CHAPTER XXIII

IN THE MAZE

Both the man and the woman were shocked into a sudden appreciation of the world outside that box-like dressing-room by a knock on the door. Miss Mont rose quickly, threw off the garment with which she had lightly covered her shoulders and slipped into a negligee which had been hanging in the corner.

"Who's there?" she asked quietly.

"Why, hullo!" and Sam Marks' broad face showed at the opening door. "Ain't you a long time getting dressed, Miss Mont? I got a taxi at the door---- Hullo!"

He saw Ryder but did not at first recognize him.

"Got a visitor? Scuse me----"

"You may come in," said Miss Mont sternly. "You will recognize this gentleman."

"Gee! Well, I wouldn't, hardly. What's the matter with him?" asked Marks, finally identifying Ryder.

The manager looked anxious, and he kept very close to the door. Miss Mont watched him narrowly; but Ryder scarcely raised his eyes from the floor.

"Mr. Marks," she said, "Mr. Ryder came here---- That is, he says that before we landed from the _Minnequago_ he sent me a letter to my stateroom. I did not receive it. You were hovering around me a good deal just then. Did you happen to see the letter?"

"What--_me_? Why, I----"

"Your face tells the truth if your lips cannot," she interrupted him sharply. "I see that you _did_ get my letter. Where is it?"

Marks looked foolish; yet his pig-like eyes twinkled. He found the hardihood to say:

"Well, I had to get your name on that contract and I wasn't going to risk this guy butting in. Guess you're glad now yourself. See the hand you got tonight? You're going to be a knock-out."

"You scoundrel!" she said bitterly. "You do not know what you have done. You would not understand if I told you--you clod! Can you understand this much? Your stealing that letter----"

"Oh, I say! that's rather thick, you know. I didn't steal it and I didn't destroy it. I just forgot to give it to you after taking it from the steward," and he grinned, bringing forth the still unopened letter from his pocket.

"You dog! Oh, that men like you are allowed to live! You do things for a selfish reason, and then can never undo the harm you have done. Had you killed one or both of us, your act could have been no more brutal."

"God bless us!" gasped Marks looking fairly frightened now. "It ain't as bad as that. I got you on a contract--that's all I wanted. What's the matter with him? Won't he marry you just the same? But you'll have to fulfil the terms of my contract." Then he laughed a sudden sneering laugh.

"Or did somebody butt in on your game? I saw him walking off the dock with another queen."

Miss Mont started. "You saw them together?"

"Sure."

"Saw the woman? What did she look like?"

"I didn't see her face," Sam Marks said, puzzled at her vehemence. "I was only thinkin' just then of the contract in my pocket."

"Oh, you beast!" she exclaimed in disgust. "Go away. I want to talk with Mr. Ryder."

"Oh, very well! You can call names----"

"Go!" she commanded. "Let the taxi wait."

He slunk out of the dressing-room. It is doubtful if Ryder had realized his presence at all.

"Come," Miss Mont said with her hand on the shoulder of the stunned man. "I want you to wait for me outside the door until I dress. Then you shall ride to my hotel with me. Let me help you to understand this--this thing."

He looked at her in a dazed way; but finally he obeyed and went out of the room. He was in a maze and his intellect seemed beclouded.

In ten minutes she rejoined him and led the way to the stage entrance where the car was in waiting. They entered it, she gave the chauffeur the direction, and the jouncing of the taxicab over the nearest car track aroused Ryder to the first audible speech he had made since the truth had sunk into his mind.

"I--I cannot believe it, Miss Mont. Yet it must be so. How two women could look so much alike--act so much alike! Great heavens! She shall suffer for it----"

The woman beside him turned quickly and placed a palm lightly upon his lips. So like was the gesture to Ruth's that Ryder caught his breath and sank back in the seat, wordless again.

"Say nothing like that. Malign no person. Let us learn all the truth before we judge. Tell me--tell me about this other woman--this Ruth."

"She--she has left me," he said sullenly.

"Left you! How--when? No, no! Begin at the beginning. Tell me all. I will not hear a word against her--I must not!--until I know all the story."

This aroused John Ryder. He looked at her curiously. "You are a strange woman," he said. "Do you realize that she impersonated you? That I married her thinking she was you? That--that--God help me! She stole from you my love, for I _do_ love her! I _do_ love her!"

Miss Mont had taken his hand in both of hers. She sat and held it thus, looking straight ahead and saying no word for a long minute. Finally she whispered:

"Tell me all about it--and about her. Keep nothing back, Mr. Ryder. Think of me as though I were your sister. And let that be no empty term, please. For, perhaps----" She did not finish the sentence but added instead: "Tell me all!"

For a few moments Ryder was silent, trying to collect his thoughts in order to tell his story with some clarity. He fully realized that his thoughts were somewhat confused, that the emotions which had been let loose within him had, for the time being, impaired his usual judgment, a little confused his clear, keen mind, which ordinarily decided matters so rapidly and so surely.

Moreover he felt, rather than reasoned out, that in some way Miss Mont held the key to the situation, that if she knew the whole story and knew it accurately, she could be of help. So he sat, pondering, for a few moments, and again came the command:

"Tell me all!"

And Ryder told her. It was a long ride to the hotel uptown where Miss Mont was housed and there was time for him to relate every detail of his experience from the moment he had landed on the dock and met the strange woman who bore Miss Mont's name and looked so much like her.

When the story was finished the woman beside him turned to Ryder with tears in her voice, but with them a note of joy, as well.

"Let me tell you something, Mr. Ryder," she said. "And, believe me, I would stake my life upon it: This woman you have married loves you!"

"Do you believe so?" he whispered. Then, starting up angrily, he began to say harshly: "Love me? How can she and treat me so? To run away with that man, White----"

"Wait. Let us know all first. With the confidence that you should have in your heart of her love for you, you must not say that."

"But they left the hotel; they took the same train."

"Perhaps."

"And what hold has he over her? What is he to her? Is she my wife, or is she the wife of another? And where is she now?"

"Your last question is the most important," Miss Mont said quietly. "That is the first problem we have to solve. 'We,' I say, for I believe I am as much interested in finding Ruth Mont as you."

He looked at her curiously and in surprise. But she made no explanation, saying only:

"As for your first queries, we can only guess at the proper answers for them. And guessing is poor business. Who the man White is I cannot be sure, of course. But I should not be surprised if he were the man she was really waiting for that morning on the dock when the _Minnequago_ got in."

"What?" he gasped.

"Yes. I remember well that there was a passenger named White aboard. He was ill most of the time coming over. His stateroom was near mine. He was being helped ashore by one of the stewards at the time we got Mrs. Gurthrie into the ambulance. You say he signed 'John B. White, Rome,' on the hotel register. It was Rome, Italy, of course. He must have been out of America for years.

"If he was actually Ruth Mont's husband she would not have gone through a marriage ceremony with you, for she believed you to be White."

"What are you saying?" stammered the confused Ryder.

"Yes. That is the explanation, I feel sure. You say she picked out Pinewood for your honeymoon, saying something about the place reminding you both of old times. I should think that would have awakened you to some suspicion of the facts. But a man in love, I suppose, is accountable neither for his deeds nor his words.

"It is plain, Mr. Ryder, that your wife and this White knew each other years ago. Perhaps they had not met since childhood. They have probably corresponded; but she could not have known much about his mature appearance.

"She was waiting for him when you landed from the _Minnequago_. You thought she was I. How much we must look alike!"

"Alike?" he murmured. "You are twins."

"No; we are not twins," she corrected him with confidence. "But there is a reason why we should look and seem so much alike.

"Now, see: You came to her on the dock, and your first question convinced her you were White. From what you tell me it seems that she was not sure of her own mind until she had seen you in the flesh.

"What woman could be sure, when she had not met her lover for years? And," the woman's voice broke, but she went on bravely, "for your comfort, Mr. Ryder, let me tell you that I believe she must have fallen in love with you on that instant of meeting."

John Ryder was silent. He was suddenly confronted with a second riddle, but he had no words in which to answer it. Had this woman, now talking to him so gently and impressively, been drawn toward him, too? What had his impetuosity done to her, as well as to himself? He could no longer selfishly feel that he was the only person injured by this tragedy of errors.

"Then," Miss Mont continued, "the knowledge of what she had done--what a great mistake she had made--came to her with a suddenness that was enough to turn the woman's brain. She had thought herself in love all these years with one man, and had married another!

"Put yourself in her place. Think what an opinion she holds of _you_. If your heart and brain have been seared by your trouble, think how she must feel. She cannot understand why you impersonated White. She is as much in the dark as you were. She must think you deliberately befooled her. She fled--not with White, I stake my life upon it!--but because she was so mentally disturbed that flight seemed the only course left her."

"But the name--'Mrs. John B. White'--written in her own hand upon the trunk labels?" questioned the man.

It was dark in the taxicab. The vehicle had stopped at the side door of Miss Mont's hotel and the chauffeur was impatiently waiting further orders or the alighting of his passengers. Ryder could not see Miss Mont's face.

He could not see her burning blush; he could not know of the tears flooding her eyes; he could only hear the tremor of her voice as she whispered:

"My heart tells me, Mr. Ryder, that Ruth wrote those lines as soon as her trunks arrived at the hotel. It was her new name. She wished to see how it looked when she wrote it on the tags!"

"Do you suppose that--all this you have told me--is the right explanation of this awful mystery?"

"I believe so. If she has come to this city and is hiding from you, it is because she cannot imagine what manner of man would usurp another's name and place as you seem to have done."

The tone that suddenly sounded in Ryder's voice could not be mistaken. "I'll have the whole police force hunting for her in the morning. I'll turn up the whole town to find her. Think of it! The poor child running away from _me_. When I love her so and am so sure she loves me----"

Miss Mont stopped him. "I--I must leave you now," she said in a muffled voice. "No! don't get down. I do not need you. Let me know how you succeed." She was out of the taxicab instantly and without a backward glance ran hastily into the hotel. He did not see her face again; but Ryder knew she was struggling to keep back another tempest of weeping.

He told the chauffeur where to drive him, and rode back downtown. After the storm of emotion of the last two hours his soul was strangely peaceful and he was even light-hearted.

The contrast between the awful uncertainty of the riddle of his wife's actions and the confidence he now felt that Miss Mont's explanation was the only sane and reasonable explanation, was so great that Ruth's disappearance seemed at this moment a small matter indeed.

Money and patience would find her, of course. Of the first he had plenty, thank heaven! The last he must cultivate as need be.

A steeple clock boomed the hour of midnight. The third day of John Ryder's honeymoon was ended.