CHAPTER XII

WITH MARY MALDEN

BY noon next day no word had been heard of Pauline. Loft called up her New York home, and inquired, guardedly, as to conditions there. He learned that Pauline’s aunt was not well, and was unusually nervous. But as no definite cause was assigned for the lady’s nervousness and as no undue curiosity was shown regarding Miss Fuller’s movements, Loft concluded the quiet household had heard of no cause for alarm.

Without hope of much information he called up various mutual friends and also her lawyer, but he could get no hint or trace of what had become of his lost love.

Valentine Loft had ample opportunity to pursue his vaunted policy of “Do nothing and all will be done,” but somehow, in this crisis the maxim seemed to him to lose its force.

He remained away from the dining-room, lunching from a tray in the library, and to him came Stella Lawrence.

“May I come in, Val, dear?” she said, trailing her scarves through the half-open door.

“I suppose so,” he said, wearily; “but don’t chatter about Pauline,--I can’t stand it.”

“No, I won’t. What are you going to do about her--about finding her, I mean?”

“I’m just going to find her, that’s all. I shall never give up the search and I must succeed, sooner or later.”

“Val,--why do you care for her so? If any one I loved ran away from me, I shouldn’t try to get them back.”

“Stella, didn’t you hear me ask you not to talk of Pauline?”

“No, I won’t. Isn’t Miss Dwyer queer, Val?”

“Yes,--she doesn’t interest me. I’m very sorry for her, but she is a good deal of a nuisance about.”

“And she gossips so. What do you suppose she said about Pauly?”

“I don’t care to hear.”

“Well, she said that Mr. Curran must have corresponded with Pauline without knowing her personally,--and she sent him her picture and all that.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t you care, Val? Don’t you care that Pauline knew that man before, and told you she didn’t? Why, it proves Pauly a naughty fibber--or should one say fibberess?”

Stella trailed across to Loft’s chair, and sat on the arm of it.

“You’d better forget her, Val. I know Pauline,--truly, she isn’t worthy of you. Why,--listen,--I happen to know that she was in Mr. Curran’s room that night,--and that she came out of it at half-past two in the morning.”

Loft reached forward and pushed a bell button.

“Go back to your seat, Stella,” he said, “some one is coming.”

“I don’t care,” and Stella remained on the chair arm.

Loft rose, and in a moment Mrs. Jennings, the housekeeper, appeared.

“Mrs. Jennings,” Loft said, “Miss Lawrence is leaving on the four o’clock train. Send Tessie to help her with her packing and instruct Bates to have the little car ready.”

“Yes, sir,” and Mrs. Jennings went away.

“Val! How dare you? Are you driving me away? Me,--Stella?”

But Valentine Loft apparently neither saw nor heard her. He sat at a desk and began to write some letters.

One more glance at his stony profile and Stella Lawrence knew she had no choice as to her next step.

She went dejectedly from the room, her anger and indignation lost in a deeper feeling of shamed regret.

Meeting Anna in the hall she told her she had had a telegram and had to run away at once,--to another house party.

“And I’m glad to get away from this chamber of horrors,” she added. “Are you staying on?”

“I don’t know.” Anna looked perplexed. “Now Ned says we’ll go and then he stays on. We can go if we like--I mean the authorities won’t keep us now.”

“Then I should think you’d go,” Stella said, lightly, as she trailed off to her room to do her packing.

Valentine Loft sat alone until he heard the car depart with Stella in it. Then he sent a message to the Countess asking an interview.

She came to him.

“We can be alone here,” she said, gently. “You poor boy, I wish I could help you.”

“Perhaps you can, Countess,” he returned. “If so, it will be by utter frankness. Did you see Pauline at all the night Mr. Curran died? I mean after we had all said good-night.”

Countess Galaski looked straight at him.

“You want me to tell you?”

“I do.”

“Well, then, Val, it’s hard to say positively, but I did see a woman in the hall that night,--who looked like Pauline. That’s all I’m prepared to state.”

“Please state all you know. It will help me more, Countess, to know the truth than to have my feelings spared.”

“Then, Valentine, I can only say that while I am ready to state it was Pauline,--I would not be willing to swear to it. You see the difference--? Were it a casual question, I should reply, ‘Yes, it was Pauline.’ But if it is a weighty question, one on which other issues hang, I will not say positively.”

“What made you think it was she?”

“The hall was dimly lighted, and I saw a vague figure of Pauline’s height and general effect. She wore a dark gown and a cape that hung in soft folds. It was such a cape as Pauline possesses, yet that is not proof positive. Tessie could have worn that.”

“Tessie is much of Pauline’s figure.”

“Yes,--but, Val, you asked for the truth,--it wasn’t Tessie. It was a woman of the world. She carried herself as such. She walked stealthily,--but steadily,--and she went in at the door of Pauline’s room.”

“Having come from Hugh Curran’s room?”

“That I can’t say. She came from that direction,--and I heard a door close--that seemed to be his--oh, Valentine, don’t make me tell these things! What do they mean?”

“That’s what I must find out, Countess. They mean strange things, I’ve no doubt,--but they do _not_ mean that Pauline is in any way implicated in the murder of Hugh Curran.”

“Oh, of course not--”

“Don’t say, ‘oh, of course not’!” Loft’s nerves were beginning to give way.

“What shall I say?” The Countess looked bewildered.

“Say you know she couldn’t have been. For you do know it,--no one can help knowing it. Now I want all the information I can get about these circumstances, so I can unearth their explanation. Help me, Countess.”

Beneath her dictatorial manner, Countess Galaski carried a most kind heart. She looked at Loft compassionately, and her sympathy went out to him. But her judgment told her that candor was best.

“Then I will tell you, Valentine, what I had expected to tell no one. Pauline,--for it was Pauline,--carried in her hand something that glittered. Something that might have been that watch. Only for an instant, when a straggling glint of light struck it, did I see it, and then, clasping the thing in her hand, she went into her own room.”

Loft, his face stern and set, listened intently.

“Thank you, Countess,” he said, after a moment’s pause, “for telling me. My only desire in life is to find Pauline and tell her I love her. The watch, the picture in it,--even the distressing circumstances of Hugh Curran’s death, are to me of no consequence compared to the finding of Pauline.”

“And you deem her innocent?”

“Countess, I sent Stella away from the house for an aspersion on Pauline’s innocence. I do not resent your speech,--only because I know you deem her innocent yourself.”

“I do,” she returned, and if she hadn’t before, the implicit confidence Loft felt swayed her own opinion.

“There are some things to be explained,” Loft admitted, “but they can be explained only by Pauline herself. And, so, until I can ask her, I put them aside. I do not speculate on their meaning.”

“But, Val, you must remember, there are outsiders who do not feel as you do about it all. Who are ready to put the worst construction on Pauline’s flight--”

“Of course, Countess, dear. Those are the people I have to circumvent, whose plans I have to frustrate, whose guns I must spike. And I shall do it,--why, I can do anything to save Pauline’s name from the slightest stain,--to find again my darling--my love.”

He almost seemed to forget the Countess’ presence, as his firm, strong mouth, set in determination and a glow of lovelight came into his fine eyes.

“You’re centuries behind your time, Val,” she said, “you belong in the age of chivalry. You’d tourney to the death for the woman you love.”

“Any real man would,” he returned, “though perhaps,” he looked a little whimsical, “he wouldn’t say so much about it.”

“I’m an old woman, Val, dear,--you may confide your feelings to me as much as you like.”

“Oh, I’m not ashamed of my desperate love for Pauly,--but declarations of it naturally bore others. However, Countess, you’re so delightfully understanding, that I let myself go. But, now as to this tale of yours? You know a lot about--things in general,--can you trump up any reason why Pauly should visit Hugh Curran in his room,--or why she should come away with his watch?”

“None, unless,--” she hesitated, “unless she had given him the picture long ago, in foolish flirtation,--and wanted to get it back,--and did so.”

“Not good enough,”--she told me she had never seen him before. I believe her. My theory is more toward her doing it all for somebody else.

“Suppose somebody who had Pauline’s picture--long ago,--gave it to Curran,--and she thought if I learned of it,--say it was Angel,--or some equally dear friend, I’d be angry at him--or maybe it was a woman--”

“Valentine, you’re drivelling. You can’t even voice the theory you’re trying to pick out of the air. Now, stop surmising and mulling over reasons or motives and stick to facts. Where do you think Pauline is?”

“I think she is staying with some dear and true friend, who lives somewhere off the beaten paths, and that friend, sworn to secrecy, will keep Pauly in hiding as long as she wishes to be kept. It’s an easy guess,--where else could she be?”

“I daresay you’re right. How long will she stay there?”

“Until I can get to her,--or get a message to her to come to me.”

“Would she come?”

“If she could get the message. You see, she thinks,--bless her heart,--that I’m upset over the miserable business,--and she must think that the finding of the watch in her desk has been an unpardonable sin. Silly darling! As if she could do an unpardonable thing--to me.”

“Then the question of Pauline’s whereabouts is at a deadlock.” The Countess spoke seriously. “Do you realize what that means?”

“Lots of unpleasantness,--I’m sure. But it does not mean that she will be found--by the authorities, until she gets good and ready. It’ll be all I can do to find her.”

He sighed.

“How are you going to set about it?”

“Haven’t the slightest idea,--yet. But an inspiration will come to me before long. You see, she’s not in the vicinity of New York City at all. She’s up in northern New York or in New England.”

“Quite an area to search.”

“Yes,” he said, laconically.

And Valentine Loft was right.

In a tiny, elm-shaded New England village, Pauline Fuller was at that moment sitting in a wicker chair on the back veranda of a pleasant country home. And she looked sadly in need of the comfort and consolation of the knowledge of her lover’s faith in her.

“And so you see, Mary,” she was saying, “I never want to see Val again. I couldn’t hope for his forgiveness,--in his eyes it is crime,--nothing less. No power could make him understand my motive,--or see it all as I do. Oh, do you suppose they’ll send out detectives after me,--and all that?”

“Don’t think about it, Pauline. At least, not now. We’ll have to think pretty soon,--a lot,--but today, do rest and try to calm your nerves.”

“I’m not nervous,” Pauline declared, “I’m only wretchedly miserable. Oh, why did I ever do it? I can’t live--Mary, I can’t _live_ without Val!”

“Well, dear, if you get yourself all worked up, you’ll have hysterics and make a lot of trouble for me. Now, get your cape, we’re going for a long ride in the country. And during the ride, you’re not to mention these things. Then we’ll come home, have a nice cosy little dinner, and after that we’ll sit down and thrash out the whole thing. You haven’t told me all yet, you know.”

Mary Malden, an old school friend of Pauline’s mother, was a spinster, and was of the type known as salt of the earth. She had been the first one Pauline thought of in her mad flight, and she had done just exactly what Loft had surmised. She had passed three stations on the road to New York City, had left the train, turned around and retraced her path, going on up, in the region of the Berkshire hills, and had found a welcome in Mary Malden’s heart and home.

The house was a small one, though comfortable, but the heart was one of the largest and kindest God ever made.

At first, Miss Malden would listen to no explanation, no word of trouble,--she only took Pauline in as a mother would take a long lost child.

And now, nearly twenty-four hours of coddling had restored Pauline’s poise physically,--but her mind and soul were more perturbed than ever, and she longed for the time when Mary would listen and advise.

During the drive in Miss Malden’s unpretentious little car, Pauline tried to respond to her kind friend’s efforts at conversation, but it was so difficult that her hostess left her to her own thoughts,--and they were not pleasant ones.

“Why did I ever do it?” she asked herself over and over,--yet could find no answer.

“Lassitude is rather becoming to you, Pauline,” Mary said, at last, in a vain hope to rouse a fleeting interest in her appearance.

“Lassitude isn’t the word,” Pauline tried to smile. “I’m anything but inert. I’ve energy enough--to--to sink a ship.”

“Use it then to pull yourself together. Look here, honey, if you have a nervous collapse, or go into a decline,--or have some sort of foolish psycho-neurasthenia,--or whatever the latest fad is,--I’ll pack you off to a sanitarium. I can’t have invalids about. People in trouble are my hobby, but people who are ill give me the creeps.”

“Not a bad idea, Mary,” Pauline said, “the sanitarium, I mean. Couldn’t you commit me to some nice one where they keep patients in utter seclusion? Tell them I’m a little bit irresponsible, you know,--a trifle unbalanced,--and make them promise to keep it all confidential. It could be done, I’m sure.”

“And it will be done, if you don’t brace up and behave yourself! Moreover, I shan’t stop at a sanitarium, I’ll put you in an out-and-out lunatic asylum--in a straight-jacket!”

“I rather wish you would. Say, in solitary confinement,--then the police couldn’t get at me!”

“The police! Good heavens, girl, is it as bad as that?”

“Yes,” Pauline said, slowly, “as bad as that.”

And when at last they turned homeward, when at last dinner was over and Pauline had told Mary all, all her pitiful story, Miss Malden agreed it was as bad as that.

At Valhalla, matters seemed to be at a standstill.

Detective Kinney had taken on a new and somewhat blustering manner. He dictated to everybody, except to Valentine Loft,--somehow, he couldn’t quite compass that.

Angel Bob resented dictation.

“Make him stop, Val,” he said, after a few days of it; “I won’t be told what to do and what not to do by a whipper-snapper of a detective that can’t detect a single thing!”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything to detect,” Loft said, with an abstracted air. “Except what has become of Pauly, and I’m going to detect that myself.”

“So you’ve said, repeatedly. But she’s been gone five days now, and you’ve made no headway. Can’t you get busy?”

“I’ve laid my plans,--they’re being carried out. They may work, Angel,--and, Lord help me, they may not. If not,--the case is hopeless.”

“Unless Pauline returns of her own accord.”

“She never will. Now, Angel, don’t you stay here any longer than you wish. The police have practically released us all from surveillance,--that is, all except myself--”

“You! Since when have you been under suspicion?”

“Oh, Friend Kinney has trumped up a theory that Pauline stole the watch because it was evidence of a disgraceful past, and that I killed Curran because,--oh, I don’t know why,--to wipe out the same past, I suppose.”

“What rot.”

“What theory isn’t? Can you suggest, Angel, can you _invent_ a sound theory of Hugh Curran’s death? Can you imagine a motive that would fit the case or a method that would fit the facts? The police have really shelved the thing,--though they don’t say so. Miss Dwyer wants to go home and I don’t blame her. The Knoxes want to go,--at least, Anna does. I’m not sure about Ned,--he’s so moody.”

“I say, Val,” Angel looked thoughtful, “you never suspected Ned,--did you?”

“No, I never did. Nor you, nor Roly, nor myself! Perhaps I’m the most likely suspect of the four, though.”

“Guess we’ll have to come back to old Meredith.”

“As likely as anybody, I suppose. But, you didn’t invent a theory.”

“Tell me how a real live murderer got in and out of a locked room and I’ll do the rest of the theory,” Angel retorted, and the subject was dropped.

A little later, Kinney appeared, bristling with excitement and swelling with importance.

“I’ve had a report,--” he began, and paused; “I’d rather make it to you alone, Mr. Loft.”

“Oh, go ahead,” Loft returned, with little show of interest. “Mr. Baldwin is my friend, he may hear whatever you have to tell me.”

“The report is from Reno,” Kinney said, a little sullenly. “Shall I go ahead?”

“From Reno?” Loft cried, startled out of his usual calm by this unexpected disclosure.

“Yes, sir,” Kinney said, satisfied now with the sensation he was creating. “A telegram from the man I sent out there to investigate the circumstances of Mr. Hugh Dwyer’s divorce--some years ago.”

“Mr. Dwyer’s divorce,--has it any bearing on the case?” Loft said.

“I’ll read it to you,--no, you read it yourself.”

He handed over the yellow paper, and Angel noted that it was a long telegram, perhaps a night letter.

Either Valentine Loft read very slowly, or he read the screed several times, for it seemed to both Kinney and Bob that he would never raise his eyes from the typewritten lines.

Watching closely, they saw his eyes return again and again to the top and travel slowly across the lines to the bottom, only to repeat the performance.

“What is it, Val?” Baldwin asked at last, unable to stand it longer.

Loft raised his eyes then and stared at Bob, unseeing.

“Tell me, old chap,” Angel persisted, longing to snatch the paper himself.

Then the two men saw such an expression of agony in the dark eyes as neither had ever before seen in mortal man.

An effort to speak proved futile; Valentine Loft was speechless.

With a sudden nervous jerk he tore the paper across and across, again and again, until it was the tiniest scraps.

“That doesn’t matter,” Kinney said, comfortably, “we can get duplicates from the office. It’s a report copied from the Reno records of Hugh Dwyer’s divorce from his wife, nearly six years ago. His wife, whom he had married about eight months previous, was Miss Pauline Fuller, of New York City. The same lady we are now trying to locate. I hope we shall be able to find her,--for more reasons than one.”