Kitabı oku: «Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter», sayfa 5
She paced to and fro, to and fro; nothing would have been harder for her than to remain quiet then. Her eyes wandered often to the tiny bronze clock on the marble above the grate.
Ten minutes; her letter was delivered, was being answered perhaps; – fifteen; how slowly the moments were going! – twenty; what if he should return, too soon? Instinctively she placed her hand upon the pocket holding the little pistol. Twenty-five minutes; what if her messenger should fail her? And that card had clearly stated "office hours three to five." Twenty-six; oh, how slow, how slow! – twenty-seven; had the clock stopped? no; – twenty-eight – nine – half an hour.
Where was Henry?
She felt a giddiness creeping over her; how close the air was. Her nerves were at their utmost tension; another strain upon the sharply strung chords would overcome her. She felt this vaguely. If she should be baffled now! She could take fresh heart, could nerve herself anew, if aid came to her, but if he should come she feared, in her now half frenzied condition, to be alone, she was so strangely nervous, so weak!
How plainly she saw it, the face of Clarence Vaughan. Oh, it was a good face! When she saw it again she could rest. She had not felt it before, but she did need rest sorely.
Thirty-five minutes, – oh, they had been hours to her; weary, weary time!
How many a sad watcher has reckoned the flying moments as creeping hours, while sitting lonely, with heavy eyes, trembling frame, and heart almost bursting with its weight of suspense – waiting.
Forty minutes – and a footstep in the passage! Her heart almost stopped beating. It was Henry.
"I had to wait, as he was busy with a patient," said he, apologetically, handing her the letter she desired.
Madeline tore open the missive with eager fingers, and read:
Miss Madeline W.:
Thank you for your faith in me. I will meet you at the place and time appointed. Do not fail me. Respectfully,
C. Vaughan.
She drew a long breath of relief.
"Thank you, Henry. Now I shall leave this place; promise me that you will not tell your master where I went or how. Will you promise?"
"I will, miss," said the man, earnestly. "Is this all I can do?"
"If you would be my true friend – if I might trust you, Henry – I would ask more of you. But I should ask you to work against your master. He has wronged me cruelly, and I need a friend who can serve me as you can quite easily. I should not command you as a servant, but ask you to aid me as a true friend, for I think your heart is whiter than his."
And Henry was won. Starting forward, he exclaimed:
"He treats me as if I were a dog; and you, as if I were white and a gentleman! Let me be your servant, and I will be very faithful; tell me what I can do."
"Thank you, Henry; I will trust you. To-morrow, at noon, call at Dr. Vaughan's office and he will tell you where you can find me. Then come to me. You can serve me best by remaining with your master, at present; and I will try, after I have left this place, to reward you as you deserve."
"I will obey you, mistress," said the delighted servant. "I shall be glad to serve where I can hear a kind word. And I shall be glad to help you settle accounts with him. I will be there to-morrow, no fear for me."
She turned, and put on her wrappings with a feeling of exultation. He would come soon, smiling and triumphant, and she would not be there! He should fret and wonder, question and search, but when they met again the power should be on her side.
She turned to the waiting servant, saying: "I am ready, Henry."
He opened the door as if for a princess. Before Madeline had lifted her foot from the carpet, her eyes became riveted upon the open doorway.
There, smiling and insouciant, stood Lucian Davlin!
Madeline stood like one in a nightmare, motionless and speechless. Again, and more powerfully, came over her senses that insidious, creeping faintness; that sickening of body and soul together.
It was not the situation alone, hazardous as it certainly was, which filled her with this shuddering terror; it was the feeling that vitality had almost exhausted itself. She suddenly realized the meaning of the awful lethargy that seemed benumbing her faculties. The "last straw" was now weighing her down, and, standing mute and motionless she was putting forth all her will power to comprehend the situation, grasp and master it.
Like a dark stone image Henry stood, his hand upon the open door, his eyes fastened upon the man blocking the way.
Davlin, whose first thought had been that the open door was to welcome his approach, realized in an instant as he gazed upon Madeline, that he was about to be defied. There was no mistaking the expression of the face, so white and set. He elevated his eyebrows in an elaborate display of astonishment.
"Just in time, I should say," removing his hat with mock courtesy, and stepping across the threshold. "Not going out without an escort, my dear? Surely not. Really, I owe a debt of gratitude to my friends down town, for boring me so insufferably, else I should have missed you, I fear."
No answer; no change in the face or attitude of the girl before him.
"Close that door, sir, and take yourself off," he said, turning to Henry.
Remembering her words, "You can serve me best here," Henry bowed with unusual humility, and went out.
"I don't think she is afraid of him," he muttered, as he went down the hall; "anyhow, I won't be far away, in case she needs me."
Lucian Davlin folded his arms with insolent grace, and leaning lazily against the closed door, gazed, with his wicked half smile, upon the pale girl before him.
Thus for a few moments they faced each other, without a word. At length, she broke the silence. Advancing a step, she looked him full in the face and said, in a calm, even tone:
"Open that door, sir, and let me pass."
"Phew – w – w!" he half whistled, half ejaculated, opening wide his insolent eyes. "How she commands us; like a little empress, by Jove! Might the humblest of your adorers be permitted to ask where you were going, most regal lady?"
"Not back to the home I left for the sake of a gambler and roue," she said, bitterly.
"Oh," thought he, "she has just got her ideas awakened on this subject: believed me the soul of honor, and all that. Only a small matter this, after all."
"Don't call hard names, little woman," he said aloud. "I'm not such a very bad man, after all. By the way, I shouldn't have thought it exactly in your line, to order up my servant for examination in my absence."
"I am not indebted to your servant for my knowledge concerning you, sir. I wish to leave this place; stand aside and let me pass."
The red flush had returned to her cheeks, the dangerous sparkle to her eyes; her courage and spirits rose in response to his sneering pleasantries. Her nerves were tempered like steel. He little dreamed of the courage, strength and power she could pit against him.
He dropped one hand carelessly, and inserted it jauntily in his pocket.
"Zounds; but you look like a little tigress," he exclaimed, admiringly. "Really, rage becomes you vastly, but it's wearisome, after all, my dear. So drop high tragedy, like a sensible girl, and tell me what is the meaning of this new freak."
"I will tell you this, sir: I shall leave this place now, and I wish never to see your face again. Where I go is no concern of yours. Why I go, I leave to your own imagination."
"Bravo; what a little actress you would make! But now for a display of my histrionic talents. Leave this place, against my will, you can not; and I wish to see your face often, for many days to come. Where you go I must go, too; and why you go, is because of a prudish scruple that has no place in the world you and I will live in."
"The world you live in is not large enough for me too, Lucian Davlin. And you and I part, now and forever."
"Not so fast, little one," he answered, in his softest, most persuasive tone. "See, I am the same lover you pledged yourself to only yesterday. I adore you the same as then; I desire to make you happy just the same. You have put a deep gulf between yourself and your home; you can not go back; you would go out from here to meet a worse fate, to fall into worse hands. Come, dear, put off that frown."
He made a gesture as if to draw her to him. She sprang away, and placing herself at a distance, looked at him over a broad, low-backed chair, saying:
"Not a step nearer me, sir, and not another word of your sophistry. I will not remain here. Do you understand me? I will not!"
Lucian dragged a chair near the door, and throwing himself lazily into it, surveyed the enraged girl with a look of mingled astonishment, amusement, and annoyance.
"Really, this is rather hard on a fellow's patience, my lady. Not a step nearer the door, my dear; and no more defiance, if you please. You perceive I temper my tragedy with a little politeness," he added, parenthetically. "I will not permit you to leave me; do you hear me? I will not!"
His tone of aggressive mockery was maddening to the desperate girl. It lent her a fresh, last impulse of wild, defiant energy. There was not the shadow of a fear in her mind or heart now. The rush of outraged feeling took full possession of her, and, for a second, deprived her of all power of speech or action. In another instant she stood before him, her eyes blazing with wrath, and in her hand, steadfast and surely aimed, a tiny pistol – his pistol, that he had taught her to load and aim not two short hours before!
He was not a coward, this man; and rage at being thus baffled and placed at a disadvantage by his own weapon, drove all the mockery from his face.
He gave a sudden bound.
There was a flash, a sharp report, and Lucian Davlin reeled for a moment, his right arm hanging helpless and bleeding. Only for a moment, for as the girl sprang past him, he wheeled about, seized her with his strong left arm, and holding her close to him in a vice-like clutch, hissed, while the ghastly paleness caused by the flowing blood overspread his face:
"Little demon! I will kill you before I will lose you now! You – shall – not – esca – "
A deathly faintness overcame him, and he fell heavily; still clasping the girl, now senseless like himself.
Hearing the pistol shot, and almost simultaneously a heavy fall, Henry hurried through the long passage and threw open the door. One glance sufficed, and then he rushed down the stairs in frantic haste.
Meantime, Clarence Vaughan, punctual to the time appointed, had driven rapidly to the spot designated by Madeline. He was about to alight from the carriage, when he drew back suddenly, and sat in the shadow as a man passed up the street.
It was Lucian Davlin, and he entered the building bearing the number Madeline had given in her note.
Instantly Vaughan comprehended the situation. She had sent for aid in this man's absence, and his return might frustrate her plans. Pondering upon the best course to pursue, he descended from the carriage, and paced the length of the block. Turning in his promenade, his ear was greeted by a pistol shot. Could it come from that building? It sounded from there certainly. It was now five minutes past the time appointed; could it be there was foul play? He paused at the foot of the stairs, irresolute.
Suddenly there was a rush of feet, and Henry came flying down, the whites of his eyes looking as if they would never resume their natural proportions. Clarence intercepted the man as he essayed to pass, evidently without having seen him.
"Oh, sir! – Oh, doctor, come right up stairs, quick, sir," he exclaimed.
"Was that shot from here, my man?" inquired Doctor Vaughan, as he followed up the stairs.
"Yes, sir," hurrying on.
"Any people in the building besides your master and the lady?"
"No, sir; not at this time. This way, sir."
He threw open the door and stepped back. Entering the room, this is what Clarence Vaughan saw:
Lying upon the floor in a pool of blood, the splendid form of Lucian Davlin, one arm dripping the red life fluid, the other clasping close the form of a beautiful girl. His eyes were closed and his face pallid as the dead. The eyes of the girl were staring wide and set, her face expressing unutterable fear and horror, every muscle rigid as if in a struggle still. One hand was clenched, and thrown out as if to ward off that death-like grasp, while the other clutched a pistol, still warm and smelling of powder.
It was the work of a moment to stop the flow of blood, and restore the wounded man to consciousness. But first he had removed the insensible girl from Davlin's grasp, laid her upon a bed in the inner room and, removing the fatal weapon from her hand, instructed Henry how to apply the remedies a skilful surgeon has always about him, especially in the city.
At the first sure symptoms of slowly returning life, Doctor Vaughan summoned Henry to look after his master, whom he left, with rather unprofessional alacrity, to attend to the fair patient in whose welfare he felt so much interest. As he bent over the still unconscious girl, his face was shadowed with troubled thought. She was in no common faint, and feeling fully assured what the result would be, he almost feared to see the first fluttering return of life.
At last a shudder agitated her form, and looking up with just a gleam of recognition, she passed into another swoon, thence to another. Through long weary hours she only opened her eyes to close them, blinded with the vision of unutterable woe; and so the long night wore away.
Dr. Vaughan had given brief, stern orders, in accordance with which Lucian Davlin had entrusted his wound to another surgeon for dressing, and then, still in obedience to orders, had swallowed a soothing potion and betaken himself to other apartments.
Henry had summoned a trusty nurse well known to Clarence Vaughan, to assist him at the bedside of Madeline.
In the gray of morning, pallid and interesting, with his arm in a sling, Lucian reappeared in the sick room. Evidently he had not employed all of the intervening time in slumber, for his course of action seemed to have been fully matured.
"She won't be able to leave here for many days, I should fancy?" he half inquired in a low tone, sinking languidly into a sleepy-hollow, commanding a view of the face of the patient, and the back of the physician.
"Not alive," was the brief but significant answer.
"Not alive! Great heavens, doctor, don't tell me that my miserable accident will cost the little girl her life!"
"Ah! your accident: how was that?" bending over Madeline.
"Why, you see," explained Davlin, "She picked up the pistol, and not being acquainted with the use of fire-arms, desired to investigate under my instructions. Having loaded it, explaining the process by illustration, she, being timid, begged me to put it up. Laughing at her fear, I was about to obey, when moving around carelessly, my hand came in contact with that chair, setting the thing off. The sight of my bleeding arm frightened her so that I saw she was about to faint. As I caught her I myself lost consciousness, and we fell together. But how will she come out, doctor? tell me that; poor little girl!"
"She will come out from this trance soon, to die almost immediately, or to pass through a fever stage that may result fatally later. Her bodily condition is one of unusual prostration from fatigue; and evidently, she has been sustaining some undue excitement for a considerable time."
"Been traveling, and pretty well tired with the journey. That, I suppose, taken with this pistol affair – but tell me, doctor, what she will need, so that I may attend to it immediately."
"If she is living at noon," said Dr. Vaughan, reflectively, "it will be out of the question to remove her from here, without risking her life for weeks to come. If she comes out of this, and you will leave her in my hands, I will, with the aid of this good woman," nodding toward the nurse, "undertake to pull her through. It will be necessary that she have perfect quiet, and sees no face that might in any manner excite her, during her illness and convalescence."
Davlin mused for a few moments before making answer. He did not care to excite remark by calling in unnecessary attendants. Dr. Vaughan he knew by reputation as a skilful physician. As well trust him as another, he thought, and it was no part of his plan to let this girl die if skill could save her.
In answer to his natural inquiry as to how the doctor was so speedily on the spot when needed, Henry had truthfully replied that he knew the medical man by sight, and that, fortunately, he was passing when he ran down to the street for assistance. Davlin was further convinced that he, Henry, knew nothing save that the young lady rang for him to show her out, and he, according to orders, had obeyed.
"Well, sir," Davlin said, at last, "I shall leave the lady and the premises entirely in your hands, as soon as the crisis has passed. Then, as my presence might not prove beneficial, while I carry this arm in a sling, at least, I will run down into the country for a few days. My man, here, is entirely at your disposal. Don't spare any pains to pull her through safely, doctor. I will look in again at noon."
He rose and went softly out of the room, the doctor having answered him only by a nod of assent.
"Zounds, how weak I feel," he ejaculated. "I hope the girl won't die. Anyhow, I have no notion of figuring at a death-bed scene. So I'll just keep myself out of the way until the thing is decided. Then, I'll run down and let Cora coddle me up a bit. I can explain my wounded arm as the result of a little affair at the card-table."
Noon came, and slowly, slowly, stern Death relaxed his grasp upon the miserable girl, for Death, like man, finds no satisfaction in claiming willing victims. Slowly the life fluttered back to her heart; and because Death had yielded her up, and to retain it would be to lose her life, reason forsook her.
Under the watchful care of the skilled nurse, and the ministrations of the young physician, she now lay tossing in the delirium of fever.
Nothing worse to fear, for days at least, reported the doctor. So the afternoon train bore Lucian Davlin away from the city and his victim, to seek repose and diversion in the society of his comrade, Cora.
"She will come out of this now, I think," he muttered. "Then – Oh! I'll tame your proud spirit yet, my lady! I would not give you up now for half a million."
And he meant it.
CHAPTER VIII.
THREADS OF THE FABRIC
What had become of Madeline Payne?
The question went the round of the village, as such questions do. The servants of Oakley fed upon it. They held secret conferences in the kitchen, and grew loud and argumentative when they knew John Arthur was safely out of hearing. They bore themselves with an air of subdued, unobservant melancholy in his presence, and waxed important, mysterious and unsatisfactory, when in converse with the towns folk – as was quite right and proper, for were they not, in the eyes of mystery hunters, objects of curiosity secondary only to their master himself?
The somber-faced old housekeeper gave utterance to a doleful croak or two, and a more doleful prophecy. But after a summons from John Arthur, and a brief interview with him in the closely shut sacredness of his especial den, not even the social intercourse of the kitchen and the inspiration that the prolonged absence of the master always lent to things below stairs, could beguile from her anything beyond the terse statement that "she didn't meddle with her master's affairs," and she "s'posed Miss Madeline knew where she was."
The housemaid, who read novels and was rather fond of Miss Payne, grieved for a very little while, but found in this "visitation of providence," as John Arthur piously termed it, food for romance weaving on her own responsibility. She entertained Peter, the groom, coachman and general factotum, with divers suggestions and suppositions, each more soul harrowing than the last, making of poor Madeline a lay figure upon which she fitted all the catastrophes that had ever befallen her yellow-covered "heroinesses."
The villagers talked. It was all they could do, and their tongues were very busy for a time until, in fact, a fresher sensation arrived. Nurse Hagar was viewed and interviewed; but beyond sincere expression of grief at her disappearance, and the unvarying statement that she had not even the slightest conjecture as to the fate of the lost girl, nothing could be gained from her.
Hagar was somewhat given to rather bluntly spoken opinions of folk who happened to run counter to her notions in regard to prying, or, in fact, her notions on any subject. In the present emergency she became a veritable social hedgehog, and was soon left to solitude and her own devices.
Whatever were Hagar's opinions on the subject, she kept them discreetly locked within her own breast. She had received, at their last interview, a revelation of the depth and force of character which lay dormant in the nature of Madeline; and she believed, even when she grieved most, that the girl would return, and that when she came she would make her advent felt.
John Arthur went to the city "to put the matter in the hands of the detectives," he said. But as he most fervently hoped and wished that he had seen the last of his "stumbling – block," and believed that of her own will she would not return, it is hardly to be supposed that the Secret Service was severely taxed.
Be this as it may, the Summer days passed and he heard nothing of Madeline.
Meantime, the neat little hotel that rejoiced in the name of the Bellair House, displayed on a fresh page of its register the signature of Lucian Davlin once more, and underneath it that of Mrs. C. Torrance.
Mrs. C. Torrance was a blonde young widow, dressed in weeds of most elegant quality and latest style, with just the faintest hint of an approaching season of half mourning.
Mrs. Torrance had now been an inmate of Bellair House some days, and she certainly had no reason to complain that her present outlook was not all that could be desired. Already she had met the object of her little masquerade, and it was charming to see the alacrity with which John Arthur placed himself in the snare set for him by these plotters, and how gracefully he submitted as the cords tightened around him.
Over and over again Davlin thanked his lucky star for having so ordered his goings that, on his previous visit, he had never been brought into immediate contact with John Arthur. Over and again he congratulated himself that his meetings with Madeline had been kept their own secret, for he knew nothing of the watchful, jealous eyes of old Hagar.
On a fine summer morning, or rather "forenoon," for Mrs. Torrance was a luxurious widow, and her "brother," Mr. Davlin, not at all enamored of early rising, – on a fine forenoon, then, the pair sat in the little hotel parlor, partaking of breakfast. They relished it, too, if one might judge from the occasional pretty little ejaculations, expressive of enjoyment and appreciation, that fell from the lips of the widow.
"More cream, monsieur? Oh, but this fruit is delicious! And I believe there is a grand difference in the qualities of city and country cream."
"The difference in the favor of the country living, eh? I say, Co., don't you think your appetite is rather better than is exactly expected, or in order, for a widow in the second stage of her grief?"
Things were moving just now as Mr. Davlin approved, and he felt inclined to be jocular.
Cora laughed merrily. Then holding up a pretty, berry-stained hand, she said, with mock solemnity, "That is the last, my greatly shocked brother. But didn't you inform Mr. Arthur that we should accept of his kind offer to survey the woods and grounds of Oakley in his company, and isn't this the day, and almost the hour?"
"So it is; I had forgotten."
It was not long before the pair were equipped, and sauntering slowly in the direction of the Oakley estate.
Their morning's enterprise was more than rewarded, and the cause of the widow was in a fair way to victory, when, after having politely refused to lunch with Mr. Arthur on that day, and gracefully promised to dine at Oakley on the next day but one, they bade adieu to that flattered and fascinated gentleman, and left him at the entrance of his grounds.
Then they sauntered slowly back, keeping to the wooded path. Arriving at the fallen tree, the scene of so many interviews between Madeline and Lucian, Cora seated herself on the mossy trunk and announced her determination to rest.
Accordingly her escort threw himself upon the soft grass, and betook himself to his inevitable cigar, while he closed his eyes and allowed the vision of Madeline to occupy the place now usurped by Cora. Very absorbing the vision must have been, for he gave an almost nervous start as Cora's voice broke the stillness:
"Lucian, did you ever see this runaway daughter of Mr. Arthur's?"
Lucian started unmistakably now. Then he employed himself in pulling up tufts of the soft grass, pretending not to have heard.
"Lucian!" impatiently.
"Eh, Co., what is it?" affecting a yawn.
"I ask, did you ever see this Madeline Payne, who ran away recently?"
"I? Oh, no. Old fellow always kept her shut up too close, I fancy. They say she was pretty, and you are the first pretty woman I have seen in these parts, Co."
"Well, then, I'm sorry you didn't," quoth Cora, "for from motives of delicacy I really don't care to inquire of others, and I have just curiosity enough to wish to know how she looked."
"Sorry I can't enlighten you, Co. Get it all out of the old fellow after the joyful event."
"Umph! Well, that business prospers, mon brave. We shall win, I think, as usual."
"Yes; and never easier, Co."
"Well, I don't anticipate much trouble in landing our fish. But come along, Lucian, this romantic dell might make you forget luncheon; it can't have that effect on me."
Cora gathered her draperies about her, and prepared to quit the little grove, her companion following half reluctantly.
