NOR UNDERSTAND ALL I SEE
For the next few days I think I must have been nearer to a nervous
breakdown than I am ever likely to be again. All the strain and the
anxiety of the whole summer seemed to fall upon me in a mass; I had not
the relief of taking arms against my trouble, nor of any better business
than to brood and to remember, sifting misery by the hour in hopeless
search after some grain of decision; and the heat and hurry of the city
broke my natural sleep, and went to make a nightmare of my days. Maclean
was with me a good deal, taking me with him into strange corners of the
town, and trying his best to bring me out of myself; but I could not
talk to him of what was on my mind, and the irritation of constant
pretense to carelessness vitiated much of the relief he tried to give.
Wherever I might be to appearance, the same Spartan Fox was at my
breast--Carucci's story and Sheila's attempted contradiction, and the
ambiguous trouble that overhung Lady and shut me out from her. I could
not fathom it; and I dared not take dangerous action in the dark. Reid
had passed through some scandal before his marriage; Sheila had admitted
so much; and her denial that Miriam and Lady were the same had been
involved in such a maze of surmise and superstition, so evidently and
angrily put forward as a defense, that I could not believe what I would
of it. It might well be that Mrs. Tabor was oppressed even to insanity
by the situation. But what was the situation? If the mother's madness of
bereavement were at the root of all, what had the family to conceal? Or
why should not the remaining daughter marry whom she chose? Sheila's
explanation of the first was absurdly tenuous; and the last she had not
attempted to explain. No, there was one shadow over them all: the cause
of the mother's grief was the cause of the daughter's terror, and of the
irrational behavior of the sane and practical men of the family. I could
find no alternative; either Mrs. Tabor was haunted by mediaeval ghosts,
or some part of the scandal must be true.
At last, one unbearably humid morning, when I was almost on the point of
going blindly out to Stamford on the chance of any happening that might
let my anxiety escape into action, of any opportunity that might force a
climax, Mr. Tabor called me on the telephone.
"Hello, Mr. Crosby? Mr. Laurence Crosby?--Well, Crosby, this is Mr.
Tabor talking. Are you free this morning, so that you can give us a few
hours of your time? You can help us very much if you will."
"Certainly; I'll be out as soon as I can get a train." The idea of
seeing Lady again was a compensation under any circumstances; but the
next words destroyed that hope.
"No, don't do that. What I want of you is right there in New York." He
hesitated a moment. "Hello--that--that same situation which occurred the
other day, when you were alone in the house, and we were in town, has
arisen again. You understand me?--We're looking after this neighborhood.
The person in question has been gone an hour, leaving no word; may have
gone to New York. Now, will you meet all trains until further notice,
and keep your eyes open? Call us up about every half hour. In case of
success, use your own judgment--don't excite any one, don't be left
behind, and telephone as soon as possible. Am I making this explicit
enough?"
"Yes, perfectly. I'm to meet trains, let matters take their own course
as far as possible, keep in touch, and let you know."
"That's it exactly. I knew we could count on you."
I was not many minutes in getting to the Grand Central, laying my plan
of action on the way. To be sure that no one arrived unobserved in that
great labyrinth of tracks and exits was no such easy matter, even though
I knew the point of departure. I began by a thorough search of the
waiting-rooms. Then, finding, as I had expected, no trace of Mrs. Tabor,
I learned the times and positions of all the Stamford trains, and set
myself to meet each one as it arrived. I had to make certain of seeing
every passenger, and at the same time to keep out of the expectant
throng that crowded close to the restraining ropes on a similar errand;
for if Mrs. Tabor should appear I must not seem to be watching for her.
The next hour and a half was divided between studying the clock, running
my eyes dizzily over streams of hurrying humanity, racing anxiously from
place to place when a late train crowded close upon its successor, and
snatching a moment at the telephone in the intervals of nervous waiting.
Even so, I could not be morally sure that she might not slip by me
somewhere unnoticed. And when at last I recognized her fragile figure
far down the long platform, I was less excited than relieved.
She came on quickly, carrying a little shopping-bag, and stepping with a
certain bird-like alertness. It was hard to imagine that this eager,
pretty lady, with her spun-glass hair and her bright eyes, could be
either ill or in trouble. I let her pass me, and followed at a little
distance into the waiting-room; then crossed over and met her face to
face by the telephone booths on the west side. Her greeting was a fresh
surprise.
"Why, Mr. Crosby, this is delightfully fortunate! I was just going to
call you up, and here you spring from the earth as if I had rubbed a
magic ring. You must have known that I was thinking about you. You're
not going away, are you? Or meeting any one?"
If she meant anything in particular, I had reason to feel embarrassed;
but the big, childish eyes that smiled into my own seemed wholly
innocent of suspicion.
"No," I said. "I've been seeing somebody off, and I'm very gladly at
your service for as long as you like." I was praying Heaven to inspire
me with mendacity.
"Well, that's the best that could have happened. I came in town to see
some friends, and I promised myself to see you at the same time. Excuse
me just half a minute, while I telephone them."
She slipped into the booth, leaving me hesitating outside. Evidently
here was my chance to call up Mr. Tabor, and report; but she kept
glancing out at me through the glass doors as she talked, quite
casually, but still with observant interest; and I dared not shut myself
in a booth lest she should either suspect or escape. She was out again
before I could make up my mind.
"Now take me to lunch," she said gaily, "and after that, if you haven't
grown tired of such a frivolous old creature, you may take me where I am
going. I'll set you free by two or three o'clock, at the latest."
I took her to the Waldorf, for no better reason than that it was cool
and close at hand; wondering all the way how in the world I was to get
word to the family, and keeping up my end rather absently in a
conversation, which with a younger woman would have been merrily
flirtatious, and wanted only relief from preoccupied anxiety to be very
delightful fencing. Mrs. Tabor was in that state of fluffy exhilaration,
that heightening and brightening of spirit which in a man would have
been hilarity, and which in a woman may equally well mean the excitement
of pleasure or the tension of imprisoned pain. She was a little above
herself, but there was absolutely nothing to tell me why. And she kept
me too busy in finding the next answer to plan what I should do the
minute afterward.
"Of course, Mr. Crosby," she began when we were settled at our table,
"this is another of my horrible and mysterious disappearances. I've
actually come to the great city, in broad daylight, without a chaperon.
Isn't it reckless of me?"
"Desperately," I answered. "And not a soul knows where you are? Won't
they be shocked and surprised when they miss you?"
She shook out a little laugh. "Let them; it's their own fault. If I'm to
be treated like an European school-girl, I shall at least have the
pleasure of acting like one. They need imagination enough to conceive of
my being able to take care of myself now and then. I'm not in my second
childhood yet--only in my second girlhood."
"At least let me telephone them that you're with me. I won't say why or
where, and we can make a mystery of that."
"Not a bit of it." Her voice sharpened just a trifle. "That would spoil
the whole lesson. They needn't worry unless they choose. Then when I
come home, if they make a fuss over me I shall say: 'Now see how silly
you've been. I've been having luncheon with Mr. Crosby,' You wouldn't
take the edge off of that disclosure?" She tilted her head on one side.
"But they ought to know merely that you're safe," I ventured.
"Safe? What should I be but safe? No--" She put out an emphatic little
hand. "I'm free from the convent, and I'm not going to be taken to task
by so young and good-looking a confessor. Besides, I'm ashamed of you.
Where's your gallantry? You don't seem to appreciate the honor of our
secret at all."
"Perhaps the trouble is," I said cautiously, "that I don't understand
the secret myself. What did you mean when you said--"
"Oh, _that_!" she laughed. "Why, I meant the hardest thing in the world
for a man to understand, and that is--just nothing at all. You had all
of you been so stupid and serious and uncomfortable that night that I
felt it would serve you right to make you jump. So I made a little
mystery of my own, and it worked beautifully. It sounded every bit as
sensible as yours, too."
She was beyond me. Two or three times after that I worked around to the
same subject, but she evaded me so deftly that I could not for the life
of me be sure whether it was evasion or unconsciousness; and my attempts
to communicate with the family met with no better fortune. At last I
tried to leave her for a moment on the plea of calling a taxicab.
"You live on Table Mountain, and your name is Truthful James," was her
comment. "Taxicabs are scarce in Stamford, Mr. Crosby, and it would take
too long to get one here. Let the waiter call one of those outside."
At that, I gave up with a good grace. I should be free to report as soon
as I had left her with her friends, and a few minutes more or less could
not matter much by now. She gave the chauffeur an address in the
sixties and we were presently there: one of these new American basement
houses sandwiched in among the older brownstone fronts of the more
conservative blocks. During the short drive, she had been silent and I
thought a little disturbed; but her farewell was bright with reawakened
gaiety.
"I shall measure your enjoyment by your secrecy, Mr. Confessor," she
purred, with tilted head and raised forefinger. "You may tell my anxious
warders just as much as you please, and the less you confide in them the
more I shall flatter myself of your confidence in me. Now I leave you to
your conscience."
[Illustration: And there he stood on the sidewalk]
She was standing in the doorway, her hand upon the bell, and I had
turned back to the waiting taxicab, when a somber and respectable
electric brougham turned the corner and drew slowly up to the curb. I
recognized with an uncomfortable shock that the driver was no other than
the Tabors' former chauffeur, the unworthy Thomas who had deserted Lady
and myself at the crisis of our midnight adventure; and I thought that
under his mask of the impassive servant he recognized me somewhat
uncomfortably. I glanced back to see if Mrs. Tabor had seen him also.
She was leaning against the door of the house, clutching at the handle
as if for support, or in a desperate anxiety to enter; every line of
her face and figure writhing and agonized with unmistakable terror. The
bang of the brougham door behind me and the sound of a shrill precise
voice that I remembered made me turn my eyes to the street--and as I did
so the bang of the front door sounded behind me like an echo. Mrs. Tabor
had disappeared into the house, the brougham was starting rapidly away,
and there on the sidewalk stood the man whom Reid had twice brought
secretly home.