FRIGHT AND A DISAPPEARANCE
With the almost disappointed thing of might purring tamely along
through the far-spread town, and then on through level ways of beauty,
leading the way to Gotham, Dorothy found that she was still clinging
fast to Jerold's arm, after nearly ten minutes of peace.
Then she waked, as it were, and shyly withdrew her hand.
Garrison had felt himself transported literally, more by the ecstasy of
having her thus put dependence upon him than by any mere flight of the
car. He underwent a sense of loss when the strain subsided, and her
trembling hold relaxed and fell from his arm.
Nevertheless, she clung to the roses. His heart had taken time to beat
a stroke in joy during that moment of stress at the house, when she had
caused a few seconds' added delay to gather up the crushed and faded
flowers.
Since speaking to the driver last Garrison had been content to sit
beside the girl in silence. There was much he must ask, and much she
must tell, but for this little time of calm and delight he could not
break the spell. Once more, however, his abounding confidence in her
goodness, her innocence, and deep-lying beauty of character rose
triumphant over fears. Once more the spell of a mighty love was laid
upon his heart. He did not know and could not know that Dorothy, too,
was Cupid's victim--that she loved him with a strange and joyous
intensity, but he did know that the whole vast world was no price for
this moment of rapture.
She was the first to speak.
"Why did we have to run away? Aren't you supposed to have a perfect
right to--to take me wherever you please--especially from a place like
that, and such outrageous treatment?"
"I am only supposed to have that right," he answered. "As a matter of
fact, I committed a species of violence in Theodore's house, compelling
him to act at the point of the gun. Technically speaking, I had no
right to proceed so far. But, aside from that, when they sprung the
alarm--well, the time had come for action.
"Had the constable dragged me away, as a legal offender--which he would
doubtless have done on the charge of two householding citizens--the
delay would have been most annoying, while a too close investigation of
my status as a husband might have proved even more embarrassing."
A wave of crimson swept across her face.
"Of course." She relapsed into silence for a moment. Then she added:
"What does it all mean, anyway? How dared they carry me off like this?
How did you happen to come? When did you find that I had gone? What
do you think we'd better do?"
"Answer one question at a time," said Garrison, stuffing his
handkerchief into the tube, lest the driver overhear their
conversation. "There is much to be explained between us. In the first
place, tell me, Dorothy, what happened just after I 'phoned you last
evening, and you made an appointment to meet me in the park."
"Why, I hardly know," she said, her face once more a trifle pale. "I
went upstairs to get ready, thinking to slip out unobserved. In the
act of putting on my hat, I was suddenly smothered in the folds of a
strong-smelling towel thrown over my head, and since that time I have
scarcely known anything till this morning, when I waked in the bed at
Theodore's house, fully dressed, and chained as you saw me."
"But--these roses?" he said, lightly placing his hand upon them. "How
did you happen to have them along?"
It was not a question pertinent to the issues in hand, but it meant a
great deal to his heart.
"Why--I--I was wearing them--that's all," she stammered. "No one
stopped to take them off."
He was satisfied. He wished they might once and for all dismiss the
world, with all its vexations, its mysteries, and pains, and ride on
like this, through the June-created loveliness bathed in its
sunlight--comrades and lovers, forever.
The hour, however, was not for dreaming. There were grim facts
affecting them both, and much to be cleared between them. Moreover he
was merely hired to enact a rôle that, if it sometimes called for a
show of tender love, was still but a rôle, after all. He attacked the
business directly.
"We require an understanding on a great many topics," he said to her
slowly. "After I 'phoned you I went to the park, was caught in the
rain, and attacked by two ruffians, who knocked me down, and left me to
what they supposed would be certain destruction."
"Jerold!" she said, and his name thus on her lips, with no one by to
whom she was acting, gave him an exquisite pleasure. There was no
possibility of guilty knowledge on her part. Of this he was thoroughly
convinced. "You? Attacked?"
"Later," he resumed, "when I recovered, I went to the house in
Ninety-third Street, was admitted by the woman in charge, and remained
all night, after taking the liberty of examining all the apartments."
She looked at him in utter amazement.
"Why--but what does it---- You, attacked in the park--these lawless
deeds--you stayed all night---- And you found I had been carried away?"
"No; I merely thought so. The woman knew nothing. But I presently
discovered a number of interesting things. Theodore has installed a
private 'phone in his closet, and by means thereof had overheard our
appointment. Your bureau and dressing-case had both been searched----"
"For the necklaces!" she cried. "You have them safe?"
"I thought it might have been the jewels--or your marriage
certificate," he said, alive to numerous points in the case which, he
felt, were about to develop.
She turned a trifle pale.
"I've sewn the certificate--where I'm sure they'd never find it," she
said. "But the jewels are safe?"
"Quite safe," he said, making a mental note of her insistence on the
topic. "I then discovered the address of the Woodsite house, and you
know the rest."
"It's terrible! The whole thing is terrible!" she said. "I wouldn't
have thought they'd dare to do such things! I don't know what we're
going to do. We're neither of us safe!"
"You must help me all you can," he said, laying his hand for a moment
on her arm. "I've been fighting in the dark. I must find you
apartments where you will not be discovered by the Robinsons, whose
criminal designs on the property inheritance will halt at nothing,
and--you must tell me all you can."
"I will," she said; "only----"
And there she halted, her eyes raised to his in mute appeal, a dumb
fear expressed in their depths.
They had both avoided the topic of the murder, at the news of which she
had fainted. Garrison almost feared it, and Dorothy evidently dreaded
its approach.
More than anything else Garrison felt he must know she was innocent.
That was the one vital thing to him now, whether she could ever return
his love or not. He loved her in every conceivable manner, fondly,
passionately, sacredly, with the tenderest wishes for her comfort and
happiness. He believed in her now as he always had, whensoever they
were together. Nevertheless, he could not abandon all his faculties
and plunge into folly like a blind and confident fool.
"I'd like to ask about the jewels first," he said. "The night I first
came to your home I entered the place next door by accident. A
fancy-dress party was in progress."
"Yes--I knew it. They used to be friends of Theodore's."
"So I guessed," he added dryly. "Theodore was there."
"Theodore--there?" she echoed in surprise he felt to be genuine. "Why,
but--don't you remember you met him with the others in my house, soon
after you came?"
"I do, perfectly. Nevertheless, I saw him in the other house, in mask,
I assure you, dressed to represent _Mephistopheles_. Last night I
found the costume in his closet, and the stairs at the rear were his,
of course, to employ."
"I remember," said Dorothy excitedly, "that he came in a long gray
overcoat, though the evening was distinctly warm."
"Precisely. And all of this would amount to nothing," Garrison
resumed, "only that while I stood in the hall of the house I had
entered, that evening, I saw a young woman, likewise in mask, wearing
your necklaces--your pearls and diamonds."
Dorothy stared at him in utter bewilderment. Her face grew pale. Her
eyes dilated strangely.
"You--you are sure?" she said in a tone barely audible.
"Perfectly," said Garrison.
"And you never mentioned this before?"
"I awaited developments."
"But--what did you think? You might almost have thought that Theodore
had stolen them, and handed them to me," she said. "Especially after
the way I put them in your charge!"
"I told you we have much to clear between us," he said. "Haven't I the
right to know a little----"
"But--how did they come to be there?" she interrupted, abruptly
confronted by a phase of the facts which she had momentarily
overlooked. "How in the world could my jewels have been in that house
and also in my bureau at the very same time?"
"Isn't it possible that Theodore borrowed them, temporarily, and
smuggled them back when he came?"
The startled look was intensified in her eyes as she met his gaze.
"He must have done it in some such way!" she said. "I thought at the
time, when I ran in to get them, they were not exactly as I had left
them, earlier. And I gave them to you for fear he'd steal them!"
This was some light, at least. Garrison needed more.
"Why couldn't you have told me all about them earlier?"
She looked at him beseechingly. Some way, it seemed to them both they
had known each other for a very long time, and much had been swept away
that must have stood as a barrier between mere client and agent.
"I felt I'd rather not," she confessed. "Forgive me, please. They do
not belong to me.
"Not yours?" said Garrison. "What do you mean?"
"I advanced some money on them--to some one very dear," she answered.
"Please don't probe into that, if you can help it."
His jealousy rose again, with his haunting suspicion of a man in the
background with whom he would yet have to deal. He knew that here he
had no rights, but in other directions he had many.
"I shall be obliged to do considerable probing," he said. "The time
has come when we must work much more closely together. A maze of
events has entangled us both, and together we must find our way out."
She lowered her glance. Her lip was trembling. He felt she was
striving to gain a control over her nerves, that were strung to the
highest tension. For fully a minute she was silent. He waited. She
looked up, met his gaze for a second, and once more lowered her eyes.
"You spoke of--of something--yesterday," she faltered. "It gave me a
terrible shock."
She had broached the subject of the murder.
"I was sorry--sorry for the brutal way--the thoughtless way I spoke,"
he said. "I hope to be forgiven."
She made no reply to his hope. Her entire stock of nerve was required
to go on with the business in hand.
"You said my uncle was--murdered," she said, in a tone he strained to
hear. "What makes you think of such a thing?"
"You have not before made the statement that the Hardy in Hickwood was
your uncle," he reminded her.
"You must have guessed it was my uncle," she replied. "You knew it all
the time."
"No, not at first. Not, in fact, till some time after I began my work
on the case. I knew Mr. Hardy had been murdered before I knew anything
else about him."
She was intensely white, but she was resolute.
"Who told you he was murdered?"
"No one. I discovered the evidence myself."
He felt her weaken and grow limp beside him.
"The--the evidence?" she repeated faintly. "What kind--of evidence?"
"Poison."
He was watching her keenly.
She swayed, as if to faint once more, but mastered herself by exerting
the utmost of her will.
"Poison?" she repeated, as before. "But how?"
"In a box of cigars--a birthday present given to your uncle."
It was brutal--cruelly brutal--but he had to test it out without
further delay.
His words acted almost with galvanic effect.
"Cigars! His birthday! My cigars!" she cried. "Jerold, you don't
suspect me?"
The car was starting across the bridge. It suddenly halted in the
traffic. Almost on the instant came a crash and a cry. A dainty
little brougham had been crushed against another motor car in the jam
and impatience on the structure. One of its wheels had lost half its
spokes, that went like a parcel of toothpicks.
Garrison leaped out at once, and Dorothy followed in alarm. In the
tide of vehicles, blocked by the trifling accident, a hundred persons
craned their heads to see what the damage had been.
A small knot of persons quickly gathered about the damaged carriage.
Garrison hastened forward, intent upon offering his services, should
help in the case be required. He discovered, in the briefest time,
that no great damage had been done, and that no one had been injured.
Eager to be hastening onward, he turned back to his car. Almost
immediately he saw that the chauffeur's seat was empty. Dorothy had
apparently stepped once more inside, to be screened from public view.
Hastily scanning the crowd about the place, Garrison failed to find his
driver. He searched about impatiently, but in vain. He presently
became aware of the fact that his man had, for some reason, fled and
left his car.
Considerably annoyed, and aware that he should have to drive the
machine himself, he returned once more to the open door of the auto,
intent upon informing Dorothy of their loss.
He gazed inside the car in utter bewilderment.
Dorothy also was gone.