The Art of Disappearing Part 28

We are not going to stand your abominations, even if men like Livingstone and Bradford encourage you. I am giving you a chance. What do you say? Have I your promise to be silent?"

"You have," she replied brokenly.

He looked at her surprised. The mask of her brazen audacity remained, but some feeling had overpowered her, and she began to weep like any woman in silent humiliation. He left her without a word, knowing enough of her s.e.x to respect this inexplicable grief, and to wait for a more favorable time to improve his acquaintance. "Sonia's mate," he said to himself as he reached the street. The phrase never left him from that day, and became a prophecy of woe afterwards. He writhed as he saw how nearly the honor and happiness of Louis had fallen into the hands of this wretch. Protected by the great, she could fling her dirt upon the clean, and go unpunished. Sonia's mate! He had punished one creature of her kind, and with G.o.d's help he would yet lash the backs of Sister Claire and her supporters.

CHAPTER XXI.

AN ANXIOUS NIGHT.

Curran caught up with him as he turned into Broadway. He had waited to learn if Arthur had any instructions, as he was now to return to Sister Claire's office and explain as he might the astounding appearance of Dillon at a critical moment.

"She's a ripe one," Arthur said, smiling at thought of her collapse, but the next moment he frowned. "She's a devil, Curran, a handsome devil, and we must deal with her accordingly--stamp her out like a snake. Did you notice her?"

"No doubt she's a bad one," Curran answered thickly, but Arthur's bitter words gave him a shiver, and he seemed to choke in his utterance.

"Make any explanation you like, Curran. She will accuse you of letting me in perhaps. It looks like a trap, doesn't it? By the way, what became of the boy?"

"He seemed pretty well broken up," the detective answered, "and sent me off as soon as he learned that I had him in charge. I told him that you had the whole business nicely in hand, and not to worry. He muttered something about going home. Anyway, he would have no more of me, and he went off quite steady, but looking rather queer, I thought."

Arthur, with sudden anxiety, recalled that pitiful, hopeless look of the terrified child in Louis' face. Perhaps he had been too dazed to understand how completely Arthur had rescued him in the nick of time. To the lad's inexperience this cheap attempt of Claire to overcome his innocence by a modified badger game might have the aspect of a tragedy.

Moreover, he remained ignorant of the farce into which it had been turned.

"I am sorry you left him," he said, thoughtfully weighing the circ.u.mstances. "This creature threatened him, of course, with publicity, an attack on her honor by a papist emissary. He doesn't know how little she would dare such adventure now. He may run away in his fright, thinking that his shame may be printed in the papers, and that the police may be watching for him. Public disgrace means ruin for him, for, as you know, he is studying to be a priest."

"I didn't know," Curran answered stupidly, a greenish pallor spreading over his face. "That kind of work won't bring her much luck."

"It occurs to me now that he was too frightened to understand what my appearance meant, and what your words meant," Arthur resumed. "He may feel an added shame that we know about it. I must find him. Do you go at once to Sister Claire and settle your business with her. Then ride over to the Everards, and tell the lad, if he be there, that I wish to see him at once. If he has not yet got back, leave word with his mother ...

keep a straight face while you talk with her ... to send him over to me as soon as he gets home. And tell her that if I meet him before he does get home, that I shall keep him with me all night. Do you see the point?

If he has gone off in his fright, we have sixteen hours to find him. No one must know of his trouble, in that house at least, until he is safe.

Do you think we can get on his trail right away, Curran?"

"We must," Curran said harshly, "we must. Has he any money?"

"Not enough to carry him far."

"Then ten hours' search ought to capture him."

"Report then to me at my residence within an hour. I have hopes that this search will not be needed, that you will find him at home. But be quicker than ever you were in your life, Curran. I'd go over to Cherry Street myself, but my inquiries would frighten the Everards. There must be no scandal."

Strange that he had not foreseen this possibility. For him the escapade with the escaped nun would have been a joke, and he had not thought how differently Louis must have regarded it. If the lad had really fled, and his friends must learn of it, Sister Claire's share in the matter would have to remain a profound secret. With all their great love for this boy, his clan would rather have seen him borne to the grave than living under the shadow of scandal in connection with this vicious woman. Her perfidy would add disgrace to grief, and deepen their woe beyond time's power to heal.

For with this people the prejudice against impurity was so n.o.bly unreasonable that mere suspicion became equal to crime. This feeling intensified itself in regard to the priesthood. The innocence of Louis would not save him from lifelong reproach should his recent adventure finds its way into the sneering journals. Within the hour Curran, more anxious than Arthur himself, brought word that the lad had not yet reached home. His people were not worried, and promised to send him with speed to Arthur.

"Begin your search then," said Arthur, "and report here every hour. I have an idea he may have gone to see an aunt of his, and I'll go there to find out. What is your plan?"

"He has no money, and he'll want to go as far as he can, and where he won't be easily got at. He'll ship on an Indiaman. I'll set a few men to look after the outgoing ships as a beginning."

"Secrecy above all things, understand," was the last admonition.

Darkness had come on, and the clocks struck the hour of seven as Arthur set out for a visit to Sister Mary Magdalen. Possibly Louis had sought her to tell the story of failure and shame, the sad result of her foolish enterprise; and she had kept him to console him, to put him in shape before his return home, so that none might mark the traces of his frightful emotion. Alas, the good nun had not seen him since their visit to Claire's office in Bleecker Street the day before. He concealed from her the situation.

"How in the name of Heaven," said he, "did you conceive this scheme of converting this woman?"

"She has a soul to be saved, and it's quite saveable," answered the nun tartly. "The more hopeless from man's view, the more likely from G.o.d's.

I have a taste for hopeless enterprises."

"I wish you had left Louis out of this one," Arthur thought. "But to deal with a wretch like her, so notorious, so fallen," he said aloud, "you must have risked too much. Suppose, after you had entered her office, she had sent for a reporter to see you there, to see you leaving after kissing her, to hear a pretty story of an emba.s.sy from the archbishop to coax her back to religion; and the next morning a long account of this attempt on her resolution should appear in the papers?

What would your superiors say?"

"That could happen," she admitted with a shiver, "but I had her word that my visit was to be kept a secret."

"Her word!" and he raised his hands.

"Oh, I a.s.sure you the affair was arranged beforehand to the smallest detail," she declared. "Of course no one can trust a woman like that absolutely. But, as you see, in this case everything went off smoothly."

"I see indeed," said Arthur too worried to smile.

"I arranged the meeting through Miss Conyngham," the nun continued, "a very clever person for such work. I knew the danger of the enterprise, but the woman has a soul, and I thought if some one had the courage to take her by the hand and lead her out of her wicked life, she might do penance, and even become a saint. She received Miss Conyngham quite nicely indeed; and also my message that a helping hand was ready for her at any moment. She was afraid too of a trap; but at the last she begged to see me, and I went, with the consent of my superior."

"And how did you come to mix Louis up in the thing?"

"He happened to drop in as I was going, and I took him along. He was very much edified, we all were."

"And he has been more edified since," observed Arthur, but the good nun missed the sarcasm.

"She made open confession before the three of us," warming up at the memory of that scene. "With tears in her eyes she described her fall, her present remorse, her despair of the future, and her hope in us. Most remarkable scene I ever witnessed. I arranged for her to call at this convent whenever she could to plan for her return. She may be here any time. Oh, yes, I forgot. The most touching moment of all came at the last. When we were leaving she took Louis' hand, pressed it to her heart, kissed it with respect, and cried out: 'You happy soul, oh, keep the grace of G.o.d in your heart, hold to your high vocation through any torment: to lose it, to destroy it, as I destroyed mine, is to open wide the soul to devils.' Wasn't that beautiful now? Then she asked him in the name of G.o.d to call on her the next day, and he promised. He may be here to-night to tell me about it."

"You say three. Was Edith Conyngham the third?"

"Oh, no, only a sister of our community."

He burst out laughing at the thought of the fox acting so cleverly before the three geese. Claire must have laughed herself into a fit when they had gone. He had now to put the Sister on her guard at the expense of her self-esteem. He tried to do so gently and considerately, fearing hysterics.

"You put the boy in the grasp of the devil, I fear," he said. "Convert Sister Claire! You would better have turned your prayers on Satan! She got him alone this afternoon in her office, as you permitted, and made him a proposition, which she had in her mind from the minute she first saw him. I arrived in time to give her a shock, and to rescue him. Now we are looking for him to tell him he need not fear Sister Claire's threats to publish how he made an attack upon her virtue."

"I do not quite understand," gasped Sister Magdalen stupefied. What Arthur thought considerate others might have named differently.

Exasperation at the downright folly of the scheme, and its threatened results, may have actuated him. His explanation satisfied the nun, and her fine nerve resisted hysterics and tears.

"It is horrible," she said at the last word. "But we acted honestly, and G.o.d will not desert us. You will find Louis before morning, and I shall spend the night in prayer until you have found him ... for him and you ... and for that poor wretch, that dreadful woman, more to be pitied than any one."

His confidence did not encourage him. Hour by hour the messengers of Curran appeared with the one hopeless phrase: no news. He walked about the park until midnight, and then posted himself in the bas.e.m.e.nt with cigar and journal to while away the long hours. Sinister thoughts troubled him, and painful fancies. He could see the poor lad hiding in the slums, or at the mercy of wretches as vile as Claire; wandering about the city, perhaps, in anguish over his ruined life, horrified at what his friends must read in the morning papers, planning helplessly to escape from a danger which did not exist, except in his own mind. Oh, no doubt Curran would find him! Why, he _must_ find him!

Across the sea in London, Minister Livingstone slept, full fed with the flatteries of a day, dreaming of the pleasures and honors sure to come with the morning. Down in the prison town lived Honora, with her eyes dulled from watching the jail and her heart sore with longing. For Owen the prison, for Louis the pavement, for Honora and himself the sleepless hours of the aching heart; but for the responsible Minister and his responsible tool sweet sleep, gilded comfort, overwhelming honors. Such things could be only because men of his sort were craven idiots. What a wretched twist in all things human! Why not, if nothing else could be done, go and set fire to Claire's office, the bishop's house, and the Livingstone mansion?

However, joy came at the end of the night, for the messenger brought word that the lad had been found, sound as a bell, having just shipped as a common sailor on an Indiaman. Since Curran could not persuade him to leave his ship, the detective had remained on the vessel to await Arthur's arrival. A cab took him down to the wharf, and a man led him along the dock to the gang-plank, thence across the deck to a s.p.a.ce near the forecastle, where Curran sat with Louis in the starlight.