Before leaving for Mexico there was a long, detailed conversation
between Stolliker and Carlita, a conversation in which he fully
outlined to her the part it would be necessary for her to play--a line
of action to which she offered no word of objection, though her whole
soul rebelled against such duplicity.
There was also a telegraph code agreed upon, by which cipher telegrams
could be sent; a method used before, but always comparatively safe.
A book was mutually agreed upon, in this instance "The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes," by Conan Doyle. The word, counting from the bottom
of the page, was to be indicated by the first number, the page itself
by the second; so that to read it would be impossible, unless the
reader knew to what volume the numbers referred, as well as the edition
selected.
They understood each other perfectly when Stolliker left to catch his
train, and in his own mind there was not a doubt but that he should be
able to prove Pierrepont's guilt with almost greater ease than he had
ever settled a case before.
"It's too pretty a neck to be bound by a halter," he mused, as he took
his seat in the train. "Adam lost Eden because of a woman--a woman who
loved him; but this man will lose more than that, if I mistake not. He
will lose not alone his life, but his soul as well, and for a woman
who loves him not! It is a queer world, and man is the queerest animal
in it. Instead of conscience making cowards of us all, passion makes
brutes of us all, and we forget conscience and cowardice, too, under
the intoxicant of a woman's smile."
After Stolliker had gone, the excitement which had seemed to brace
Carlita for the emergency suddenly wore itself out, and for several
days she was confined to her room, with a nearer approach to fever than
she had ever had in her strong, healthy young life before.
It was during those few days that a strange change came over Jessica.
She developed a sudden affection for her mother's ward that touched
that poor, friendless young thing to the heart. She even refused to go
to the opera the night that Carlita was threatened with delirium, and
sat beside the bed, holding Carlita's hand while the physician was in
the room, and bending over the patient once or twice with tenderest
solicitude when there was a murmur of a name upon those rambling lips
which she did not wish the doctor to hear.
And Jessica learned much in those few days, much that it would have
been a thousand times better if she had never known; but Carlita was
unaware of that.
She lifted the girl's hand to her cooling lips, and pressed it there
passionately when she realized who it was that had nursed her so
carefully.
"How shall I thank you?" she murmured, faintly. "I don't think I have
ever appreciated before how good you are!"
"Perhaps we have never quite understood each other before," returned
Jessica, in that low, melodious voice which none knew better than she
how to assume.
"Ah, yes, it is that," answered Carlita, eagerly. "But now that I know
how tender your friendship can be, you will not withdraw it from me?
I am so alone, so pitifully alone in all the world! There is not one
creature that belongs to me, not one that cares whether I live or die,
not one to whom I could stretch out my hand for help, no matter what
my needs may be. It seems to me sometimes that my heart will break
from the heaviness of its loneliness and isolation. Let me love you,
Jessica! Let me love you!"
There was a peculiar smile upon the Judas lips, a smile filled with
fascination--a fascination which she was exerting upon that helpless
girl as she had upon so many men, luring them to eternal ruin, and then
she bent and pressed a Judas kiss upon Carlita's tremulous lips.
"You silly little sentimentalist!" she exclaimed, laughingly. "I should
always have been your friend if you had not repelled my advances
with such determination. There now"--moving the pillows into a more
comfortable position--"we won't talk about it any more. You are weak
and nervous. The first thing I know you will cry, then I shall cry, and
then I shall never forgive you as long as I live for making my nose
red. Did you ever read in a novel about how beautiful the heroine looks
when she cries? That is the baldest kind of rot! I never saw a girl
in my life who looked pretty when she cried. I am not presentable for
hours afterward."
It was a charity in its way, this new friendship, for in spite of its
odious treachery on one side, it kept Carlita from going mad in those
first days, and later gave her courage to play the part which Stolliker
had mapped out for her.
At the end of the fifth day Stolliker reached the City of Mexico. He
telegraphed from there, but there was nothing beyond the statement of
his arrival.
On the seventh Carlita was up and about again, very wan, very haggard,
but still on the road to recovery.
She felt that there was no longer any time to be lost in carrying out
Stolliker's injunctions; and so, when Leith Pierrepont's card was
brought to her two days later, she arose and went wearily downstairs.
"How you have suffered!" Leith exclaimed, as his eyes fell upon her.
Her own burned fiercely, and her lips trembled so that she could find
no words in which to answer him.
He pressed her hand in silence, and led her to the same chair she had
occupied that day when Stolliker was in the conservatory.
"It is so good of you to receive me," he continued, after a painful
pause. "In memory of our compact of friendship, I have called every day
to ask after you.'"
Her heart gave a great passionate bound, a mad bound of anger, at his
presumption, she told herself; but her tone was calm, even serene, as
she replied to him:
"Really? I was not told. Perhaps it was forgotten. It was very good of
you to take so much trouble. Every one has been singularly kind and
just, when I was fancying myself so cruelly alone, too."
"Never alone so long as you will consider me your friend."
"That is two I have now."
"Two? Who is the other?"
"Jessica."
"Oh!"
A shadow of disappointment crossed his brow, a disappointment which he
made no attempt to conceal.
She laughed nervously.
"Jessica tells me that I have been such a fool," she said, in a tone
that was quite new to her.
"Indeed? How?"
"She calls me 'little Puritan,' and says that my absurd morality has a
Plymouth Rock cast. She has told me the reason I have but two friends."
"Has she? What is it?"
"It is because I am too intense for this day and generation. People
don't like it. Frivolity and lightness of heart are much more to their
taste."
"But what of your nature? Does that count for nothing? Is that not to
be taken into consideration?"
"One's nature is a matter of education, nothing more. If that has been
faulty, it should be rectified as quickly as possible."
"May I ask how she proposes that you shall rectify these defects of
education?"
"Why, simply by imitating other people at first."
"Herself, for example?"
"Certainly."
"By playing poker after the opera, you mean?"
"Perhaps, though not necessarily. You do not approve?"
"I approve of a woman or man following the bent of her or his own
particular predilection," he answered, evasively. "If you approve of
playing poker, I have nothing to say."
"But--"
"But--I should be very sorry," he said, sadly.
"You would--withdraw from that compact of friendship?"
"No; I should feel that you needed me all the more, and I should be in
constant attendance, lest the moment should arrive in my absence when
you might want my services most."
She looked up at him with a faint smile, into which she would have
thrown more archness had the power to do so been given her, and
exclaimed, playfully:
"You offer inducement rather than opposition."
He flushed and drew back slightly, something in word, or tone, or
glance jarring upon his emotion. Somehow he preferred her coldest
disdain to the remark that she had made, and yet there was nothing in
it to give offense to any man.
He walked to the other side of the fire, behind her chair, and changed
the subject suddenly.
"When shall you be able to take up your music again?" he asked,
irrelevantly.
"Soon, I hope," she answered, but with a little shiver.
He saw it, and his conscience smote him. He believed that he had
wronged her.
"Carlita!" he cried, unconscious that in his pain he had used her first
name. "Carlita, don't allow a morose and morbid desire to conceal your
real emotions make you false to yourself and all those higher and
better attributes with which God has blessed you. You have sustained
a terrible shock. Don't let it turn the very beauties of your sweet
nature into a curse. You want something to turn to in your hour of
trouble. Let it be your music. God gave you a talent which He intended
as a comfort and sustaining power. Call upon it now. May I play to you?"
She did not reply, she could not; but already he had wandered toward
the piano. He sat down absent-mindedly and passed his hands over the
keys.
It reminded them both of that other evening when he had played for her,
and they sang together, that evening when he had told her of a love of
which he had no right to speak, which had no right to exist. A great,
wild, turbulent passion rose up in his heart against himself, numbing
his fingers.
For the first time within his remembrance the keys beneath his hands
gave forth a discordant sound.
He stood up suddenly and looked at her.
She too had arisen.
Her eyes were fierce, burning with raging passion. He thought he knew
what thoughts were at work in her brain, and cried out feverishly:
"God! How can a man live to curse himself for a momentary yielding to
madness! Do you believe there is any forgiveness for it? Do you believe
there is forgiveness for any sin, when the person against whom you have
sinned is dead, when he can no longer hear you cry out your passionate
remorse?"
She did not reply. She rose ghastly in her horrible pallor, and stood
there shaking and trembling as if an awful ague had fallen upon her.
She was striving to loosen her cleaving tongue when Jessica came into
the room suddenly, with a swish of skirts and a bound that startled her.
"Halloo, Leith!" she exclaimed, in the old slangy way. "Glad to see you
back again. The house has been like a funeral. Look at Carlita! Like
a ghost, isn't she? And you tiring her out by allowing her to stand
in this way. If you had been either a good physician or a good nurse,
you would have drawn up that couch and have her comfortably bolstered
up with pillows. Now, I'm going to send her upstairs, just because you
have been so thoughtless."
"I'm afraid I deserve the punishment," he answered, meekly. "But if I
promise not to do it in future you won't banish me, will you?"
"Not to any alarming extent," she returned, laughing. "Here you are,
Ahbel! Take our patient upstairs, see that she is nicely tucked up and
has a good rest. And now, sir, give an account of yourself. Where have
you been this last week?"
But Carlita did not hear his reply.
Ahbel had led her from the room to her own, where she suddenly sat down
beside the window.
"Leave me, Ahbel!" she cried, nervously. "I'll ring if I want you, but
I couldn't lie down now. I must think! I must think!"
She didn't even know when the girl left the room, but, with her hands
clinched in her lap, sat looking half frantically out of the window.
What was it, she was asking herself, that he would have told her when
Jessica entered? Could it have been a confession of his guilt? Would
a guilty man have so spoken? What was it he meant? Was he innocent or
guilty?
And, as if in answer to her unspoken question, a knock came upon
the door, quick, incisive, as if the seeker for permission to enter
realized the importance of her errand.
It was Ahbel.
"A telegram, miss!" she exclaimed, half breathlessly.
Carlita received it and tore it open hastily. It looked ordinary enough
as it trembled in her hand, and yet there was something sinister in the
array of figures as she flashed her eyes over them:
"2, 75, 107, 29, 12, 35, 18, 134; 24, 23, 18, 11, 126, 29, 23, 22,
55, 10, 324, 51, 23, 50, 135, 114, 45, 116, 19, 97, 17, 78, 4, 97."
Scarcely able to control her excitement, she sped across the floor
to her escritoire, and snatched up the volume of "Sherlock Holmes"
concealed there.
With trembling fingers she turned the pages and slowly counted out the
words, horrible, ghastly in their import:
"The gentleman to whom you were engaged was not shot as you were told.
E. S."