CHAPTER XVI. THE SHADOW OF A GIRL
Certain things about the dinner at the Dallas house will always be obscure to me. Dallas was something in the Fish Commission, and I remember his reeling off fish eggs in billions while we ate our caviar. He had some particular stunt he had been urging the government to for years—something about forbidding the establishment of mills and factories on river-banks—it seems they kill the fish, either the smoke, or the noise, or something they pour into the water.
Mrs. Dallas was there, I think. Of course, I suppose she must have been; and there was a woman in yellow: I took her in to dinner, and I remember she loosened my clams for me so I could get them. But the only real person at the table was a girl across in white, a sublimated young woman who was as brilliant as I was stupid, who never by any chance looked directly at me, and who appeared and disappeared across the candles and orchids in a sort of halo of radiance.
When the dinner had progressed from salmon to roast, and the conversation had done the same thing—from fish to scandal—the yellow gown turned to me. "We have been awfully good, haven't we, Mr. Blakeley?" she asked. "Although I am crazy to hear, I have not said 'wreck' once. I'm sure you must feel like the survivor of Waterloo, or something of the sort."
"If you want me to tell you about the wreck," I said, glancing across the table, "I'm sorry to be disappointing, but I don't remember anything."
"You are fortunate to be able to forget it." It was the first word Miss West had spoken directly to me, and it went to my head.
"There are some things I have not forgotten," I said, over the candles. "I recall coming to myself some time after, and that a girl, a beautiful girl—"
"Ah!" said the lady in yellow, leaning forward breathlessly. Miss West was staring at me coldly, but, once started, I had to stumble on.
"That a girl was trying to rouse me, and that she told me I had been on fire twice already." A shudder went around the table.
"But surely that isn't the end of the story," Mrs. Dallas put in aggrievedly. "Why, that's the most tantalizing thing I ever heard."
"I'm afraid that's all," I said. "She went her way and I went mine. If she recalls me at all, she probably thinks of me as a weak-kneed individual who faints like a woman when everything is over."
"What did I tell you?" Mrs. Dallas asserted triumphantly. "He fainted, did you hear? when everything was over! He hasn't begun to tell it."
I would have given a lot by that time if I had not mentioned the girl. But McKnight took it up there and carried it on.
"Blakeley is a regular geyser," he said. "He never spouts until he reaches the boiling point. And by that same token, although he hasn't said much about the Lady of the Wreck, I think he is crazy about her. In fact, I am sure of it. He thinks he has locked his secret in the caves of his soul, but I call you to witness that he has it nailed to his face. Look at him!"
I squirmed miserably and tried to avoid the startled eyes of the girl across the table. I wanted to choke McKnight and murder the rest of the party.
"It isn't fair," I said as coolly as I could. "I have my fingers crossed; you are five against one."
"And to think that there was a murder on that very train," broke in the lady in yellow. "It was a perfect crescendo of horrors, wasn't it? And what became of the murdered man, Mr. Blakeley?"
McKnight had the sense to jump into the conversation and save my reply.
"They say good Pittsburgers go to Atlantic City when they die," he said. "So—we are reasonably certain the gentleman did not go to the seashore."
The meal was over at last, and once in the drawing-room it was clear we hung heavy on the hostess' hands. "It is so hard to get people for bridge in September," she wailed, "there is absolutely nobody in town. Six is a dreadful number."
"It's a good poker number," her husband suggested.
The matter settled itself, however. I was hopeless, save as a dummy; Miss West said it was too hot for cards, and went out on a balcony that overlooked the Mall. With obvious relief Mrs. Dallas had the card-table brought, and I was face to face with the minute I had dreaded and hoped for for a week.
Now it had come, it was more difficult than I had anticipated. I do not know if there was a moon, but there was the urban substitute for it—the arc light. It threw the shadow of the balcony railing in long black bars against her white gown, and as it swung sometimes her face was in the light. I drew a chair close so that I could watch her.
"Do you know," I said, when she made no effort at speech, "that you are a much more formidable person to-night, in that gown, than you were the last time I saw you?"
The light swung on her face; she was smiling faintly. "The hat with the green ribbons!" she said. "I must take it back; I had almost forgotten."
"I have not forgotten—anything." I pulled myself up short. This was hardly loyalty to Richey. His voice came through the window just then, and perhaps I was wrong, but I thought she raised her head to listen.
"Look at this hand," he was saying. "Regular pianola: you could play it with your feet."
"He's a dear, isn't he?" Alison said unexpectedly. "No matter how depressed and downhearted I am, I always cheer up when I see Richey."
"He's more than that," I returned warmly. "He is the most honorable fellow I know. If he wasn't so much that way, he would have a career before him. He wanted to put on the doors of our offices, Blakeley and McKnight, P. B. H., which is Poor But Honest."
From my comparative poverty to the wealth of the girl beside me was a single mental leap. From that wealth to the grandfather who was responsible for it was another.
"I wonder if you know that I had been to Pittsburg to see your grandfather when I met you?" I said.
"You?" She was surprised.
"Yes. And you remember the alligator bag that I told you was exchanged for the one you cut off my arm?" She nodded expectantly. "Well, in that valise were the forged Andy Bronson notes, and Mr. Gilmore's deposition that they were forged."
She was on her feet in an instant. "In that bag!" she cried. "Oh, why didn't you tell me that before? Oh, it's so ridiculous, so—so hopeless. Why, I could—"
She stopped suddenly and sat down again. "I do not know that I am sorry, after all," she said after a pause. "Mr. Bronson was a friend of my father's. I—I suppose it was a bad thing for you, losing the papers?"
"Well, it was not a good thing," I conceded. "While we are on the subject of losing things, do you remember—do you know that I still have your gold purse?"
She did not reply at once. The shadow of a column was over her face, but I guessed that she was staring at me.
"You have it!" She almost whispered.
"I picked it up in the street car," I said, with a cheerfulness I did not feel. "It looks like a very opulent little purse."
Why didn't she speak about the necklace? For just a careless word to make me sane again!
"You!" she repeated, horror-stricken. And then I produced the purse and held it out on my palm. "I should have sent it to you before, I suppose, but, as you know, I have been laid up since the wreck."
We both saw McKnight at the same moment. He had pulled the curtains aside and was standing looking out at us. The tableau of give and take was unmistakable; the gold purse, her outstretched hand, my own attitude. It was over in a second; then he came out and lounged on the balcony railing.
"They're mad at me in there," he said airily, "so I came out. I suppose the reason they call it bridge is because so many people get cross over it."
The heat broke up the card group soon after, and they all came out for the night breeze. I had no more words alone with Alison.
I went back to the Incubator for the night. We said almost nothing on the way home; there was a constraint between us for the first time that I could remember. It was too early for bed, and so we smoked in the living-room and tried to talk of trivial things. After a time even those failed, and we sat silent. It was McKnight who finally broached the subject.
&nbs
p; "And so she wasn't at Seal Harbor at all."
"No."
"Do you know where she was, Lollie?"
"Somewhere near Cresson."
"And that was the purse—her purse—with the broken necklace in it?"
"Yes, it was. You understand, don't you, Rich, that, having given her my word, I couldn't tell you?"
"I understand a lot of things," he said, without bitterness.
We sat for some time and smoked. Then Richey got up and stretched himself. "I'm off to bed, old man," he said. "Need any help with that game arm of yours?"
"No, thanks," I returned.
I heard him go into his room and lock the door. It was a bad hour for me. The first shadow between us, and the shadow of a girl at that.
CHAPTER XVII. AT THE FARM-HOUSE AGAIN
McKnight is always a sympathizer with the early worm. It was late when he appeared. Perhaps, like myself, he had not slept well. But he was apparently cheerful enough, and he made a better breakfast than I did. It was one o'clock before we got to Baltimore. After a half hour's wait we took a local for M-, the station near which the cinematograph picture had been taken.
We passed the scene of the wreck, McKnight with curiosity, I with a sickening sense of horror. Back in the fields was the little farm-house where Alison West and I had intended getting coffee, and winding away from the track, maple trees shading it on each side, was the lane where we had stopped to rest, and where I had—it seemed presumption beyond belief now—where I had tried to comfort her by patting her hand.
We got out at M-, a small place with two or three houses and a general store. The station was a one-roomed affair, with a railed-off place at the end, where a scale, a telegraph instrument and a chair constituted the entire furnishing.
The station agent was a young man with a shrewd face. He stopped hammering a piece of wood over a hole in the floor to ask where we wanted to go.
"We're not going," said McKnight, "we're coming. Have a cigar?"
The agent took it with an inquiring glance, first at it and then at us.
"We want to ask you a few questions," began McKnight, perching himself on the railing and kicking the chair forward for me. "Or, rather, this gentleman does."
"Wait a minute," said the agent, glancing through the window. "There's a hen in that crate choking herself to death."
He was back in a minute, and took up his position near a sawdust-filled box that did duty as a cuspidor.
"Now fire away," he said.
"In the first place," I began, "do you remember the day the Washington Flier was wrecked below here?"
"Do I!" he said. "Did Jonah remember the whale?"
"Were you on the platform here when the first section passed?"
"I was."
"Do you recall seeing a man hanging to the platform of the last car?"
"There was no one hanging there when she passed here," he said with conviction. "I watched her out of sight."
"Did you see anything that morning of a man about my size, carrying a small grip, and wearing dark clothes and a derby hat?" I asked eagerly.
McKnight was trying to look unconcerned, but I was frankly anxious. It was clear that the man had jumped somewhere in the mile of track just beyond.
"Well, yes, I did." The agent cleared his throat. "When the smash came the operator at MX sent word along the wire, both ways. I got it here, and I was pretty near crazy, though I knew it wasn't any fault of mine.
"I was standing on the track looking down, for I couldn't leave the office, when a young fellow with light hair limped up to me and asked me what that smoke was over there.
"'That's what's left of the Washington Flier,' I said, 'and I guess there's souls going up in that smoke.'
"'Do you mean the first section?' he said, getting kind of greenish-yellow.
"'That's what I mean,' I said; 'split to kindling wood because Rafferty, on the second section, didn't want to be late.'
"He put his hand out in front of him, and the satchel fell with a bang.
"'My God!' he said, and dropped right on the track in a heap.
"I got him into the station and he came around, but he kept on groaning something awful. He'd sprained his ankle, and when he got a little better I drove him over in Carter's milk wagon to the Carter place, and I reckon he stayed there a spell."
"That's all, is it?" I asked.
"That's all—or, no, there's something else. About noon that day one of the Carter twins came down with a note from him asking me to send a long-distance message to some one in Washington."
"To whom?" I asked eagerly.
"I reckon I've forgot the name, but the message was that this fellow—Sullivan was his name—was at M-, and if the man had escaped from the wreck would he come to see him."
"He wouldn't have sent that message to me," I said to McKnight, rather crestfallen. "He'd have every object in keeping out of my way."
"There might be reasons," McKnight observed judicially. "He might not have found the papers then."
"Was the name Blakeley?" I asked.
"It might have been—I can't say. But the man wasn't there, and there was a lot of noise. I couldn't hear well. Then in half an hour down came the other twin to say the gentleman was taking on awful and didn't want the message sent."
"He's gone, of course?"
"Yes. Limped down here in about three days and took the noon train for the city."
It seemed a certainty now that our man, having hurt himself somewhat in his jump, had stayed quietly in the farm-house until he was able to travel. But, to be positive, we decided to visit the Carter place.
I gave the station agent a five-dollar bill, which he rolled up with a couple of others and stuck in his pocket. I turned as we got to a bend in the road, and he was looking curiously after us.
It was not until we had climbed the hill and turned onto the road to the Carter place that I realized where we were going. Although we approached it from another direction, I knew the farm-house at once. It was the one where Alison West and I had breakfasted nine days before. With the new restraint between us, I did not tell McKnight. I wondered afterward if he had suspected it. I saw him looking hard at the gate-post which had figured in one of our mysteries, but he asked no questions. Afterward he grew almost taciturn, for him, and let me do most of the talking.
We opened the front gate of the Carter place and went slowly up the walk. Two ragged youngsters, alike even to freckles and squints, were playing in the yard.
"Is your mother around?" I asked.
"In the front room. Walk in," they answered in identical tones.
As we got to the porch we heard voices, and stopped. I knocked, but the people within, engaged in animated, rather one-sided conversation, did not answer.
"'In the front room. Walk in,'" quoted McKnight, and did so.
In the stuffy farm parlor two people were sitting. One, a pleasant-faced woman with a checked apron, rose, somewhat embarrassed, to meet us. She did not know me, and I was thankful. But our attention was riveted on a little man who was sitting before a table, writing busily. It was Hotchkiss!
He got up when he saw us, and had the grace to look uncomfortable.
"Such an interesting case," he said nervously, "I took the liberty—"
"Look here," said McKnight suddenly, "did you make any inquiries at the station?"
"A few," he confessed. "I went to the theater last night—I felt the need of a little relaxation—and the sight of a picture there, a cinematograph affair, started a new line of thought. Probably the same clue brought you gentlemen. I learned a good bit from the station agent."
"The son-of-a-gun," said McKnight. "And you paid him, I suppose?"
"I gave him five dollars," was the apologetic answer. Mrs. Carter, hearing sounds of strife in the yard, went out, and Hotchkiss folded up his papers.
"I think the identity of the man is established," he said. "What number of hat do you wear, Mr. Blakeley?"
"Seven and a quart
er," I replied.
"Well, it's only piling up evidence," he said cheerfully. "On the night of the murder you wore light gray silk underclothing, with the second button of the shirt missing. Your hat had 'L. B.' in gilt letters inside, and there was a very minute hole in the toe of one black sock."
"Hush," McKnight protested. "If word gets to Mrs. Klopton that Mr. Blakeley was wrecked, or robbed, or whatever it was, with a button missing and a hole in one sock, she'll retire to the Old Ladies' Home. I've heard her threaten it."
Mr. Hotchkiss was without a sense of humor. He regarded McKnight gravely and went on:
"I've been up in the room where the man lay while he was unable to get away, and there is nothing there. But I found what may be a possible clue in the dust heap.
"Mrs. Carter tells me that in unpacking his grip the other day she took out of the coat of the pajamas some pieces of a telegram. As I figure it, the pajamas were his own. He probably had them on when he effected the exchange."
I nodded assent. All I had retained of my own clothing was the suit of pajamas I was wearing and my bath-robe.
"Therefore the telegram was his, not yours. I have pieces here, but some are missing. I am not discouraged, however."
He spread out some bits of yellow paper, and we bent over them curiously. It was something like this:
Man with p- Get-
Br-
We spelled it out slowly.
"Now," Hotchkiss announced, "I make it something like this: The 'p.-' is one of two things, pistol—you remember the little pearl-handled affair belonging to the murdered man—or it is pocket-book. I am inclined to the latter view, as the pocket-book had been disturbed and the pistol had not."
I took the piece of paper from the table and scrawled four words on it.
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