← catalogue

A Strange Disappearance

by Anna Katharine Green · English · Gutenberg #1167 · 296,509 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Strange Disappearance
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: A Strange Disappearance

Author: Anna Katharine Green


        
Release date: January 1, 1998 [eBook #1167]
                Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1167

Credits: Produced by Lisa Bennett, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE ***

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

By Anna Katharine Green



OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR

   The House of the Whispering Pines   Miss Hurd. An Enigma
   Leavenworth Case                    That Affair Next Door
   Strange Disappearance               Lost Man’s Lane
   Sword of Damocles                   Agatha Webb
   Hand and Ring                       One of My Sons
   The Mill Mystery                    Defence of the Bride,
   Behind Closed Doors                   and Other Poems
   Cynthia Wakeham’s Money             Risifi’s Daughter. A Drama
   Marked “Personal”                   The Golden Slipper
   To the Minute



CONTENTS

     CHAPTER I       A NOVEL CASE
     CHAPTER II      A FEW POINTS
     CHAPTER III     THE CONTENTS OF A BUREAU DRAWER
     CHAPTER IV      THOMPSON’S STORY
     CHAPTER V       A NEW YORK BELLE
     CHAPTER VI      A BIT OF CALICO
     CHAPTER VII     THE HOUSE AT THE GRANBY CROSS ROADS
     CHAPTER VIII    A WORD OVERHEARD
     CHAPTER IX      A FEW GOLDEN HAIRS
     CHAPTER X       THE SECRET OF MR. BLAKE’S STUDIO
     CHAPTER XI      LUTTRA
     CHAPTER XII     A WOMAN’S LOVE
     CHAPTER XIII    A MAN’S HEART
     CHAPTER XIV     MRS. DANIELS
     CHAPTER XV      A CONFAB
     CHAPTER XVI     THE MARK OF THE RED CROSS
     CHAPTER XVII    THE CAPTURE
     CHAPTER XVIII   LOVE AND DUTY
     CHAPTER XIX     EXPLANATIONS
     CHAPTER XX      THE BOND THAT UNITES




A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE



CHAPTER I. A NOVEL CASE


“Talking of sudden disappearances the one you mention of Hannah in that
Leavenworth case of ours, is not the only remarkable one which has come
under my direct notice. Indeed, I know of another that in some respects,
at least, surpasses that in points of interest, and if you will promise
not to inquire into the real names of the parties concerned, as the
affair is a secret, I will relate you my experience regarding it.”

The speaker was Q, the rising young detective, universally acknowledged
by us of the force as the most astute man for mysterious and
unprecedented cases, then in the bureau, always and of course excepting
Mr. Gryce; and such a statement from him could not but arouse our
deepest curiosity. Drawing up, then, to the stove around which we
were sitting in lazy enjoyment of one of those off-hours so dear to
a detective’s heart, we gave with alacrity the required promise; and
settling himself back with the satisfied air of a man who has a good
story to tell that does not entirely lack certain points redounding to
his own credit, he began:

I was one Sunday morning loitering at the ----- Precinct Station, when
the door opened and a respectable-looking middle-aged woman came in,
whose agitated air at once attracted my attention. Going up to her, I
asked her what she wanted.

“A detective,” she replied, glancing cautiously about on the faces of
the various men scattered through the room. “I don’t wish anything said
about it, but a girl disappeared from our house last night, and”--she
stopped here, her emotion seeming to choke her--“and I want some one to
look her up,” she went on at last with the most intense emphasis.

“A girl? what kind of a girl; and what house do you mean when you say
our house?”

She looked at me keenly before replying. “You are a young man,” said
she; “isn’t there some one here more responsible than yourself that I
can talk to?”

I shrugged my shoulders and beckoned to Mr. Gryce who was just then
passing. She at once seemed to put confidence in him. Drawing him aside,
she whispered a few low eager words which I could not hear. He listened
nonchalantly for a moment but suddenly made a move which I knew
indicated strong and surprised interest, though from his face--but you
know what Gryce’s face is. I was about to walk off, convinced he had
got hold of something he would prefer to manage himself, when the
Superintendent came in.

“Where is Gryce?” asked he; “tell him I want him.”

Mr. Gryce heard him and hastened forward. As he passed me, he whispered,
“Take a man and go with this woman; look into matters and send me word
if you want me; I will be here for two hours.”

I did not need a second permission. Beckoning to Harris, I reapproached
the woman. “Where do you come from,” said I, “I am to go back with you
and investigate the affair it seems.”

“Did he say so?” she asked, pointing to Mr. Gryce who now stood with his
back to us busily talking with the Superintendent.

I nodded, and she at once moved towards the door. “I come from No.----
Second Avenue: Mr. Blake’s house,” she whispered, uttering a name so
well known, I at once understood Mr. Gryce’s movement of sudden interest
“A girl--one who sewed for us--disappeared last night in a way to
alarm us very much. She was taken from her room--” “Yes,” she cried
vehemently, seeing my look of sarcastic incredulity, “taken from her
room; she never went of her own accord; and she must be found if I spend
every dollar of the pittance I have laid up in the bank against my old
age.”

Her manner was so intense, her tone so marked and her words so vehement,
I at once and naturally asked if the girl was a relative of hers that
she felt her abduction so keenly.

“No,” she replied, “not a relative, but,” she went on, looking every way
but in my face, “a very dear friend--a--a--protegee, I think they call
it, of mine; I--I--She must be found,” she again reiterated.

We were by this time in the street.

“Nothing must be said about it,” she now whispered, catching me by the
arm. “I told him so,” nodding back to the building from which we had
just issued, “and he promised secrecy. It can be done without folks
knowing anything about it, can’t it?”

“What?” I asked.

“Finding the girl.”

“Well,” said I, “we can tell you better about that when we know a few
more of the facts. What is the girl’s name and what makes you think she
didn’t go out of the house-door of her own accord?”

“Why, why, everything. She wasn’t the person to do it; then the looks of
her room, and--They all got out of the window,” she cried suddenly, “and
went away by the side gate into ------ Street.”

“They? Who do you mean by they?”

“Why, whoever they were who carried her off.”

I could not suppress the “bah!” that rose to my lips. Mr. Gryce might
have been able to, but I am not Gryce.

“You don’t believe,” said she, “that she was carried off?”

“Well, no,” said I, “not in the sense you mean.”

She gave another nod back to the police station now a block or so
distant. “He did’nt seem to doubt it at all.”

I laughed. “Did you tell him you thought she had been taken off in this
way?”

“Yes, and he said, ‘Very likely.’ And well he might, for I heard the men
talking in her room, and--”

“You heard men talking in her room--when?”

“O, it must have been as late as half-past twelve. I had been asleep and
the noise they made whispering, woke me.”

“Wait,” I said, “tell me where her room is, hers and yours.”

“Hers is the third story back, mine the front one on the same floor.”

“Who are you?” I now inquired. “What position do you occupy in Mr.
Blake’s house?”

“I am the housekeeper.”

Mr. Blake was a bachelor.

“And you were wakened last night by hearing whispering which seemed to
come from this girl’s room.”

“Yes, I at first thought it was the folks next door,--we often hear them
when they are unusually noisy,--but soon I became assured it came from
her room; and more astonished than I could say,--She is a good girl,”
 she broke in, suddenly looking at me with hotly indignant eyes,
“a--a--as good a girl as this whole city can show; don’t you dare, any
of you, to hint at anything else o--”

“Come, come,” I said soothingly, a little ashamed of my too
communicative face, “I haven’t said anything, we will take it for
granted she is as good as gold, go on.”

The woman wiped her forehead with a hand that trembled like a leaf.
“Where was I?” said she. “O, I heard voices and was surprised and got
up and went to her door. The noise I made unlocking my own must have
startled her, for all was perfectly quiet when I got there. I waited a
moment, then I turned the knob and called her: she did not reply and I
called again. Then she came to the door, but did not unlock it. ‘What is
it?’ she asked. ‘O,’ said I, ‘I thought I heard talking here and I was
frightened,’ ‘It must have been next door,’ said she. I begged pardon
and went back to my room. There was no more noise, but when in the
morning we broke into her room and found her gone, the window open and
signs of distress and struggle around, I knew I had not been mistaken;
that there were men with her when I went to her door, and that they had
carried her off--”

This time I could not restrain myself.

“Did they drop her out of the window?” I inquired.

“O,” said she, “we are building an extension, and there is a ladder
running up to the third floor, and it was by means of that they took
her.”

“Indeed! she seems at least to have been a willing victim,” I remarked.

The woman clutched my arm with a grip like iron. “Don’t you believe it,”
 gasped she, stopping me in the street where we were. “I tell you if what
I say is true, and these burglars or whatever they were, did carry her
off, it was an agony to her, an awful, awful thing that will kill her if
it has not done so already. You don’t know what you are talking about,
you never saw her--”

“Was she pretty,” I asked, hurrying the woman along, for more than one
passer-by had turned their heads to look at us. The question seemed in
some way to give her a shock.

“Ah, I don’t know,” she muttered; “some might not think so, I always
did; it depended upon the way you looked at her.”

For the first time I felt a thrill of anticipation shoot through my
veins. Why, I could not say. Her tone was peculiar, and she spoke in a
sort of brooding way as though she were weighing something in her own
mind; but then her manner had been peculiar throughout. Whatever it was
that aroused my suspicion, I determined henceforth to keep a very sharp
eye upon her ladyship. Levelling a straight glance at her face, I asked
her how it was that she came to be the one to inform the authorities of
the girl’s disappearance.

“Doesn’t Mr. Blake know anything about it?”

The faintest shadow of a change came into her manner. “Yes,” said she,
“I told him at breakfast time; but Mr. Blake doesn’t take much interest
in his servants; he leaves all such matters to me.”

“Then he does not know you have come for the police?”

“No, sir, and O, if you would be so good as to keep it from him. It is
not necessary he should know. I shall let you in the back way. Mr. Blake
is a man who never meddles with anything, and--”

“What did Mr. Blake say this morning when you told him that this
girl--By the way, what is her name?”

“Emily.”

“That this girl, Emily, had disappeared during the night?”

“Not much of anything, sir. He was sitting at the breakfast table
reading his paper, he merely looked up, frowned a little in an
absent-minded way, and told me I must manage the servants’ affairs
without troubling him.”

“And you let it drop?”

“Yes sir; Mr. Blake is not a man to speak twice to.”

I could easily believe that from what I had seen of him in public, for
though by no means a harsh looking man, he had a reserved air which if
maintained in private must have made him very difficult of approach.

We were now within a half block or so of the old-fashioned mansion
regarded by this scion of New York’s aristocracy as one of the most
desirable residences in the city; so motioning to the man who had
accompanied me to take his stand in a doorway near by and watch for
the signal I would give him in case I wanted Mr. Gryce, I turned to the
woman, who was now all in a flutter, and asked her how she proposed to
get me into the house without the knowledge of Mr. Blake.

“O sir, all you have got to do is to follow me right up the back stairs;
he won’t notice, or if he does will not ask any questions.”

And having by this time reached the basement door, she took out a key
from her pocket and inserting it in the lock, at once admitted us into
the dwelling.



CHAPTER II. A FEW POINTS


Mrs. Daniels, for that was her name, took me at once up stairs to the
third story back room. As we passed through the halls, I could not but
notice how rich, though sombre were the old fashioned walls and heavily
frescoed ceilings, so different in style and coloring from what we see
now-a-days in our secret penetrations into Fifth Avenue mansions. Many
as are the wealthy houses I have been called upon to enter in the line
of my profession, I had never crossed the threshold of such an one as
this before, and impervious as I am to any foolish sentimentalities,
I felt a certain degree of awe at the thought of invading with police
investigation, this home of ancient Knicker-bocker respectability. But
once in the room of the missing girl, every consideration fled save that
of professional pride and curiosity. For almost at first blush, I saw
that whether Mrs. Daniels was correct or not in her surmises as to the
manner of the girl’s disappearance, the fact that she had disappeared
was likely to prove an affair of some importance. For, let me state
the facts in the order in which I noticed them. The first thing that
impressed me was, that whatever Mrs. Daniels called her, this was no
sewing girl’s room into which I now stepped. Plain as was the furniture
in comparison with the elaborate richness of the walls and ceiling,
there were still scattered through the room, which was large even for
a thirty foot house, articles of sufficient elegance to make the
supposition that it was the abode of an ordinary seamstress open to
suspicion, if no more.

Mrs. Daniels, seeing my look of surprise, hastened to provide some
explanation. “It is the room which has always been devoted to sewing,”
 said she; “and when Emily came, I thought it would be easier to put up
a bed here than to send her upstairs. She was a very nice girl and
disarranged nothing.”

I glanced around on the writing-case lying open on a small table in the
centre of the room, on the vase half full of partly withered roses, on
the mantel-piece, the Shakespeare, and Macaulay’s History lying on the
stand at my right, thought my own thoughts, but said nothing.

“You found the door locked this morning?” asked I, after a moment’s
scrutiny of the room in which three facts had become manifest: first,
that the girl had not occupied the bed the night before; second, that
there had been some sort of struggle or surprise,--one of the curtains
being violently torn as if grasped by an agitated hand, to say nothing
of a chair lying upset on the floor with one of its legs broken; third,
that the departure, strange as it may seem, had been by the window.

“Yes,” returned she; “but there is a passageway leading from my room
to hers and it was by that means we entered. There was a chair placed
against the door on this side but we easily pushed it away.”

I stepped to the window and looked out. Ah, it would not be so very
difficult for a man to gain the street from that spot in a dark night,
for the roof of the newly-erected extension was almost on a level with
the window.

“Well,” said she anxiously, “couldn’t she have been got out that way?”

“More difficult things have been done,” said I; and was about to step
out upon the roof when I bethought to inquire of Mrs. Daniels if any of
the girl’s clothing was missing.

She immediately flew to the closets and thence to bureau drawers which
she turned hastily over. “No, nothing is missing but a hat and cloak
and--” She paused confusedly.

“And what?” I asked.

“Nothing,” returned she, hurriedly closing the bureau drawer; “only some
little knick-knacks.”

“Knick-knacks!” quoth I. “If she stopped for knick-knacks, she couldn’t
have gone in any very unwilling frame of mind.” And somewhat disgusted,
I was about to throw up the whole affair and leave the room. But the
indecision in Mrs. Daniels’ own face deterred me.

“I don’t understand it,” murmured she, drawing her hand across her eyes.
“I don’t understand it. But,” she went on with even an increase in her
old tone of heart-felt conviction, “no matter whether we understand it
or not, the case is serious; I tell you so, and she must be found.”

I resolved to know the nature of that must, used as few women in her
position would use it even under circumstances to all appearance more
aggravated than these.

“Why, must?” said I. “If the girl went of her own accord as some things
seem to show, why should you, no relative as you acknowledge, take the
matter so to heart as to insist she shall be followed and brought back?”

She turned away, uneasily taking up and putting down some little matters
on the table before her. “Is it not enough that I promise to pay for
all expenses which a search will occasion, without my being forced to
declare just why I should be willing to do so? Am I bound to tell you I
love the girl? that I believe she has been taken away by foul means,
and that to her great suffering and distress? that being fond of her and
believing this, I am conscientious enough to put every means I possess
at the command of those who will recover her?”

I was not satisfied with this but on that very account felt my
enthusiasm revive.

“But Mr. Blake? Surely he is the one to take this interest if anybody.”

“I have before said,” returned she, paling however as she spoke, “that
Mr. Blake takes very little interest in his servants.”

I cast another glance about the room. “How long have you been in this
house?” asked I.

“I was in the service of Mr. Blake’s father and he died a year ago.”

“Since when you have remained with Mr. Blake himself?”

“Yes sir.”

“And this Emily, when did she come here?”

“Oh it must be eleven months or so ago.”

“An Irish girl?”

“O no, American. She is not a common person, sir.”

“What do you mean by that? That she was educated, lady-like, pretty, or
what?”

“I don’t know what to say. She was educated, yes, but not as you would
call a lady educated. Yet she knew a great many things the rest of us
did’nt. She liked to read, you see, and--O sir, ask the girls about her,
I never know what to say when I am questioned.”

I scanned the gray-haired woman still more intently than I had yet done.
Was she the weak common-place creature she seemed, or had she really
some cause other than appeared for these her numerous breaks and
hesitations.

“Where did you get this girl?” I inquired. “Where did she live before
coming here?”

“I cannot say, I never asked her to talk about herself. She came to me
for work and I liked her and took her without recommendation.”

“And she has served you well?”

“Excellently.”

“Been out much? Had any visitors?”

She shook her head. “Never went out and never had any visitors.”

I own I was nonplussed, “Well,” said I, “no more of this at present.
I must first find out if she left this house alone or in company with
others.” And without further parley I stepped out upon the roof of the
extension.

As I did so I debated with myself whether the case warranted me or not
in sending for Mr. Gryce. As yet there was nothing to show that the girl
had come to any harm. A mere elopement with or without a lover to help
her, was not such a serious matter that the whole police force need
be stirred up on the subject; and if the woman had money, as she said,
ready to give the man who should discover the whereabouts of this girl,
why need that money be divided up any more than was necessary. Yet Gryce
was not one to be dallied with. He had said, send for him if the affair
seemed to call for his judgment, and somehow the affair did promise to
be a trifle complicated. I was yet undetermined when I reached the edge
of the roof.

It was a dizzy descent, but once made, escape from the yard beneath
would be easy. A man could take that road without difficulty; but a
woman! Baffled at the idea I turned thoughtfully back, when I beheld
something on the roof before me that caused me to pause and ask myself
if this was going to turn out to be a tragedy after all. It was a drop
of congealed blood. Further on towards the window was another, and
yes, further still, another and another. I even found one upon the very
window ledge itself. Bounding into the room, I searched the carpet for
further traces. It was the worst one in the world to find anything
upon of the nature of which I was seeking, being a confused pattern of
mingled drab and red, and in my difficulty I had to stoop very low.

“What are you looking for?” cried Mrs. Daniels.

I pointed to the drop on the window sill. “Do you see that?” I asked.

She uttered an exclamation and bent nearer. “Blood!” cried she, and
stood staring, with rapidly paling cheeks and trembling form. “They have
killed her and he will never--”

As she did not finish I looked up.

“Do you think it was her blood?” she whispered in a horrified tone.

“There is every reason to believe so,” rejoined I, pointing to a spot
where I had at last discovered not only one crimson drop but many,
scattered over the scarcely redder roses under my feet.

“Ah, it is worse than I thought,” murmured she. “What are you going to
do? What can we do?

“I am going to send for another detective,” returned I; and stepping to
the window I telegraphed at once to the man Harris to go for Mr. Gryce.

“The one we saw at the Station?”

I bowed assent.

Her face lost something of its drawn expression. “O I am glad; he will
do something.”

Subduing my indignation at this back thrust, I employed my time in
taking note of such details as had escaped my previous attention. They
were not many. The open writing-desk--in which, however I found no
letters or written documents of any kind, only a few sheets of paper,
with pen, ink, etc.; the brush and hairpins scattered on the bureau as
though the girl had been interrupted while arranging her hair (if she
had been interrupted); and the absence of any great pile of work such as
one would expect to see in a room set apart for sewing, were all I could
discover. Not much to help us, in case this was to prove an affair of
importance as I began to suspect.

With Mr. Gryce’s arrival, however, things soon assumed a better shape.
He came to the basement door, was ushered in by your humble servant, had
the whole matter as far as I had investigated it, at his finger-ends in
a moment, and was up-stairs and in that room before I, who am called the
quickest man in the force as you all know, could have time to determine
just what difference his presence would make to me in a pecuniary way in
event of Mrs. Daniels’ promises amounting to anything. He did not remain
there long, but when he came down I saw that his interest was in no wise
lessened.

“What kind of a looking girl was this?” he asked, hurrying up to Mrs.
Daniels who had withdrawn into a recess in the lower hall while all this
was going on. “Describe her to me, hair, eyes, complexion, etc.; you
know.”

“I--I--don’t know as I can,” she stammered reluctantly, turning very
red in the face. “I am a poor one for noticing. I will call one of the
girls, I--” She was gone before we realized she had not finished her
sentence.

“Humph!” broke from Mr. Gryce’s lips as he thoughtfully took down a vase
that stood on a bracket near by and looked into it.

I did not venture a word.

When Mrs. Daniels came back she had with her a trim-looking girl of
prepossessing appearance.

“This is Fanny,” said she; “she knows Emily well, being in the habit of
waiting on her at table; she will tell you what you want to hear. I
have explained to her,” she went on, nodding towards Mr. Gryce with a
composure such as she had not before displayed; “that you are looking
for your niece who ran away from home some time ago to go into some sort
of service.”

“Certainly, ma’am,” quoth that gentleman, bowing with mock admiration
to the gas-fixture. Then carelessly shifting his glance to the
cleaning-cloth which Fanny held rather conspicuously in her hand, he
repeated the question he had already put to Mrs. Daniels.

The girl, tossing her head just a trifle, at once replied:

“O she was good-looking enough, if that is what you mean, for them as
likes a girl with cheeks as white as this cloth was afore I rubbed the
spoons with it. As for her eyes, they was blacker than her hair, which
was the blackest I ever see. She had no flesh at all, and as for her
figure--” Fanny glanced down on her own well developed person, and gave
a shrug inexpressibly suggestive.

“Is this description true?” Mr. Gryce asked, seemingly of Mrs. Daniels,
though his gaze rested with curious intentness on the girl’s head which
was covered with a little cap.

“Sufficiently so,” returned Mrs. Daniels in a very low tone, however.
Then with a sudden display of energy, “Emily’s figure is not what
you would call plump. I have seen her--” She broke off as if a little
startled at herself and motioned Fanny to go.

“Wait a moment,” interposed Mr. Gryce in his soft way. “You said the
girl’s hair and eyes were dark; were they darker than yours?”

“O, yes sir;” replied the girl simpering, as she settled the ribbons on
her cap.

“Let me see your hair.”

She took off her cap with a smile.

“Ha, very pretty, very pretty. And the other girls? You have other girls
I suppose?”

“Two, sir;” returned Mrs. Daniels.

“How about their complexions? Are they lighter too than Emily’s?”

“Yes, sir; about like Fanny’s.”

Mr. Gryce spread his hand over his breast in a way that assured me of
his satisfaction, and allowed the girl to go.

“We will now proceed to the yard,” said he. But at that moment the door
of the front room opened and a gentleman stepped leisurely into the
hall, whom at first glance I recognized as the master of the house. He
was dressed for the street and had his hat in his hand. At the sight
we all stood silent, Mrs. Daniels flushing up to the roots of her gray
hair.

Mr. Blake is an elegant-looking man as you perhaps know; proud,
reserved, and a trifle sombre. As he turned to come towards us, the
light shining through the windows at our right, fell full upon his
face, revealing such a self-absorbed and melancholy expression, I
involuntarily drew back as if I had unwittingly intruded upon a great
man’s privacy. Mr. Gryce on the contrary stepped forward.

“Mr. Blake, I believe,” said he, bowing in that deferential way he knows
so well how to assume.

The gentleman, startled as it evidently seemed from a reverie, looked
hastily up. Meeting Mr. Gryce’s bland smile, he returned the bow, but
haughtily, and as it appeared in an abstracted way.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” proceeded my superior. “I am Mr. Gryce
from the detective bureau. We were notified this morning that a girl
in your employ had disappeared from your house last night in a somewhat
strange and unusual way, and I just stepped over with my man here, to
see if the matter is of sufficient importance to inquire into. With many
apologies for the intrusion, I stand obedient to your orders.”

With a frown expressive of annoyance, Mr. Blake glanced around and
detecting Mrs. Daniels, said: “Did you consider the affair so serious as
that?”

She nodded, seeming to find it difficult to speak.

He remained looking at her with an expression of some doubt. “I can
hardly think,” said he, “such extreme measures were necessary; the girl
will doubtless come back, or if not--” His shoulders gave a slight shrug
and he took out his gloves.

“The difficulty seems to be,” quoth Mr. Gryce eyeing those gloves with
his most intent and concentrated look, “that the girl did not go alone,
but was helped away, or forced away, by parties who had previously
broken into your house.”

“That is a strange circumstance,” remarked Mr. Blake, but still without
any appearance of interest, “and if you are sure of what you say,
demands, perhaps, some inquiry. I would not wish to put anything in the
way of justice succoring the injured. But--” again he gave that slight
shrug of the shoulders, indicative of doubt, if not indifference.

Mrs. Daniels trembled, and took a step forward. I thought she was
going to speak, but instead of that she drew back again in her strange
hesitating way.

Mr. Gryce did not seem to notice.

“Perhaps sir,” said he, “if you will step upstairs with me to the room
occupied by this girl, I may be able to show you certain evidences which
will convince you that our errand here is not one of presumption.”

“I am ready to concede that without troubling myself with proof,”
 observed the master of the house with the faintest show of asperity.
“Yet if there is anything to see of a startling nature, perhaps I had
best yield to your wishes. Whereabouts in the house is this girl’s room,
Mrs. Daniels?”

“It is--I gave her the third story back, Mr. Blake;” replied that woman,
nervously eyeing his face. “It was large and light for sewing, and she
was so nice--”

He impatiently waved his hand on which he had by this time fitted his
glove to a nicety, as if these details were an unnecessary bore to him,
and motioned her to show the way. Instantly a new feeling appeared to
seize her, that of alarm.

“I hardly think you need trouble Mr. Blake to go up-stairs,” she
murmured, turning towards Mr. Gryce. “I am sure when you tell him the
curtains were torn, and the chair upset, the window open and--”

But Mr. Gryce was already on the stairs with Mr. Blake, whom this small
opposition seemed to have at once determined.

“O my God!” she murmured to herself, “who could have foreseen this.”
 And ignoring my presence with all the egotism of extreme agitation, she
hurried past me to the room above, where I speedily joined her.



CHAPTER III. THE CONTENTS OF A BUREAU DRAWER

Mr. Blake was standing in the centre of the room when I entered,
carelessly following with his eyes the motion of Mr. Gryce’s finger as
that gentleman pointed with unwearying assiduity to the various little
details that had struck us. His hat was still in his hand, and he
presented a very formidable and imposing appearance, or so Mrs. Daniels
appeared to think as she stood watching him from the corner, whither she
had withdrawn herself.

“A forcible departure you see,” exclaimed Mr. Gryce; “she had not even
time to gather up her clothes;” and with a sudden movement he stooped
and pulled out one of the bureau drawers before the eyes of his
nonchalant listener.

Immediately a smothered exclamation struck our ears, and Mrs. Daniels
started forward.

“I pray, gentlemen,” she entreated, advancing in such a way as to place
herself against the front of the bureau in a manner to preclude the
opening of any more drawers, “that you will remember that a modest woman
such as this girl was, would hardly like to have her clothing displayed
before the eyes of strangers.”

Mr. Gryce instantly closed the drawer.

“You are right,” said he; “pardon the rough ways of a somewhat hardened
officer of the law.”

She drew up closer to the bureau, still protecting it with her meagre
but energetic form while her eyes rested with almost a savage expression
upon the master of the house as if he, and not the detective, had been
the aggressor whose advances she feared.

Mr. Blake did not return the look.

“If that is all you can show me, I think I will proceed to my
appointment,” said he. “The matter does seem to be more serious than I
thought, and if you judge it necessary to take any active measures, why,
let no consideration of my great and inherent dislike to notoriety of
any kind, interfere with what you consider your duty. As for the house,
it is at your command, under Mrs. Daniels’ direction. Good morning.” And
returning our bows with one singularly impressive for all its elegant
carelessness, he at once withdrew.

Mrs. Daniels took one long deep breath and came from the bureau.
Instantly Mr. Gryce stooped and pulled out the drawer she had so visibly
protected. A white towel met our eyes, spread neatly out at its full
length. Lifting it, we looked beneath. A carefully folded dress of dark
blue silk, to all appearance elegantly made, confronted our rather
eager eyes. Beside it, a collar of exquisite lace--I know enough of such
matters to be a judge--pricked through by a gold breast-pin of a strange
and unique pattern. A withered bunch of what appeared to have been a
bouquet of red roses, surmounted the whole, giving to the otherwise
commonplace collection the appearance of a relic from the tomb.

We both drew back in some amazement, involuntarily glancing up at Mrs.
Daniels.

“I have no explanation to give,” said that woman, with a calmness
strangely in contrast to the agitation she had displayed while Mr. Blake
had remained in the room. “That those things rich as they are, really
belonged to the girl, I have no doubt. She brought them when she came,
and they only confirm what I have before intimated: that she was no
ordinary sewing girl, but a woman who had seen better days.”

With a low “humph!” and another glance at the dark blue dress and
delicate collar, Mr. Gryce carefully replaced the cloth he had taken
from them, and softly closed the drawer without either of us having laid
a finger upon a single article. Five minutes later he disappeared from
the room.

I did not see him again till occasion took me below, when I beheld him
softly issue from Mr. Blake’s private apartment. Meeting me, he smiled,
and I saw that whether he was conscious of betraying it or not, he had
come upon some clue or at the least fashioned for himself some theory
with which he was more or less satisfied.

“An elegant apartment, that,” whispered he, nodding sideways toward the
room he had just left, “pity you haven’t time to examine it.”

“Are you sure that I haven’t?” returned I, drawing a step nearer to
escape the eyes of Mrs. Daniels who had descended after me.

“Quite sure;” and we hastened down together into the yard.

But my curiosity once aroused in this way would not let me rest. Taking
an opportunity when Mr. Gryce was engaged in banter with the girls
below, and in this way learning more in a minute of what he wanted to
know than some men would gather in an hour by that or any other method,
I stole lightly back and entered this room.

I almost started in my surprise. Instead of the luxurious apartment I
had prepared myself to behold, a plain, scantily-furnished room opened
before me, of a nature between a library and a studio. There was not
even a carpet on the polished floor, only a rug, which strange to say
was not placed in the centre of the room or even before the fireplace,
but on one side, and directly in front of a picture that almost at first
blush had attracted my attention as being the only article in the room
worth looking at. It was the portrait of a woman, handsome, haughty and
alluring; a modern beauty, with eyes of fire burning beneath high piled
locks of jetty blackness, that were only relieved from being too intense
by the scarlet hood of an opera cloak, that was drawn over them. “A
sister,” I thought to myself, “it is too modern for his mother,” and I
took a step nearer to see if I could trace any likeness in the chiselled
features of this disdainful brunette, to the more characteristic ones
of the careless gentleman who had stood but a few moments before in my
presence. As I did so, I was struck with the distance with which
the picture stood out from the wall, and thought to myself that
the awkwardness of the framing came near marring the beauty of this
otherwise lovely work of art. As for the likeness I was in search of, I
found it or thought I did, in the expression of the eyes which were
of the same color as Mr. Blake’s but more full and passionate; and
satisfied that I had exhausted all the picture could tell me, I
turned to make what other observations I could, when I was startled by
confronting the agitated countenance of Mrs. Daniels who had entered
behind me.

“This is Mr. Blake’s room,” said she with dignity; “no one ever intrudes
here but myself, not even the servants.”

“I beg pardon,” said I, glancing around in vain for the something which
had awakened that look of satisfaction in Mr. Gryce’s eyes. “I was
attracted by the beauty of this picture visible through the half open
door and stepped in to favor myself with a nearer view. It is very
lovely. A sister of Mr. Blake?”

“No, his cousin;” and she closed the door after us with an emphasis that
proclaimed she was anything but pleased.

It was my last effort to obtain information on my own account. In a few
moments later Mr. Gryce appeared from below, and a conversation ensued
with Mrs. Daniels that absorbed my whole attention.

“You are very anxious, my man here tells me, that this girl should be
found?” remarked Mr. Gryce; “so much so that you are willing to defray
all the expenses of a search?”

She bowed. “As far as I am able sir; I have a few hundreds in the
bank, you are welcome to them. I would not keep a dollar back if I
had thousands, but I am poor, and can only promise you what I myself
possess; though--” and her cheeks grew flushed and hot with an unnatural
agitation--“I believe that thousands would not be lacking if they were
found necessary. I--I could almost swear you shall have anything in
reason which you require; only the girl must be found and soon.”

“Have you thought,” proceeded Mr. Gryce, utterly ignoring the wildness
of these statements, “that the girl may come back herself if let alone?”

“She will come back if she can,” quoth Mrs. Daniels.

“Did she seem so well satisfied with her home as to warrant you in
saying that?”

“She liked her home, but she loved me,” returned the woman steadily.
“She loved me so well she would never have gone as she did without being
forced. Yes,” said she, “though she made no outcry and stopped to put
on her bonnet and shawl. She was not a girl to make a fuss. If they had
killed her outright, she would never have uttered a cry.”

“Why do you say they?”

“Because I am confident I heard more than one man’s voice in her room.”

“Humph! Would you know those voices if you heard them again?”

“No.”

There was a surprise in this last negative which Mr. Gryce evidently
noticed.

“I ask,” said he, “because I have been told that Mr. Blake lately kept a
body servant who has been seen to look at this girl more than once, when
she has passed him on the stairs.”

Mrs. Daniels’ face turned scarlet with rage and she hastily rose from
the chair. “I don’t believe it,” said she; “Henry was a man who knew his
place, and--I won’t hear such things,” she suddenly exclaimed; “Emily
was--was a lady, and--”

“Well, well,” interposed Mr. Gryce soothingly, “though the cat looks at
the king, it is no sign the king looks at the cat. We have to think of
everything you know.”

“You must never think of anything like that.”

Mr. Gryce softly ran his thumb around the brim of the hat he held in his
hand. “Mrs. Daniels,” observed he, “it would greatly facilitate matters
if you would kindly tell us why you take such an interest in this girl.
One glimpse at her real history would do more towards setting us on the
right track than anything else you could offer.”

Her face assumed an unmistakable frown. “Have I not told you,” said she,
“what is known of it? That she came to me about two years ago for work;
that I liked her, and so hired her; that she has been with us ever since
and--”

“Then you will not tell us?” exclaimed Mr. Gryce.

Her face fell and a look of hesitation crossed it.

“I doubt if we can do anything unless you do,” continued he.

Her countenance settled again into a resolved expression.

“You are mistaken,” said she; “if the girl had a secret--as nearly all
girls have, brought low as she has evidently been--it had nothing to do
with her disappearance, nor would a knowledge of it help you in any way.
I am confident of this and so shall hold my peace.”

She was not a woman to be frightened or cajoled into making revelations
she did not think necessary, and seeing it, Mr. Gryce refrained from
urging her further.

“However, you will at least tell me this,” said he, “what were the
knick-knacks she took away with her from her bureau drawer?”

“No,” said she, “for they have nothing to do with her abduction. They
were articles of positive value to her, though I assure you of little
importance to any one else. All that is shown by their disappearance is
the fact that she had a moment’s time allowed her in which to collect
what she most wanted.”

Mr. Gryce arose. “Well,” said he, “you have given us a hard sum to
work out, but I am not the man to recoil from anything hard. If I can
discover the whereabouts of this girl I will certainly do it, but you
must help me.”

“I, how?”

“By inserting a personal in the Herald. You say she loves you; and would
come back if she could. Now whether you believe it or not this is open
to doubt; therefore I would advise that you take some such means as
that to inform her of the anxiety of her friends and their desire to
communicate with her.”

“Impossible,” she cried vehemently. “I should be afraid--”

“Well?”

“I might put it that Mrs. D----, anxious about Emily, desires
information of her whereabouts--”

“Put it any way you like.”

“You had better add,” said I, speaking for the first time, “that you
would be willing to pay for information.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Gryce, “add that.”

Mrs. Daniels frowned, but made no objection, and after getting as minute
a description as possible of the clothing worn by the girl the night
before, we left the house.



CHAPTER IV. THOMPSON’S STORY


“An affair of some mystery,” remarked Mr. Gryce, as we halted at the
corner to take a final look at the house and its environs. “Why a girl
should choose such a method of descent as that,”--and he pointed to the
ladder down which we believed her to have come--“to leave a house of
which she had been an inmate for a year, baffles me, I can tell you. If
it were not for those marks of blood which betray her track, I would
be disinclined to believe any such hare-brained adventure was ever
perpetrated by a woman. As it is, what would’nt I give for her
photograph. Black hair, black eyes, white face and thin figure! what a
description whereby to find a girl in this great city of New York.
Ah!” said he with sudden gratification, “here is Mr. Blake again; his
appointment must have been a failure. Let us see if his description will
be any more definite.” And hurrying towards the advancing figure of that
gentleman, he put some questions to him.

Instantly Mr. Blake stopped, looked at him blankly for a moment, then
replied in a tone sufficiently loud for me to hear:

“I am sorry, sir, if my description could have done you any good, but I
have not the remotest idea how the girl looked. I did not know till
this morning even, that there was such a person in my house as a
sewing-woman. I leave all such domestic concerns entirely with Mrs.
Daniels.”

Mr. Gryce again bowed low and ventured another question. The answer came
as before, distinctly to my ears.

“O, I may have seen her, I can not say about that; I very often run
across the servants in the hall; but whether she is tall or short, light
or dark, pretty or ugly, I know no more than you do, sir.” Then with
a dignified nod calculated to abash a man in Mr. Gryce’s position,
inquired,

“Is that all?”

It did not seem to be, Mr. Gryce put another question.

Mr. Blake give him a surprised stare before replying, then courteously
remarked,

“I do not concern myself with servants after they have left me. Henry
was an excellent valet, but a trifle domineering, something which I
never allow in any one who approaches me. I dismissed him and that was
the end of it, I know nothing of what has become of him.”

Mr. Gryce bowed and drew back, and Mr. Blake, with the haughty step
peculiar to him, passed by him and reentered his house.

“I should not like to get into that man’s clutches,” said I, as my
superior rejoined me; “he has a way of making one appear so small.”

Mr. Gryce shot an askance look at his shadow gloomily following him
along the pavement. “Yet it may happen that you will have to run the
risk of that very experience.”

I glanced towards him in amazement.

“If the girl does not turn up of her own accord, or if we do not succeed
in getting some trace of her movements, I shall be tempted to place you
where you can study into the ways of this gentleman’s household. If the
affair is a mystery, it has its centre in that house.”

I stared at Mr. Gryce good and roundly. “You have come across
something which I have missed,” observed I, “or you could not speak so
positively.”

“I have come across nothing that was not in plain sight of any body who
had eyes to see it,” he returned shortly.

I shook my head slightly mortified.

“You had it all before you,” continued he, “and if you were not able
to pick up sufficient facts on which to base a conclusion, you mustn’t
blame me for it.”

More nettled than I would be willing to confess, I walked back with
him to the station, saying nothing then, but inwardly determined to
reestablish my reputation with Mr. Gryce before the affair was over.
Accordingly hunting up the man who had patrolled the district the night
before, I inquired if he had seen any one go in or out of the side gate
of Mr. Blake’s house on ----- street, between the hours of eleven and
one.

“No,” said he, “but I heard Thompson tell a curious story this morning
about some one he had seen.”

“What was it?”

“He said he was passing that way last night about twelve o’clock when he
remarked standing under the lamp on the corner of Second Avenue, a group
consisting of two men and a woman, who no sooner beheld him than they
separated, the men drawing back into Second Avenue and the woman coming
hastily towards him. Not understanding the move, he stood waiting her
approach, when instead of advancing to where he was, she paused at the
gate of Mr. Blake’s house and lifted her hand as if to open it, when
with a wild and terrified gesture she started back, covering her
face with her hands, and before he knew it, had actually fled in the
direction from which she had come. A little startled, Thompson advanced
and looked through the gate before him to see if possible what had
alarmed her, when to his great surprise, he beheld the pale face of the
master of the house, Mr. Blake himself, looking through the bars from
the other side of the gate. He in his turn started back and before he
could recover himself, Mr. Blake had disappeared. He says he tried the
gate after that, but found it locked.”

“Thompson tells you this story, does he?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” said I, “it’s a pretty wild kind of a tale, and all I have
got to say is, that neither you nor Thompson had better go blabbing
it around too much. Mum is the word where such men as Mr. Blake are
concerned.” And I departed to hunt up Thompson.

But he had nothing to add to his statement, except that the girl
appeared to be tall and thin, and was closely wrapped about in a shawl.
My next move was to make such inquiries as I could with safety into the
private concerns of Mr. Blake and his family, and discovered--well, such
facts as these:

That Mr. Blake was a man who if he paid but little attention to domestic
affairs was yet rarely seen out of his own house, except upon occasions
of great political importance, when he was always to be found on
the platform at meetings of his constituents. Though to the ordinary
observer a man eminently calculated, from his good looks, fine position,
and solid wealth to enjoy society, he not only manifested a distaste
for it, but even went so far as to refuse to participate in the social
dinners of his most intimate friends; the only table to which he would
sit down being that of some public caterer, where he was sure of finding
none but his political associates assembled.

To all appearance he wished to avoid the ladies, a theory borne out by
the fact that never, even in church, on the street, or at any place of
amusement, was he observed with one at his side. This fact in a
man, young--he was not far from thirty-five at that time--rich, and
marriageable, would, however, have been more noteworthy than it was
if he had not been known to belong to a family eminent for their
eccentricities. Not a man of all his race but had possessed some marked
peculiarity. His father, bibliomaniac though he was, would never treat a
man or a woman with decency, who mentioned Shakspeare to him, nor would
he acknowledge to his dying day any excellence in that divine poet
beyond a happy way of putting words together. Mr. Blake’s uncle hated
all members of the legal profession, and as for his grandfather--but you
have heard what a mania of dislike he had against that simple article of
diet, fish; how his friends were obliged to omit it from their bills of
fare whenever they expected him to dinner. If then Mr. Blake chose
to have any pet antipathy--as for women for instance--he surely
had precedent enough in his own family to back him. However, it was
whispered in my ear by one gentleman, a former political colleague of
his who had been with him in Washington, that he was known at one time
to show considerable attention to Miss Evelyn Blake, that cousin of
his who has since made such a brilliant thing of it by marrying, and
straightway losing by death, a wealthy old scapegrace of a French noble,
the Count De Mirac. But that was not a matter to be talked about,
Madame the Countess being free at present and in New York, though to all
appearance upon anything but pleasant terms with her quondam admirer.

Remembering the picture I had seen in Mr. Blake’s private apartment, I
asked if this lady was a brunette, and being told she was, and of the
most pronounced type, felt for the moment I had stumbled upon something
in the shape of a clue; but upon resorting to Mr. Gryce with my
information, he shook his head with a short laugh and told me I would
have to dive deeper than that if I wanted to fish up the truth lying at
the bottom of this well.



CHAPTER V. A NEW YORK BELLE


Meanwhile all our efforts to obtain information in regard to the fate or
whereabouts of the missing girl, had so far proved utterly futile. Even
the advertisements inserted by Mrs. Daniels had produced no effect; and
frustrated in my scheme I began to despair, when the accounts of that
same Mrs. Daniels’ strange and unaccountable behavior during these days
of suspense, which came to me through Fanny, (the pretty housemaid at
Mr. Blake’s, whose acquaintance I had lately taken to cultivating,)
aroused once more my dormant energies and led me to ask myself if the
affair was quite as hopeless as it seemed.

“If she was a ghost,” was her final expression on the subject, “she
could’nt go peramberlating this house more than she does. It seems as if
she could’nt keep still a minute. Upstairs and down, upstairs and down,
till we’re most wild. And so white as she is and so trembling! Why her
hands shake so all the time she never dares lift a dish off the table.
And then the way she hangs about Mr. Blake’s door when he’s at home!
She never goes in, that’s the oddest part of it, but walks up and down
before it, wringing her hands and talking to herself just like a mad
woman. Why, I have seen her almost put her hand on the knob twice in
an afternoon perhaps, then draw back as if she was afraid it would burn
her; and if by any chance the door opened and Mr. Blake came out, you
ought to have seen how she run. What it all means I don’t know, but I
have my imaginings, and if she is’nt crazy, why--” etc., etc.

In face of facts like these I felt it would be pure insanity to despair.
Let there be but a mystery, though it involved a man of the position of
Mr. Blake and I was safe. My only apprehension had been that the whole
affair would dissolve itself into an ordinary elopement or some such
common-place matter.

When, therefore, a few minutes later, Fanny announced that Mr. Blake
had ordered a carriage to take him to the Charity Ball that evening,
I determined to follow him and learn if possible what change had
taken place in himself or his circumstances, to lead him into such an
innovation upon his usual habits. Though the hour was late I had but
little difficulty in carrying out my plan, arriving at the Academy
something less than an hour after the opening dance.

The crowd was great and I circulated the floor three times before I came
upon him. When I did, I own I was slightly disappointed; for instead of
finding him as I anticipated, the centre of an admiring circle of ladies
and gentlemen, I espied him withdrawn into a corner with a bland old
politician of the Fifteenth Ward, discussing, as I presently overheard,
the merits and demerits of a certain Smith who at that time was making
some disturbance in the party.

“If that is all he has come for,” thought I, “I had better have stayed
at home and made love to the pretty Fanny.” And somewhat chagrined, I
took up my stand near by, and began scrutinizing the ladies.

Suddenly I felt my heart stand still, the noise of voices ceasing
the same instant behind me. A lady was passing on the arm of a
foreign-looking gentleman, whom it did not require a second glance to
identify with the subject of the portrait in Mr. Blake’s house. Older by
some few years than when her picture was painted, her beauty had assumed
a certain defiant expression that sufficiently betrayed the fact that
the years had not been so wholly happy as she had probably anticipated
when she jilted handsome Holman Blake for the old French Count. At all
events so I interpreted the look of latent scorn that burned in her dark
eyes, as she slowly turned her richly bejeweled head towards the corner
where that gentleman stood, and meeting his eyes no doubt, bowed with a
sudden loss of self-possession that not all the haughty carriage of
her noble form, held doubly erect for the next few moments, could quite
conceal or make forgotten.

“She still loves him,” I inwardly commented and turned to see if the
surprise had awakened any expression on his uncommunicative countenance.

Evidently not, for the tough old politician of the Fifteenth Ward was
laughing, at one of his own jokes probably, and looking up in the
face of Mr. Blake, whose back was turned to me, in a way that entirely
precluded all thought of any tragic expression in that quarter. Somewhat
disgusted, I withdrew and followed the lady.

I could not get very near. By this time the presence of a live countess
in the assembly had become known, and I found her surrounded by a swarm
of half-fledged youths. But I cared little for this; all I wanted to
know was whether Mr. Blake would approach her or not during the evening.
Tediously the moments passed; but a detective on duty, or on fancied
duty, succumbs to no weariness. I had a woman before me worth studying
and the time could not be thrown away. I learned to know her beauty;
the poise of her head, the flush of her cheek, the curl of her lip, the
glance--yes, the glance of her eye, though that was more difficult to
understand, for she had a way of drooping her lids at times that, while
exceedingly effective upon the poor wretch toward whom she might be
directing that half-veiled shaft of light, was anything but conducive to
my purposes.

At length with a restless shrug of her haughty shoulders she turned away
from her crowd of adorers, her breast heaving under its robing of garnet
velvet, and her whole face flaring with a light that might mean resolve
and might mean simply love. I had no need to turn my head to see who was
advancing towards her; her stately attitude as countess, her thrilling
glance as woman, betrayed only too readily.

He was the more composed of the two. Bowing over her hand with a few
words I could not hear, he drew back a step and began uttering the usual
common-place sentiments of the occasion.

She did not respond. With a splendor of indifference not often seen even
in the manner of our grandest ladies, she waited, opening and shutting
her richly feathered fan, as one who would say, “I know all this has to
be gone through with, therefore I will be patient.” But as the moments
passed, and his tone remained unchanged, I could detect a slight gleam
of impatience flash in the depths of her dark eyes, and a change
come into the conventional smile that had hitherto lighted, without
illuminating her countenance. Drawing still further back from the crowd
that was not to be awed from pressing upon her, she looked around as if
seeking a refuge. Her glance fell upon a certain window, with a gleam
of satisfaction. Seeing they would straightway withdraw there, I took
advantage of the moment and made haste to conceal myself behind a
curtain as near that vicinity as possible. In another instant I heard
them approaching.

“You seem to be rather overwhelmed with attention to-night,” were the
first words I caught, uttered in Mr. Blake’s calmest and most courteous
tones.

“Do you think so?” was the slightly sarcastic reply. “I was just
deciding to the contrary when you came up.”

There was a pause. Taking out my knife, I ripped open a seam in the
curtain hanging before me, and looked through. He was eyeing her
intently, a firm look upon his face that made its reserve more marked
than common. I saw him gaze at her handsome head piled with its midnight
tresses amid which the jewels, doubtless of her dead lord, burned with
a fierce and ominous glare, at her smooth olive brow, her partly veiled
eyes where the fire passionately blazed, at her scarlet lips trembling
with an emotion her rapidly flushing cheeks would not allow her to
conceal. I saw his glances fall and embrace her whole elegant form with
its casing of ruby velvet and ornamentation of lace and diamonds, and
an expectant thrill passed through me almost as if I already beheld the
mask of his reserve falling, and the true man flash out in response to
the wooing beauty of this full-blown rose, evidently in waiting for him.
But it died away and a deeper feeling seized me as I saw his glances
return unkindled to her countenance, and heard him say in still more
measured accents than before:

“Is it possible then that the Countess De Mirac can desire the adulation
of us poor American plebeians? I had not thought it, madame.”

Slowly her dark eyes turned towards him; she stood a statue.

“But I forget,” he went on, a tinge of bitterness for a moment showing
itself in his smile: “perhaps in returning to her own country, Evelyn
Blake has so far forgotten the last two years as to find pleasure again
in the toys and foibles of her youth. Such things have been, I hear.”
 And he bowed almost to the ground in his half sarcastic homage.

“Evelyn Blake! It is long since I have heard that name,” she murmured.

He could not restrain the quick flush from mounting to his brow. “Pardon
me,” said he, “if it brings you sadness or unwelcome memories. I promise
you I will not so transgress again.”

A wan smile crossed her lips grown suddenly pallid.

“You mistake,” said she; “if my name brings up a past laden with bitter
memories and shadowed by regret, it also recalls much that is pleasant
and never to be forgotten. I do not object to hearing my girlhood’s name
uttered--by my nearest relative.”

The answer was dignity itself. “Your name is Countess De Mirac, your
relatives must be proud to utter it.”

A gleam not unlike the lightning’s quick flash shot from the eyes she
drooped before him.

“Is it Holman Blake I am listening to,” said she; “I do not recognize my
old friend in the cool and sarcastic man of the world now before me.”

“We often fail to recognize the work of our hands, madame, after it has
fallen from our grasp.”

“What,” she cried, “do you mean--would you say that--”

“I would say nothing,” interrupted he calmly, stooping for the fan she
had dropped. “At an interview which is at once a meeting and a parting,
I would give utterance to nothing which would seem like recrimination.
I--”

“Wait,” suddenly exclaimed she, reaching out her hand for her fan with a
gesture lofty as it was resolute. “You have spoken a word which demands
explanation; what have I ever done to you that you should speak the word
recrimination to me?”

“What? You shook my faith in womankind; you showed me that a woman who
had once told a man she loved him, could so far forget that love as to
marry one she could never respect, for the sake of titles and jewels.
You showed me--”

“Hold,” said she again, this time without gesture or any movement, save
that of her lips grown pallid as marble, “and what did you show me?”

He started, colored profoundly, and for a moment stood before her
unmasked of his stern self-possession. “I beg your pardon,” said he, “I
take back that word, recrimination.”

It was now her turn to lift her head and survey him. With glance less
cool than his, but fully as deliberate, she looked at his proud head
bending before her; studying his face, line by line, from the stern brow
to the closely compressed lips on which melancholy seemed to have
set its everlasting seal, and a change passed over her countenance.
“Holman,” said she, with a sudden rush of tenderness, “if in the times
gone by, we both behaved with too much worldly prudence for it now to be
any great pleasure for either of us to look back, is that any reason
why we should mar our whole future by dwelling too long upon what we are
surely still young enough to bury if not forget? I acknowledge that
I would have behaved in a more ideal fashion, if, after I had been
forsaken by you, I had turned my face from society, and let the
canker-worm of despair slowly destroy whatever life and bloom I had
left. But I was young, and society had its charms, so did the prospect
of wealth and position, however hollow they may have proved; you who
are the master of both this day, because twelve months ago you forsook
Evelyn Blake, should be the last to reproach me with them. I do not
reproach you; I only say let the past be forgotten--”

“Impossible,” exclaimed he, his whole face darkening with an expression
I could not fathom. “What was done at that time cannot be undone. For
you and me there is no future. Yes,” he said turning towards her as she
made a slight fluttering move of dissent, “no future; we can bury the
past, but we can not resurrect it. I doubt if you would wish to if we
could; as we cannot, of course you will not desire even to converse upon
the subject again. Evelyn I wanted to see you once, but I do not wish to
see you again; will you pardon my plain speaking, and release me?”

“I will pardon your plain speaking, but--” Her look said she would not
release him.

He seemed to understand it so, and smiled, but very bitterly. In another
moment he had bowed and gone, and she had returned to her crowd of
adoring sycophants.



CHAPTER VI. A BIT OF CALICO


It was about this time that I took up my residence in a sort of
lodging-house that occupied the opposite corner to that of Mr. Blake.
My room, as I took pains to have it, overlooked the avenue, and from
its windows I could easily watch the goings and comings of the gentleman
whose movements were daily becoming of more and more interest to me.
For set it down to caprice--and men are often as capricious as women--or
account for it as you will, his restlessness at this period was truly
remarkable. Not a day that he did not spend his time in walking the
streets, and that not in his usual aimless gentlemanly fashion, but
eagerly and with an intent gaze that roamed here and there, like a bird
seeking its prey. It would often be as late as five o’clock before he
came in, and if, as now frequently happened, he did not have company to
dinner, he was even known to start out again after seven o’clock and go
over the same ground as in the morning, looking with strained gaze, that
vainly endeavored to appear unconcerned, into the faces of the women
that he passed. I not unfrequently followed him at these times as much
for my own amusement as from any hope I had of coming upon anything that
should aid me in the work before me. But when he suddenly changed his
route of travel from a promenade in the fashionable thoroughfares of
Broadway and Fourteenth Street to a walk through Chatham Square and the
dark, narrow streets of the East side, I began to scent whom the prey
might be that he was seeking, and putting every other consideration
aside, regularly set myself to dog his steps, as only I, with my
innumerable disguises, knew how to do. For three separate days I kept at
his heels wherever he went, each day growing more and more astonished
if not to say hopeful, as I found myself treading the narrowest and most
disreputable streets of the city; halting at the shops of pawnbrokers;
peering into the back-rooms of liquor shops; mixing with the crowds that
infest the corner groceries at nightfall, and even slinking with hand on
the trigger of the pistol I carried in my pocket, up dark alleys where
every door that swung noiselessly to and fro as we passed, shut upon
haunts of such villainy as only is known to us of the police, or to
those good souls that for the sake of One whose example they follow, lay
aside their fears and sensitiveness to carry light into the dim pits of
this wretched world. At first I thought Mr. Blake might have some such
reason for the peculiar course he took. But his indifference to all
crowds where only men were collected, his silence where a word would
have been well received, convinced me it was a woman he was seeking and
that with an intentness which blinded him to the commonest needs of the
hour. I even saw him once in his hurry and abstraction, step across the
body of a child who had fallen face downward on the stones, and that
with an expression showing he was utterly unconscious of anything but an
obstacle in his path. The strangest part of it all was that he seemed to
have no fear. To be sure he took pains to leave his watch at home; but
with such a figure and carriage as he possessed, the absence of jewelry
could never deceive the eye for a moment as to the fact of his being
a man of wealth, and those he went among would do anything for money.
Perhaps, like me, he carried a pistol. At all events he shunned no spot
where either poverty lay hid or deviltry reigned, his proud stern head
bending to enter the lowest doors without a tremble of the haughty lips
that remained compressed as by an iron force; except when some poor
forlorn creature with flaunting head-gear, and tremulous hands,
attracted by his bearing would hastily brush against him, when he would
turn and look, perhaps speak, though what he said I always failed to
catch; after which he would hurry on as if possessed by seven devils.
The evenings of those three days were notable also. Two of them he
spent in the manner I have described; the third he went to the Windsor
House--where the Countess De Mirac had taken rooms--going up to the
ladies’ entrance and actually ringing the bell, only to start back and
walk up and down on the opposite side of the way, with his hands behind
his back, and his head bent, evidently deliberating as to whether he
should or should not carry out his original intention of entering. The
arrival of a carriage with the stately subject of his deliberations,
who from her elaborate costume had seemingly been to some kettledrum or
private reception, speedily put an end to his doubts. As the door opened
to admit her, I saw him cast one look at her heavily draped person, with
its snowy opera-cloak drawn tightly over the sweeping folds of her maize
colored silk, and shrink back with what sounded like a sigh of anger or
distrust, and without waiting for the closing of the door upon her, turn
toward home with a step that hesitated no longer.

The fourth day to my infinite chagrin, I was sick and could not go with
him. All I could do was to wrap myself in blankets and sit in my window
from which I had the satisfaction of viewing him start as I supposed
upon his usual course. The rest of the day was employed in a long,
dull waiting for his return, only relieved by casual glimpses of Mrs.
Daniels’ troubled face as she appeared at one window or another of
the old-fashioned mansion before me. She seemed, too, to be unusually
restless, opening the windows and looking out with forlorn cranings of
her neck as if she too were watching for her master. Indeed I have
no doubt from what I afterwards learned, that she was in a state of
constant suspense during these days. Her frequent appearance at the
station house, where she in vain sought for some news of the girl in
whose fate she was so absorbed, confirmed this. Only the day before I
gave myself up to my unreserved espionage of Mr. Blake, she had had an
interview with Mr. Gryce in which she had let fall her apprehensions
that the girl was dead, and asked whether if that were the case, the
police would be likely to come into a knowledge of the fact. Upon being
assured that if she had not been privately made way with, there was
every chance in their favor, she had grown a little calmer, but before
going away had so far forgotten herself as to intimate that if some
result was not reached before another fortnight had elapsed, she should
take the matter into her own hands and--She did not say what she would
do, but her looks were of a very menacing character. It was no wonder,
then, that her countenance bore marks of the keenest anxiety as she
trod the halls of that dim old mansion, with its dusky corners rich
with bronzes and the glimmering shine of ancient brocades, breathing
suggestions of loss and wrong; or bent her wrinkled forehead to gaze
from the windows for the coming of one whose footsteps were ever
delayed. She happened to be looking out, when after a longer stroll than
usual the master of the house returned. As he made his appearance at the
corner, I saw her hurriedly withdraw her head and hide herself behind
the curtain, from which position she watched him as with tired steps and
somewhat dejected mien, he passed up the steps and entered the house.
Not till the door closed upon him, did she venture to issue forth and
with a hurried movement shut the blinds and disappear. This anxiety on
her part redoubled mine, and thankful enough was I when on the next day
I found myself well enough to renew my operations. To ferret out this
mystery, if mystery it was,--I still found myself forced to admit the
possibility of there being none--had now become the one ambition of my
life; and all because it was not only an unusually blind one, but of a
nature that involved danger to my position as detective, I entered upon
it with a zest rare even to me who love my work and all it involves with
an undivided passion.

To equip myself, then, in a fresh disguise and to join Mr. Blake shortly
after he had left his own corner, was anything but a hardship to me that
bright winter morning, though I knew from past experience, a long and
wearisome walk was before me with nothing in all probability at the
end but reiterated disappointment. But for once the fates had willed
it otherwise. Whether Mr. Blake, discouraged at the failure of his own
attempts, whatever they were, felt less heart to prosecute them than
usual I cannot say, but we had scarcely entered upon the lower end of
the Bowery, before he suddenly turned with a look of disgust, and
gazing hurriedly about him, hailed a Madison Avenue car that was rapidly
approaching. I was at that moment on the other side of the way, but I
hurried forward too, and signaled the same car. But just as I was on the
point of entering it I perceived Mr. Blake step hastily back and with
his eyes upon a girl that was hurrying past him with a basket on her
arm, regain the sidewalk with a swiftness that argued his desire to stop
her. Of course I let the car pass me, though I did not dare approach him
too closely after my late conspicuous attempt to enter it with him. But
from my stand on the opposite curb-stone I saw him draw aside the girl,
who from her garments might have been the daughter or wife of any one
of the shiftless, drinking wretches lounging about on the four corners
within my view, and after talking earnestly with her for a few moments,
saunter at her side down Broome Street, still talking. Reckless at this
sight of the consequences which might follow his detection of the part
I was playing, I hasted after them, when I was suddenly disconcerted by
observing him hurriedly separate from the girl and turn towards me with
intention as it were to regain the corner he had left. Weighing in an
instant the probable good to be obtained by following either party,
I determined to leave Mr. Blake for one day to himself, and turn my
attention to the girl he had addressed, especially as she was tall and
thin and bore herself with something like grace.

Barely bestowing a glance upon him, then, as he passed, in a vain
attempt to read the sombre expression of his inscrutable face grown
five years older in the last five days, I shuffled after the girl now
flitting before me down Broome Street. As I did so, I noticed her dress
to its minutest details, somewhat surprised to find how ragged and
uncouth it was. That Mr. Blake should stop a girl wherever seen, clad
in a black alpaca frock, a striped shawl and a Bowery hat trimmed with
feathers, I could easily understand; but that this creature with her
faded calico dress, dingy cape thrown carelessly over her head, and
ragged basket, should arrest his attention, was a riddle to me. I
hastened forward with intent to catch a glimpse of her countenance if
possible; but she seemed to have acquired wings to her feet since her
interview with Mr. Blake. Darting into a crowd of hooting urchins that
were rushing from Centre Street after a broken wagon and runaway horse,
she sped from my sight with such rapidity, I soon saw that my only hope
of overtaking her lay in running. I accordingly quickened my steps when
those same hooting youngsters getting in the way of my feet, I tripped
up and--well, I own I retired from that field baffled. Not entirely so,
however. Just as I was going down, I caught sight of the girl tearing
away from a box of garbage on the curb-stone; and when order having
been restored, by which lofty statement I mean to say when your humble
servant had regained his equilibrium, I awoke to the fact that she had
effectually disappeared, I hurried to that box and succeeded in finding
hanging to it a bit of rag easily recognized as a piece of the old
calico frock of nameless color which I had been following a moment
before. Regarding it as the sole spoils of a very unsatisfactory day’s
work, I put it carefully away in my pocket book, where it lay till--But
with all my zeal for compression, I must not anticipate.

When I came home that afternoon I found myself unexpectedly involved in
a matter that for the remainder of the day at least, prevented me from
further attending to the affair I had in hand. The next morning Mr.
Blake did not start out as usual, and at noon I received intimation
from Fanny that he was preparing to take a journey. Where, she could
not inform me, nor when, though she thought it probable he would take an
early train. Mrs. Daniels was feeling dreadfully, she informed me; and
the house was like a grave. Greatly excited at this unexpected move on
Mr. Blake’s part, I went home and packed my valise with something of the
spirit of her who once said, under somewhat different circumstances I
allow, “Whither thou goest I will go.”

The truth was, I had travelled so far and learned so little, that
my professional pride was piqued. That expression of Mr. Gryce still
rankled, and nothing could soothe my injured spirit now but success.
Accordingly when Mr. Blake stepped up to the ticket office of the Hudson
River Railroad next morning, to buy a ticket for Putney, a small town
in the northern part of Vermont, he found beside him a spruce
young drummer, or what certainly appeared such, who by some strange
coincidence, wanted a ticket for the same place. The fact did not seem
in the least to surprise him, nor did he cast me a look beyond the
ordinary glance of one stranger at another. Indeed Mr. Blake had no
appearance of being a suspicious man, nor do I think at this time,
he had the remotest idea that he was either watched or followed; an
ignorance of the truth which I took care to preserve by taking my seat
in a different car from him and not showing myself again during the
whole ride from New York to Putney.



CHAPTER VII. THE HOUSE AT THE GRANBY CROSS ROADS


Why Mr. Blake should take a journey at all at this time, and why of
all places in the world he should choose such an insignificant town
as Putney for his destination, was of course the mystery upon which I
brooded during the entire distance. But when somewhere near five in the
afternoon I stepped from the cars on to the platform at Putney Station
only to hear Mr. Blake making inquiries in regard to a certain stage
running between that town and a still smaller village further east, I
own I was not only surprised but well-nigh nonplussed. Especially as
he seemed greatly disappointed to hear that it only ran once a day, and
then for an earlier train in the morning.

“You will have to wait till to-morrow I fear,” said the ticket agent,
“unless the landlord of the hotel down yonder, can harness you up a
team. There is a funeral out west to-day and--”

I did not wait to hear more but hurried down to the hotel he had pointed
out, and hunting up the landlord inquired if for love or money he could
get me any sort of a conveyance for Melville that afternoon. He assured
me it would be impossible, the livery stable as well as his own being
entirely empty.

“Such a thing don’t happen here once in five years,” said he to me. “But
the old codger who is dead, though a queer dick was a noted personage in
these parts, and not a man, woman or child, who could find a horse, mule
or donkey, but what availed himself of the privilege. Even the doctor’s
spavined mare was pressed into service, though she halts on one leg and
stops to get her breath half a dozen times in going up one short hill.
You will have to wait for the stage, sir.”

“But I am in a hurry,” said I as I saw Mr. Blake enter. “I have business
in Melville tonight, and I would pay anything in reason to get there.”

But the landlord only shook his head; and drawing back with the air of
an abused man, I took up my stand in the doorway where I could hear the
same colloquy entered into with Mr. Blake, with the same unsatisfactory
termination. He did not take it quite as calmly as I did, though he
was of too reserved a nature to display much emotion over anything.
The prospect of a long tedious evening spent in a country hotel seemed
almost unendurable to him, but he finally succumbed to the force of
circumstances, as indeed he seemed obliged to do, and partaking of such
refreshment as the rather poorly managed hotel afforded, retired without
ceremony to his room, from which he did not emerge again till next
morning. In all this he had somehow managed not to give his name; and by
means of some inquiries I succeeded in making that evening, I found his
person was unknown in the town.

By a little management I secured the next room to his, by which
arrangement I succeeded in passing a sleepless night, Mr. Blake spending
most of the wee sma’ hours in pacing the floor of his room, with an
unremitting regularity that had anything but a soothing effect upon my
nerves. Early the next morning we took the stage, he sitting on the back
seat, and I in front with the driver. There were other passengers, but
I noticed he never spoke to any of them, nor through all the long drive
did he once look up from the corner where he had ensconced himself. It
was twelve o’clock when we reached the end of the route, a small town
of somewhat less than the usual pretensions of mountain villages; so
insignificant indeed, that I found it more and more difficult to imagine
what the wealthy ex-Congressman could find in such a spot as this, to
make amends for a journey of such length and discomfort; when to my
increasing wonder I heard him give orders for a horse to be saddled and
brought round to the inn door directly after dinner. This was a move I
had not expected and it threw me a little aback, for although I had thus
far managed to hold myself so aloof from Mr. Blake, even while keeping
him under my eye, that no suspicion of my interest in his movements had
as yet been awakened, how could I thus for the third time follow his
order with one precisely similar, without attracting an attention that
would be fatal to my plans. Yet to let him ride off alone now, would be
to drop the trail at the very moment the scent became of importance.

The landlord, a bustling, wiry little man all nervousness and questions,
unwittingly helped me at this crisis.

“Are you going on to Perry, sir?” inquired he of that gentleman, “I have
been expecting a man along these three days bound for Perry.”

“I am that man,” I broke in, stepping forward with some appearance of
asperity, “and I hope you won’t keep me waiting. A horse as soon as
dinner is over, do you hear? I am two days late now, and won’t stand any
nonsense.”

And to escape the questions sure to follow, I strode into the
dining-room with a half-fierce, half-sullen countenance, that
effectually precluded all advances. During the meal I saw Mr. Blake’s
eye roam more than once towards my face; but I did not return his gaze,
or notice him in any way; hurrying through my dinner, and mounting the
first horse brought around, as if time were my only consideration. But
once on the road I took the first opportunity to draw rein and wait,
suddenly remembering that I had not heard Mr. Blake give any intimation
of the direction he intended taking. A few minutes revealed to me his
elegant form well mounted and showing to perfection in his closely
buttoned coat, slowly approaching up the road. Taking advantage of
a rise in the ground, I lingered till he was almost upon me, when I
cantered quickly on, fearing to arouse his apprehensions if I allowed
him to pass me on a road so solitary as that which now stretched out
before us: a move provocative of much embarassment to me, as I dared not
turn my head for the same reason, anxious as I was to keep him in sight.

The roads dividing before me, at length gave me my first opportunity
to pause and look back. He was some fifty paces behind. Waiting till he
came up, I bowed with the surly courtesy I thought in keeping with the
character I had assumed, and asked if he knew which road led towards
Perry, saying I had come off in such haste I had forgotten to inquire my
way. He returned my bow, pointed towards the left hand road and saying,
“I know this does not,” calmly took it.

Now here was a dilemma. If in face of this curt response I proceeded to
follow him, my hand was revealed at once; yet the circumstances
would admit of no other course. I determined to compromise matters by
pretending to take the right hand road till he was out of sight, when I
would return and follow him swiftly upon the left. Accordingly I reined
my horse to the right, and for some fifteen minutes galloped slowly
away towards the north; but another fifteen saw me facing the west, and
riding with a force and fury of which I had not thought the old mare
they had given me capable, till I put her to the test. It was not long
before I saw my fine gentleman trotting in front of me up a long but
gentle slope that rose in the distance; and slackening my own rein, I
withdrew into the forest at the side of the road, till he had passed its
summit and disappeared, when I again galloped forward.

And thus we went on for an hour, over the most uneven country I ever
traversed, he always one hill ahead; when suddenly, by what instinct I
cannot determine, I felt myself approaching the end, and hastening to
the top of the ascent up which I was then laboring, looked down into the
shallow valley spread out before me.

What a sight met my eyes if I had been intent on anything less practical
than the movements of the solitary horseman below! Hills on hills piled
about a verdant basin in whose depths nestled a scanty collection of
houses, in number so small they could be told upon the fingers of the
right hand, but which notwithstanding lent an indescribable aspect of
comfort to this remote region of hill and forest.

But the vision of Mr. Blake pausing half way down the slope before me,
examining, yes examining a pistol which he held in his hand, soon put
an end to all ideas of romance. Somewhat alarmed I reined back; but his
action had evidently no connection with me, for he did not once glance
behind him, but kept his eye on the road which I now observed took a
short turn towards a house of so weird and ominous an appearance that I
scarcely marvelled at his precaution.

Situated on a level track of land at the crossing of three roads, its
spacious front, rude and unpainted as it was, presented every appearance
of an inn, but from its moss-grown chimneys no smoke arose, nor could
I detect any sign of life in its shutterless windows and closed doors,
across which shivered the dark shadow of the one gaunt and aged pine,
that stood like a guard beside its tumbled-down porch.

Mr. Blake seemed to have been struck by the same fact concerning its
loneliness, for hurriedly replacing his pistol in his breast pocket, he
rode slowly forward. I instantly conceived the plan of striking across
the belt of underbrush that separated me from this old dwelling, and by
taking my stand opposite its front, intercept a view of Mr. Blake as
he approached. Hastily dismounting, therefore, I led my horse into the
bushes and tied her to a tree, proceeding to carry out my plan on foot.
I was so far successful as to arrive at the further edge of the wood,
which was thick enough to conceal my presence without being too dense to
obstruct my vision, just as Mr. Blake passed on his way to this solitary
dwelling. He was looking very anxious, but determined. Turning my eyes
from him, I took another glance at the house, which by this movement I
had brought directly before me. It was even more deserted-looking than
I had thought; its unpainted front with its double row of blank windows
meeting your gaze without a response, while the huge old pine with half
its limbs dismantled of foliage, rattled its old bones against its sides
and moaned in its aged fashion like the solitary retainer of a dead
race.

I own I felt the cold shivers creep down my back as that creaking sound
struck my ears, though as the day was chill with an east wind I dare say
it was more the effect of my sudden cessation from exercise, than of
any superstitious awe I felt. Mr. Blake seemed to labor under no such
impressions. Riding up to the front door he knocked without dismounting,
on its dismal panels with his riding whip. No response was heard.
Knitting his brows impatiently, he tried the latch: the door was locked.
Hastily running his eye over the face of the building, he drew rein and
proceeded to ride around the house, which he could easily do owing
to the absence of every obstruction in the way of fence or shrubbery.
Finding no means of entrance he returned again to the front door which
he shook with an impatient hand that however produced no impression
upon the trusty lock, and recognizing, doubtless, the futility of his
endeavors, he drew back, and merely pausing to give one other look at
its deserted front, turned his horse’s head, and to my great amazement,
proceeded with sombre mien and clouded brow to retake the road to
Melville.

This old inn or decayed homestead was then the object of his lengthened
and tedious journey; this ancient house rotting away among the bleak
hills of Vermont, the bourne towards which his steps had been tending
for these past two days. I could not understand it. Rapidly emerging
from the spot where I had secreted myself, I in my turn made a circuit
of the house, if happily I should discover some loophole of entrance
which had escaped his attention. But every door and window was securely
barred, and I was about to follow his example and leave the spot, when
I saw two or three children advancing towards me down the cross roads,
gaily swinging their school books. I noticed they hesitated and huddled
together as they approached and saw me, but not heeding this, I accosted
them with a pleasant word or so, then pointing over my shoulder to the
house behind, asked who lived there. Instantly their already pale faces
grew paler.

“Why,” cried one, a boy, “don’t you know? That is where the two wicked
men lived who stole the money out of the Rutland bank. They were put in
prison, but they got away and--”

Here, the other, a little girl, plucked him by the sleeve with such
affright, that he himself took alarm and just giving me one quick stare
out of his wide eyes, grasped his companion by the hand and took to his
heels. As for myself I stood rooted to the ground in my astonishment.
This blank, sleepy old house the home of the notorious Schoenmakers
after whom half of the detectives of the country were searching? I could
scarcely credit my own ears. True I now remembered they had come from
these parts, still--

Turning round I eyed the house once more. How altered it looked to me!
What a murderous aspect it wore, and how dismally secret were the tight
shut windows and closely fastened doors, on one of which a rude cross
scrawled in red chalk met the eye with a mysterious significance. Even
the old pine had acquired the villainous air of the uncanny repositor of
secrets too dreadful to reveal, as it groaned and murmured to itself in
the keen east wind. Dark deeds and foul wrong seemed written all over
the fearful place, from the long strings of black moss that clung to
the worm-eaten eaves, to the worn stone with its great blotch of
something,--could it have been blood?--that served as a threshold to
the door. Suddenly with the quickness of lightning the thought flashed
across me, what could Mr. Blake, the aristocratic representative of New
York’s oldest family, have wanted in this nest of infamy? What errand
of hope, fear, despair, avarice or revenge, could have brought this
superior gentleman with his refined tastes and proudly reticent manners,
so many miles from home, to the forsaken den of a brace of hardy
villains whose name for two years now, had stood as the type of all that
was bold, bad and lawless, and for whom during the last six weeks the
prison had yawned, and the gallows hungered. Contemplation brought
no reply, and shocked at my own thoughts, I put the question by for
steadier brains than mine; and instead of trying further to solve it,
cast about how I was to gain entrance into this deserted building; for
to enter it I was more than ever determined, now that I had heard to
whom it had once belonged.

Examining with a glance the several roads that branched off in every
direction from where I stood, I found them all equally deserted. Even
the school children had disappeared in some one of the four or five
houses scattered in the remote distance.

If I was willing to enter upon any daring exploit, there was no one to
observe or interrupt. I resolved to make the attempt with which my mind
was full. This was to climb the old tree, and from one of the two or
three branches that brushed against the house, gain entrance at an
open garret window that stared at me from amid the pine’s dark needles.
Taking off my coat with a sigh over the immaculate condition of my new
cassimere trousers, I bent my energies to the task. A difficult one you
will say for a city lad, but thanks to fortune I was not brought up in
New York, and know how to climb trees with the best. With little more
than a scratch or so, I reached the window of which I have spoken,
and after a moment spent in regaining my breath, gave one spring and
accomplished my purpose. I alighted upon a heap of broken glass in a
large bare room. An ominous chill at once struck to my heart. Though
I am anything but a sensitive man as far as physical impressions are
concerned, there was something in the hollow echo that arose from the
four blank walls about me as my feet alighted on that rough, uncarpeted
floor, that struck a vague chill through my blood, and I actually
hesitated for the moment whether to pursue the investigations I had
promised myself, or beat a hasty retreat. A glance at the huge distorted
limbs swaying across the square of the open window decided me. It
was easy to enter by means of that unsteady support, but it would be
extremely unsafe to venture forth in that way. If I prized life and limb
I must seek some other method of egress. I at once put my apprehensions
in my pocket and entered upon my self imposed task.

A single glance was sufficient to exhaust the resources of the empty
garret in which I found myself. Two or three old chairs piled in one
corner, a rusty stove or so, a heap of tattered and decaying clothing,
were all that met my gaze. Taking my way, then, at once to the ladder,
whose narrow ends projecting above a hole in the garret floor, seemed
to proffer the means of reaching the rooms below, I proceeded to descend
into what to my excited imagination looked like a gulf of darkness. It
proved, however, to be nothing more nor less than an unlighted hall of
small dimensions, with a stair-case at one end and a door at the other,
which, upon opening I found myself in a large, square room whose immense
four-post bedstead entirely denuded of its usual accompaniments of bed
and bolster at once struck my eye and for a moment held it enchained.
There were other articles in the room; a disused bureau, a rocking
chair, even a table, but nothing had such a ghostly look as that antique
bedstead with its curtains of calico tied back over its naked framework,
like rags draped from the bare bones of a skeleton. Passing hurriedly
by, I tried a closet door or so, finding little, however, to reward my
search; and eager to be done with what was every moment becoming more
and more drearisome, I hastened across the floor to the front of the
house where I found another hall and a row of rooms that, while not
entirely stripped of furniture, were yet sufficiently barren to
offer little encouragement to my curiosity. One only, a small but not
uncomfortable apartment, showed any signs of having been occupied within
a reasonable length of time; and as I paused before its hastily spread
bed, thrown together as only a man would do it, and wondering why the
room was so dark, looked up and saw that the window was entirely covered
by an old shawl and a couple of heavy coats that had been hastily nailed
across it, I own I felt my hand go to my breast pocket almost as if I
expected to see the wild faces of the dreaded Schoenmakers start up all
aglare from one of the dim corners before me. Rushing to the window, I
tore down with one sweep of my arm both coat and shawl, and with a start
discovered that the window still possessed its draperies in the shape of
a pair of discolored and tattered curtains tied with ribbons that must
once have been brilliant and cheery of color.

Nor was this the only sign in the room of a bygone presence that had
possessed a taste for something beyond the mere necessities of life.
On the grim coarsely papered wall hung more than one picture; cut from
pictorial newspapers to be sure, but each and every one, if I may be
called a judge of such matters, possessing some quality of expression to
commend it to a certain order of taste. They were all strong pictures.
Vivid faces of men and women in daring positions; a hunter holding back
a jaguar from his throat; a soldier protecting his comrade from the
stroke; and most striking of all, a woman lissome as she was powerful,
starting aghast and horror stricken from--what? I could not tell; a
rough hand had stripped the remainder of the picture from the wall.

A bit of candle and a half sheet of a newspaper lay on the floor. I
picked up the paper. It was a Rutland Herald and bore the date of two
days before. As I read I realized what I had done. If these daring
robbers were not at this very moment in the house, they had been there,
and that within two or three days. The broken panes of glass in the
garret above were now explained. I was not the first one who had climbed
that creaking pine tree this fall.

Something like a sensible dread of a very possible danger now seized
hold of me. If I had stumbled upon these strangely subtile, yet
devilishly bold creatures in their secret lair, the pistol I carried was
not going to save me. Shut in like a fox in a hole, I had little to hope
for, if they once made their appearance at the stairhead or came upon me
from any of the dim halls of the crazy old dwelling, which I now began
to find altogether too large for my comfort. Stealing cautiously forth
from the room in which I had found so much to disconcert me, I crept
towards the front staircase and listened. All was deathly quiet. The
old pine tree moaned and twisted without, and from time to time the wind
came sweeping down the chimney with an unearthly shrieking sound that
was weirdly in keeping with the place. But within and below all was
still as the tomb, and though in no ways reassured, I determined to
descend and have the suspense over at once. I did so, pistol in hand
and ears stretched to their utmost to catch the slightest rustle, but no
sound came to disturb me, nor did I meet on this lower floor the sign of
any other presence in the house but my own. Passing hastily through what
appeared to be a sort of rude parlor, I stepped into the kitchen and
tried one of the windows. Finding I could easily lift it from the
inside, I drew my breath with ease for the first time since I had
alighted among the broken glass above, and turning back, deliberately
opened the door of the kitchen stove, and looked in. As I half expected,
I found a pile of partly charred rags, showing where the wretches had
burned their prison clothing, and proceeding further, picked up from
the ashes a ring which whether or not they were conscious of having
attempted to destroy in this way I cannot say, but which I thankfully
put in my pocket against the day it might be required as proof.

Discerning nothing more in that quarter inviting interest, I asked
myself if I had nerve to descend into the cellar. Finally concluding
that that was more than could be expected from any man in my position, I
gave one look of farewell to the damp and desolate walls about me, then
with a breath of relief jumped from the kitchen window again into the
light and air of day. As I did so I could swear I heard a door within
that old house swing on its hinges and softly close. With a thrill I
recognized the fact that it came from the cellar.

                        *      *      *      *

My thoughts on the road back to Melville were many and conflicting.
Chief above them all, however, rose the comfortable conclusion that in
the pursuit of one mysterious affair, I had stumbled, as is often the
case, upon the clue to another of yet greater importance, and by so
doing got a start that might yet redound greatly to my advantage. For
the reward offered for the recapture of the Schoenmakers was large, and
the possibility of my being the one to put the authorities upon their
track, certainly appeared after this day’s developements, open at least
to a very reasonable hope. At all events I determined not to let the
grass grow under my feet till I had informed the Superintendent of what
I had seen and heard that day in the old haunt of these two escaped
convicts.

Arrived at the public house in Melville, and learning that Mr. Blake had
safely returned there an hour before, I drew the landlord to one side
and asked what he could tell me about that old house of the two noted
robbers Schoenmaker, I had passed on my way back among the hills.

“Wa’al now,” replied he, “this is curious. Here I’ve just been answering
the gentleman up stairs a heap of questions concerning that self same
old place, and now you come along with another batch of them; just as
if that rickety old den was the only spot of interest we had in these
parts.”

“Perhaps that may be the truth,” I laughed. “Just now when the papers
are full of these rogues, anything concerning them must be of superior
interest of course.” And I pressed him again to give me a history of the
house and the two thieves who had inhabited it.

“Wa’al,” drawled he “‘taint much we know about them, yet after all it
may be a trifle too much for their necks some day. Time was when nobody
thought especial ill of them beyond a suspicion or so of their being
somewhat mean about money. That was when they kept an inn there, but
when the robbery of the Rutland bank was so clearly traced to them,
more than one man about here started up and said as how they had
always suspected them Shoenmakers of being villains, and even hinted at
something worse than robbery. But nothing beyond that one rascality has
yet been proved against them, and for that they were sent to jail for
twenty years as you know. Two months ago they escaped, and that is the
last known of them. A precious set, too, they are; the father being only
so much the greater rogue than the son as he is years older.”

“And the inn? When was that closed?”

“Just after their arrest.”

“Has’nt it been opened since?”

“Only once when a brace of detectives came up from Troy to investigate,
as they called it.”

“Who has the key?”

“Ah, that’s more than I can tell you.”

I dared not ask how my questions differed from those of Mr. Blake, nor
indeed touch upon that point in any way. I was chiefly anxious now
to return to New York without delay; so paying my bill I thanked the
landlord, and without waiting for the stage, remounted my horse and
proceeded at once to Putney where I was fortunate enough to catch the
evening train. By five o’clock next morning I was in New York where I
proceeded to carry out my programme by hastening at once to headquarters
and reporting my suspicions regarding the whereabouts of the
Schoenmakers. The information was received with interest and I had
the satisfaction of seeing two men despatched north that very day with
orders to procure the arrest of the two notable villains wherever found.



CHAPTER VIII. A WORD OVERHEARD


That evening I had a talk with Fanny over the area gate. She came out
when she saw me approach, with her eyes staring and her whole form in a
flutter.

“O,” she cried, “such things as I have heard this day!”

“Well,” said I, “what? let me hear too.” She put her hand on her heart.
“I never was so frightened,” whispered she, “I thought I should have
fainted right away. To hear that elegant lady use such a word as
crime,--”

“What elegant lady?” interrupted I. “Don’t begin in the middle of your
story, that’s a good girl; I want to hear it all.”

“Well,” said she, calming down a little, “Mrs. Daniels had a visitor
to-day, a lady. She was dressed--”

“O, now,” interrupted I for the second time, “you can leave that out.
Tell me what her name was and let the fol-de-rols go.”

“Her name?” exclaimed the girl with some sharpness, “how should I know
her name; she did’nt come to see me.”

“How did she look then? You saw her I suppose?”

“And was’nt that what I was telling you, when you stopped me. She looked
like a queen, that she did; as grand a lady as ever I see, in her velvet
dress sweeping over the floor, and her diamonds as big as--”

“Was she a dark woman?” I asked.

“Her hair was black and so were her eyes, if that is what you mean.”

“And was she very tall and proud looking?”

The girl nodded. “You know her?” whispered she.

“No,” said I, “not exactly; but I think I can tell who she is. And so
she called to-day on Mrs. Daniels, did she.”

“Yes, but I guess she knew master would be home before she got away.”

“Come,” said I, “tell me all about it; I’m getting impatient.”

“And ain’t I telling you?” said she. “It was about three o’clock this
afternoon, the time I go up stairs to dress, so I just hangs about in
the hall a bit, near the parlor door, and I hear her gossiping with Mrs.
Daniels almost as if she was an old friend, and Mrs. Daniels answering
her mighty stiffly and as if she was’nt glad to see her at all. But the
lady didn’t seem to mind, but went on talking as sweet as honey, and
when they came out, you would have thought she loved the old woman like
a sister to see her look into her face and say something about knowing
how busy she was, but that it would give her so much pleasure if she
would come some day to see her and talk over old times. But Mrs. Daniels
was’nt pleased a bit and showed plain enough she did’nt like the lady,
fine as she was in her ways. She was going to answer her too, but just
then the front door opened and Mr. Blake with his satchel in his hand,
came into the house. And how he did start, to be sure, when he saw them,
though he tried to say something perlite which she did’nt seem to take
to at all, for after muttering something about not expecting to see him,
she put her hand on the knob and was going right out. But he stopped her
and they went into the parlor together while Mrs. Daniels stood staring
after them like one mad, her hand held out with his bag and umbrella in
it, stiff as a statter in the Central Park. She did’nt stand so long,
though, but came running down the hall, as if she was bewitched. I was
dreadful flustered, for though I was hid behind the wall that juts out
there by the back stairs, I was afraid she would see me and shame me
before Mr. Blake. But she passed right by and never looked up. ‘There is
something dreadful mysterious in this,’ thought I, and I just made up
my mind to stay where I was till Mr. Blake and the lady should come out
again from the parlor. I did’nt have to wait very long. In a few minutes
the door opened and they stepped out, he ahead and she coming after. I
thought this was queer, he is always so dreadful perlite in his ways,
but I thought it was a deal queerer when I saw him go up the front
stairs, she hurrying after, looking I cannot tell you how, but awful
troubled and anxious, I should say.

“They went into that room of his he calls his studio and though I knew
it might cost me my place if I was found out, I could’nt help following
and listening at the keyhole.”

“And what did you hear?” I asked, for she paused to take breath.

“Well, the first thing I heard was a cry of pleasure from her, and the
words, ‘You keep that always before you? You cannot dislike me, then, as
much as you pretend.’ I don’t know what she meant nor what he did, but
he stepped across the room and I heard her cry out this time as if she
was hurt as well as awful surprised; and he talked and talked, and I
could’nt catch a word, he spoke so low; and by and by she sobbed just a
little, and I got scared and would have run away but she cried out with
a kind of shriek, ‘O, don’t say any more; to think that crime should
come into our family, the proudest in the land. How could you, Holman,
how could you.’ Yes,” the girl went on, flushing in her excitement till
she was as red as the cherry ribbons in her cap, “those were the very
words she used: ‘To think that crime should come into our family! the
proudest one in the land!’ And she called him by his first name, and
asked him how he could do it.”

“And what did Mr. Blake say?” returned I, a little taken back myself at
this result of my efforts with Fanny.

“O, I did’nt wait to hear. I did’nt wait for anything. If folks was
going to talk about such things as that, I thought I had better be
anywhere than listening at the keyhole. I went right up stairs I can
tell you.”

“And whom have you told of what you heard in the half dozen hours that
have gone by?”

“Nobody; how could you think so mean of me when I promised, and--”

It is not necessary to go any further into this portion of the
interview.

The Countess De Mirac possessed to its fullest extent the present fine
lady’s taste for bric-a-brac. So much I had learned in my inquiries
concerning her. Remembering this, I took the bold resolution of
profiting by this weakness of hers to gain admission to her presence,
she being the only one sharing Mr. Blake’s mysterious secret. Borrowing
a valuable antique from a friend of mine at that time in the business,
I made my appearance the very next day at her apartments, and sending
in an urgent request to see Madame, by the trim negress who answered my
summons, waited in some doubt for her reply.

It came all too soon; Madame was ill and could see no one. I was not,
however, to be baffled by one rebuff. Handing the basket I held to the
girl, I urged her to take it in and show her mistress what it contained,
saying it was a rare article which might never again come her way.

The girl complied, though with a doubtful shake of the head which was
anything but encouraging. Her incredulity, however, must have been
speedily rebuked, for she almost immediately returned without the
basket, saying Madame would see me.

My first thoughts upon entering the grand lady’s presence, was that the
girl had been mistaken, for I found the Countess walking the floor in an
abstracted way, drying a letter she had evidently but just completed, by
shaking it to and fro with an unsteady hand; the placque I had brought,
lying neglected on the table.

But at sight of my respectful form standing with bent head in the
doorway, she hurriedly thrust the letter into a book and took up the
placque. As she did so I marked her well and almost started at the
change I observed in her since that evening at the Academy. It was not
only that she was dressed in some sort of loose dishabille that was
in eminent contrast to the sweeping silks and satins in which I had
hitherto beheld her adorned; or that she was laboring under some
physical disability that robbed her dark cheek of the bloom that was its
chiefest charm. The change I observed went deeper than that; it was more
as if a light had been extinguished in her countenance. It was the same
woman I had beheld standing like a glowing column of will and strength
before the melancholy form of Mr. Blake, but with the will and strength
gone, and with them all the glow.

“She no longer hopes,” thought I, and already felt repaid for my
trouble.

“This is a very pretty article you have brought me,” said she with
something of the unrestrained love of art which she undoubtedly
possessed, showing itself through all her languor. “Where did it come
from, and what recommendations have you, to prove it is an honest sale
you offer me?”

“None,” returned I, ignoring with a reassuring smile the first question,
“except that I should not be afraid if all the police in New York knew I
was here with this fine placque for sale.”

She gave a shrug of her proud shoulder that bespoke the French Countess
and softly ran her finger round the edge of the placque.

“I don’t need anything more of this kind,” said she languidly;
“besides,” and she set it down with a fretful air, “I am in no mood to
buy this afternoon.” Then shortly, “What do you ask for it?”

I named a fabulous price.

She started and cast me a keen glance. “You had better take it to some
one else; I have no money to throw away.”

With a hesitating hand I lifted the placque towards the basket. “I would
very much like to sell it to you,” said I. “Perhaps--”

Just then a lady’s fluttering voice rose from the room beyond inquiring
for the Countess, and hurriedly taking the placque from my hand with
an impulsive “O there’s Amy,” she passed into the adjoining apartment,
leaving the door open behind her.

I saw a quick interchange of greetings between her and a fashionably
dressed lady, then they withdrew to one side with the ornament I had
brought, evidently consulting in regard to its merits. Now was my time.
The book in which she had placed the letter she had been writing lay on
the table right before me, not two inches from my hand. I had only
to throw back the cover and my curiosity would be satisfied. Taking
advantage of a moment when their backs were both turned, I pressed open
the book with a careful hand, and with one eye on them and one on the
sheet before me, managed to read these words:--


    MY DEAREST CECILIA.

    I have tried in vain to match the sample you sent me at Stewart’s,
    Arnold’s and McCreery’s. If you still insist upon making up the
    dress in the way you propose, I will see what Madame Dudevant can
    do for us, though I cannot but advise you to alter your plans and
    make the darker shade of velvet do. I went to the Cary reception
    last night and met Lulu Chittenden. She has actually grown old,
    but was as lively as ever. She created a great stir in Paris when
    she was there; but a husband who comes home two o’clock in the
    morning with bleared eyes and empty pockets, is not conducive to
    the preservation of a woman’s beauty. How she manages to retain
    her spirits I cannot imagine. You ask me news of cousin Holman. I
    meet him occasionally and he looks well, but has grown into the
    most sombre man you ever saw. In regard to certain hopes of which
    you have sometimes made mention, let me assure you they are no
    longer practicable. He has done what--

Here the conversation ceased in the other room, the Countess made a
movement of advance and I closed the book with an inward groan over my
ill-luck.

“It is very pretty,” said she with a weary air; “but as I remarked
before, I am not in the buying mood. If you will take half you mention,
I may consider the subject, but--”

“Pardon me, Madame,” I interrupted, being in no wise anxious to leave
the placque behind me, “I have been considering the matter and I hold to
my original price. Mr. Blake of Second Avenue may give it to me if you
do not.”

“Mr. Blake!” She eyed me suspiciously. “Do you sell to him?”

“I sell to anyone I can,” replied I; “and as he has an artist’s eye for
such things--”

Her brows knitted and she turned away. “I do not want it;” said she,
“sell it to whom you please.”

I took up the placque and left the room.



CHAPTER IX. A FEW GOLDEN HAIRS


When a few days from that I made my appearance before Mr. Gryce, it was
to find him looking somewhat sober. “Those Schoenmakers,” said he, “are
making a deal of trouble. It seems they escaped the fellows up north and
are now somewhere in this city, but where--”

An expressive gesture finished the sentence.

“Is that so?” exclaimed I. “Then we are sure to nab them. Given time and
a pair of low, restless German thieves, I will wager anything, our hands
will be upon them before the month is over. I only hope, when we do come
across them, it will not be to find their betters too much mixed up with
their devilish practices.” And I related to him what Fanny had told me a
few evenings before.

“The coil is tightening,” said he. “What the end will be I don’t know.
Crime, said she? I wish I knew in what blind hole of the earth that girl
we are after lies hidden.”

As if in answer to this wish the door opened and one of our men came
in with a letter in his hand. “Ha!” exclaimed Mr. Gryce, after he had
perused it, “look at that.”

I took the letter from his hand and read:

    The dead body of a girl such as you describe was found in the East
    river off Fiftieth Street this morning. From appearance has been
    dead some time. Have telegraphed to Police Headquarters for
    orders. Should you wish to see the body before it is removed to
    the Morgue or otherwise disturbed, please hasten to Pier 48 E. R.
                                                           GRAHAM.

“Come,” said I, “let’s go and see for ourselves. If it should be the
one--”

“The dinner party proposed by Mr. Blake for to-night, may have its
interruptions,” he remarked.

I do not wish to make my story any longer than is necessary, but I must
say that when in an hour or so later, I stood with Mr. Gryce before the
unconscious form of that poor drowned girl I felt an unusual degree
of awe stealing over me: there was so much mystery connected with this
affair, and the parties implicated were of such standing and repute.

I almost dreaded to see the covering removed from her face lest I should
behold, what? I could not have told if I had tried.

“A trim made body enough,” cried the official in charge as Mr. Gryce
lifted an end of the cloth that enveloped her and threw it back. “Pity
the features are not better preserved.”

“No need for us to see the features,” exclaimed I, pointing to the locks
of golden red hair that hung in tangled masses about her. “The hair is
enough; she is not the one.” And I turned aside, asking myself if it was
relief I felt.

To my surprise Mr. Gryce did not follow.

“Tall, thin, white face, black eyes.” I heard him whisper to himself.
“It is a pity the features are not better preserved.”

“But,” said I, taking him by the arm, “Fanny spoke particularly of
her hair being black, while this girl’s--Good heavens!” I suddenly
ejaculated as I looked again at the prostrate form before me. “Yellow
hair or black, this is the girl I saw him speaking to that day in
Broome Street. I remember her clothes if nothing more.” And opening my
pocketbook, I took out the morsel of cloth I had plucked that day from
the ash barrel, lifted up the discolored rags that hung about the body
and compared the two. The pattern, texture and color were the same.

“Well,” said Mr. Gryce, pointing to certain contusions, like marks from
the blow of some heavy instrument on the head and bared arms of the girl
before us; “he will have to answer me one question anyhow, and that
is, who this poor creature is who lies here the victim of treachery or
despair.” And turning to the official he asked if there were any other
signs of violence on the body.

The answer came deliberately, “Yes, she has evidently been battered to
death.”

Mr. Gryce’s lips closed with grim decision. “A most brutal murder,” said
he and lifting up the cloth with a hand that visibly trembled, he softly
covered her face.

“Well,” said I as we slowly paced back up the pier, “there is one thing
certain, she is not the one who disappeared from Mr. Blake’s house.”

“I am not so sure of that.”

“How!” said I. “You believed Fanny lied when she gave that description
of the missing girl upon which we have gone till now?”

Mr. Gryce smiled, and turning back, beckoned to the official behind us.
“Let me have that description,” said he, “which I distributed among the
Harbor Police some days ago for the identification of a certain corpse I
was on the lookout for.”

The man opened his coat and drew out a printed paper which at Mr.
Gryce’s word he put into my hand. It ran as follows:

    Look out for the body of a young girl, tall, well shaped but thin,
    of fair complexion and golden hair of a peculiar bright and
    beautiful color, and when found, acquaint me at once.
                                                            G.

“I don’t understand,” began I.

But Mr. Gryce tapping me on the arm said in his most deliberate tones,
“Next time you examine a room in which anything of a mysterious nature
has occurred, look under the bureau and if you find a comb there with
several long golden hairs tangled in it, be very sure before you draw
any definite conclusions, that your Fannys know what they are talking
about when they declare the girl who used that comb had black hair on
her head.”



CHAPTER X. THE SECRET OF MR. BLAKE’S STUDIO


“Mr. Blake is at dinner, sir, with company, but I will call him if you
say so.”

“No,” returned Mr. Gryce; “show us into some room where we can be
comfortable and we will wait till he has finished.”

The servant bowed, and stepping forward down the hall, opened the door
of a small and cosy room heavily hung with crimson curtains. “I will
let him know that you are here,” said he, and vanished towards the
dining-room.

“I doubt if Mr. Blake will enjoy the latter half of his bill of fare as
much as the first,” said I, drawing up one of the luxurious arm-chairs
to the side of my principal. “I wonder if he will break away from his
guests and come in here?”

“No; if I am not mistaken we shall find Mr. Blake a man of nerve. Not a
muscle of his face will show that he is disturbed.”

“Well,” said I, “I dread it.”

Mr. Gryce looked about on the gorgeous walls and the rich old fashioned
furniture that surrounded him, and smiled one of his grimmest smiles.

“Well, you may,” said he.

The next instant a servant stood in the doorway, bearing to our great
astonishment, a tray well set with decanter and glasses.

“Mr. Blake’s compliments, gentlemen,” said he, setting it down on the
table before us. “He hopes you will make yourselves at home and he will
see you as soon as possible.”

The humph! of Mr. Gryce when the servant had gone would have done your
soul good, also the look he cast at the pretty Dresden Shepherdess on
the mantel-piece, as I reached out my hand towards the decanter. Somehow
it made me draw back.

“I think we had better leave his wine alone,” said he.

And for half an hour we sat there, the wine untouched between us,
listening alternately to the sound of speech-making and laughter that
came from the dining-room, and the solemn ticking of the clock as it
counted out the seconds on the mantel-piece. Then the guests came in
from the table, filing before us past the open door on their way to
the parlors. They were all gentlemen of course--Mr. Blake never invited
ladies to his house--and gentlemen of well known repute. The dinner had
been given in honor of a certain celebrated statesman, and the character
of his guests was in keeping with that of the one thus complimented.

As they went by us gaily indulging in the jokes and light banter with
which such men season a social dinner, I saw Mr. Gryce’s face grow sober
by many a shade; and when in the midst of it all, we heard the voice
of Mr. Blake rise in that courteous and measured tone for which it
is distinguished, I saw him reach forward and grasp his cane with an
uneasiness I had never seen displayed by him before. But when some time
later, the guests having departed, the dignified host advanced with some
apology to where we were, I never beheld a firmer look on Mr. Gryce’s
face than that with which he rose and confronted him. Mr. Blake’s own
had not more character in it.

“You have called at a rather inauspicious time, Mr. Gryce,” said the
latter, glancing at the card which he held in his hand. “What may your
business be? Something to do with politics, I suppose.”

I surveyed the man in amazement. Was this great politician stooping
to act a part, or had he forgotten our physiognomies as completely as
appeared?

“Our business is not politics,” replied Mr. Gryce; “but fully as
important. May I request the doors be closed?”

I thought Mr. Blake looked surprised, but he immediately stepped to the
door and shut it. Then coming back, he looked at Mr. Gryce more closely
and a change took place in his manner.

“I think I have seen you before,” said he.

Mr. Gryce bowed with just the suspicion of a smile. “I have had the
honor of consulting you before in this very house,” observed he.

A look of full recognition passed over the dignified countenance of the
man before us.

“I remember,” said he, shrugging his shoulders in the old way. “You are
interested in some servant girl or other who ran away from this house a
week or so ago. Have you found her?” This with no apparent concern.

“We think we have,” rejoined Mr. Gryce with some solemnity. “The river
gives up its prey now and then, Mr. Blake.”

Still only that look of natural surprise.

“Indeed! You do not mean to say she has drowned herself? I am sorry for
that, a girl who had once lived in my house. What trouble could she have
had to drive her to such an act?”

Mr. Gryce advanced a step nearer the gentleman.

“That is what we have come here to learn,” said he with a deliberation
that yet was not lacking in the respect due to a man so universally
esteemed as Mr. Blake. “You who have seen her so lately ought to be able
to throw some light upon the subject at least.”

“Mr.--” he again glanced at the card, “Mr. Gryce,--excuse me--I believe
I told you when you were here before that I had no remembrance of this
girl at all. That if such a person was in my house I did not know it,
and that all questions put to me on that subject would be so much labor
thrown away.”

Mr. Gryce bowed. “I remember,” said he. “I was not alluding to any
connection you may have had with the girl in this house, but to the
interview you were seen to have with her on the corner of Broome Street
some days ago. You had such an interview, did you not?”

A flush, deep as it was sudden, swept over Mr. Blake’s usually unmoved
cheek. “You are transgressing sir,” said he and stopped. Though a man of
intense personal pride, he had but little of that quality called temper,
or perhaps if he had, thought it unwise to display it on this occasion.
“I saw and spoke to a girl on the corner of that street some days ago,”
 he went on more mildly, “but that she was the one who lived here,
I neither knew at the time nor feel willing to believe now without
positive proof.” Then in a deep ringing tone the stateliness of which it
would be impossible to describe, he inquired, “Have the city authorities
presumed to put a spy on my movements, that the fact of my speaking to
a poor forsaken creature on the corner of the street should be not only
noted but remembered?”

“Mr. Blake,” observed Mr. Gryce, and I declare I was proud of my
superior at that moment, “no man who is a true citizen and a
Christian should object to have his steps followed, when by his own
thoughtlessness, perhaps, he has incurred a suspicion which demands it.”

“And do you mean to say that I have been followed,” inquired he,
clenching his hand and looking steadily, but with a blanching cheek,
first at Mr. Gryce then at me.

“It was indispensable,” quoth that functionary gently.

The outraged gentleman riveted his gaze upon me. “In town and out of
town?” demanded he.

I let Mr. Gryce reply. “It is known that you have lately sought to visit
the Schoenmakers,” said he.

Mr. Blake drew a deep breath, cast his eyes about the handsome apartment
in which we were, let them rest for a moment upon a portrait that graced
one side of the wall, and which was I have since learned a picture of
his father, and slowly drew forward a chair. “Let me hear what your
suspicions are,” said he.

I noticed Mr. Gryce colored at this; he had evidently been met in a
different way from what he expected. “Excuse me,” said he, “I do not say
I have any suspicions; my errand is simply to notify you of the death of
the girl you were seen to speak with, and to ask whether or not you
can give us any information that can aid us in the matter before the
coroner.”

“You know I have not. If I have been as closely followed as you say, you
must know why I spoke to that girl and others, why I went to the house
of the Schoenmakers and--Do you know?” he suddenly inquired.

Mr. Gryce was not the man to answer such a question as that. He eyed the
rich signet ring that adorned the hand of the gentleman before him and
suavely smiled. “I am ready to listen to any explanations,” said he.

Mr. Blake’s haughty countenance became almost stern. “You consider you
have a right to demand them; let me hear why.”

“Well,” said Mr. Gryce with a change of tone, “you shall. Unprofessional
as it is, I will tell you why I, a member of the police force, dare
enter the house of such a man as you are, and put him the questions I
have concerning his domestic affairs. Mr. Blake, imagine yourself in
a detective’s office. A woman comes in, the housekeeper of a respected
citizen, and informs us that a girl employed by her as seamstress has
disappeared in a very unaccountable way from her master’s house
the night before; in fact been abducted as she thinks from certain
evidences, through the window. Her manner is agitated, her appeal for
assistance urgent, though she acknowledges no relationship to the girl
or expresses any especial cause for her interest beyond that of common
humanity. ‘She must be found,’ she declares, and hints that any sum
necessary will be forthcoming, though from what source after her own
pittance is expended she does not state. When asked if her master has
no interest in the matter, she changes color and puts us off. He never
noticed his servants, left all such concerns to her, etc.; but shows
fear when a proposition is made to consult him. Next imagine yourself
with the detectives in that gentleman’s house. You enter the girl’s
room; what is the first thing you observe? Why that it is not only one
of the best in the house, but that it is conspicuous for its comforts if
not for its elegancies. More than that, that there are books of poetry
and history lying around, showing that the woman who inhabited it was
above her station; a fact which the housekeeper is presently brought to
acknowledge. You notice also that the wild surmise of her abduction by
means of the window, has some ground in appearance, though the fact
that she went with entire unwillingness is not made so apparent. The
housekeeper, however, insists in a way that must have had some special
knowledge of the girl’s character or circumstances to back it, that she
never went without compulsion; a statement which the torn curtains
and the track of blood over the roof of the extension, would seem to
emphasize. A few other facts are made known. First, a pen-knife is
picked up from the grass plot in the yard beneath, showing with what
instrument the wound was inflicted, whose drippings made those marks of
blood alluded to. It was a pearl-handled knife belonging to the writing
desk found open on her table, and its frail and dainty character proved
indisputably, that it was employed by the girl herself, and that against
manifest enemies; no man being likely to snatch up any such puny weapon
for the purpose either of offence or defence. That these enemies were
two and were both men, was insisted upon by Mrs. Daniels who overheard
their voices the night before.

“Mr. Blake, such facts as these arouse curiosity, especially when
the master of the house being introduced upon the scene, he fails to
manifest common human interest, while his housekeeper betrays in every
involuntary gesture and expression she makes use of, her horror if not
her fear of his presence, and her relief at his departure. Yes,” he
exclaimed, unheeding the sudden look here cast him by Mr. Blake, “and
curiosity begets inquiry, and inquiry elucidated further facts such as
these, that the mysterious master of the house was in his garden at the
hour of the girl’s departure, was even looking through the bars of his
gate when she, having evidently escaped from her captors, came back with
every apparent desire to reenter her home, but seeing him, betrayed an
unreasonable amount of fear and fled back even into the very arms of
the men she had endeavored to avoid. Did you speak sir?” asked Mr. Gryce
suddenly stopping, with a sly look at his left boot tip.

Mr. Blake shook his head. “No,” said he shortly, “go on.” But that last
remark of Mr. Gryce had evidently made its impression.

“Inquiry revealed, also, two or three other interesting facts. First,
that this gentleman qualified though he was to shine in ladies’ society,
never obtruded himself there, but employed his leisure time instead, in
walking the lower streets of the city, where he was seen more than
once conversing with certain poor girls at street corners and in blind
alleys. The last one he talked with, believed from her characteristics
to be the same one that was abducted from his house--”

“Hold there,” said Mr. Blake with some authority in his tone, “there you
are mistaken; that is impossible.”

“Ah, and why?”

“The girl you allude to had bright golden hair, something which the
woman who lived in my house did not possess.”

“Indeed. I thought you had never noticed the woman who sewed for you,
sir,--did not know how she looked?”

“I should have noticed her if she had had such hair as the girl you
speak of.”

Mr. Gryce smiled and opened his pocketbook.

“There is a sample of her hair, sir,” said he, taking out a thin strand
of brilliant hair and showing it to the gentleman before him. “Bright
you see, and golden as that of the unfortunate creature you talked with
the other night.”

Mr. Blake stooped forward and lifted it with a hand that visibly
trembled. “Where did you get this?” asked he at last, clenching it to
his breast with sudden passion.

“From out of the comb which the girl had been using the night before.”

The imperious man flung it hastily from him.

“We waste our time,” said he, looking Mr. Gryce intently in the face.
“All that you have said does not account for your presence here nor the
tone you have used while addressing me. What are you keeping back? I am
not a man to be trifled with.”

Mr. Gryce rose to his feet. “You are right,” said he, and he gave a
short glance in my direction. “All that I have said would not perhaps
justify me in this intrusion, if--” he looked again towards me. “Do you
wish me to continue?” he asked.

Mr. Blake’s intent look deepened. “I see no reason why you should not
utter the whole,” said he. “A good story loses nothing by being told
to the end. You wish to say something about my journey to Schoenmaker’s
house, I suppose.”

Mr. Gryce gravely shook his head.

“What, you can let such a mystery as that go without a word?”

“I am not here to discuss mysteries that have no connection with the
sewing-girl in whose cause I am interested.”

“Then,” said Mr. Blake, turning for the first time upon my superior with
all the dignified composure for which he was eminent, “it is no
longer necessary for us to prolong this interview. I have allowed, nay
encouraged you to state in the plainest terms what it was you had or
imagined you had against me, knowing that my actions of late, seen by
those who did not possess the key to them, must have seemed a little
peculiar. But when you say you have no interest in any mystery
disconnected with the girl who has lived the last few months in
my house, I can with assurance say that it is time we quitted this
unprofitable conversation, as nothing which I have lately done, said or
thought here or elsewhere has in any way had even the remotest bearing
upon that individual; she having been a stranger to me while in my
house, and quite forgotten by me, after her unaccountable departure
hence.”

Mr. Gryce’s hand which had been stretched out towards the hitherto
untouched decanter before him, suddenly dropped. “You deny then,” said
he, “all connection between yourself and the woman, lady or sewing-girl,
who occupied that room above our heads for eleven months previous to the
Sunday morning I first had the honor to make your acquaintance.”

“I am not in the habit of repeating my assertions,” said Mr. Blake with
some severity, “even when they relate to a less disagreeable matter than
the one under discussion.”

Mr. Gryce bowed, and slowly reached out for his hat; I had never seen
him so disturbed. “I am sorry,” he began and stopped, fingering his
hat-brim nervously. Suddenly he laid his hat back, and drew up his form
into as near a semblance of dignity as its portliness would allow.

“Mr. Blake,” said he, “I have too much respect for the man I believed
you to be when I entered this house to-night, to go with the thing
unsaid which is lying at present like a dead weight upon my lips. I dare
not leave you to the consequence of my silence; for duty will compel
me to speak some day and in some presence where you may not have
the opportunity which you can have here, to explain yourself with
satisfaction. Mr. Blake I cannot believe you when you say the girl who
lived in this house was a stranger to you.”

Mr. Blake drew his proud form up in a disdain that was only held in
check by the very evident honesty of the man before him. “You
are courageous at least,” said he. “I regret you are not equally
discriminating.” And raising Mr. Gryce’s hat he placed it in his hand.

“Pardon me,” said that gentleman, “I would like to justify myself before
I go. Not with words,” he proceeded as the other folded his arms with a
sarcastic bow. “I am done with words; action accomplishes the rest. Mr.
Blake I believe you consider me an honest officer and a reliable man.
Will you accompany me to your private room for a moment? There is
something there which may convince you I was neither playing the fool
nor the bravado when I uttered the phrase I did an instant ago.”

I expected to hear the haughty master of the house refuse a request so
peculiar. But he only bowed, though in a surprised way that showed
his curiosity if no more was aroused. “My room and company are at your
disposal,” said he, “but you will find nothing there to justify you in
your assertions.”

“Let me at least make the effort,” entreated my superior.

Mr. Blake smiling bitterly immediately led the way to the door. “The
man may come,” he remarked carelessly as Mr. Gryce waved his hand in my
direction. “Your justification if not mine may need witnesses.”

Rejoiced at the permission, for my curiosity was by this time raised to
fever pitch, I at once followed. Not without anxiety. The assured poise
of Mr. Blake’s head seemed to argue that the confidence betrayed by my
superior might receive a shock; and I felt it would be a serious blow
to his pride to fail now. But once within the room above, my doubts
speedily fled. There was that in Mr. Gryce’s face which anyone
acquainted with him could not easily mistake. Whatever might be
the mysterious something which the room contained, it was evidently
sufficient in his eyes to justify his whole conduct.

“Now sir,” said Mr. Blake, turning upon my superior with his sternest
expression, “the room and its contents are before you; what have you to
say for yourself.”

Mr. Gryce equally stern, if not equally composed, cast one of his
inscrutable glances round the apartment and without a word stepped
before the picture that was as I have said, the only ornamentation of
the otherwise bare and unattractive room.

I thought Mr. Blake looked surprised, but his face was not one that
lightly expressed emotion.

“A portrait of my cousin the Countess De Mirac,” said he with a certain
dryness of tone hard to interpret.

Mr. Gryce bowed and for a moment stood looking with a strange lack of
interest at the proudly brilliant face of the painting before him, then
to our great amazement stepped forward and with a quick gesture turned
the picture rapidly to the wall, when--Gracious heavens! what a vision
started out before us from the reverse side of that painted canvas! No
luxurious brunette countenance now, steeped in pride and languor, but a
face--Let me see if I can describe it. But no, it was one of those faces
that are indescribable. You draw your breath as you view it; you feel as
if you had had an electric shock; but as for knowing ten minutes later
whether the eyes that so enthralled you were blue or black, or the locks
that clustered halo-like about a forehead almost awful in its expression
of weird, unfathomable power, were brown or red, you could not nor would
you pretend to say. It was the character of the countenance itself that
impressed you. You did not even know if this woman who might have been
anything wonderful or grand you ever read of, were beautiful or not. You
did not care; it was as if you had been gazing on a tranquil evening
sky and a lightning flash had suddenly startled you. Is the lightning
beautiful? Who asks! But I know from what presently transpired, that
the face was ivory pale in complexion, the eyes deeply dark, and the
hair,--strange and uncanny combination,--of a bright and peculiar golden
hue.

“You dare!” came forth in strange broken tones from Mr. Blake’s lips.

I instantly turned towards him. He was gazing with a look that was half
indignant, half menacing at the silent detective who with eyes drooped
and finger directed towards the picture, seemed to be waiting for him to
finish.

“I do not understand an audacity that allows you to--to--” Was this
the haughty gentleman we had known, this hesitating troubled man with
bloodless lips and trembling hands?

“I declared my desire to justify myself,” said my principal with a
respectful bow. “This is my justification. Do you note the color of the
woman’s hair whose portrait hangs with its face turned to the wall in
your room? Is it like or unlike that of the strand you held in your hand
a few moments ago; a strand taken as I swear, hair by hair from the comb
of the poor creature who occupied the room above. But that is not all,”
 he continued as Mr. Blake fell a trifle aback; “just observe the dress
in which this woman is painted; blue silk you see, dark and rich; a wide
collar cunningly executed, you can almost trace the pattern; a brooch;
then the roses in the hand, do you see? Now come with me upstairs.”

Too much startled to speak, Mr. Blake, haughty aristocrat as he was,
turned like a little child and followed the detective who with an
assured step and unembarassed mien led the way into the deserted room
above.

“You accuse me of insulting you, when I express disbelief of your
assertion that there was no connection between you and the girl Emily,”
 said Mr. Gryce as he lit the gas and unlocked that famous bureau drawer.
“Will you do so any longer in face of these?” And drawing off the towel
that lay uppermost, he revealed the neatly folded dress, wide collar,
brooch and faded roses that lay beneath. “Mrs. Daniels assures us these
articles belonged to the sewing-woman Emily; were brought here by her.
Dare you say they are not the ones reproduced in the portrait below?”

Mr. Blake uttering a cry sank on his knees before the drawer. “My God!
My God!” was his only reply, “what are these?” Suddenly he rose, his
whole form quivering, his eyes burning. “Where is Mrs. Daniels?” he
cried, hastily advancing and pulling the bell. “I must see her at once.
Send the house-keeper here,” he ordered as Fanny smiling demurely made
her appearance at the door.

“Mrs. Daniels is out,” returned the girl, “went out as soon as ever you
got up from dinner, sir.”

“Gone out at this hour?”

“Yes sir; she goes out very often nowadays, sir.”

Her master frowned. “Send her to me as soon as she returns,” he
commanded, and dismissed the girl.

“I don’t know what to make of this,” he now said in a strange tone,
approaching again the touching contents of that open bureau drawer with
a look in which longing and doubt seemed in some way to be strangely
commingled. “I cannot explain the presence of these articles in this
room; but if you will come below I will see what I can do to make other
matters intelligible to you. Disagreeable as it is for me to take anyone
into my confidence, affairs have gone too far for me to hope any longer
to preserve secrecy as to my private concerns.”



CHAPTER XI. LUTTRA


“Gentlemen,” said he as he ushered us once more into his studio, “you
have presumed, and not without reason I should say, to infer that the
original of this portrait and the woman who has so long occupied the
position of sewing-woman in my house, are one and the same. You will no
longer retain that opinion when I inform you that this picture, strange
as it may appear to you, is the likeness of my wife.”

“Wife!” We both were astonished as I take it, but it was my voice which
spoke. “We were ignorant you ever had a wife.”

“No doubt,” continued our host smiling bitterly, “that at least has
evaded the knowledge even of the detectives.” Then with a return to
his naturally courteous manner, “She was never acknowledged by me as my
wife, nor have we ever lived together, but if priestly benediction can
make a man and woman one, that woman as you see her there is my lawful
wife.”

Rising, he softly turned the lovely, potent face back to the wall,
leaving us once more confronted by the dark and glowing countenance of
his cousin.

“I am not called upon,” said he, “to go any further with you than this.
I have told you what no man till this hour has ever heard from my lips,
and it should serve to exonerate me from any unjust suspicions you may
have entertained. But to one of my temperament, secret scandal and the
gossip it engenders is only less painful than open notoriety. If I leave
the subject here, a thousand conjectures will at once seize upon you,
and my name if not hers will become, before I know it, the football of
gossip if not of worse and deeper suspicion than has yet assailed me.
Gentleman I take you to be honest men; husbands, perhaps, and fathers;
proud, too, in your way and jealous of your own reputation and that of
those with whom you are connected. If I succeed in convincing you that
my movements of late have been totally disconnected with the girl whose
cause you profess solely to be interested in, may I count upon your
silence as regards those actions and the real motive that led to them?”

“You may count upon my discretion as regards all matters that do not
come under the scope of police duty,” returned Mr. Gryce. “I haven’t
much time for gossip.”

“And your man here?”

“O, he’s safe where it profits him to be.”

“Very well, then, I shall count upon you.”

And with the knitted brows and clinched hands of a proudly reticent
man who, perhaps for the first time in his life finds himself forced to
reveal his inner nature to the world, he began his story in these words:

“Difficult as it is for me to introduce into a relation like this the
name of my father, I shall be obliged to do so in order to make my
conduct at a momentous crisis of my life intelligible to you. My father,
then, was a man of strong will and a few but determined prejudices.
Resolved that I should sustain the reputation of the family for wealth
and respectability, he gave me to understand from my earliest years,
that as long as I preserved my manhood from reproach, I had only to make
my wishes known, to have them immediately gratified; while if I crossed
his will either by indulging in dissipation or engaging in pursuits
unworthy of my name, I no longer need expect the favor of his
countenance or the assistance of his purse.

“When, therefore, at a certain period of my life, I found that the
charms of my cousin Evelyn were making rather too strong an impression
upon my fancy for a secured peace of mind, I first inquired how such a
union would affect my father, and learning that it would be in direct
opposition to his views, cast about in my mind what I should do to
overcome my passion. Travel suggested itself, and I took a trip to
Europe. But the sight of new faces only awakened in me comparisons
anything but detrimental to the beauty of her who was at that time my
standard of feminine loveliness. Nature and the sports connected with a
wild life were my next resort. I went overland to California, roamed the
orange groves of Florida, and probed the wildernesses of Canada and
our Northern states. It was during these last excursions that an event
occurred which has exercised the most material influence upon my fate,
though at the time it seemed to me no more than the matter of a day.

“I had just returned from Canada and was resting in tolerable enjoyment
of a very beautiful autumn at Lake George, when a letter reached me
from a friend then loitering in the vicinity, urging me to join him in
a certain small town in Vermont where trout streams abounded and what is
not so often the case under the circumstances, fishers were few.

“Being in a somewhat reckless mood I at once wrote a consent, and before
another day was over, started for the remote village whence his letter
was postmarked. I found it by no means easy of access. Situated in the
midst of hills some twenty miles or so distant from any railroad, I
discovered that in order to reach it, a long ride in a stage-coach was
necessary, followed by a somewhat shorter journey on horseback. Not
being acquainted with the route, I timed my connections wrong, so that
when evening came I found myself riding over a strange road in the
darkest night I had ever known. As if this was not enough, my horse
suddenly began to limp and presently became so lame I found it
impossible to urge her beyond a slow walk. It was therefore with no
ordinary satisfaction that I presently beheld a lighted building in the
distance, which as I approached resolved itself into an inn. Stopping
in front of the house, which was closed against the chill night air,
I called out lustily for someone to take my horse, whereupon the door
opened and a man appeared on the threshold with a lantern in his hand. I
at once made my wishes known, receiving in turn a somewhat gruff,

“‘Well it is a nasty night and it will be nastier before it’s over;’ an
opinion instantly endorsed by a sudden swoop of wind that rushed by at
that moment, slamming the door behind him and awakening over my head a
lugubrious groaning as from the twisting boughs of some old tree, that
was almost threatening in its character.

“‘You had better go in,’ said he, ‘the rain will come next.’

“I at once leaped from my horse and pushing open the door with main
strength, entered the house. Another man met me on the threshold who
merely pointing over his shoulder to a lighted room in his rear, passed
out without a word, to help the somewhat younger man, who had first
appeared, in putting up my horse. I at once accepted his silent
invitation and stepped into the room before me. Instantly I found myself
confronted by the rather startling vision of a young girl of a unique
and haunting style of beauty, who rising at my approach now stood with
her eyes on my face and her hands resting on the deal table before which
she had been sitting, in an attitude expressive of mingled surprise
and alarm. To see a woman in that place was not so strange; but such
a woman! Even in the first casual glance I gave her, I at once
acknowledged to myself her extraordinary power. Not the slightness of
her form, the palor of her countenance, or the fairness of the locks of
golden red hair that fell in two long braids over her bosom, could for
a moment counteract the effect of her dark glance or the vivid almost
unearthly force of her expression. It was as if you saw a flame
upstarting before you, waving tremulously here and there, but burning
and resistless in its white heat. I took off my hat with deference.

“A shudder passed over her, but she made no effort to return my
acknowledgement. As we cast our eyes dilating with horror, down some
horrible pit upon whose verge we suddenly find ourselves, she allowed
her gaze for a moment to dwell upon my face, then with a sudden lifting
of her hand, pointed towards the door as if to bid me depart--when it
swung open with that shrill rushing of wind that involuntarily awakes a
shudder within you, and the two men entered and came stamping up to my
side. Instantly her hand sunk, not feebly as with fear, but calmly as if
at the bidding of her will, and without waiting for them to speak, she
turned away and quietly left the room. As the door closed upon her I
noticed that she wore a calico frock and that her face did not own one
perfect feature.

“‘Go after Luttra and tell her to make up the bed in the northwest
room,’ said the elder of the two in deep gutteral tones unmistakably
German in their accent, to the other who stood shaking the wet off his
coat into the leaping flames of a small wood fire that burned on the
hearth before us.

“‘O, she’ll do without my bothering,’ was the sullen return. ‘I’m wet
through.’

“The elder man, a large powerfully framed fellow of some fifty years or
so, frowned. It was an evil frown, and the younger one seemed to feel
it. He immediately tossed his coat onto a chair and left the room.

“‘Boys are so obstropolous now-a-days,’ remarked his companion to me
with what he evidently intended for a conciliatory nod. ‘In my time they
were broke in, did what they were told and asked no questions.’

“I smiled to myself at his calling the broad shouldered six-footer who
had just left us a boy, but merely remarking, ‘He is your son is he
not!’ seated myself before the blaze which shot up a tongue of white
flame at my approach, that irresistibly recalled to my fancy the
appearance of the girl who had gone out a moment before.

“‘O, yes, he is my son, and that girl you saw here was my daughter; I
keep this inn and they help me, but it is a slow way to live, I can tell
you. Travel on these roads is slim.’

“‘I should think likely,’ I returned, remembering the half dozen or so
hills up which I had clambered since I took to my horse. ‘How far are we
from Pentonville?’

“‘O, two or three miles,’ he replied, but in a hurried kind of a way.
‘Not far in the daytime but a regular journey in a night like this?’

“‘Yes,’ said I, as the house shook under a fresh gust; ‘it is fortunate
I have a place in which to put up.’

“He glanced down at my baggage which consisted of a small hand bag,
an over-coat and a fishing pole, with something like a gleam of
disappointment.

“‘Going fishing?’ he asked.

“‘Yes,’ I returned.

“‘Good trout up those streams and plenty of them,’ he went on. ‘Going
alone?’

“I did not half like his importunity, but considering I had nothing
better to do, replied as affably as possible. ‘No, I expect to meet a
friend in Pentonville who will accompany me.”

“His hand went to his beard in a thoughtful attitude and he cast me
what, with my increased experience of the world, I should now consider a
sinister glance. ‘Then you are expected?’ said he.

“Not considering this worth reply, I stretched out my feet to the blaze
and began to warm them, for I felt chilled through.

“‘Been on the road long?’ he now asked, glancing at the blue flannel
suit I wore.

“‘All summer,’ I returned,

“I again thought he looked disappointed.

“‘From Troy or New York?’ he went on with a vague endeavor to appear
good naturally off hand.

“‘New York.’

“‘A big place that,’ he continued. ‘I was there once, lots of money
stored away in them big buildings down in Wall Street, eh?’

“I assented, and he drew a chair up to my side, a proceeding that was
interrupted, however, by the reentrance of his son, who without any
apology crowded into the other side of the fire-place in a way to
sandwich me between them. Not fancying this arrangement which I,
however, imputed to ignorance, I drew back and asked if my room was
ready. It seemed it was not, and unpleasantly as it promised, I felt
forced to reseat myself and join in, if not support, the conversation
that followed.

“A half hour passed away, during which the wind increased till it almost
amounted to a gale. Spurts of rain dashed against the windows with a
sharp crackling sound that suggested hail, while ever and anon a distant
roll as of rousing thunder, rumbled away among the hills in a long and
reverberating peal, that made me feel glad to be housed even under the
roof of these rude and uncongenial creatures. Suddenly the conversation
turned upon the time and time-pieces, when in a low even tone I heard
murmured behind me,

“‘The gentleman’s room is ready;’ and turning, I saw standing in
the doorway the slight figure of the young girl whose appearance had
previously so impressed me.

“I immediately arose. ‘Then I will proceed to it at once,’ said I,
taking up my traps and advancing towards her.

“‘Do not be alarmed if you hear creaks and cracklings all over the
house,’ observed the landlord as I departed. ‘The windows are loose and
the doors ill-fitting. In such a storm as this they make noise enough
to keep an army awake. The house is safe enough though and if you don’t
mind noise--’

“‘O I don’t mind noise,’ rejoined I, feeling at that moment tired enough
to fall into a doze on the staircase. ‘I shall sleep, never fear,’ and
without further ado followed the girl upstairs into a large clumsily
furnished room whose enormous bed draped with heavy curtains at once
attracted my attention.

“‘O I cannot sleep under those things,’ remarked I, with a gesture
towards the dismal draperies which to me were another name for
suffocation.

“With a single arm-sweep she threw them back. ‘Is there anything more I
can do for you?’ asked she, glancing hastily about the room.

“I thanked her and said ‘no,’ at which she at once departed with a look
of still determination upon her countenance that I found it hard to
explain.

“Left alone in that large, bare and dimly lighted room, with the wind
shrieking in the chimney and the powerful limbs of some huge tree
beating against the walls without, with a heavy thud inexpressibly
mournful, I found to my surprise and something like dismay, that the
sleepiness which had hitherto oppressed me, had in some unaccountable
way entirely fled. In vain I contemplated the bed, comfortable enough
now in its appearance that the stifling curtains were withdrawn; no
temptation to invade it came to arouse me from the chair into which I
had thrown myself. It was as if I felt myself under the spell of some
invisible influence that like the eye of a basilisk, held me enchained.
I remember turning my head towards a certain quarter of the wall as if
I half expected to encounter there the bewildering glance of a serpent.
Yet far from being apprehensive of any danger, I only wondered over the
weakness of mind that made such fancies possible.

“An extra loud swirl of the foliage without, accompanied by a quick
vibration of the house, aroused me at last. If I was to lose the sense
of this furious storm careering over my head, I must court sleep at
once. Rising, I drew off my coat, unloosened my vest and was about to
throw it off, when I bethought me of a certain wallet it contained.
Going to the door in some unconscious impulse of precaution I suppose, I
locked myself in, and then drawing out my wallet, took from it a roll of
bills which I put into a small side pocket, returning the wallet to its
old place.

“Why I did this I can scarcely say. As I have before intimated, I
was under no special apprehension. I was at that time anything but a
suspicious man, and the manner and appearance of the men below struck me
as unpleasantly disagreeable but nothing more. But I not only did what I
have related, but allowed the lamp to remain lighted, lying down finally
in my clothes; an almost unprecedented act on my part, warranted however
as I said to myself, by the fury of the gale which at that time seemed
as if it would tumble the roof over our heads.

“How long I lay listening to the creakings and groanings of the rickety
old house, I cannot say, nor how long I remained in the doze which
finally seized me as I became accustomed to the sounds around and over
me. Enough that before the storm had passed its height, I awoke as if at
the touch of a hand, and leaping with a bound out of the bed, beheld
to my incredible amazement, the alert, nervous form of Luttra standing
before me. She had my coat in her hand, and it was her touch that had
evidently awakened me.

“‘I want you to put this on,’ said she in a low thrilling tone totally
new in my experience, ‘and come with me. The house is unsafe for you to
remain in. Hear how it cracks and trembles. Another blast like that and
we shall be roofless.’

“She was moving toward the door, which to my amazement stood ajar, but
my hesitation stopped her.

“‘Won’t you come?’ she whispered, turning her face towards me with a
look of such potent determination, I followed in spite of myself ‘I dare
not let you stay here, your blood will be upon my head.’

“‘You exaggerate,’ I replied, shrinking back with a longing look at the
comfortable bed I had just left. ‘These old houses are always strong.
It will take many such a gust as that you hear, to overturn it, I assure
you.’

“‘I exaggerate!’ she returned with a look of scorn impossible to
describe. ‘Hark!’ she said, ‘hear that.’

“I did hear, and I must acknowledge that it seemed is if we were about
to be swept from our foundations.

“‘Yes,’ said I, ‘but it is a fearful night to be out in.’

“‘I shall go with you,’ said she.

“‘In that case--’ I began with an ill-advised attempt at gallantry which
she cut short with a gesture.

“‘Here is your hat,’ remarked she, ‘and here is your bag. The
fishing-pole must remain, you cannot carry it.’

“‘But,--’ I expostulated.

“‘Hush!’ said she with her ear turned towards the depths of the
staircase at the top of which we stood. ‘My father and brother will
think as you do that it is folly to leave the shelter of a roof for the
uncertainties of the road on such a night as this, but you must not heed
them. I tell you shelter this night is danger, and that the only safety
to be found is on the stormy highway.’

“And without waiting for my reply, she passed rapidly down stairs,
pushed open a door at the bottom, and stepped at once into the room we
had left an hour or so before.

“What was there in that room that for the first time struck an ominous
chill as of distinct peril through my veins? Nothing at first sight,
everything at the second. The fire which had not been allowed to die
out, still burned brightly on the ruddy hearthstone, but it was not that
which awakened my apprehension. Nor was it the loud ticking clock on the
mantel-piece with its hand pointing silently to the hour of eleven. Nor
yet the heavy quiet of the scantily-furnished room with its one lamp
burning on the deal table against the side of the wall. It was the sight
of those two powerful men drawn up in grim silence, the one against the
door leading to the front hall, the other against that opening into the
kitchen.

“A glance at Luttra standing silent and undismayed at my side, however,
instantly reassured me. With that will exercised in my favor, I could
not but win through whatever it was that menaced me. Slinging my bag
over my shoulder, I made a move towards the door and the silent figure
of my host. But with a quick outreaching of her hand, she drew me back.

“‘Stand still!’ said she. ‘Karl,’ she went on, turning her face towards
the more sullen but less intent countenance of her brother, ‘open the
door and let this gentleman pass. He finds the house unsafe in such a
gale and desires to leave it. At once!’ she continued as her brother
settled himself more determinedly against the lock: ‘I don’t often ask
favors.’

“‘The man is a fool that wants to go out in a night like this,’ quoth
the fellow with a dogged move; ‘and so are you to encourage it. I think
too much of your health to allow it.’

“She did not seem to hear. ‘Will you open the door?’ she went on, not
advancing a step from the fire, before which she had placed herself and
me.’

“‘No, I won’t,’ was the brutal reply. ‘Its been locked for the night and
its not me nor one like me, that will open it.’

“With a sudden whitening of her already pale face, she turned towards
her father. He was not even looking at her.

“‘Some one must open the house,’ said she, glancing back at her brother.
‘This gentleman purposes to leave and his whim must be humored. Will you
unlock that door or shall I?’

“An angry snarl interrupted her. Her father had bounded from the door
where he stood and was striding hastily towards her. In my apprehension
I put up my arm for a shield, for he looked ready to murder her, but
I let it drop again as l caught her glance which was like white flame
undisturbed by the least breeze of personal terror.

“‘You will stop there,’ said she, pointing to a spot a few feet from
where she stood. ‘Another step and I let that for which I have heard
you declare you would peril your very soul, fall into the heart of the
flames.’ And drawing from her breast a roll of bills, she stretched them
out above the fire before which she was standing.

“‘You -----’ broke from the gray-bearded lips of the old man, but he
stopped where he was, eyeing those bills as if fascinated.

“‘I am not a girl of many words, as you know,’ continued she in a lofty
tone inexpressibly commanding. ‘You may strangle me, you may kill me,
it matters little; but this gentleman leaves the house this night, or I
destroy the money with a gesture.’

“‘You -----’ again broke from those quivering lips, but the old man did
not move.

“Not so the younger. With a rush he left his post and in another instant
would have had his powerful arms about her slender form, only that I
met him half way with a blow that laid him on the floor at her feet.
She said nothing, but one of the bills immediately left her hand and
fluttered into the fire where it instantly shrivelled into nothing.

“With the yell of a mad beast wounded in his most vulnerable spot, the
old man before us stamped with his heel upon the floor.

“‘Stop!’ cried he; and going rapidly to the front door he opened it.
‘There!’ shrieked he, ‘if you will be fools, go! and may the lightning
blast you. But first give me the money.’

“‘Come from the door,’ said she, reaching out her left hand for the
lantern hanging at the side of the fireplace, ‘and let Karl light this
and keep himself out of the way.’

“It was all done. In less time than I can tell it, the old man had
stepped from the door, the younger one had lit the lantern and we were
in readiness to depart.

“‘Now do you proceed,’ said she to me, ‘I will follow.’

“‘No,’ said I, ‘we will go together.’

“‘But the money?’ growled the heavy voice of my host over my shoulder.

“‘I will give it to you on my return,’ said the girl.”



CHAPTER XII. A WOMAN’S LOVE


“Shall I ever forget the blast of driving rain that struck our faces and
enveloped us in a cloud of wet, as the door swung on its hinges and let
us forth into the night; or the electric thrill that shot through me as
that slender girl grasped my hand and drew me away through the blinding
darkness. It was not that I was so much affected by her beauty as
influenced by her power and energy. The fury of the gale seemed to bend
to her will, the wind lend wings to her feet. I began to realize what
intellect was. Arrived at the roadside, she paused and looked back. The
two burly forms of the men we had left behind us were standing in the
door of the inn; in another moment they had plunged forth and towards
us. With a low cry the young girl leaped towards a tree where to
my unbounded astonishment I beheld my horse standing ready saddled.
Dragging the mare from her fastenings, she hung the lantern, burning as
it was, on the pommel of the saddle, struck the panting creature a smart
blow upon the flank, and drew back with a leap to my side.

“The startled horse snorted, gave a plunge of dismay and started away
from us down the road.

“‘We will wait,’ said Luttra.

“The words were no sooner out of her mouth than her father and brother
rushed by.

“‘They will follow the light,’ whispered she; and seizing me again by
the hand, she hurried me away in the direction opposite to that
which the horse had taken. ‘If you will trust me, I will bring you to
shelter,’ she murmured, bending her slight form to the gusty wind but
relaxing not a whit of her speed.

“‘You are too kind,’ I murmured in return. ‘Why should you expose
yourself to such an extent for a stranger?’

“Her hand tightened on mine, but she did not reply, and we hastened
on as speedily as the wind and rain would allow. After a short but
determined breasting of the storm, during which my breath had nearly
failed me, she suddenly stopped.

“‘Do you know,’ she exclaimed in a low impressive tone, ‘that we are on
the verge of a steep and dreadful precipice? It runs along here for a
quarter of a mile and it is not an uncommon thing for a horse and rider
to be dashed over it in a night like this.’

“There was something in her manner that awakened a chill in my veins
almost as if she had pointed out some dreadful doom which I had
unwittingly escaped.

“‘This is, then, a dangerous road,’ I murmured.

“‘Very,’ was her hurried and almost incoherent reply.

“How far we travelled through the mud and tangled grasses of that
horrible road I do not know. It seemed a long distance; it was probably
not more than three quarters of a mile. At last she paused with a short
‘Here we are;’ and looking up, I saw that we were in front of a small
unlighted cottage.

“No refuge ever appeared more welcome to a pair of sinking wanderers I
am sure. Wet to the skin, bedrabbled with mud, exhausted with breasting
the gale, we stood for a moment under the porch to regain our breath,
then with her characteristic energy she lifted the knocker and struck a
smart blow on the door.

“‘We will find shelter here,’ said she.

“She was not mistaken. In a few moments we were standing once more
before a comfortable fire hastily built by the worthy couple whose
slumbers we had thus interrupted. As I began to realize the sweetness of
conscious safety, all that this young, heroic creature had done for me
swept warmly across my mind. Looking up from the fire that was beginning
to infuse its heat through my grateful system, I surveyed her as she
slowly undid her long braids and shook them dry over the blaze, and
almost started to see how young she was. Not more than sixteen I should
say, and yet what an invincible will shone from her dark eyes and
dignified her slender form; a will gentle as it was strong, elevated
as it was unbending. I bowed my head as I watched her, in grateful
thankfulness which I presently put into words.

“At once she drew herself erect. ‘I did but my duty,’ said she quietly.
‘I am glad I was prospered in it.’ Then slowly. ‘If you are grateful,
sir, will you promise to say nothing of--of what took place at the inn?’

“Instantly I remembered a suspicion which had crossed my mind while
there, and my hand went involuntarily to my vest pocket. The roll of
bills was gone.

“She did not falter. ‘I would be relieved if you would,’ continued she.

“I drew out my empty hand, looked at it, but said nothing.

“‘Have you lost anything?’ asked she. ‘Search in your overcoat pockets.’

“I plunged my hand into the one nearest her and drew it out with
satisfaction; the roll of bills was there. ‘I give you my promise,’ said
I.

“‘You will find a bill missing,’ she murmured; ‘for what amount I do not
know; the sacrifice of something was inevitable.’

“‘I can only wonder over the ingenuity you displayed, as well as express
my appreciation for your bravery,’ returned I with enthusiasm. ‘You are
a noble girl.’

“She put out her hand as if compliments hurt her. ‘It is the first time
they have ever attempted anything like that,’ cried she in a quick low
tone full of shame and suffering. ‘They have shown a disposition to--to
take money sometimes, but they never threatened life before. And they
did threaten yours. They saw you take out your money, through a hole
pierced in the wall of the room you occupied, and the sight made them
mad. They were going to kill you and then tumble you and your horse over
the precipice below there. But I overheard them talking and when they
went out to saddle the horse, I hurried up to your room to wake you. I
had to take possession of the bills; you were not safe while you held
them. I took them quietly because I hoped to save you without betraying
them. But I failed in that. You must remember they are my father and my
brother.’

“‘I will not betray them,’ said I.

“She smiled. It was a wintry gleam but it ineffably softened her face. I
became conscious of a movement of pity towards her.

“‘You have a hard lot,’ remarked I. ‘Your life must be a sad one.’

“She flashed upon me one glance of her dark eye. ‘I was born for
hardship,’ said she, ‘but--’ and a sudden wild shudder seized her, ‘but
not for crime.’

“The word fell like a drop of blood wrung from her heart.

“‘Good heavens!’ cried I, ‘and must you--’

“‘No,’ rang from her lips in a clarion-like peal; ‘some things cut the
very bonds of nature. I am not called upon to cleave to what will drag
me into infamy.’ Then calmly, as if speaking of the most ordinary matter
in the world, ‘I shall never go back to that house we have left behind
us, sir.’

“‘But,’ cried I, glancing at her scanty garments, ‘where will you go?
What will you do? You are young--’

“‘And very strong,’ she interrupted. ‘Do not fear for me.’ And her smile
was like a burst of sudden sunshine.

“I said no more that night.

“But when in the morning I stumbled upon her sitting in the kitchen
reading a book not only above her position but beyond her years,
a sudden impulse seized me and I asked her if she would like to be
educated. The instantaneous illumining of her whole face was sufficient
reply without her low emphatic words,

“‘I would be content to study on my knees to know what some women do,
whom I have seen.’

“It is not necessary for me to relate with what pleasure I caught at
the idea that here was a chance to repay in some slight measure the
inestimable favor she had done me; nor by what arguments I finally won
her to accept an education at my hands as some sort of recompense for
the life she had saved. The advantage which it would give her in her
struggle with the world she seemed duly to appreciate, but that so
great a favor could be shown her without causing me much trouble and an
unwarrantable expense, she could not at once be brought to comprehend,
and till she could, she held out with that gentle but inflexible will of
hers. The battle, however, was won at last and I left her in that little
cottage, with the understanding that as soon as the matter could be
arranged, she was to enter a certain boarding-school in Troy with the
mistress of which I was acquainted. Meanwhile she was to go out to
service at Melville and earn enough money to provide herself with
clothes.

“I was a careless fellow in those days but I kept my promise to that
girl. I not only entered her into that school for a course of three
years, but acting through its mistress who had taken a great fancy to
her, supplied her with the necessities her position required. It was so
easy; merely the signing of a check from time to time, and it was
done. I say this because I really think if it had involved any personal
sacrifice on my part, even of an hour of my time, or the labor of a
thought, I should not have done it. For with my return to the city my
interest in my cousin revived, absorbing me to such an extent that any
matter disconnected with her soon lost all charm for me.

“Two years passed; I was the slave of Evelyn Blake, but there was no
engagement between us. My father’s determined opposition was enough to
prevent that. But there was an understanding which I fondly hoped would
one day open for me the way of happiness. But I did not know my father.
Sick as he was--he was at that time laboring under the disease which in
a couple of months later bore him to the tomb--he kept an eye upon my
movements and seemed to probe my inmost heart. At last he came to a
definite decision and spoke.

“His words opened a world of dismay before me. I was his only child, as
he remarked, and it had been and was the desire of his heart to leave
me as rich and independent a man as himself. But I seemed disposed
to commit one of those acts against which he had the most determined
prejudice; marriage between cousins being in his eyes an unsanctified
and dangerous proceeding, liable to consequences the most unhappy. If I
persisted, he must will his property elsewhere. The Blake estate should
never descend with the seal of his approbation to a race of probable
imbeciles.

“Nor was this enough. He not only robbed me of the woman I loved,
but with a clear insight into the future, I presume, insisted upon
my marrying some one else of respectability and worth before he died.
‘Anyone whose appearance will do you credit and whose virtue is beyond
reproach,’ said he. ‘I don’t ask her to be rich or even the offspring of
one of our old families. Let her be good and pure and of no connection
to us, and I will bless her and you with my dying breath.’

“The idea had seized upon him with great force, and I soon saw he was
not to be shaken out of it. To all my objections he returned but the one
word,

“‘I don’t restrict your choice and I give you a month in which to
make it. If at the end of that time you cannot bring your bride to my
bedside, I must look around for an heir who will not thwart my dying
wishes.’”

“A month! I surveyed the fashionable belles that nightly thronged the
parlors of my friends and felt my heart sink within me. Take one of them
for my wife, loving another woman? Impossible. Women like these demanded
something in return for the honor they conferred upon a man by marrying
him. Wealth? they had it. Position? that was theirs also. Consideration?
ah, what consideration had I to give? I turned from them with distaste.

“My cousin Evelyn gave me no help. She was a proud woman and loved my
money and my expectations as much as she did me.

“‘If you must marry another woman to retain your wealth, marry, said
she, ‘but do not marry one of my associates. I will have no rival in my
own empire; your wife must be a plainer and a less aspiring woman than
Evelyn Blake. Yet do not discredit your name,--which is mine,’ she would
always add.

“Meanwhile the days flew by. If my own conscience had allowed me to
forget the fact, my father’s eagerly inquiring, but sternly unrelenting
gaze as I came each evening to his bedside, would have kept it
sufficiently in my mind. I began to feel like one in the power of
some huge crushing machine whose slowly descending weight he in vain
endeavors to escape.

“How or when the thought of Luttra first crossed my mind I cannot
say. At first I recoiled at the suggestion and put it away from me in
disdain; but it ever recurred and with it so many arguments in her favor
that before long I found myself regarding it as a refuge. To be sure she
was a waif and a stray, but that seemed to be the kind of wife demanded
of me. She was allied to rogues if not villains, I knew; but then had
she not cut all connection with them, dropped away from them, planted
her feet on new ground which they would never invade? I commenced to
cherish the idea. With this friendless, grateful, unassuming protegee of
mine for a wife, I would be as little bound as might be. She would
ask nothing, and I need give nothing, beyond a home and the common
attentions required of a gentleman and a friend. Then she was not
disagreeable, nor was her beauty of a type to suggest the charms of
her I had lost. None of the graces of the haughty patrician lady whose
lightest gesture was a command, would appear in this humble girl, to
mock and constrain me. No, I should have a fair wife and an obedient
one, but no vulgarized shadow of Evelyn, thank God, or of any of her
fashionably dressed friends.

“Advanced thus far towards the end, I went to see Luttra. I had not
beheld her since the morning we parted at the door of that little
cottage in Vermont, and her presence caused me a shock. This, the humble
waif with the appealing grateful eyes I had expected to encounter? this
tall and slender creature with an aureola of golden hair about a face
that it was an education to behold! I felt a half movement of anger as I
surveyed her. I had been cheated; I had planted a grape seed and a palm
tree had sprung up in its place. I was so taken aback, my salute lost
something of the benevolent condescension I had intended to infuse into
it. She seemed to feel my embarassment and a half smile fluttered to
her lips. That smile decided me. It was sweet but above all else it was
appealing.

“How I won that woman to marry me in ten days time I care not to
state. Not by holding up my wealth and position before her. Something
restrained me from that. I was resolved, and perhaps it was the only
point of light in my conduct at that time, not to buy this young girl. I
never spoke of my expectations, I never alluded to my present advantages
yet I won her.

“We were married, there, in Troy in the quietest and most unpretending
manner. Why the fact has never transpired I cannot say. I certainly took
no especial pains to conceal it at the time, though I acknowledge
that after our separation I did resort to such measures as I thought
necessary, to suppress what had become gall and wormwood to my pride.

“My first move after the ceremony was to bring her immediately to New
York and to this house. With perhaps a pardonable bitterness of spirit,
I had refrained from any notification of my intentions, and it was as
strangers might enter an unprepared dwelling, that we stepped across the
threshold of this house and passed immediately to my father’s room.

“‘I can give you no wedding and no honeymoon,’ I had told her. ‘My
father is dying and demands my care. From the altar to a death-bed may
be sad for you, but it is an inevitable condition of your marriage with
me.’ And she had accepted her fate with a deep unspeakable smile it has
taken me long months of loneliness and suffering to understand.

“‘Father, I bring you my bride,’ were my first words to him as the door
closed behind us shutting us in with the dread, invisible Presence that
for so long a time had been relentlessly advancing upon our home.

“I shall never forget how he roused himself in his bed, nor with what
eager eyes he read her young face and surveyed her slight form swaying
towards him in her sudden emotion like a flame in a breeze. Nor while I
live shall I lose sight of the spasm of uncontrollable joy with which
he lifted his aged arms towards her, nor the look with which she sprang
from my side and nestled, yes nestled, on the breast that never to my
remembrance had opened itself to me even in the years of my earliest
childhood. For my father was a stern man who believed in holding love at
arm’s length and measured affection by the depth of awe it inspired.

“‘My daughter!’ broke from his lips, and he never inquired who she was
or what; no, not even when after a moment of silence she raised her head
and with a sudden low cry of passionate longing looked in his face and
murmured,

“‘I never had a father.’

“Sirs, it is impossible for me to continue without revealing depths
of pride and bitterness in my own nature, from which I now shrink with
unspeakable pain. So far from being touched by this scene, I felt myself
grow hard under it. If he had been disappointed in my choice, queried
at it or even been simply pleased at my obedience, I might have accepted
the wife I had won, and been tolerably grateful. But to love her, admire
her, glory in her when Evelyn Blake had never succeeded in winning a
glance from his eyes that was not a public disapprobation! I could
not endure it; my whole being rebelled, and a movement like hate took
possession of me.

“Bidding my wife to leave me with my father alone, I scarcely waited
for the door to close upon the poor young thing before all that had been
seething in my breast for a month, burst from me in the one cry,

“‘I have brought you a daughter as you commanded me. Now give me the
blessing you promised and let me go; for I cannot live with a woman I do
not love.’

“Instantly, and before his lips could move, the door opened and the
woman I thus repudiated in the first dawning hour of her young bliss,
stood before us. My God! what a face! When I think of it now in the
night season--when from dreams that gloomy as they are, are often
elysian to the thoughts which beset me in my waking hours, I suddenly
arouse to see starting upon me from the surrounding shadows that young
fair brow with its halo of golden tresses, blotted, ay blotted by the
agony that turned her that instant into stone, I wonder I did not take
out the pistol that lay in the table near which I stood, and shoot her
lifeless on the spot as some sort of a compensation for the misery I had
caused her. I say I wonder now: then I only thought of braving it out.

“Straight as a dart, but with that look on her face, she came towards
us. ‘Did I hear aright?’ were the words that came from her lips. ‘Have
you married me, a woman beneath your station as I now perceive, because
you were commanded to do so? Have you not loved me? given me that which
alone makes marriage a sacrament or even a possibility? and must you
leave this house made sacred by the recumbent form of your dying father
if I remain within it?’

“I saw my father’s stiff and pallid lips move silently as though
he would answer for me if he could, and summoning up what courage I
possessed, I told her that I deeply regretted she had overheard my
inconsiderate words. That I had never meant to wound her, whatever
bitterness lay in my heart towards one who had thwarted me in my dearest
and most cherished hopes. That I humbly begged her pardon and would so
far acknowledge her claim upon me as to promise that I would not leave
my home at this time, if it distressed her; my desire being not to
injure her, only to protect myself.

“O the scorn that mounted to her brow at these weak words. Not scorn of
me, thank God, worthy as I was of it that hour, but scorn of my slight
opinion of her.

“‘Then I heard aright,’ she murmured, and waited with a look that would
not be gainsaid.

“I could only bow my head, cursing the day I was born.

“‘Holman! Holman!’ came in agonized entreaty from the bed, ‘you will not
rob me of my daughter now?’

“Startled, I looked up. Luttra was half way to the door.

“‘What are you going to do?’ cried I, bounding towards her.

“She stopped me with a look. ‘The son must never forsake the father,’
said she. ‘If either of us must leave the house this day, let it be I.’
Then in a softer tone, ‘When you asked me to be your wife, I who had
worshipped you from the moment you entered my father’s house on the
memorable night I left it, was so overcome at your condescension that
I forgot you did not preface it by the usual passionate, ‘I love you,’
which more than the marriage ring binds two hearts together. In the
glamour and glow of my joy, I did not see that the smile that was in my
heart, was missing from your face. I was to be your wife and that was
enough, or so I thought then, for I loved you. Ah, and I do now, my
husband, love you so that I leave you. Were it for your happiness I
would do more than that, I would give you back your freedom, but from
what I hear, it seems that you need a wife in name and I will be but
fulfilling your desire in holding that place for you. I will never
disgrace the position high as it is above my poor deserts. When the day
comes--if the day comes--that you need or feel you need the sustainment
of my presence or the devotion of my heart, no power on earth save that
of death itself, shall keep me from your side. Till that day arrives I
remain what you have made me, a bride who lays no claim to the name
you this morning bestowed upon her.’ And with a gesture that was like a
benediction, she turned, and noiselessly, breathlessly as a dream that
vanishes, left the room.

“Sirs, I believe I uttered a cry and stumbled towards her. Some one in
that room uttered a cry, but it may be that it only rose in my heart and
that the one I heard came from my father’s lips. For when at the door
I turned, startled at the deathly silence, I saw he had fainted on his
pillow. I could not leave him so. Calling to Mrs. Daniels, who was never
far from my father in those days, I bade her stop the lady--I believe
I called her my wife--who was going down the stairs, and then rushed to
his side. It took minutes to revive him. When he came to himself it was
to ask for the creature who had flashed like a beacon of light upon his
darkening path. I rose as if to fetch her but before I could advance I
heard a voice say, ‘She is not here,’ and looking up I saw Mrs. Daniels
glide into the room.

“‘Mrs. Blake has gone, sir, I could not keep her.’”



CHAPTER XIII. A MAN’S HEART


“That was the last time my eyes ever rested upon my wife. Whither she
went or what refuge she gained, I never knew. My father who had received
in this scene a great shock, began to fail so rapidly, he demanded my
constant care; and though from time to time as I ministered to him and
noted with what a yearning persistency he would eye the door and then
turn and meet my gaze with a look I could not understand, I caught
myself asking whether I had done a deed destined to hang forever about
me like a pall; it was not till after his death that the despairing
image of the bright young creature to whom I had given my name, returned
with any startling distinctness to my mind, or that I allowed myself to
ask whether the heavy gloom which I now felt settling upon me was owing
to the sense of shame that overpowered me at the remembrance of the
past, or to the possible loss I had sustained in the departure of my
young unloved bride.

“The announcement at this time of the engagement between Evelyn Blake
and the Count De Mirac may have had something to do with this. Though I
had never in the most passionate hours of my love for her, lost sight of
that side of her nature which demanded as her right the luxury of great
wealth; and though in my tacit abandonment of her and secret marriage
with another I had certainly lost the right to complain of her actions
whatever they might be, this manifest surrendering of herself to the
power of wealth and show at the price of all that women are believed to
hold dear, was an undoubted blow to my pride and the confidence I
had till now unconsciously reposed in her inherent womanliness and
affection. That she had but made on a more conspicuous scale, the same
sacrifice as myself to the god of Wealth and Position, was in my eyes
at that time, no palliation of her conduct. I was a man none too good
or exalted at the best; she, a woman, should have been superior to the
temptations that overpowered me. That she was not, seemed to drag all
womanhood a little nearer the dust; fashionable womanhood I ought to
say, for somehow even at that early day her conduct did not seem to
affect the vivid image of Luttra standing upon my threshold, shorn of
her joy but burning with a devotion I did not comprehend, and saying,

“‘I loved you. Ah, and I do yet, my husband, love you so that I leave
you. When the day comes--if the day comes--you need or feel you need
the sustainment of my presence or the devotion of my heart, no power on
earth save that of death itself, shall keep me from your side.’

“Yes, with the fading away of other faces and other forms, that face and
that form now began to usurp the chief place in my thoughts. Not to my
relief and pleasure. That could scarcely be, remembering all that had
occurred; rather to my increasing distress and passionate resentment.
I longed to forget I was held by a tie, that known to the world would
cause me the bitterest shame. For by this time the true character of
her father and brother had been revealed and I found myself bound to the
daughter of a convicted criminal.

“But I could not forget her. The look with which she had left me was
branded into my consciousness. Night and day it floated before me, till
to escape it I resolved to fasten it upon canvas, if by that means I
might succeed in eliminating it from my dreams.

“The painting you have seen this night is the result. Born with an
artist’s touch and insight that under other circumstances might,
perhaps, have raised me into the cold dry atmosphere of fame, the
execution of this piece of work, presented but few difficulties to my
somewhat accustomed hand. Day by day her beauty grew beneath my brush,
startling me often with its spiritual force and significance till my
mind grew feverish over its work, and I could scarcely refrain from
rising at night to give a touch here or there to the floating golden
hair or the piercing, tender eyes turned, ah, ever turned upon the
inmost citadel of my heart with that look that slew my father before his
time and made me, yes me, old in spirit even in the ardent years of my
first manhood.

“At last it was finished and she stood before me life-like and real in
the very garments and with almost the very aspect of that never to be
forgotten moment. Even the roses which in the secret uneasiness of my
conscience I had put in her hand on our departure from Troy, as a sort
of visible token that I regarded her as my bride, and which through all
her interview with my father she had never dropped, blossomed before
me on the canvas. Nothing that could give reality to the likeness,
was lacking; the vision of my dreams stood embodied in my sight, and I
looked for peace. Alas, that picture now became my dream.

“Inserting it behind that of Evelyn which for two years had held its
place above my armchair, I turned its face to the wall when I rose in
the morning. But at night it beamed ever upon me, becoming as the months
passed, the one thing to hold to and muse over when the world grew a
little noisy in my ears and the never ceasing conflict of the ages beat
a trifle too loudly on heart and brain.

“Meanwhile no word of her, only of her villainous father and brother; no
token that she had escaped evil or was removed from want. If I had loved
her I could not have succored her, for I did not know where to find her.
Her countenance illumined my wall, but her fair young self lay for all I
knew sheltered within the darkness and silence of the tomb.

“At length my morbid broodings worked out their natural result. A dull
melancholy settled upon me which nothing could break. Even the news that
my cousin who had lost her husband a month after marriage, had returned
to America with expectation to remain, scarcely caused a ripple in my
apathy. Was I sinking into a hypochrondriac? or was my passion for the
beautiful brunette dead? I determined to solve the doubt.

“Seeking her where I knew she would be found, I gazed again upon her
beauty. It was absolutely nothing to me. A fair young face with high
thoughts in every glance floated like sunshine between us and I left the
haughty Countess, with the knowledge burned deep into my brain, that the
love I had considered slain was alive and demanding, but that the object
of it past recall, was my lost young wife.

“Once assured of this, my apathy vanished like mist before a kindled
torch. Henceforth the future held a hope, and life a purpose. I would
seek my wife throughout the world and bring her back if I found her
in prison between the men whose existence was a curse to my pride. But
where should I turn my steps? What golden thread had she left in my hand
by which to trace her through the labyrinth of this world? I could think
of but one, and that was the love which would restrain her from going
away from me too far. The Luttra of old would not leave the city where
her husband lived. If she was not changed, I ought to be able to find
her somewhere within this great Babylon of ours. Wisdom told me to
set the police upon her track, but pride bade me try every other means
first. So with the feverish energy of one leading a forlorn hope, I
began to pace the streets if haply I might see her face shine upon me
from the crowd of passers by; a foolish fancy, unproductive of result! I
not only failed to see her, but anyone like her.

“In the midst of the despair occasioned by this failure a thought flashed
across me or rather a remembrance. One night not long since, being
uncommonly restless, I had risen from my bed, dressed me and gone out
into the yard back of my house for a little air. It was an unusual thing
for me to do but I seemed to be suffocating where I was, and nothing
else would satisfy me. As you already surmise, it was the night on which
disappeared the sewing girl of which you have so often spoken, but I
knew nothing of that, my thoughts were far from my own home and its
concerns. You may judge what a state of mind I was in when I tell you
that I even thought at one moment while I paused before the gate leading
into ---- Street that I saw the face of her with whom my thoughts were
ever busy, peering upon me through the bars.

“You tell me that I did see a girl there, and that it was the one who
had lived as sewing woman in my house; it may be so, but at the time I
considered it a vision of my wife, and the remembrance of it, coming as
it did after my repeated failures to encounter her in the street, worked
a change in my plans. For regard it as weakness or not, the recollection
that the vision I had seen wore the garments of a working-woman rather
than a lady, acted upon me like a warning not to search for her any
longer among the resorts of the well-dressed, but in the regions of
poverty and toil. I therefore took to wanderings such as I have no heart
to describe. Nor do I need to, if, as you have informed me, I have been
followed.

“The result was almost madness. Though deep in my heart I felt a
steadfast trust in the purity of her intentions, the fear of what she
might have been driven to by the awful poverty and despair I every day
saw seething about me, was like hot steel in brain and heart. Then her
father and her brother! To what might they not have forced her, innocent
and loving soul though she was! Drinking the dregs of a cup such as I
had never considered it possible for me to taste, I got so far as to
believe that her eyes would yet flash upon me from beneath some of the
tattered shawls I saw sullying the forms of the young girls upon which I
hourly stumbled. Yes, and even made a move to see my cousin, if haply I
could so win upon her compassion as to gain her consent to shelter the
poor creature of my dreams in case the necessity came. But my heart
failed me at the sight of her cold face above the splendor she had
bought with her charms, and I was saved a humiliation I might never have
risen above.

“At last, one day I saw a girl--no, it was not she, but her hair was
similar to hers in hue, and the impulse to follow her was irresistible.
I did more than that, I spoke to her. I asked her if she could tell me
anything of one whose locks were golden red like hers--But I need not
tell you what I said nor what she replied with a gentle delicacy that
was almost a shock to me as showing from what heights to what depths a
woman can fall. Enough that nothing passed between us beyond what I have
intimated, and that in all she said she gave me no news of Luttra.

“Next day I started for the rambling old house in Vermont, if haply
in the spot where I first saw her, I might come upon some clue to her
present whereabouts. But the old inn was deserted, and whatever hope I
may have had in that direction, perished with the rest.

“Concerning the contents of that bureau-drawer above, I can say nothing.
If, as I scarcely dare to hope, they should prove to have been indeed
brought here by the girl who has since disappeared so strangely, who
knows but what in those folded garments a clue is given which will lead
me at last to the knowledge for which I would now barter all I possess.
My wife--But I can mention her name no more till the question that now
assails us is set at rest. Mrs. Daniels must--”

But at that moment the door opened and Mrs. Daniels came in.



CHAPTER XIV. MRS. DANIELS


She still wore her bonnet and shawl and

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/1167