The Professor's Mystery Part 20

Mr. Tabor glanced quickly at me. "We can do that very well, as we have done. Of course your husband can be sent to prison for blackmail, if I can't otherwise be rid of him, but for your sake I should rather have him simply go away. If you are not willing to help, Sheila, you need only say so."

For a moment I thought she was going to refuse. But after a vain appeal or two, she gave way rather sullenly, and agreed to leave early in the morning.

"That's the pity of those people," Mr. Tabor said to me, as he closed the door after her. "Let the man do or be what he will, the woman he has possessed will hold of him to the end of her days; he can't quite lie away her faith or kick away her tenderness. I suppose it's beautiful in its way, but it gives a foothold to a lot of misery--well, now, Crosby, the rest is your part. I believe Sheila will keep her word; but it's against her husband, after all, and I want to make sure. Will you go to New York, too, and keep an eye on them until Carucci has gone?

It's an unpleasant service to ask, but I can't do it for myself.

And--since your vacation trip would naturally start from New York, it won't be far out of your way." I looked full at him to be sure that I understood, but I knew already that he had weighed his words.

"I see," I said slowly. "Is that all, or do you really want me to watch the Caruccis?"

"Certainly I do, if you will. I'm going to be very frank with you, Crosby, because you've deserved it. I did feel at one time that your former trip was managed with a little too much gallantry--that you had with the best intentions involved us in a melodrama, been the means of bringing these people down on us. But that wasn't just. n.o.body could have done better in your place; and if any one was to blame, it was Reid, for allowing you to go at that time of night. Of course, I was away from home when you started. Well, you've helped us and been loyal to us, though we had no claim upon you. It all comes down to this: Mrs.

Tabor's health is a cause of great concern to me, and has been for a long time. I feel that she must be guarded from every possible shock. As I told you, there is a condition here which we are keeping to ourselves, which is dangerous to her, and which--you must take my word for it--may be aggravated by your continual presence. I'm eliminating, so far as I can, every disturbing element, and you are such an element, through no fault of yours. I'm not banishing you, I only ask that your visits to us be no more than occasional. Once in a while, a little later, we shall be very glad to see you, I hope; but not just now. Is that clear?"

"All but the reason for it," I said, "and I won't ask that."

"I won't make any protestations or apologies," he added very deliberately. "I think you trust us. And I prove that I trust you more than you know, in telling you as much as I have."

I suppose that a more sensible man in my place would have done very differently. On his own confession, Mr. Tabor was telling me only a part of the truth; accident and warning had combined to make me suspicious of him; and I knew by my own experience how plausibly he could lie. But whether it was his age, or his deference, or the fact that he was Lady's father, all the Don Quixote in me came suddenly to the surface.

"I'll do as you say, sir," I said. "Let me know when I can do anything more," and I held out my hand.

His own was moist and hot; and I noticed under the stronger light of the hall, that the veins in his temples were swollen and throbbing and that he moved listlessly, as though he had been under a great strain. Before I could think about it, Lady parted the curtains of the living-room.

"What is it?" she asked quickly. "Has anything happened?"

"Only that I am going to New York to see Carucci sail away," I answered, "and I don't know just when I shall be back." It was plain that Mr.

Tabor had not meant me to say so much; but that was my own affair.

She followed me outside the front door. "That means that you are going away-- I knew it must come to that." She was twisting nervously at her chain.

"One word from you, and I won't go."

She shook her head. "No, I want you to--good-by."

"Promise me one thing," I said. "That you'll send me word if you want me."

"I promise," she answered quietly, "but I shall never have to keep that promise."

As I went out of the gate, Doctor Reid was coming in, and stopped to speak to me. His companion stood meanwhile some distance away; but it was not too dark for me to recognize the big man with the shrill precision of speech whom I had seen him bring secretly to the house before.

I set out the next morning in a humor of suspicious disillusion, all my quixotism turned sour under the dry sun. Put it how I would, I was playing the part of a spy: if Carucci himself was no better, the honest Irish eyes of his wife made me vaguely ashamed of my task. Having nevertheless undertaken it, I must put it through as well as might be.

To follow the pair about would be futile, since I must presently be seen and recognized; but I conceived that merely by making sure of them at intervals during the next forty-eight hours I should be fulfilling my mission. I saw them safely on the train, and established myself in another car; and when we reached the Grand Central, I made straight for the scene of my midnight adventure. It was no less ugly by day than by night, and if possible even more malodorous. Push-carts vended unimaginable sweetmeats along the curb to a floating population of besmeared and screaming children; bleared slatterns, flabbily overflowing their bulging garments, jabbered in window and doorway; and the squat and dingy little saloon on the corner leered beerily at all. I waited half an hour before the Caruccis appeared. Then I made for a telephone in a state of disgusted relief, and called up Maclean.

"So you're in town now for a while," he said, in answer to my expurgated account of myself. "Well, I tell you how it is, Laurie, I'm pretty busy to-day. Let's have your number, an' I'll call you up later when I'm loose. You'll hang out at the Club, won't you?"

"I thought you wanted to see me about something."

"Oh, _that_. That wasn't anythin'-- Why, yes, I'll lunch with you if you're in such a hurry, but I'll have to beat it right afterwards, 'cause I've got an a.s.signment this afternoon."

At the Club, he plunged immediately into the irrelevant subject.

"Say, I've got to slide out after grub, an' go on a spook-hunt. There's this gang of Psychics or Spiritualists or whatever they are, up the line here, you see? And I'm coverin' one of their seances. Hamlet's old grandfather comes in an' rough-houses the furniture, an' Little Eva says a lot more than her prayers, an' you sit in a circle holdin' hands to get a line on the higher life. Don't you want to come along? You'll get some thrillin' moments."

"Is it a fake, then?" I asked.

"Oh, they're all fakes, I guess. All I ever ran across, anyway. But this death-fancier's the real squeeze--only raises the graveyard in private an' don't take any money, an' a whole lot of big doctors an' psychology profs are nutty about her, you see? It's the big show, the original New York company. You better come."

"All right," I said, "bring on your mysteries. I always thought there was something in that business, really; and here's a good chance. But look here, Mac, I want you to tell me what you heard from Carucci."

"Tell you the truth," said Maclean, "I'm a little bit afraid there may be something in spookery, myself. That's why I'd just as soon have you along."

"It won't do, old fellow," said I; "let's have the dago story."

Maclean fidgeted and glowered at the table. "It's like this, Laurie, you see? Those folks are friends of yours, an' this yarn of the guinea's is just a dirty bit of scandal, that's all over an' done with. An' I told you I didn't believe it anyhow. I hadn't ought to have said anythin' to you in the first place; and I'd rather not say anythin' about it now unless you want. 'Tain't anythin'."

"Mac, I've gone so far with the Tabors that I need to know all I can. If it's a lie, why all right. If it's true, why you can trust me and so can they. I wasn't born last week."

"Well," Mac grunted after a pause, "I'd better tell you, I guess, than let you go it blind--here you are. You know that Doctor Reid that's in with the Tabors?" He lowered his voice, leaning across the table.

"Accordin' to the dago, he got mixed up with some woman abroad, an'

married her. Then he leaves her, an' comes back, an' maybe he thinks she's dead. So he marries the Tabor girl, you see? Then the family get wise about the other woman, an' there's an awful row, an' finally they fix it up among them to move away, an' let on that Reid an' the daughter ain't married at all, not until this other woman dies, you see? An'

that's what they're all keepin' so quiet about. Mind you, I don't believe it, myself."

"Why, it's impossible," I said. "It doesn't fit together. Miriam Tabor died a year after Reid married her, and why should they--"

"Sure, that's just it. Sure. I told you it was all over, an' anyhow it couldn't be so." He looked at his watch, and I noticed that the monogram on the back was cut in a quaint, antique fashion. "Come ahead--we've just got time."

I found his eyes and held them. "One minute, Mac. You're keeping back the point, so that I won't understand the story. It's no use."

"No, I ain't--honest--it's all over--well, d.a.m.n it, Carucci says the Tabor girl didn't die. He says that's only the fake they put up, an'

she's alive an' around the same as ever."

For a moment the words did not mean anything. I was groping madly among a ma.s.s of reminiscences, the noises in the house, the room with the presence in it, into which Carucci had broken, the tangled half-confidences of the family. Then the picture of Lady twisting nervously at the slender chain came uppermost in imagination, and through the eddying fog of my mind the whole nightmare leaped forth in a flash of horrible clearness, a score of interwoven circ.u.mstances outlining it as with threads of fire: the wedding-ring worn hidden at her breast, her raising of unaccountable barriers, her hopelessness, the family's fear of publicity and growing anxiety over my intimate presence among them, the cloud upon Mrs. Tabor, her aversion to Reid and the elaborate explanation of her slip in calling her daughter Miriam--I leaned my forehead on my hands.

Maclean had me by the shoulder: "Brace up, man," he muttered; "here, drink your drink. You'll have everybody looking at you."

CHAPTER XVII

THE BORDERLAND, AND A NAME

"It's an infernal lie," I said dully.

"Sure it is." Maclean was thoroughly embarra.s.sed and uncomfortable. "The way I work it out is, there's probably just enough in it somewhere for Carucci to build on. Maybe Reid did get into some mess or other 'way back before he was married, an' Carucci works that in with what he thinks he knows about the family now, an' dopes out this scandal in high life business. Or maybe he don't believe it himself, an' just has it in for the old man. You can't tell whether it's muck-rakin' or mud-slingin', but it's bound to be partly both, you see? I only told you so you'd know what was around. Well, are you comin'?"

I got my hat mechanically, and went out with him into the dust and the heat. The sense of unreality that had been upon me that early morning in the automobile was returned now in the breathless afternoon. The hazy slit of sky overhead, the stark light and shadow of the street, had the tones of a cheap colored photograph. The very smell of the air was like a memory of itself. The roar and jangle of the traffic seemed to come from a distance through a stillness that listened; and the wail of a hand-organ on the corner somehow completed and enhanced it all. I had only had one serious illness in my life, and that had been long ago; but I remembered that upon my first venturing out of doors after it, things had looked so; and I wondered for a moment whether I were going to be ill again. But that was nonsense. I was not a person to collapse upon the hearing of bad news; and besides, this news, I did not believe.

Maclean had not believed it himself, in telling it to me. Only, he had so much less knowledge than I of its consistency. Grant for once that Lady was Miriam, that she was an only daughter--and they all would have done even as I had seen them doing. So Lady would have worn her ring, so feared our growing intimacy, so felt the burden of an abnormality not her own, so confessed to me the barrier and in extremity lied about her name, so the family would have shrunk from any notice, and striven to rid themselves of Carucci and of me. Straight this way pointed every line of mystery since the beginning; here was one logical motive for all. The explanation fitted every fact; only, I could not believe it of the people. A small cloud covered the sun, and the hot street turned suddenly gray. A horse clocked heavily around the corner, the rumble of the wheels behind him suddenly m.u.f.fled as they struck the asphalt of the avenue. We were going up the steps of a house, a house closed for the summer with lead-colored board shutters over the lower windows, and an outer door of the same, on which the bright bra.s.s disk of a spring lock took the place of a k.n.o.b. Maclean glanced again up at the number as he pressed the bell.