THE ARROW OF SUSPICION
The first excitement having worn away, the Council of War was now
organized. Colonel Brack had gathered together those men best fitted
to form a working committee--and likewise best able to finance any
scheme decided upon for the keeping open of Pinewood Inn.
The situation was already thoroughly canvassed. No other hotel in
the vicinity was open. To escape from the place by either motor or
train--at least for some hours, if not days--was impossible. Local
residents could not take in the hotel guests had they so desired.
Here were women and children used to every luxury who were threatened
with dismissal from the hotel at once. As the colonel loudly said,
it was brutal.
The track to Pinewood was for the accommodation of freight for the
most part. For the very reason that the owners of the Barnaby
property wished to keep the hotel exclusive, they had fought any
improvement in railroad accommodations.
At this time of night even the station telegraph office was closed;
and George had already informed the guests that there had been a
break in the long-distance telephone service since dark.
Any such thing as a special train to transport the guests to New York
could not be arranged for until the following day.
"And we'd have to put up with vile accommodations from here to the
Junction," explained the excitable Jimson. "Do you realize that this
spur-track roadbed is scarcely fit to pull coal cars over? My wife
couldn't stand it, I am sure."
"How about getting across to the island and to the regular railroad
station at Barr?" John Ryder asked.
"That bridge is practically a wreck. Do you know the bus slumped
clear through it, and will have to be raised by a derrick? And the
road to any other station is impossible for autos. No, we can't get
away and that's all there is to it."
This was the consensus of opinion. The disorganization of the hotel
employees which would follow the closing of the doors of the house
and its abandonment by the guests would make it unsafe to leave
personal property in the hotel. There were half a hundred reasons,
and all very good ones, that proved the guests must remain.
"And in union there is strength," quoted Mr. Jimson.
"We must hang together," declared another.
"Speaking of hanging," observed one, "how would it do to begin with
Bangs? I'd like to see him dangling at the end of a rope."
"Better starve him," murmured another.
But these futile remarks were cut off when John Ryder began to speak
seriously. He suggested that a committee be appointed to confer in a
quiet way with Bangs and try to pacify him if possible--even if it
cost some money. Some arrangement should be made, too, for the
retention of the servants.
Ryder was at once elected by acclamation to head this committee. The
colonel refused to be a member.
"You want cool men--calm men, suh," said the bristling old fellow.
"I am a fire-eater. I'd rather wring that skunk's neck than take a
drink!"
"Oh, Colonel!" exclaimed Jimson, "that is a very strong statement."
"I know it. But it's a fact. I know my weaknesses," said the
colonel modestly.
First the committee were to make sure of the truth of the manager's
statement regarding the coal supply. Then they were to sound the
help through the steward, Al, to find out how many would remain. To
learn what the prospect was for feeding the people in the house,
including the help, was likewise important.
"If the coal gives out," Ryder said, "there is surely coal in the
village here that may be bought. Perhaps not tonight, but early in
the morning. We should be able to find oil lamps and heaters in that
big store which I see is still open for business. The town has no
gas plant, I understand. We are dependent upon the hotel's lighting
plant."
The committee divided to attend to several of these matters before
going to see Bangs, agreeing to meet at the desk in ten minutes.
"I must not leave Ruth alone any longer," thought John Ryder, pulling
himself up short. "By thunder! there must be something more
important for a bridegroom to do on his wedding night than running
about as I am, shouldering other people's troubles. I must go and
take a peep at the dear girl and cheer her up a bit. She'll be
frightened by my remaining so long away, perhaps. No doubt she has
heard by this time of the manager's threat."
As his suite was on the second floor he did not use the elevator, but
ran up the broad, main stairway which led out of the office. Here
the hotel seemed to be running in its usual quiet way.
A white-capped and aproned maid passed him; a bellboy bustled by with
a tray of pitchers in which the ice tinkled; he heard the dull whir
of the elevators. He walked along the broad, central corridor and
turned off at his own proper "alley."
He saw that the door of his suite was open. There were voices which
reached his quickened ear--a man's deep tones and then (and this
startled him) a woman's sharp cry.
He was not yet sufficiently familiar with Ruth's voice to recognize
its tone under stress of emotion. But he felt, somehow, that it was
her cry.
He quickened his step. There was a man standing in the doorway of
the suite. Instantly, from the side view Ryder obtained of his face,
he knew him to be the stranger who had come last to the hotel on this
fateful evening.
"The bungling fool!" thought John Ryder. "Is he going from room to
room in this hotel looking for his friends? Maybe he is not honest.
The disturbed state of the hotel guests would open very easily the
way to business for an industrious burglar."
"I--I don't know you," Ruth said just as Ryder reached the spot.
She stood within the room, clinging with both hands to the edge of
the door and staring at the stranger with such a wild look in her
eyes that her husband was frightened. He turned on the man furiously.
"What do you want? What are you disturbing this lady for?"
"I--I beg your pardon," stammered the stranger, backing away from
both John Ryder and the open door of his suite, his face now
displaying nothing but pain and anxiety. "I have made a mistake--a
terrible mistake."
"Oh, I am so glad you have come," Ruth said quickly to Ryder. "I--I
thought you were lost--or something had happened. And then this man
came----"
She was still staring at the stranger with eyes in which lurked
actual terror. Ryder's fierce aspect seemed to trouble the strange
man.
"I--I beg your pardon--and the lady's," he murmured. "I thought I
was acquainted with her. It--it is a mistake."
"I never saw him in my life!" gasped Ruth.
"It's all right. Mistakes will happen," said Ryder, and entered the
room, shutting the door abruptly in the man's face. He caught Ruth
quickly in his arms with a sort of fierceness this time that was his
man-way of claiming possession, as well as a desire to defend her
from annoyance. "Were you frightened, dearie?" he asked.
"Yes. He--he startled me so. He is a strange looking man. Do you
think him quite--quite right?"
"Not right to come bungling up here and disturbing you," Ryder
responded, tenderly.
She blushed, slipping out of his arms suddenly. "Here, dear," she
said softly. "I have a visitor."
Ryder looked down the room and saw for the first time a large,
smiling woman sitting in a chair beyond the line of half-unpacked
trunks. She was a person whom he knew he had never seen before, and
he was not particularly happy to see her now.
She was a richly dressed--indeed a gaudily dressed--person wearing
many jewels and lacking that quiet demeanor and appearance that Ryder
admired most in womankind. Nevertheless, he walked in with as good a
grace as he could summon while Ruth introduced him.
"This is my husband, Mrs. Judson," she said, and there was a thrill
of pride in her sweet voice that delighted the man. "Mrs. Judson has
been telling me how dreadfully this Mr. Bangs, the hotel manager, is
behaving. Are they actually going to close the hotel? Mrs. Judson
is all upset about it. Being alone here with only a maid, she
doesn't know what to do."
"A committee of the older guests is trying to arrange now to keep the
house open in spite of Bangs," said John Ryder. "But Bangs is a
sharper. He may have fixed things so that we shall be without light
or heat for a part of the night. But to-morrow----"
"Oh, dear!" broke in the large lady in horror. "I'll never dare stay
in my rooms in the dark. And all stark alone. What _shall_ I do?
You know how very helpless we widows feel, Mister--er----" She did
not speak the name, which evidently had escaped her, but her smirk
caused Ryder a feeling of sudden nausea.
"You don't look helpless," he thought, with much disapproval of the
visitor. Mrs. Judson gave one the impression of being a woman amply
able to take care of herself in any emergency. Aloud he said:
"There are men now seeing about obtaining candles and lamps. Perhaps
heat may be furnished some of the rooms with the aid of oil stoves.
Of course, the furnace fires are not out yet."
"It is not cold in here," Ruth said brightly.
"But it will be if what Bangs says is true. He hasn't coal enough to
last until midnight. Oh, he was ready weeks ago for this trick,
without any doubt."
"And we can't get away!" wailed the heavy woman in the armchair.
"When poor, dear Horace was alive nothing like this ever happened to
me. And an oil stove! Horrid, smelly things! Oh, I never could
sleep with one in my room! I am delicate, you know, quite delicate!
Dear Horace always took the greatest care of me!"
Ryder looked at the huge, over-fed woman before him, and had some
difficulty to keep from snorting aloud at her claim of delicate
health.
"And candles!" she wailed on. "You surely can't expect a woman to
dress and undress by the aid of candle light! Oh, it's all
horrid--perfectly horrid!"
She seemed on the verge of tears, and from her size Ryder expected
nothing less than a deluge. He made for the door.
"I'll see what can be done about it," he whispered to Ruth, who
followed him swiftly, to squeeze his hand in both her own. "Don't
you be troubled, dearie. I will not remain away long."
"I was troubled," she confessed in the same tone. "Then I sent a
bellboy to page you and he couldn't find you anywhere."
"The stupid! I was right down there in the foyer. We'll be all
right when this tangle is straightened out. But, for the beginning
of a honeymoon----"
"Yes," she suddenly giggled. "Isn't it just too _funny_? Shall we
really stay?"
"To be sure. Dispossessing a manager who won't pay his rent is all
right; but to try to dispossess a guest who is ready and willing to
pay is quite another matter. It can't be done."
"Then shall I continue to unpack my trunks?"
Ryder smiled at her, then glanced back at the boxes. They were more
than half empty already and the open wardrobe doors gave him a view
of a number of pretty gowns which Ruth had shaken out and hung away.
"Go ahead," he said, easily. "You'll want the furbelows out of the
boxes, anyway. They look as though they'd muss pretty easily."
She glanced at him sidewise with a little blush, and squeezed his
hand again. "Don't you think they're _sweet_?" she whispered. "I
made them almost all myself."
"Is that so?" responded Ryder, with another curious glance at the
gowns in display. Then he went out and she closed the door after
him. When he had walked half the length of the corridor he halted
and came near going back to the suite again. Two startling facts had
finally made an impression on his busy mind.
One was the nature of Ruth's wardrobe. Ryder was not much versed in
women's apparel, and all those pretty, dainty, gray and cream colored
dresses could mean but one thing. To his mind, they were bride's
gowns.
He had met his wife first aboard the _Minnequago_ and had known her
just seven days before they were married. He had seen her wear no
dress on shipboard like these she had brought out of her trunks.
Indeed, Miss Mont had been gowned with severity and with no more
style than the average English woman displays.
"Why," muttered Ryder, "she has a complete bridal outfit--or, it
seems so to me. How could she have got those dresses? And she says
she made them herself!"
He turned back, but bethought him of Mrs. Judson. He could have no
private word with Ruth now. So he walked slowly on toward the main
stairway, and his mind reverted to the second puzzling circumstance
he had noted. There were few if any labels on his wife's trunks.
No trunk can cross the ocean without being plastered over with the
various marks and stamps of the European agencies, and of the
steamship companies. It was a small matter, perhaps--this lack of
the usual labels--but it continued to puzzle John Ryder until he had
descended to the office once more and found himself again in the
thick of the circumstances connected with the attempt of the hotel
manager to turn his guests out of house and home.