A Husband by Proxy Part 21

Once more he waited, in vain.

His third ring was long and insistent.

About to despair of gaining admission, he was gratified to note a dimly reflected light, as if from the rear, below stairs. Then the hall was illumined, and presently a chain-lock was drawn, inside the door, the barrier swung open, and the serving-woman stood there before him, dressed with the evidences of haste that advertised the fact she had risen from her bed.

Garrison s.n.a.t.c.hed at his wits in time to act a part for which he had not been prepared.

"I'm afraid it's pretty late," he said, "but I came to surprise my wife."

"My word, that's too bad, sir, ain't it?" said the woman. "Mrs.

Fairfax has went out for the night."

This was the truth. Dorothy, together with the Robinsons, had left the house an hour before and gone away in an automobile, leaving no word of their destination, or of when they intended to return.

Utterly baffled, and wholly at a loss to understand this unexpected maneuver. Garrison stood for a moment staring at the woman. After all, such a flight was in reasonable sequence, if Dorothy were guilty.

The one thing to do was to avail himself of all obtainable knowledge.

"Gone--for the night," he repeated. "Did Mrs. Fairfax seem anxious to go?"

"I didn't see her, sir. I couldn't say, really," answered the woman.

"Mr. Theodore said as how she was ailing, sir, and they was going away.

That's all I know about it, sir."

"I'm sorry I missed them," Garrison murmured, half to himself. Then a thought occurred to him abruptly--a bold suggestion, on which he determined to act.

"Is my room kept ready, in case of present need like this to-night?" he said. "Or, if not, could you prepare it?"

"It's all quite ready, sir, clean linen and all, the room next to Mrs.

Fairfax's," said the woman. "I always keeps it ready, sir."

"Very good," said Garrison, with his mind made up to remain all night and explore the house for possible clews to anything connected with its mysteries. "You may as well return to your apartments. I can find my way upstairs."

"Is there anything I could get you, sir?" inquired the woman. "You look a bit pale, sir, if you'll pardon the forwardness."

"Thank you, no," he answered gratefully. "All I need is rest." He slipped half a dollar in her hand.

The woman switched on the lights in the hallway above.

"Good-night, sir," she said. "If you're needing anything more I hope you'll ring."

"Good-night," said Garrison. "I shall not disturb you, I'm sure."

With ample nerve to enact the part of master, he ascended the stairs, proceeded to the room to which he had always gone before, and waited to hear the woman below retire to her quarters in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

The room denoted nothing unusual. The roses, which he had taken from the vase to obtain the water to sprinkle on Dorothy's face, had disappeared. The vase was there on the table.

He crossed the floor and tried the door that led to Dorothy's boudoir.

It was locked. Without further ado, he began his explorations.

It was not without a sense of grat.i.tude that he presently discovered the bathroom at the rear of the hall. Here he laved his face and head, being very much refreshed by the process.

A secondary hall led away from the first, and through this he came at once to the rooms which had evidently been set apart for Dorothy and her husband. The room which he knew was supposed to be his own contained nothing save comfortable furnishings. He therefore went at once to Dorothy's apartments.

She occupied a suite of three rooms--one of them large, the others small. Exquisite order was apparent in all, combined with signs of a dainty, cultured taste. It seemed a sacrilege to search her possessions, and he made no attempt to do so. Indeed, he gained nothing from his quick, keen survey of the place, save a sense of her beauty and refinement as expressed in the features of her "nest." He felt himself warranted in opening a closet, into which he cast a comprehensive glance.

It seemed well filled with hanging gowns, but several hooks were empty.

On a shelf high up was a suit-case, empty, since it weighed almost nothing as he lifted up the end. He took it down, found marks where fingers had disturbed the dust upon its lid, then stood on a chair, examined the shelf, and became aware that a second case had been removed, as shown by the absence of acc.u.mulated dust, which had gathered all about the place it had formerly occupied.

Replacing the case he had taken from the shelf, he closed the closet, in possession of the fact that some preparation, at least, had been made against some sort of a journey. He was certain the empty hooks had been stripped of garments for the flight, but whether by Dorothy herself or by her relatives he could not, of course, determine.

He repaired at once to the rooms farther back, which the Robinsons had occupied. When he switched on the lights in the first one entered, he knew it had been the old man's place of refuge, for certain signs of the occupancy of Mr. Robinson were not lacking.

It reeked of stale cigar-smoke, which would hang in the curtains for a week. It was very untidy. There were many indications that old Robinson had quitted in haste. On the table were ash-trays, old cigar-stumps, matches, burned and new; magazines, hairpins, a tooth-brush, and two calf-bound volumes of a legal aspect. One was a lawyer's treatise on wills, the other a history of broken testaments, statistical as well as narrative.

The closet here supplied nothing of value to Garrison when he gave it a brief inspection. At the end of the room was a door that stood slightly ajar. It led to the next apartment--the room to which Theodore had been a.s.signed. Garrison soon discovered the electric b.u.t.ton and flooded the place with light.

The apartment was quite irregular. The far end had two windows, overlooking the court at the rear--the hollow of the block. These were both in an alcove, between two in-jutting part.i.tions. One part.i.tion was the common result of building a closet into the room. The other was constructed to accommodate a staircase at the back of the house, leading to the quarters below.

Disorder was again the rule, for a litter of papers, neckties, soiled collars, and ends of cigarettes, with perfumes, toilet requisites, and beer bottles seemed strewn promiscuously on everything capable of receiving a burden.

Garrison tried the door that led to the staircase, and found it open.

The closet came next for inspection. Without expecting anything of particular significance, Garrison drew open the door.

Like everything else in the Robinsons' realm, it was utterly disordered. Glancing somewhat indifferently over its contents.

Garrison was about to close the door when his eye caught upon a gleam of dull red, where a ray of light fell in upon a bit of color on the floor.

He stopped, put his hand on the cloth, and drew forth a flimsy pair of tights of carmine hue--part of the Mephistophelian costume that Theodore had worn on the night of the party next door. With this in his hand, and a clearer understanding of the house, with its staircase at the rear. Garrison comprehended the ease with which Theodore had played his role and gone from one house to the other without arousing suspicion.

Encouraged to examine the closet further, he pawed around through the garments hung upon the hooks, and presently struck his hand against a solid obstacle projecting from the wall in the darkest corner, and heard a hollow, resonant sound from the blow.

Removing half a dozen coats that hung concealingly ma.s.sed in the place, he almost uttered an exclamation of delight. There on the wall was a small equipment telephone, one of the testing-boxes employed by the linemen in their labors with which to "plug in" and communicate between places where no regular 'phone is installed.

It was Theodore's private receiver, over which he could hear every word that might be said to anyone using the 'phone!

It tapped the wires to the regular instrument installed in the house, and was thoroughly concealed.

Instantly aware that by this means young Robinson could have overheard every word between himself and Dorothy concerning their meeting in the park, Garrison felt his heart give a lift into realms of unreasonable joy.

It could not entirely dissipate the doubts that hung about Dorothy, but it gave him a priceless hope!

CHAPTER XVI

IN QUEST OF DOROTHY