Through the Wall Part 32

"Now for the mystery," he persisted. "Go on, what is it?"

At this her lovely face clouded and her eyes grew sad. "It's not the kind of mystery you think, Lloyd; I--I can't tell you about it very well--because--" She hesitated.

"Don't you worry, little sweetheart. I don't care what it is, I don't care if you're the daughter of a Zulu chief." Then, seeing her distress, he said tenderly: "Is it something you don't understand?"

"That's it," she answered in a low voice, "it's something I don't understand."

"Ah! Something about yourself?"

"Ye-es."

"Does anyone else know it?"

"No, no one _could_ know it, I--I've been afraid to speak of it."

"Afraid?"

She nodded, and again he noticed that the pupils of her eyes were widening and contracting.

"And that is why you said you wouldn't marry me?"

"Yes, that is why."

He stopped in perplexity. He saw that, in spite of her bravest efforts, the girl was almost fainting under the strain of these questions.

"You dear, darling child," said Lloyd, as a wave of pity took him, "I'm a brute to make you talk about this."

But Alice answered anxiously: "You understand it's nothing I have done that is wrong, nothing I'm ashamed of?"

"Of course," he a.s.sured her. "Let's drop it. We'll never speak of it again."

"I want to speak of it. It's something strange in my thoughts, dear, or--or my soul," she went on timidly, "something that's--different and that--frightens me--especially at night."

"What do you expect?" he answered in a matter-of-fact tone, "when you spend all your time in a cold, black church full of bones and ghosts? Wait till I get you away from there, wait till we're over in G.o.d's country, living in a nice little house out in Orange, N. J., and I'm commuting every day."

"What's commuting, Lloyd?"

"You'll find out--you'll like it, except the tunnel. And you'll be so happy you'll never think about your soul--no, sir, and you won't be afraid nights, either! Oh, you beauty, you little beauty!" he burst out, and was about to take her in his arms again when the guard came forward to warn them that the time was nearly up, they had three minutes more.

"All right," nodded Lloyd, and as he turned to Alice, she saw tears in his eyes. "It's tough, but never mind. You've made a man of me, little one, and I'll prove it. I used to have a sort of religion and then I lost it, and now I've got it again, a new religion and a new creed. It's short and easy to say, but it's all I need, and it's going to keep me game through this whole rotten business. Want to hear my creed? You know it already, darling, for you taught it to me. Here it is: 'I believe in Alice'; that's all, that's enough. Let me kiss you."

"Lloyd," she whispered as he bent toward her, "can't you trust me with that woman's name?"

He drew back and looked at her half reproachfully and her cheeks flushed.

She would not have him think that she could bargain for her lips, and throwing her arms about him, she murmured: "Kiss me, kiss me as much as you like. I am yours, yours."

Then there was a long, delicious, agonizing moment of pa.s.sion and pain until the guard's gruff voice came between them.

"One moment," Kittredge said, and then to the clinging girl: "Why do you ask that woman's name when you know it already?"

Wide-eyed, she faced him and shook her head. "I don't know her name, I don't want to know it."

"You don't know her name?" he repeated, and even in the tumult of their last farewell her frank and honest denial lingered in his mind.

She did not know the woman's name! Back in his lonely cell Kittredge pondered this, and reaching for his little volume of De Musset, his treasured pocket companion that the jailer had let him keep, he opened it at the fly leaves. _She did not know this woman's name!_ And, wonderingly, he read on the white page the words and the name written by Alice herself, scrawlingly but distinctly, the day before in the garden of Notre-Dame.

CHAPTER XIV

THE WOMAN IN THE CASE

Coquenil was neither surprised nor disappointed at the meager results of Alice's visit to the prison. This was merely one move in the game, and it had not been entirely vain, since he had learned that Kittredge _might_ have used his left hand in firing a pistol and that he did not suffer with gout or rheumatism. This last point was of extreme importance.

And the detective was speedily put in excellent humor by news awaiting him at the Palais de Justice Monday morning that the man sent to London to trace the burned photograph and the five-pound notes had already met with success and had telegraphed that the notes in question had been issued to Addison Wilmott, whose bankers were Munroe and Co., Rue Scribe.

Quick inquiries revealed the fact that Addison Wilmott was a well-known New Yorker, living in Paris, a man of leisure who was enjoying to the full a large inherited fortune. He and his dashing wife lived in a private _hotel_ on the Avenue Kleber, where they led a gay existence in the smartest and most spectacular circle of the American Colony. They gave brilliant dinners, they had several automobiles, they did all the foolish and extravagant things that the others did and a few more.

He was dull, good-natured, and a little fat; she was a beautiful woman with extraordinary charm and a lithe, girlish figure of which she took infinite care; he was supposed to kick up his heels in a quiet way while she did the thing brilliantly and kept the wheels of American Colony gossip (busy enough, anyway) turning and spinning until they groaned in utter weariness.

What was there that p.u.s.s.y Wilmott had not done or would not do if the impulse seized her? This was a matter of tireless speculation in the ultra-chic salons through which this fascinating lady flitted, envied and censured. She was known to be the daughter of a California millionaire who had left her a fortune, of which the last shred was long ago dispersed.

Before marrying Wilmott she had divorced two husbands, had traveled all over the world, had hunted tigers in India and canoed the breakers, native style, in Hawaii; she had lived like a cowboy on the Texas plains, where, it was said, she had worn men's clothes; she could swim and shoot and swear and love; she was altogether selfish, altogether delightful, altogether impossible; in short, she was a law unto herself, and her brilliant personality so far overshadowed Addison that, although he had the money and most of the right in their frequent quarrels, no one ever spoke of him except as "p.u.s.s.y Wilmott's husband."

In spite of her willfulness and caprices Mrs. Wilmott was full of generous impulses and loyal to her friends. She was certainly not a sn.o.b, as witness the fact that she had openly snubbed a certain grand duke, not for his immoralities, which she declared afterwards were n.o.body's business, but because of his insufferable stupidity. She rather liked a sinner, but she couldn't stand a fool!

Such was the information M. Paul had been able to gather from swift and special police sources when he presented himself at the Wilmott _hotel_, about luncheon time on Monday. Addison was just starting with some friends for a run down to Fontainebleau in his new Panhard, and he listened impatiently to Coquenil's explanation that he had come in regard to some English bank notes recently paid to Mr. Wilmott, and possibly clever forgeries.

"Really!" exclaimed Addison.

Coquenil hoped that Mr. Wilmott would give him the notes in question in exchange for genuine ones. This would help the investigation.

"Of course, my dear sir," said the American, "but I haven't the notes, they were spent long ago."

Coquenil was sorry to hear this--he wondered if Mr. Wilmott could remember where the notes were spent. After an intellectual effort Addison remembered that he had changed one into French money at Henry's and had paid two or three to a shirt maker on the Rue de la Paix, and the rest--he reflected again, and then said positively: "Why, yes, I gave five or six of them, I think there were six, I'm sure there were, because--" He stopped with a new idea.

"You remember whom you paid them to?" questioned the detective.

"I didn't pay them to anyone," replied Wilmott, "I gave them to my wife."

"Ah!" said Coquenil, and presently he took his departure with polite a.s.surances, whereupon the unsuspecting Addison tooted away complacently for Fontainebleau.

It was now about two o'clock, and the next three hours M. Paul spent with his sources of information studying the career of p.u.s.s.y Wilmott from special points of view in preparation for a call upon the lady, which he proposed to make later in the afternoon.

He discovered two significant things: first, that, whatever her actual conduct, Mrs. Wilmott had never openly compromised herself. Love affairs she might have had, but no one could say when or where or with whom she had had them; and if, as seemed likely, she was the woman in this Ansonia case, then she had kept her relations with Kittredge in profoundest secrecy.

As offsetting this, however, Coquenil secured information that connected Mrs. Wilmott directly with Martinez. It appeared that, among her other excitements, p.u.s.s.y was pa.s.sionately fond of gambling. She was known to have won and lost large sums at Monte Carlo, and she was a regular follower of the fashionable races in Paris. She had also been seen at the Olympia billiard academy, near the Grand Hotel, where Martinez and other experts played regularly before eager audiences, among whom betting on the games was the great attraction. The detective found two bet markers who remembered distinctly that, on several occasions, a handsome woman, answering to the description of Mrs. Wilmott, had wagered five or ten louis on Martinez and had shown a decided admiration for his remarkable skill with the cue.