That Affair at Elizabeth by Burton Egbert Stevenson (book club suggestions TXT) 📕

coolness which had not been possible the night before. That Marcia Lawrence had taken refuge with the Kingdons, I did not for an instant doubt; it was my business to prove it—to gain entrance to her presence and persuade her to grant Burr Curtiss a final interview.

There was another mystery about the cottage which piqued and puzzled me. What was the meaning of that light in the cellar? What work had been going forward there, hour after hour? Whose was that shrill and violent voice which had threatened me through the door? And how had it been possible for the other inmates of the house to sleep on undisturbed through all that commotion? If Miss Lawrence were really there, would she not have heard me?

I descended to the dining-room, revolving this problem in my mind, so intent upon it that I brushed into a man at the door. I turned to apologise and saw his face light up at sight of me.

"Why, hello, Lester," he cried, holding out his hand. "This is luck!"

"Hello, Godfrey," I answered, returning his clasp with interest. "Glad to see you."

"Not half so glad as I am to see you. Come over here to this side-table where we can talk in peace. Quite like the Studio, isn't it?"

I laughed responsively at the memory of that night when Jim Godfrey, of the Record, for purposes of his own, had kidnapped me and entertained me with a superb dinner at the famous Sixth Avenue resort. I had met him occasionally since, and had found him always the same genial, generous, astute fellow he had proved himself then. Trained on the detective force, he had been for some years the Record's star reporter, and was employed only on what the newspapers love to call causes c�l�bres. Of course, I knew instantly what "cause" it was had brought him to Elizabeth.

"Here on business?" he asked, as we sat down.

"Yes. And you?"

"Oh, I came down last night to write up this Lawrence-Curtiss affair. You've heard about it?"

He was looking at me keenly.

"Yes," I answered steadily, determined to keep him from guessing my connection with it; "I read about it in the papers last night. Queer affair, wasn't it?"

"Mighty queer. You haven't happened to form a theory about it, have you?"

I laughed outright. He had come to me for a theory once before, and here he was at his old trick.

"I haven't enough data to form a theory," I said.

"Well, maybe I can furnish you with more. I did some pretty lively work last night, and covered all the details I could think of."

"I haven't seen this morning's Record," I said. "Of course it's all there."

"Not quite all. I don't want to give the other fellows too much rope. They're all tied up in a knot, now, and I want them to stay that way."

"The 'other fellows,' I suppose, are your esteemed contemporaries?"

"In plain English, my hated rivals. But I don't mind telling you. You treated me square in the Holladay case. The boys told me afterwards how you refused to give me away."

"All right; fire ahead," I said, and cut my steak.

"Well," he began, "I saw at once, after I'd looked over the field and found out that it was impossible to see either Curtiss or Mrs. Lawrence, that the persons who could probably tell me most about the inside workings of this affair were the servants in the Lawrence house. Evidently there must have been trouble of some sort there; and it probably would not escape the servants' notice. So I went after them."

I nodded, but kept my eyes on my plate. Here was luck, indeed!

"There are five of them," he went on; "an outside man, who takes care of the grounds and horses; a cook, two house-girls, and a maid. The outside man is the husband of the cook; they and the house-girls stay at the place, and the maid lives with her sister in a cottage just off the grounds."

"And could they tell you anything?" I asked.

"Neither the man, the cook, nor the house-girls could tell me a thing. They'd all been busy preparing for the wedding, and didn't know anything was wrong until the maid, whose name is Lucy Kingdon, told them Miss Lawrence had disappeared. The house-girls had been passing back and forth all the time, and had caught a glimpse of Miss Lawrence now and then, but had noticed absolutely nothing unusual, had seen no stranger about the place, nor heard any outcry. One of them passed Miss Lawrence in the hall as she was talking with the decorator, and says that she was radiant with happiness.

"But the maid?" I asked, anxious to hear what he had got from her.

"Ah, she was different. She's been with the family a long time. She seems to be a kind of privileged character—a trusted confidante; though why any one should wish to trust her is beyond me—she's not an attractive woman, rather the reverse."

"And what did she tell you?"

"She didn't tell me anything," answered Godfrey, with some heat. "She beat about the bush and finally got angry. But I'm sure of one thing, and that is that she knows where Miss Lawrence is. Indeed," he added, "I'm pretty certain that Miss Lawrence passed the night in the Kingdon cottage."

"Why?" I asked, with lively interest at this confirmation of my own belief.

"I don't know—just a sort of intuition. And then—they wouldn't let me in to see."

"Oh—you tried to get in, did you?"

"I certainly did—tried my level best, but couldn't make it. Those Kingdon sisters are a pair of Tartars. Both of them were there. The elder one was a beauty when she was young, I fancy, but she's seen some trying times since, to judge from her face. She's got mighty handsome eyes, even yet—and my! how they can flash. Well, they sent me to the right-about as soon as they learned my errand. I tried all my wiles," he added, with a little rueful smile, "and in vain."

"But intuition's hardly enough to go on," I suggested.

"Of course there's more than that. It's the only house she could have reached without being seen. There's a path leads to it through a grove which screens it from the street. If she'd gone in any other direction, she'd have had to venture out into the open, where somebody would have been sure to see her. Remember, she was in her wedding-dress, and there were probably a good many people standing around watching the house, as they always do at these fashionable weddings."

Perhaps something in my face betrayed me; at any rate, he looked at me with a sudden intent interest.

"See here, Lester," he said, "I believe you're in on this thing yourself."

"Not for publication."

"Agreed. Now let's have it."

"Well," I explained, "I'm working for Curtiss. I'm trying to find Miss Lawrence. He thinks he's entitled to an explanation."

Godfrey nodded quickly.

"Any man would think so," he said. "How are you going about it?"

"I'm going to take advantage of the hint you just gave me."

"And go to the Kingdon house?"

"Yes. I believe Miss Lawrence is there, myself. I thought so last night when I came to it after following that path through the grove."

"So you'd discovered it, too! Well, I wish you luck. Of course, we may be all wrong. I don't believe there are any other pointers I can give you," he added, "or I'd be glad to. I suppose you saw Mrs. Lawrence?"

"Oh yes."

"How was she affected?"

"Not so deeply as you'd expect," I said.

He gazed at me with narrowed eyes.

"Has it occurred to you, Lester," he said, at last, "that Miss Lawrence may not have gone away of her own accord at all; that there may be a plot against her; that she was forced to go, or perhaps even shut up in some room in the Lawrence house?"

"Yes; I'd thought of it. I even put it to Mrs. Lawrence."

"And what did she say?"

"She laughed at me. She said her daughter was a strong girl, who wouldn't let herself be abducted without a struggle, and that a single scream would have alarmed the house."

"But suppose she'd been drugged," suggested Godfrey. "Then she would have neither screamed nor struggled."

"Last night," I said, "I was half-inclined to believe that something of the sort had happened. I'd forgotten one fact which absolutely disproves it. She left a note behind her—or, at least, wrote it and sent it back after she ran away."

"Ah—she did?"

"Yes—a note saying the marriage was impossible, though her love was unaltered, and that Curtiss wasn't to attempt to find her."

Godfrey sat suddenly upright with grim countenance.

"Then there's only one explanation of it," he said. "There's only one thing could make a girl drop everything and run away like that—only one thing in the world. She's already married, and her first husband's turned up."

"I'd thought of that, too; but her mother swears her daughter never had a love affair previous to this one."

"Of course she'd say so. Has any other possible explanation occurred to you?"

"No," I answered frankly. "And I've tried mighty hard to find another."

"Let's go back a bit. The discovery—whatever it was—was made at the last moment."

"Yes—at the moment she left the decorator and started upstairs to get her veil."

"Was it made accidentally?"

"I don't know."

"But I do. It was not accidentally—it was by design. Things don't happen accidentally, just in the nick of time."

"No," I agreed, "they don't."

"It was his revenge," continued Godfrey, with growing excitement. "He wanted to get even, and he waited till the last moment. It was certainly artistic."

"If he really wanted to crush her," I suggested, my lips trembling with the horror of the thought, "he'd have waited a little longer."

Godfrey stared at me with glittering eyes.

"You're right," he agreed, after a moment. "He didn't want to get even, then; he wanted her back. So he sent a letter——"

"It wasn't a letter. Perhaps it was a telegram."

"No, it wasn't a telegram—I looked that up. Are you sure it wasn't a letter?"

"Yes. The morning mail was delivered shortly after nine. She was happy as usual until the moment of her disappearance, two hours later. If it wasn't a letter or a telegram, he must have come in person."

Godfrey sat for a moment with intent face.

"I hardly think so," he said, at last. "Some one would have noticed a stranger, and I made special inquiries on that point, though it was a lover I was looking for, not a husband. I rather imagined that there was another man in the case, and that, at the last moment, she decided to marry him and ran away to do it."

"No," I said decidedly, "she was in love with Curtiss—passionately in love with him."

"Well, lover or husband, I don't believe he came in person. I think it much more probable that the warning came from inside the house."

"From the maid," I suggested.

"Precisely," he nodded. "From the maid."

Then, suddenly, I recalled the sweet face, the clear gaze——

"It's a pretty theory, Godfrey," I said; "but I don't believe it. Have you ever seen Miss Lawrence?"

"No—not even her photograph. I tried to get one and failed," he added, with rueful countenance.

"She's a beautiful woman—she's more than that—she's a good woman. There's something Madonna-like about her."

"Most of the famous Madonnas," he said, smiling, "however virginal in appearance, were anything but Madonna-like in behaviour—Andrea del Sarto's, for instance."

With a little shiver, I remembered Mr. Royce's phrase—it was to the del Sarto Madonna he had compared her! Could I be wrong in my estimate of her, after all?

"There's no other theory will explain her flight," he repeated. "Presuming, of course, that she was sane."

"She was very sane," I said, in a low voice. "She was a self-controlled, well-balanced woman."

"And that she still loves Curtiss."

"I'm sure she does."

"Then you'll find I'm right. But come," he added, rising, "I've got some work to do. I'll try to meet you as you come away from the Kingdon cottage. I'm curious to know what luck you'll have."

He left me at the hotel door and hurried away toward the business part of the town, while I turned in the opposite direction. Godfrey's confidence in his theory weighed upon me heavily. He was right in saying that it seemed the only tenable one, and yet, with the memory of Miss Lawrence's pure face before me, I could not believe it. I could not believe that those clear eyes sheltered such a secret. I could not believe that anything shameful had ever touched her. She had kept herself unspotted from the world. And I would prove it!

As I reached the Kingdon house and turned in at the gate, I remembered with a smile the resolution I had made the night before to buy a revolver. It seemed absurd enough in the