Part 80

It was much too early. There he sat, shut up in the snug little sedan, with the snow falling outside, as if he were some unfortunate victim of an enchantment, shut up in a glass cage. And he began to think, now, of what lay immediately before him.

“I’ll have to make some sort of excuse to Mr. Solway for going away,” he thought. “A lie, of course. I wish to Heaven I didn’t have to lie to _him_. Then I’ll get the child, and clear out. I’ll find some sort of home for her. Phyllis Barron will help me.”

The idea dazzled him, the magnificent simplicity of it, the unspeakable relief of just picking up the child and walking off. No explanations, no more lies. He contemplated it in detail. How he would walk into the Hotel Miston, into his comfortable room, and unpack his bags. How he would take the child to Phyllis Barron, and tell her that here was a poor little kid who had nobody in the world. She would know what to do; she would help him; the nightmare would end.

As for Amy--

“I’ll have it out with her to-day!” he thought. “I’m not called upon to give up my entire life for that girl. I’ve done enough, and more than enough.”

The door opened, and out came Mr. Solway. Ross jumped out and opened the door of the car.

“Ha!” said Mr. Solway. “Very sensible--very sensible! You came early, so that you’d have time to drive carefully. Very important--weather like this. Very sensible! But wait a bit! Mr. Dexter’s coming along.” Standing out in the snow, he shouted: “Gayle! Come, now! Come!” to the unresponsive house; then he got into the car.

“I’d like to speak to you for a minute, sir,” said Ross.

Mr. Solway observed how white and strained the young man’s face was, and he spoke to him very kindly.

“Well?” he said. “What is it, Moss?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to leave to-morrow, sir.”

“Leave, eh?”

“Yes, sir. I--it’s--family troubles, sir.”

“Married man?” asked Mr. Solway, in a low voice.

“No, sir,” said Ross. The honest sympathy in the other man’s tone made him sick with shame. “It’s a--a younger sister of mine.”

“Well, my boy,” said Mr. Solway, “I’m sorry, very sorry. You’re the sort of young fellow I like. Family troubles--Too bad! I’m sorry. Come back here any time you like.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Ross.

“Nonsense! Nonsense! You’re the type of young--Ha, Gayle! Step in! Step in. Start her up, Moss!”

Ross did so. He had never been more unhappy in his life than he was now, with his lie successfully accomplished.

“This finishes it!” he thought, as he drove back from the station. “I’m going to see Amy, and have it out with her. I’ll tell her about this Donnelly. I’ll warn her--”

And then go off and leave her to face the consequences alone?

“But, hang it all, she’s not alone!” he cried to himself. “She’s got Solway, and she’s got her Gayle. Why doesn’t she go to him? He’s the natural one to share her troubles.”

Unfortunately, however, he could not help understanding a little why Amy did not want to tell Gayle. He had had another good look at Gayle when he got out of the car at the station, and he was obliged to admit that there was something very uncompromising in that handsome face. Nobody, he thought, would want to tell Gayle Dexter a guilty secret.

“I suppose she doesn’t particularly mind my knowing anything,” he reflected, “because, as far as she’s concerned, I don’t count.”

This idea pleased him as much as it would please any other young fellow of twenty-six. And, combined with his many anxieties, and his hatred and impatience toward his present position, it produced in him a very unchivalrous mood. He brought the car into the garage, and sat down on its step, with his watch in his hand. He gave Amy thirty minutes in which to send him a message.

Of course she didn’t send any. Then he went to the telephone which connected with the house. Gracie’s voice answered him.

“I want to speak to Miss Solway!” he said.

“I’ll see,” said Gracie.

He waited and waited, feeling pretty sure that Amy would not come; that she would, indeed, never speak to him or think of him unless she wanted him to do something for her. But presently, to his surprise, he heard her voice, so very gentle and sweet that he could scarcely recognize it.

“Moss?” she said, as if in wonder.

“Yes,” he said. “Look here! I’d like to--”

“I don’t think I’ll want the car all day,” said she. “Not in this weather.”

“Look here!” he began, again. “I want to speak to you. Now.”

“I shan’t need you at all to-day, Moss,” said she, graciously, and he heard the receiver go up on the hook.

He stood for a moment, looking at the telephone. His dark face had grown quite pale, and there was upon it a peculiar and unpleasant smile.

But he was, in his way, a just man, and not disposed to let his temper master him. He looked at the telephone, and he thought his thoughts for a few moments; then he resolutely put this exasperation out of his mind, and proceeded with his business.

He decided to go and get the child without any further delay. There was no reason for delay, and, to tell the truth, he was vaguely uneasy with her away. He could easily keep her hidden in the garage until the morning, and then get away early. And he wanted her here.

He took off the hated uniform, dressed himself in his customary neat and sober fashion, put his papers and what money he had into his pockets, and set off toward the station, where he knew he could get a taxi.

The beauty which had so enchanted him early in the morning was perishing fast, now. The fields still showed an unbroken expanse of white, but the trees were bare again. The flakes melted as they fell; the roads were a morass of slush, and all the tingle had gone out of the air. It was a desolate, depressing day, now, with a leaden sky. The slush came over the tops of his shoes, his hat brim dripped, his spirits sank, in this melancholy world.

But at least he was alone, and able to go his own way, in his own good time, and that was a relief. He stopped in the town, and bought himself a pipe and a tin of tobacco. He stopped whenever he felt like it, to look at things; and, passing a fruit stand, went in and bought two apples for the little girl.

“Good for children,” he thought, with curious satisfaction.

He reached the station, and saw three or four vacant taxis standing there; he selected one and went up to it, and was just about to give his directions when a hand fell on his shoulder.

“Well!” said a voice--the most unwelcome one he could have heard.

It was Donnelly, grinning broadly.

“Well!” said Ross, in a noncommittal tone.

His brain was working fast. He couldn’t go to the cottage now. He must somehow get rid of this fellow, and he must invent a plausible reason for being here.

“I walked down to get a few things,” he said, “but I guess I won’t try walking back. The roads are too bad.”

“You’re right!” said Donnelly, heartily.

“Wygatt Road!” Ross told the taxi driver, and got into the cab.

“Hold on a minute!” said Donnelly. “I’m going that way, too. I’ll share the cab with you.”

“Look here!” cried Ross.

“Well?” said Donnelly. “I’m looking.”

The unhappy young man did not know what to say. He felt that it would be extremely imprudent to antagonize the man.

“All right,” he said, at last, and Donnelly got in beside him.

The cab set off, splashing through the melted snow--going back again to that infernal garage. Suppose Donnelly hung about all day?

“Where do you want to get out?” he demanded.

“To tell you the truth,” said Donnelly, “I was waiting for you.”

“Waiting! But--”

“I sort of thought you might be coming to the station some time to-day,” said the other, tranquilly, “and I waited. Wanted a little talk with you.”

“What about?”

“Well, it’s this. I told you I was looking for a man called Ives.”

“And I told you I didn’t--”

“Now, hold on a minute! You told me you’d never heard of him. All right. Now, I told you I knew Ives came out to Stamford on Tuesday. That was about all I did know--this morning. But I’ve found out a little more since then.”

“What’s that got to do with me?” asked Ross, with a surly air and a sinking heart.

“That’s just what I don’t know. On Wednesday you came to Mr. Solway’s house. You didn’t bring anything with you, and you haven’t sent for any bag or trunk, or anything like that. Now, hold on! Just wait a minute! You said you’d come from Cren’s Agency, I’m told. But Cren’s Agency told me on the telephone that--Now, hold on! Don’t lose your temper! You can clear this up easy enough. Just show me your license. Haven’t got it with you, I suppose?”

“No!” said Ross.

“_All_ right. You’ve left it in the garage. Very well. That’s where you’re going now, isn’t it? Unless--” He paused. “Unless you’d like to come along with me.”

“Come--where?” asked Ross.

“Why, there’s a little cottage off the Post Road,” said Donnelly. “I’d like to pay a little visit there this morning, and it came into my head that maybe you’d like to come along with me, eh?”

XV

Ross was, by nature, incapable of despair; but he felt something akin to it now. He was so hopelessly in the dark; he did not know what to guard against, what was most dangerous. He remembered Eddy’s warning, not to let any one come “monkeying around” that cottage; but he did not know the reason for that warning. Nor could he think of any way to prevent Donnelly’s going there.

Should he lock the fellow up in the garage until he had warned Eddy? No; that was a plan lacking in subtlety. Certainly it would confirm whatever suspicions Donnelly might have; it might do a great deal more harm than good.

Should he tell Amy, on the chance that she might suggest something? No. The chance of her suggesting anything helpful was very small, and the chance that she would do something reckless and disastrous very great. Better keep Amy out of it.

Then what could he do? The idea came into his head that he might keep Donnelly quiet for a time by boldly asserting that he himself was Ives. But perhaps Donnelly knew that he wasn’t.

“By Heaven, why shouldn’t I tell him the truth?” he thought, in a sort of rage. “Why not tell him I’m James Ross? There’s nothing against me. I’ve done nothing criminal. I don’t even know what’s happened here. I’ll just tell him.”

And then Donnelly would ask him why he had come, and why he was here masquerading as a chauffeur. How could he explain? For it never occurred to him as a possibility that he could ignore Donnelly’s questions.

There was an air of unmistakable authority about the man. Ross had not asked him who he was, and he had no wish in the world to find out, either; simply, he knew that Donnelly was justified in his very inconvenient curiosity, that he had a right to know, and that he probably would know, before long.

“Perhaps I can manage to get away from him,” thought Ross.

That was the thing! Somehow he must sidetrack Donnelly; get him off upon a false scent, while he himself hastened to Eddy. Such a simple and easy thing to do, wasn’t it?

“Well!” said Donnelly. “Do we go back, and have a look at that license of yours--or do we go and pay a little visit to that cottage, eh?”

“I’m going back,” said Ross, curtly.

“Of course,” Donnelly went on, in a mild and reasonable tone, “_I_ know, and you know, that you’re not going to show me any license. What you want is a little time to make up your mind. You’re saying to yourself: ‘I don’t know this fellow. I don’t know what he’s up to. I don’t see any reason why I should trust him with any of my private affairs.’ You’re right. Why should you? You’ve talked to certain other people, and you’ve heard good reasons why you ought to keep quiet--about one or two little things. That’s sensible enough. Why, naturally,” he went on, growing almost indignant in defense of Ross, “naturally an intelligent young man like you isn’t going to tell all he knows to a stranger. Why should you?”

Ross found it difficult to reply to this.

“No,” said Donnelly. “Naturally not. What you say to me is: ‘Put your cards on the table, Donnelly. Let’s hear who you are, and what you know, and what you’re after. Then we can talk.’ That’s what you say. All right. Now, I’ll tell you. I’ll be frank. I’ll admit that when I saw you this morning, I thought you were Ives. You see, I’m frank--not pretending to know it all. I made a mistake. You’re not Ives.”

“Thanks!” said Ross.

“When Ives came out here on Tuesday,” Donnelly proceeded, “he took a taxi. I’ll tell you frankly that I just found that out this morning by a lucky fluke. No credit to me. He went out to this cottage, and there he met somebody.”

“Oh, _that_ was me, I suppose,” said Ross.

“No,” said Donnelly. “It was a woman.”

“Oh, Lord!” thought Ross. “This is--I can’t stand much more of this.”

“Now, I’m not going to pretend I know who that woman was,” Donnelly went on. “I don’t. I haven’t found that out--yet. Not yet.”

“But you will,” thought Ross.

He felt sure of that. He believed that there was no hope now for the guilty ones, and he felt that he was one of the guilty ones. He did not know what had happened at “Day’s End,” but the burden of that guilt lay upon his heart. This man was the agent of destiny, inexorable, in no way to be eluded. He had come to find out, and find out he surely would.

Ross was a young man of remarkable hardihood, though; no one had ever yet been able to bully him, or to intimidate or fluster him. He had precious little hope of success, but he meant to do what he could. If he could only gain a little time, perhaps he might think of a plan, and, in the meanwhile, he would say nothing and admit nothing.

“Now, before we talk,” said Donnelly, “you want to know who I am, and how I came to be mixed up in this business. As soon as you saw me, you said to yourself: ‘Police!’”

Ross winced at the word.

“That was natural. But you made a mistake. I’ll tell you frankly that I was a police detective once, but I’ve left the force. I’m a private citizen, now, same as you are. Got a little business of my own--what you might call a private investigator. Collecting information--jobs like that. Nothing to do with criminal cases.”

He was silent for a moment.

“Nothing to do with criminal cases,” he repeated. “I don’t like ’em. Now, this--”

Again he fell silent.

“We’ll hope this isn’t one,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it. My sister, she’s a widow, and she keeps a rooming house, down on West Twelfth Street. Well, yesterday she came to me with a story that sort of interested me. She told me that about a month ago a young fellow took a room in her house. Quiet young fellow, didn’t give any trouble, but she’d taken a good deal of notice of him, in what you might call a sort of motherly way.”

“Yes, I know,” Ross nodded.

“A good-looking young fellow, very polite and nice in his ways--and she thought from the start that he was pretty badly worried about something. She’d hear him walking up and down at night--and she said there was a look on his face--You know how women are.”

“Yes,” Ross agreed.

“So, when he didn’t show up for a couple of nights, she came to me. I told her to go to the police, but she had some sort of notion that he wouldn’t like that--and I dare say she didn’t like it herself. Bad for business--a thing like that in the newspapers, you know. So, just to please her, I got his door unlocked, and had a look at his room.”

“You found--”

“Well, the first thing I saw there was a pile of money on the table--about seventy-five dollars in bills, under a paper weight, and a half finished letter. No name--just began right off--‘I won’t wait any longer.’ But here’s the letter. You can see for yourself.”

Unbuttoning his overcoat, he took a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket and handed it to Ross. It read:

I won’t wait any longer. I am coming out to Stamford to-morrow, and if you refuse to see me this time, it will be the end. You’ve been putting me off with one lie after the other for all this time, and now it’s finished. I don’t know how you _can_ be so damned cruel. Don’t you even want to see your own child? As for your husband--I have no more illusions about that. You’re sick of me. All you want is to get rid of me, and you don’t care how, either. Well, _I_ don’t care. I’d be better off with a bullet through the head. It’s only the baby--

Here there were several words scratched out, and it began again:

Darling, my own girl, perhaps I’m wrong. I hope to God I am. Perhaps you are really doing your best, and thinking of what’s best for the child. Only, it’s been so long. I want you back so. I’ve got a little money saved. I can keep you both. I can work. I can make you happy, even if we are a bit poor. Darling, just let me see you and--

That was the end. Ross touched his tongue to his dry lips, and folded up the letter again. He dared not look at Donnelly, but he knew Donnelly was looking at him.

“Ives wrote that letter,” said Donnelly. “The way I figure it out is this. He began to write, and then he decided that, instead of sending a letter, he’d go. He must have been in a pretty bad state to leave all that money behind. But, of course, he meant to come back. Well, he didn’t. Aha! Here we are!”

The taxi stopped before the gates of “Day’s End,” and Donnelly, getting out, told the driver to wait for him. Then he set off with Ross, not along the drive, but across the lawn, behind the fir trees.

“I won’t bother you by telling you how I know he came to Stamford on Tuesday,” he proceeded. “It’s my business to find out things like that. He came, and he took a taxi out to this cottage I’ve mentioned, and a woman met him there. He sent the taxi away--and that’s the last I’ve heard of him.”

The snow was wholly turned to rain, now; it blew against Ross’s face, cold and bitter; the trees stood dripping and shivering under the gray sky. He was wet, chilled to the bone, filled with a terrible foreboding.

“That cottage belongs to an old lady in the neighborhood,” said Donnelly. “But she doesn’t know anything about this. She said the place had been vacant two years, and she didn’t expect to rent it till she’d made some repairs. She said anybody could get into it easily enough if they should want to. Well!”

They stood before the garage, now, and Ross took the key from his pocket.

“So you see,” said Donnelly, “that’s how it is. I’ve traced him that far. I know that there’s some woman in Stamford who has a good reason for wanting to get rid of him. And now--” He looked steadily at Ross, “And now I’ve about finished.”

“Finished?” said Ross. “You--you mean--”

But Donnelly did not answer.

XVI

Ross went upstairs to the sitting room over the garage. It did not occur to him to extend an invitation to his companion; he knew well enough that he would hear those deliberate footsteps mounting after him; he knew that Donnelly would follow.

He took off his hat and overcoat and flung himself into a chair, and Donnelly did the same, in a more leisurely fashion. Certainly he was not a very troublesome shadow; he did not speak or disturb Ross in any way. He just waited.

And Ross sat there, his legs stretched out before him, hands in his pockets, his head sunk, lost in a reverie of wonder, pity, and great dread.

“_Her_ child?” he thought. “Amy’s child? Ives was her husband, and that baby is her child?”

He recalled with singular vividness the phrases of that pitiful, unreasonable letter. “Just let me see you.” “It’s been so long!” “You’re sick of me. All you want is to get rid of me.” He could imagine Ives, that fellow who was about his age, about his build--alone in his furnished room, writing that letter. “How _can_ you be so damned cruel?” And “darling.”

“In a pretty bad state,” Donnelly had said. And he had come, with all his hope and his fear and his pain, to “Day’s End,” and--

“But if--if that was Ives I saw in Mrs. Jones’s room,” thought Ross, “then who was it Amy wanted me to watch for last night?”

This idea gave him immeasurable relief. That man had not been Ives. Ives hadn’t come yet. The whole tragedy was an invention of his own.

“No reason to take it for granted that that letter was meant for Amy,” he thought. “Plenty of other women in Stamford. No; I’ve simply been making a fool of myself, imagining.”

But there was one thing he had not imagined. There was, among all these doubts and surmises, one immutable fact, the man under the sofa. He could, if he pleased, explain away everything else, but not that.

It seemed to him incredible that he had, in the beginning, accepted that fact so coolly. He had thought it was “none of his business.” And now it was the chief business of his life. It was as if that silent figure had cried out to him for justice; as if he had come here only in order to see that man, and to avenge him.

“No!” he protested, in his soul. “I’ve got nothing to do with justice and--vengeance. The thing’s done. It can never be undone. I don’t want to see--any one punished for it. That’s not my business. I’m nobody’s judge, thank God!”

“Well?” said Donnelly, gently.

Ross looked up, met his glance squarely.

“I can’t help you,” he said.

Donnelly arose.

“I’m sorry for that,” he said. “Mighty sorry. I’ve been very frank with you. Showed you the letter--laid my cards on the table. Because I had a notion that you’d heard one side of the case, and that if you heard the other you might change your mind. You might think that Ives hadn’t had a fair deal.”

“I can’t help that,” muttered Ross.