THE DREAM FACE
That evening of her dismissal from Brown's, and her meeting with Rex
Carshaw, Winifred opened the door of the dun house in One Hundred and
Twelfth Street the most downhearted girl in New York. Suddenly, mystery
had gathered round her. Something threatened, she knew not what. When
the door slammed behind her her heart sank--she was alone not only in
the house, but in the world. This thought possessed her utterly when the
excitement caused by Carshaw and Fowle, and their speedy arrest, had
passed.
That her aunt, the humdrum Rachel Craik, should have any sort of
connection with the murder of Ronald Tower, of which Winifred had
chanced first to hear on Riverside Drive that morning, seemed the
wildest nonsense. Then Winifred was overwhelmed afresh, and breathed to
herself, "I must be dreaming!"
And yet--the house was empty! Her aunt was not there--her aunt was held
as a criminal! It was not a dream, but only like one, a waking nightmare
far more terrifying. Most of the rooms in the house had nothing but
dust in them. Rachel Craik had preferred to live as solitary in teeming
Manhattan as a castaway on a rock in the midst of the sea.
Winifred's mind was accustomed now to the thought of that solitude
shared by two. This night, when there were no longer two, but only one,
the question arose strongly in her mind--why had there never been more
than two? Certainly her aunt was not rich, and might well have let some
of the rooms. Yet, even the suggestion of such a thing had made Rachel
Craik angry. This, for the first time, struck Winifred as odd.
Everything was puzzling, and all sorts of doubts peeped up in her, like
ghosts questioning her with their eyes in the dark.
When the storm of tears had spent its force she had just enough interest
in her usual self to lay the table and make ready a meal, but not enough
interest to eat it. She sat by a window of her bedroom, her hat still on
her head, looking down. The street lamps were lit. It grew darker and
darker. Down there below feet passed and repassed in multitudes, like
drops of the eternal cataract of life.
Winifred's eyes rested often on the spot where Rex Carshaw had spoken to
her and had knocked down Fowle, her tormentor. In hours of trouble, when
the mind is stunned, it will often go off into musings on trivial
things. So this young girl, sitting at the window of the dark and empty
house, let her thoughts wander to her rescuer. He was well built, and
poised like an athlete. He had a quick step, a quick way of talking, was
used to command; his brow was square, and could threaten; he had the
deepest blue eyes, and glossy brown hair; he was a tower of strength to
protect a girl; and his wife, if he had one, must have a feeling of
safety. Thoughts, or half-thoughts, like these passed through her mind.
She had never before met any young man of Carshaw's type.
It became ten o'clock. She was tired after the day's work and trouble of
mind. The blow of her dismissal, the fright of her interview with the
police, the arrest of her aunt--all this sudden influx of mystery and
care formed a burden from which there was no escape for exhausted nature
but in sleep. Her eyes grew weary at last, and, getting up, she
discarded her hat and some of her clothes; then threw herself on the
bed, still half-dressed, and was soon asleep.
The hours of darkness rolled on. That tramp of feet in the street grew
thin and scattered, as if the army of life had undergone a repulse. Then
there was a rally, when the theaters and picture-houses poured out their
crowds; but it was short, the powers of night were in the ascendant, and
soon the last stragglers retreated under cover. Of all this Winifred
heard nothing--she slept soundly.
But was it in a dream, that voice which she heard? Something somewhere
seemed to whisper, "She must be taken out of New York--she is the image
of her mother."
It was a hushed, grim voice.
The room, the whole house, had been in darkness when she had thrown
herself on the bed. But, somewhere, had she not been conscious of a
light at some moment? Had she dreamed this, or had she seen it? She sat
up in bed, staring and startled. The room was in darkness. In her ears
were the words: "She is the image of her mother."
She had heard them in some world, she did not know in which. She
listened with the keen ears of fear. Not a wagon nor a taxi any longer
moved in the street; no step passed; the house was silent.
But after a long ten minutes the darkness seemed to become pregnant with
a sound, a steady murmur. It was as if it came from far away, as if a
brook had spurted out of the granite of Manhattan, and was even more
like a dream-sound than those words which still buzzed in Winifred's
ear. Somehow that murmur as of water in the night made Winifred think of
a face, one which, as far as she could remember, she had never
consciously seen--a man's face, brown, hard, and menacing, which had
looked once into her eyes in some state of semi-conscious being, and
then had vanished. And now this question arose in her mind: was it not
that face, hard and brown, which she had never seen, and yet once had
seen--were not those the cruel lips which somewhere had whispered: "She
is the image of her mother?"
Winifred, sitting up in bed, listened to the steady, dull murmuring a
long time, till there came a moment when she said definitely: "It is in
the house."
For, as her ears grew accustomed to its tone, it seemed to lose some of
its remoteness, to become more local and earthly. Presently this sound
which the darkness was giving out became the voices of people talking in
subdued undertones not far off. Nor was it long before the murmur was
broken by a word sharply uttered and clearly heard by her--a gruff and
unmistakable oath. She started with fright at this, it sounded so near.
She was certain now that there were others in the house with her. She
had gone to bed alone. Waking up in the dead of the small hours to find
men or ghosts with her, her heart beat horribly.
But ghosts do not swear--at least such was Winifred's ideal of the
spirit world. And she was brave. Nerving herself for the ordeal, she
found the courage to steal out of bed and make her way out of the room
into a passage, and she had not stood there listening two minutes when
she was able to be certain that the murmur was going on in a back room.
How earnest that talk was--how low in pitch! It could hardly be burglars
there, for burglars do not enter a house in order to lay their heads
together in long conferences. It could not be ghosts, for a light came
out under the rim of the door.
After a time Winifred stole forward, tapped on a panel, and her heart
jumped into her mouth as she lifted her voice, saying:
"Aunty, is it you?"
There was silence at this, as though they had been ghosts, indeed, and
had taken to flight at the breath of the living.
"Speak! Who is it?" cried Winifred with a fearful shrillness now. A
chair grated on the floor inside, hurried steps were heard, a key
turned, the door opened a very little, and Winifred saw the gaunt face
of Rachel Craik looking dourly at her, for she had frightened this
masterful woman very thoroughly.
"Oh, aunt, it _is_ you!" gasped Winifred with a flutter of relief.
"You are to go to bed, Winnie," said Rachel.
"It is you! They have let you out, then?"
"Yes."
"Tell me what happened; let me come in--"
"Go back to bed; there's a good girl. I'll tell you everything in the
morning."
"Oh, but I am glad! I was so lonely and frightened! Aunt, what was it
all about?"
"About nothing; as far as I can discover," said Rachel Craik--"a mere
mare's-nest found by a set of stupid police. Some man--a Mr. Ronald
Tower--was supposed to have been murdered, and I was supposed to have
some connection with it, though I had never seen the creature in my
life. Now the man has turned up safe and sound, and the pack of noodles
have at last thought fit to allow a respectable woman to come home to
her bed."
"Oh, how good! Thank heaven! But, you have some one in there with you?"
"In here--where?"
"Why, in the room, aunt."
"I? No, no one."
"I am sure I heard--"
"Now, really, you must go to bed, Winifred! What are you doing awake at
this hour of the morning, roaming about the house? You were asleep half
an hour ago--"
"Oh, then, it was your light I saw in my sleep! I thought I heard a man
say: 'She is the image--'"
"Just think of troubling me with your dreams at this unearthly hour! I'm
tired, child; go to bed."
"Yes--but, aunt, this day's work has cost me my situation. I am
dismissed!"
"Well, a holiday will do you good."
"Good gracious--you take it coolly!"
"Go to bed."
A sudden din of tumbling weights and splintering wood broke out behind
the half-open door. For, within the room a man had been sitting on a
chair tilted back on its two hind legs. The chair was old and slender,
the man huge; and one of the chair-legs had collapsed under the weight
and landed the man on the floor.
"Oh, aunt! didn't you say that no one--" began Winifred.
The sentence was never finished. Rachel Craik, her features twisted in
anger, pushed the young girl with a force which sent her staggering, and
then immediately shut the door. Winifred was left outside in the
darkness.
She returned to her bed, but not to sleep. It was certain that her aunt
had lied to her--there was more in the air than Winifred's quick wits
could fathom. The fact of Rachel Craik's release did not clear up the
mystery of the fact that she had been arrested. Winifred lay, spurring
her fancy to account for all that puzzled her; and underlying her
thoughts was the man's face and those strange words which she had heard
somewhere on the borders of sleep.
She fancied she had seen the man somewhere before. At last she recalled
the occasion, and almost laughed at the conceit. It was a picture of
Sitting Bull, and that eminent warrior had long since gone to the happy
hunting-grounds.
Meantime, the murmur of voices in the back room had recommenced and was
going on. Then, towards morning, Winifred became aware that the murmur
had stopped, and soon afterward she heard the click of the lock of the
front door and a foot going down the front steps.
Rising quickly, she crept to the window and looked out. Going from the
door down the utterly empty street she saw a man, a big swaggerer, with
something of the over-seas and the adventurer in his air. It was Ralph
"Voles," the "brother" of Senator William Meiklejohn. But Winifred could
not distinguish his features, or she might have recognized the man she
had seen in her half-dreams, and who had said: "She must be taken out of
New York--she is the image of her mother."
Voles had hardly quitted the place before a street-car conductor, who
had taken temporary lodgings the previous evening in a house opposite,
hurried out into the coldness of the hour before dawn. He seemed pleased
at the necessity of going to work thus early.
"Oh, boy!" he said softly. "I'm glad there's somethin' doin' at last. I
was getting that sleepy. I could hardly keep me eyes open!"
When Detective Clancy came to the Bureau a few hours later he found a
memorandum to the effect that a Mr. Ralph V. Voles, of Chicago, stopping
at a high-grade hotel in Fifth Avenue, had dined with Rachel Craik in a
quiet restaurant, had parted from her, and met her again, evidently by
appointment. The two had entered the house in One Hundred and Twelfth
Street separately shortly before midnight, and Voles returned to his
hotel at four o'clock in the morning.
Clancy shook his head waggishly.
"Who'd have thought it of you, Rachel?" he cackled. "And, now that I've
seen _you_, what sort of weird specimen can Mr. Ralph V. Voles, of
Chicago, be? I'll look him up!"