CHAPTER XVIII

IT IS NO LONGER FARCE

Ruth halted. Her husband, from the other end of the room, saw fear in her face--right down terror!--as she confronted the man who addressed her.

Nor was this surprising. White's eyes glowed unnaturally, his long black hair was disheveled and his appearance altogether wild and uncanny. Ruth fell back from him, and Ryder heard her breath come gaspingly. Yet for the moment Ryder was spellbound and unable to go to her protection.

"What--what do you want of me?" she asked faintly.

"I sent for you. I must talk with you," White returned.

"Sent for me?" she said in a dully puzzled tone. "Oh, no! My husband sent for me." She glanced at the card in her hand. "He--he sent me this card---- So strange----"

She flashed White a suddenly indignant glance. "You have tricked me!" she cried with more force. "You have obtained one of my husband's cards----"

"That is my card, Ruth Mont!" White exclaimed harshly. "It is the card of the man whom you should call 'husband'--who _is_ your husband by right. _And I am that man!_"

A porter suddenly entered the door at John Ryder's back.

"Are you Mr. Ryder, sir?" he said. "I was sent after you. Your trunks have been brought across the inlet and we have them at the door of your suite. Shall we take them inside and carry the empty boxes downstairs, sir?"

How did he do it? How does a man's brain sometimes continue to work and his limbs to move when he is sleep-walking? The subconscious self of John Ryder moved out of the parlor where two human beings were in the throes of a gripping tragedy--a tragedy that might scar his whole future life--and led the porter back to Suite Three.

He opened the door with the key he had obtained at the desk and saw the porters bring in the trunks. He made them understand that they were to let the empty boxes belonging to Ruth remain. Then he tipped them and was left alone.

He sat down in the very chair he had sat in before and held Ruth in his arms, and awaited his wife's return. His wife! God in heaven! Was she his wife? White had claimed her as rightfully belonging to him, and all those suspicious circumstances that had heretofore rankled in John Ryder's mind swam to the surface and offered proof that White's statement was true.

What was this awful riddle that seared John Ryder's soul as though with a branding iron?

He was convinced now that White was not a madman. Wild he might appear; but that he was insane, that his strange speeches were the vaporings of an unbalanced mind, Ryder did not now believe.

Why was he so sure that White was sane? Because Ruth had shown by her manner and by the expression of her countenance that something in White's statement impressed her. Ryder had seen her display this fear twice. He was convinced that White actually was closely associated with her, or had been so in the past.

Yet Ruth was bound to him--Ryder. She was his wife. He had been wedded to her less than twenty-four hours before. Twenty-four hours! It seemed a lifetime of storm and stress.

Ryder had promised to love, to cherish, to support and defend from all harm, to----

"My God!" he exclaimed, leaping up. "Am I a pusillanimous coward--a dastard? I have left her to face that man--whatever or whoever he is--alone."

He started for the door, madly intending to go back to the parlor and face them both. The door of the suite opened and closed swiftly. Ruth came in--the vision of a panting, wild-eyed, pallid-faced woman. She clung to the door knob for a moment, striving to regain her breath, and staring strangely into John Ryder's face. When she spoke, what she said shocked him as nothing else could have done.

"Who are you?" she demanded. "What--what manner of man are you? What did you do this to me for? _Why did you do it?_"

"Do what?" asked Ryder.

"Why did you marry me? Oh!" she cried in despair, wringing her hands, "why did you do this awful thing?"

"Why did I marry you?" repeated the man, dumbfounded. "Because I loved you. I told you I loved you when we were aboard ship, Ruth----"

"Aboard ship! Aboard what ship?"

"The _Minnequago_. Surely you have not forgotten our long talks? You have not forgotten----"

"Am I mad?" cried the woman, throwing her arms wildly above her head. "Oh! I must be mad!" Then she gained sudden control over herself. She thrust her face forward, her eyes blazing into his. "If you are my husband," she whispered, "what is your name?"

"I _am_ your husband," Ryder said sternly. "You were legally married to me yesterday. Here is the certificate which the minister gave you, and which you placed in my hands for safe keeping."

He had dragged out his wallet and handed her the folded document. Her shaking fingers clutched at it and finally got the stiff paper unfolded. She read the names aloud in crescendo:

"'Ruth A. Mont': 'John Ryder'. "The paper slipped from her fingers and fluttered to the floor. "'John Ryder'?" she repeated staring at him. "_I never heard of you before!_"

She burst into tears, a passion of weeping that shook her whole body. For a moment she stood before him, so near that he might have touched her, her face in her trembling hands. The man stood still, dumb and helpless.

Then turning swiftly she ran into the inner room. Ryder, at last awakened, started up. He was frightened by her vehemence, as well as amazed by her words.

He started to follow her. She had shut the door sharply, but the key was not turned in the lock. He put his hand upon the door and hesitated. And so surely is the man lost who hesitates, John Ryder was lost then! There were two courses open to him, and he chose the wrong one.

His hand left the knob, and with the sound of the woman's wild sobbing in his ears he went slowly down the room and out into the corridor. As he came in sight of the parlor door he saw White wildly break from the room and run for the stairway. John Ryder's senses were so dulled that he scarcely saw the man. But behind the departing White appeared in the parlor doorway the figure of Miss Solomons. The expression upon the house detective's face might have alarmed Ryder at another time. She fairly glared at him as he moved past her.

"No, you ain't no crook, Mr. Ryder," he heard the strange girl mutter. "You're just a particular blamed fool! That's what you are."

He managed to get out of the hotel in some way and stumbled along the sandy road to the shore of the inlet where he might be alone. He tramped the edge of the inlet for miles.

His mind was back in the room at the hotel where he had left Ruth. The incident was as clearly etched on his brain as it had been when he stood and heard her amazing declaration.

What she meant he did not know. What he should have done he did not know. That he had done the wrong thing he was not sure. But he had.

_Wrong_? Indeed, his act had been the deadliest wrong possible to the woman. He was stunned, he did not understand; but there was one thing of which in his sane moments he was already convinced: Ruth loved him.

Nothing should have superseded that in his mind. Whatever the riddle was, whatever the skein of mystery in which they two were entangled, he should have remembered that. Instead he had allowed jealousy to step in and becloud the issue. John Ryder had turned his back upon a woman who had shown she loved him deeply. He had deserted her at a time when she needed him as she never had before and probably never would again.

All the pain and passion which followed this event John Ryder could lay to his own act. He brought all that followed upon himself by his own unwisdom. He was thinking only of himself. He was like a hurt animal, desiring to seek some lair wherein to lick its wounds.

He walked on and on. The in-running tide lapped along the strand at his feet, the burden of its murmur being:

"_I never heard of you before!_"

What had Ruth meant by that statement? Was it possible that she was insane? What had that fellow, White, said to her that had thrown her mind into such confusion?

White! At the remembrance of the man of mystery Ryder suddenly spat out an oath. He could explain this thing; and Ryder suddenly registered a vow that White should explain, or he would have his life!

He was a man now enraged to the point of desperation. He started for the hotel with this single idea milling in his brain. More than an hour had elapsed since he had left the Pinewood Inn, but he had taken little note of the lapse of time.

He betrayed his disturbed state of mind when he reached the desk where George presided.

"For mercy's sake, Mr. Ryder! what's happened to you?" demanded the clerk.

"I--I am looking for a man," stammered Ryder. "You know--the fellow who threw a fit here last night. White--John B. White."

"What about him?"

"I want to see him."

"But he's gone, sir."

"Gone? Left the hotel?"

"Yes, sir. He had no heavy baggage, and he got somebody to row him across the inlet. There are several fellows down there taking folks back and forth because of the broken bridge. I guess he intended catching the two o'clock train on the main line. Had your lunch, sir?"

Ryder was not thinking of eating. He walked away from the desk without replying. White was gone. Then who would explain to him----?

Ruth! He started up the stairway. Instinctively he sought Suite Three. Yet when he arrived there he hesitated. Should he go in? Could he face Ruth? What was he to say to her?

At last he turned the knob. The door was unlocked. He stepped into the room. Its condition instantly shocked his mind into activity.

The wardrobe was wide open and was empty. All Ruth's pretty dresses had disappeared and there was evidence of hasty packing. He hurried down the room to her trunks. They were repacked, strapped, and ready for shipment. He stooped to peer at the tags.

The trunks had come to the hotel, of course, marked with Ruth's maiden name and Pinewood. The man's eyes bulged--he uttered a hoarse cry. These lines were crossed out and in their stead and in a woman's upright handwriting he saw: "Mrs. John B. White, New York." Ruth had repacked the boxes ready for their return by the express company.

Ryder turned swiftly to the bed chamber, his heart thumping so that he well nigh choked. The door of the inner room was open. He crept to it and looked in. It was empty.

"She's gone! She's run away!" muttered the horrified man. "What--why----" His words ceased and he dashed for the corridor. He understood at last. She had gone away with White! This was his firm belief.

Right here it would have been well if John Ryder had recalled the observation of Miss Solomons: "You're just a particular blamed fool!"

He did not stop to question the reasonableness of this idea that had shot across his brain and seared it. Ruth had gone. Her trunks were tagged with that man's name--_with her own name_. He saw it all now in a flash. She had married him while yet she was another man's wife. That man was John B. White, and he had followed them to Pinewood Inn and demanded that she return to him.

As Ryder rushed out into the corridor he came upon the chambermaid he had tipped so liberally that morning. His trembling lips formed the instant words:

"Have you seen my wife?"

"Why, Mr. Ryder! I saw her some time ago--going out."

"You mean she was leaving the hotel?"

"She was dressed for traveling--yes, sir. Just as she was dressed when she came last evening. Yes, sir."

Ryder brushed by and started for the stairs. Ruth was attempting to get away with White on that two o'clock train. There might still be time for him to catch it. If ever hell was brewed in a man's heart it was in the heart of John Ryder at this moment.

Somebody spoke his name behind him. A swift glance showed him the motherly face of Mrs. Brack. She seemed desirous of speaking to him, but Ryder could stop for nothing now. He hurried on without a word of reply.

He reached the head of the flight and started down. There were several men at the desk, but Ryder brushed through them and leaned forward to speak confidentially to George.

"Does that train leave Barr, on the main line, at just two o'clock?" he asked the clerk.

"Two-thirteen, Mr. Ryder," answered George.

"Thanks!" Ryder turned to make his way to the door. He was confronted by a stranger who put an authoritative hand upon his breast and pushed him back.

"This is the gentleman, is it?" the stranger said to the clerk. "This is John Ryder?"

"That's my name--yes," snapped Ryder. "I'm in a hurry. I can't talk to you now."

"I'm afraid you'll have to wait till your hurry's over, Mr. Ryder," said the man. "I'm the sheriff's deputy. I understand you are the man who stole two cars of coal from the Lossing Soap Company. I've got to detain you, sir."