Produced by Al Haines
A HUSBAND BY PROXY
By
JACK STEELE
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1909, by
Desmond FitzGerald, Inc.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE PROPOSITION
II. A SECOND EMPLOYMENT
III. TWO ENCOUNTERS
IV. UNSPOKEN ANTAGONISM
V. THE "SHADOW"
VI. THE CORONER
VII. A STARTLING DISCOVERY
VIII. WHERE CLEWS MAY POINT
IX. A SUMMONS
X. A COMPLICATION
XI. THE SHOCK OF TRUTH
XII. A DISTURBING LOSS
XIII. A TRYST IN THE PARK
XIV. A PACKAGE OF DEATH
XV. SIGNIFICANT DISCOVERIES
XVI. IN QUEST OF DOROTHY
XVII. A RESCUE BY FORCE
XVIII. THE RACE
XIX. FRIGHT AND A DISAPPEARANCE
XX. NEW HAPPENINGS
XXI. REVELATIONS
XXII. A MAN IN THE CASE
XXIII. THE ENEMY'S TRACKS
XXIV. A NEW ALARM
XXV. A DEARTH OF CLEWS
XXVI. STARTLING DISCLOSURES
XXVII. LIKE A BOLT FROM THE BLUE
XXVIII. A HELPLESS SITUATION
XXIX. NIGHT-WALKERS
XXX. OVERTURES FROM THE ENEMY
XXXI. THE FRET OF WAITING
XXXII. A TRAGIC CULMINATION
XXXIII. FOSTER DURGIN
XXXIV. THE RICHES OF THE WORLD
XXXV. JOHN HARDY'S WILL
XXXVI. GARRISON'S VALUED FRIEND
XXXVII. A HONEYMOON
A Husband by Proxy
CHAPTER I
THE PROPOSITION
With the hum of New York above, below, and all about him, stirring his
pulses and prodding his mental activities, Jerold Garrison, expert
criminologist, stood at the window of his recently opened office,
looking out upon the roofs and streets of the city with a new sense of
pride and power in his being.
New York at last!
He was here--unknown and alone, it was true--but charged with an energy
that he promised Manhattan should feel.
He was almost penniless, with his office rent, his licenses, and other
expenses paid, but he shook his fist at the city, in sheer good nature
and confidence in his strength, despite the fact he had waited a week
for expected employment, and nothing at present loomed upon the horizon.
His past, in a small Ohio town, was behind him. He blotted it out
without regret--or so at least he said to himself--even as to all the
gilded hopes which had once seemed his all upon earth. If his heart
was not whole, no New York eye should see its wounds--and the healing
process had begun.
He was part of the vast machine about him, the mighty brain, as it
were, of the great American nation.
He paced the length of his room, and glanced at the door. The
half-painted sign on the frosted glass was legible, reversed, as the
artist had left it:
JEROLD --------
CRIMINOLOGIST.
He had halted the painter himself on the name, as the lettering
appeared too fanciful--not sufficiently plain or bold.
While he stood there a shadow fell upon the glass. Someone was
standing outside, in the hall. As if undecided, the owner of the
shadow oscillated for a moment--and disappeared. Garrison, tempted to
open the door and gratify a natural curiosity, remained beside his
desk. Mechanically his hand, which lay upon a book entitled "A
Treatise on Poisons," closed the volume.
He was still watching the door. The shadow returned, the knob was
revolved, and there, in the oaken frame, stood a tall young woman of
extraordinary beauty, richly though quietly dressed, and swiftly
changing color with excitement.
Pale in one second, crimson in the next, and evidently concentrating
all her power on an effort to be calm, she presented a strangely
appealing and enchanting figure to the man across the room. Bravery
was blazing in her glorious brown eyes, and firmness came upon her
manner as she stepped inside, closed the door, and silently confronted
the detective.
The man she was studying was a fine-looking, clean-cut fellow,
gray-eyed, smooth-shaven, with thick brown hair, and with a
gentleman-athlete air that made him distinctly attractive. The
fearless, honest gaze of his eyes completed a personal charm that was
undeniable in his entity.
It seemed rather long that the two thus stood there, face to face.
Garrison candidly admiring in his gaze, his visitor studious and
slightly uncertain.
She was the first to speak.
"Are you Mr. Jerold?"
"Jerold Garrison," the detective answered. "My sign is unfinished.
May I offer you a chair?"
His caller sat down beside the desk. She continued to study his face
frankly, with a half-shy, half-defiant scrutiny, as if she banished a
natural diffidence under pressure of necessity.
She spoke again, abruptly.
"I wish to procure peculiar services. Are you a very well-known
detective?"
"I have never called myself a detective," said Garrison. "I'm trying
to occupy a higher sphere of usefulness. I left college a year ago,
and last week opened my office here and became a New Yorker."
He might, in all modesty, have exhibited a scrap-book filled with
accounts of his achievements, with countless references to his work as
a "scientific criminologist" of rare mental attainments. Of his
attainments as a gentleman there was no need of reference. They
proclaimed themselves in his bearing.
His visitor laid a glove and a scrap of paper on the desk.
"It isn't so much detective services I require," she said; "but of
course you are widely acquainted in New York--I mean with young men
particularly?"
"No," he replied, "I know almost none. But I know the city fairly
well, if that will answer your purpose."
"I thought, of course--I hoped you might know some honorable---- You
see, I have come on rather extraordinary business," she said, faltering
a little helplessly. "Let me ask you first--is the confidence of a
possible client quite sacred with a man in this profession?"
"Absolutely sacred!" he assured her. "Whether you engage my services
or not, your utterances here will be treated as confidential and as
inviolate as if spoken to a lawyer, a doctor, or a clergyman."
"Thank you," she murmured. "I have been hunting around----"
She left the sentence incomplete.
"And you found my name quite by accident," he supplied, indicating the
scrap of paper. "I cannot help observing that you have been to other
offices first. You have tramped all the way down Broadway from
Forty-second Street, for the red ink that someone spilled at the
Forty-first Street crossing is still on your shoe, together with just a
film of dust."
She withdrew her shoe beneath the edge of her skirt, although he had
never apparently glanced in that direction.
"Yes," she admitted, "I have been to others--and they wouldn't do. I
came in here because of the name--Jerold. I am sorry you are not
better acquainted--for my business is important."
"Perhaps if I knew the nature of your needs I might be able to advise
you," said Garrison. "I hope to be more widely acquainted soon."
She cast him one look, full of things inscrutable, and lowered her
lashes in silence. She was evidently striving to overcome some
indecision.
Garrison looked at her steadily. He thought he had never in his life
beheld a woman so beautiful. Some wild, unruly hope that she might
become his client, perhaps even a friend, was flaring in his mind.
The color came and went in her cheeks, adding fresh loveliness at every
change. She glanced at her list of names, from which a number had been
scratched.
"Well," she said presently, "I think perhaps you might still be able to
attend to my requirements."
He waited to hear her continue, but she needed encouragement.
"I shall be glad to try," he assured her.
She was silent again--and blushing. She looked up somewhat defiantly.
"I wish you to procure me a husband."
Garrison stared. He was certain he had heard incorrectly.
"I do not mean an actual husband," she explained. "I simply mean some
honorable young man who will assume the rôle for a time, as a business
proposition, for a fee to be paid as I would pay for anything else.
"I would require that he understand the affair to be strictly
commercial, and that when I wish the arrangement to terminate he will
disappear from the scene and from my acquaintance at once and
absolutely.
"All I ask of you is to supply me such a person. I will pay you
whatever fee you may demand--in reason."
Garrison looked at her as fixedly as she was looking at him.
Her recital of her needs had brought to the surface a phase of
desperation in her bearing that wrought upon him potently, he knew not
why.
"I think I understand your requirements, as far as one can in the
circumstances," he answered. "I hardly believe I have the ability to
engage such a person as you need for such a mission. I informed you at
the start that my acquaintance with New York men is exceedingly narrow.
I cannot think of anyone I could honestly recommend."
"But don't you know any honorable young gentleman--like some college
man, perhaps--here in New York, looking for employment; someone who
might be glad to earn, say, five hundred dollars?" she insisted.
"Surely if you only know a few, there must be one among them."
Garrison sat back in his chair and took hold of his smooth-shaved lip
with his thumb and finger. He reviewed his few New York experiences
rapidly.
"No," he repeated. "I know of no such man. I am sorry."
His visitor looked at him with a new, flashing light in her eyes.
"Not one?" she said, significantly. "Not one young _college_ man?"
He was unsuspicious of her meaning.
"Not one."
For a moment she fingered her glove where it lay upon the desk. Then a
look of more pronounced determination and courage came upon her face as
she raised her eyes once more to Garrison's.
She said:
"Are you married?"
A flush came at once upon Garrison's face--and memories and heartaches
possessed him for a poignant moment. He mastered himself almost
instantly.
"No," he said with some emotion, "I am not."
"Then," she said, "couldn't you undertake the task yourself?"
Garrison leaned forward on the table. Lightning from an azure sky
could have been no more astonishing or unexpected.
"Do you mean--will I play this rôle--as your husband?" he said slowly.
"Is that what you are asking?"
"Yes," she answered unflinchingly. "Why not? You need the money; I
need the services. You understand exactly what it is I require. It is
business, and you are a business man."
"But I have no wish to be a married man, or even to masquerade as one,"
he told her bluntly.
"You have quite as much wish to be one as I have to be a married
woman," she answered. "We would understand each other thoroughly from
the start. As to masquerading, if you have no acquaintances, then who
would be the wiser?"
He acknowledged the logic of her argument; nevertheless, the thing
seemed utterly preposterous. He rose and walked the length of his
office, and stood looking out of the window. Then he returned and
resumed his seat. He was strangely moved by her beauty and some
unexplained helplessness of her plight, vouchsafed to his senses, yet
he recognized a certain need for caution.
"What should I be expected to do?" he inquired.
His visitor, in the mental agitation which had preceded this interview,
had taken little if any time to think of the details likely to attend
an alliance such as she had just proposed. She could only think in
generalities.
"Why--there will be very little for you to do, except to permit
yourself to be considered my lawful husband, temporarily," she replied
after a moment of hesitation, with a hot flush mounting to her cheek.
"And to whom would I play?" he queried. "Should I be obliged, in this
capacity, to meet your relatives and friends?"
"Certainly--a few," said his visitor. "But I have almost no relatives
in the world. I have no father, mother, brothers, or sisters. There
will be, at most, a few distant relatives and possibly my lawyer."
Garrison made no response. He was trying to think what such a game
would mean--and what it might involve.
His visitor presently added:
"Do you consent--for five hundred dollars?"
"I don't know," answered the man. Again he paced the room. When he
halted before his client he looked at her sternly.
"You haven't told me your name," he said.
She gave him her card, on which appeared nothing more than just merely
the name "Mrs. Jerold Fairfax," with an address in an uptown West Side
street.
Garrison glanced at it briefly.
"This is something you have provided purposely to fit your
requirements," he said. "Am I not supposed to know you by any other
name?"
"If you accept the--the employment," she answered, once more blushing
crimson, "you may be obliged at times to call me Dorothy. My maiden
name was Dorothy Booth."
Garrison merely said: "Oh!"
They were silent for a moment. The man was pondering the
possibilities. His visitor was evidently anxious.
"I suppose I can find someone else if you refuse the employment," she
said. "But you will understand that my search is one of great
difficulty. The person I employ must be loyal, a gentleman,
courageous, resourceful, and very little known. You can see yourself
that you are particularly adapted for the work."
"Thank you," said Garrison, who was aware that no particular flattery
was intended. He added: "I hardly suppose it could do me any harm."
Mrs. Fairfax accepted this ungallant observation calmly. She
recognized the fact that his side of the question had its aspects.
She waited for Garrison to speak again.
A knock at the door startled them both. A postman entered, dropped two
letters on the desk, and departed down the hall.
Garrison took up the letters. One was a circular of his own, addressed
to a lawyer over a month before, and now returned undelivered and
marked "Not found," though three or four different addresses had been
supplied in its peregrinations.
The second letter was addressed to himself in typewritten form. He was
too engrossed to tear it open, and laid them both upon the table.
"If I took this up," he presently resumed, "I should be obliged to know
something more about it. For instance, when were we supposed to have
been married?"
"On the 10th of last month," she answered promptly.
"Oh!" said he. "And, in case of necessity, how should we prove it?"
"By my wedding certificate," she told him calmly.
His astonishment increased.
"Then you were actually married, over a month ago?"
"I have the certificate. Isn't that sufficient?" she replied evasively.
"Well--I suppose it is--for this sort of an arrangement," he agreed.
"Of course some man's name must appear in the document. I should be
obliged, I presume, to adopt his name as part of the arrangement?"
"Certainly," she said. "I told you I came into your office because
your name is Jerold."
"Exactly," he mused. "The name I'd assume is Jerold Fairfax?"
She nodded, watching him keenly.
"It's a good enough name," said Garrison.
He paced up and down the floor in silence a number of times. Mrs.
Fairfax watched him in apparent calm.
"This is a great temptation," he admitted. "I should like to earn the
fee you have mentioned, Miss Booth--Mrs. Fairfax, but----"
He halted.
"Well?"
"I don't exactly like the look of it, to be frank," he confessed. "I
don't know you, and you don't know me. I am not informed whether you
are really married or not. If you are, and the man---- You have no
desire to enlighten me on these matters. Can you tell me why you wish
to pretend that I am your husband?"
"I do not wish to discuss that aspect of the arrangement at present,"
she said. "It is purely a business proposition that should last no
more than a month or two at most, and then terminate forever. I would
prefer to have you remain out of town as much as possible."
"A great many haphazard deductions present themselves to my mind," he
said, "but all are doubtless inaccurate. I have no morbid curiosity
concerning your affairs, but this thing would involve me almost as much
as yourself, by its very nature."
His brows were knitted in indecision.
There was silence again between them. His visitor presently said:
"If I could offer you more than the five hundred dollars, I would
gladly do so."
"Oh, the fee is large enough, for up to date I have had no employment
or even a prospect of work," said Garrison. "I hope you will not be
offended when I say that I have recently become a cautious man."
"I know how strange it appears for me to come here with this
extraordinary request," agreed Mrs. Fairfax. "I hardly know how I have
done so. But there was no one to help me. I hope you will not
consider the matter for another moment if you feel that either of us
cannot trust the other. In a way, I am placing my honor in your
keeping far more than you are placing yourself in charge of mine."
Garrison looked at her steadily, and something akin to
sympathy--something that burned like wine of romance in his blood--with
zest of adventure and a surge of generosity toward this unknown
girl--tingled in all his being. Something in her helplessness appealed
to his innate chivalry.
Calmly, however, he took a new estimate of her character,
notwithstanding the fact that his first, most reliable impression had
been entirely in her favor.
"Well," he said, after a moment, "it's a blind game for me, but I think
I'll accept your offer. When do you wish me to begin my services?"
"I should like to notify my lawyer as soon as possible," answered Mrs.
Fairfax, frankly relieved by his decision. "He may regard the fact
that he was not sooner notified as a little peculiar."
"Practically you wish me to assume my rôle at once," commented
Garrison. "What is your lawyer's name?"
"Mr. Stephen Trowbridge."
Garrison took up that much-addressed letter, returned by the post, and
passed it across the table. The one fairly legible line on its surface
read:
STEPHEN TROWBRIDGE, ESQ.
"I think that must be the same individual," he said. "I sent out
announcements of my business and presence here to nearly every lawyer
in the State. This envelope has been readdressed, as you observe, but
it has never reached its destination. Is that your man?"
Mrs. Fairfax examined the missive.
"Yes," she said, "I think so. Do you wish his present address?"
"If you please," answered Garrison. "I shall take the liberty of
steaming this open and removing its contents, after which I will place
an antedated letter or notification of the--our marriage--written by
yourself--in the envelope, redirect it, and send it along. It will
finally land in the hands of your lawyer with its tardiness very
naturally explained."
"You mean the notification will appear as if misdirected originally,"
said Dorothy. "An excellent idea."
"Perhaps you will compose the note at once," said Garrison, pushing
paper, pen, and ink across the desk. "You may leave the rest, with the
address, to me."
His visitor hesitated for a moment, as if her decision wavered in this
vital moment of plunging into unknown fates, but she took up the pen
and wrote the note and address with commendable brevity.
Garrison was walking up and down the office.
"The next step----" he started to say, but his visitor interrupted.
"Isn't this the only step necessary to take until something arises
making others expedient?"
"There is one slight thing remaining," he answered, taking up her card.
"You are in a private residence?"
"Yes. The caretaker, a woman, is always there."
"Have you acquainted her with the fact of your marriage?"
"Certainly. She is an English servant. She asks no questions. But I
told her my husband is away from town and will be absent almost
constantly for the next two or three months."
Garrison slightly elevated his brows, in acknowledgment of the
thoroughness of her arrangements.
"I have never attempted much acting--a little at private theatricals,"
he told her; "but of course we shall both be obliged to play this
little domestic comedy with some degree of art."
She seemed prepared for that also, despite the sudden crimson of her
cheeks.
"Certainly."
"One more detail," he added. "You have probably found it necessary to
withhold certain facts from my knowledge. I trust I shall not be led
into awkward blunders. I shall do my best, and for the rest--I beg of
you to conduct the affair according to your own requirements and
judgment."
The slightly veiled smile in his eyes did not escape her observation.
Nevertheless, she accepted his proposal quite as a matter of course.
"Thank you. I am glad you relieved me of the necessity of making some
such suggestion. I think that is all--for the present." She stood up,
and, fingering her glove, glanced down at the table for a moment. "May
I pay, say, two hundred dollars now, as a retainer?"
"I shall be gratified if you will," he answered.
In silence she counted out the money, which she took from a purse in a
bag. The bills lay there in a heap.
"When you wish any more, will you please let me know?" she said. "And
when I require your services I will wire. Perhaps I'd better take both
this office and your house address."
He wrote them both on a card and placed it in her hand.
"Thank you," she murmured. She closed her purse, hesitated a moment,
then raised her eyes to his. Quite coldly she added: "Good-afternoon."
"Good-day," answered Garrison.
He opened the door, bowed to her slightly as she passed--then faced
about and stared at the money that lay upon his desk.