Part 3

I sat up very straight in my chair and stared at him for a moment in silence.

“I’m not crazy,” he replied to my glance. “I don’t think I am, Gilly. I’m admitting that the invalid brother may be Vanderdonck, and that Minor may be some place else. I’m even admitting that the invalid brother may be just himself, an honest-to-goodness invalid brother of Miss Kane. But I don’t think so. Everything points to the truth of my idea that Merritt, Vanderdonck, and Minor are one and the same individual, playing a game. And Minor isn’t anxious that his daughter shall discover what that game is, as least not until it is played out. That’s why he wired Miss Shirley and why we were called off. We were getting too ‘warm,’ as the boys say. Of course Miss Minor had no idea that in releasing us she was playing her father’s game.”

He shook his head. “What puzzles me, however, is that invalid brother. If he isn’t Minor, and isn’t Vanderdonck, to accept your idea for a moment, who is he, unless he is just himself?”

“I think he’s Mrs. Jameson,” I said with a grin.

Lavender laughed. “No,” he replied. “She, at least, has nothing to do with this case. She just happens to have disappeared on the same day.

“Well, to continue. Having learned nothing in particular yesterday afternoon, I followed Miss Kane home last night. I wanted to see whom, if anybody, she would meet at her home. She met nobody. There were lights in the place for some time, chiefly upstairs, but after she had closed the door I didn’t have even a second glimpse of Miss Kane. Not a shadow on the blind. Finally darkness fell over the house, and I came home. I’m very much afraid indeed that the invalid brother is not a myth, that he actually exists—if for no other reason than to complicate this case.”

“And you have no idea why Minor is doing all this?”

“Oh, yes, a sort of an idea, Gilly, but it isn’t complete. I don’t understand why Miss Shirley has not known all about it from the beginning. There’s nothing heinous in it that I can see.”

“And now I suppose we shall never know,” I suggested.

“I think we will,” said Lavender. “I think that Minor himself will look us up to see how much we know, and to tell us the rest, so that we will keep our mouths shut.”

However, it came about rather differently, for we had talked barely an hour when again our telephone bell rang and again it was Miss Shirley Minor who called. Lavender’s expression was one of comical relief as he listened to what she had to say.

“Quite right, quite right!” he said. And a minute later, “Yes, I think I can. Can you join us? Then please do. Come at once!”

There was a gleam in his eye when he had hung up the receiver.

“Off again, on again,” he chuckled. “It gets better, Gilly! Miss Minor distrusts her wire. She doesn’t believe her father sent it and she is more alarmed than ever. It seems that the telegram was signed ‘Father,’ instead of ‘Dad,’ and I think the young lady’s point is well taken. If he always signed himself ‘Dad,’ he should have done so this time. It is such slips that betray criminals. Now I know what happened. Minor didn’t send the wire and Miss Kane did, probably unknown to Minor.

“Well, it should be over shortly. Miss Minor asked me if I knew where her father was. She had an idea that I did because I had told her that she would hear from him. I took a chance and said ‘Yes!’ She’s on her way here now.”

I looked startled. “Can you make good on that, Jimmie?” I cautiously asked.

“Well, I can at least bluff Miss Kane,” he replied, “and that is what I propose to do. We’ll drive out with Miss Shirley herself and surprise the actress lady at her tardy breakfast. I think something interesting will develop. It will be dramatic and you had better possess your soul in patience till we get there. I won’t spoil it for you.”

He flung himself into a chair and gave himself over to some deep thinking. “Please don’t talk for a few minutes, Gilly,” he cautioned me.

It was exactly twenty minutes before he sprang to his feet, in which time he had smoked a great many cigarettes. A new gleam was in his eye, and without a word he strode to the telephone. From his pocket he produced a list of numbers, then lifted the receiver. In a moment or two he was talking apparently to a shopkeeper in Elmhurst.

“You remember my asking you yesterday about Miss Kane and her brother?” he queried. “I forgot one thing. Do you often see Mr. Kane, the brother, in the streets?”

He listened eagerly to the reply.

“Thank you, that’s all.”

He swung on me. “Gilly, what do you think the fellow said? He said, ‘No, nor anybody else. He don’t go out. Nobody ever sees him.’”

“Well, that’s natural enough,” I started to reply.

But Lavender was calling another number and asking the same question. Again he turned to me.

“That was a neighbor,” he crowed. “She said, ‘I only saw him once. That was about a week ago. It was getting along toward dark, and I didn’t see him very clear. I guess he’s pretty sick.’ Excuse her grammar, Gilly, but digest her remarks. Don’t they tell you anything? What an ass I was not to have guessed before!”

“I confess—” I began.

“Don’t!” he laughed. “I’ve been as big an idiot as you have. Bless our poor innocent hearts! Why, it means only one thing. This invalid is never seen, and never has been seen, except once by this neighbor—and then at night—for the very good reason that he never existed. Until a week ago, when this neighbor saw him going in, he’d never been there! For three months he had been an invention of Miss Kane’s, to take care of emergencies. She knew that sometime Minor would come, and that when he did he might be seen. She had to provide for that. I’ll bet she moved in at night. She started the fiction somehow or other, right after she moved in, so that if ever Minor came and was seen at a window, his presence would be accounted for; so that if Minor even had to leave in daylight, he could do it without talk. A week ago he came, and for the first time the ‘invalid brother’ was seen, and whoever saw him thought he was the ‘invalid brother.’ And he’s there now, too, keeping out of sight. The place isn’t thickly populated, the houses are pretty far apart, and not many people would be inclined to ask questions. What gossip there has been about the ‘invalid brother’ has come from the shops, where I have no doubt Miss Kane herself began it. The shopkeepers talked as they always do, to any who will listen, and those of their customers who were interested, remembered.”

“Very clever,” I commented.

Lavender agreed heartily, except that he was thinking of Miss Kane’s scheme, and I was thinking of his solution of the problem.

So it came about that an hour and a half after our conversation Lavender and I and Miss Shirley Minor rang a doorbell out in Elmhurst, or at any rate, one of us did, and directed a startled maid to take our cards to Miss Kane. At the same time Lavender quietly inserted his foot in the door opening. The maid had no alternative. She let us into the sitting room.

And then a curious thing happened. Miss Minor’s eyes fell upon a photograph on the mantel, and a puzzled look spread over her face. Following her glance I saw what must have been a portrait of Miss Kane taken some years before, and I, too, was startled. For it might have been a portrait of Shirley Minor herself.

Lavender was watching us. He smiled very kindly at the girl.

“Yes,” he said, “it is a little older than Miss Minor, of course, but on the whole a very good portrait, don’t you think?”

Shirley Minor turned to him swiftly. “You are going to tell me something very strange,” she said. “Tell me at once! Who is that woman?”

“I believe her to be your mother,” answered Lavender, quietly.

The girl’s hand shook and her face twitched.

“My m-mother,” she stammered, “is dead! I knew her! She died about three years ago, Mr. Lavender!”

“God knows, I have no desire to cause you distress,” replied my friend, “but I firmly believe the original of that portrait to be Miss Sidney Kane, your mother.”

Then the curtains were swept aside, and a tall handsome woman was in the room. Her entrance was theatrical. Her face was the face of Shirley Minor, but older and sadder.

“Yes,” she said, in a harsh strained voice, “he is right. I am Miss Sidney Kane, dear—and your mother. After this, there is nothing to be concealed.”

“Surely there never has been?” suggested Lavender.

“Cyril thought so,” she replied defiantly.

“No doubt,” was Lavender’s reply. “It is too bad.”

“Oh, tell me!” cried Shirley Minor. “Tell me before I scream!”

The older woman crossed the room and laid a hand on her daughter’s head. The gesture was timid and caressing.

“I hope you will love me,” she said simply. “Listen, dear. Your father and I were divorced when you were a tiny baby. There had been trouble. His family objected to his marrying an actress. Shortly afterward, he married again. She was a charming woman, and she treated you as her own daughter and loved you. Your father tried to forget, and as part of the effort he allowed you always to believe that his wife was your mother. I think they were happy; I hope they were. You grew up, the years passed, and at length Mrs. Minor died, as you know. While she lived your father was content. After her death, he had you, and your face was a constant reminder of me. He felt that he had treated me badly and he set about finding me. He did find me, and we loved each other again. We have been married now for more than a year, but until recently we had not been together except for a few days at a time. I kept my position on the stage, and your father, who as a young man had wanted to be an actor, decided to join me there for in that way he could often be with me. He actually became popular as a comedian, to the great surprise of us both.”

She smiled almost brightly for a moment, then her face saddened again.

“But he had to keep it all very quiet, or he thought he did. He hated publicity and he didn’t want the old story raked up. You had been happy with your second mother, and he didn’t want to take that from you. So he became two other men. On the stage he was Charles Merritt, but he never left this city. He played only here in Chicago. And he loved his work so much that he didn’t care to leave it. When his part was over he would quietly dress for the street, leave the theatre, and become for a time Peter Vanderdonck. But Peter Vanderdonck was only a myth. He used the office as a place to hide himself while he became again Cyril Minor.

“I knew that some day he would break under the strain of the situation. I could see it coming, and I made a home ready for him to go to when the time came. A week ago, he became ill—don’t be alarmed; he is better now! Someone had to care for him and I had the best right. I brought him to my home here, but at the same time, of course, both Peter Vanderdonck and Charles Merritt also disappeared. I couldn’t even explain Charles Merritt’s disappearance without betraying Cyril. And so I did nothing.”

Lavender nodded, and took up the tale.

“And, of course, you had no idea that Shirley would come home and miss her father, nor that this old idiot of a landlord would start a search for Vanderdonck. It was all unfortunate in a way, and yet it has ended very happily. But Mr. Minor would have done better to have trusted Shirley entirely from the beginning.”

“As if I would have cared!” cried Miss Minor, springing to her feet. “Where is he?”

The look in her mother’s eyes stopped her. She retraced her steps, and pulling down the older head to her own, kissed the sorrowful eyes.

“I’m sure I shall love you,” she said, “but it is still so strange and new, and, of course—Dad——!”

“Of course!” said Miss Sidney Kane, and with a lift of her finger to us, she led the way upstairs.

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the April 25, 1925 issue of Short Stories magazine.]