She was stunned by this final blow. Her eyes gazed into vacancy. What she was to do now she did not know. The next day she had to go away into strange lodgings, with hardly any money, without any possibility of her applying again to Rex, without support of any sort. She had never known real poverty, for her “aunt” had always more or less been in funds; and the prospect appalled her. She would face it, however, at all costs, and, the bookbinding failing her, her mind naturally recurred, with a gasp of hope, to the singing.
There was the appointment at East Orange at eight. She looked at the clock; she might have time, though it would mean an instant rush. She would go. True, she had written the agent to say that she would not, and he might have so advised his client. But perhaps he had not had time to do this, since she had written him so late. In any case, there was a chance that she should meet the person in question, and then she could explain. Suddenly she leaped up, hurried on her hat and coat, and ran out of the house. In a few minutes she was at the Hudson Tube, bound for Hoboken and East Orange.
Of course it was a mad thing to leave an unopened letter on the table, but just then poor Winifred was nearly out of her mind.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE CRASH
When Carshaw came, with lightsome step and heart freed from care – for in some respects he was irresponsible as any sane man could be – to visit his beloved Winifred next day, he was met by a frightened and somewhat incoherent Miss Goodman.
“Not been home all night! Surely you can offer some explanation further than that maddening statement?” cried he, when the shock of her news had sent the color from his face and the joy from his eyes.
“Oh, sir, I don’t know what to say. Indeed, I am not to blame.”
Miss Goodman, kind-hearted soul, was more flurried now by Carshaw’s manner than by Winifred’s inexplicable disappearance.
“Blame, my good woman, who is imputing blame?” he blazed at her. “But there’s a hidden purpose, a convincing motive, in her going out and not returning. Give me some clue, some reason. A clear thought now, the right word from you, may save hours of useless search.”
“How can I give any clues?” cried the bewildered landlady. “The dear young creature was crying all day fit to break her heart after the lady called – ”
“The lady! What lady?”
“Your mother, sir. Didn’t she tell you? Mrs. Carshaw was here the day before yesterday, and she must have spoken very cruelly to Winifred to make her so downcast for hours. I was that sorry for her – ”
Now, Carshaw had the rare faculty – rare, that is, in men of a happy-go-lucky temperament – of becoming a human iceberg in moments of danger or difficulty. The blank absurdity of Miss Goodman’s implied assertion that Winifred had run away – though, indeed, running away was uppermost in the girl’s thoughts – had roused him to fiery wrath.
But the haphazard mention of his mother’s visit, the coincidence of Winifred’s unexpectedly strange behavior and equally unexpected transition to a wildly declared love, revealed some of the hidden sources of events, and over the volcano of his soul he imposed a layer of ice. He even smiled pleasantly as he begged Miss Goodman to dry her eyes and be seated.
“We are at loggerheads, you see,” he said, almost cheerfully. “Just let us sit down and have a quiet talk. Tell me everything you know, and in the order in which things happened. Tell me facts, and if you are guessing at probabilities, tell me you are guessing. Then we shall soon unravel the tangled threads.”
Thus reassured, Miss Goodman took him through the records of the past forty-eight hours, so far as she knew them. After the first few words he required no explanations of his mother’s presence in that middle-class section of Manhattan. She had gone there in her stately limousine to awe and bewilder a poor little girl – to frighten an innocent out of loving her son and thus endangering her own grandiose projects for his future.
It was pardonable, perhaps, from a worldly woman’s point of view. That there were other aspects of it she should soon see, with a certain definiteness, the cold outlines of which already made his mouth stern, and sent little lines to wrinkle his forehead. He had spared her hitherto – had hoped to keep on sparing her – yet she had not spared Winifred! But who had prompted her to this heartless deed? He loved his mother. Her faults were those of society, her virtues were her own. She had lived too long in an atmosphere of artificiality not to have lost much of the fine American womanliness that was her birthright. That could be cured – he alone knew how. The puzzling query, for a little while, was the identity of the cruel, calculating, ruthless enemy who struck by her hand.
There was less light shed on Winifred’s own behavior. He recalled her words: “You want to know if I love you – yes, yes – I want you to stay a long time this afternoon – don’t ask me why I told you that awful fib – ”
And then her confession to Miss Goodman: “I am going away to-morrow – for always, I’m afraid.”
What did that portend? Ah, yes; she was going to some place where he could not find her, to bury herself away from his love and because of her love for him. It was no new idea in woman’s heart, this. For long ages in India sorrowing wives burned themselves to death on the funeral pyres of their lords. Poor Winifred only reversed the method of the sacrifice – its result would be the same.
“But ‘to-morrow’ – to-day, that is. You are quite sure of her words?” he persisted.
“Oh, yes, sir; quite sure. Besides she has left her clothes and letters, and little knick-knacks of jewelry. Would you care to see them?”
For an instant he hesitated, for he was a man of refinement, and he hated the necessity of prying into the little secrets of his dear one. Then he agreed, and Miss Goodman took him from her own sitting-room to that tenanted by Winifred. Her presence seemed to linger in the air. His eyes traveled to the chair from which she rose with that glad crooning cry when he came to her so few hours earlier.
On the table lay her tiny writing-case. In it, unopened, and hidden by the discouraging missive from the bookbinder’s, rested the note from the dramatic agent, with the thrice-important clue of its plain statement: “I have made no appointment for you at any house near East Orange.”
But Miss Goodman had already thrown open the door which led to Winifred’s bedroom.
“You can see for yourself, sir,” she said, “the room was not occupied last night. Nor that she could be in the house without me knowing it, poor thing. There are her clothes in the wardrobe, and the dressing-table is tidy. She’s extraordinarily neat in her ways, is Miss Bartlett – quite different from the empty-headed creatures girls mostly are nowadays.”
Miss Goodman spoke bitterly. She was fifty, gray-haired, and a hopeless old maid. This point of view sours the appearance of saucy eighteen with the sun shining in its tresses.
Carshaw swallowed something in his throat. The sanctity of this inner room of Winifred’s overwhelmed him. He turned away hastily.
“All right, Miss Goodman,” he said; “we can learn nothing here. Let us go back to your apartment, and I’ll tell you what I want you to do now.”
Passing the writing-desk again he looked more carefully at its contents. A small packet of bills caught his eye. There were the receipts for such simple articles as Winifred had bought with his money. Somehow, the mere act of examining such a list struck him with a sense of profanation. He could not do it.
His eyes glazed. Hardly knowing what the words meant, he glanced through the typed document from the bookbinder. It was obviously a business letter. He committed no breach of the etiquette governing private correspondence by reading it. So great was his delicacy in this respect that he did not even lift the letter from the table, but noted the address and the curt phraseology. Here, then, was a little explanation. He would inquire at that place.
“I want you to telegraph me each morning and evening,” he said to the landlady. “Don’t depend on the phone. If you have news, of course you will give it, but if nothing happens say that there is no news. Here is my address and a five-dollar bill for expenses. Did Miss Bartlett owe you anything?”
“No, sir. She paid me yesterday when she gave me notice.”
“Ah! Kindly retain her rooms. I don’t wish any other person to occupy them.”
“Do you think, sir, she will not come back to-day?”
“I fear so. She is detained by force. She has been misled by some one. I am going now to find out who that some one else is.”
He drove his car, now rejuvenated, with the preoccupied gaze of one who seeks to pierce a dark and troubled future. From the garage he called up the Long Island estate where his hacks and polo ponies were housed for the winter. He gave some instructions which caused the man in charge to blink with astonishment.
“Selling everything, Mr. Carshaw!” he said. “D’ye really mean it?”
“Does my voice sound as if I were joking, Bates?”
“No-no, sir; I can’t say it does. But – ”
“Start on the catalogue now, this evening. I’ll look after you. Mr. Van Hofen wants a good man. Stir yourself, and that place is yours.”
He found his mother at home. She glanced at him as he entered her boudoir. She saw, with her ready tact, that questions as to his state of worry would be useless.
“Will you be dining at home, Rex?” she asked.
“Yes. And you?”
“I – have almost promised to dine en famille with the Towers.”
“Better stop here. We have a lot of things to arrange.”
“Arrange! What sort of things?”
“Business affairs for the most part.”
“Oh, business! Any discussion of – ”
“I said nothing about discussion, mother. For some years past I have been rather careless in my ways. Now I am going to stop all that. A good business maxim is to always choose the word that expresses one’s meaning exactly.”
“Rex, you speak queerly.”
“That shows I’m doing well. Your ears have so long been accustomed to falsity, mother, that the truth sounds strangely.”
“My son, do not be so bitter with me. I have never in my life had other than the best of motives in any thought or action that concerned you.”
He looked at her intently. He read in her words an admission and a defense.
“Let us avoid tragedy, mother, at least in words. Who sent you to Winifred?”
“Then she has told you?”
“She has not told me. Women are either angels or fiends. This harmless little angel has been driven out of her Paradise in the hope that her butterfly wings may be soiled by the rain and mud of Manhattan. Who sent you to her?”
“Senator Meiklejohn,” said Mrs. Carshaw defiantly.
“What, that smug Pharisee! What was his excuse?”
“He said you were the talk of the clubs – that Helen Tower – ”
“She, too! Thank you. I see the drift of things now. It was heartless of you, mother. Did not Winifred’s angel face, twisted into misery by your lies, cause you one pang of remorse?”
Mrs. Carshaw rose unsteadily. Her face was ghastly in its whiteness.
“Rex, spare me, for Heaven’s sake!” she faltered. “I did it for the best. I have suffered more than you know.”
“I am glad to hear it. You have a good nature in its depths, but the canker of society has almost destroyed it. That is why you and I are about to talk business.”
“I am feeling faint. Let matters rest a few hours.”
He strode to the bell and summoned a servant. “Bring some brandy and two glasses,” he said when the man came.
It was an unusual order at that hour. Silently the servant obeyed. Carshaw looked out of the window, while his mother, true to her caste, affected nonchalance before the domestic.
“Now,” said he when they were alone, “drink this. It will steady your nerves.”
She was frightened at last. Her hand shook as it took the proffered glass.
“What has happened?” she asked, with quavering voice. She had never seen her son like this before. There was a hint of inflexible purpose in him that terrified her. When he spoke the new crispness in his voice shocked her ears.
“Mere business, I assure you. Not another word about Winifred. I shall find her, sooner or later, and we shall be married then, at once. But, by queer chance, I have been looking into affairs of late. The manager of our Massachusetts mills tells me that trade is slack. We have been running at a loss for some years. Our machinery is antiquated, and we have not the accumulated reserves to replace it. We are in debt, and our credit begins to be shaky. Think of that, mother – the name of Carshaw pondered over by bank managers and discounters of trade bills!”
“Senator Meiklejohn mentioned this vaguely,” she admitted.
“Dear me! What an interest he takes in us! I wonder why? But, as a financial magnate, he understands things.”
“Your father always said, Rex, that trade had its cycles – fat years and lean years, you know.”
“Yes. He built up our prosperity by hard work, by spending less than half what he earned, not by living in a town house and gadding about in society. Do you remember, mother, how he used to laugh at your pretty little affectations? I think I own my share of the family brains, though, so I shall act now as he would have acted.”
“Do you wish to goad me into hysteria? What are you driving at?” she shrieked.
“That is the way to reach the heart of the mystery – get at the facts, eh? They’re simple. The business needs three hundred thousand dollars to give it solidity and staying power; then four or five years’ good and economical management will set it right. We have been living at the rate of fifty thousand dollars a year. For some time we have been executing small mortgages to obtain this annual income, expecting the business to clear them. Now the estates must come to the help of the business.”
“In what way?” she gasped.
“They must be mortgaged up to the hilt to pay off the small sums and find the large one. It will take ten years of nursing to relieve them of the burden. Not a penny must come from the mills.”
“How shall we live?” she demanded.
“I have arranged that. Your marriage settlement of two thousand five hundred dollars a year is secured; that is all. How big it seemed in your eyes when you were a bride! How little now, though your real needs are less! I shall take a sufficient salary as assistant manager while I learn the business. It means two thousand dollars a year for housekeeping, and I have calculated that the sale of all our goods will pay our personal debts and leave you and me five thousand each to set up small establishments.”
Mrs. Carshaw flounced into a chair. “You must be quite mad!” she cried.
“No, mother, sane – quite sane – for the first time. Don’t you believe me? Go to your lawyers; the scheme is really theirs. They are good business men, and congratulated me on taking a wise step. So you see, mother, I really cannot afford a fashionable wife.”
“I am – choking!” she gasped. For the moment anger filled her soul.
“Now, be reasonable, there’s a good soul. Five thousand in the bank, twenty-five hundred a year to live on. Why, when you get used to it you will say you were never so happy. What about dinner? Shall we start economizing at once? Let’s pay off half a dozen servants before we sit down to a chop! Eh, tears! Well, they’ll help. Sometimes they’re good for women. Send for me when you are calmer!”
With a look of real pity in his eyes he bent and kissed her forehead. She would have kept him with her, but he went away.
“No,” he said, “no discussion, you remember; and I must fix a whole heap of things before we dine!”
CHAPTER XIX
CLANCY EXPLAINS
Carshaw phoned the Bureau, asking for Clancy or the chief. Both were out.
“Mr. Steingall will be here to-morrow,” said the official in charge. “Mr. Clancy asked me to tell you, if you rang up, that he would be away till Monday next.”
This was Wednesday evening. Carshaw felt that fate was using him ill, for Clancy was the one man with whom he wanted to commune in that hour of agony. He dined with his mother. She, deeming him crazy after a severe attack of calf-love, humored his mood. She was calm now, believing that a visit to the lawyers next day, and her own influence with the mill-manager and the estate superintendent, would soon put a different aspect on affairs.
A telegram came late: “No news.”
He sought Senator Meiklejohn at his apartment, but the fox, scenting hounds, had broken covert.
“The Senator will be in Washington next week,” said the discreet Phillips. “At present, sir, he is not in town.”
Carshaw made no further inquiry; he knew it was useless. In the morning another telegram: “No news!”
He set his teeth, and smilingly agreed to accompany his mother to the lawyers’. She came away in tears. Those serious men strongly approved of her son’s project.
“Rex has all his father’s grit,” said the senior partner. “In a little time you will be convinced that he is acting rightly.”
“I shall be dead!” she snapped.
The lawyer lifted his hands with a deprecating smile. “You have no secrets from me, Mrs. Carshaw,” he said. “You are ten years my junior, and insurance actuaries give women longer lives than men when they have attained a certain age.”
Carshaw visited Helen Tower. She was fluttered. By note he had asked for a tête-à-tête interview. But his first words undeceived her.
“Where is Meiklejohn?” he asked.
“Do you mean Senator Meiklejohn?” she corrected him.
“Yes; the man who acted in collusion with you in kidnapping my intended wife.”
“How dare you – ”
“Sit down, Helen; no heroics, please. Or perhaps you would prefer that Ronald should be present?”
“This tone, Rex – to me!” She was crimson with surprise.
“You are right: it is better that Tower should not be here. He might get a worse douche than his plunge into the river. Now, about Meiklejohn? Why did he conspire with you and my mother to carry off Winifred Bartlett?”
“I – don’t know.”
“Surely there was some motive?”
“You are speaking in enigmas. I heard of the girl from you. I have never seen her. If your mother interfered, it was for your good.”
He smiled cynically. The cold, far-away look in his eyes was bitter to her soul, yet he had never looked so handsome, so distinguished, as in this moment when he was ruthlessly telling her that another woman absorbed him utterly.
“What hold has Meiklejohn over you?” he went on.
She simulated tears. “You have no right to address me in that manner,” she protested.
“There is a guilty bond somewhere, and I shall find it out,” he said coldly. “My mother was your catspaw. You, Helen, may have been spiteful, but Meiklejohn – that sleek and smug politician – I cannot understand him. The story went that owing to an accidental likeness to Meiklejohn your husband was nearly killed. His assailant was a man named Voles. Voles was an associate of Rachel Craik, the woman who poses as Winifred’s aunt. That is the line of inquiry. Do you know anything about it?”
“Not a syllable.”
“Then I must appeal to Ronald.”
“Do so. He is as much in the dark as I am.”
“I fancy you are speaking the truth, Helen.”
“Is it manly to come here and insult me?”
“Was it womanly to place these hounds on the track of my poor Winifred? I shall spare no one, Helen. Be warned in time. If you can help me, do so. I may have pity on my friends, I shall have none for my enemies.”
He was gone. Mrs. Tower, biting her lips and clenching her hands in sheer rage, rushed to an escritoire and unlocked it. A letter lay there, a letter from Meiklejohn. It was dated from the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, Atlantic City.
“Dear Mrs. Tower,” it ran, “the Costa Rica cotton concession is almost secure. The President will sign it any day now. But secrecy is more than ever important. Tell none but Jacob. The market must be kept in the dark. He can begin operations quietly. The shares should be at par within a week, and at five in a month. Wire me the one word ‘settled’ when Jacob says he is ready.”
“At five in a month!”
Mrs. Tower was promised ten thousand of those shares. Their nominal value was one dollar. To-day they stood at a few cents. Fifty thousand dollars! What a relief it would be! Threatening dressmakers, impudent racing agents asking for unpaid bets, sneering friends who held her I. O. U.’s for bridge losses, and spoke of asking her husband to settle; all these paid triumphantly, and plenty in hand to battle in the whirlpool for years – it was a stake worth fighting for.
And Meiklejohn? As the price of his help in gaining a concession granted by a new competitor among the cotton-producing States, he would be given five shares to her one. Why did he dread this girl? That was a fruitful affair to probe. But he must be warned. Her lost lover might be troublesome at a critical stage in the affairs of the cotton market.
She wrote a telegram: “Settled, but await letter.” In the letter she gave him some details – not all – of Carshaw’s visit. No woman will ever reveal that she has been discarded by a man whom she boasted was tied to her hat-strings.
Carshaw sought the detective bureau, but Steingall was away now, as well as Clancy. “You’ll be hearing from one of them” was the enigmatic message he was given.
Eating his heart out in misery, he arranged his affairs, received those two daily telegrams from Miss Goodman with their dreadful words, “No news,” and haunted the bookbinder’s, and Meiklejohn’s door hoping to see some of the crew of Winifred’s persecutors. At the bookbinder’s he learned of the visit of the supposed clergyman, whose name, however, did not appear in the lists of any denomination.
At last arrived a telegram from Burlington, Vermont. “Come and see me. Clancy.” Grown wary by experience, Carshaw ascertained first that Clancy was really at Burlington. Then he instructed Miss Goodman to telegraph to him in the north, and quitted New York by the night train.
In the sporting columns of an evening paper he read of the sale of his polo ponies. The scribe regretted the suggested disappearance from the game of “one of the best Number Ones” he had ever seen. The Long Island estate was let already, and Mrs. Carshaw would leave her expensive flat when the lease expired.
Early next day he was greeted by Clancy.
“Glad to see you, Mr. Carshaw,” said the little man. “Been here before? No? Charming town. None of the infernal racket of New York about life in Burlington. Any one who got bitten by that bug here would be afflicted like the Gadarene swine and rush into Lake Champlain. Walk to the hotel? It’s a fine morning, and you’ll get some bully views of the Adirondacks as you climb the hill.”
“Winifred is gone. Hasn’t the Bureau kept you informed?”
Clancy sighed.
“I’ve had Winifred on my mind for days,” he said irritably. “Can’t you forget her for half an hour?”
“She’s gone, I tell you. Spirited away the very day I asked her to marry me.”
“Well, well. Why didn’t you ask her sooner?”
“I had to arrange my affairs. I am poor now. How could I marry Winifred under false pretenses?”
“What, then? Did she love you for your supposed wealth?”
“Mr. Clancy, I am tortured. Why have you brought me here?”
“To stop you from playing Meiklejohn’s game. I hear that you camp outside his apartment-house. You and I are going back to New York this very day, and the Bureau will soon find your Winifred. By the way, how did you happen onto the Senator’s connection with the affair?”
Taking hope, Carshaw told his story. Clancy listened while they breakfasted. Then he unfolded a record of local events.
“The Bureau has known for some time that Senator Meiklejohn’s past offered some rather remarkable problems,” he said, dropping his bantering air and speaking seriously. “We have never ceased making guarded inquiries. I am here now for that very purpose. Some thirty years ago, on the death of his father, he and his brother, Ralph Vane Meiklejohn, inherited an old-established banking business in Vermont. Ralph was a bit of a rake, but local opinion regarded William as a steady-going, domesticated man who would uphold the family traditions. There was no ink on the blotter during upward of ten years, and William was already a candidate for Congress when Ralph was involved in a scandal which caused some talk at the time. The name of a governess in a local house was associated with his, and her name was Bartlett.”
Carshaw glanced at the detective with a quick uneasiness, which Clancy pretended not to notice.
“I have no proof, but absolutely no doubt,” he continued, “that this woman is now known as Rachel Craik. She fell into Ralph Meiklejohn’s clutches then, and has remained his slave ever since. Two years later there was a terrific sensation here. A man named Marchbanks was found lying dead in a lakeside quarry, having fallen or been thrown into it. This quarry was situated near the Meiklejohn house. Mrs. Marchbanks, a ward of Meiklejohn’s father, died in childbirth as the result of shock when she heard of her husband’s death, and inquiry showed that all her money had been swallowed up in loans to her husband for Stock Exchange speculation. Mrs Marchbanks was a noted beauty, and her fortune was estimated at nearly half a million dollars. It was all the more amazing that her husband should have lost such a great sum in reckless gambling, seeing that those who remember him say he was a nice-mannered gentleman of the old type, devoted to his wife, and with a passion for cultivating orchids. Again, why should Mrs. Marchbanks’s bankers and guardians allow her to be ruined by a thoughtless fool?”
Clancy seemed to be asking himself these questions; but Carshaw, so far from New York, and with a mind ever dwelling on Winifred, said impatiently:
“You didn’t bring me here to tell me about some long-forgotten mystery?”
“Ah, quit that hair-trigger business!” snapped Clancy. “You just listen, an’ maybe you’ll hear something interesting. Ralph Vane Meiklejohn left Vermont soon afterward. Twelve years ago a certain Ralph Voles was sentenced to five years in a penitentiary for swindling. Mrs. Marchbanks’s child lived. It was a girl, and baptized as Winifred. She was looked after as a matter of charity by William Meiklejohn, and entrusted to the care of Miss Bartlett, the ex-governess.”
Carshaw was certainly “interested” now.
“Winifred! My Winifred!” he cried, grasping the detective’s shoulder in his excitement.
“Tut, tut!” grinned Clancy. “Guess the story’s beginning to grip. Yes. Winifred is ‘the image of her mother,’ said Voles. She must be ‘taken away from New York.’ Why? Why did this same Ralph vanish from Vermont after her father’s death ‘by accident’? Why does a wealthy and influential Senator join in the plot against her, invoking the aid of your mother and of Mrs. Tower? These are questions to be asked, but not yet. First, you must get back your Winifred, Carshaw, and take care that you keep her when you get her.”
“But how? Tell me how to find her!” came the fierce demand.
“If you jump at me like that I’ll make you stop here another week,” said Clancy. “Man alive, I hate humbug as much as any man; but don’t you see that the Bureau must make sure of its case before it acts? We can’t go before a judge until we have better evidence than the vague hearsay of twenty years ago. But, for goodness’ sake, next time you grab Winifred, rush her to the nearest clergyman and make her Mrs. Carshaw, Jr. That’ll help a lot. Leave me to get the Senator and the rest of the bunch. Now, if you’ll be good, I’ll show you the house where your Winifred was born!”