Ashes to Ashes
by Isabel Ostrander
Contents
I The Lie
II The Trap
III The Blow
IV The Long Night
V When Morning Dawned
VI The Verdict
VII The Letter
VIII The Truth
IX The Escape
X A Chance Meeting
XI Luck
XII Mirage
XIII The Black Bag
XIV In His Hands
XV Ashes to Ashes
XVI The Second Vigil
XVII Missing
XVIII The Girl in the Watch Case
XIX Found
XX Marked
XXI The Unconsidered Trifle
XXII At the Club
XXIII The Scourge of Memory
XXIV If George Knew
XXV The Final Test
XXVI The Key
XXVII In the Library
XXVIII Just a Moment Please
Chapter I
The Lie
“Well, that’s the situation.” Wendle Foulkes’ keen old eyes narrowed
as they gazed into the turbulent ones of his client across the wide
desk. “This last batch of securities is absolutely all that you have
left of your inheritance from your father. Leave them alone where they
are and you are sure of three thousand a year for yourself and for
Leila after you.”
Norman Storm struck the desk impatiently, and his lean, aristocratic
face darkened.
“Three thousand a year! It wouldn’t cover the running expenses of the
car and our country club bills alone!” he exclaimed. “I tell you,
Foulkes, this investment is a sure thing; it will pay over thirty per
cent in dividends in less than four years. I have straight inside
information on it—”
“So you had on all the other impulsive, ill-judged ventures that have
wiped out your capital, Norman.” The attorney sighed wearily. “I don’t
want to rub it in, but do you realize that you have squandered nearly
four hundred thousand dollars in the past ten years on wildcat schemes
and speculations? You’ve come to the end now; think it over. Your
salary with the Mammoth Trust Company is fifteen thousand a year—on
eighteen you and your wife ought to be living fairly comfortably. I
grant you that three thousand income per annum isn’t much to leave
Leila in the event of your death, but it is better than the risk of
utter insolvency, and she’s been spending her own money pretty fast
lately.”
“It is hers, to do with as she pleases!” Storm retorted sulkily and
then flushed as the school-boyishness of his own attitude was borne in
upon his consciousness. “You cannot make big money unless you take a
chance. I’ve been unlucky, that’s all. My father made all his in Wall
Street, and his father before him——”
“In solid investments, not speculations; and they were on the inside
themselves. They had the capital to take a gambler’s chance and the
acumen to play the game.” Foulkes rose and laid his hand paternally
upon the younger man’s shoulder. “Forgive me, my boy, but you haven’t
the temperament, the knowledge of when to stop and the strength to do
it. Of course, this money is yours unreservedly; you may have it if
you want to risk this last venture, but it will take some time for me
to convert the securities into cash. Remember, you have reached the
bottom of the basket; I only want you to stop and consider, and not to
jeopardize the last few thousand you have in the world.”
Outside in the bright May sunshine once more, Storm shouldered his way
through the noon-tide throng on the busy pavement with scant ceremony,
his resentment hot against the man he had just left. Confound old
Foulkes! Why didn’t he keep his smug counsels for those who came
sniveling to him for them? As if he, an official of a huge and noted
corporation, were a mere lad once more, to be lectured for
over-spending his allowance!
The fact that the position he held with the trust company entailed no
financial responsibility and was practically an honorary one, granted
him solely because of his father’s former connection with that
institution, was a point which did not present itself to his mind. He
was occupied in closing his mental eyes to the truth of the lawyer’s
arraignment, bolstering his defiance with excuses for the repeated
fiascos of his past ventures, and the secret knowledge that Foulkes
had read him aright only added fuel to the flames.
Still inwardly seething, he crossed Broadway and plunged into another
narrow, crowded cross-street lined by towering office buildings whose
walls rose like cliffs on either side. From the tallest of these, an
imposing structure of white stone which reared a shaft high above its
neighbors, a woman emerged and mingled with the hurrying host before
him. She was not a toiler of the financial district; that was evident
from the costly simplicity of the smart little toque upon her shining
golden hair and the correct lines of her severely tailored costume.
She was undeniably pretty with the delicate, tender irregularity of
feature which just escapes actual beauty; yet it was not that which
caused Norman Storm to halt and drove from him all thought of the late
interview.
It was his wife. Leila! What possible errand could have brought her to
the city and to this portion of it? Surely an unexpected one, for she
had not told him of any such intention; indeed, to his knowledge she
had never before invaded the precincts of finance, and he could
conceive of no possible reason for her presence there.
As he paused, momentarily petrified with astonishment, a stout little
man upon the opposite curb also caught sight of the young woman’s
hurrying figure, and he, too, stopped in surprise, a smile lighting
his plain, commonplace features. Then, as though drawn by a magnet,
his pale, rather faded blue eyes traveled straight to where Norman
Storm stood, the surprise deepened, and with a half-audible
exclamation he started across the street toward him; but a long double
line of drays and motor trucks barred his way.
Meanwhile Leila had vanished utterly in the crowd, and Storm realizing
the futility of an attempt to overtake her, dismissed the matter from
his thoughts with a shrug. She would tell him of her errand, of
course, on his return home; and a conference of importance awaited his
immediate presence at the office of the trust company.
The conference developed complications which delayed him until long
after the closing hour, forcing him to forego an engagement with
Millard for a round of golf at the country club. He likewise missed
his accustomed train bearing the club car out to Greenlea and was
compelled to herd in with commuters bound for the less exclusive
suburban communities on the line.
Storm was not a snob, but the atmosphere of petty clerking and its
attendant interests grated upon his tired, highly strung
sensibilities; the unsatisfactory interview of the morning with
Foulkes returned to exasperate him further and he was in no very
genial frame of mind when he alighted at the station.
But Barker was on hand promptly with the smart little car which
consumed such an incredible amount of gasolene, and the air of the
soft spring twilight was infinitely grateful after the smoke and
stuffiness of the train. As they drove swiftly past the rolling lawns
of one spacious landscape garden after another, each burgeoning with
its colorful promise of the blossoming year, his taut nerves relaxed,
and he settled back in contented ease. What if he had been unlucky in
past speculations, if old Foulkes did consider him an unstable
weakling? Leila believed in him, and she was his, all his!
The glimmer of white upon the veranda half-hidden in the trees
resolved itself into a slender, fairy-like figure, and as he alighted
from the car and mounted the steps she caught his hands in the eager,
childish way which was one of her chief charms.
“Oh, Norman, how late you are! Poor dear, did they keep him at that
wretched old office and make him miss his golf?” She lifted her face
for his evening kiss, and her soft, blue eyes glowed with a deep, warm
light. “George is here; I mean, he ’phoned from the Millards’. He’s
coming over for dinner.”
“That’s the reason for the début of the new white gown, eh?” Storm
laughed. “By Jove, I believe I ought to be jealous of old George! When
a man’s wife and his best friend——”
“Don’t!” There was a quick note almost of distress in Leila’s tones.
“I don’t like to hear you joke that way about him, dear. He seems so
lonely, standing just outside of life, somehow. He hasn’t anything of
this!”
She waved her little hands in a comprehensive gesture as if to take in
the whole atmosphere of the home, and her husband laughed carelessly
once more.
“It’s his own fault, then. Don’t waste any sympathy on him on that
score, Leila. George is a confirmed old bachelor; he would run a mile
from a suggestion of domesticity.” At the door he turned. “Oh, I say
dear——”
But Leila was already down the steps and had started across the lawn,
at the farther side of which Storm discerned a short stout commonplace
figure approaching; and turning once more he hastened to his room to
change.
George Holworthy, two years his senior, had been a classmate
of Storm’s at the university twenty years before, and the
companionship—rather a habit of association than a friendship—which
had grown up between the undisciplined, high-spirited boy and his
duller, more phlegmatic comrade had proved a lasting one despite the
wide dissimilarity in their natures. Storm was too fastidious,
Holworthy too seriously inclined, for dissipation to have attracted
either of them, but while the former had drifted, plunging recklessly
from one speculation to another, the latter had plodded slowly,
steadily ahead until at forty-two he had amassed a comfortable fortune
and attained a position of established recognition among his business
associates.
An hour later, as they sat drinking their after-dinner coffee on the
veranda, Leila’s words returned to his mind, and Storm found himself
eying his guest in half-disparaging appraisal. Good, stupid old
George! How stodgy and middle-aged he was getting to be! His hair was
noticeably thin on top and peppered with gray and he looked like
anything but an assured, successful man of affairs as he lounged,
round-shouldered, in his chair, his mild eyes blinking nearsightedly
at Leila, who sat on the veranda steps cradling one chiffon clad knee
between her clasped hands.
George looked every day of fifty. Now, if he would only patronize a
smart tailor, join a gymnasium and work some of that adipose tissue
off, he wouldn’t be half bad-looking. Unconsciously Norman Storm
squared his shoulders and drew his slim, lithe form erect in his
chair. Then his muscles tightened convulsively and he sat with every
nerve tense, for a snatch of the disjointed conversation had
penetrated his abstraction and its import stunned him.
“You weren’t in town to-day, then?” The question, seemingly a
repetition of some statement of Leila’s, came stammeringly from
Holworthy’s lips.
“Oh, dear, no!” Her laugh tinkled out upon the soft air. “I haven’t
been in perfect ages! It doesn’t attract me now that spring is here.”
Not in town! But he had seen her himself! Sheer surprise held Storm
silent for a moment.
When he spoke his voice sounded strange to his own ears.
“Where were you all day, Leila? What did you do with yourself?”
“I—I lunched out at the Ferndale Inn with Julie Brewster.” Her tone
was low, and she did not turn her head toward him as she replied,
adding hurriedly: “George, when are you going to give up those stuffy
rooms of yours in town and take a bungalow out here? You can keep
bachelor hall just as well; lots of nice men are doing it . . .”
Through the desultory talk which followed, Storm sat as if in a
trance. If the blue tailored frock and hat with its saucy quill had
not been familiar to him in every line, he could still not have
mistaken that glimpse of her profile, the carriage of her head, the
coil of shining, spun-gold hair. Ferndale Inn was twenty miles away, a
good sixty from town, and inaccessible save by motor; she could not
possibly have reached there in time for luncheon, for it was after
twelve when she had passed him on that crowded, downtown street. She
had told a deliberate falsehood; but why?
“I think if you don’t mind, George, I’ll say good night.” Leila rose
at last, her white gown shimmering in the darkness. “I feel a bit
tired and headachey——”
“Not faint, Leila?” Holworthy spoke in quick solicitude.
“One of my old attacks you mean?” She laughed lightly. “Indeed, no! I
haven’t had one in ever so long. It is nothing that a good, early
sleep won’t put right. I suppose it is no use to ask you to stay
overnight, George?”
He shook his head.
“Must be at the office early to-morrow. I’ll catch the ten-forty train
to town. Good night, Leila. Sleep well.”
“Good night.” She touched her husband’s cheek softly with her
finger-tips as she passed him, and he felt that they were icy cold.
“Put on your coat if you go to the station with George, dear; these
early Spring nights are deceptive.”
Deceptive! And she, who had never lied to him before in the ten years
of their married life, was going to her rest with a falsehood between
them! Storm felt as if someone had struck him suddenly, unfairly
between the eyes. The fact in itself was a staggering one, but a score
of questions beat upon his brain. Why, if she wished to conceal her
errand to town, had she not been content merely to deny her presence
there? Why drag in the Ferndale Inn and Julie Brewster?
As if his thoughts had in some way communicated themselves to his
companion, the latter asked suddenly:
“What sort of a place is this Ferndale Inn, Norman?”
“Oh, the usual thing. Imitation Arcadia at exorbitant prices. Why?”
“Oh, I’ve heard things.” The tip of Holworthy’s cigar described a
glowing arc as he gestured vaguely. “I guess it is quiet enough; Leila
wouldn’t see anything wrong there in a million years unless she
happened to run into some of her own set in an indiscreet hour. I’m
informed that it is quite a rendezvous for those who are misunderstood
at their own firesides.”
“George, you’re getting to be a scandal-monger!” Storm laughed
shortly, his thoughts still centered on his problem. “The Inn is under
new management this season, and anyway you needn’t take a crack at our
set out here. They’re up-to-date, a bit unconventional, perhaps, but
never step out of bounds. The trouble with you, old man, is that
you’re old-fashioned and narrow; you don’t get about enough——”
“I get about enough to hear things!” Holworthy retorted with unusual
acerbity. “Your crowd here at Greenlea is no different from any other
small community of normal people thrown together intimately under the
abnormal conditions created by too much money and not enough to do. I
don’t mean you two, but look around you. This Julie Brewster of whom
Leila spoke just now; she is Dick Brewster’s wife, isn’t she? I don’t
discuss women as a rule, but she’s going it rather strong with young
Mattison. Dick’s not a fool; he’ll either blow up some day or find
somebody’s else wife to listen to his tale of woe and hand out the
sympathy. That is merely a case in point.”
“And just before your arrival, Leila was bemoaning the fact that you’d
missed domestic happiness!”
“Was she? Well, there are different kinds of happiness in this world,
you know; perhaps I’ve found mine in just looking on.” He rose, “I’ll
get on down to the station now, old man. No, don’t rout out Barker;
I’d rather walk.”
“I’ll stroll down with you, then.” Storm paused to light a cigarette,
then followed his guest down the veranda steps. He shrank from facing
Leila again that night; he would wait until the morning, and perhaps
later she would explain. Perhaps the explanation of her prevarication
lay in the fact of George’s presence; whatever her errand, she might
not have cared to discuss it before him. As this solution presented
itself to his mind Storm grasped at it eagerly. That was it, of
course! What a fool he had been to worry, to doubt her! He could have
laughed aloud in sheer relief.
“This is a great little place you have out here, Norman.” Holworthy
halted at the gate to glance back at the house outlined in the
moonlight. “I don’t wonder you’re proud of it. The grounds are
perfect, too; that little corner there, where the hill dips down and
the trout stream runs through, couldn’t have been laid out better if
you had planned it.”
“It wouldn’t be a little corner if that old rascal Jaffray would sell
me that stretch of land which cuts into mine, confound him!” Storm
plunged with renewed zest into a topic ever rankling with him. “I’ve
tried everything to force his hand, but the scoundrel hangs on to it
through nothing in the world but blasted perversity! I tell you,
George, it spoils the whole place for me sometimes, and I feel like
selling out!”
“Leave all this after the years you and Leila have put in beautifying
it because you can’t have an extra bit that belongs to someone else?”
Holworthy shook his head. “Don’t be a fool, Norman! If you can only
get another head gardener as good as MacWhirter was——”
“I’ll have MacWhirter himself back in a month,” Storm interrupted.
“Didn’t Leila tell you? She saw him yesterday at the Base Hospital. He
has lost a leg, but he’ll stump around as well as ever on an
artificial one, and if he had to be wheeled about in a chair Leila
wouldn’t hear of not having him back. She is the most loyal little
soul in the world.”
“Of course she is!” Holworthy assented hastily. “You’re the luckiest
man living, Norman, and she is the best of women!”
He paused abruptly, and when he spoke again there was an odd,
constrained note in his usually placid tones.
“How about the South American investment? I wish you wouldn’t go into
it——”
“So, evidently, does Foulkes!” Storm retorted. “I had it out with him
to-day, and the old pettifogger talked as though I were the original
Jonah; told me to my face that I had no head for business——”
“Well, he’s right on that,” remarked the other, with the candor of
long association. “This South American thing isn’t sound; I’ve looked
into it, and I know. The big fellows would have taken hold of it long
ago if it had been worth while. You certainly cannot afford to take a
chance where they won’t.”
The discussion which ensued lasted until the station was reached and
Holworthy, with a final wave of his hand, disappeared into the smoker
of the train which was just pulling out.
Storm had had rather the better of the argument, as usual, for the
other’s slower mind was not sufficiently agile to grasp his brilliant
but shallow points and turn them against him, and he started homeward
in high good humor. How peaceful and still everything lay under the
pale shimmering haze of moonlight! Leila would be fast asleep by now.
What a child she was at heart, in spite of her twenty-eight years! How
she had hesitated, even over that little white lie that she had been
to Ferndale Inn with Julie Brewster, and how stupid he had been to
force it by questioning her before George!
The house as he approached it lay cloaked in darkness amid the shadow
of the trees save only the subdued ray of light which shone out from
the hall door, which in the custom of Greenlea he had left ajar. His
footsteps made no sound on the soft, springing turf of the lawn, but
when he reached the veranda the sharp, insistent shrill of the
telephone came to his ears.
As he started forward it ceased abruptly, and to his amazement he
heard Leila’s voice in a murmur of hushed inquiry. The murmur was
prolonged, and after a moment he slipped into the hall and stood
motionless, unconscious of his act, listening with every nerve
strained to the words which issued from the library.
“It is a frightful risk, dear! . . . I know, I’ve had to fib about it
already to him . . . No, of course he doesn’t, but what if
others . . . . Yes, but he has only gone to the station with George
Holworthy; he’ll be back any minute, and then what can I say? . . . .
Of course I will, I promised, but you must be mad! . . . Yes, in ten
minutes.”
Storm heard the receiver click and had only time to shrink back into
the embrasure of the window when Leila emerged from the library, still
clad in her dinner gown, and passing him swiftly, seized a long, dark
cloak from the rack and sped noiselessly out of the door.
Storm’s breath caught harshly in his throat, and he took an impetuous
step or two after her, Then he halted, and with head erect and
clenched hands he turned and mounted the stairs.