A Husband by Proxy Part 30

He had felt her disappearance had nothing to do with the vanishing of the chauffeur. Her statement confirmed his belief.

"Durgin?" Garrison repeated. "Didn't some Durgin, a nephew of Hardy, claim the body, up at Branchville?"

Dorothy was pale again, but resolute.

"Yes--Paul. He's Foster's brother."

"You told me you had neither brothers nor sisters," Garrison reminded her a little sternly. "These were not forgotten?"

"They are stepbrothers only--by marriage. I thought I could leave them out," she explained, flushing as she tried to meet his gaze. "Please don't think I meant to deceive you very much."

"It was a technical truth," he told her; "but isn't it time you told me everything? You ran off before I could even reply to something you appeared to wish to know. You----"

"But you don't suspect me?" she interrupted, instantly reverting to the question she had put before, in that moment of her impulse to run. "I couldn't bear it if I thought you did!"

"If I replied professionally, I should say I don't know what to think,"

he said. "The whole affair is complicated. As a matter of fact, I cannot seem to suspect you of anything wrong, but you've got to help me clear it as fast as I can."

She met his gaze steadily, for half a minute, then tears abruptly filled her eyes, and she lowered her gaze to the floor.

"Thank you, Jerold," she murmured, and a thrill went straight to his heart. "I am very much worried, and very unhappy--but I haven't done anything wrong--and nothing like that!--not even a wicked thought like that! I loved my uncle very dearly."

She broke down and turned away to give vent to an outburst of grief.

"There, there," said Garrison after a moment. "We must do the best we can. If you will tell me more, my help is likely to be greater."

Dorothy dried her eyes and resumed her courage heroically.

"I haven't asked you to be seated all this time," she said apologetically. "Please do--and I'll tell you all I can."

Garrison took a chair, while Dorothy sat near him. He thought he had never seen her in a mood of beauty more completely enthralling than this one of helplessness and bravery combined.

"We are quite, well--secure from being overheard?" he said.

She went at once and closed the door.

"Alice would never listen, greatly as she is worried," she said. "It was she who met you at the door--Foster's wife."

Garrison nodded. He was happy only when she came once more to her seat.

"This is your stepbrother's home?" he inquired. "Is he here?"

"This is Alice's property," Dorothy corrected. "But that's way ahead of the story. You told me my uncle was poisoned by my cigars. How could that possibly have been? How did you find it out? How was it done?"

"The box had been opened and two cigars had been so loaded with poison that when he bit off one, at the end, to light it up, he got the deadly stuff on his tongue--and was almost instantly stricken."

Despite the dimness of the light in the room Dorothy's face showed very white.

She asked; "What kind of poison?"

He mentioned the drug.

"Not the kind used by photographers?" she asked in affright.

"Precisely. Foster, then, is a photographer?"

"He used to be, but---- Oh, I don't see how he--it's terrible! It's terrible!"

She arose and crossed the room in agitation, then presently returned.

"Your suspicions may be wrong," said Garrison, who divined she had something on her mind. "Why not tell me all about it, and let me a.s.sist, if I can? What sort of a looking man is Foster?"

"Rather small, and nearly always smiling. But he may not have done it!

He may be innocent! If only you could help me now!" she said. "I don't believe he could have done it!"

"But you half suspect it was he?"

"I've been afraid of it all along," she said, in an outburst of confession. "Before I even knew that Uncle John was--murdered--before you told me, I mean--I felt afraid that something of the kind might have happened, and since that hour I've been nearly distracted by my thoughts!"

"Let's take it slowly," said Garrison, in his soothing way. "I imagine there has been either anger or hatred, spite or pique on the part of your stepbrother, Foster, towards John Hardy in the past."

"Yes--everything! Uncle John spoiled Foster at first, but when he found the boy was gambling in Wall Street, he cut him off and refused to supply him the means to pay off the debts he had contracted. Foster threatened at the time.

"The breach grew wider. Uncle didn't know he was married to Alice.

Foster wouldn't let me tell. He had used up nearly all of Alice's money. She refused to mortgage anything more, after I took the necklaces, on a loan--and if Foster doesn't get ten thousand dollars in August I don't know what he'll do!"

Garrison was following the threads of this quickly delivered narrative as best he might. It revealed a great deal, but not all.

"I see," he commented quietly. "But how could Foster hope to profit by the death of Mr. Hardy?"

Dorothy turned very white again.

"He knew of the will."

"The will that was drawn in your favor?"

"Yes."

"And he thought that you were married, that the conditions of the will had been fulfilled?"

Dorothy nodded a.s.sent.

Garrison's impulse was to push a point in personal affairs and ask if she had really married some Fairfax, not yet upon the scene. But he adhered strictly to business.

"What you fear is that Foster, aware that you would become your uncle's heir, may have hastened your uncle's end, in the hope that when you came in for the property you would liquidate his debts?"

Dorothy nodded again.

She said: "It is terrible! Do you see the slightest ray of hope?"