They had intended to go to the theater but Ruyler put her to bed at
once. He offered to read to her, but she turned her back on him with
cold disdain, and he went to the little invisible cupboard where she
kept her own jewels and took out the heavy gold box which had been the
wedding present of one of his California business friends who owned a
quartz mine.
"I shall put this in the safe," he said incisively, "for, while I admire
your stanchness in friendship, even for such an unworthy object as Polly
Roberts, I do not propose that my wife shall be selling or pawning her
jewels for any reason whatever. Think over the proposal I made
downstairs. If Polly is willing I'll lend Roberts the money to-morrow."
She had thrown an arm over her face and she made no reply. He went down
stairs and put the box in the safe. It occurred to him that she had
watched him open and close the safe several times but she certainly never
had written the combination down, and it had taken him a long while to
commit it to memory himself.
He had glanced over the contents of the box before he locked it in. The
jewels were all there, the string of pearls that he had given her on
their marriage day, a few wedding presents, and several rings and
trinkets he had bought for her since. The value was perhaps twenty
thousand dollars, for he had told her that she must wait several years
before he could give her the jewels of a great lady. When she was thirty,
and really needed them to make up for fading charms--it had been one of
their pleasant little jokes.
As Ruyler set the combination he sighed and wondered whether their days
of joking were over. Their life had suddenly shot out of focus and it
would require all his ingenuity and patience, aided by friendly
circumstance, to swing it into line again. He did not believe a word of
the necklace story. Somebody was blackmailing the poor child. If he could
only find out who! He made up his mind suddenly to put this problem also
in the hands of Spaulding for solution. The question of his
mother-in-law's antecedents was important enough, but that of his wife's
happiness and his own was paramount.
He decided to go to the theater himself, for he was in no condition for
sleep or the society of men at the club, nor could any book hold his
attention. He prayed that the play would be reasonably diverting.
He walked down town and as he entered the lobby of the Columbia at the
close of the first act he saw 'Gene Bisbee and D.V. Bimmer, who was now
managing a hotel in San Francisco, standing together. He also saw Bisbee
nudge Bimmer, and they both stared at him openly, the famous hotel man
with some sympathy in his wise secretive eyes, the reformed peer of the
underworld with a certain speculative contempt.
Ruyler, to his intense irritation, felt himself flushing, and wondered if
the man's regard might be translated: "Just how much shall I be able to
touch him for?" He wished he would show his hand and dissipate the
damnable web of mystery which Fate seemed weaving hourly out of her
bloated pouch, but he doubted if Bisbee, or whoever it was that tormented
his wife, would approach him save as a last resource. They were clever
enough to know that her keenest desire would be to keep the disgraceful
past from the knowledge of her husband, rather than from a society
seasoned these many years to erubescent pasts.
Moreover it is always easier to blackmail a woman than a man, and Price
Ruyler could not have looked an easy mark to the most optimistic of
social brigands.
He found it impossible to fix his mind on the play; the cues of the first
act eluded him, and the characters and dialogue were too commonplace to
make the story negligible.
At the end of the second act Ruyler made up his mind to go home and try
to coax his wife back into her customary good temper, pet her and make
her forget her little tragedy. He still hesitated to broach the subject
to her directly, but it was possible that by some diplomatically
analogous tale he could surprise her into telling him the truth.
During the long drive he turned over in his mind the data Spaulding had
placed before him during the afternoon. He rejected the theory that
Madame Delano was Mrs. Lawton as utterly fantastic, but admitted a
connection. Hélène had spoken more than once of Mrs. Lawton's kindness to
"maman" when her baby was born during her "enforced stay in San
Francisco," and it was quite possible that the two had been friends, and
that the young mother had adopted the name of Dubois when calling upon
the nuns of the convent at St. Peter, either because it would naturally
occur to her, or from some deeper design which, he could not fathom....
Yes, the connection with Mrs. Lawton was indisputable and it remained for
him to "figger out" as Spaulding would say, which of these women, the
gambler's wife, the notorious "Madam," Gabrielle, the briefly coruscating
Pauline Marie, or the Englishman's mistress, a woman of Mrs. Lawton's
position would be most likely to befriend.
The first three might be dismissed without argument. She had been no
frequenter of "gambling joints" whatever her peccadilloes; Gabrielle,
he happened to know, had died some eight or ten years ago, and
Mademoiselle Pauline Marie, if she had had a child, which was extremely
doubtful, was the sort that sends unwelcome offspring post haste to the
foundling asylum.
There remained only the spurious Mrs. Medford, and she was the
probability on all counts. What more likely than that she and Mrs. Lawton
had met at one of the great winter hotels in Southern California, and
foregathered? Certainly they would be congenial spirits.
When the baby came Mrs. Lawton would naturally see her through her
trouble, and advise her later what to do with the child. No doubt,
Medford found it in the way.
After that Ruyler could only fumble. Did Medford desert the woman,
driving her on the stage?--or elsewhere? Did they start for Japan, and
did he die on the voyage? Did he merely give the woman a pension and tell
her to go back to Rouen, or to the devil? It was positive that when
Hélène was five years old Madame Delano had gone back to her relatives
with some trumped up story and been received by them.
Moreover, this theory coincided with, his belief that Hélène's father
was a gentleman. No doubt he had been already married when he met the
young French girl, superbly handsome, and intelligent--possibly at one
of the French watering places, even in Rouen itself, swarming with
tourists in Summer. They might have met in the spacious aisles of the
Cathedral, she risen from her prayers, he wandering about, Baedeker in
hand, and fallen in love at sight. One of Earth's million romances,
regenerating the aged planet for a moment, only to sink back and
disappear into her forgotten dust.
His own romance? What was to be the end of that!
But he returned to his argument. He wanted a coherent story to tell his
wife, and he wanted also to believe that his wife's father had been a
gentleman.
Medford, like so many of his eloping kind, had made instinctively for
California with the beautiful woman he loved but could not marry. Santa
Barbara, Ruyler had heard, had been the favorite haven for two
generations of couples fleeing from irking bonds in the societies of
England and the continent of Europe. Southern California combined a wild
independence with a languor that blunted too sensitive nerves, offered an
equable climate with months on end of out of door life, boating,
shooting, riding, driving, motoring, romantic excursions, and even sport
if a distinguished looking couple played the game well and told a
plausible story.
Breeding was a part of Ruyler's religion, as component in his code as
honor, patriotism, loyalty, or the obligation of the strong to protect
the weak. Far better the bend sinister in his own class than a legitimate
parent of the type of 'Gene Bisbee or D.V. Bimmer. Ruyler was a "good
mixer" when business required that particular form of diplomacy, and the
familiarities of Jake Spaulding left his nerves unscathed, but in bone
and brain cells he was of the intensely respectable aristocracy of
Manhattan Island and he never forgot it. He had surrendered to a girl of
no position without a struggle, and made her his wife, but it is doubtful
if he would even have fallen in love with her if she had been underbred
in appearance or manner. He had never regretted his marriage for a
moment, not even since this avalanche of mystery and portending scandal
had descended upon him; if possible he loved his troubled young wife more
than ever--with a sudden instinct that worse was to come he vowed that
nothing should ever make him love her less.
When he arrived at his house he found two notes on the hall table
addressed to himself. The first was from Hélène and read:
"Polly telephoned that she would send her car for me to go down to the
Fairmont and dance. I cannot sleep so I am going. _She cannot sleep
either_! Forgive me if I was cross, but I am terribly worried for her.
Don't wait up for me. Hélène."
He read this note with a frown but without surprise. It was to be
expected that she would seek excitement until her present fears were
allayed and her persecutors silenced.
He determined to order Spaulding to have her shadowed constantly for at
least a fortnight and note made of every person in whose company she
appeared to be at all uneasy, whether they were of her own set or not. It
would also be worth while to have Madame Delano's rooms watched, for it
was possible that she would summon Hélène there to meet Bisbee or others
of his ilk.
Then he picked up the other note. It was from Spaulding, and as he read
it all his finespun theories vanished and once more he was adrift on an
uncharted sea without a landmark in sight.
"Dear Sir," began the detective, who was always formal on paper. "I've
just got the information required from Holbrook Centre. We didn't half
believe there was such a place, if you remember? Well there is, and
according to the parish register Marie Jeanne Perrin was married to James
Delano on July 25th, 1891. She was there, visiting some French
relations--they went back soon after--and he had left there when he was
about sixteen and had only come back that once to see his mother, who was
dying. Nothing seems to have been known about him in his home town except
a sort of rumor that he was a bad lot and lived somewheres in California.
Can you beat it? But don't think I'm stumped. I'm working on a new line
and I'm not going to say another word until I've got somewheres.
"Yours truly,
"J. SPAULDING."
"Delano's father was a Forty-niner, and lived in California till 1860,
when he went home to H. C. and died soon after. There were wild stories
about him, too."