The High Heart Part 47

"All right, lady; I'll take care of you. Cranky old bunch, ain't she?

Handle a good many like that between Boston and Ne' Yawk."

Mrs. Brokenshire made no resistance when I fastened the lighter of her two veils about her head, folding the other and putting it away. Neither did she resist when I drew her cloak about her and put on my own coat.

But as the train drew into Providence station and she struggled to her feet in response to my touch on her arm, I was obliged to pull and drag and push her, till she was finally lifted to the platform.

Before leaving the car, however, I took time to glance at the English traveling-cap. I noted then what I had noted throughout the journey. Not once did the head beneath it turn in my direction. Of whatever had happened since leaving the main station in New York Larry Strangways could say that he was wholly unaware.

CHAPTER XVIII

What happened on the train after Mrs. Brokenshire and I had left it I heard from Mr. Strangways. Having got it from him in some detail, I can give it in my own words more easily than in his.

I may be permitted to state here how much and how little of the romance between Mr. Grainger and Mrs. Brokenshire Larry Strangways knew. He knew next to nothing--but he inferred a good deal. From facts I gave him once or twice in hours of my own perplexity he had been able to get light on certain matters which had come under his observation as Mr. Grainger's confidential man, and to which otherwise he would have had no key. He inferred, for instance, that Mrs. Brokenshire wrote daily to her lover, and that occasionally, at long intervals, her lover could safely write to her. He inferred that when their meetings had ended in one place they were taken up discreetly at another, but only with difficulty and danger. He inferred that the man chafed against this restraint, and as he had got out of it with other women, he was planning to get out of it again. I understood that had Mrs. Brokenshire been the only such instance in Stacy Grainger's career Larry Strangways might not have felt impelled to interfere; but seeing from the beginning that his employer "had a weakness," he felt it only right to help me save a woman for whom he knew I cared.

I have never wholly understood why he believed that the situation had worked up to a crisis on that particular day; but having watched the laying of the mine, he could hardly do anything but expect the explosion on the application of the match.

When Mr. Grainger had bidden him that morning go to the station and secure a drawing-room, or, if that was impossible, two parlor-car seats, on the five-o'clock for Boston, he had reasons for following the course of which I have briefly given the lines. No drawing-room was available, because any that was not sold he bought for himself in order to set the stage according to his own ideas. How far he was justified in this will be a matter of opinion. Some may commend him, while others will accuse him of unwarrantable interference. My own judgment being of no importance I hold it in suspense, giving the incidents just as they occurred.

It must be evident that as Mr. Strangways didn't know what was to happen he could have no plan of action. All he could arrange for was that he and I should be on the spot. As it is difficult for guilty lovers to elope while acquaintances are looking on, he was resolved that they should find elopement difficult. For anything else he relied on chance--and on me. Chance favored him in keeping Stacy Grainger out of sight, in putting Mrs. Brokenshire next to me, and in making the action, such as it was, run smoothly. Had I known that he relied on me I should have been more terrified than I actually was, since I was relying on him.

It will be seen, then, that at the moment when Mrs. Brokenshire and I left the train Larry Strangways had but a vague idea of what had taken place. He merely conjectured from the swish of skirts that we had gone.

His next idea was, as he phrased it, to make himself scarce on his own account; but in that his efforts miscarried.

Hoping to slip into another car and thus avoid a meeting with the outmanoeuvered lover, he was snapping the clasp of the bag into which he had thrust his cap when he perceived a tall figure enter the car by the forward end. To escape recognition he bent his head, pretending to search for something on the floor. The tall figure pa.s.sed, but came back again. It was necessary that he should come back, because of the number on the ticket, the ulster, the walking-stick, and the golf-clubs.

What Stacy Grainger saw, of course, was three empty seats, with his secretary sitting in a fourth. The sight of the three empty seats was doubtless puzzling enough, but that of the secretary must have been bewildering. Without turning his head Mr. Strangways knew by his sixth and seventh senses that his employer was comparing the number on his ticket with that of the seat, examining the hand-luggage to make sure it was his own, and otherwise drawing the conclusion that his faculties hadn't left him. For a private secretary who had ventured so far out of his line of duty it was a trying minute; but he turned and glanced upward only on feeling a tap on his shoulder.

"h.e.l.lo, Strangways! Is it you? What's the meaning of this?"

Strangways rose. As the question had been asked in perplexity rather than in anger, he could answer calmly.

"The meaning of what, sir?"

"Where the deuce are you going? What are you doing here?"

"I'm going to Boston, sir."

"What for? Who told you you could go to Boston?"

The tone began to nettle the young man, who was not accustomed to being spoken to so imperiously before strangers.

"No one told me, sir. I didn't ask permission. I'm my own master. I've left your employ."

"The devil you have! Since when?"

"Since this morning. I couldn't tell you, because when you left the office after I'd given you the tickets you didn't come back."

"And do you call that decent to a man who's-- But no matter!" He pointed to the seat next his own. "Where's the--the lady who's been sitting here?"

Mr. Strangways raised his eyebrows innocently, and shook his head.

"I haven't seen any lady, sir."

"What? There must have been a lady here. Was to have got on at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street."

"Possibly; I only say I didn't see her. As a matter of fact, I've been reading, and I don't think I looked round during the entire journey.

Hadn't we better not speak so loud?" he suggested, in a lower tone.

"People are listening to us."

"Oh, let them go to-- Now look here, Strangways," he began again, speaking softly, but excitedly, "there must be some explanation to this."

"Of course there must be; only I can't give it. Perhaps the porter could tell us. Shall I call him?"

Mr. Grainger nodded his permission. The colored man with the flashing teeth came up on the broad grin, showing them.

"Yep," he replied, in answer to the question: "they was two ladies in them seats all the way f'um Ne' Yawk."

"Two ladies?" Mr. Grainger cried, incredulously.

"Yes, gen'lemen. Two different ladies. The young one she got in at the Grand Central--fust one in the cyar--and the ole one at a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street."

"Do you mean to say it was an old lady who got in there?"

"Yep, gen'lemen; ole and cranky. I 'ain't handled 'em no crankier not since I've bin on this beat. Sick, too. They done get off at Providence, though they was booked right through to Boston, because the ole lady she couldn't go no farther."

Mr. Grainger was not a sleuth-hound, but he did what he could in the way of verification.

"Did the young lady wear--wear a veil?"

The porter scratched his head.

"Come to think of it she did--one of them there flowery things"--his forefinger made little whirling designs on his coffee-colored skin--"what makes a kind of pattern-like all over people's face."

Because he was frantically seeking a clue, Mr. Grainger blurted out the foolish question:

"Was she--pretty?"

To answer as a connoisseur and as man to man the African took his time.

"Wa-al, not to say p'ooty, she wasn't--but she'd pa-ss. A little black-eyed thing, an' awful smart. One of 'em trained nusses like--very perlite, but a turr'ble boss you could see she'd be, for all she was so soft-spoken. Had cyare of the ole one, who was what you'd call plumb crazy."

"That will do." The trail seemed not worth following any further.

"There's some mistake," he continued, furiously. "She must be in one of the other cars."

Like a collie from the leash he bounded off to make new investigations.

In five minutes he was back again, pa.s.sing up the length of the car and going on to examine those at the other end of the train. His face as he returned was livid; his manner, as far as he dared betray himself before a dozen or twenty spectators, that of a balked wild animal.