When Jean Forette, whose month was not quite up and who had not yet
completed arrangements for his new position, alighted from the Shore
Express at Lakeside and made his way-afoot and not in a machine--to the
Three Pines, the picturesque figure of the Southern gentleman followed.
“I wonder,” mused Colonel Ashley, “whether he takes Scotch Highballs or
absinthe, and what dope he mixes with it? Absinthe is rather hard to get
out here, I should imagine, but they might have a green brand of whiskey
they'd sell for it. But that Frenchman ought to know the genuine stuff.
However, we'll see.”
Carrying his limp, leather bag, which had served him in such good stead
when he entered the lavatory, the colonel slouched silently along the
road. It was close to midnight, and there would be no other trains to
the shore that day.
The lights of the Three Pines glowed in pleasant and inviting fashion
across the sandy highway. Out in front stood several cars, for the
tavern was one much patronized by summer visitors, and was a haven of
refuge, a “life-saving station,” as it had been dubbed by those who
fancied they were much in need of alcoholic refreshment.
Jean Forette entered, and Colonel Ashley, waiting a little and
making sure that the “tap room,” as it was ostentatiously called, was
sufficiently filled to enable him to mingle with the patrons without
attracting undue notice, followed.
He looked about for a sight of the chauffeur, and saw him leaning up
against the bar, sipping a glass of beer, and, between imbibitions,
talking earnestly to the white-aproned bartender.
“I'd like to hear what they're saying,” mused the colonel. “I wonder if
I can get a bit nearer.”
He ordered some rye, and, having disposed of it, took out a cigar, and
began searching in his pockets as though for a match.
“Here you are!” observed a bartender, as he held out a lighted taper.
The colonel had anticipated this, and quickly moved down the mahogany
rail toward the end where Jean Forette was standing. At that end was a
little gas jet kept burning as a convenience to smokers.
“I'll use that,” said the colonel. “I don't like the flavor of burnt
wood in my smoke.”
“Fussy old duck,” murmured the barkeeper as he let the flame he had
ignited die out, flicking the blackened end to the floor.
And, being careful to keep his face as much as possible in the shadow of
his big, slouch hat, Colonel Ashley lighted his cigar at the gas flame.
And, somehow or other, that cigar required a long and most careful
lighting. The smoker got the tip glowing, and then inspected it
critically. It was not to his satisfaction, as he drew a few puffs on
it, and again he applied the end to the flame.
He sent forth a perfect cloud of smoke this time, and it seemed to veil
him as the fog, blowing in from the sea, veils the tumbling billows.
Once more there was a look at the end, but the “fussy old duck” was not
satisfied, and, again had recourse to the flame.
All this while Colonel Ashley was straining his ears to catch what Jean
Forette was saying to the attendant who had drawn the frothing glass of
beer for him.
But the men talked in too low a tone, or the colonel had been a bit too
late, for all he heard was a murmur of automobile talk. Jean seemed
to be telling something about a particularly fast car he had formerly
driven.
“The fishing isn't as good as I hoped,” mused the colonel.
Then, as he turned to go out, he heard distinctly:
“Sure I remember you paying for the drink. I can prove that if you want
me to. Are they tryin' to double-cross you?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Well, you leave it to me, see? I'll square you all right.”
“Thanks,” murmured Jean, and then he, too, turned aside.
“There may be something in it after all,” was the colonel's thought,
and then he, too, hurried from the Three Pines, passing beneath the big
trees, with their sighing branches, which gave the name to the inn.
On toward The Haven, through the silence and darkness of the night, went
the detective. And at a particularly dark and lonely place he stopped.
The pungent, clean smell of grain alcohol filled the air, and a little
later a man, devoid of goatee and moustache, passing out into the
starlight, while a black, slouch hat went into the bag, and a Panama,
so flexible that it had not suffered from having been thrust rather
ruthlessly into the valise, came out.
“I don't like that sort of detective work,” mused the colonel, “but it
has its uses.”
Viola Carwell, alone in her room, sat with a bundle of letters on a
table before her. They were letters she had found in a small drawer of
the private safe--a drawer she had, at first, thought contained nothing.
The discovery of the letters had been made in a peculiar manner.
Viola and Miss Carwell, going over the documents, had sorted them into
two piles--one to be submitted to the lawyer, the other being made up
of obviously personal matters that could have no interest for any but
members of the family.
Then Miss Carwell had been called away to attend to some household
matters, and Viola had started to return to the safe such of the papers
as were not to go to the lawyer.
She opened a small drawer, to slip back into it a bundle of letters her
mother had written to Mr. Carwell years before. Then Viola became aware
of something else in the drawer. It was something that caught on the end
of her finger nail, and she was stung by a little prick-like that of a
pin.
“A sliver-under my nail!” exclaimed Viola. “The bottom of the wooden
drawer must be loose.”
It was loose, as she discovered as soon as she looked in the
compartment. But it was a looseness that meant nothing else than that
the drawer had a false bottom.
It was not such a false bottom as would have been made use of in the
moving pictures. That is to say it was very poorly made, and an almost
casual glance would have revealed it. All that had been done was to take
a piece of wood the exact size and shape of the bottom of the drawer,
and fit it in. This extra piece of wood covered anything that might be
put in the drawer under it, and then, on top of the false bottom other
things might be placed so that when they were taken out, and the person
doing it saw bare wood, the conclusion would naturally follow that all
the contents of the drawer had been removed.
But such was not the case. Beneath the smooth-fitting piece of wood,
which had sprung loose and been the means of driving a splinter under
Viola's nail, thus apprising her of the fact that there was something in
the drawer she had not seen, had been found some letters. And Viola had
not told her aunt about them.
“I want to see what they are myself, first,” the girl decided.
Now they were spread out on her dressing table in front of her. She
sat with her glorious blue-black hair unbound, and falling over her
shoulders, which gleamed pink through the filmy thinness of her robe.
“I wonder if I shall be shocked when I read them?” she mused.
That was what Viola had been living in continual fear of since her
father's death--that some disclosure would shock her--that she might
come upon some phase of his past life which would not bear the full
light of day. For Horace Carwell had not stinted himself of the
pleasures of life as he saw them. He had eaten and drunk and he had made
merry. And he was a gregarious man--one who did not like to take his
pleasures alone.
And so Viola was afraid.
The letters were held together with an elastic band, and this gave some
hope.
“If they were from a woman, he wouldn't have used a rubber band on
them,” reasoned Viola. “He was too sentimental for that. They can't be
mother's letters--they were in another compartment. I wonder--”
Viola had done much wondering since her mother's death, and considerable
of it had been due to the life her father led. That he would marry again
she doubted, but he was fond of the society of the men, and particularly
the women of their own set, and some sets with which Viola preferred to
have nothing to do.
And if Mr. Carwell had no intentions of marrying again, then his
interest in women--
But here Viola ceased wondering.
With a more resolute air she reached forth hand to the bundle of letters
and took one out. There was distinct relief in her manner as she quickly
turned to the signature and read: “Gerry Poland.”
And then, quickly, she ascertained that all the letters comprised
correspondence between her father and the yacht club captain.
“But why did he hide these letters away?” mused Viola. “They seem to
be about business, as the others were--the others showing that Captain
Poland perhaps saved my father from financial ruin. Why should they be
under the false bottom of the drawer?”
She could not answer that question.
“I must read them all,” she murmured, and she went through the entire
correspondence. There were several letters, sharp in tone, from both
men, and the subject was as Greek to Viola. But there was one note from
the captain to her father that brought a more vivid color to her dark
cheeks, for Captain Poland had written:
“You care little for what I have done for you, otherwise you would not
so oppose my attentions to your daughter. They are most honorable, as
you well know, yet you are strangely against me. I can not understand
it.”
“Oh!” murmured Viola. “It is as if I were being bargained for! How I
hate him!”
Almost blinded by her tears she read another letter. It was another
appeal to her father to use his influence in assisting the captain's
suit.
But this letter--or at least that portion of it relating to Viola--had
been torn, and all that remained was:
“As members of the same lo--”
“What can that have meant?” she mused. “Is it the word 'lodge'?”
She read on, where the letter was whole again:
“I must ask you to reconsider your actions. Let me hear from you by the
twenty-third or--”
Again was that mystifying and tantalizing tear. Viola hastily searched
among the other letters, hoping the missing pieces might be found.
“I simply must see what it meant,” she said. “I wonder if they can be in
another part of the safe? I'm going to look!”
She started for her bath robe, and, at that moment, with a suddenness
that unnerved her, there came a knock on her door.