_Face to Face._
Betty attacked the new translation that evening with undiminished
enthusiasm but her mind wandered and when midnight came a few meager
lines proved to be the result of her labors. She paused to read them
over before putting them away and the quaint phraseology fell strangely
from her lips upon the stillness of the room.
"To the Stele of Abu I have come in peace to sepulchre this of eternity
which I have made in the horizon western of the home of Abydos--"
Her voice halted and trembled into silence and she stood listening
with every nerve strained. A dull jarring crash had sounded from below
accompanied by the muffled but harsh tones of a man's voice raised in
anger or expostulation.
Hastily disposing of her work she extinguished the light and
groping her way to the door, opened it. The voice had sunk to an
indistinguishable rumble, and mingled with it was a murmur in a higher,
clearer tone which she had no difficulty in recognizing as that of Mrs.
Atterbury.
The girl hesitated, then crept to the head of the stairs. The house
was in darkness save for a narrow shaft of light which glowed from the
open door of the music room. Clinging to the banisters and keeping well
in shadow, Betty made her way down the staircase and from behind the
shelter of the newel post she peered into the room.
Jack Wolvert was crouched half over the table, both fists full of
crumpled papers and his dark face, half-defiant, half-cringing, leered
up at his hostess who stood before him drawn up to her full height in
imperious disdain.
"You're crazy!" he ejaculated. "What's the good of playing a waiting
game? Come out in the open and make one big bluff, that's my idea."
"You'll find it decidedly dangerous, my man, to execute your ideas
without my sanction." Mrs. Atterbury's quiet tones dominated his
blustering whine. "Remember, I am master and I will not brook any
rebellion against my authority. I might remind you that the last time
you took matters into your own hands the result was unfortunate."
"Ah-h!" The sound which issued from his lips was between a snarl and
a groan, and Betty saw his whole body quiver as he cowered back. Mrs.
Atterbury advanced a step and her cameo-like face suddenly hardened.
"We're all in this for life or death. If one succeeds, all succeed; if
one fails, he fails alone. That was my rule, but once I broke it for
you. Hereafter you fare with the rest. You have your uses, I admit, but
no one is indispensable to me. You know what happened to the Comet;
remember her luck when you are tempted to play a lone hand, my friend."
Betty waited to hear no more, but turned and fled silently up the
stair, her heart beating tumultuously. The level unemotional voice of
Mrs. Atterbury had not raised in pitch or increased in volume, yet
there had been something far more sinister in its measured utterance
than any display of ungoverned wrath could have evidenced.
The girl sank trembling upon her couch and for the first time a vision
came to her of her own possible fate should the extent of her knowledge
be even suspected by the ruthless woman downstairs. She had learned
from the cipher letter of the retribution which had overtaken "The
Comet," and once again the stark face of Breckinridge rose before her,
his sightless eyes fixed on hers in mute warning.
She covered her face with her hands, striving to shut out the dread
picture imagination conjured for her. She, like the Comet, was playing
a lone hand, but the stakes were worth the hazard! At that thought her
momentary weakness dropped from her like a cloak and she straightened,
her eyes aflame with resolution. She would win, she must!
Disrobing in the dark, she lay for long listening intently, but no
sound reached her from below, and the strained effort brought its
own reaction of fatigue. She slept at last, to awaken only when the
sunlight of broad day streamed through the uncurtained window and
flooded her face.
There was no hint of the previous night's quarrel in the genial
camaraderie of Mrs. Atterbury's attitude toward Wolvert, but Betty
fancied that Madame Cimmino regarded them both with ill-concealed
anxiety and the girl was glad to escape to the seclusion of the library.
The morning's correspondence awaited her, and she opened the first
letter in listless abstraction, her thoughts still centered on the
implacable words she had overheard. One glance at the sheet of
note-paper in her hand, however, and everything else was banished from
her mind.
"My dear Marcia:
"Professor Blythe has caught pneumonia in Chicago. Doctor's
consultation held over him on Monday. Too old for recovery,
Hamilton says is verdict. Much grieved but still hope. McCormick
has been getting orders which evidence strong market. New machinery
no trouble to operate. Marked Mary's improved letters; she has
seized her opportunity. Hear from out west that John Cote won
appeal. Sanitarium being planned for consumptives here. Good
air but nothing can be doing if Mayor refuses permit. Please
communicate in care Trust Company. Give nobody business confidence
but me. They lie who say low prices ruin business. It is dead if
the end of the superfluous stock is not sold out regardless of cost.
"With kindest regards,
"Yours,
"Shirley."
With a curious set smile Betty read and reread the missive, then laid
it aside, and sat for some minutes staring out of the window. The
hidden message was pregnant with meaning and a shade of anxiety crossed
her face. The man whom she had seen loitering under the lamp-post just
outside the gates a few days before loomed up as a possibility more to
be dreaded than any present contingency within the house and she felt
that she was being irresistibly carried forward in a chain of events
forged by circumstance which she could not break if she would.
When Mrs. Atterbury came to her, Betty watched surreptitiously for her
reception of the cipher letter and saw that after a quick glance her
employer thrust it without a perusal into her belt. The girl marveled
anew at her stoicism; she must at least have gleaned the purport of
the first sentence, yet her eyes were as clear and her voice as steady
as though it had been the most casual of communications.
Her dictation was interrupted by the abrupt entrance of Madame Cimmino.
"Look!" the latter exclaimed with an excited gesture toward the window.
"It is Louise Dana, but in what haste! Without a hat, too, in this most
detestable of climates! Is it that something has happened? An accident?"
She spoke lightly, but her eyes smouldered as they met Mrs.
Atterbury's, and the rouge stood out in patches of vivid scarlet
against the sudden pallor which blanched her cheeks.
Mrs. Dana was running swiftly up the path from the gate, her
meretriciously golden head bare and gleaming in the sunlight. A cloak
had been flung carelessly about her figure, but as she sped past the
window Betty noted that her feet were encased in the thinnest of
boudoir slippers.
With a murmured ejaculation Mrs. Atterbury hurried from the room
followed by Madame Cimmino, and the girl was left to her own thoughts.
A bell pealed wildly through the house and its echo had not died
away when there came a slam of the front door and a piercing cry
which reached even to the secluded library, although Betty could only
distinguish a word or two.
"Mortie--caught--help--!"
"Good God!" It was unmistakably Wolvert's voice but shaken with the
same craven fear which had actuated it on the day of Betty's arrival.
"What do you mean by coming here? Do you want to give us all--"
"Silence!" Mrs. Atterbury dominated him and after a confused murmur
from which not a separate word could be gleaned another door closed and
the hysterical sobs of Louise Dana were hushed.
What had happened to bring that woman in terror to the house? For it
was mortal terror which had distorted her face as she passed the window
and had rung in her desperate cry. She had come for help, but what
help could she find there? Betty remembered her single meeting with
the florid middle-aged man whose eyes were lined with weariness and
dissipation. What had he "caught," or was it that he himself had been
caught in some difficulty?
For half an hour Betty restlessly paced the library, fearing to
venture forth lest she be suspected of eavesdropping yet longing to
escape to her own room. The hum of a motor drew her to the window, and
she reached it in time to see the familiar bizarre stripes of Mrs.
Atterbury's own car whirl past and down the drive, with a fleeting
glimpse of a golden head within it. Whatever her trouble, the woman had
not remained to add its shadow to those already clustering about the
household.
It was with somewhat of a shock that Betty turned to find her employer
standing on the threshold.
"Yes, she has gone." Mrs. Atterbury nodded, following the girl's
glance. "Such a ridiculously nervous, excitable, young woman!
Just fancy, my dear! Mr. Dana--you met him at my last dinner, if
you remember--has been ailing for some days, and this morning the
physician was called and found that he was suffering an acute attack of
diphtheria. It is very sad, of course, although I do not doubt that he
will pull through, but that silly wife of his rushed out of the house
just as she was with only a cloak over her negligee, jumped into a taxi
and came straight to me. Unfortunately, the car broke down a short
distance beyond our gates and what the neighbors will think of her
running about bareheaded I cannot imagine!"
"I am sorry about Mr. Dana," Betty remarked in a lowered tone.
"Diphtheria is very dangerous, isn't it?"
"Not since medicine has become the science that it is today," responded
the other, indifferently. "Mr. Wolvert was quite annoyed. Did you hear
him? He is an arrant coward about contagion, like most men, and he
feared she would give the disease to all of us! It really was stupid of
her, but they are strangers here, you know, and I am practically the
only friend she has. I arranged by 'phone for Mr. Dana's reception in a
private hospital and she has gone back to him with her nerves steadied.
What empty-headed fools most modern women are!"
Her tone was a skillful blend of indignation and amusement but she bent
her eyes upon the girl in a keen, unwavering scrutiny as if to satisfy
herself that the explanation was received in good faith.
Betty smiled back at her steadily.
"People are apt to lose their heads when someone they love is in
trouble, don't you think?" she asked.
"Some people, not those with any self-control. I don't believe that you
would, for instance, my dear. I think that you could be counted upon
to act in any emergency which presented itself with quick decision and
courage if you were sufficiently interested."
Betty flushed but she replied without a tremor.
"Perhaps I should. I hope so. We never can tell until the moment comes."
Luncheon was a constrained meal. Madame Cimmino maintained a
non-committal silence and her nervous fluttering hands were still,
but Wolvert's mood had changed to a mocking frivolity which Betty
had learned to recognize as the reaction of his lawless nature from
any emotional stress. Divining the girl's aversion, he directed his
witticisms at her, and sought in impish perversity to compel her
response. Madame Cimmino listened and watched with sombre eyes and Mrs.
Atterbury flashed an ominous warning to him as they rose.
For the better part of the afternoon her employer kept Betty beside
her, busied with the mending of household linen, while from the music
room came strange intermittent bursts of melody, rippling, elusive,
hauntingly sweet. Long moments of silence would ensue and then a
thunderous crash of chords as if in very fury the musician sought to
smother the softer, tenderer strain.
Betty was fascinated in spite of herself. It was as though the man's
inmost soul were revealed racked with the storm of his passions yet
alluring in its reckless gay abandon. A dangerous man to himself as
well as to others she felt, and to her own heart there came again that
thrill of fear.
When she descended the stairs at dusk, she found Wolvert standing
before the great hearth in the hall staring moodily into the flames.
She would have passed him with a mere nod, but he stepped forward
impulsively.
"Where have you been hiding yourself since lunch? I looked for you in
every corner, but you had vanished."
"For me?" Betty paused in unguarded surprise.
"For you, mademoiselle!" he mimicked her slyly. "Why will you not be
kind and talk to me? I know that you disapprove of me most heartily,
but you have promised to be friendly and I am bored with my own
exclusive society. Come and sit here and tell me what goes on behind
those grave, wise, young eyes of yours."
He pushed a chair forward coaxingly but she shook her head.
"I--I have a message for Welch--" she began.
"A plague take Welch!" Wolvert interrupted. "In all this great house,
where no one ever does anything and nothing ever happens, must you
alone be always busy, you who alone are worth talking to? You could
tell me much, if you would."
There was a note of studied intent in his tone which held her as much
as the choice of phrase piqued her curiosity.
"What do you mean, Mr. Wolvert? What could I tell you?"
He shrugged, laughing lightly.
"Why you are always so still, for one thing, like a little mouse. Your
silence intrigues me. Why your glance is always so distrait as if
you were listening to a far-off voice." He knelt upon the chair his
arms folded across its back and brought his dark face close to hers.
"Perhaps you will tell me also why your smile is so sad and so bitter.
What has life taught you, Little Mouse?"
"To keep my own counsel, Mr. Wolvert." Betty retreated a step or two,
but her eyes met his gravely. "To walk warily, and to do my appointed
work."
"That is a wise creed." He seemed to muse aloud. "But is this your
appointed work? To write at another's dictation, to fetch and carry,
to serve and wait and to be finally dismissed! You are so demure, so
docile, so perfectly in the picture, that I sometimes wonder if you are
not playing a part."
He paused and she waited breathlessly seeking to read in his sardonic
smile how much of serious purpose lay behind the facetious drawl.
"Your work is still new to you, but are you content?" He rose and
strode around the chair to face her. His manner had changed and the
words fell in a rapid, insistent undertone from his lips. "Will you
be satisfied always to stay in the background, to occupy the extra
chair, to be commanded when you might command? You have too much
intelligence to be without ambition, too much common sense to work for
a mere pittance when you might share, too much personality to remain a
nonentity. You are quick-witted and discreet, you would go far if you
were shown the way, and I----"
"Jack!" Madame Cimmino's querulous voice sounded from the stairs, and
Betty shrank guiltily. Wolvert straightened and uttered an oath beneath
his breath, but the next instant the little mocking smile was curling
about his lips.
"Ah, Speranza! Now that I have ceased torturing the piano, you come
forth from your refuge! I have been trying to beguile Miss Shaw from
her duty and succeeded only in boring her. Come down and tell me how
you liked my concerto; you must have heard it for I thundered it to the
gods."
"Miss Shaw does not look bored." Madame Cimmino flashed a look of
unconcealed hostility at the girl, her usually dull eyes snapping fire.
"Marcia has sent me for you. She is in her private sitting-room."
"At your service, Madame." He shrugged, glanced at Betty from beneath
lowered lids and bounded lightly up the stair. Midway he passed the
woman and she caught his arm, murmuring something in a staccato patter
of Italian. He shook himself free and laughing vanished around the
gallery overhead.
"Will you be satisfied always to be commanded when you might command?"
His words still rang in Betty's ears and his dark face, sinister and
insurgent rose before her mental vision. Had he not spoken as much to
himself as to her? He, too, appeared to be at Mrs. Atterbury's command
and the girl recalled his half-cringing defiance in that secret quarrel
of the previous evening. Was he contemplating revolt?
All at once she was aware that Madame Cimmino stood staring with
insolent hauteur into her face.
"I must find Welch; I have a message for him." She stammered and was
turning away when the other woman detained her with a gesture.
"Surely a further delay will make but little difference, Miss Shaw."
Her tones were silky. "There is something I wish to say to you and you
would do well to listen to me. You are clever even for an American
young girl, but you rely too much upon your ability to take care of
yourself. For your own good I speak; do not try to play with Jack
Wolvert."
"I don't understand you, Madame," Betty said coldly. "What have I to do
with any guest of Mrs. Atterbury?"
"What indeed?" The woman came close and thrust her sallow pointed chin
forward. "Do you think I have no eyes, that I have not seen your sly
crude efforts to engage his attention? _Mille tonneres!_ You are but a
conceited, over confident child! Your very gaucherie may amuse him for
the moment but you could not hold him a day. Do I not know him? Have
I not studied his every mood these many years? Could you think in the
insolence of your youth to take him from me?"
"You are mistaken, Madame." The girl spoke in quiet control, but she
met the snakelike glitter in the other's eyes with an answering gleam.
"I have no interest whatever in Mr. Wolvert and his inclinations and
prejudices are alike of no moment to me. In any case I am accountable
to my employer alone for my conduct and I have received no complaint
from Mrs. Atterbury. Let me pass, please."
"Then I warn you!" Madame Cimmino turned livid. "You are treading
on dangerous ground, more dangerous than you know. Keep your silly
schoolgirl wiles for others, but leave Jack Wolvert to me or I will
make you wish that the earth had opened and engulfed you before you
crossed my path!"
Betty smiled.
"Your threats do not interest me, Madame Cimmino. I shall accept
censure only from Mrs. Atterbury, and I beg that you will go to her. I
really cannot listen any longer to these unfounded accusations."
She turned and left the other inarticulate with rage. Her own heart
was filled with a dull ache of resentment, not against the hysterical
virago and her absurd charge, but against the perverse fate which
through no act or fault of hers, seemed rearing difficulty after
difficulty in the way of her purpose. She did not underestimate the
intelligence of Wolvert or the danger of arousing his suspicions, while
she realized that the jealous animosity of Madame Cimmino might at any
moment precipitate a crisis. She must walk warily, indeed.
Her message delivered to Welch, she ascended the back stairs to avoid
a second encounter with the woman who had become her enemy, and was
rounding the gallery shadowed in the gathering dusk, when a blotch of
white lying against the baseboard caught her eye.
It was a folded paper, crumpled in the center and even before she
opened it, a premonition warned her of its contents. The cipher letter!
The significant words leaped out at her anew from the irrelevancies
with which they were cloaked and on a swift impulse she thrust the
letter into her breast.
Late that night when all was still Betty crept from her room and down
the stairs like an unquiet wraith intent upon the secret motive which
actuated her, yet on her guard for the slightest warning of discovery.
The darting ray from her electric torch played before her, dancing in a
diminutive circle of light upon the wall and piercing the almost opaque
darkness like a flash of forked lightning. The midnight silence was
oppressive in its intensity and for the first time there seemed to be a
brooding menace in the soundless void.
The girl's nerves were tingling and the torch wavered fitfully in her
hand. A hallucination, vague but terrible, took possession of her
that something unnameable lurked in the shadows watching, crouched to
spring. In vain she summoned her resolute will to her aid, lashing
herself with scorn for her weakness. A swift unreasoning fear clutched
her by the throat and her trembling limbs all but refused her support.
Doggedly she forced herself to go on but the distance from stair foot
to library door seemed interminable and when she had traversed it Betty
paused, an unexplainable reluctance staying her hand upon the knob.
At length she set her teeth and with an impatient jerk opened the door.
Her torch light circled about the familiar room, the desk with its
orderly array of papers, the center table, the bookcases--
Her breath caught in a strangling gasp. One bookcase was swinging
loosely on its secret hinge and the safe in the aperture behind was
open, a handful of documents scattered upon the floor.
Slowly her light travelled along the wall creeping ever nearer and
nearer to the hearth. The brass andirons glittered dazzlingly from the
darkness and the outline of a massive chair leaped into prominence.
Something lay relaxed upon its arm, and the wavering light stopped.
It was a black coatsleeve, motionless but seemingly vibrant with life
and from it protruded a pallid hand shapely and slender, its tapering
fingers loosely extended.
There was a roaring as of many waters in Betty's ears and her heart
seemed to have ceased to beat, but mechanically she trained the light
upward. Jack Wolvert's face, diabolic in triumph, leered at her.