The Lie
Even Robert Vining halted his death march. A man of but one idea in the
world just a second ago, he jerked about suddenly and cried:
"_Dick?_"
Dalton a strong man half-benumbed by mental agony, turned slowly upon
him.
"Are you--here, too, Robert?" he muttered. "Yes, Dicky!"
And slowly he turned back to Anthony and, slowly also, he drew forth the
automatic in all its steely-blue nastiness.
"Well, Fry?"
Anthony Fry merely shook his head. The mood that was come upon him now
passed any explanation; he was neither frightened nor excited. He heard
the latest absurd accusation without even forming an opinion on it.
Either he had passed the point where one may feel the sensation of
astonishment or infinite desperation had blessed him with a calm past
any understanding. He did not know which and he did not care; it was
enough that he could look straight at Dalton and not even change color!
"I have no idea what you're talking about, Dalton," he said quietly.
Beatrice leaped into action.
"Dalton!" she cried. "Mary Dalton's father?"
"What?" Dalton, momentarily sidetracked, whirled upon her. "You've heard
something from Mary, madam? You know----"
"I know all about Mary!" said Beatrice Boller.
"Madam!" Anthony broke in. "I forbid you to say one word of your
ridiculous and unjustified----"
Beatrice simply ignored his presence and favored Theodore Dalton with
her unspeakable smile.
"Mary Dalton passed the night in this apartment," she said quickly.
"Mary----" Dalton cried, just as Robert hurried to his side and clutched
his arm.
"They say she was here!" he panted. "The woman says so, and Mary's
hat--see! She's holding it even now! And Mary's bag is in a room there,
and her comb and brush and two of her handkerchiefs and----"
"But it wasn't a woman, whatever she's left!" Hobart Hitchin
contributed. "It was a boy, about twenty or twenty-two--a boy Fry
introduced to me as David Prentiss, and who was Dalton's son. Look! We
have his trousers, and Dalton has identified them as his son's!"
Dalton's attention was still upon Beatrice.
"You say that--that my daughter----"
"I say that she was here and that she left suddenly when I came, so
suddenly that she hadn't even time to take her hat!" said Boller's
charming wife. "Where she is now I don't know; not in this apartment
because I've searched it; probably somewhere else in the house, because
she would be unlikely to leave without a hat. But she was here, and if
you doubt it, _ask those men_!"
Slowly, Dalton turned back to Anthony Fry. One glance he sent down at
the automatic and his finger settled over the trigger.
And still the calm held Anthony.
It was one of the most curious things he had ever experienced, that
calm, and more curious than the calm itself was the astounding capacity
for thought that had come to his tired brain. Except for this last
inexplicable accusation, which he discarded, he was thinking lucidly,
and swiftly and, by the way, along a single line. Mary was all that
mattered just now.
And to some extent, if Fate remained kind, he saw his way to saving
Mary, should the girl have sense enough to remain quiet in his room. He
smiled, did Anthony, and looked so confidently, so directly at Dalton
that the latter scowled in bewilderment.
"I know nothing whatever about your son, Dalton," said he. "I did not
even know that you had a son. Are you sure he is not at home?"
"He has not been at home for weeks," Hitchin put in. "That's what
puzzles us; how did you get him to the city?"
"From what point?"
"Hillcombe, in the Adirondacks," Dalton said. "He----"
"Is it possible to get Hillcombe on the long distance?"
The unfathomable self-possession made its own impression on Dalton.
"Very likely," he muttered.
"Then if you will give my man the number or the name of the hotel, or
whatever it may be, he will put in the call," said Anthony Fry. "Let us
hope that you'll be able to talk to your son shortly. If he doesn't
answer, wire him," Anthony pursued, impatiently. "That is the very best
I can suggest."
Theodore Dalton's hand passed through his hair, pausing to clutch it for
a moment; Wilkins, waiting attentively, met his eye and Dalton, having
cleared his dry throat, mumbled the name of a camp and turned back to
Anthony.
That remarkable figure was quite erect and merely waiting for a chance
to speak again. So far as the general theme was concerned, his mind was
fairly well settled; it meant certain ruin for him, if Dalton was kind
enough to believe; it was likely enough to mean even criminal
prosecution, but it bade fair to save Mary. Anthony even smiled
composedly as he tacked on new details; thus does suffering refine us!
Apparently, several of them were about to speak at once. Anthony held up
his lean, commanding hand for silence.
"One moment, please!" said the amazing Anthony. "There is no cause for
any further excitement, any further speculation. The thing has gone too
far now; it has passed beyond me and--I have failed."
"What?" Robert rasped.
Anthony drew a deep breath.
"Will you all be seated?" he asked. "I--I wish to confess the truth!"
"You mean that you----" Dalton exploded.
"I mean that nobody has been injured, to the best of my knowledge, and
that your daughter Mary is perfectly safe," Anthony smiled sadly. "Put
the gun away, Dalton, and hear me through at least. Later on, if you
feel inclined to use it, I don't know that I shall object greatly. I
quite understand what is likely to happen to me when you have heard what
I have to tell and--in spite of that the whole affair seems to have
tangled itself so terribly that there is nothing to do but tell it!"
He himself was sitting behind the table now, and he certainly claimed
their attention. Dalton perched on the edge of a chair; Robert took one
of its arms. Beatrice seemed at first unwilling to leave the center of
the stage, but presently she, too, was seated--and Johnson Boller
shuffled to a chair and went into it quite limply, gazing at Anthony and
breathing hard.
Unless Anthony was lying, he meant to tell the truth; and while some of
those present might believe the truth, Beatrice Boller was not among the
number.
"I don't know, Dalton," Anthony began evenly, "that I have anything to
say in extenuation of what I have done. Evidently I lost my head, even
to the point of downright insanity; some of us do that occasionally, you
know. Brooding over the business was responsible, I suppose. Your
Celestial Oil has been cutting pretty heavily into Imperial Liniment
this last year."
"Humph!" said Dalton.
"Cutting in so heavily that whatever efforts I have been able to put
forth have been of no avail whatever," Anthony pursued. "Last week--all
day last Saturday, in fact--I went over the year's business and it
fairly maddened me to see the falling off. I spent Sunday thinking and I
am frank to say, Dalton, that by Sunday night I was all but ready to
murder you. Toward midnight I conceived what seemed to be a means of
forcing you into some sort of mutual contract, by which each of us could
do business with the assurance that the other wasn't coming over to take
away what didn't belong to him."
"_You_ get away with a thing like that?" Dalton demanded.
"It was a wild notion," Anthony sighed. "I knew that talking was
useless, I knew that fighting you openly was equally useless, because
once I became too conspicuous I knew that you'd sail in and wreck me. At
the same time something had to be done and that in mighty short order,
or Fry's Imperial was likely to die a natural death. Therefore, Dalton,
I perfected the scheme of kidnaping your daughter and holding her until
you'd come to terms."
"Great----"
"Rest easy!" Mr. Fry smiled. "Part of it succeeded, but she hasn't been
injured and I ask you to believe, at least, that I never had any idea of
injuring her. What I did mean to do was to threaten you, through a third
person I met most unfortunately and who is, not to put too fine a point
upon it, one of the slimiest crooked lawyers in the world--what I meant
to do was to make you understand that, unless you came to terms, the
girl would be killed!
"If the details interest you I'll confess that I had a note sent to the
girl last evening, by a messenger who succeeded in telephoning her and
having her meet him just outside your home. The note informed Miss
Dalton that Vining here--oh, sit still, Vining, you may settle with me
when I've finished--that Vining here was engaged, if not actually
married, to another girl. It was a very convincing note indeed, and the
messenger was instructed to tell Miss Dalton, should the note make its
impression, that he would take her to a place where she would be able to
observe with her own eyes the faithlessness of one she was on the point
of trusting with her whole life!"
"Well, by the holy----" Robert began.
"Every little twist and turn of this story I had perfected beforehand; I
could not see the possibility of a slip and there was no slip. It was
made plain to Miss Dalton that, if she wished to see Robert under the
unpleasant conditions, she would have to attire herself as a man, for
she was likely to spend some time at least in the back room of a saloon.
My messenger even took her a wig I had provided for the purpose, and she
was informed that, if she wished to take along her own proper clothing,
it would be quite possible to return in that."
Utter admiration possessed Johnson Boller; yet Beatrice, as he knew, was
watching him narrowly.
"You--you contemptible scoundrel!" Johnson Boller said pleasantly.
Him, too, Anthony ignored.
"She took the bait, Dalton, just as I had planned. The man brought her
to me at a point--er--outside this hotel, and she was dressed in her
brother's clothing, as it appears now. It was agreed between us that she
should take the name of David Prentiss for the evening, and under that
name she was introduced to Hitchin here. After that she was brought to
this apartment."
Anthony paused and sighed heavily and impressively, an erring man borne
down by his guilt.
"Miss Dalton, even as a boy, did not look very much like a boy," he
pursued. "It seemed better to me that she change to her own clothes, and
I requested her to do so, on some pretext which, I am frank to say,
slips my mind at the moment. She came into this room afterward and, as I
had planned, a little luncheon was waiting for us. She drank a cup of
coffee and--it had been drugged."
"Where was Johnson Boller all this time?" Beatrice asked.
Although Johnson Boller held his breath, Anthony Fry batted never an
eyelash. Dignified, austere exponent of the rock-ribbed truth that he
had once been, all his sails were set now and the rudder lashed in place
for the sinful course. It would have been a downright effort just then
for Anthony to have told the truth about anything whatever.
"Johnson never came until an hour after it was over," he said. "He went
to a prize fight, Mrs. Boller, and after that met some out-of-town
people in the woolen trade and worked until nearly two this morning
winding up a contract."
"D'ye see?" said Johnson Boller, when his breath came back. "D'ye see?
You had me down for everything that was worst in the world, kid, and now
you hear the truth."
All unaware was Anthony Fry of the sharp start of Hobart Hitchin. All
unaware was he that the crime-student, rousing from his partially scared
state, had smiled suddenly. All unaware, in fact, was Anthony, of the
terrible slip he had just made.
"That is almost all of the story," he said, with a miserable little
smile at Dalton. "The young lady was taken, in an automobile,
half-stupefied, to--a certain town in New Jersey, Dalton. She is
unharmed and has been unharmed; that at least I am able to guarantee
you."
"And she's there now?" Dalton cried.
"She is there now and----"
"What town?"
"That I will not tell you, because it will involve several poor devils
I've hired in connection with this mad affair," said Anthony. "But if
you will permit me, I will go for the young lady myself--stipulating
only that I shall not be followed--and I will return her to your house
before three o'clock this afternoon. After that, Dalton," said Anthony,
drawing himself up, "I'm willing to take my medicine. I know that it's
coming and I'm willing----"
"You'll get it, never fear," snarled Mary's father. "But about Mary!
Tell me the name of this town or----"
"I shall tell you nothing whatever!" Anthony said firmly. "I shall tell
you only that, under the conditions I have named, I will very gladly go
to Jersey and get her."
"You're sure she's there now?" Robert said hoarsely.
"I am absolutely sure," said Anthony, "that she is now in New Jersey
under guard."
And now, with Dalton's murderous impulses stilled at least, with many
things fairly well explained and new minutiæ coming into his head every
second should this, that or the other question be asked, just as Anthony
leaned back, two new quantities must needs enter. The first was Hobart
Hitchin. The second was a strong breeze, which always came through the
living-room when Wilkins left open the door and the window of his
pantry.
"Fry," said the crime-student, and if a snake owned a voice it would be
as slithery and oily as the voice of Hobart Hitchin just then, "Fry, you
say that Boller came in several hours after you came in last night?
Didn't I see you both downstairs?"
"Eh?" Anthony said.
"And Fry," the reptilian voice added, "you haven't told us what was in
the trunk you sent to Dalton's house, you know."
Anthony straightened up again. Two seconds were passed, and still he had
not the answer; three, and he was still silent; four, and he had not yet
spoken. And the playful breeze saved him all the trouble of speaking.
The latch of Anthony's bedroom door was not caught, and the breeze,
striking it squarely, sent it open suddenly and cleanly as if jerked
back by a wire!
And leaning forward in her chair, even now listening intently, Mary
Dalton was revealed!
Anthony Fry did not move; this was because he could not. But with a
single motion Theodore Dalton and Robert Vining, Johnson Boller and
Johnson Boller's wife, were on their feet and staring at her. With a
single plunge, Dalton and Vining went forward, and the former winning,
he snatched Mary to him and wrapped the great arms around her, mouthing
and mumbling and shouting all at once!
Still Anthony did not move. He had not moved when, through the swirl
that was before his eyes, Mary and her father came into the room. The
girl had disengaged herself and she was rather pale--ah, and she was
speaking to her father.
"Dad," she said very quietly, "have I ever told you a lie?"
"You'd be no daughter of mine if you had," Dalton said simply.
"Then what happened is just this: I wanted to go to that fight last
night and Bob wouldn't take me. He was so awfully uppish about it that I
decided to go myself; I like a good fight, you know. I didn't dare go as
a girl, so I put on Dicky's fishing suit--the old one--and sneaked out
the back door, after you thought I was in bed. Then I got a messenger
boy and managed to find a ticket for the fight. And I went," said Mary,
"and I happened to sit next to Mr. Fry."
"You went alone to a prize fight?" her father gasped.
"It was horribly tame," said Mary, "but some men started a fight behind
us, because Mr. Fry spoke to me, I think, and that wasn't tame at all.
For a minute it scared my wits out, because I thought we were all going
to be arrested. So when Mr. Fry and Mr. Boller decided to escape in a
taxicab, I was mighty glad to go with them. After that Mr. Fry--turned
queer," Mary dimpled. "He thought I was a boy and he wanted to offer me
the opportunity of a lifetime.
"I don't know just what it meant, but I was curious enough to come up
here and listen; and when I didn't appreciate what he was offering, Mr.
Fry got mad. He told me he'd keep me here until I did, so I--I just went
to bed and counted on getting out overnight, somehow. I tried it and I
missed fire, and this morning he discovered that I was a girl. That's
the whole story; we've all been trying to get me out of here ever
since--and I'm still here!"
"But the trunk----" Hobart Hitchin put in doggedly.
"I was in the trunk," said Mary. "We thought I could get to Felice's
room that way, but Felice was gone, so Wilkins brought me back." She
looked at her father steadily and almost confidently. "That weird tale
about having me drugged was just to save me, dad, and maybe if the door
hadn't blown open I'd have been home about three and swearing to it.
That's all. Mr. Fry--Mr. Boller, too--have been too nice for words,"
concluded Mary, stretching a point. "There isn't a thing to blame them
for--and I never could have believed that Mr. Fry was capable of a
lovely lie like that."
Since seven that morning, at which time Mary's absence had been
discovered, Theodore Dalton had been breathing in terrible, spasmodic
gasps. Now, as he faced Anthony, he breathed deeply--breathed deeply
again--and turned Anthony's tottering world quite upside down by
suddenly thrusting out his hand.
"Well, by gad, Fry!" he bellowed. "I knew you were crazy, but I never
suspected you were man enough for that! I'd swallowed that tale almost
whole and I'd made up my mind to wipe you and your bottled mess off the
map together."
"I know," said Anthony.
"But if there's one thing that hits me right where I live," vociferated
Dalton, "it's a man who will chuck his own every earthly interest aside
to save a woman's name and--put it there, Fry! You're a man!"
A little uncertainly, because he was dazed and dizzy, Anthony grasped
the hairy hand. It was not so, because it was impossible, but--he and
Dalton were friends!
Beatrice was within a yard of her husband.
"Then there was--was nothing----" she faltered.
"There was nothing to get excited about--no," Johnson Boller said
stiffly. "Not at any time."
"Pudgy!" Beatrice said chokily, because her volatile nature was whizzing
breathlessly down from the exalted murder-state to the depths of
contrition.
"Well? What?" Johnson Boller said coldly.
"Pudgy-wudgy, can you ever forgive me?" Beatrice cried, burying her head
on his shoulder.
"I don't know," Johnson Boller said frigidly, and did not even put an
arm around her. "I don't know, Beatrice. You have wounded me more deeply
this day than I have ever been wounded in all my life before. I shall
try in time to forgive you, but--I do not know."
* * * * *
They were all gone now, all but Anthony and his old friend, Johnson
Boller.
It was in fact nearly noon, for with the tension removed Mary had gone
into the details of last night; and after a little even Robert Vining
had laughed. He at least knew Anthony Fry and he believed Johnson Boller
to be one of the most harmless fat men in existence, so that when he had
heard it all even Robert fell to chuckling.
And now they were gone with Mary, leaving behind a conviction in
Anthony's bosom that Mary was really a very charming young girl; leaving
an impression, too, that, could twenty years have been swept from his
forty-five, he might even have undertaken to win her away from Robert!
This last impression was transitory in the extreme, however; it endured
for perhaps forty-five seconds.
Hobart Hitchin was gone; he had vanished somewhere about the middle of
the session, leaving Richard's trousers, and for a long time nobody even
noticed that he was among the missing. To the best of Johnson Boller's
memory, he left just after Richard answered the long distance call and
assured his father that all was well.
Beatrice was gone, too. She had left all wreathed in smiles, since the
idiot that was her husband could not maintain his chilliness for more
than five minutes. In a dusky corner, Johnson and his cyclonic lady had
kissed eighteen times, lingeringly, and then she had left him to pack up
and follow, while she went personally to the five-thousand-dollar
apartment to prepare the things he most liked for luncheon.
And now Johnson Boller had packed the grip, while Anthony lounged, tired
out, weak in knees and hands, trembling every now and then and gazing
into the blue cigar smoke above him.
"The next time I come to stay with you I'm going to bring a chaperon,"
Boller mused.
"Do."
"You came pretty near wrecking my home that time, Anthony."
"Pah!" snarled Anthony.
Johnson Boller pursued the strain no further. Instead, with a shrug of
the shoulders, he picked up a book from the top of the case and turned
its pages idly. After which he smiled suddenly and said, with the utmost
alertness.
"You have a lot of poetry, haven't you?"
"I'm fond of it," said Anthony, absently.
"Here's a pretty little thing," Johnson Boller pursued in his very
gentlest voice. "This is awful pretty. Listen:
"Master of human destinies am I;
Fame, love and fortune on----"
Here he ceased abruptly. He shrieked gleefully, did Johnson Boller, and
ducked almost down to the floor.
This was as well, because Anthony's little blue vase, for which he had
paid sixty dollars in Canton, had splintered on the wall, just where
Johnson Boller's head had been!
THE END.