CHAPTER XVI

CURRAN’S CRUELTY

PAULINE FULLER was both listless and restless. The quiet, secluded home of Mary Malden was sanctuary indeed, and Pauline ran little or no chance of being discovered there.

But now that she had had time to think matters over, she was not quite sure she had been wise in coming. She had told kind-hearted Mary her whole story, and Mary had sympathized and had coddled her and petted her, all of which was balm to Pauline’s tortured heart.

Now three or four days had passed and the monotony of the place, though restful and soothing, had begun to get on her nerves.

She wondered what Val was doing. What he was thinking of her. How matters were progressing at Valhalla.

“Do you know,” she said to Mary, “sometimes I feel as if I must rush right back there,--I’m so anxious about Val.”

“Better stay where you are,” said the practical Mary. “From what you’ve told me of his ideas about divorce, I should think you’d never dare see him again.”

“Perhaps he’d forgive it all,” said Pauline, hopefully.

“Perhaps he wouldn’t,” returned Mary. “No, my child, you did the most scandalous thing I ever heard of,--to pass yourself off as a girl, when you were a married and divorced woman. I wouldn’t have believed it of you, Polly.”

“I know it was dreadful, but oh, Mary,--I was so young, and I was urged into that marriage against my will. Almost nobody knew anything about it. I was out in California two years, you see, and the whole courtship, engagement, marriage and divorce all occurred within the first year. So, when I did come back to New York, I tried to forget it,--I told no one, not even Auntie,--she would have been so upset. And, you see, the courts gave me back my maiden name,--so I just put that whole year out of my mind,--and strove to forget it. And I did forget it, practically. I know it was wrong to deceive Val, but--he is so dear,--and he is so terribly opposed to divorce. I meant to tell him before we were married, though,--” she broke off, and bowing her head in her hands, she wept silently.

“There, there, dearie,” said the kindly Mary, “never mind now, we’ll think out what’s best to do. But don’t go back to Valhalla,--you’d--you’d be arrested for--for--you know--”

“For the murder of Hugh Curran? But I didn’t kill him, Mary.”

“Thank Heaven for that! Do you know, Polly, this is the first time you’ve said that definitely. Can I believe you, dear?”

“Oh, yes, indeed you can. No, Mary, I was in his room that night, I did take the watch, but I didn’t poison him.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I can’t, dear,--the mere thought of it all upsets me so. Just think, I hadn’t thought of that man for nearly six years,--I mean, thought of him coherently. If ever a suggestion of him came in my mind I resolutely put it away from me. You know, I had no idea that Hugh Curran was Hugh Dwyer.”

“You hadn’t?”

“Oh, no, indeed. I had never heard from or of Hugh Dwyer since I left him at the time of the divorce--”

“Was he very dreadful to you, dear?”

“Awful! Horrible! Don’t ask me about that! The divorce was granted at once,--an absolute decree and all that. Mary, _don’t_!”

“No, I’ll never mention it again. Go on, about this later time.”

“Well, I heard them talking about this author of detective stories,--I never read them myself,--and I heard them say that Hugh Curran had been a Moving Picture actor. But it all meant nothing to me. I never connected that name with the name of Hugh Dwyer,--why should I?”

“Of course not, dearie. And then, Val invited him to the house?”

“Yes,--and it happened that when somebody asked Val what the man looked like, just out of foolishness, Val described him as quite different from the truth.”

“Why did he do that?”

“No reason but as a bit of fooling. Anyway, that made me think of the coming guest as a total stranger, of course, and, Mary, when he came,--and I saw him,--I almost fainted. Truly I did. I was pouring coffee, and let the cup overflow while I struggled to keep my composure. I think I only did keep up because I knew Hugh’s eye was on me, and he would be rejoiced to see me collapse.”

“What a fiend he was!”

“Oh, yes, all of that. He had a diabolical way of tormenting any one, under cover of utmost friendliness. So, first of all, he asked me to walk in the garden with him,--alone. I shouldn’t have gone, but anyway, Val forbade it, and Hugh subsided. Then later, he took a fiendish delight in flinging out allusions that only I could understand. Why, he even asked me straight out if I kept my bureau drawers in order,--that had been a source of disagreement between us when we lived together. He was a most untidy sort of person,--I mean about keeping things in their places. And then,--when I wouldn’t seem to notice anything he said of that sort, he asked if the name ‘Rosalie’ meant anything to anybody present! He thought I’d betray myself then, but I didn’t. Rosalie or Rosy is what he always called me because of my pink cheeks--which I always had then.”

“And which you’ve never had since, you poor darling. Pauline, how you have suffered! Surely you’ve atoned for anything you have ever done.”

“Oh, I hope so,--but Mary, I haven’t done anything wrong--except to keep from Val the knowledge of my former marriage,--and I did that more for his sake than for my own. Truly I did.”

“It was wrong, Pauline,--very wrong. But, go on, tell me the rest of your story.”

“Then, he flashed his watch open once or twice, in such a way that I couldn’t help seeing that my picture was in it. He used to have it there,--I don’t know whether he carried it all these years or not. And,--Mary, the worst of all, was the look of admiration he gave me every chance he could get to do so, unobserved. I could have stood better his hate, his fury, his revenge, even, than those glances of admiration and apparent affection. As we said good-night, he managed to whisper to me, ‘Come to my room at two o’clock.’ Mary, I didn’t dare disobey,--and, too, I felt I had to see him alone,--and learn what his intentions were. If he meant to expose me, I wanted it done all at once,--not by that slow torture. If I could persuade him to keep my secret, I meant to do so. Anyway my relations to Val, my hope of happiness with him, all depended on that man’s attitude in the matter. So,--I went to his room--at two o’clock.”

“I don’t blame you, dear. You had to do it.”

“Yes, I had to. And Mary, the whole trouble was that he had become infatuated with me all over again! He was engaged to another girl, but he told me he didn’t love her,--and he did love me,--and he begged me to come back to him,--said I had grown more beautiful, more dear and sweet, and he wanted me. He said, if he couldn’t have me,--no one else should. He said he would tell Val the whole story, and as he well knew Val’s feelings about divorce, he knew--and I knew,--that would break off our engagement.

“He upbraided me fearfully for deceiving Val,--called me terrible names, and then he would change to a wheedling love-making on his own account. Finally, he threatened that unless I would promise to break with Val and remarry him, he would not only tell the whole story of our marriage, but would compromise me by saying I had come to his room that night without invitation. Oh, he was a devil incarnate. And all the time, suave and urbane as if he were proposing some casual plan. Then he would suddenly break into protestations of passion and love for me,--all of which I knew by heart, and they brought back the old days that I have tried so hard to forget. Mary,--I was ready to kill either him or myself,--and I didn’t care much which.”

“You didn’t do either?”

“I see you can’t believe me,--and I don’t wonder,--now that you know what happened. No, I didn’t kill him,--though I confess there was murder in my heart. And if I had had a weapon, I could have easily brought myself to do it--oh, no, I don’t think I could, either. I’ve crime enough on my shoulders, without adding murder to it.”

“No, Polly, if you didn’t kill him, you’ve no crime to regret. Your deception of Val is wrong,--very wrong,--but not a crime. But Val knows the truth of that, now,--and Pauline, don’t you suppose Val thinks you killed Curran?”

“Maybe he does,--but, Mary, how could I kill him? What with?”

“Why, with the poison,--your choice of a method, as you’ve told me yourself.”

“But I didn’t,” Pauline reiterated. “I became frightened at his wild protestations of love and passion, and I simply ran out of the room. I felt sure that for all his threats he wouldn’t follow me, and so, I grabbed his watch as I fled, with a half-conscious idea of destroying that picture. But when I reached my room, I was trembling so, and so faint from nervous reaction, I hid the watch and fell on the bed where I lay for hours just as I was. It was daybreak before I got up and undressed and really went to bed. Then, Mary,--then imagine next morning, learning that Hugh Dwyer was dead!”

“You were glad?”

“Glad faintly expresses it! I was freed from a dreadful danger, saved from an awful fate. I was so glad I could have sung for very joy. I daresay it was a sort of nervous hysteria, but it was all I could do to preserve a decent calm. I tried not to lie to Val. He asked me straight out if I had ever seen Hugh Curran before he came to the house. And I said ‘No,’ for surely I had never met Hugh Curran before. Hugh Dwyer was my persecutor. And, now, as you say, Mary, Val knows my story, and others know it. I heard enough to know they were going to send a man to Reno to learn the details of Dwyer’s marriage and divorce, and the name of his wife. I knew, too, that that Detective Kinney had found the watch in my room,--with my picture in it--oh, Mary, I couldn’t face Val! Now, I almost wish I had,--maybe he would have stood by me,--maybe I could have convinced him that I didn’t kill Curran.”

“Who do you suppose did, Pauline?”

“I can’t imagine,--nor can I see how it was done. I’ve thought over it so much. How could any one have poisoned that man after I left his room?”

“How long after?”

“A couple of hours, I should judge. The doctors calculated that he died between four and five o’clock in the morning. I should think it a suicide, but that I know he was too eager to live to--to punish me,--or,--to marry me again. Nor can I think of any one who had any motive to kill him. I feel sure now, it must have been some intruder from outside,--maybe through the window,--though they say that was impossible. Oh, dear, I wish you’d believe, Mary, that I didn’t kill him.”

“I do believe it, Pauline,--at least, I’m trying to believe it. But if you had done it, I’d think you were justified,--”

“No, not justified. You may say you could understand my doing it,--as I confess I had the will to do it--oh, Mary, does that make me a murderess? Am I all bad?”

“No, no, dearie, there, there, don’t cry so.... You’re just a normal, true woman,--you love Val, and all these feelings toward that brute who ruined your life are only natural. How did you come to marry him, Pauline?”

“Oh, I was very young,--only seventeen, but younger even than that in my innocence and ignorance. He was a handsome, beguiling chap, and one night he made desperate love to me, and urged me to elope with him. I thought it all very romantic, and I thought I loved him,--and I went.

“We were married at once, by some clergyman friend of his, and all of the honeymoon he was angelic. But soon after, he began to be careless and worthless, and from that on, as I soon found I didn’t really love him, he became cruel, brutal and unbearable. I went to stay with a friend, a nice elderly lady, and she advised me to get a divorce at once. She helped me put it through, and inside of eight months I had been wooed, wedded and divorced. Oh, but I was glad to be free again. Then when I returned to New York, a year later, I kept it a secret, to save myself the gossip that it would have caused. And when I met Val,--and when we came to love each other,--I should have told him all, but for his strange, almost insane hatred of divorce. I meant to tell him, even then, but I’ve put it off because I couldn’t bear to hurt him. And, I’ve worried myself sick over the question of whether to tell him at all or not. One day I would decide to make a clean breast of it all, and then he’d say something about divorce, and I’d find myself utterly unable to open the subject. But I never should have married him without telling.”

“Well, Pauline, I’m your friend, whatever happens. I’m ready to believe you didn’t kill that man, but I couldn’t blame anybody who thinks you did. And, I may as well say that I think if you had killed him, you’d deny it just as you have done.”

Pauline smiled. She felt such a relief at having unburdened her, whole heart to her friend, that she was able to see the absurdity of Mary’s attitude.

Yet was it so absurd? Could friendship go further than to pledge continued friendship even in the face of such uncertainty as was surely in Mary’s mind?

Pauline appreciated this, and flung her arms round Mary while she thanked her for her goodness and love.

“And now,” Mary said, with her usual good sense, “put it all out of your mind for the moment. Go and lie in the hammock and read a foolish novel or go out and pick flowers or get out some sewing,--no, don’t do anything conducive to thought. Go and listen in on the radio.”

“I hate those radio things,” Pauline said, laughing. “To me, they’re the monotonous lingo of a metal mind.”

“Oh, come, now, some of it is real interesting,--and instructive, too. Go and try it, anyway.”

Pauline drifted about, lounged in the hammock, picked some flowers, and honestly endeavored to put her troubles away from her for a time.

“I’m going to the village, in the Ford,” Mary said, later. “Want to go?”

“No,” said Pauline, promptly, “somebody might see me.”

“Fiddlesticks! You can’t live all your life shut up on this farm. Well, all right, but you’ve got to go with me tomorrow, or soon.”

“Very well, we’ll see,” and Pauline waved a good-by after the departing car, and returned to her listless idleness.

At last, in sheer desperation, she turned to the radio outfit, and took up the receivers.

As she had anticipated, she was bored by a soprano solo by a high-strung young girl, and an accordion obbligato by a clever young man.

She was about to disconnect, when she heard the announcement of a lecture on “European Countries Little Known.” The day’s subject turned out to be Portugal. Slightly interested, she listened to the lecturer’s trite and ready-made phrases. And then, he said, in especially clear accents, “The Portuguese are the people!”

Pauline smiled to herself, for that was a phrase she and Val had often used, and to them it meant an appreciation of certain “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” with which Elizabeth Barrett Browning charmed all lovers.

The lecture proceeded, and three times the speaker repeated the short phrase, “The Portuguese are the people.”

Pauline pondered long, after the lecture was over.

Could it be a sort of an omen,--a hint from Fate that Valentine was thinking of her,--perhaps still loving her?

And then, realizing the absurdity of her own thoughts, she put it from her mind. She had no leanings toward the occult, or even toward telepathy or thought transference. And, too, as she said to herself, it wasn’t Val who was doing the lecturing.

But the result of the episode was that Pauline spent many hours at the radio apparatus the next few days. She let herself be bored by the lectures on science, by the children’s stories, by the far from first-class music, and by the rehash of current events. She listened even to the talk on home-making and culinary doings, hoping against hope that something would again remind her of Valentine.

At last she was rewarded. On the second day of her radio interest, there was a talk by one of New York’s most celebrated detectives. Among other things he spoke of the work of the Bureau of Missing Persons. And, she could scarcely believe her ears, but she certainly heard him say, “For example, if an advertisement were worded, ‘Pearline, come back and all will be forgiven,’ it might not succeed in its purpose. But if it said, ‘Pearline, come back, I love you,’ then maybe she would come.”

The lecture, though of serious intent, was in a popular style, and Pauline gasped.

For Pearline was a foolish nickname that Val used in his gayest moments. It had seemed to him a great joke to call the dignified and beautiful Pauline by the silly name.

And as she continued to listen, the lecturer referred again to the supposed advertisement and repeated the whole idea.

Pauline waited till the lecture was over and then went away to her own room to think it out.

She knew little of the way in which radio stuff was “broadcasted,” but she felt almost certain that that bit in an otherwise impersonal lecture couldn’t be mere chance.

If Val had wanted to send her a message, what could he have said more perfect, more poignant, than “Come back,--I love you.”

How it was done, she didn’t know,--but her heart claimed the message, even though her mind refused to believe it was from Valentine Loft.

Though tempted to tell Mary about it, she couldn’t bring herself to do so, but she continued to haunt the radio at every number of its programmes.

“Well, for any one who scorned that thing, you’ve certainly become addicted to it,” Mary said, as Pauline refused to leave the instrument to go for a short drive.

“I’ve learned to like it,” Pauline said, and waved Mary to silence.

Yet only once again did she get anything from it that might have been meant for her.

It was twilight, their early supper was over, for Pauline had insisted that Mary retain her simple ways of living, and though her hostess called to her from the veranda, Pauline replied that she would come out as soon as she had heard the evening concert.

And after two or three uninteresting numbers, a fairly good baritone voice sang a ballad with a simple air, the refrain of which was: “There’s a Valentine a waiting for Pauline.”

No mistake this time! Pauline’s eyes filled with tears and her heart beat fast as she listened to words, homely, but loving and sincere,--each stanza closing with the refrain, “There’s a Valentine a waiting for Pauline.”

Not Pearline this time,--but Pauline, her own name, and Valentine, her waiting lover.

Now, she knew it was intentional, now she knew it was meant for her, and she believed the references to Portuguese and to Pearline were also meant for her.

How it had been done she didn’t know,--but, she assumed Valentine had somehow managed to get in on the radio programmes.

What should she do? She couldn’t doubt that it was his method of trying to find her. She couldn’t doubt that it was his wish that she should return to him, and that he still wanted and loved her.

She went out to the porch and told Mary Malden all about it.

“H’m,” said that astute individual. “Tricky, if you ask me. And I don’t believe your Val did it at all,--I believe it’s the work of those smarty detectives,--they’re trying to find you, and they are tricking you with that stuff. For, Valentine Loft couldn’t get those things into a radio programme himself,--they won’t touch anything personal. But the police could do it, of course.”

Pauline was crestfallen. Suppose it should be the police, pretending to send a message from Val, so that she would by chance hear it, and divulge her hiding place!

The more she thought it over, the more it seemed that Mary must be right, and she would better not follow it up at all.

But after she went to bed that night, she lay long awake thinking. And the more she thought the more she felt she must speak to Val, let the result be what it might.

Hastily donning kimono and slippers, she went noiselessly downstairs to the telephone. She called up Long Distance, and finally succeeded in getting connection with Valhalla. The servant who answered her, went immediately to call Loft.

“Is that you, Val?” she said, timidly.

“Yes, Pauline, darling. I am coming to you. Where are you?”

Now that she had succeeded, she was panic-stricken, but his dear voice reassured her, and she whispered Mary Malden’s name before the receiver fell from her trembling fingers.