“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.