That Affair at Elizabeth Part 37

"Nor anything to prove it."

"True-but it has a certain speciousness."

"Yes-all of G.o.dfrey's theories have that. Do you remember what a perfect one he built up in the Holladay case, and how it fell to pieces? Well, I believe this is wilder yet. A look at Miss Lawrence's face will show you she hasn't any past of that kind. G.o.dfrey himself admits that now."

My companion ran his fingers savagely through his hair.

"Of course I don't know anything about it," he said, "but I've already told you how the affair affects me. Trust me, Lester, there's some terrible secret just below the surface. I wanted to say as much to Curtiss, but didn't quite dare. That's why I shiver at the thought of that meeting. I pity him when he comes face to face with it. That reminds me-I found an old photograph of him the other day." He turned to his desk and, after a moment's search, brought out a card. "He gave it to me when we were chums together at college," he added, and handed it over to me.

It showed Curtiss as he was at twenty or twenty-one. The face was plumper than I knew it, and the skin much fairer. The hair was worn longer and the absence of beard or moustache revealed fully the singularly pure lines of the lower portion of the face-a poetic face, yet full of fire and vigour.

"We used to call him 'The Beaut.'," went on my companion. "I told you that he was rather girlish-looking. Well, see here-here he is as the soubrette, in a burlesque we got up in senior year."

He handed me a group picture including the whole company. The central figure was a charming girl, with admirable arms, hands, shoulders-an inimitable way of holding the head....

"Great Scott!" I shouted, springing to my feet. "Don't you see it? Don't you see it, man?"

"See it? See what, Lester?" repeated Mr. Royce, in amazement. "What's the matter, old fellow?"

"No, I haven't gone mad," I laughed, as he put a restraining hand on my arm. "It's the key to the mystery," I added, as calmly as I could. "I'm not going to tell you-I want you to see it for yourself. Come along."

He followed me down to the street without a word, though I could see how his hand trembled as he took down his hat. I myself was quivering from head to foot with excitement-with triumph. What a blind fool I had been not to suspect it long ago. G.o.dfrey had never seen Curtiss, or he would have known the instant his eyes rested on that photograph!

Luckily, the journey was not a long one, or I could not have kept the secret.

"Sit there," I said, when we reached my room, and I motioned him to a chair near the table. I turned down the light and arranged my properties-let me confess at once to a secret liking for the dramatic-the unexpected. Then I turned up the light.

"Now look at them," I said, and pointed to the three photographs placed side by side before him.

He stared at them-at Marcia Lawrence; at Burr Curtiss, smooth-faced and girlish; at the soubrette....

I knew by the sudden deep breath he drew that he understood. There could be no mistaking. Feature for feature they would not match at all; but there was a tone, an expression, that little way of holding the head....

"Of course," he said slowly, at last. "Of course."

How easily it explained Marcia Lawrence's panic, her flight-there could be no marriage, no explanation-only flight!

"There's one crucial test," I said, glancing at my watch. "I'll make it this very evening."

An hour later, I was shown for the third time into the study of Dr. Schuyler at Elizabeth. He was sitting at his desk, just as I had found him once before.

"Ah, Mr. Lester," he began.

"Dr. Schuyler," I interrupted, "I've a photograph here which I'm very anxious for you to see. This is it-whose do you think it is?"

He took it with a glance of astonishment, moved over to the table, and held it beneath the rays of the lamp.

"Why," he faltered, "why-it reminds me very strongly of young Boyd Endicott, as he was when I knew him, thirty years ago."

My heart leaped.

"As a matter of fact, Dr. Schuyler," I said, "it's a photograph of Burr Curtiss, as he was ten years ago."

He stared at me for a moment without understanding, then I saw the light of comprehension in his eyes, and he sank heavily back into his chair.

"Poor woman!" he murmured hoa.r.s.ely. "Poor woman!"

And all the way back to New York, I was wondering which of the women he had meant. Which was the more to be pitied-the woman who, thirty years before, had been whirled away from her lover by a trick of fortune; or the younger one, innocent and unsuspecting, discovering, only at the last moment, the horrible abyss yawning at her feet?

Which of the women had he meant?

CHAPTER XXV

The Revelation

Neither Mr. Royce nor myself was quite equal to the routine work of the office next morning. We had solved the mystery, indeed; but so far from bringing us relief, the solution had brought us a terrible unrest. Miss Lawrence had chosen her words well when she had said that the marriage was "quite, quite impossible." Yet who could have guessed a reason so dark, so terrifying, so unanswerable! Small wonder that she had fled, that her first thought had been to put the ocean between herself and her lover. How could she meet him, how look him in the eyes, with that secret weighing upon her? How would she face him when she found him awaiting her at Liverpool? I shuddered at thought of that meeting. We should have held Curtiss back; we should have known that it was no idle whim, no empty fear which had driven her over-sea.

Resolutely I tried to put such thoughts behind me, and to apply myself to the ma.s.s of work which had acc.u.mulated during my three days' absence. Was it only three days? It seemed weeks, months, since that moment when I opened the telegram from Mr. Royce which summoned me to Elizabeth.

But they would not be frowned down, for there were many questions still unanswered. What had been Lucy Kingdon's connection with the mystery? Above all, why had Mrs. Lawrence permitted the courtship to go on? Perhaps she had not known-only at the last moment, after her daughter's disappearance, had she suspected. No doubt, it was that sudden revelation, confirmed, perhaps, by Lucy Kingdon, coming to her after she had left us in the library, which had struck her white and tremulous, which had urged her to tell me that the search must cease. Yet, even then, she had spoken as though the marriage might be arranged, as though it were not impossible! She had said that Curtiss himself should choose! What had she meant by that? Was there some depth which we had not yet touched, some turn to the tragedy which we did not suspect? Had we really found the solution, after all?

My mind flew back to the Kingdon women, with a sort of fascination. What had Harriet Kingdon meant by that wild outburst of hers?

"There are others," she had said, "who have waived their rights and torn their hearts and withered in silence--"

What had she meant by that? What secret was it had torn her heart? Were the words merely a meaningless outburst, an incoherent cry, the result of a mind disordered? I could not bring myself to think so, but cudgel my brain as I might, I could read no meaning into them. Yet it was for her that Mrs. Lawrence had sent at that supreme moment when I revealed to her the secret of the letter; it was of her she had spoken when she cried, "I thought it was that woman!" Harriet Kingdon had known the secret, then, and had kept silence.

Then, suddenly, it burst upon me what a hideous thing it was that she had done by keeping silent. It was the letter, arriving at that last desperate moment, which had s.n.a.t.c.hed Marcia Lawrence and Burr Curtiss from the horrible pit which yawned before them. The writing of that letter was not an act of enmity, but of mercy. Harriet Kingdon had stood by and uttered no word of warning-I shuddered at the utter fiendishness of it! But who had written the letter? Then, in a flash, I knew!

"What is it, Lester?" demanded Mr. Royce, wheeling suddenly around. I suppose some exclamation must have burst from me, though I was not conscious of uttering any sound. "What is it? I can guess what you're thinking of-I can't think of anything else."

"I believe," I answered, "that I know who it was wrote that letter to Miss Lawrence."

"You do!" he cried. "Who was it?"

"Wait!" I said, and closed my eyes and pressed my hands tight against my temples in the effort at recollection. "It was Mrs. Lawrence's aunt-her father's sister. It was to her house she came when she ran away. It was there, no doubt, that the child was born."

"And who is she?" asked our junior. "Where does she live?"

I made another desperate effort of memory. At last I had it.

"Her name is Heminway," I said. "I don't know her address, except that it's somewhere in New York. She was married to a banker."

"Oh, I knew him-Martin Heminway," and Mr. Royce jerked down a directory and ran feverishly through its pages. "Here it is-East Fifty-fourth Street."

He closed the book with a bang and took down his hat.

"Where are you going?" I asked.