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

to make friends with him. I thought perhaps he might be able to help me. Ah, there he is now. Wait a moment."

He hurried forward and intercepted a well-dressed man who was just leaving the office. I saw them stop for a moment's low-toned conversation; then Godfrey turned back towards me.

"No," he said, "no luck. Miss Lawrence bought no ticket at the station here last night, nor did either of the Kingdons. The agent was on duty from six o'clock till midnight. But he suggests a very simple way in which she could have escaped notice, had she wished. She had merely to enter the train without buying a ticket, and pay her fare direct to the conductor. I'm inclined to think that's what she did—providing, of course, that she left town at all."

"I think she's left," I said; "and that's no doubt the way she did it."

"Now, I'll have to say good-bye," he added. "I don't think I shall stay here much longer—the case isn't worth it. When do you go back?"

"I don't know, yet," I answered. "I've got to have something to take to Curtiss. I can't go back empty-handed."

"I'll let you know if I hear anything," he said. "Our correspondent here will be on the lookout for developments. My sympathies are all with Curtiss. I want to help you."

"Thank you," I said. "Good-bye."

I watched him for a moment, as he hurried down the street; then I turned back towards the Lawrence house. Yes, Godfrey evidently wished to help me; and yet, while he had given me a lot of what he called "interesting information," and had treated me to a no-less-interesting theory, he had only made the mystery more impenetrable than ever.

"Beg pardon, sir," said a voice, and somebody ran into me.

I glanced up to see that it was a pert-looking boy, wearing a cap with "W. U." on the front. We were just at the Lawrence gate.

"All right," I said. "No harm done," and entered.

Not till I was half-way up the walk, did it occur to me that the boy had probably come out of the gate—that he had brought a message—from whom? for whom?

I rang the bell, and a girl admitted me; but it was not Lucy Kingdon, whom I had hoped to see. She showed me into the library, and took my card. She must have met her mistress in the hall, for it was only a moment before the rustle of approaching skirts announced her. As she entered, I noticed with a quick leap of the heart that she held crushed in her hand a sheet of yellow paper.

"Good-morning, Mr. Lester," she said, quite composedly, and it was evident that she had entirely conquered the agitation which had racked her the evening before. "Sit down, please," and she herself sank into a chair. "I've been thinking over what you said to me yesterday afternoon," she continued, "and I believe that you were right. Mr. Curtiss unquestionably has the right to know what it is that takes his promised wife away from him, and to decide if he shall permit it to take her away forever."

"Then it's not impossible that she should be his wife?" I questioned quickly. "Your daughter was mistaken?"

"She perhaps thought it impossible at first; but I don't see it so. She has been moved, I should say, by a sense of faithfulness to the dead. I don't think—I can't think—that he will take it so seriously as she does. He will look at it from a man's point of view; he won't shrink from it as she did; besides, he'll see that it is no fault in her, that she's just as she always was, sweet, pure, and lovable. She herself will take it less seriously when she has time to think it over."

"Yes," I agreed, striving to conceal from her the fact that I did not in the least understand. "No doubt of that. The first shock when she read the letter——"

"The letter?" she broke in. "Which letter?"

"But I thought you knew!"

"I knew nothing of any letter," she said, her face suddenly white.

"Yesterday morning," I said, "just as Miss Lawrence was going upstairs after looking at the decorations, a boy came to the door with a special-delivery letter from New York. It was addressed to her—marked 'Important, read at once.' She took it and came into this room, and it was here she learned this secret——"

But Mrs. Lawrence was no longer listening. She was sitting there, staring straight before her, her face livid.

"A letter!" she repeated hoarsely. "A letter! I don't understand. I thought she had been told—I thought that woman had told her—I was sure of it. Yes—that must have been it—I cannot be mistaken—the letter had nothing to do with it. It was that woman. She had waited all these years, and then——"

There was a step at the door, and Lucy Kingdon's dark face appeared. She was going past, but at the sight of us, she hesitated, and then stopped on the threshold.

"Did you call, ma'am?" she asked, shooting me at the same time a glance so venomous that I recoiled a little.

"No!" said Mrs. Lawrence, and it seemed to me that there was abhorrence in the look she turned upon the other woman. "Yet stay," she added quickly. "Go to your sister. Tell her I wish to see her—here—at once."

I saw the girl's start of surprise; she half-opened her lips to speak, then glanced at me again and closed them.

"Very well, ma'am," she said, and left the room.

Mrs. Lawrence turned to me, still breathing quickly under the stress of the emotion which shook her.

"You must leave me to solve this mystery, Mr. Lester," she said rapidly, "by myself and in my own way. I must find who it is that has dared to meddle in my family affairs. I was prepared to forgive—but there are some things which can never be forgiven—however deeply one may pity——"

She checked herself; perhaps she saw the intentness of my interest.

"But that is no concern of yours," she went on more calmly, and I could not but admit the justice of the rebuke. "You're seeking Marcia. In that I would help you, if I could, but I don't know where she is. As soon as I do know, I will summon Mr. Curtiss; I promise you that. Perhaps you will find her without my help. If you do, tell Mr. Curtiss to go to her and demand an explanation; it is due him, and she has my full permission to tell him everything. Then let him decide whether she shall be his wife. We will both bow to his decision."

"But you've heard from her?" I persisted.

"Only this," she answered, and thrust a crumpled piece of paper into my hand, then turned and left the room.

I smoothed it out and read the message at a glance, noting that it was dated from New York:—

"I am safe. Do not worry. Will write.

"Marcia."

CHAPTER XIII Pursuit

My work at Elizabeth was done. Whatever mystery this house contained, whatever the secrets of the Kingdons and the Lawrences, my business was not with them. I had only to return to New York and place this message in Burr Curtiss's hands. I would counsel him to wait until Marcia Lawrence chose to reveal herself—I was sure it would not be long. A few days' respite would be wise for both of them; they would be calmer, more self-controlled, better able to meet bravely and sensibly what must be the one crisis of their lives. But a great load was lifted from me. Mrs. Lawrence had assured me that the marriage was not impossible; loving each other as they did, I knew that nothing short of the impossible could stand between them. So they would win through, at last.

Cheered by this thought, I left the house and made my way to the hotel.

"When's the next train to New York?" I asked.

"There's one on the Pennsylvania, sir, in ten minutes," said the clerk. "'Bus just leaving."

I ran out and got aboard, and a moment later we were bumping over the uneven pavement. I took a final look up the shady street; it was the last time I should see it. What was going on, I wondered, in that big house among the trees? Had Miss Kingdon answered the imperative summons sent her? Had there already been an explanation, a revelation of the mystery? Had she confessed that it was indeed she who revealed the secret? Was Mrs. Lawrence right in thinking the letter from New York had no connection with it?

The 'bus stopped abruptly, and I clambered down to the platform and got my ticket. It was still some minutes till train time, and while I waited, a train on the Jersey Central tracks stood puffing a moment, and then started on for Philadelphia. The little station was built in the triangle where the two lines crossed; trains were passing almost every minute, and I reflected how easy it would be for a person not familiar with the place to get confused and to take the wrong train.

There came a growing rumble, a shrieking of brakes. A moment more and we were off.

I glanced at my watch. It was nearly twelve o'clock. I should be at the office in, say, forty-five minutes. I would wire Curtiss at once, and the rest would be in his hands. My connection with the case would end. And yet, it was not without a certain regret that I would relinquish it—for I had not solved the mystery; that was, if anything, more impenetrable than when I had first approached it. Godfrey's specious theory—which I had myself at first believed—I put aside, for, even from the broken sentences which had fallen from Mrs. Lawrence's lips, I could see that it was not the right one. If Marcia Lawrence had fled in order to protect the memory of the dead, there could be no question of a living husband. But though I rejected that explanation, it was evident that, with the data at hand, I could form no adequate one to replace it.

I went over in my mind every phase of the affair from first to last; I endeavoured to sift out the significant incidents, and to reject the immaterial; I tried to weld them into a compact mass, but they would not be welded. There was nothing to connect them, no common thread upon which they could be strung; all that I had in my possession was a bundle of facts which seemed to be flatly self-contradictory.

I remembered Mrs. Lawrence's astonishment when I had mentioned the existence of the letter. What had she said? "I thought it was that woman!" Which woman? Evidently the elder Kingdon, since she had at once sent for her. That had been my suspicion—that it was she or her sister who had betrayed the secret. Yet the letter would seem to prove that it was some one else. And it struck me as significant that at no time had Mrs. Lawrence appeared to suspect the maid.

Was there really any connection, I wondered, between that old tragedy in Mrs. Lawrence's life and this in the life of her daughter? I reviewed again the story Dr. Schuyler had told me. How the lives of the Endicotts and the Kingdons and the Lawrences had intertwined! I got out my notebook and sketched a rough table showing their relationship, which looked somewhat as here shown.