Part 62

“Yesterday,” she said, “I did know. I couldn’t sleep all night. I felt so ill, I thought I was going to die; and all the time it was coming back to me. I couldn’t think why I was there in that place. I was frightened--worse than frightened. The nurse kept calling me ‘Mrs. Quelton,’ and I told her I wasn’t Mrs. Quelton--I was Caroline Enderby. She must have told him. He came, he kept looking at me, and saying, ‘You are Muriel Quelton, I tell you!’ Then he sent the nurse away, and he said: ‘If you insist that you are Caroline Enderby, you’re mad, and I’ll send you to an asylum.’ I was--oh, Lexy, I’m not brave!--I was afraid of him. When you came that morning, I didn’t dare to tell you. I hoped you’d find the handkerchief, and know; and then--”

Suddenly she turned and buried her face in the pillow.

“Then I didn’t want you to know!” she sobbed. “Captain Grey--he sat there with me. Lexy! Lexy! I didn’t know there was any one like him in the world! I wanted to stay, then. I thought, if you found out, I’d have to go away--to go home again, or to marry Charles. I’d promised to marry him, Lexy, but I can’t! Not now!”

“Hush, darling!” said Lexy hastily.

This was something Captain Grey had no right to hear, but he did hear it. He was still standing outside the door, motionless.

“He was so kind!” Caroline went on. “And his face--”

“Never mind that!” Lexy interrupted sternly. “Tell me how you got away.”

“When _he_ came back, he found George there--I had to call him George.”

“Yes, I see. Never mind!”

“George went away, and then--he told me. He said his wife had died a few months ago, and that in her will she’d left some jewel--a ruby--”

“An emerald,” corrected Lexy.

“Yes--it was an emerald. She’d left it to her brother, and he--Dr. Quelton--had taken it long ago, and sold it, to get money for his horrible drugs. She never knew that, and he didn’t tell her lawyer that she’d died. I don’t know how he managed, or what he did, but nobody knew. Then there came a letter from her brother, to say that he was coming; and the doctor said--I’ll never forget it:

“‘Consequently, Muriel Quelton had to be here, and she was; and she’ll remain here until her purpose is served!’

“He told me what had happened. He said that as soon as he knew Captain Grey was coming, he began to look for some one to take his poor wife’s place. The captain hadn’t seen his sister since she was a baby, you know, and all he knew was that she was tall and dark. Dr. Quelton said he had arranged for some one to come from a hospital; and then he found me. He drove by just a little while after the accident, and he found the poor driver dead and me unconscious. He found a letter to mother in my purse, and he mailed it afterward. Then he heard another car coming along the road, and he started the engine and sent the taxi--with the dead driver in his seat--crashing down the hill, to run into the other car. He wanted the driver’s death to look like an accident. He didn’t care if the other man were killed. He’s--he’s not human, Lexy! He told me he had never in his life cared for any one except his wife. He told me what a beautiful, wonderful woman she was--and yet he had stolen her emerald when she was dying. Love! He couldn’t love any one!”

But Lexy remembered her last glimpse of Dr. Quelton, lying dead across the coffin of the woman he had robbed. Who would ever know, who was to judge now, what might have been in his warped and utterly solitary heart?

“He told me,” Caroline went on, “that he had never felt any great interest in me. A mediocre mind, he said I had. He told me he had never so much as touched my finger tips. He sat there, talking so calmly! He said he had kept me under the influence of some drug that made my mind suggestible--I think that’s the word. He meant that whoever took that drug would believe anything, accept anything. He had told me I was Muriel Quelton, and I believed I was. Then he told me to dye my hair, and to make up my face with things he gave me. He told me I was ill and tired and growing old, and I felt so. Lexy, he said that even without that, without making the least change in my appearance, no one would have known me, because my _mind_ was changed. He said there was no disguise in the world like that. Was it true, Lexy? Was I old, and--and horrible to every one?”

“No,” Lexy briefly replied.

“Then he went on. He said he had no more of the drug left, and that he’d have to dispose of me. ‘You know you’re very ill,’ he said. ‘The nurse and that young fool of a doctor agree with me. I think you’re likely to grow worse--very much worse--to-night. You’re very likely to die.’ Oh, Lexy! What could I do but agree? I was shut up--so weak and ill--I knew he could so easily give me something to kill me! He said that if I would make a will and sign it as he told me, he would let me go and be--be myself again. I couldn’t help it! And his wife was dead. It couldn’t do her any harm if I signed her name. He wrote it, and I traced it on another sheet of paper. I had to, Lexy! I knew it was wrong, but what else could I possibly do?”

“Never mind, Caroline!” said Lexy. “It didn’t do any harm, dear. And then did he let you go?”

An odd smile came over Caroline’s face.

“Not exactly,” she said. “After I’d signed the will, leaving him the emerald, he sent away the nurse. Then he came out on the balcony, sat down, and began to talk to me. He was so pleasant and kindly! He made plans for my getting away unnoticed, and brought me some sandwiches and a cup of tea. He said I would have to eat a little, or I wouldn’t have strength enough to go. It was getting dark then, and he couldn’t see my face. I pretended to believe him, but I knew all the time. He kept urging me to hurry up, and to eat the sandwiches and drink the tea. I _knew_! I had made the will, and now, of course, I had to die. I tried to think of a way out; and at last, when he saw that I didn’t eat or drink, he spoke out plainly. He said that he had sent the servants away for the afternoon, and that we were alone in the house. He got up; he stood there and looked down at me.

“‘That tea is an easy way out--quite painless and easy,’ he said; ‘but if you won’t take it, there’s another way--not so easy!’

“He had some sort of hypodermic needle; but just then some one began pounding on the door downstairs, and he had to go. He locked the door after him, and he knew I was too weak to move. I tried. I got off the couch, but I fell on the floor beside it; and then Charles came--”

“_Charles?_”

“He climbed up over the balcony. It was too dark to see him, but I heard his voice, whispering, ‘Where are you?’ He found me, lifted me up, and helped me over to the railing. Then we heard Dr. Quelton coming back. There was another man, down in the garden, with a taxi. Charles called out to him, and he stood below there. I heard Dr. Quelton unlock the door, and I was so frightened that I felt strong enough to do anything to get away. Charles helped me over, and the other man caught me. Then I heard Charles shout, ‘Quick! Get her away!’ The other man pushed me into the taxi and started off across the lawn. I fainted, and I didn’t know anything more until I opened my eyes here.”

“But where is he?” cried Lexy. “What happened to him?”

“I don’t know.”

“And you don’t seem to care, either!” said Lexy hotly. “He saved your life, and now--”

She thought of that bloody hand print, and the grass beaten down. The young man who had no caution, no regard for the proprieties, had done the direct and simple thing which appealed to his audacious mind. Perhaps he had been killed in doing it. He would know how to face death in the same straightforward way.

Lexy would be as straightforward as he. She would find him, and she wouldn’t try to think how much she cared about finding him.

She rose.

“I’ll get Mrs. Royce to stay with you, Caroline,” she said.

“But where are you going, Lexy?”

“I’m going to find Charles.”

In the doorway she encountered Captain Grey.

“Do you think she could stand seeing me?” he asked anxiously. “I mean do you--”

But Lexy didn’t even answer.

XXV

After all, Lexy’s search for Charles Houseman was neither difficult nor heroic, except in intention. She found him in the Lymewell Hospital. Joe told her where he was, and Joe took her there.

Houseman himself was rigidly determined not to be heroic. He had refused to go to bed, and Lexy found him in a bare, whitewashed waiting room, where he sat on a bench.

“Just came in to get the hand dressed,” he said. “I’ll go back with you now.”

The doctor advised him not to, but Charles was not very susceptible to advice. He wished to be entirely casual and matter-of-fact, and Lexy tried to humor him. They stood together in the hall of the hospital while a nurse went to get him a bottle of lotion from the dispensary, and he talked in what he intended to be an offhand manner; but Lexy could see that he was in pain, and almost exhausted, and his hair was all on end.

Somehow, that was the thing she couldn’t bear--that his hair should be so ruffled. She could respect his determination to ignore the throbbing anguish of his hand, she would, if he liked, pretend that there was nothing at all tragic or unusual in the night’s adventure; but his hair--

The nurse returned with the bottle, gave him directions for its use, and told him sternly that he must come back the next morning for a dressing.

“All right!” he said impatiently. “Come on, Lexy!”

They got into Joe’s cab together, and off they went.

“What happened to your hand?” inquired Lexy, as if it didn’t much matter.

“Knife through it,” he answered. “You see, I held the old fellow, to give Mrs. Quelton a chance to get away. When I thought it was all right, I gave him a shove backward, and started to climb over the balcony; and he jabbed a knife through my hand. That’s what kept me so long--I couldn’t get it out; and after I did, I--rested for a while. Then I started for Wyngate, and I met Joe coming back to look for me. He said he’d landed Mrs. Quelton all right. So that’s all!”

Lexy was silent for a moment.

“Of course you didn’t know it wasn’t Mrs. Quelton,” she said. “It was Caroline all the time.”

“Caroline?” he cried. “What do you mean? It couldn’t have been Caroline!”

Lexy gave him a very brief, very bare account of Caroline’s narrative.

“Oh!” he said, when she had done; and again there was silence for a time. “Does she still want to go on with the thing--marrying me, I mean?” he asked finally, in a queer, flat tone.

“No,” said Lexy pleasantly. “No--she does not.”

“Oh!” he said again, with undisguised relief. “Well, then--it’s all right, then!”

“You don’t seem to be much surprised,” said Lexy. “Don’t you think it’s the most extraordinary story you ever heard?”

“Well, you see--I’m a bit tired,” he explained. “I haven’t grasped it all yet; only, if she doesn’t want to marry me now, Lexy, dear, will you?”

At last Lexy could do what she had longed to do for the last half hour--she could stroke down his ruffled hair.

And this, as far as they were concerned, was the last act and the fitting climax of the play. They were ready now for the curtain to rise upon another play; but there were other people not so young, or not so sturdy, for whom the first drama was not so readily dismissed.

There was Captain Grey, who was never to see his sister now, never to know if she had really wanted him and needed him. He did not soon forget what had happened at the Tower.

Mrs. Enderby was sent for, and arrived that morning before sunrise, with her husband. She listened to Caroline’s strange story, and made what she could of it. She had not one word of reproach for her daughter.

“We shall not cry over the spilled milk,” she said. “Let us see what is to be done, before the police come.” She had a thoroughly European point of view about the police. “If we are fortunate enough to find an officer with discretion,” she added, “even yet a scandal may be averted.”

For that was still her passionate resolve--that there should be no scandal. She thought and planned with desperate energy; she directed every one as to the part he or she should play; and in the end she succeeded. Nobody knew that Caroline had disappeared, and nobody ever would know. Nobody knew that the so-called Mrs. Quelton was Caroline, and that, too, would never be known. Only let Joe and Mrs. Royce be persuaded to hold their tongues; as for Lexy, Captain Grey, and Houseman, she could of course rely upon them.

So the police were, as they say, baffled. Mr. Houseman told them a tale. He had been alarmed about the lady whom he knew as Mrs. Quelton, and he had climbed up on the balcony, hoping to see her alone; but he had met Dr. Quelton instead, and had been hurt in trying to escape from him.

Captain Grey also had a tale. He, too, had been alarmed about the lady whom he believed to be his sister. He had gone with Miss Moran to call upon her, and they had found the doctor dead, lying across the coffin.

There was an inquest, and Mr. Houseman had a very unpleasant time of it, being the last one who had seen the doctor alive; but there was no really serious suspicion against him. The _post-mortem_ showed that the doctor had died of some unknown poison, at least half an hour after the young man had arrived at the hospital. The verdict was suicide, although the coroner’s jury had its own opinion about the mysterious dark woman who had posed as the doctor’s wife. An autopsy revealed that Mrs. Quelton had died from a natural cause--phthisis of the lungs. In short, as far as could be discovered, there was no murder at all.

This was a disappointment to the public, but there was always the mysterious dark woman. The police instituted a search for her, and there was much about her in the newspapers, but she was never found.

Miss Enderby returned to the city from her visit to Miss Craigie, and friends of the family were interested to learn that while away she had met such a nice young man--a Captain Grey, from India. He had to return to his regiment, but, before he went, Caroline’s engagement to him was announced. Later he was to retire from the army and come back to live in New York.

There was another item of news, of minor importance. That pretty little secretary of Mrs. Enderby’s got married, and the Enderbys were wonderfully kind about it--surprisingly so. It didn’t seem at all like Mrs. Enderby to let the girl be married from her own house, and to give her a smart little car for a wedding present. What is more, Mr. Enderby found a very good position in his office for the young man.

“My dear Sophie,” said one of Mrs. Enderby’s old friends, with the peculiar candor of an old friend, “I’ve never known _you_ to do so much for any one before!”

Mrs. Enderby was standing on the top doorstep of her house, looking after the car in which Lexy and her Charles had driven off for their honeymoon, with Joe, of Wyngate, as their chauffeur.

“So much for her?” she said. “It’s not enough--not half enough!”

And there were actually tears in her eyes as she went back into the house where Caroline was.

THE END

MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE

MARCH, 1926 Vol. LXXXVII NUMBER 2

Dogs Always Know

INTO THIS DIGNIFIED LOVE STORY HUGE CAPTAIN MACGREGOR BARGES WITH A GRAND CARGO OF HUMOR TO MATCH LITTLE LEROY’S DRAMATIC DOG

By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

The lovely little Miss Selby came from Boston, and the large and not unhandsome Mr. Anderson came from New York, and they did not like each other.

Indeed, Miss Selby was not very fond, just then, of any one who did not come from Boston. Sometimes she even went so far as to declare to herself that she did not like any one at all except the members of one certain household in Boston.

It was at night, after she had gone to bed, that she usually made this somewhat narrow-minded declaration, because it was at that time, when she was lying in the dark, that she would most vividly imagine that especial household. Her mother, her grandmother, and her two aunts; they were the kindest, wittiest, most delightful, lovable people who ever breathed, and she compared all other persons with them. And, so compared, Mr. Anderson came out very badly.

As for Mr. Anderson, the reason he did not like Miss Selby was because she obviously did not like him. He was a little sensitive about being liked.

He almost always had been, in the past, and when he saw Miss Selby’s eyes resting on him, with that look which meant that she was mentally comparing him with her mother, her grandmother, and her two aunts, he felt chilled to the bone. Not that he looked chilled; on the contrary, his face grew red, and he fancied that his neck, his ears, and his hands did also.

He justly resented this. It was not his fault that he was sitting at her table. It wasn’t her table, anyhow; purely by luck had she sat alone at it so long. It was the only place left in the dining room, and the landlady told him to sit there.

As he pulled out his chair he said, “Good evening,” with a friendly and unsuspicious smile, and Miss Selby glanced up at him as if she were surprised to hear a human voice issuing from this creature, and bent her head in something probably intended to be a nod.

Naturally, he did not speak again. But, as he sat facing her, and with his back to the room, he could not help his eyes resting upon her from time to time, and it was then that he had encountered that chilly look.

It was very pitiful, he thought, to see one as young as she behaving in such a way--really pitiful. Because she was not unattractive; even a casual glance had informed him of that.

Dark-browed, she was, and dark-eyed; but with hair that was bright and soft and almost blond, and a lovely rose color in her cheeks; the sort of girl a man would admire, if there had been the true womanly gentleness in her aspect. But after that look, it was impossible to admire; he could only pity.

Strange as it may seem, Miss Selby pitied him, and for a somewhat illogical reason. She saw pathos in the man because he was so large--so much too large. His great shoulders towered above the table; knives and forks looked like toys in his lean, brown hands, and his face was invisible, unless she raised her eyes, which she did not intend to do again.

She had seen him, though, as he crossed the room, and she might have thought him not bad looking, if he had not come to sit at her table. It was an honest and alert young face, healthily tanned, with warm, gray eyes, and a crest of wheat-colored hair above his forehead. But when he did sit down at her table, she immediately began her usual comparisons.

She imagined this young man in that sitting room in Boston, and she saw clearly how much too large he was. It was a small room, and her mother and her grandmother and her two aunts were all of a nice, neat, polite size.

“Like a bull in a china shop,” she thought, imagining him among them.

This was unjust. It is never fair to judge bulls by their possible behavior in china shops, anyhow; they seldom go into them, and when seen in the fields, or in bullfights, and so on, they are really noble animals.

But that is what she did think, and as soon as she could finish her dinner, she arose, with another of those almost imperceptible nods, and went away. She went up to her own room, and began to study shorthand.

She did this every evening, with great earnestness, for she was very anxious to get a better position than the one she now had, and she was so far advanced in her study that she could write absolutely anything in shorthand--if you gave her time enough. She could often read what she had written, too.

As for Mr. Anderson, he also went up to his room, but not to study. He had had all he wanted of that at college. Nor did he need to worry about a better position.

The one he had was good, and he was confident that he would have a better one next year, and a still better one the year after that, and so on and on, until he was one of the leading paper manufacturers in the country--if not the leading one. He had just been made assistant superintendent of a paper mill in this little town, and he had come out in the most hopeful and cheerful humor.

The hope and cheer had fled, now. He felt profoundly dejected. He had no friends here, and if other people were like that girl, he never would have any. For all he knew, there might be something repellent in his manner, which his old friends had kindly overlooked.

He began to think sorrowfully of those old friends, of the little flat he had had in New York with two other fellows--such nice fellows--such a nice flat. When you looked out of the window there you saw a façade of other windows, with shaded lamps in them, and the shadows of people passing back and forth, and down below in the street more people, and taxis, and big, quiet, smooth-running private cars, and all the familiar city sounds. And here, outside this window, there were trees--nothing but trees.