_The Honor of the Name._
Chief McCormick's honest face beamed as he sat back in his office chair
and regarded the pale young girl before him with the frank, genuine
admiration of one colleague for another.
"It was wonderful! I couldn't have engineered it better myself. You've
pulled off the greatest stunt in years, Miss Shaw."
"Westcote," she corrected him, smilingly. "I'm glad to drop my friend's
name at last, and sail under no more false colors. But I did very
little, Mr. McCormick. If it hadn't been for Herbert I would have been
murdered as poor George Breckinridge was, and the man called 'Mike'
would have escaped."
"'Herbert,' eh?" The detective glanced quizzically at the
self-conscious young man who stood beside the girl's chair. "I suppose
congratulations are in order, but first let us get down to business.
You used the name of some friend, Miss Westcote?"
"And her birthmark. It proved to be a frightful nuisance, wearing off
and having to be renewed every day. That was what ultimately betrayed
me, you know. But I want to tell you my story from the beginning; I
know you will respect my confidence and you have earned it by your
kindness in saving me from the police.
"My real name is Ruth Westcote, and I am the daughter of Alden
Westcote, a retired broker. My mother died years ago, and we lived
alone together in Bruce Manor, an exclusive colony on Long Island. As
I grew up I noticed that father was aging rapidly and seemed breaking
in spirit and it was borne in upon me that something was preying on his
mind. I watched him and observed that his nervous depression reached
an acute state regularly every three months on the arrival of certain
visitors who came late at night and were received privately in his
study.
"When I insisted upon knowing their errand he put me off on the plea
of a confidential business transaction which I would not understand,
and he had become so unapproachable of late that I dared not press the
matter, although it worried me to distraction.
"One night about three months ago--it was the eighth of December, and
the first big snowstorm of the year--I returned home late. I had been
spending a day or two with a girl friend who lived on the South Shore
and was motoring back in my own little car when I stuck in a snowdrift
and the engine froze. A chauffeur came along with a big limousine just
as I was on the point of freezing, myself, and took me home. I noticed
the huge bulk of another limousine with gaudy wide stripes standing
beneath our _porte-cochère_ and there was a light in father's study
window. My heart sank, for it was about the time for those mysterious
visitors to call once more. I had never seen them, but I had heard
their voices raised in dispute on several occasions.
"To my surprise, that night it was the murmur of a woman's voice
which drifted out to me as I started up the stairs to my room, and on
a sudden impulse I turned and ran down to the library to wait until
she had gone. She seemed to be urging father to something and once
I thought I heard him groan. A low choking cough interrupted her
constantly and when at last the door opened and she came out into the
hall, I could see at a glance from where I was standing behind the
library portieres, that she was very ill.
"Father followed her from the study but he did not speak to her again;
instead he turned and groped his way up the stairs, bowed and shaking
as if he had received a blow.
"The woman tottered toward the door, but she had taken only a few steps
when she reeled, gasping, with her hands tearing at her breast, and
would have fallen if I had not rushed out and caught her. I managed
to get her to the couch in the library and brought her the water she
begged for, but I knew the meaning of her terrible thirst. I had had
pneumonia myself and no matter what misfortune her visit had brought to
father, I could not help being sorry for her.
"She was a tall, dark, willowly creature and must have been very
handsome in her youth. Her eyes were bright with fever and the hectic
patches on her thin cheeks heightened their glitter, but she had a
hardened expression which made the general effect she produced coarse
and repellent.
"She seemed half delirious and kept moaning that she must go, but it
would have been death to her to face the storm, even if she had not
been too weak to rise from the couch. I told her that she would have to
remain and let me send for a doctor, and at length she realized herself
the futility of further effort.
"'Who are you?' she gasped, clinging to my hand. I told her and she
stared long at me before she spoke again.
"'I have a letter here, a message from your father which must be
delivered tonight, or the consequences for him will be disastrous. I
cannot go; I feel as if I were dying! Will you take my place? Your
father must not know, he would sacrifice himself and his own vital
interests rather than have you brave the storm. My car is waiting. Can
you do this? Remember, it means much to him!'
"Her eyes were burning into mine and something in her deadly
earnestness decided me. I nodded and she fell back in relief. When she
had gathered her remaining strength together, she went on:
"'You have only to permit my chauffeur to take you to a certain house
and deliver this letter to the man servant who opens the door. The
chauffeur will explain what is necessary to him, and then bring you
home immediately. I will accept your hospitality for tonight because I
must, but I shall be able to go in the morning. No doctor is necessary
and I forbid you to send for one. I will not see him! You must lose
no time, but go at once. Call my chauffeur in and I will give him his
instructions.'
"I aroused the housemaid to prepare a bed and get the stranger into it
without disturbing father, and then I started on my journey. I shall
never forget that ride! For hours we plowed through drifts and over
hummocks, the car swaying and rocking like a ship and the intense cold
penetrating my very bones.
"The miles seemed endless and I was so numb and dazed that I scarcely
realized when we entered the city, the string of lights were a
meaningless blur.
"We drew up at last before a big house and I managed to descend,
although my limbs were half frozen. The door opened before I could
ring, and the man servant stared at me as if he saw a ghost, but the
chauffeur called sharply to him and he ran down bareheaded in the snow
and talked to him. Then he returned and conducted me into the hall
where a great hearth fire was burning, and I gave him the square,
blank, sealed envelope which the woman had handed to me. He took it and
ascended the stairs, to return presently with a goblet of mulled wine.
His manner was respectful enough, but I thought the way he stared at
me was very strange and he was evidently relieved when he conducted me
outside and saw me once more safely in the car.
"I slept nearly all the way home and the chauffeur had difficulty in
rousing me. The dawn had come, clear, but intensely cold, as I stumbled
up to bed.
"When I awakened, the woman was raving in delirium and I was compelled
to call a doctor in spite of her prohibition. Of course, I had to tell
father of our strange guest and he flared out in fury and would have
driven her from the house if he could. I was horrified, for he is the
dearest, most tender-hearted man in the world, but no inkling of the
truth came to me. He asked if she had sent anything back to town by her
chauffeur, and he looked utterly crushed when I told him the man had
taken a letter to deliver for her.
"The doctor looked very grave when he came and said he would send a
nurse, but when she arrived I had to dismiss her. Mr. McCormick, I sat
by that woman for an hour and I knew that no one else must learn from
her lips what she disclosed in her delirium!
"There was no hope for her from the first, but she lingered, and I
nursed her day and night, not even allowing the housemaid to relieve me
for an hour. Her raving filled me with loathing and bitter resentment,
but she was a fellow creature dying and I could not help doing all that
was possible, in sheer humanity.
"The night before she died consciousness returned to her and she
realized everything and knew the end was approaching. She tried
brokenly to thank me for the kindness I had shown her, and in gratitude
told me the whole truth.
"Years ago, when father was in a desperate financial strait, he forged
a check. Oh, if it is hard for me to tell you now, think how hard it
must have been for me to learn of it from that wretched woman's lips.
Father had great provocation, for the man whose name he used had
defrauded him, but the dreadful fact remained. He made full restitution
anonymously long ago, and the other man is dead, but somehow the forged
check and a letter proving father's guilt had fallen into the hands of
a blackmailing gang, through a dishonest law clerk, who found them in
going over the man's private papers to settle up his estate.
"The blackmailers had for years preyed on father and he was broken and
on the verge of ruin from the continued strain. Imagine how I felt when
I realized that I had been used as a tool to deliver to his enemies the
very money wrung from my own father!
"The check and letter denouncing him were in the possession of this
Mrs. Atterbury, who was the leader of the greatest band of criminals
ever organized in America. Their operations covered every state in the
Union and they had extorted hundreds of thousands from unhappy victims
all over the country. It was to Mrs. Atterbury's house that I had been
sent, but the dying woman would not tell me the address. She admitted,
however, that it was the meeting place for the sub-leaders of the gang
and the incriminating documents were kept there.
"A wild idea came to me to get into that house somehow and destroy that
check and letter which held father in such hideous bondage, and the
woman's next words showed me the way.
"It appeared that Mrs. Atterbury always employed a private secretary
who was not a member of the gang as a blind, and chose a girl who was
alone and friendless. If she proved really stupid but trustworthy, she
was frequently sent to collect money from victims so that if she later
became suspicious she would be technically guilty with the rest and
they could hold that as a weapon over her. That had not yet occurred,
because Mrs. Atterbury dismissed each one after a short period and
replaced her with another young and fairly unintelligent stranger. The
time had come for the present incumbent to be sent away before she
learned too much, and I made up my mind to take her place, if I could.
"The woman was sinking rapidly and I begged her to tell me her name.
"'I have come into your life unknown and in a cruel, base fashion; let
me go out of it a stranger. A stranger, that is it! Once I was called
Lucille and that will do for the end; Lucille L'Etrangere! Only, if you
have still more compassion left for me in your warm, young heart, save
me from burial at their hands! Put me away quietly somewhere, I beg of
you, in an unmarked grave!'
"She died at dawn and then I went down and had it out with father. I
hope never to live through another such hour! His grief and shame were
pitiful, but he seemed relieved, too, that I knew the truth at last. He
had been driven to the wall, and was almost mad.
"He arranged for the woman's burial in a little forgotten graveyard
nearby. The coroner was an old friend and everything was managed very
quietly and without question.
"When it was over I told father that I would be able to save him from
further persecution if he would consent to go to a sanitarium and
spread the rumor that his mind was permanently wrecked so that the gang
would cease their activities in his direction until my purpose was
accomplished. I withheld the details of my plan, for he would never
have consented to my facing the danger, but his tortured mind was on
the verge of giving way and he agreed helplessly to my proposal.
"In the meantime I had received a letter from an old school friend,
Betty Shaw, who is like me in type and coloring, but has a huge
birthmark like a clutching hand upon her cheek. She had moved West
ages ago, but when her mother died she went to Chicago to earn her
living, and there received a proposal from an old sweetheart who is
now in British Columbia. Her letter was to tell me that she had gone
out there to marry him, and I resolved to take her name and imitate
her appearance, so that if I succeeded in gaining a position with Mrs.
Atterbury and she wrote for reference out to the Western town where
Betty had lived, my supposed identity could be established beyond
question.
"I closed our house, leaving no address, painted the scar on my face
and, as Betty Shaw, went to a cheap boarding house in the city. From
there I inserted an advertisement in the papers, asking for a position
as secretary and emphasizing my friendlessness as much as I dared.
"It succeeded, for Mrs. Atterbury herself was one of the applicants
for my services. I cannot describe my sensations when I saw the very
car in which I had made that memorable trip draw up before the door! I
went back with her to the house I had visited that night, but the man
servant I had interviewed was gone and I have never encountered him
since.
"Much of the rest of my story must have been told to you by Herbert;
how I searched every night that I dared for the check and letter, and
how I found the murdered man on the floor of the dining-room.
"There was a little dressmaker whom Mrs. Atterbury hired during the
first days of my stay to make some things for me, and she tried to warn
me that I was in danger of being led into a trap, and begged me to go.
She was afraid to explain, however, and her visits soon ceased. No one
else tried to help me but her.
"I felt that I was being watched and tested, and although I was on my
guard I came very near betraying myself more than once.
"When at last they were convinced that I was as stupid as I tried to
appear, I was sent on my first errand to collect money from another
victim. Looking back now, I can scarcely realize the mood in which I
accepted such a horrible task, but my own suffering and the threatened
disgrace to my father had hardened me to the troubles of others. That
initial experience was at the opera, and a man in the next box handed
me an envelope; he had a round, plump face and a little downy mustache,
and a woman companion spoke of him as 'Toddie.'"
"J. Todhunter Crane!" exploded McCormick, interrupting for the first
time. "They had him on a fraudulent government contract and could have
got to him for a huge sum in time! But go on, please."
She told of her meeting with the beautiful golden-haired woman in the
art shop and her response to Herbert's advertisement for an Egyptian
translator. During this portion of her recital the young gentleman
in question carefully avoided the eyes of his chief and the latter
forebore to interrupt again, but when the girl told of her fruitless
visit to the Café de Luxe and subsequent encounter with the blonde
lady of the art shop at the Hotel Rochefoucauld, he could not contain
himself.
"Mrs. Haddon Cheever!" he ejaculated. "Young wife of a rich, jealous,
old husband, and the Atterbury crew got hold of a bunch of silly
letters she wrote to that Willie-boy who tried to stall you in the
Carnival Room. Ten thousand cold she handed over to you in the hotel!"
"I had another disquieting experience on the same afternoon at the Café
de Luxe. The girl from whose house I returned home on the night of the
storm came up and greeted me, and I was obliged to cut her, fearing
some spy would hear her call me by my own name. She was one of my most
intimate friends, and I felt ashamed.
"I had other worries, too. The man Wolvert, whom you have just placed
in custody, had begun to annoy me with his attentions and would not
be snubbed. Then I seemed to be forever dodging people I knew! On
my second visit to the museum, Herbert introduced me to a dear old
professor whom I had met previously in Cairo, where I was studying
under the great Mallory. He remembered me, in spite of the birthmark,
and he was suspicious enough to trap me later with a papyrus I had
seen, but I admitted nothing.
"My search for the incriminating documents continued whenever an
opportunity presented itself, but I seemed no nearer finding them. One
night I came face to face with Wolvert in the library, but I reached
Mrs. Atterbury first with a plausible story and she believed me.
"The next place to which I was sent to receive the blackmail was the
very last I could have anticipated--a church. It was the aristocratic
St. Jude's, on Brinsley Square, and the envelope containing the money
was presented to me on the collection plate!"
She described the event in detail and when she had finished the
detective asked eagerly:
"It was a fat, smug-faced little man, with heavy pouches under his eyes
and a cocky air about him? That's Hobart Wallace, or I'm a Dutchman!
Among the papers we found in Mike Hannigan's bag when we nabbed him at
the Porter Street address on your plucky tip, were two hundred shares
in a fake copper mine with his endorsement. He would have let himself
be bled dry rather than have an inkling of that reach the press!"
"I was sent on one more errand," the girl continued, "to the courtroom
where the Huston trial was in progress. I recognized the prisoner as
the young chauffeur who had rescued me in the storm and brought me home
the night the strange woman came, and as I listened to the testimony
and learned that the murder of his wife had been committed on that
night and his life depended on the alibi which I alone could supply,
I faced the worst moment of all! Seated with him was poor Miss Pope,
the dressmaker, who had risked everything to warn me to leave Mrs.
Atterbury. I met her afterward in the corridor, and when she told me
that Huston was her half-brother, all she had in the world to care for,
and I heard his story from her lips, I did not know what to do! My
father's good name was very dear to me, but here was a human life at
stake. All that night I fought my battle, but in the morning I wrote a
letter to Huston's lawyers, signing my real name and assuring them that
I would appear if necessary and testify on a certain date. I had just
placed the letter in the postbox that morning when I met you on the
North Drive, Herbert."
She turned to Ross and he answered her with a quick pressure of her
hand, but his eyes twinkled as he remarked:
"You haven't told the Chief yet who paid the blackmail to you in the
courtroom, dear!"
"It was the judge, himself," she exclaimed. "He dropped the envelope in
my lap as he passed out to his chambers when court adjourned."
"Judge Garford!" McCormick started in his chair. "What on earth could
they have on him? It doesn't seem possible!"
"Don't forget there was more than a suspicion of bribery in connection
with the Taylor case," Ross reminded him. "The opposition made a lot
of it at the last election. The Atterbury crowd may have held some
evidence of that over his head."
"Lord! They didn't mind who they tackled, did they?" McCormick
chuckled. "It took just one little woman, though, to put the whole
bunch out of business! Go on, Miss Westcote; I am anxious to hear the
rest."
The girl told her story to the end, and when she had finished dusk
was fast settling down outside the office windows. The Chief's eyes
sparkled with admiration as she told of her desperate venture in the
music room and the chloroforming of Wolvert, but his bluff, kindly
face grew grave when he learned of the concerted rush upon her by the
conspirators and the blast of the whistle which meant life or death to
the girl who had dared all, and won out in the face of inconceivable
odds.
"You ought to have taken me into your confidence, Ross." He turned
reproachfully to his operative. "When you came to me with all that
inside dope about the murder of 'the Comet' and the rest of it, and
told me to round the boys up for a raid on the North Drive at the
signal of a whistle, I agreed to let you boss the job, but if you'd
given me an inkling that this young lady was in danger at the hands of
that pack of thugs--!"
"You might have pulled them too soon and spoiled her game, Chief." Ross
smiled slyly. "Besides, you had said something about being tarred with
the same brush, remember, and I wanted to prove to you who was crooked
and who wasn't."
McCormick reddened.
"My boy, I told you I'd be the first to apologize, and I do, most
heartily. But what could I think? You were shielding the young lady
with the scar at every turn, double-crossing me, and--say!" He broke
off and faced the girl. "Did you ever hear of a peppery old lady named
Madame Dumois?"
"Oh, yes!" She dimpled, delightfully. "Herbert is going to produce me
in--in a little while!"
Then her face clouded and she shuddered.
"There is one question I have not dared to ask, although it has beaten
into my brain day and night since that awful hour. Who killed George
Breckinridge?"
"Jack Wolvert," the Chief responded slowly. "He has confessed, and will
pay the penalty of his crime."