The Fifth Ace Part 33

"It is the jorobadito, Jose, who has disappeared now!"

"What?" Willa faltered. "You mean that Jose has gone also? It cannot be, Senora Rodriguez! There must be a mistake! He would not go unless he were abducted!"

"No, Senorita; there was no abduction!" the Spanish woman cried. "The little Jose was all of yesterday most thoughtful. Scarcely could I arouse him to eat, and as his fever abated I allowed him to sit in the sun upon the gla.s.s-enclosed back porch and did not urge upon him the medicine he hates. Last night as he went to bed he kissed my hand quite suddenly, a thing he has not done before, though always was he courteous. This morning he was gone as the old Senora went, without warning.--Senorita, I am a poor woman, but I would give half I possess to have the pobrecito back for he is frail and weak to be alone in this great city and he has not a peso with him. Moreover, he brought me luck. What can I do, Senorita, to find him once more?"

Willa cut the woman's protestations short, and, calling up the garage--their prearranged rendez-vous--instructed Dan to meet her at the bridge.

Intent on the new calamity, she gave no heed as to the probability of having been overheard by Angie, but hurriedly departed.

The deeply concerned Dan broke all records and narrowly escaped arrest in getting her to the Rodriguez home, but nothing further could be elicited from its dismayed chatelaine. Her sincerity, however, was self-evident; she could have had no hand in the disappearance of the little hunchback.

The day was spent in a feverishly renewed search which brought no surcease of anxiety and at its end Willa dragged herself with leaden feet to her room. Her head seemed bursting and she shook as with an ague as she dressed for the tedious dinner and the still more tedious game of bridge which was the program of the evening. She dared not absent herself, explanations enough would be demanded of her for the day's broken engagements, but she looked forward to the hours ahead with a dread foreboding which she could not name.

It was merely nerves, she a.s.sured herself; she was worn-out mentally and physically with the continued strain and ceaseless effort and she forced her thoughts resolutely away from the false but ecstatic happiness which might have been hers on that evening save for the discovery of Kearn Thode's perfidy.

The arrival of the expected guests commanded her descent to the drawing-room, dinner somehow dragged through its almost interminable length and the bridge-tables were made up, when a diversion occurred.

The door-bell pealed, and Welch obeyed its summons, then came and called Ripley Halstead quietly from his place. No premonition warned Willa, even when her cousin returned visibly perturbed and excused himself for the evening, pleading an unantic.i.p.ated business conference.

The tables were readjusted and the game went on to its close. Then came supper, and when the last of the guests had departed the hands of the clock were on the stroke of twelve and Willa turned with a sigh of relief to ascend to her room.

Midway the stairs, she was halted by hearing her name called in strange, stunned accents, and, turning, saw Ripley Halstead standing in the library door, regarding her with dazed, half-incredulous eyes, as though she were a changeling.

Instantly the truth came to her, and with head held high and a slight scornful smile upon her lips she descended and approached him.

The long table in the center of the library was strewn with large legal-looking doc.u.ments, and beside it sat Mason North, his rotund body sagged in the chair, his good-natured face drawn and haggard. Opposite him stood Starr Wiley, his bruised lips twisted into a leer of triumph.

The girl looked gravely from one to the other and then turning to her cousin, waited submissively for him to speak.

"Willa, my dear----" he paused, clearing his throat nervously--"I have something to tell you which will be a painful shock to you. It has utterly unnerved me. I--I would not have dreamed that such an astounding discovery could come to pa.s.s and at this late date it is particularly distressing----"

"Better permit me to tell her, Ripley." Mason North rose heavily to his feet and stood with one pudgy hand braced upon the table as if for support. "The mistake was mine in too eagerly grasping the obvious as proof.--My dear Wil--my dear girl, I am profoundly grieved, but it has been brought to our attention that--that there are grave doubts as to your ident.i.ty! In fact, belated but seemingly irrefutable doc.u.mentary evidence appears to prove that you--you are not Willa Murdaugh!"

The girl stood like a statue, but from behind her Mrs. Halstead gasped convulsively, and there came a little squeal in Angie's treble tones.

"Sit down, my dear." Ripley Halstead drew forward a chair and Willa sank obediently into it, her eyes never leaving those of the attorney.

The others came in and seated themselves unbidden; all but Vernon. He took up his stand behind Willa's chair and for a moment his hand brushed her shoulder as if to a.s.sure her of his presence in case of need.

"It is only just that an immediate and detailed explanation be made to you," North continued. "I am sure it is unnecessary for me to express my regret and sympathy, but I want you to realize that I am as entirely at your service in every way as I was prior to this discovery.

"When I found you in Limasito and retraced your history from the time the man known as 'Gentleman Geoff' adopted you supposedly in Topaz Gulch, I overlooked one significant phase in his peregrinations. Willa Murdaugh's parentage and the circ.u.mstances of her birth were in every particular as I have told you; Ralph Murdaugh died when the baby was two years old, his wife lost her life in a fire two years later and the child was actually adopted by Gentleman Geoff and taken with him on his wanderings.

"Now it has transpired that the first heavy snow of the following winter caught him midway between two mining camps far up in the Rockies, near Flathead Lake, Montana. Does that name recall any memories to you?"

Willa shook her head, mutely, and the attorney after a moment's pause went on:

"It is scarcely likely that it would, for you yourself could have been no more than five years old at the time. However, Gentleman Geoff and the little Willa were lost in the blizzard, and, after suffering untold horrors, he finally made his way to the cabin of a trapper, named----"

he hesitated and glanced down at the papers beneath his hand--"named Frank Hillery. This trapper Hillery's wife had run away with another man some years before, leaving him with a little daughter on his hands, a child of about five years, called Louise."

Again he paused, coughing. The Halsteads, mother and daughter, sat spell-bound, but Willa was outwardly the coolest person in the room.

The story in its every detail was stamping itself indelibly upon her mind and for the moment even the presence of Starr Wiley was forgotten.

"When he reached the trapper's cabin, Gentleman Geoff was blinded by the snow, delirious and half frozen. Hillery took him in, unwrapped the fur pack he carried on his back and discovered the body of little Willa. She had died from exposure."

Vernon uttered a sharp exclamation, and the girl seated before him clasped her hands tightly, but no other sign greeted Mason North's announcement. He pa.s.sed his hand across his brow and drew a deep breath.

"Hillery buried the child and nursed Gentleman Geoff through a long illness. It was well into the following spring when he was able to proceed on his journey, and when he did, he took the trapper's little daughter, Louise, with him, and called her 'Billie' as he had nicknamed the other. His future wanderings never took him back over the same route or to any of the places where the real Willa had been known, consequently the subst.i.tution was never discovered until these papers came to light. No one had visited the trapper's lonely cabin during the period of Gentleman Geoff's presence there. Hillery deserted it the following summer and went southward to Arizona where he eventually died six months ago. Undoubtedly, those who had known him and pa.s.sed the cabin clearing took it for granted that the little grave was that of his daughter, Louise, but these doc.u.ments, found among Frank Hillery's private papers after his death, bear witness in crude but unmistakable fashion to the agreement between the two men and the adoption of little Louise by Gentleman Geoff."

Mason North seated himself once more with a gesture of relief that the bomb was exploded, and all eyes turned to Willa.

"How is it, then, that I remember the fire in which my mother was destroyed?" She was wholly innocent of an intention to defend her position, but asked her question in the first bewildering shock, unconscious of the fact which her form of speech betrayed, that she could not all at once disa.s.sociate herself from the ident.i.ty she had accepted only a few short weeks before. "Why, I even recall vaguely a song which the woman I supposed must have been my mother used to sing all the time, though I cannot quite bring it back to my mind. I am sure if I heard it once, I should remember!"

The attorney visibly hesitated, and it was Ripley Halstead who replied as gently as possible:

"Often one believes that one can recall experiences of their very early years which they have actually learned from hearsay, from countless repet.i.tion in their presence."

"But Dad never spoke of that time in Nevada; he never once referred to it to the very hour of his death! I recall vaguely being lost in the snow and I have often heard Dad speak of Hillery's kindness and care; he used to say that the trapper had saved both our lives. A number of people in Limasito have heard the story from his own lips, Jim Baggott and Henry Bailey and Rufe Terwilliger--but Rufe is dead now, he was killed in El Negrito's raid----"

She paused as if a hand had closed suddenly about her throat, while a tiny patch of color crept into each cheek and her eyes, large and luminous and swiftly keen, sought Starr Wiley's. Her clasped hands tightened, then relaxed and a little smile hovered about her lips once more; a coolly calculating, somewhat grim little smile. The story had engrossed her for the moment to the exclusion of all else, but mention of the raid recalled her sharply to the presence of its instigator.

Wiley's vague threats were plain to her now, his purpose practically achieved. He had kept his word, he had exposed her, but was her early memory indeed tricking her? Was this latest revelation true, and had he actually stumbled upon authentic records, or manufactured them to avenge himself upon her and eliminate her from his path? Willa's mind still groped in a quandary, but every instinct within her arose to combat.

"Why would Dad have mentioned Hillery at all, if he did not intend that I should ever learn the truth?" she asked quietly. "Indeed, why did he adopt the trapper's little daughter and call her by the other's name?"

"Well," Ripley Halstead replied after a swift glance at the attorney as if for help, "probably he had grown fond of the dead child and wanted another to take her place."

"He undoubtedly did!" It was the first time Starr Wiley spoke in the girl's presence and a short ugly laugh accompanied the remark. "Not wholly because he had taken a liking to Willa Murdaugh, however. Why blink the facts, Mr. Halstead? It is plain on the face of it that he must have looked up the real Willa's parentage and connections, and realized that the storm had robbed him of a potential heiress in whose probable inheritance he would sometime have shared----"

"That is a lie." Willa's tones rang out without pa.s.sion but clarion clear in her absolute cert.i.tude. "Anyone who knew Dad ever so slightly would testify to its falseness. Why did he not keep himself informed of my grandfather's changing att.i.tude and come forward and claim the inheritance when the search for me began? Whether I am Willa Murdaugh or not, there can be at least no reason why I should remain to hear the memory of the finest man who ever lived defiled by such a base imputation. If you will excuse me now----"

She half rose from her chair, but Starr Wiley forestalled her.

"Your pardon--I will go." He bowed with an undercurrent of mockery in his suave manner. "Naturally, Miss Billie, you resent my interference in your career and I deplore the fact that the onerous duty should have fallen upon my shoulders. However, it was a duty, no matter how repugnant, and I could do no less than place the facts before Mr. North and Mr. Halstead. I am sure my att.i.tude requires no defense and I trust, when you will have had time to think matters over calmly, you will not blame me too bitterly. Believe me, I would have spared you, gladly, had it been compatible with my sense of the right. It is long past midnight, and I will leave you, if you will permit me, Mr. North."

He turned deferentially to the attorney, but not before Willa had caught the significance with which he mentioned the hour. Twelve o'clock had struck, indeed, as he had prophesied, for this latter-day Cinderella, and the pumpkin coach had vanished. The story differed only in that there was no fairy prince to find her once again; he had vanished, too, stripped of his splendor, but before the magic hour.

Or, rather, he had never existed save in the exalted fancy of the girl back there in Limasito!

Cinderella must pick up her slipper herself, and go forth into the world.

CHAPTER XIX

THE VENDER OF TOMALES

After Starr Wiley's departure Mason North placed the doc.u.ments in Willa's hands, explaining each in turn and she forced herself to a stern concentration on them that she might master every detail. Already she was gathering her forces, although no definite purpose outlined itself in the chaos of her thoughts. Only a blind, as yet unreasoning, repudiation of the story to which she had just listened sprang full-grown to life within her and the very strength of her conviction urged her to examine well the evidence against herself.