctor Feldsburg turned to me.
“Of course,” said he quietly, “you must understand the significance of what you just heard at the telephone.”
“I understand that Miss Stanley bought some rat poison at the druggist's,” I answered; “but I fail to see that the circumstance proves anything against her.”
“The evidence of that,” he answered, “lies in the fact that when she gave the stuff to Charles, the butler, the package had been opened and some of the poison taken out. Charles brought it to me to ask if he had better use it. This was the morning after I had taken the medicine from Miss Stanley as she was about to administer it to the patient. Don't you find that rather convincing?”
“No,” I answered. “What does Miss Stanley say about it?”
“I have not yet told her.”
“Why not?”
“Because, while I am willing to let her know that I suspect her, I am not yet ready to tell her that I have proof of her guilt. I do not care to acquaint her with the fact that the case against her is complete unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”
“What do you mean by 'absolutely necessary'?” I asked.
“I mean her refusal to marry my son and to inherit this money.”
“Good Lord,” I said, “what sort of a man are you, anyhow? You believe the girl to be an attempted murderess, and yet you want her to marry your son! Don't you see that what you propose would make you an accessory after the fact? And, besides, here's this butler—and now you're telling me, though nothing could ever make me believe the girl guilty.”
“The butler knows nothing about it,” said Feldsburg. “He has no idea of my suspicions. All he knows is that Miss Stanley gave him some rat poison and told him to use it according to the directions. As a matter of fact, the stuff would probably not prove fatal to the average adult unless administered in enormous doses or in small quantities for a period of several days. As Miss Stanley bought it that same morning she could not have given at most more than two doses. My attention was attracted by the turbidity of the fluid which she had in the medicine glass, and, on smelling it, I immediately detected the peculiar, garliclike odor suggestive of free phosphorus. Even my colleague, Doctor Ratznoff, has no idea of my suspicions of Miss Stanley, if they may be called suspicions in the light of such damning evidence. Doctor Ratznoff suggested some slovenliness on the part of the local druggist; a wrong bottle, or something of the sort. As for yourself”
“As for myself,” I answered, “I still believe the girl to be innocent.”
He frowned. “That is not reason,” he answered. “Mere obstinacy, in the face of the proof which I have offered you.”
“What does your son think?” I asked.
“He absolutely refused to believe her guilty until he learned about the rat paste. That shook but did not convince him. As a matter of fact, my son has formed a violent attachment for this young woman, and insists upon marrying her. She appeared to infatuate him from the very start. I could not help but notice it, myself, but to tell the truth I was not displeased, as I had been for some time worrying about his possible entanglement in an even more undesirable quarter. Also, I did not believe that it would come to anything serious. It is very possible that he may have suggested to Mr. Millsboro that, as he has no immediate heirs and does not believe in charities, it would be a worthy thing to leave his property to the young nurse who had taken such conscientious care of him and for whom it had been for years a struggle to support her family. I do not know. I have not asked Lorenz. But if he did such a thing I am convinced that he did it entirely for Miss Stanley's sake. Lorenz has no sense of the value of money where he himself is concerned. He is quite different in that respect from his father.”
And Doctor Feldsburg looked at me with his bleak, thin-lipped smile.
I studied him thoughtfully for a brief moment. He did not appear to notice my scrutiny, but sat twitching at the tip of his beard, his eyes on the bookshelves opposite, evidently occupied with his own ideas. For some reason he seemed far less obnoxious than he had at first; less vulpine; more human, and possessed of human sentiments and emotions. There was no mistaking the kindling of his eyes when he spoke of his son. It was indubitable that this Lorenz was his pride and delight; his great objective in life. Our reflections must have fallen into the same mental groove, for he glanced up at me quickly and said, as if in answer to my unspoken thought:
“Yes, I have very great ambitions for my son. He has it in him to reach a very high place. But he is impulsive, and his two great dangers are women and his disregard of money. If he were to marry Miss Stanley, and she were to inherit this Millsboro legacy, his future would be assured.” He gave me a sharp look. “You raise your eyebrows, Mr. Walcott. Let me tell you that in spite of her momentary moral lapse, I believe this young person to be of the highest and most virtuous character. I have been in practice too long and observed too many complexities of motive and action to allow my estimate of an individuality to be influenced by a single act, wrong to the point of criminality though it may be. Such an act, if traced through an honest though mistaken ethical course, might show itself to have been evolved from the highest, rather than the lowest, of impulses.
“An honest man who loathes the very thought of theft, yet who steals bread for his starving children because he cannot get it in any other way, is for me more of a hero than a criminal. He is sacrificing his deeper principles, his self-pride and honesty, for his paternal love. But filial love sometimes takes no odds from paternal, and for all we know Miss Stanley may have been moved by some such course of reason as this:
“'Here is a very old man, an invalid for months, who, the doctor says, cannot live but a few weeks longer. His death may even be a painful one. In a flash of appreciation for my care of him he has left me the bulk of his fortune—enough to lift those whom I love from poverty to affluence; perhaps to restore my mother to health and many years of happiness, where otherwise she will surely not long survive. But the mind of this old man is vacillating, and for all I know he might make another will next week, forgetting me entirely.'”
Doctor Feldsburg leaned forward and fixed me with his small, sharp eyes.
“This weighs on her mind, and she passes a restless night. The rats, of which this old house is full, add to her nervous condition. She feels that she cannot stand another night in the place, certainly with the rats scampering about within half an inch of her face; but she dares not leave. There is the fortune and the danger of resentment on the part of her benefactor when in a moment of clearer intelligence he finds that she has deserted him. No, she must stay on; so she walks to the town and buys a box of phosphorus paste. Mind you, all of this time she is thinking only of getting rid of the rats. But, alone in her room, the red label 'Poison' catches and holds her eye. It fascinates her. She smells the stuff, and its garlic odor reveals the active principle—or perhaps the druggist may have told her that the toxic ingredient is phosphorus and explained its action. Nurses are given a course in toxicology, and it may have been that she remembered the action of phosphorus, so peculiarly adapted to such a case as this. In China, you know, they fatten Chow dogs, then kill them with a poisonous dose of phosphorus. The animal dies slowly and painlessly of degeneration of the internal organs, and muscles as well. He softens up, as it were, and becomes more edible, from the Chinese point of view. By the time that he has succumbed, the poison itself has been eliminated from the system.” I gave a shudder of disgust. Doctor Feldsburg glanced at me and spread out his hands.
“That, at least, is my idea,” he said quietly. “I believe that her act was the result of a sublime moral self-sacrifice for the sake of those she loved.”
“And yet you would have her indicted for attempted murder if she should refuse to act as you wish,” I said.
He nodded. “Although able to condone such an act as hers from an ethical point of view,” said he, “it is not one that should go unpunished. It is simply that if I am to be an accessory to a crime, I do not intend to be one gratuitously. You see, I am perfectly frank with you. I believe the girl to be guilty, but I am willing to act against my own sense of my duty to society and the State for the sake of my son's happiness and welfare. There we have the business in a nutshell.”
He rose briskly, as if suddenly realizing that he had been neglecting the passage of valuable time.
“So my advice to you, Mr. Walcott,” said he, rubbing together the palms of his hands, “is precisely the same as it was in the other room. You had better drop out of the case, leaving those—us whom it intimately concerns—to settle it as best we may.”
“I think,” said I, “that I can reasonably claim to be included among those whom it intimately concerns.”
“Indeed!” he snapped. “And on what grounds, pray?”
“On these,” I answered, and reached for my inner pocket, where I had placed the marriage certificate. I drew it out and handed it to Feldsburg. “Miss Stanley and I were married less than an hour ago. She is now my wife, and out of your reach, however she may stand in regard to the law. But I'm not afraid of that. Your faked-up case is as full of holes as a colander. What's to prove that not Miss Stanley but the butler opened that rat poison? And would a trained nurse be fool enough to load up a dose of medicine with some stuff that makes it turbid and smells like garlic and then administer it when she expected the doctor in at any moment? And would she be such a stricken idiot as to save out some of the stuff for a criminal purpose and give the rest to the butler? What's to prove that you didn't bribe the butler to poison the medicine, so that you might get Miss Stanley and the million dollars between your claws?”
Feldsburg stepped back, white and shaken, yet furious.
“There's this to prove it,” he hissed. “The butler brought me the poison this morning after I confiscated the poisoned drug.”
“Shucks,” said I contemptuously, “that proves nothing. Miss Stanley told me herself that she had asked the butler to set some traps, and that he told her traps were of no use, so she bought the poison when she went to the town. No doubt she told the butler that she would buy it.” I turned on him so fiercely that he shrank back behind his chair. “You think you've got a case against that poor girl, do you, you infernal scoundrel? Well, then, all I've got to say is that you'd better look out or I may beat you to it. There's never been a straighter case of conspiracy—or one that could be easier to prove. I'll soon cook your hash, you miserable old hyena”
I laid my hand on the knob of the door, and as I did so felt it move. The door opened inward, and as I stepped back and drew it toward me I found myself face to face with a tall man, broad-shouldered, and with a black Vandyke beard and mustache. He stood on the threshold as if to block the way, and as I glanced at his face I saw that it was flushed from anger or excitement. His dark eyes moved quickly from Doctor Feldsburg to myself.
“Excuse me,” said I curtly, and made a motion to pass.
“Mr. Walcott?” he asked, in a deep bass voice.
“Yes,” I answered; “let me pass, please.”
“Here is a note which Miss Stanley asked me to give you,” said he.
“Where is Miss Stanley?” I demanded.
“She has gone back to the city. Perhaps the note may explain matters.”
His voice was easy and unembarrassed, and as I glanced suspiciously at his face I was surprised to see an expression of friendly sympathy about his eyes. Puzzled and angry, I ripped open the note and read:
Dear Mr. Walcott: As the result of a few words with Doctor Lorenz I feel convinced that I have been unjust to him. He assures me that he has never had the slightest suspicion of me, and promises to try to help me in every way. If you have not already told Doctor F. of our crazy act, please say nothing about it. I shall take steps to have it annulled as soon as possible. I do not wish you to be involved any further in this wretched affair if it can possibly be helped. I am now going back to town, leaving Doctor Lorenz to arrange matters. Have told him everything. Good-by, and God bless you for your great kindness! Jean.
CHAPTER V.
Jean's Disappearance.
“You say that Miss Stanley has gone back to the city?” I asked of Doctor Lorenz.
“Yes,” he answered.
“When did she go?”
“About fifteen minutes ago. I sent her to the station in the car which brought me here.”
I turned with a gesture of disgust to Doctor Feldsburg.
“Your son may be a good doctor,” said I contemptuously, “but he is certainly an awfully poor liar. I happened to see that car go out while we were talking, and there was nobody in it but the driver.”
I expected an outburst of rage from Lorenz as the result of this speech. So did his father, I think, for he shrank back with a frightened look. I was watching both warily, for it seemed to me that I had to deal with a pair of unmitigated scoundrels, who might not stop at anything. But to my intense surprise the face of the younger man, instead of showing anger, was lit by an expression of eagerness, almost of relief.
“You are sure?” he cried, in his vibrant bass, and I saw at once that I had made a serious mistake. Apparently he believed that Jean had gone and was only too anxious to be assured that she had not. I inwardly cursed my loose tongue.
“Possibly I am mistaken,” I answered rather clumsily. “I may have spoken hastily. But I was under the impression that there was nobody in the back of the car.”
The quick flash of his eyes showed me that he was not deceived.
“Excuse me,” said he, and turned to leave, but his father spoke up sharply and in a querulous, shaking voice:
“Wait a minute, Lorenz. Mr. Walcott, here, tells me that it is his intention to drag all of this wretched business into the courts. He knows all of the facts of the case, and this morning, with a chivalrous though mistaken idea of protecting Miss Stanley, persuaded her to make a civil marriage with him before a justice of the peace.”
Here, again, I was destined for a surprise, for Lorenz merely gave me a quick, curious glance, then nodded.
“So Mr. Walcott has told you about that,” said he quietly. “I had hoped that he might not mention it. I have just had the whole story from Miss Stanley, and I must confess that I think Mr. Walcott acted in a very generous if somewhat quixotic manner. I understand, also, that Mr. Walcott expects to sail to-morrow for South America, but I hope to be able to convince him before we part that Miss Stanley—or Mrs. Walcott, pro tempore”—he smiled slightly—“is in no danger of any ill treatment at our hands, but that on the contrary I intend to do my utmost to protect her.”
“By marrying her yourself?” I sneered.
A quick flush appeared on his face. It was a handsome face, well-shaped, fine-featured, and of high intelligence, and quite without the craftiness of expression shown by his father's.
“I want to marry her,” he answered “but only with her consent. Of course, it would be a simple matter to get this marriage of yours dissolved, to which I presume you would have no objection, as I understand that your object was purely impersonal and for her protection. But she shall be subjected to no coercion.”
“That is not your father's idea,” I retorted.
He shrugged. “Father and I are not in agreement on the subject,” said he. “Personally, I do not for a moment believe that Miss Stanley—pardon me if I use the name by which I think of her—had any criminal design on her patient.”
“Then who do you think dosed the medicine with phosphorus?” I demanded.
He smiled again, with a flash of his strong, white teeth.
“A rat,” he answered.
“What?” I cried, and Feldsburg echoed the exclamation.
Doctor Lorenz nodded. “A rat,” he repeated. “This house swarms with rats. It was as the result of her fright at finding a rat in her room that Miss Stanley bought the phosphorus paste. She put some of the stuff in her closet, where a rat found and devoured it; then, being tormented by thirst as the poison began to act, it set out to look for water. Miss Stanley had poured some spring water into a low, wide-necked pitcher on the medicine stand. The rat must have drunk from this pitcher, perhaps while its muzzle was covered with the poison. Mr. Millsboro's medicine is diluted with water, and Miss Stanley used that in the pitcher, which is one of these small, squat vessels of the sort used on a table de nuit, at the side of a bed.
“Going from the light into the darkness of the sick room, she did not notice the turbid condition of the water. But the presence of the phosphorus clouded the medicine, and this caught my father's eye, which is uncommonly observant of details.” He threw out his hands. “There, you have my explanation of the circumstance, and the proof of it is that just after I said good-by to Miss Stanley, about fifteen minutes ago, the nurse called me upstairs to show me a poisoned rat which she had that moment discovered in the bathroom. The animal smells strongly of phosphorus. It is outside here in a box, if you would care to examine it. It was this which suggested the solution of the problem.”
“Good Lord,” I exclaimed, “Miss Stanley must know about this, at once!”
“Since you say that she did not go off in the taxi, she must be somewhere about the place,” said Lorenz. “No doubt, at the last moment, she decided to wait and have a word with you before leaving.”
Doctor Feldsburg had sunk wearily into his chair. His face was gray and pinched, and he looked old and shaken. He stretched out his hand to touch the bell.
“We will send Charles to search the premises,” said he. “I shall not operate to-day, Lorenz. This affair has unstrung my nerves. But could a rat carry poison enough on its muzzle”
“Of course, it could!” his son interrupted sharply. “And the stuff probably floated on the top of the water, so that the bulk of it went into the glass. There is no other explanation possible. One has only to look at Miss Stanley to know that she could never be guilty of such a devilish act!”
“You're right, there!” I growled.
Doctor Feldsburg pushed the bell again, and we heard it sound faintly in the distance.
“Now where is that confounded Charles?” growled Feldsburg.
Lorenz turned on his heel. “I'm going to look for her, myself,” said he.
Doctor Feldsburg rose wearily. “I feel rather badly,” said he. “I think that I shall go back to town.” He looked grimly at me. “There doesn't seem to be much for us to say to each other, Mr. Walcott. Suppose we call it quits. This has been an odd jumble, and one that I am by no means anxious to repeat. Lorenz is no doubt right. I told you that he was no fool.” His sharp, foxy face softened a little in expression as he glanced at his son. “A black head is often better than a gray one in matters of this sort. We grow suspicious of everybody as we increase in age, especially in my profession. Where is that fool of a butler?” And he put his finger on the bell and held it there.
“I'm going to look for Miss Stanley, father,” Lorenz repeated. “How are you going back?”
“I'll have Mr. Millsboro's man take me in—unless you care to?” And he glanced at me. “Mr. Walcott's the best driver I've ridden behind, if he is a bit reckless in other ways,” said he, with his bleak smile.
“Thank you,” said I, “but I should like to see Miss Stanley, first. As your son suggests, she may be waiting about in the hope of a word with me. I'm sorry for the way I talked to you, Doctor Feldsburg, but, as you say, I think we'd better call it quits. After all, my suspicions were no worse than yours.”
He nodded moodily, then his face relaxed into certain lines which might have developed into those of humor on the features of a man of kindlier soul.
“Yes, yes—let's hope that it may teach us both not to trust too much to circumstantial evidence. Give my compliments to your wife'—he grinned—“if you find her, and tell her that I'll apologize later. Take a look at the patient before you leave, Lorenz, and tell Miss Lawrence that we've decided to postpone the operation. Blast it all!” he cried, in a sudden gust of irritation. “Isn't there a servant left in this rat-ridden old shack?” And he jabbed viciously at the bell.
Lorenz, who had been standing impatiently in the doorway, turned on his heel and strode off, saying that he would try to scare up somebody. I wished Feldsburg good day and followed him. At the front door he paused and glanced at me over his shoulder.
“Suppose you take a look around the grounds while I hunt through the house,” said he. “And, I say, would you mind passing by the garage and telling the chauffeur that Doctor Feldsburg wants him to take him into town in his own car? I'm afraid you were mistaken, though, about her being in the taxi.” He gave me a keen look. “You're quite sure?”
“As a matter of fact, I'm positive,” I answered. “I was looking out of the window when it passed, and was able to see right into it when it made the loop in the drive.”
“Odd,” he muttered. “I said good-by to her here in the hall, gave her the money to pay the driver, and told her I'd call on her at the nurses' home late this afternoon. She must be somewhere about. Come back here after you've looked around, and we'll have them get us a bite before going into the city. There are some things we've got to talk about.”
“All right,” I answered, and went down the steps.
I walked first to the garage, where I found the chauffeur and gave him his orders, telling him that he had better fill the tank before starting. The grounds of the estate were large and laid out in the semiformal, old-fashioned way, copied, as I have since learned, from the French school of landscape gardening, with little winding paths which led through dense masses of shrubbery, once closely trimmed, but now straggling and unkempt.
There were quaint old fountains fallen into disuse and grimy statues in bronze and iron and moldly marble, the whole place surrounded by a high wall which would cost a small fortune to build in these days.
Beyond the stables and garage a stretch of weedy lawn led down to the shore of a little bay jutting in from the Sound, and there was a boathouse which appeared to have been freshly painted, and a little way out a launch, sadly in need of the attentions bestowed upon the boathouse, was moored to a buoy.
I did not trouble to go down there, knowing that if Jean had been waiting about to see me she would not have chosen such an out-of-the-way spot. As a matter of fact, I was quite sure that she must be in the house, and I suspected that Lorenz had asked me to search the grounds merely to get rid of me while he told her of his discovery.
To tell the truth, I was bound to admit that Lorenz impressed me as an unusually attractive man, and I wondered at Jean's having given me such a different impression of him. Although at first sight I had naturally been prejudiced against a person who had been described to me as a big, black, snaky hypnotist—of course, I pictured a sort of Svengali—and had already jumped to the conclusion that he must be a blackguard of the first water, I could find nothing to bear out this idea.
Physically, he was one of the handsomest men that I had ever seen, and that in a virile, wholesome way. Magnetic, he certainly was, so far as my crude appreciation of this quality was able to appreciate, but while his look and manner had a sort of compelling force, this did not impress me disagreeably. His speech and manner indicated a breeding and culture which might have made me feel like a raw clodhopper in comparison, if I had been of the sort to take my measure from that of other men. Yet here was Jean, who seemed to have an actual horror of him, confiding herself blindly to the care of a plodding plow horse like myself at the end of a forced acquaintance of about twenty minutes!
Before I had fairly started to puzzle over this another idea struck me which put it out of my head. This was that by all the rules of sense and logic I should have been tremendously glad that the affair had worked itself out so well for Jean. Or, rather—for I was of course rejoiced that Doctor Lorenz's analytic mind had cleared the girl of all suspicion—I should have been happy enough on her account to feel that I could now leave her with my mind at rest.
And yet I was not happy. On the contrary, I was conscious of a deep, soul-pervading sadness, which increased as I beat aimlessly about through the unkempt shrubbery. If the prospect of my exile had seemed gloomy the day before, it now became almost intolerable, and I thought of going aboard the steamer the following morning as bitterly as any deported prisoner in the time of the Georges might have contemplated being driven aboard one of those floating infernos whose sails were marked with the black arrow.
It was not on the girl's account; it was on my own. So far as Jean was concerned, I felt no particular anxiety. I believed that Lorenz was honestly in love with her and would not subject her to any persecution. He was, as I felt assured, a gentleman, and a man of undoubted talent and ability in his profession. Very possibly, he might succeed in overcoming Jean's aversion for him and make her a loving and devoted husband, At any rate, it would take a certain length of time to have her civil marriage with me annulled, and this period would give her the opportunity to weigh the proposition from all of its points of view.
As for Doctor Feldsburg, he had been the victim of the same injustice which he had meted out to Jean, and I cannot say that I was inclined to regret the way in which I had talked to him. Reputable practitioner he might be so far as his general standing in the profession was concerned; but any man who would try to blackmail into marrying his son an unfortunate woman whom he believed guilty of the attempted crime of which he had accused Jean, must be, perforce, of a moral type approaching the criminal himself.
Moreover, I did not believe that his proposed operation on Mr. Millsboro had been decided upon for the best interests of the patient.
Doctor Feldsburg was, in my opinion, a conscienceless, rapacious old vulture, with the besetting sin of avarice. I would not go so far as to accuse him of any direct design on Mr. Millsboro's life, but I do believe that the surgeon's motive was one of personal gain. Whether his patient lived or died, Feldsburg stood to profit by a fee which he would make commensurate to the sick man's estate.
The possibility of Jean's inheriting the Millsboro millions and being coerced into marrying Lorenz was a rich side issue, the temptation to profit by which had been too strong for the surgeon's avaricious nature. No doubt he had told the truth when he had said that he could find it in his heart to forgive Jean her moral lapse. Such a heart as Feldsburg's could forgive anything associated with great pecuniary increment. So far as I could see, his only redeeming feature was his affection for his son, and even this took a warped form.
At any rate, Jean was clear of the pair, and need have nothing more to do with either, if she chose. It was very probable. that after the ordeal through which she had passed it would be her earnest prayer never again to set eyes on either Lorenz or his jackal of a father. She might return to her own part of the country, there to take up her profession, and where she would before long be almost sure to meet some good man who would win her heart and ask nothing better than to lift from her soft shoulders the burden of care and trouble which they had borne so bravely.
But even this reflection brought me no comfort. The more I thought of Jean, the darker my mood became. I felt feverish and depressed, and conscious of such a hungry yearning as I had never felt. If I had ever been given to self-analysis, I would have thought that this came from my anxiety about her immediate future, and probably have got no further than that. I would have lacked the imagination to solve the problem of why I should be so disturbed over the fate of a girl whom I had seen for the first time a few short hours ago.
But her low-pitched, tremulous voice still vibrated in my ears, and I was haunted by the frightened, intent expression which I had seen in her eyes; that and the touch of her hand as it had rested in mine.
It seemed to me that within a few brief moments I had awakened from some sort of long, plodding lethargy, and had lived in the light for the first time, after years of blind boring in the mud. I had felt the rush of emotions in which I would never have believed. I wanted to feel them again; I wanted to see and touch and hear her and to experience once more that curious exaltation which had come over me on realizing that I was her sole protector.
As all of these vague cravings began to take a more concrete form, I stopped suddenly in the middle of the weedy path in front of a tattered little arbor of woven vines.
“Good Lord,” I said aloud, “am I falling in love with her?”
I in love? And with a woman whom I had known for about three hours? The idea was preposterous—insane! And yet, once it entered my head, I clung to it like a drowning man to a reed. A sudden, scorching exultation swept over me. For the moment I was unable to think at all. I could only feel. And then, as I realized suddenly that I was actually married to this woman whom I so insanely desired, there came over me a sensation such as I had once felt on being dropped over the edge of a precipice in an ore bucket, when the man at the hoist had let the cable run off the reel for the first two hundred feet.
My knees felt weak, and I sank down on a rustic bench and took my head between my hands.
I was roused by the sound of Doctor Feldsburg's car, which passed not far from where I sat, though hidden from sight by the delicate spring foliage. It tore me back to the Real from the first flash of the Ideal which had ever dazzled my grubbing eyes.
I scrambled to my feet and stood for a moment staring at the tower of the old house, which rose clear of the tangled shrubbery. Lorenz, I reflected, was no doubt with Jean at this moment, telling her of his discovery and pleading his cause with the full force of his compelling personality. I wondered what she would say to him; how long she would be able to resist his masterful nature. After all, he had acted as honorably as a man could, refused to believe anything unworthy of her in spite of his father's mesh of damning evidence, and established her innocence by his own clear-headedness. I had no doubt that he honestly loved her and wanted her for his wife. After all, I reflected, she might do far worse than to marry Lorenz. She might, for instance, have shared the serfdom of some dull slave like myself.
There seemed no use in beating about longer through the grounds, so I struck out across the lawn for the house, noticing as I did so that the air had become very hot and oppressive for the time of year, while the pellucid blue of the sky had grown lusterless and opaque. Not a breath of air stirred the new-born leaves, and the western heavens were darkening to a somber, leaden hue. I judged that there would be a thunderstorm before night. There was, in fact, a nervous tension in the air already. Distant noises sounded flat and with no resonance, and the birds had stopped singing.
A curious depression pervaded the place, and this was heightened by the dreary look of the big, drab house with its dingy, olive-colored paint and shuttered windows, the lawns which needed mowing, and the paths and roadways with the weeds struggling to poke up between the pebbles.
Halfway across the front lawn I saw Doctor Lorenz come out of the front door and hurry to meet me. His fine face was flushed as if from excitement and irritation, and I noticed as he drew near that there was an anxious look about his eyes.
“You've seen nothing of her?” he called, as we came within speaking distance.
“No,” I answered. “But I supposed, of course, that you must have found her in the house.”
“She's not,” he answered, and gave me a keen look. “I don't understand it. You are positive that she did not go off in that station car?” His dark eyes fixed on mine with a sort of appeal. “Look here, Mr. Walcott, you're not keeping anything back from me, are you?”
“Certainly not,” I answered shortly. “Why should I? If Miss Stanley was in that taxi, she must have slipped down behind the side. There was nobody on the seat.”
He struck his hands together and frowned. “It's devilish odd,” he said. “Where could she have got to? Do you mind telling me what she said in her note?”
I drew the piece of paper from my pocket and handed it to him. He glanced through it, and the lines in his forehead deepened.
“That makes it all the more mysterious,” he said. “That confounded butler, Charles, has disappeared, too. Besides Mr. Millsboro and the nurse, there's nobody in the house but the cook and a maid. They tell me that the valet de chambre went off on some errand on his bicycle, but Charles ought to be about. You haven't seen anything of him down by the garage?”
“There was nobody there but the chauffeur,” I answered.
He knit his brows. “There's something here not as it should be,” said he, more as though speaking to himself than to me. “I seem to feel it in the air. The worst of it is I have just had a telephone from my case in the Bronx asking me to get there as soon as possible as the patient has had a sinking spell. I've telephoned to the station for a taxi. It ought to be here at any moment, and if it's the same one we'll find out for sure about Miss Stanley. I say, since fate seems to have dragged you into this curious business, would it be too much if I were to ask you to wait here for a couple of hours and let me know if anything turns up?”
“Why?”
“Well”—he seemed to hesitate a little, and the color came into his lean cheeks—“I've got an idea—that is, it's occurred to me that perhaps Miss Stanley may be somewhere about watching for a chance to speak to you alone. To tell the truth, she hasn't the confidence in my—my feeling toward her that I wish she had. My father's attitude in this wretched affair has frightened her and made her suspicious of us both. I can't very well explain” He bit his lip.
“I think that I understand,” said I. “Very well, I'll stay here for a while, if you like. But I must say I don't see much use in it. However, I've nothing to do, so I might as well be here as anywhere else. But Miss Stanley is not the sort of girl to be hiding about the place waiting for you to go. If she wanted to see me alone I think she'd be mighty apt to walk up and say so.”
He stared at me for a moment, then nodded. “I fancy you're right,” said he. “All the same, it's deuced queer. I don't know if you ever have—premonitions.” He looked at me doubtfully and with a certain diffidence.
“No,” I answered, “I don't.”
“Well, then, I do—and sometimes they are pretty positive. I've got a presentiment right at this minute that there is something wrong here—of what sort I couldn't for the life of me say. I'd give a lot if I didn't have to leave—but I must get down to see my patient. It's a surgical case, and Į fear internal hemorrhage. I've told the cook to get you some lunch, and if that brute of a butler doesn't show up the maid will serve you.”
We were silent for a moment, Lorenz tugging at his closely trimmed mustache.
“It's a pity to see a fine estate like this going all to pot,” I observed, to change the subject.
He nodded moodily. “The old gentleman lost interest in everything after the death of his son,” said he. “Besides, he's a bit of a miser—and a recluse. The butler has run things for a number of years. No doubt he charges in a lot of work about the place that is never done and puts the money in his pockets. Even before his illness, Mr. Millsboro would never have noticed the difference. His son was a lunatic; violent at times. He never left the place, I believe, and sometimes he had to be confined for days at a time. That was a good many years ago, before Mr. Millsboro became a patient of my father's. Well”—he turned at the sound of a motor, and we saw a taxi coming through the big, iron gates—“here's my car. Let's go and speak to the driver.”
As we turned to walk back to the porte-cochère, Doctor Lorenz glanced at me over his shoulder.
“The people in the house think that you are a surgeon, come out to assist at the operation,” said he. “It doesn't matter, though. Let 'em think it. That explains your waiting here for an hour or two.”
The driver of the taxi proved to be another man than the one who had brought Doctor Lorenz. He knew nothing of any passenger being taken to the station. Doctor Lorenz paused before getting into the car and gave me his card.
“You've acted like a trump, Mr. Walcott,” said he. “I wish that you would drop into my office late this afternoon. Or couldn't you call for me at about seven and we'll dine at my club? There are a number of things which I should like to say to you.”
“Thank you,” I answered, “I should like to very much.”
“Good!” said he, and with a nod to me told the driver to go ahead.
When he had gone, I stood for a moment thinking deeply. The mystery of Jean's disappearance must have some reasonable explanation, I was sure, but no solution at which I was able to arrive seemed adequate. It was possible that the unwarranted absence of the butler might have some bearing upon it, and I determined to question him closely on his return. Thinking of the butler, my mind reverted to the peculiar livid pallor of his skin, unusual in a person of his apparently powerful physique—for he was a strongly knit, big-framed man of not more than forty, I should say, though his thick, coarse hair was quite gray.
It struck me that I had somewhere observed that same, utterly toneless complexion which suggested the bleaching of otherwise healthy and wholesome skin, for its bloodlessness was quite different to that of ill health or insufficient blood. In the former condition the skin itself looks fragile, either transparent or pinched, while with anæmia the mucous membranes of lips and eyes are bleached. But this was something different—and then suddenly I remembered.
It was in our State prison, which as a boy I had once visited with an acquaintance, the son of a warden, that I had been so impressed by the peculiar, pallid faces of certain incorrigibles deprived for long periods of direct sunlight; of scarcely any light at all, for our penitentiary was at that time a fearful place. It was the “prison pallor,” unlike anything else, which had bleached the complexion of Charles, the butler. I would have been willing to swear that the man was an ex-convict, and one who had served a long term.
There was something also in his face, now that I came to think of it, which reminded me of the expression in some of the convict faces which I had observed. This was a peculiar tonelessness, an expression, which if one may put it in this way, came of the lack of expression; a flaccid condition of the facial muscles which, seldom called into play by the varying emotions which are a part of the daily routine in the life of the free man, lose their normal nervous tension, just as the muscles of the calves might atrophy in the case of a paralytic. The gray monotone of prison life finds no need for the facial interpretations of aught but apathy, and so the lines of character fade into those of a changeless mask. Charles had this masklike face—the prison face.
It was a startling. discovery, and I was pondering it when a rather slovenly maidservant came to tell me that my luncheon was ready. She showed me into a big, manorial dining room handsomely furnished and paneled in Flemish oak, black with age. Over the center of the table hung a huge, old-fashioned chandelier, and on either side of the great fireplace set back in niches were two complete suits of medieval armor, and on the walls shields, with maces, swords, and battle-axes.
I had never seen such a room, though I had been able to picture the like from my readings, and I looked about with a certain lugubrious interest at the big porcelain platters which decorated the somber walls, and the darkened squares of canvas which appeared to have at one time represented rich profusions of fruit and flowers and peacocks and other tropical birds, but were now black and all but indistinguishable from age.
The gathering gloom without made the place sepulchral, and I was relieved, on approaching the table, to see that there were places laid for two.
“Is the nurse coming down for luncheon?” I asked the maid.
“Oh, no, sir,” she answered. “She has her meals served upstairs. Doctor Lorenz ordered another place set for the other nurse he said might be here for lunch.”
I nodded, and she proceeded to serve me, remarking that she was sorry she could not offer me anything to drink, as the butler, who had the keys of the wine cellar, had not returned. I ate what she served me, which was no doubt good enough, though I have not the slightest recollection of what it consisted. At any rate, I did not linger over the meal, and as soon as I had finished got up and walked out into the hall. As I did so there came a step on the stair, and I looked around to see the nurse who had come to ask Doctor Feldsburg to see Mr. Millsboro.
“Would you mind coming upstairs a minute, doctor?” said she.
“What's the matter?” I asked.
“Its Mr. Millsboro's medicine. I scarcely know whether to have him take it or not. It has such a queer, garlicky smell.”
“All right,” I answered, and followed her upstairs. She led the way to a room which evidently adjoined that of the patient, for I heard him stir in bed as I entered. The nurse handed me a bottle and a glass.
“It never smelled like that before,” said she.
I raised the bottle to my nose.
“It smells like wet matches,” said the nurse.
“Yes,” I answered, setting down the bottle. “There is certainly something wrong with it. Don't give it to him under any circumstances. The stuff has evidently decomposed, or something of the sort. Don't give him any medicine at all until you see Doctor Feldsburg or his son. And don't say anything about it. There must have been some mistake about the prescription.”
“That is what I thought,” she answered, setting down the bottle; then added:
“Do you know how soon the new nurse will be here?”
“No,” I answered. “I didn't know that there was to be a new nurse.”
She glanced at me quickly. She was a nice-looking woman of perhaps thirty-four or thirty-five.
“But I thought that you were waiting to give her the instructions,” said she.
“No,” I answered; “I am waiting to give the butler some.”
She seemed to hesitate for a moment, as though doubtful of the wisdom of expressing what was uppermost in her mind. Then
“Oh, dear,” said she, “I wish the new nurse would come! I hoped that I wouldn't have to spend another night in this horrid place.”
“What's the matter?” I asked. “The rats?”
“Yes, the rats—and—other things.”
“Such as”
“Well, that awful butler. He gives me the creeps. He goes prowling about in his felt-soled shoes, and it seems to me that every time I turn a corner or open a door—and I don't think I was ever in a house that had so many doors and corners—I come on him. I found him in my room this forenoon. That was a little too much.
“'What are you doing in here?' I asked.
“He turned that death-mask face of his on me like an owl. 'Beg pardon, miss,' said he, 'I'm trying to find where that noise in the water pipes comes from.'
“'What noise?' I asked. 'I don't hear any noise.'
“He told me that it came and went, and sounded like muffled hammering. Sometimes, he said, you'd swear it was a person groaning or shouting into a barrel, He said that it had been going on off and on for some time and that if I heard it not to be alarmed. I hadn't heard it up to then, because there were so many other weird noises in this old barn, maybe; but I've heard it—listen!”
She touched my arm. We listened intently. For a moment or two I heard nothing. Then from the wall, as it seemed, there came a vague, muffled vibration. It lasted but a moment or two, then ceased, and we heard a rat scuffling across the ceiling. The nurse shivered.
“Did you hear it?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered slowly, “I heard it.”
CHAPTER VI.
The Valet's Part in the Game.
There came a querulous cry from the sick room, and the nurse left me to go to her patient. I stepped out into the hall and stood for a moment, listening. The sound was not repeated. I went to the end of the hall at the rear of the house, mounted the stairs to the top story, and listened again, but with no result.
The fresh discovery of phosphorus in the medicine, backed by my conviction that the brother had at some time served a term in prison, had given rise to all sorts of fresh suspicions. It might be that Charles himself was the poisoner and that he was trying to do away with his master either for reasons of his own or at the instigation of Lorenz, of whom my doubts had suddenly returned.
It even occurred to me that possibly Jean had caught Charles in the act of dosing the medicine, and that he might have locked her up in some room or closet while he made his escape. This last idea I dismissed immediately, however, as he could scarcely have used violence in that hushed and silent house without being heard by the nurse.
Nevertheless, Jean's disappearance was very perplexing, and, coupled with that of the butler, dangerously suggestive. I decided to hang about the place for the rest of the afternoon, and then, if Charles did not return by five o'clock, to call up the local authorities and have the premises thoroughly searched. But for Jean's own sake I did not care to take any such extreme measures if they were possibly to be avoided. As for the noise to which the nurse had called my attention, I decided that it was actually made by the water. It had precisely the muffled, metallic sound caused by a “water hammer.”
As I came downstairs again, I was met by the nurse, who told me that the valet also had taken himself off, although it was understood that he was to relieve her bedside duties between the hours of two and four, when she should be free to rest or take the air.
She seemed very nervous and tired, and said that if she did not hear from Doctor Lorenz by half past four she proposed to call him up and insist that an extra nurse be assigned to the case if she were to remain.
She was very ill at ease in the gloomy old house, and said that she could not see why they did not remove Mr. Millsboro to the local hospital, which was a new and very excellent institution. She had already suggested this to Doctor Feldsburg, and, although he had appeared to consider the idea favorably, he had as yet done nothing about it.
Feeling rather sorry for the woman, and as I wanted to remain in the house until something turned up or I heard from Doctor Lorenz, I told her that I would relieve her for a couple of hours, or until the valet returned. She thanked me, and as the old gentleman had sunk into a heavy sleep I established myself in an alcove of the hall outside the room and tried to amuse myself with some magazines.
The time dragged past slowly. The rats scuffled about in walls and ceiling, and once or twice I heard the water again, but gave this noise little heed, as it seemed now to come from the floor under my feet. A little after four the nurse returned from her walk. She seemed more nervous even than before, and said that we were going to have a terrific storm, as the sky was inky. This I had already observed.
She said, also, that it was a shame to leave a bedridden old man alone with a single nurse in a house run as loosely as Mr. Millsboro's, where the servants went off when they pleased and where they pleased, and that she was going to call up Doctor Lorenz at five and give him a bit of her mind.
I told her that she was quite right, and that I would fully indorse anything she might care to say as to the slovenliness of the household machinery.
While she had been gone, I had come to another plan, which was on the return of the chauffeur to have him take me in Mr. Millsboro's car to the police station, where I proposed to acquaint the proper authority in person with my uneasiness in regard to Jean's peculiar disappearance and my suspicions of Charles' past criminal record.
I decided to say nothing about the poison episode, but merely to request that a thorough investigation of the premises, and the interrogation of Charles, in case he should have returned, be made immediately.
Not wishing to cause the nurse any further uneasiness, I told her that I could not wait about much longer, and that as soon as the chauffeur got back I would have to leave.
Mr. Millsboro roused presently, and she went in to perform some service. She was in the sick room when I heard the “water hammer” again, this time louder than I had yet observed it, and coming as it seemed from the ceiling overhead. I ascended the upper stairs again, but just as before the noise ceased by the time I had reached the upper story, and I was about to go down when, happening to glance through a window at the head of the stairs, I saw a young man in black clothes and riding a bicycle make the loop of the drive which described a half circle on its approach to the house.
Guessing that this must be the valet, I went down to the reception room and touched the bell. After a considerable delay, the maid who had served my lunch appeared, wiping her hands on an apron which was none too clean.
“Is the valet in the house?” I asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell him to come here,”. said I.
She gave me a rather pert stare as if to ask by what right I took it on myself to give orders.
“I think he's busy,” said she.
“You tell him that I want to see him,” said I sharply, “and at once!”
She flopped out without answering. A few minutes passed, when there appeared in the doorway a narrow-faced, slope-shouldered young fellow of about twenty-four. His hands were dirty, and his face blotched and perspiring. Also, he was in need of a shave.
“You want me, sir?” he asked half defiantly.
“Yes,” I answered. “Where is the butler?”
I could tell from his expression that he was on the point of giving me an impudent answer. He hesitated, then, after a glance at my face, seemed to think better of it. Still, he managed to say, though without very much assurance:
“What do you want of the butler, sir?”
“Look here,” said I sharply, “you answer my questions, and never mind about your own. Understand? Where is the butler?”
“I—I don't know, sir.”
“Very well,” said I, rising; “if you won't answer me, perhaps you may answer”
I stopped short and turned sharply to listen. For at that moment there came as it seemed to me from the wall about three feet away the dull, pounding vibration to which the nurse had called my attention. So faintly audible it was that if I had not had the matter in my mind I should never have noticed it.
As a matter of fact I had decided upstairs that the noise was produced by what is known to engineers as a “water hammer,” and is caused by the sudden closing of a faucet when a volume of water is passing through pipes of faulty construction where a sharp angle permits of the falling of a vertical column of water in a manner to break the continuity of the flow, thus producing a vacuum into which the interrupted current from above trickles with a pounding concussion.
The sound to which I had listened upstairs was precisely that of a water hammer. But the noise to which I now listened was not. A water hammer might give a series of thumps, either regular or irregular, depending on the flow. But it could scarcely be expected to thump with an irregularity which was regular. The muffled shocks to which I now listened came in what might be described in music as “syncopated time.” Tum—tum—tum-tum-tum. Tum—tum—tum-tum-tum—it went for perhaps half a dozen beats, then ceased.
The valet was standing close to the wall, and must have heard it also. As I looked around at him I saw that his sweating face had whitened.
“What is that noise?” I asked.
“I—it must be the—the water, sir,” he stammered, and added: “We hear it quite often, sir.”
“Oh, do you?” I answered quietly, and took a step toward him. He recoiled like a snake and spun about to make a dash for it. But his foot slipped on the polished floor, and the next instant my grip was on his shoulder. He tried to slip out of his coat, but my fingers sank under his frail bone and muscle in a way that brought a squall out of him. I jerked him into the room and kicked the door shut.
“What's this?” I growled, and gave him a shake that rattled his bare teeth. “Keep still, you shrimp, or I'll tear your head off!”
His face turned livid, and I tossed him into a big, brocaded chair. Then it struck me that he might be armed, and I leaned over him, gripping both of his puny wrists in one hand, while I rummaged through his pockets with the other. He lay limp as a dead cat until my hand passed over the inner pocket of his coat, when he made a sudden movement. Then he shrank away as if I had touched a sore spot.
“What have you got there?” I asked, and at the same time felt a crackling such as might come from a mass of papers.
“Nothing,” he mumbled; “let go my wrists, can't you?”
“You keep still, if you know what's good for you,” I answered, and, reaching in his pocket, I drew out a mass of loose sheets of writing paper. A glance at them showed that they were covered with loose, scrawling signatures. All were the same. John T. Millsboro—John T. Millsboro—John T. Millsboro—over about a dozen sheets of paper in ragged, disjointed letters.
“Aha,” said I; “so you are one of these autograph cranks, are you?”
He wet his lips and peered up at me like a beaten cur that wants to bite, but doesn't dare. He was frightened, too; badly frightened, but beginning to pull his shaken wits together.
“So you sign the checks for the firm,” said I, “and Charles looks after the dope department. Well, son, take it from me that if that last slug of rat poison does its work, it won't be long before you sit in a nice armchair like the one you've got now, and short circuit a big jolt of trolley-car juice. Do you get me?”
His pallid lips moved a little, but he seemed unable to speak. He wet them with his tongue, and managed to say:
“I ought to ha' known who you were. Say, what if I was to put you on to the whole plant?” He looked up at me eagerly out of his ratty eyes.
“It ain't necessary,” I answered. “I'm already on. I'll tell you what you can do, though, and do it quick, or you may not last long enough to take your electric Pullman. Where have you got Miss Stanley?”
He hesitated.
“Cough it up, you crab,” said I, and gave his wrist a wrench. “Sputter it out—and quick.” And his joints creaked at elbow and shoulder.
“Hold on!” he whined. “She's in the bughouse!”
“The what?”
“The batroom—where the old man kept his son that was balmy. Hold on, mister!”
I shifted my grip, and, taking him by the collar, jerked him to his feet.
“Show me where it is,” I growled.
“It's locked,” he whined. “Charles has got the key.”
“Then we'll get one of our own, son,” said I, and marched him into the dining room, where I wrenched from the wall one of the heavy battle-axes which was furnished at the end with a heavy spike.
“Now, then,” said I, “show me the way.”
We went quietly up the stairs to the top of the house, for I did not want to alarm the nurse, fearing that if she knew the sort of game which was being played around her she might rush off, leaving the poor old invalid uncared for.
The first thing was to liberate Jean, after which I could quietly telephone for the police, give the valet in charge, and possibly secure the butler. There was still a lot which needed clearing up, but for the moment my thought was entirely for Jean.
The principal features of the case seemed plain enough. Charles, evidently acting as steward of the Millsboro estate, had no doubt been systematically robbing his employer for a number of years, and was in the habit of cashing checks signed by Mr. Millsboro.
With the old gentleman on his death-bed, Charles had decided on a final coup. He had either pressed the valet into his service, or else imported him expressly for the work in hand when between them they had no doubt cashed quantities of forged checks of different denominations. Then, fearing that the master might yet survive to audit his accounts, or, perhaps, because of suspicion aroused in other quarters, Charles had decided to put the old man out of the way. Possibly he might have learned of the behest of Miss Stanley, when he had seized upon the opportunity offered by her purchase of the rat poison to accomplish his ends in a manner which, if discovered, might throw the suspicion elsewhere.
All of this had flashed through my mind on discovering the practice signatures in the pocket of the valet. But my brain, usually rather deliberate in its action, had been prepared for just such a revelation by the nurse's having called my attention to the medicine, and her remark about having found Charles prowling about her room. In fact, the mental process had begun, really, when I had found an explanation for the butler's peculiar pallor. Even as dull a person as myself could scarcely have failed to follow the course of deduction. But I had not actually associated Jean's puzzling disappearance with Charles, except in the vaguest way, until I heard the syncopated tapping transmitted by the wall.
At the top of the upper stairs the valet twisted about in my grip and asked:
“Say, what if I put you wise to the whole mob? There's a lot about this business that you ain't on to. If you could round up the whole bunch you'd be a made man. You could afford to give a poor, little slob like me a chance to make his get-away. All I've done was to put the old geezer's monaker on a check once in a while. Say, how about it?”
Evidently enough the valet took me for a detective. But his reference to the “mob” and the “bunch” indicated that there were others besides the butler and himself mixed up in the crime. It flashed through my head that, perhaps, after all, the Feldsburgs might be involved, the two servants playing the parts of jackals for their bigger game.
I paused and stared into the valet's mean, little face. There was no doubt but that he was badly frightened, and ready to tell all that he knew to save his skin. It was very probable, I thought, that he might really be no more than the tool of a tool; working for Charles just as Charles was working for the Feldsburgs. The little brute did not look as though he had either the courage or the intelligence for any crime more daring than forgery, which might have been easy for him as the result of a natural aptitude.
“Come in here,” said I, and opened a door at the head of the stairs, for I did not want our voices to carry down to the nurse. The door opened into what appeared to be a storeroom containing trunks, boxes, and some pieces of dilapidated furniture. I closed the door behind me and stood with my back against it.
“Now, see here,” said I, “you make a clean breast of this whole business, and as soon as I have the gang rounded up you'll get your chance to beat it. Savvy?”
He stared at me doubtfully.
“How do I know that?” he asked.
“You'll have to take your chance, I reckon. But it's that or the chair. The old man got that last dose of Charles; the one last night, I mean, and he's pretty bad. If he cashes in it's the zig-zags for yours.”
The sweat broke out on the valet's bloodless face, and he sank down on a box, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief.
“I been a lollop,” said he. “I never counted on this poison racket. Charles never put me next to that until last night—him. The graft he put up to me was only a few fake checks, me to write 'em and he to cash 'em, then beat it”
“Can all that,” I interrupted, “and get down to this stuff about the mob. Who else is in it?”
“There's two yeggs coming here to-night. They blow the safe and get the hardware and the sparklers. Then they start a blaze, and the bunch of us fade. See?”
“Burn the house, you mean?”
He nodded.
“With the old man—and Miss Stanley”
“Say,” he whispered eagerly, “that's Charles. D'ye know who he is?”
“Yes,” I answered, and added, with a quick effort at invention: “He's “the Prince.”
“I never heard that one: 'Swell Bill' is the name' he used to work under. Honest to God, though, I wouldn't ha' stood for this crematin' business. I'd ha' let the girl out—honest I would.”
“How about the cook and the maid?” I asked.
“Oh, they ain't in it. Charles told the shoffer he could take 'em to a show to-night in the car. Say, how did you get your tip?”
“Doctor Feldsburg got leary of the dope and brought me out,” said I, watching him narrowly.
“I thought that must be it. Do I get my chance?”
“I guess so,' I answered. “How soon is Charles coming back?”
“He ought to get here about six.”
“Went in to cash a check, hey?”
“Yes—and to see that his two yeggs were on the job.”
“Why did he lock up Miss Stanley?” I asked. “And how did he manage it?”
“He got a hunch that she was wise to him about the rat poison, so just as she was getting into the taxi he went out and told her that he'd like a few words with her. She followed him back into the house, and he asked her to step up to his room, where they could talk without being interrupted. She hung back for a minute, but he whispered that it was something about Doctor Lorenz that he thought she ought to know. So she went up with him, and right here he clapped his hand over her mouth and crammed her into the 'batroom,' as we call it. Then he slipped out by the side door and went along by the beach until he got outside the grounds. I met him on the road as I was going to the town, where I'd been to draw out a little I had in the bank. He told me what he'd done, and gave me the key to the batroom, and said that, if she got noisy, to open the outside door and tell her that she'd better keep quiet if she knew what was good for her.”
“Then you've got the key?” I asked.
“Yes, You don't need that meat ax.”
“All right,” said I. “I guess you've earned your chance to do a Marathon. Come along, now, and we'll let her out.”
He wriggled uneasily.
“How about me?” he asked.
“The best thing for you,” said I, “is to turn State's evidence. I'll testify that you wouldn't stand for this devilish business, and handed it out to me of your own accord. That'll clear you, all right.”
“Charles would fix me, if”
“You needn't worry about Charles,” said I. “Charles will be full of quicklime in a few months. As for these yeggs, they'll be where there's no danger of the dogs biting them for about as many years as you've been alive. Come along.”
I opened the door and motioned him to go ahead. There seemed no longer any fear of his trying to escape. In fact, after what he had told me, and I did not for a moment doubt the truth of it all, so precisely did it fit the circumstances of the case, I appeared to have become the one bulwark of defense not only between him and the law, but between him and Charles.
I had in my pocket not only the papers on which were the practice forgeries, but I had confiscated his wallet at the same time. He knew that Mr, Millsboro was a dying man, and the valet had intelligence enough to realize that even should he manage to give me the slip it would not be long before the grip of the law closed on his snipe neck, when he would be dragged into the dock, to be convicted as accessory to murder in the first degree. As matters stood, I was his best chance, and he could not help but know it.
As he went out into the hall, he glanced at the battle-ax, which I still carried in my hand.
“You don't need that,” said he.
“I like the feel of it,” I answered. “Where's that room?”
Not far from the top of the stairs, and nearly in the middle of the house, the hall divided, when two narrow corridors turned at right angles to right and left. Apparently, the top-story plan of the house had been altered for the construction of a chamber in the very center of the house, which was windowless and completely isolated. This evidently had been built as a place of confinement for Mr. Millsboro's insane son during his periods of violence, and I guessed that the walls and floor must be of double thickness to prevent the ravings and stormings of this unfortunate becoming audible to the other inmates of the house.
Halfway down the corridor, the valet stopped in front of a kind of disguised door, which was papered like the rest of the wall, and which, on being unlocked, proved to be of heavy boiler iron. Between this and an inner door was a space of, perhaps, three feet, with a step leading up to a higher level.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the valet, and I might have been struck by the sudden return to his servile tone if I had not been so impatient. It was not necessary to unlock the inner door with the key, for it was furnished with a spring latch. Reaching past me, the valet unlocked it, and stood aside. “Mind the step, sir,” said he.
I caught at the rim of the door and pulled it toward me, for it opened outward from the room, like the other. As I did so, I saw Jean, standing beside a big chair, one hand resting on its back, and the other pressed against her bosom, her eyes wide and filled with terror.
“Don't be frightened. It's I—Walcott”
That was as far as I got, for at the same moment something struck me behind the ear, and a solid weight drove against the small of my back. I pitched forward, caught my foot on the top of the step, and plunged forward on hands and knees. The battle-ax went clattering across the floor. Jean shrieked, and, as I scrambled to my feet, I heard the door slam to with a metallic clang, and the click of its spring latch.
CHAPTER VII.
Trapped.
Even to-day, when I think of that moment, I can feel the hot blood coming up into my face and scorching my ears. Great, hulking idiot that I was, to be caught napping in such a brainless way, and tilted into the room like some stupid, clumsy clod by a shrimp of a man scarcely more than half my size and weight.
As I clambered up and flung myself at the door, I heard the click of the latch, and knew that I was trapped. A moment later I heard a muffled jar, which told me that the valet had shut the outer door also.
Jean had shrieked, and when I turned she was clinging to the chair. I stood for an instant staring at her.
“Here's a nice mess,” I said. “That little devil fooled me.”
“What's happened?”
“Oh, we are up against a bad crowd,” I answered vaguely, wondering how much I had better tell her. Here we were, caged in a prison which seemed to offer no chance of immediate escape, and in a house which was doomed to destruction before many hours passed. I knew that there was no mercy to be expected from Charles or the valet. Jean and I were the only persons alive who had any suspicion, or, even more, any proof of their crime. With the house in ashes, and the only witnesses who could testify against them roasted alive and buried in the ruins, the criminals would have plenty of time to put oceans between themselves and the place before any suspicion of foul play might leak out. Indeed, for that matter, it might never leak out. There was nothing to prevent Charles from remaining to explain the conflagration, even to the finding of our charred corpses in any way which his ingenuity might suggest.
Charles would be able to say anything he chose, and there would be nobody to disprove his claims. Even if he thought himself under suspicion of attempting to poison his master, he could lay the crime on Jean, and who could disprove any statement which he might see fit to make?
As I realized all of this, my heart turned cold, and the sweat broke out on my face. I looked around. The room was of average size, windowless, of course, but furnished with light and air by a shaft of nearly the same dimensions which rose directly to the roof of the house, where it was covered by a skylight of frosted glass. On the level of the ceiling of the room itself were wires which ran across the bottom of the shaft to carry horizontal curtains of baize.
Jean's frightened voice interrupted my inspection.
“Tell me, please,” she cried, “what does it all mean?”
“It means that I'm a fool,” I answered bitterly. “It was Charles who put the phosphorus in Mr. Millsboro's medicine. He thought that you had found him out. I heard your hammering and made the valet bring me up here after Charles had left. He shoved me into the room and shut the door, as you saw. The valet is a forger. He and Charles have been working together, cashing checks.”
“How did you find this out?” Jean asked.
I was about to answer, when there came a noise from over our heads. We looked up and saw silhouetted on the skylight a dark, sprawling figure. Out it swarmed to the middle, supported by the iron frame which held the heavy, opaque glass. In the middle it stopped, when there came a splintering crash, and some fragments of broken glass rattled down into the room. I caught Jean by the arm and drew her aside, for we were standing almost in the middle of the room, and in danger of being cut by the falling pieces. More glass fell, to leave a jagged opening a foot or more across, and in this there appeared the face of the valet. For a moment he stared down at us, then
“Hello, there!” he called.
“So it's you, is it?” I answered. “Think you've turned the trick, don't you!”
“Looks that way to me,” he retorted. “Now, listen; you two keep quiet in there, d'ye 'hear? If there's any racket I'll come up and plug you both!”
He shoved his arm through the ragged hole and waved an automatic pistol. “You see that?” said he. “Well, then, you'd better keep mighty quiet down there, or you'll hear it, too. We ain't takin' any chances on this job.”
“Look here,” said I, “you better go slow, son. I'm not the only one that's wise to this game. If I'm not heard from by six o'clock, you and Charles won't get far.”
“Ah, go on,” he answered, “you can't con me.”
“There's no con about it,” said I. “We've got enough on the blotter right now to fix Charles, and if you're fool enough to think that he won't try to save his skin by putting the job onto you, then there's no use trying to teach you anything about crime. You're too thick to learn. You may both try to beat it, but you won't get far. You're foolish, son; that's your trouble. I gave you a chance to save your hide a few minutes ago. Now come down and open up these doors, and the same proposition holds good. I'll overlook that jab behind the ear. It was worth it just to learn what a gink a man like you can be. Take your only chance before it gets stale. That's my advice to you. Savvy?”
He seemed to hesitate for a moment, and I hoped that the bluff had worked. It may have been that I believed what he said about Charles being under suspicion and the house under observation, for he said sullenly:
“Charles can't prove nothin' against me. Now you keep quiet, and maybe I'll let you out before we touch her off—see?”
The skylight was square, the heavy glass held by light T-iron frames about three feet apart, and set into a heavier iron-ridgepole. It was on this that the valet lay, nearly in the center, as the height of the shaft from the room's ceiling was enough to make it impossible for him to command the entire room from any other point. He had knocked the hole with his heel, or the butt of his automatic pistol, between the two middle transverse T-irons close to the ridgepole, and it was through this gap that he had been talking, his body sprawled out on the ridgepole itself, as the transverses were too light and too widely spaced to permit of their taking a strain of a weight even as light as his.
He was not in the slightest danger of breaking through, so long as he avoided placing any great stress on the glass itself. Even that might have supported him had he borne down upon it gradually. But now, as he started to back away, one knee must have placed undue pressure on the glass. Or else, it was that the slight sagging of the whole frame caused the glass to bear unevenly on its lateral support. Whatever the cause, there was a sudden splintering crash, and the next instant all but a few jagged fragments of an entire section came smashing down into the room.
Standing, as we were, clear of the shaft, we were in no danger of being cut by the falling pieces. Nor, for that matter, was the valet in any danger of falling himself. But the sudden giving away of his insecure support startled him so that he grabbed with both hands at the iron ridgepole, one knee projecting over the opening. In doing this he was forced to loose his grip on the pistol, which fell with the shower of glass, striking the floor almost at my feet. In a second I had whipped it up, and covered his dark body, silhouetted against the sky. His face was hanging over the opening, staring down at us.
“Don't shoot—don't—don't, mister!” he cried stranglingly. “I'll let you out—I will—honest to”
“Throw down that key!” I roared—“and quick!”
“I ain't got the key” His voice was a bleat of terror.
“Throw it down!”
“I ain't got it. I left it in the door. Don't—aw, don't!”
“Throw it down!” I roared again,
“I can't,” he wailed. “It's in the door—the outside door”
“You throw down that key!” I shouted. “Chuck it down before I count three, or I'll drill you. One—two”
His body heaved, and brought down another shower of glass. In that second it flashed through me that he was telling the truth. I had noticed on entering the room that it was the outer door only which he had unlocked. The inner one had the spring latch which he had drawn by a button underneath the lock. But, key or no key, the man could not be allowed to escape. That spidery thing crawling against the darkening sky stood between us and a chance for our lives. The valet realized this. He knew that he was doomed, and, as he stared down at me, his eyes bulged in mortal terror. His mouth opened wide, and his face writhed as though to anticipate the death shriek as the bullet tore through his vitals.
“Ah—don't,” he wailed.
“Three!” I cried, and fired at the middle of the black, squirming body. It bounded on the frames, and there was an avalanche of glass. I fired again, then a third time. The writhing shape flung forward, fell upon the open space, where it hung for a moment across a transverse just as a shot squirrel hangs across a twig, then slipped off limply, and fell with a crash, landing in the heap of splintered glass.
I stepped forward and leaned over him. The body jerked a few times convulsively, then relaxed. But almost before the spasmodic contractions had ceased, almost before the mistaken soul had wrenched itself away from the shuddering clay, I was plunging my hands into one pocket after the other, searching for the key. But I did not find it. I knew all the time that there was no chance of finding it. If he had had it, he would have thrown it down.
Jean had shrunk back against the wall, her hands pressed tightly against the sides of her face.
“What have you done?” she cried. “Oh, what have you done?”
“I've killed a snake,” I answered, raising on one knee. “We've got a chance for our lives now.”
“Our lives?”
“Yes,” I answered, and rose to my feet. “Listen, Jean; I didn't tell you all. This butler, Charles, is a convict; a burglar, murderer—anything you like. He poisoned Mr. Millsboro, and he means to burn the house to-night after rifling the safe. The servants are to be sent out. No doubt he intends to murder the old man and the nurse. Part of his plan is to burn you here in this room. He thought that you suspected him of poisoning the medicine. The valet told me all this. I tore a confession out of him. He thought I was a detective, and agreed to turn State's evidence. But when, like a fool, I gave him a chance to play this trick on me, he took it. Perhaps he didn't trust me. I had to kill him. It was our only chance. Now we've got to get out!”
Jean stared from me to the huddled, bleeding thing on the floor. There was a heavy rumble overhead, and a gust of wind struck down through the smashed skylight, and it grew suddenly dark. Looking up, I saw that the sky had turned from leaden gray to indigo. There was a heavier detonation, and a blast of cold air.
“Jean,” I cried, “do you understand?”
“Yes.” She let her arms drop to her sides. “What shall we do?”
“We've got to get out.”
“But how? Where is Charles?”
“He went to the city to cash the last of their forged checks. He may get back at any moment. Come, Jean, pull yourself together. You must help me. Charles doesn't know that I am in here with you. We must do something, and do it quick.”
I picked up the battle-ax and looked around. There came another thunder clap, followed by a fresh shower of broken glass. I sprang to the door and tried to drive the spike on the end of the ax between the lock of the door and the edge of the casing. Both were of iron, and fitted closely. A quick examination showed that it would be the work of hours to force even the inner door, when there was still the outer one. Moreover, this could not be accomplished without a good deal of noise, and if Charles had returned he might hear the racket, go up on the roof, and slaughter us through the skylight.
There came another gust of wind, and a fine spray of rain beat down upon us. The thunder was becoming almost continuous, and the house shook under the heavy reverberations, The darkness deepened, and the vivid flashes of lightning played in quick succession.
Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was ten minutes to six. Charles had very possibly arrived, and the terrible thought occurred to me that he might take advantage of the storm to fire the house, not waiting for his confederates. Who could ever say that it had not been struck by lightning and sprung into a blaze? Crafty criminal that he was, it seemed as though he would be quick to profit by such an opportunity to cover his crime.
I looked at Jean, silent, but resolute, and a shudder went through me. I thought also of the helpless nurse and the pitiful old man. Their lives seemed worth little more than our own. But the two women servants were still in the basement, no doubt, and it was probable that Charles would want to send them away before putting his plan into execution. There were also the valuables in the safe, of which, no doubt, he would want to get his share.
There came a blinding flash, accompanied by a terrific clap of thunder, and another shower of glass crashed down. Jean seized me by the arm.
“Can't we get out by the skylight?” she asked.
I looked overhead, then around the room. There were two moldy, upholstered chairs, a heavy chest of drawers, and the bedstead. The skylight was at least twenty feet above the floor, and I could not see how any scaffolding which would enable us to reach it was to be constructed from these articles of furniture. But, as I quickly studied the problem, an idea flashed into my head. With the point of the ax I ripped up the dingy carpet and examined the floor planking underneath. It was laid with long strips of yellow pine, four inches wide. I drove the point of the ax behind the butt of one of these, and pried it up.
“Here's stuff for a ladder,” I said. “Come, we'll manage it.”
Jean caught the idea at once. I gave her one of the slats of the bed, and showed her how to use it as a lever to hold the section of floor planking while I got a fresh “bite” with the ax. The first strip removed, the others were easy to raise. Working rapidly, but quietly, we managed in the course of about half an hour to remove eight of these planks, the nails in most cases pulling out of the light floor beams which supported them. This false flooring was raised about a foot from the original one of the upper story, and had evidently been constructed for the sake of deadening noise, for there was a layer of sand beneath.
Next came the difficult task of working out the nails, then securing the strips one over the other, as singly they would not have been strong enough to take a person's weight. I lapped them so that the butts of the upper planks came at the middle of the under, pounding in the nails on the back of one of the upholstered chairs, for the bed had no mattress.
It was painful work and difficult, especially that of first freeing the nails before I could use them. With a hammer and a saw the whole job would have taken, perhaps, an hour, but with the clumsy battle-ax it was infuriating. The nails bent and slipped under its flat side, and, to make matters worse, the faint light soon faded, though the storm had passed over, and we were obliged to work in total darkness, and by the sense of touch alone. Not being a smoker, I had no matches, and was, therefore, unable to see my watch, but when the side supports of what was to be our ladder were finished, I removed the crystal, and Jean, touching the hands with her fingers, said that it was, as she thought, half past eight.
Throughout the whole of this fearful task the girl had not so much as whimpered. Not a single word of complaint escaped her. On the contrary, though she knew as well as I the vital necessity of haste, her few remarks were made in a low, steady voice, and her words filled with cheer and encouragement. The sweat was pouring from me in streams as I worked, and my body felt as though filled with ice and fire.
As it crossed my mind that even at that moment Charles might be piling up combustibles down there beneath us, and drenching them in gasoline, my mouth and throat grew hot and dry, and my breath came in whistling gasps. We both suffered from thirst, Jean more than myself, and she must have been faint also from lack of food, but not a word of wretchedness escaped her.
Once, when our hands touched in groping for a nail, I caught hers for a moment, and pressed it in mine, and the answering pressure sent a flame through me. With a gasp that was almost a sob I drew her to me, and for an instant held her closely in my arms. Her cool, fragrant face sought my dripping one, and there, in the gloom, I found her lips.
“Jean—darling,” I whispered incoherently, “I love you—I adore you.”
“And I love you, Douglas,” she murmured brokenly, and her arms slipped up and about my neck, where they tightened with an almost strangling force, then loosened.
“Promise me,” I said, “that if we get out of this you will belong to me—always.”
“I always have belonged to you, I think,” she whispered, “and I always shall. You are mine—my husband. In life or death you are mine. And Douglas”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Even if—if the worst comes to the worst, we do not have to suffer. You have the pistol”
I crushed her face to mine. “You shall not suffer,” I said chokingly. “After all, there are worse things than death.”
“Death is nothing,” she answered, and we turned to our work again.
There came then the problem of how to attach the crosspieces to our uprights, but that I had already considered. Our scant nails were scarcely enough to give security to the uprights themselves. I groped my way to the bed, took out the slats, and, scoring them in the middle with my pocket-knife, broke them in two across my knee. My plan was to notch the uprights in places, then lash the “rungs” with the cords which drew the curtains.
To get these latter I placed the two uprights against the sides of the shaft and started to swarm up. They buckled under my weight, but held. I reached the cords, and cut them away, then slid down again.
It was the work of half an hour to secure the rungs. The cord gave out, so I tore strips from the tough upholstery of the chairs, knotted them together, and used them as lashings. I had barely finished doing this when Jean's voice said tensely in my ear:
“Hurry, Douglas—I smell smoke!”
CHAPTER VIII.
Through the Fire.
Jean was right. The air was faintly scented with the odor of some burning substance, which seemed to come from the hole which we had torn in the floor. The darkness of the room was no longer impenetrable, for the sky had cleared, and the stars twinkled brightly through the open gap in the skylight. I groped my way to the chest of drawers, which stood in a corner, and dragged it against the side of the wall almost under the shaft. Then, raising our rickety ladder, I rested the upper end against the side of the shaft, and planted the foot on the top of the chest of drawers, bracing it against the wall.
This gave it a dangerous lateral pitch, but I hoped that it would bear my weight. There was no doubt of its taking Jean's, but it was necessary for me to mount first, as the top rung was a good five feet from the skylight, and rested beneath a point where the glass was still intact. I was obliged to smash this, then swarm up onto the roof by gripping the ridgepole of the skylight, when I could easily reach down and swing Jean up beside me.
The frail ladder buckled ominously as I tested it by reaching up and swinging from the highest rung which I could reach, for if there was any doubt of its giving way I meant to send Jean up, first, and let her try to scramble to the roof as best she might, though I doubted that she could manage it. But though the rickety affair sagged and bent, it held, reënforced as it was by the lashings which I had bound about it to hold the rungs.
“Put your weight against the chest,” I said to Jean. “Duck your head. I've got to smash the glass.”
“All right,” she answered.
I started to climb up, holding my breath as a man will in the effort to make himself lighter. In one hand I had the battle-ax, and I grudged the thing its extra weight. Halfway up I thought for a moment that the whole affair was going, and my heart came into my throat.
But it held, and once at the top, with a part of the strain against the wall of the shaft, there was no more danger of its giving way. Shielding my head with one arm, I punched at the glass with the ax. The stuff crashed down, falling clear of Jean, who was well to the side. I shoved the ax up onto the roof, then gripped the ridge-pole, and swung myself feet first through the open gap, then squirmed about and looked down.
“Come ahead,” I called softly, and was about to tell her how to go about it when there came what sounded like the muffled report of a pistol.
Close on it followed two other similar sounds, then silence, except for the rush of the cold, westerly wind, which buffeted about the chimneys, and set the ancient weathercock on the tower to jangling discordantly.
“I'm coming,” Jean called back, and I could hear the top of the ladder grating the plaster as she started to climb. I was lying out across the iron ridge-pole, my arms dangling on either side of it, staring down into the black void which swam in utter oblivion.
“Take it easily,” I cautioned her, for the rungs were wide apart, and I was afraid that if her weight came too much on one side, she might capsize the loosely knit affair. “Keep in the middle and”
“It's slipping!” she called back. “It's falling”
I could hear the top of the ladder grating against the plastered wall of the shaft. Then came a shriek from Jean, and with it a crash. I knew from the sound that the ladder had fallen.
“Jean!” I called wildly. “Jean”
Her voice rose despairingly from the murk.
“Oh, Douglas—it's fallen! The bureau slid away!”
“Are you hurt?” I cried.
“No—but how can I raise the ladder?”
“Wait,” I called down to her. “The key is probably in the door. I'll slip down and let you out. Don't be frightened, dear.”
“Douglas—the smoke is getting stronger.”
“Never mind. I'll get you out. Wait a minute, Jean,” I called, and scrambled back and onto my feet.
The roof, like all of its kind, was nearly flat, pitched only enough to permit the water to run off onto the broad eaves below the mansard. There was no scuttle, the access to the roof being through a window of the square tower. But the chimney behind me was provided with a lightning rod which led down over the eaves beside a window. I slipped to the edge and lowered myself by the wire cable to the eaves.
The window was unfastened, so I raised it and crept through. Evidently it was one of the servant's rooms, as it had the smell of recent occupation. I groped my way to the door, opened it, and was nearly blinded by the glare of light from an electric lamp in the corridor. This shone against the wall opposite, and I saw that I had come out on the door leading to the room where Jean was still a prisoner. But the key was not in the door.
The corridor was filled with smoke; a heavy, oily smoke which hung in the dead air like the fumes in a garage. I stood for a moment, listening. There was no sound of crackling flames; no sound of anything except the gusty wind as it billowed against the sides of the house. I snatched the automatic pistol from my pocket, and ran to the head of the stairs, where an electric light was burning brightly. Looking down I could see wreaths of the turbid smoke, but not a sound was to be heard.
There seemed nothing to indicate actually that the house was on fire. Rather, it seemed as if it might have been ablaze in some part, but that the flames had been quenched. I slipped down the stairs and ran the length of the hall to the nurse's room, which adjoined Mr. Millsboro's. Both were vacant. The old man's bed was vacant, the covers flung back over the foot. Both rooms were lighted. The whole house seemed lighted, and in this front part the smoke was less.
But I did not stop to ponder over these riddles. My thought was only of Jean, alone and frantic in her prison. I rushed back to the stairs and dashed down, the pistol held in front of me. On the ground floor the smoke was thicker; almost suffocating in fact, but less so because of its volume than owing to its sooty character, and there was no sign of live fire.
As I slipped down the stairs, swiftly but silently, it crossed my mind that Charles might have murdered Mr. Millsboro and the nurse, flung their bodies into a room filled with inflammables, touched his match and gone off, closing the door behind him, when the fire had smothered from lack of air or was still smoldering.
The broad, lower hall was opaque with the greasy smoke, through which the incandescent lights flared luridly. I paused for an instant at the foot of the stairs, and tried to peer under it, but could not see half the length of the house. Neither was there anything to be heard. There was no roaring nor crackling of flames, no sound of any human presence. Charles and his pals had apparently achieved their foul work and gone, taking it as a matter of course that the old barracks of a house, a double wooden shell incasing brick walls, would go off like a tar barrel.
But whether the house was on fire or not, there was no time to he lost in releasing Jean. The quickest way of doing this seemed to be to run down to the boathouse, where I would no doubt find a coil of rope, then rush back to the roof, and haul her up through the skylight, or, at any rate, raise the ladder into position. I stumbled down the hall half smothered by the heavy fumes, and was nearly to the front door when, from a room to the left, there came a deep, shuddering groan.
I stopped short, gripping the pistol.
“Who's there?” I called.
“Help—help, for the love o' God!” cried a strangling voice. “It's Charles—the butler. Help!”
The voice came from the dining room. I entered. A single electric lamp on the mantel struggled against the murk, and by its dim light I saw the butler. He was lying on his side against a closed door, and as I sprang forward and leaned over him, my foot slipped in the pool of blood which surrounded him. I noticed, too, that here was the source of the smoke, which was pouring black and viscid through the cracks of the door.
“Help!” he groaned, and his eyes glared up at me from his colorless face. “Get me out—quick!”
“You dog,” I snarled, “where's that key? The key to the room where you put Miss Stanley?”
“Here,” he groaned, and laid his hand on his side pocket.
I reached down, secured the key, then asked:
“Where is the old man—and the nurse?”
“Get me out of here—I'm choking.”
“You can choke for all me,” I answered, “Where are they? Speak quick.”
“He was taken to the hospital an hour ago. The nurse—wouldn't stop here. Doctor Feldsburg telephoned—oh”
His head pitched forward, and I thought for the moment that he was dead. I reached down and hauled him clear of the flat band of dark smoke which flowed heavy as molasses under the crack of the door. His eyes opened.
“I fixed 'em,” he muttered incoherently.
“Who?”
“Yellow Pete—and Jimmy the Rat—blast 'em!”
“Where are they?” I demanded.
“Ugh—wha's that?” His eyelids flickered, then opened wide. “I swore I'd fix 'em—long ago.”
“Where are they?” I repeated and pushed his limp body with my foot.
His head jerked convulsively. “In there. Water”
But I did not wait to hear more. The smoke was thickening. I rushed out of the room, down the hall, and up the stairs to the top of the house. Here the air was cleaner, for the fumes were too heavy to rise to any great extent. I ran to the door of the “batroom,” my heart nearly bursting as I slipped in the key. The bolt shot, and the breath burst from me in a gasp of relief. “Jean!” I cried, as I fumbled for the latch of the inner door. “Here I am, Jean!”
The door swung open. There was a low, quavering cry, and a dark figure lurched toward me.
“Jean!” I cried again, and caught her in my arms, and dragged her into the corridor, where for a moment I held her as she hung limp and nerveless. She did not faint, and as I clasped her close, kissing her cold, damp face, and murmuring soothing words of comfort, she stirred slightly and looked up at me.
“Come, dear,” I said. “We must get out. Can you walk?”
“Yes. Have they gone, Douglas?”
“There is no danger,” I answered, and led her down the corridor.
We were almost at the head of the stairs when there came from below a heavy, muffled explosion. The house seemed to rock and sway, and from all sides there came the splintering crash of broken window glass. A pulse of air so violent that it flung us back against the wall, burst upon us from below. The window at the end of the corridor from which, earlier in the day, I had watched the entrance of the valet on his bicycle, flew out, sash and all, while a burning blast heavy with swirling fumes swept up and scorched our faces.
I guessed at what had happened. Charles, perhaps to wipe out some old score of his early criminal career, had enticed his two confederates into the small room off the dining room, which he had filled with combustibles drenched in kerosene. Perhaps, as they were touching matches to the pile, he had shot them both, then tried to slip out and lock the door behind him. But they had been too quick for him, and he had fallen outside the door, drilled through and through by their bullets. These had been the reports which I had heard while on the roof. With the door closed, the fire had smoldered until the gathering heat had splintered the windowpanes, when, the air rushing in, the gas formed had ignited explosively. Charles' last moment could not have been a pleasant one.
Even for us there was no time to lose. The place was plunged in darkness, for the lights had been extinguished by the force of the explosion. After that first blast of withering heat we were able to make the descent of the upper staircase, and we staggered down, shielding our faces with our arms.
“The back stairs!” I gasped. “Where are they?”
“Here—behind us,” answered Jean.
Coughing and choking, we found the door and plunged through it, closing it behind us. Here the air was fresh and pure, for the pantry, into which the back stairs descended, was shut off from the front of the house. This was lighted by an incandescent lamp which hung from a wire, and on the table under it were the remains of a supper with which Charles had apparently regaled his victims.
I picked up the half of a cold chicken and the piece of a loaf, wrapped them in a napkin, and shoved them in one side pocket, and put a bottle of beer in the other, for the sight of the food reminded me that Jean had eaten nothing since early in the morning. Then down we hurried through the kitchen, The basement door was unlocked, and we went out into the pure, sweet air.
I looked back at the house. We had come out on the side of the public road, and as yet no flames were visible, for the fire was on the side of the inlet.
Jean gripped my arms.
“Douglas—oh, Douglas!” she wailed. “Mr. Millsboro—and the nurse!”
“They are not in the house,” I answered, “There is no living person in the house.”
“How do you know?”
“I looked. Besides, Charles told me.”
“Charles?”
“Yes. He is dead now. He told me before he died. Come, Jean. Nobody knows that we are here. Nobody needs to know.”
She did not answer, and we hurried down the drive and out of the gate. Jean, dazed, shaken, and half fainting from the ordeal through which she had passed, clung to my arm and staggered along blindly.
We started down the road, which presently forked when we turned off, away from the main thoroughfare. There was a grove of trees to the left, and when we had gone, perhaps, a hundred yards, I turned off directly into this, Jean tottering blindly at my side. The place was clear of underbrush, and we climbed to the top of a rocky little ridge. Looking through the trees, I saw a brilliant glare from the direction of the Millsboro estate.
“We'll rest a bit, here,” I said, and sat down on a flat rock, drawing Jean to my side.
For several moments neither of us spoke. The flare in the sky brightened, and we heard distant shouts and cries. Then, from the town came the rapid tolling of a fire bell. One—two—three! One—two! it rang. Motor horns sounded from here and there, and a car sped past on the road beneath us, trumpeting violently as it charged along. Jean's body swayed against me, and I held her closer, her head resting on my shoulder, and her hair against my cheek.
For a while we rested so in silence, listening to the rapidly growing tumult as the neighborhood aroused and hurried to the scene of catastrophe. The humming northwest wind was from our direction, though we were sheltered by an overhanging ledge, and presently we could see great firebrands whirled blazing toward the zenith, and swept off in the rush of the strong, upper air.
People ran chattering along the road beneath us, and we heard the clamoring, blaring arrival of the local fire force. There was something weird and dreamlike about all of this tumult from which we felt ourselves so curiously detached. It all seemed so futile, and silly, and inconsequential, after the terrific hours through which we had passed. Those people scurrying along from all sides like night moths rushing to a flame were tremendously excited, as one could tell from their panting shouts and exclamations:
“Millsboro place—old, historic landmark—wonder if they got the old man out”
All such fragments shouted by the hurrying crowd of villa dwellers in the locality rippled up to us like waves splashing against a basaltic rampart heaved up by a convulsive torment of the infant world. We sat there like a god and goddess watching, unmoved, the petty agitations of earthlings.
Motor car after motor car hummed or clattered past, according to its kind. Some of them appeared to be filled with young people who laughed and chattered as if going to a spectacular show in which fireworks played an important part. The damp wood spewed out lovers who had been roused from their trysting among the sweet spring smells of the night. We could hear them chattering, and stumbling, and giggling as they scrambled down to the road. One couple passed close, saw us sitting there, and laughed.
“See the bloomin' fire?” called to us a fresh voice with an English accent. Some sprightly groom, no doubt, who had been studying astronomy with a maidservant, for a tittering voice with a throaty Swedish accent observed: “Dey ban got no use for house on fires—like us.” And off they went, slipping, and sliding, and squealing down the bank to join the growing throng, for all about the Millsboro estate, though at some little distance, were many small villas and cottages of suburban people who lived in the country, and had their business in New York.
As I sat listening abstractedly to all of this curious chirp and twitter, I discovered that Jean had fallen fast asleep. Her head had slipped from my shoulder to my chest; my arms were round her, my hands clasped, and her breathing was as slow and peaceful as that of a sleeping child.
What waves of tenderness passed through me, then, no one may ever know. I was glad, in that hour, that I had always been a grub; glad that there had been no drain to that reservoir which holds a man's fund of love for the one woman. She was my only heart's desire; my little girl, my sweetheart, my brave companion—and she was to be my wife! The tears swam into my eyes as I bent my head to kiss her soft hair.
The kiss awakened her. Jean, in her perfect health, had that rare faculty of crowding hours of rest into a few brief minutes of profound relaxation. She awoke with a little twittering like that of the birds all about us, which were being disturbed by the growing glare of the conflagration. I was glad, because I did not think that she ought to sleep in those damp woods. She came back to full consciousness like any of us workers who have things to do that have to be done at certain times, without reference to soft comforts.
“I went to sleep,” she said.
“Yes,” I answered, “and now you must eat something, because we've got to go. It must be nearly midnight.”
I reached in my pocket and drew out the food which I had snatched up as we went through the pantry. With the leather punch in my knife I unfastened the crimped top of the bottle of beer.
“Eat and drink,” I said, “because to-morrow morning I've got to go to the Mazaruni.”
“I'm going with you,” said Jean.
“We can talk about that later,” I answered, and my heart was like lead. “Eat, now, and then we'll go.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Back to the city. Drink this.” I handed her the bottle. “You're thirsty, aren't you?”
“Yes—but I'd rather have some water.”
“Take this, and then we'll go and get some water,” I said.
She ate and drank while I described how I had found Charles, and what he had told me.
“I think it was true,” I said. “The nurse was frightened and nervous. She probably telephoned to Doctor Feldsburg or his son, and they had the patient moved to the hospital. Lorenz felt that there was something wrong. He asked me if I believed in presentiments. I didn't, then—but I do now. I think that a china dog might have felt the atmosphere of crime hanging over that house. But then, I wasn't a china dog.”
“What did you say to Doctor Feldsburg?” Jean asked.
I looked at her in surprise, then realized suddenly that I had told her nothing about that interview, and of how Lorenz had cleared her of all suspicion in the mind of his father by the theory of the poisoned rat. So I now proceeded to acquaint her with all of the facts, and of how I had come to discover the true situation through the confession which I had extorted from the wretched valet. Jean listened in silence and wonder, and before my narrative had proceeded far her hand slipped into mine, and remained there until I had finished.
“Lorenz and I were terribly puzzled about your disappearance,” I said. “He was called away to see his patient in the Bronx. No doubt the feeling which he had about there being some ugly mystery around the house grew so strong that he decided to have Mr. Millsboro removed to the hospital that very afternoon. Besides, the nurse was very nervous, and remained only under protest. It may be, also, that she had her suspicions about the phosphorus in the medicine, and suspected Charles. In that case it is possible that she called up Lorenz and intimated something of the sort, when he would have moved the old gentleman immediately. There was no sign of disorder in the room, and the bedding had been turned neatly back. There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Millsboro and the nurse are quite safe.”
“Then nobody knows that we were in the house,” said Jean slowly.
“Not a living soul. I told the nurse that I was waiting to speak to the butler. She may have thought that I got tired of waiting, and left, or that, as it was getting late, I went to the station to speak to him when he got off the train. It does not matter what she thought. She did not know that I was in the house. The cook and maid were in the basement, and would not have known if I had left the place. When the ruins are examined, and they find the bodies of the gang and the opened safe, it will not be difficult to judge pretty closely as to what actually occurred; namely, that the house was plundered by thieves, who set it afire before going out, then quarreled among themselves, and slaughtered each other. See here, Jean,” I went on, “I have been thinking the matter over while you were resting, and it seems to me that we are under no obligation to make public our part in this terrible business.”
“I have been thinking the same thing, Douglas,” she answered.
“It would be better to say nothing for a number of reasons,” I said. “The inquiry would bring you, particularly, a notoriety which might do you a great deal of harm.. It would bring out the fact of Mr. Millsboro's having made a will in your favor, and of your being in attendance on him when the doctors discovered the phosphorus in the medicine which you were about to give him. Then, there would be the fact of your presence in the house shortly before the nurse called my attention to the phosphorus in the medicine she herself was about to administer. People might choose to doubt our story of having been shut up in the insane room, and the valet, the only witness against Charles, is dead. Charles himself is dead, and it might be claimed that you had taken advantage of this fact to fix the crime on him. He might be glorified as the heroic, devoted butler who lost his life in defense of his master's property. As for my evidence, that would be vitiated by the fact of our having contracted a civil marriage this morning.
“The case, as it now stands, will always be more or less of a mystery, and for my part I think that it had better remain so. I shall call up Doctor Lorenz, or drop him a line, saying that I found you after he had left, and that we returned to the city. If he questions you, say that you were waiting to see me after he had gone. If he asks you where, say here at the fork of the road. You can tell him that you wished to thank me for befriending you. And I would advise that you lose no time in seeing Mr. Millsboro's lawyer and renouncing your claim to the estate, on the ground that in your opinion he was too vague, mentally, to appreciate his act, and that you do not know of any reason why he should have made you his heiress.”
“I do not want his money,” she answered. “I would not touch a penny of it.” She raised her face, and I saw her tears glistening in the bright starlight. “There is only one thing which I want—only one thing. Don't go to that awful place, Douglas. Or if you must, then take me with you.”
“I can't, Jean. Neither could you go. Will you wait for me? Only two years?”
“Only two years!” she echoed bitterly. “Why not say two hundred years? But you are right, Douglas. Some of us are doomed to wait, and long, and yearn for the happiness which we can imagine, but never feel—and plod along under the load of other lives—oh, my dear!” she cried passionately. “Don't you sometimes hate them all? Is it very wicked?” She began to sob.
“Jean—Jean!” I said soothingly, and took her in my arms. I understood that wail of protest; that plea for the right to live one's own life. “Jean—darling.”
Her arms slipped up around my neck. Her eyes glowed up at me from her pallid face.
“I am your wife,” she whispered.
Jean, white and tense, stood on the edge of the wharf and watched me with tearless eyes as the ship edged remorselessly away from the end of the pier. Long after her features had grown indistinct I could feel that last yearning look.
But this parting, while it wrenched me to the very core, still left a certain curious exaltation. I was going, but I should return. I was sure that I should return.
I shall not dwell on that separation. I reached the Mazaruni, and found it worse than all description. Acclimated men died about me like sewer rats stifled in a trap. Supposed immunes, negroes from the stagnant rice belts, coolies spawned under the fever mists, tropic-hardened whites, came, and labored, and died. They went to their work sound men in the morning, and at night one would have said that they had been dead a week.
And through this devastation I moved like a phœnix in the flame, thin, sweating, yellow, but unscathed. I built my plant, saw it in successful operation, received my bonus of stock, and learned that in six months it had quadrupled its value as the result of my development of the properties.
I saw myself in the near future as a man, if not actually rich, yet independent of toil. In the last six months I was able to send checks of small denomination to my father, and those of large ones to my wife. Her letters were my tonic; the divine elixir which they contained put into my blood a strong fluid which defied the fever.
I finished my work, refused munificent offers from the company to remain and conduct their operations, for I had come to be regarded as a prodigy; and then, as joyous and elated I set foot upon the steamer at Georgetown to return, the blow fell—fell like an avalanche of festering poison, to plunge me deep in a flaming delirium, which lasted the whole of the voyage.
Jean, with Mr. Stuart, our secretary, came down to the ship to claim the yellow, fever-ridden rack of bones which, from their reception of it, one might have considered as an object of value. And then, as they were getting me ashore, who should appear but Lorenz Feldsburg! These two men had proved loyal friends to Jean, and she had told them both our story.
Mr. Millsboro had recovered to such health as might be expected of his age, and to the clear possession of his mental faculties. It was Lorenz's opinion that Charles had been administering some form of poison during a considerable period. The old gentleman and his lawyer had been impressed most favorably by Jean's refusal to accept a fortune to which she did not feel herself entitled, and the will had accordingly been altered. But when a few years later the aged millionaire succumbed to an attack of grippe it was discovered that he had not forgotten her.
An examination of the ruins of the Millsboro house revealed the charred corpses of the criminals, and the explanation of their presence was such as I had foretold. People were divided in their opinions as to the parts played by Charles and the valet, but public interest did not linger long about the tragedy.
Jean and I are prosperous, now, and our future is filled with the brightness which comes of perfect love and sympathy, and the happiness which we take in our dear children.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1933, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 90 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse