THE MISSING PAPER
“How dare you enter this room at such an hour?” demanded the woman in
attendance, who, after the first shock had passed, quickly recovered
herself and was now prepared to do battle.
“We will have no words upon the subject just now, if you please—it is
one that will keep, for awhile, at least; get restoratives and revive
this fainting girl without delay,” Earle commanded, in quiet though
stern tones, and then bent anxiously over his unconscious loved one.
The woman, cowed by his authoritative manner, proceeded to attend Editha
at once, although it was with a face nearly as white as the waxen one
upon the pillow. With a sinking heart Earle stood by jealously watching
her every movement.
Editha, his darling, his promised wife, lay there looking more like a
beautiful piece of sculpture than like a human being who would ever
breathe or speak again, and a great fear took possession of him that she
never would recover. But the woman was evidently a good nurse, and,
under the influence of the restoratives she was using, Editha soon gave
signs of returning life.
When she at last opened her eyes, Earle was sitting by her side, and
smiled upon her as she looked at him, as if it was the most natural
thing in the world for him to be there.
Yet he actually held his breath, fearing that the shock of his presence
might make her swoon again.
“Earle!” she breathed, a look of awe stealing over her countenance.
The look told him that for the moment she believed herself dead, and to
have met him in another world.
“Yes, my darling, Earle, and no one else,” he said, softly, bending down
and touching her forehead with his lips. That caress brought her more to
herself. A wave of gladness swept over her face, her eyes lighted with a
beautiful and almost holy look of love, then, with a sigh that seemed to
throw off all its burdens and fear, every feature settled into
restfulness and peace.
“I am _so_ glad!” was all she could say, and that in a voice too weak
for anything but a whisper.
He could have bowed his head and wept over her to find her thus, all her
bright beauty faded, her strength nearly spent, almost dying, he feared.
But he knew he must control himself and minister to her, if he would
save her.
“Have you anything that will give her strength?” he asked, turning to
her attendant.
“Yes; there are wines and liquors in the cabinet, and beef-tea warm upon
the gas-stove in the bath-room.”
Earle had convinced himself with a glance before this that there was
only one door to the bath-room, and he now commanded her to bring some
of the beef-tea.
She brought it almost immediately.
“Taste it yourself first,” he said, curtly.
“You need not fear for her—I have no desire to have the life of _any_
one to answer for,” she said scornfully, and flushing.
“Drink some of it,” he persisted.
He would not trust her, and she swallowed a mouthful unhesitatingly.
He then slipped his arm gently under Editha’s pillow, and lifted her
until she could lean comfortably against his shoulder.
“Drink this now, dear, for my sake,” he said, putting the bowl to her
lips.
Without a question she obeyed, drinking slowly until the last drop had
disappeared, and Earle’s heart began to grow lighter.
If she would do that often she would soon be better, he thought.
“That will give you strength,” he said; “now lie down and try to sleep.
I shall not leave you again to-night, and when you are refreshed I will
let you talk with me a little.”
He laid her gently back, stopping to kiss her almost hueless lips as he
did so.
She put one hand up over the back of his neck and held him a moment so,
his face almost touching hers.
“You have saved me, Earle,” she said, feebly.
“I trust so, my injured darling,” he answered, with unsteady voice, and
then watched her while the tired eyes closed; the wan face settled into
peace, and she slept like a weary child.
Then he turned his attention to the woman, who had watched him with
wondering eyes all the while.
Pointing to a lounge on the opposite side of the room, he said:
“Madam, if you are weary you can lie down there until morning. I shall
take charge of your patient henceforth.”
“By what right?” she demanded, bridling.
“The right of her promised husband,” he answered, sternly.
The woman started violently, searched his face a moment, her own growing
very pale again.
“Are you——” she began, but her lips refused to complete the sentence.
“My name is Earle Wayne. Doubtless you have heard it before, and now
surmised as much,” he said, not pitying her agitation in the least.
“I do not believe it,” she at last said, in a low, angry tone, while at
the same time she steathily moved in the direction of the bell-pull.
Earle marked the movement.
“You will please sit over there,” he said, quietly, and pointing to the
lounge. “I am not in need of any assistance at present, and can summon
it myself if I think it necessary. It will be wiser for you to comply
with my request,” he added, sternly, as she hesitated. “If you make any
disturbance, I will have you lodged in a station-house in less than half
an hour.”
The woman cowed at once at this, and retreated in sullen silence to the
lounge, where, settling herself comfortably, she did not move again,
while Earle for the next two hours kept his vigil by Editha’s bedside,
where she slept quietly, sweetly, and refreshingly.
While she is thus sleeping we will take a bird’s-eye view of the time
that had elapsed since her encounter with Tom Drake, after leaving John
Loker’s house, and from which she was rescued by the sturdy policeman,
only to fall into still deeper trouble.
It will be remembered that after she had taken tea with her father she
repaired to her own room, where she made a careful copy of John Loker’s
confession, and then hid the original, with his signature attached,
beneath the cushion of her jewel-box. She then inclosed the copy in an
envelope addressed to Earle, and proceeded to write a long letter to
him, recounting her adventures of the evening.
Her father had gone out immediately after supper, the servants were all
abed in their rooms, and she was entirely alone in the front portion of
the house.
It had taken her so long to make a copy of the confession that she was
not half through with her letter when the cathedral clock near by struck
the hour of eleven.
Almost simultaneously with its last stroke the door of her room swung
noiselessly open, and a fierce, ugly face, half shaded by a slouch hat,
appeared in the aperture. A moment after the figure of a man entered,
the door was softly closed, and he advanced with a stealthy, cat-like
tread to where the young girl, who was deeply engaged in writing to her
lover, sat bending over her writing-desk. She was not conscious of the
presence of the intruder until, reaching for a new pen, she chanced to
raise her eyes, and saw him standing close by her side.
A cry of fright parted her lips as she instantly recognized the
repulsive features and burly form of Tom Drake. Without giving her time
to repeat her cry, he clapped his hand over her mouth in the same way he
had done earlier in the evening.
“Ah, ha! my plucky jade, did you think I would tamely give up the
chase?” he asked, with a horrible leer. “Not so, my pretty,” he
continued; “there is altogether too much at stake for that. But I can’t
stand here to hold you—will you promise to keep still if I’ll take my
hand from your mouth? You’d better, or I——”
He stopped short, with a fierce look that frightened her excessively.
“The old man is out,” he went on, as she did not make any sign of
promise. “I’ve been watching around all the evening—came directly here
after I was obliged to leave you so abruptly—ha, ha! and I saw him make
for the theater; he probably won’t be home for an hour or two yet, as I
have invited one of my friends to give him a little outside
entertainment on the way. The servants all went to bed more than an hour
ago, and you are completely in my power. Now, once for all, will you be
reasonable, and promise not to make a fuss?”
Editha saw that there was no way but to yield, and a feeling of
thankfulness stole over her, despite her terror at finding herself again
in the wretch’s power, that she had concealed John Loker’s confession
early in the evening.
She signified her assent to the villain’s terms by a motion of her head.
“Honor bright?” he asked, adding, fiercely: “I’ll choke you instanter if
you attempt to make any disturbance.”
She nodded again, and he at once released his hold of her.
“Now, little Miss Pluck,” he resumed, “what have you done with that
paper I asked you for once before? I want it, and _I’m going to have
it_. Do you hear?”
Editha did hear, and the lines about her small mouth settled into an
expression of unyielding firmness.
“You don’t mean to give it to me, hey?” he demanded, reading aright her
look.
She was too weak and excited from fright to speak, but she shook her
head resolutely.
“But I tell you I’m _going_ to have it, my lady, or it’ll be the worse
for _you_.”
A bright thought darted into her mind, and she immediately acted upon
it.
“If I will give you the paper, will you go away at once as quietly as
you came, and leave me and everything in the house unmolested?” she
asked.
“That’s the talk—now you’re sensible,” the ruffian returned, in a
satisfied tone.
“Do you promise?” she persisted.
“Yes; I’ll go instanter. You see it’s very important for my future
career that the little document doesn’t get into circulation; so hand it
over, and I’ll be off as quiet and quick as a mouse.”
Editha drew from the envelope she had addressed to Earle the copy she
had made, and passed it to him.
He reached out and took the envelope from her, and read the name written
upon the back before looking at the paper.
“So, ho! you were going to send it right to headquarters, were you?—and
I was just in the nick of time.”
Chuckling to himself, he unfolded the paper she had given him and began
to read.
The contents seemed to amuse him immensely, for he continued to chuckle
and laugh to himself all the way through; but his face grew stern and
threatening as he reached the end, and Editha’s heart failed her when he
said, fiercely:
“This won’t do, miss; this is only a copy, and I want the original. Hand
it over quick. Did you think I would be so readily cheated?”
“How do you know it is a copy?” she asked.
She had written that also with a pencil, as she could write more
rapidly, and she had thought perhaps he would think it was the one she
had written in John Loker’s house.
“Because I saw John Loker sign the other,” he said, with a malignant
scowl, adding: “Now, will you hand the other over to me?”
“No, sir, I will not,” was the firm reply.
He seemed staggered for a moment at this.
“You won’t?” he repeated, at length, with an oath, and fixing his eyes
upon her in a way that made her catch her breath and feel as if her
strength was forsaking her.
“Do you know,” he added, “that you are in the power of a desperate man?”
“Yes, I suppose so; but that paper is of more importance to me than any
other possession in the world.”
“Ah, ha! is that the way the wind blows? _He’s_ a lover, eh?” laughed
the villain, coarsely, and with a leer that made the blood boil in the
young girl’s veins and glow hotly in her cheeks. “Allow me to ask,” he
continued, with a sinister gleam in his eye, “if it is more precious to
you than your—_life_?”
She shrank from him in sudden terror at the question, but, after a
moment’s thought, she said:
“N-o, I cannot say that it is; but I do not think you would quite dare
to _murder_ me to get it. At all events _I shall not give it to you_.”
He looked at her with something akin to admiration on his face; he
evidently had not expected to find her so resolute, but at the same time
her obstinacy angered him.
“You think I would not _dare_ to put you out of the way?” he repeated,
savagely.
“What good would it do you? You surely would not accomplish your object
then,” Editha strove to say, dauntlessly, but feeling inwardly very weak
and trembling.
He saw the force of her argument and swore again, and, turning to her
writing-desk, began turning over its contents.
Of course, he did not find what he sought there, and then commenced a
general search of the room.
Bureau drawers, boxes, and every other receptacle that she had were
overturned and thoroughly searched.
Her closets also were ransacked, and the pockets of every dress turned
wrong side out, but with the same result.
Her jewel-casket stood on her dressing-case open, with all her jewelry
nicely arranged on its velvet cushion.
Editha’s heart stood still as she saw him approach this, but she did not
move or give a sign of the great fear that oppressed her.
He stooped and looked at the pretty things there, took up one or two and
examined them more closely, then laid them back again in their place,
and turned his attention to something else.
A mighty burden rolled from the fair girl’s heart as this danger was
passed.
She had expected he would put every article in his pocket, and then
perhaps turn the box upside down to seek for more; but evidently he did
not care for plunder to-night. At last he came and stood before her.
“I have searched everywhere. It must be upon your person,” he said, with
a desperate gleam in his eye.
She started from him with a look of terror.
“I swear to you that it is not anywhere about me,” she said. “As soon as
I made a copy of it I went and hid it, though I could not then have told
what made me do it. Now I know,” she added, thoughtfully.
He saw that she was speaking only truth, and in great perplexity he sat
down to think.
“Is it in this room?” he asked, at length.
“I shall not tell you,” Editha answered, her courage beginning to rise
as he became discouraged.
“Is it in this house?”
“I shall not tell you,” she repeated.
“You’re a—plucky piece,” he muttered between his teeth, and fixing his
fierce eyes again upon her in the strange way she had noticed before.
They seemed to transfix her, and a shuddering sensation pervaded her
frame whenever she met them.
“Do you mean to brave me and risk the consequences?” he demanded.
“If you ever gain that paper it will be through your own efforts alone.
I shall never _tell_ you where it is,” she replied, slowly and firmly.
He acted for a moment as if undecided what to do next. Then he took up
the letter she had been writing Earle and read it through.
She could not help this, of course, but her cheeks burned and her eyes
flashed indignantly as she thought of the tender little passages that
she had thrown in now and then, and that had been intended for her
lover’s eye alone.
She had told him a good deal of her adventure, and how that, as soon as
she had copied it, she had hidden the precious original; but strangely
enough she never mentioned even to him _where_, but said that no one but
herself knew of its hiding-place, and to-morrow she intended taking it
to Mr. Felton to see what he advised about it.
“Aha!” said the wretch, as he read this; “no one knows anything about
the precious document but yourself?”
“No.”
“And to-morrow you were intending to tell some one else about it,” he
said, rattling the letter he held in his hand.
“Yes.”
“And you are sure _nothing_ will make you give it to _me_?”
“Never!”
“Then there is but one thing left for me to do,” he muttered, striding
angrily toward her.
He seized both her hands in his, and again fixed his cruel eye upon
hers.
For one moment she looked defiance at him, though she was so frightened
by his manner that she had no power to cry out, nor make any effort to
release herself from his hold; the next her expression changed, and her
eyes began to droop.
“_Look at me!_” he commanded, bending nearer to her.
She obeyed, and gazed into his face as if suddenly fascinated.
For a moment he held her glance, while she felt as if all her will-power
was forsaking her.
He made a few passes over her head and face, touched her upon the pit of
the stomach, and she instantly became like a reed in his hands.
He had mesmerized her.