The Fate of Felix Brand Part 14

"That," he added, "is all that I can tell you, because it is all I know. But I do know that."

"Father!" cried Mildred, springing from her chair, her slender figure militantly erect, her eyes flashing and her voice thrilling with indignation. "How can you sit there and listen to this man's talk! Why don't you throttle him and make him tell all he knows? It's plain enough that if he knows this much he must know where Felix is and why he doesn't write to me. But I see through it all! He's got Felix locked up somewhere, perhaps in some mountain cabin in West Virginia, or perhaps he's killed him. He ought to be arrested! If you don't care enough for Felix to have it done I'll telephone for the police at once and he shall not leave this house until they come!"

Her words poured forth in an angry torrent, and then, with a sobbing cry, she swept from the room. Dr. Annister leaped to his feet as if to follow her, then turned with a hand outstretched to his wife.

"You'd better go to her," he said anxiously. "She's hysterical and must be put to bed. I'll be there presently. I hope you will pardon my daughter's outburst," he added, turning to Gordon with a little bow.

"She is overwrought from having brooded over this matter much more than it deserves. I don't share her suspicion of you and you seem to me to show every mark of a man speaking honestly what he believes to be the truth. But you will pardon me if I say I do not quite understand how it can all be true."

They had all risen and Gordon was looking straight down into the little physician's eyes with an expression so serious and solemn that Henrietta caught her breath, intently listening for what he was about to say.

"No," he replied, slowly, gravely, "I do not wonder that you do not understand. Neither do I."

Professional inquiry was in the keen glance with which Dr. Annister searched for an instant his visitor's face and eyes. Henrietta, watching him, guessed that he was probing for some sign of mental aberration. But apparently he was satisfied on that score, for as he followed them out he gave her a rea.s.suring pat upon the arm.

"Well," he said more cheerfully, "since this is all you can tell us, we shall have to wait with what patience we can for Mr. Brand's return. But I will tell you frankly, Mr. Gordon, that I, at least, have confidence in you and accept your a.s.surances."

He did not tell them, however, by what course of reasoning he had quickly come to this conclusion. That was something to be kept closely locked in his own breast until he should see Felix Brand again. For he had decided that the most probable key to the mystery was that his daughter's betrothed was indulging in some secret form of debauchery, perhaps solitary drunkenness, perhaps indulgence in some drug, perhaps mere beastliness, and that this fact was known to his intimate friend, Hugh Gordon, who, in single-minded loyalty, was trying to protect him.

A normal man's disgust at such a course of conduct, thought the doctor, would explain the antipathy which he was often unable to conceal when Brand's name was mentioned.

Henrietta thought her companion somewhat abstracted on their way down town, and unusually serious, even for him, who was accustomed to take, as she had already learned, a serious view of himself and the world.

He crossed the ferry with her, and not until they had ensconced themselves in a quiet corner of the boat's upper deck did he seem to settle the question which had been disturbing his mind. But settled she decided it must be, for he now gave himself up to enjoyment of her society.

When they landed he walked with her to her trolley car, where they stood, still talking, until the motorman began making preparations to start.

"Good-bye," he said unsmilingly, as he held out his hand. "I shall see you again sometime, but I fear it will not be soon."

CHAPTER XIV

"THERE IS NOT ROOM FOR US BOTH"

"What shall I do?" Henrietta Marne exclaimed aloud as she looked despairingly at the papers that littered her desk. "Here are half a dozen letters, this morning, that ought to have his immediate attention, to say nothing of all the others that I've got stacked away in this drawer. Well, I'll just have to keep on as I've done before and answer them in my own name, saying that Mr. Brand is temporarily out of the city and as soon as he returns, etc. If he doesn't come back soon," she grumbled on as she seated herself at the typewriter, "I'll be as hysterical as Mildred is, though I'm not in love with him."

She did what she could with the morning's mail, looking at one envelope as she carefully put it away unopened, with more than a little interest and curiosity, as she saw on its upper corner the firm name of "Gordon and Rotherley." After she had finished the letter writing she busied herself for an hour with such duties as it was possible for her to take up.

The architect's suite of offices was on an upper floor of a high building and from its windows one's vision soared far over the city southward and westward. Henrietta paused now and then in the course of her work to forget her anxieties in the sights and thoughts that greeted her in that wide view. Down below, at the bottom of the street canyons, people and vehicles were rushing back and forth.

But her eyes never rested long upon them. Rather, they traveled slowly out over the mighty plain of roofs, broken by chimneys and spires, by great, square b.u.t.tes of buildings, by domes, turrets and towers, across the bay, gleaming silver-white or glowing copper-red in the sun, on to where the swelling hills of Staten Island loomed dimly against the horizon.

In the brilliant sunshine a thousand plumes of cloud-white steam waved gaily above the castellated plain of roofs and shook out their tendrils in the breeze. "Peace pipes" Henrietta sometimes called them to herself, as she thought of all that their fragile beauty, forever dissolving and forever being renewed, meant to the city beneath them.

She liked to think of them, as she watched them curling and waving upward toward the blue, as a sign and compact of earth's peace and good-will.

Her bent of mind was much more practical than imaginative, but she could never look out over this scene without feeling her nerves thrill with vague consciousness of the t.i.tanic energies ceaselessly grinding, striving, achieving, beneath that surface of roofs and towers. And now, as always when she stopped to gaze from her window for a few moments, she felt her own pulses quicken in response and her own inward being stir, as if those waving white plumes were trumpet calls to activity.

She turned from the window, more restless than before, impatient with the necessity of merely sitting there and waiting. In Brand's private room the books she had got for him three weeks before still lay ranged upon his desk, in readiness for his return at any moment. In her spare hours she had been reading some of them herself and now she went to get one as the best way in which to put in her time. As she brought it back to her own room her thoughts, as they did a hundred times a day, hovered over and around her various speculations concerning the mystery of her employer's absence.

"I wonder," they presently ran, "if it could be possible that he is hiding somewhere in the city just to indulge in some sort of orgy."

And this time denial of such a possibility did not, as formerly, spring up spontaneously in her mind. "I don't like to think he could be that sort of a man," she temporized with her budding doubt, "for he always seems so refined and thoroughly nice, and he's always been such a perfect gentleman to me. But it's evident that Mr. Gordon, who knows him so well, hasn't a very high opinion of him, except in his art."

The telephone broke in upon her musing, and as she put the receiver to her ear and said "h.e.l.lo" she was almost as much astonished as delighted to hear in reply the voice of Felix Brand himself. He told her that he had just got home, after another beastly trip into the back woods of West Virginia, where he had had an accident. He had slipped and sprained his ankle--no, it was nothing serious, and was all right now, but it had kept him a prisoner for nearly two weeks in a mountain cabin a thousand miles from anywhere, and he would be at the office as soon as he had had his luncheon.

Glad as she was that he was there once more to take up the matters that needed his attention so badly, Henrietta was almost afraid to face him, when she heard his voice in the outer room, lest there might be that in his appearance which would give form and force to the doubts that were stirring in her mind.

But he seemed no different from his usual, affable and well-dressed self. He wore, in all seasons, very dark or black clothing, which was always in perfect condition, and fitted his well-proportioned figure trimly and closely rather than with the looser English cut. His dark eyes looked down upon her with their usual caressing smile and his clean-shaven face, with its finely modeled, regular features, was as handsome, as refined, as ever.

But, no,--his secretary was conscious of something in its expression she had never noticed there before. What with the rejoicing that filled her heart and the work that kept her hands and brain busy all the rest of the day, she had not time to think what it was, or to give it any definite form in her thoughts, until her homeward trip by subway, ferry and trolley gave her leisure to scan closely the happenings of the afternoon.

Even then she merely said to herself that there was something in his face and eyes that did not seem quite like him, something that was not so "nice" as he had always seemed to be. She did not know enough about the evil undercurrents of life to give the thing more specific definition. But she did know that, whatever it was, it stirred, deep within her, a faint sense of repulsion.

"Did you get my letter?" was one of the first things he said to her.

"No, Mr. Brand, I've heard nothing at all from you since you left."

"You didn't? That's queer. I gave it to the porter to mail and he probably forgot all about it. I went away so hurriedly I didn't have time to write until after I got aboard the train. There were some directions in it about the work here. Well, we'll have to go back and take things up where we left off. And the first thing is that letter I wrote and asked you not to send. Where is it?"

"Oh, I ventured to mail that--I knew how important it was, and I found out enough about the business to feel sure you would want me to."

"You did! How fortunate!"

"Then it was all right? I am so glad! But I don't deserve all the credit. Your friend, Mr. Hugh Gordon, was here----"

"What! That fellow? Did he dare to come here?"

The start, the sudden turn, the sharp exclamation with which Brand broke into her sentence were so different from his habitual manner of deliberate movement and courteous speech that Henrietta gazed at him in amazement. Surprise and indignation sat upon his countenance.

"Why, yes," she faltered. "He was here several times. The first time, a few days after you left, he told me he knew you wanted that letter sent."

She went on to repeat what Gordon had told her and ended with: "Of course, I didn't take his word for it entirely, but after what he told me I was able to find out enough to make me feel sure it was the right thing to do."

"You did quite right," he told her cordially. "But I am surprised to learn of his doing, for me, a friendly act like that. You said he was here afterwards?"

"Yes, several times. He came to tell me that you were quite safe and well and would return before long. I was very glad to have the a.s.surance, for, of course, I couldn't help being anxious."

He opened his mouth as if to speak, closed it again suddenly, then, as he busied his hands with some papers on his desk, took sudden resolution and, though his face paled, said in a casual way:

"Did he tell you where I was?"

"He said he didn't know where you were, but that he did know positively that if anything should happen to you he would be the first person to know anything about it. I felt so much less anxious after that."

"Yes, it was quite true, what he said," Brand a.s.sented slowly. He hesitated again, as if on the verge of farther speech, and Henrietta waited. After a moment he turned to her a face out of which he seemed purposely to have forced all expression and asked:

"How did he impress you? Do you think he looks like me? Some people say he does."

"Oh, he impressed me very favorably, indeed. He seemed so sincere and so kind and so much in earnest. No, I didn't think he looked like you, except in a general way. His features, perhaps, are something like yours, but he himself is so different, his manner, his expression--everything."

She spoke interestedly, the color rising in her cheeks, and Brand watched her narrowly. "Oh, that reminds me," she exclaimed, "there's a letter for you from him. It's in my desk."