CHAPTER IX

WHAT had happened to Marguerite was this.

She had never been to New York before, although she had traveled with her father and mother now and then in other directions. She knew nothing, of course, about the city save what she had gleaned from occasional references to it in novels. When the porter of the Pullman asked her before they reached Manhattan Transfer whether she was going uptown or downtown she looked at him bewildered for an instant. Then reasoning that an office building would likely be downtown, and she wanted to be near to the place where she intended going the first thing in the morning, she answered after that instant's hesitation,—

"Oh, yes, downtown. I'm going downtown."

"Then you get out at Manhattan Transfer, lady," said the porter eyeing her a bit questioningly, she thought, because she had said downtown at that time of night.

Manhattan Transfer looked wide and desolate and empty. There were few passengers so late and there seemed to be no official in charge. Marguerite stood aimlessly for a few minutes, looking this way and that, wandering up, and then down, looking off at the dim distance of stars and weird lights. Was this the great New York about which she had heard so much?

But at last a train came. A brakeman on the step, swinging a lantern, and yelling some unintelligible thing condescended to listen to her plea.

"Where you wantta go, lady? Uptown or downtown?" The same mystical question, and it must have been all wrong the way she answered it before.

"Oh, I don't know which," she cried, almost in tears, for she was suddenly realizing her lonely situation at this late hour. "I want to go to a good respectable hotel."

"You go uptown lady, then. You get on the next train that comes by, over that side of the platform; be 'long in five minutes now. Take you to the Pennsylvania Station, good hotel right across the street. All Aboard!"

And he swung away, leaving her more desolate than ever, for now the wind-swept platform was empty of the few travelers who had been waiting for this train, and Marguerite dared not go in search of any official who might be inside the shelters lest she miss her train. Thus it was that she arrived at the great station almost an hour later than the train by which she should have come. Emerging into the gloom, and climbing the midnight stairs into the wide upper area, she felt smaller and more alone even than when she had stood on the high barren sweep of Manhattan Transfer.

There was noise and light here, a blare of it, and a strange midnight clatter that frightened her.

If it had not been for a kindly agent of the Traveller's Aid who happened by just as she emerged from the iron gate, and said, noting her hesitancy, "Can I help you?" she might have stood there all night perhaps, afraid to venture into that vast empty floor like a little vessel setting sail to an unknown port.

But the friendly Traveller's Aid soon had the weary girl safely established in the great hotel across the way, and possessed of all the information she needed to get herself to the desired number on Fifth Avenue in the morning.

Mind and body cannot continue forever in a state of violent emotion without some rest, and Marguerite, finding herself at last in a quiet room with a luxurious bed, and nothing she could possibly do until morning, succumbed to her weariness and fell into a deep sleep.

She intended quite fully to waken about seven o'clock, get herself in readiness for her errand, and then try to get in touch with Rufus Keller. She thought she had a pretty good idea where to telegraph him, and felt that if she did so, it would only be a matter of a few hours before she had word that he was coming to her at once.

She was not well enough versed in the ways of travelers to leave an order at the hotel desk to have them call her at seven, and if she had been, she would have been too confident that it was unnecessary. She had prided herself for years on her ability to set herself to waken any time at all, and never fail to waken on the minute. However that was, it turned out that she slept on straight past seven, past eight, past nine, past ten, past eleven, and never wakened till quarter to twelve o'clock, dazed and vague as to where she was or why she was there.

Meantime at ten o'clock Mary Dunlap and Mrs. Sheldon arrived in the city, and took their way briskly, attended by a porter carrying their luggage, straight through the tiled tunnel and into the Pennsylvania Hotel, where they were given a room one floor below where Marguerite slept her exhausted sleep.

"We had better not wait for anything," said Marguerite's mother anxiously, giving a push and a pat to the straggling locks about her temples and walking nervously toward the door.

"My dear, you are going to have a cup of coffee before we stir a step," said Mary Dunlap firmly. "I told the boy as we came up in the elevator to have it sent up at once and it's not going to take three minutes to drink it. I tell you nothing is doing in New York until ten, and she can't get away right at once. There is no use running risks. You are going on your nerve, and that might give out at the wrong time and spoil everything. There, he is knocking now. Sit down and drink it. Then we'll call a taxi and be there in no time! It is quite early yet and I'm positive Mr. Oliver—I mean Keller—never goes down to his office before half past ten at the earliest."

But Nelson Whitney had not been able to sleep. He had laid himself properly in bed of course and closed his eyes. He had committed himself and his wishes and his girl to the care of One who was infinitely powerful, infinitely able, infinitely willing to bring order out of confusion, and he was resting on that; but he lay there staring into the night and facing a thing that might be coming to him on the morrow. Supposing he should find that Marguerite had already gone to that other man, and that, unworthy though he believed him to be, she was now irrevocably committed to him, for better, for worse. Could he give up his will in the matter, his joy, his very life, and give up his girl to a sorrow he felt was inevitable if she married Keller?

Whitney did not oversleep. He arose far earlier than he had set himself to be about. He tried to eat some breakfast, but it was as dust and ashes in his mouth. He went out to walk, but the exercise was merely mechanical. He did not see the buildings he passed, nor notice anybody on the street. He was going over the probable program for the morning, trying to decide which thing he should do first.

If he went to the train to meet Mrs. Sheldon, he would be late in getting to Fifth Avenue when Marguerite would be likely to be arriving. If he went to Fifth Avenue first, he would be too late to meet the train. He finally decided that it was more important to find Marguerite than her mother, for the mother would communicate with Mary at home as soon as she located in a hotel and if he found Marguerite, he could telephone to Mary and have little trouble in locating Mrs. Sheldon afterward. Marguerite was of course the first consideration.

He had no trouble in finding the number on the avenue that had been indicated in Marguerite's note, and was somewhat reassured, but also not a little troubled to find the name, "R. H. Oliver, Manager," in gold letters on the rich glass of the heavy mahogany door. Just what effect would it have upon the girl who had taken this wild midnight journey to prove there was no such person? He pondered this as he sought out the janitor and asked a few questions about the usual hour of opening the offices in that building.

He was still pondering it as he set out to walk a regular beat, up the avenue, across the street, down the avenue, across and back again, varying it occasionally by a quick detour into one of the side streets where he turned about and returned the other way. He did not care to be noticed, as he kept his anxious vigil. As the minutes passed into an hour and then dropped into long minutes again, his heart sank with the fear lest after all somehow he had missed her. Perhaps she had come down to the office building ahead of him, or perhaps she had looked up the name in the city directory, discovered that it really was there, and had changed her course. Why had he not thought of that before? Yet what else could he have done than he had done? He had no clue but this, and must follow it to its reasonable end.

There were not many people on that part of the avenue so early, and he had no difficulty in getting a good look at each one. He felt reasonably certain that she could not have got by since he had arrived, so he tramped back and forth like a lion in a cage, not daring to go beyond the bounds he had set himself lest somehow she escape him. The thought that was aching into his heart now was what possible connection could there be between this man Oliver and the fellow Keller whom his girl had declared her intention of marrying after she had proved that there was no such person as Oliver?

A dim possibility was stealing through his mental turbulence, but he rejected such an explanation of the situation, as unworthy of a decent man to think about another, even about one whom he distrusted. Yet again and again it recurred. Had someone been trying to make his little girl see that the man with whom she seemed to be infatuated was unworthy of her? Had she set out to disprove what they had told her? It must be something of that sort of course, but what?

By the time that he had tramped nearly two hours away in anxious watching, he was in a mood to wish he could get his hands on this Keller man and give him a good thrashing. He felt more and more confident that he deserved it, even though he might be none of the unworthy kinds of villain that his imagination had been conjuring.

It was still five minutes to the hour the janitor had mentioned as opening time for offices when he finally tramped back to the building and entered the elevator. He had considered staying outside in the street till he saw Marguerite arrive, but rejected the idea as futile. She would be very likely to see him if he came too near, and perhaps evade him, for it was most likely that she wanted none of her friends with her on this expedition, else she would surely have confided in her mother.

He had considered also secreting himself somewhere in the hallway, at a good vantage point to watch for her, if there were such a hiding place, but rejected that idea also, because if anything was going to happen, he wanted to be there to see what it was. He felt that it was his right to understand the case, seeing he was going to try to help Marguerite. How else could he know whether or not he might be intruding where even angels should not tread? No, he must be in the office, and well placed where she would not notice him, or he might never find out whether he even had a right to try to help her. He must fathom this mystery himself. It was not anything Marguerite's mother could tell him, else he felt sure she would have called for him in the middle of the night even, to accompany her and help her in her trouble. That it was a terrible trouble to the mother he had no doubt.

He had a bad half minute when several young women came hurriedly into the hall and rushed for the elevator. Perhaps she was among them, and this would be by no means the place he had planned to meet Marguerite, in the elevator!

But the young women were none of them the girl he sought; they were obviously secretaries hastening to their various jobs, and he drew an involuntary breath of relief as the elevator shot up to the floor to which he was going. The young women all got out at different stops by the way.

He was glad that he was the only one in the elevator when it stopped at the ninth floor, and he could get off and take his bearings once more without observation. Then he noticed that the door of R. H. Oliver's office was standing ajar, and with quickened pulse he hurried down the hall.