Treasure and Trouble Therewith Part 38

It was past midnight when Mrs. Kirkham dropped Lorry at her door and rolled off with the rest of her cargo. The joy of the evening was still with the girl as she entered the hall. She stood there for a moment, pulling off her gloves and looking about with the prudent eye of a proprietor. In its roving her glance fell on a letter in the card tray.

It was addressed to her and had evidently come after she had left.

Standing under the single gas jet that was all Fong's thrifty spirit would permit, she opened it.

Anonymous and written in an unknown hand it struck upon her receptive mood with a staggering shock.

It came, a bolt from the blue, but a bolt that fell precise on a spot ready to accept it. It was like a sign following her troubled premonitions, an answer to her anxious queries. If its author had known just how Miss Alston's thoughts had been engaged, she could not have aimed her missile better or timed it more accurately.

During the first moment she saw nothing but the central fact--the concealed love affair of which the writer thought she was cognizant. Her mind accepted that instantaneously, corroborating memories coming quick to her call. They flashed across her mental vision, vivid and detached like slides in a magic lantern--glimpses of Chrystie in her unfamiliar brooding and her flushed elation, and the walks, the long walks, from which she returned withdrawn and curiously silent--the silence of enraptured retrospect.

Then quick, leaping upon her, came the recollection of Chrystie's departure that afternoon--the clinging embrace, the rush down the steps, the absence of her face at the carriage window. Lorry gave a moan and her hands rose, clutched against her heart. It was proof of how her lonely life had molded her that in this moment of piercing alarm, she thought of no help, of no outside a.s.sistance to which she could appeal. She had always been the leader, acted on her own initiative, and the will to do so now held her taut, sending her mind forces out, clutching and groping for her course. It came in a low-breathed whisper of, "The Barlows," and she ran to the telephone, an old-fashioned wall instrument behind the stairs. As she flew toward it another magic lantern picture flashed into being--Chrystie boring down into her trunk and the pile of money on the bureau. That forced a sound out of her--a sharp, groaned note--as if expelled from her body by the impact of a blow.

She tried to give the Barlows' number clearly and quietly and found her voice broken by gasping breaths. There was a period of agonized waiting, then a drowsy "central" saying she couldn't raise the number, and Lorry trying to be calm, trying to be reasonable--it _must_ be raised, it was important, they were asleep that was all. _Ring_--_ring_--ring till someone answers.

It seemed hours before Roy Barlow's voice, sleepy and cross, came growling along the wire:

"What the devil's the matter? Who is it?"

Then her answer and her question: Was Chrystie there?

That smoothed out the crossness and woke him up. He became suddenly alert:

"Chrystie? Here--with us?"

"Yes--staying over till Friday. Went down this afternoon."

"No. _She's _not here. What makes you think she is?"

She did not know what to say; the instinct to protect her sister was part of her being, strong in a moral menace as a physical. She fumbled out an explanation--she'd been out of town and in her absence Chrystie had gone to the country without leaving word where. It was all right of course, she was a fool to bother about it, but she couldn't rest till she knew where the girl had gone. It was probably either to the Spencers or the Joneses; they'd been teasing her to visit them all winter. Roy, now wide-awake, showed a tendency to ask questions, but she cut him off, swamped his curiosity in apologies and good-bys and hung up the receiver.

She was almost certain now, and again she stood pressing down her terrors, urging her faculties to intelligent action. She did not let them slip from her guidance; held them close as dogs to the trail. A moment of rigid immobility and she had whirled back to the telephone and called up a near-by livery stable. This answered promptly and she ordered a cab sent round at once.

While she waited she tried to keep steady and think clearly. Prominent in her mind was the necessity not to move rashly, not to do anything that would react on Chrystie. There might yet be a mistake--a blessed, unforseen mistake. She clung to the idea as those about a deathbed cling to the hope that a miracle may supervene and save their loved one. There _was_ a possibility that Chrystie had gone on some mysterious adventure of her own, was playing a trick, was doing anything but eloping with a man that no one had ever thought she cared for. The only way to find out whether Mayer had any part in her disappearance was to go directly to him.

She sat stiffly in the cab holding her hands tight-clenched to control their trembling. Her whole being seemed to tremble like a substance strained to the point of a perpetual vibration. She was not conscious of it; was only conscious of her will stretching out like a tangible thing, grasping at a fleeing Chrystie and dragging her back. And under that lay a substratum of anguish--that it was _her_ fault, _her_ fault. The wheels repeated the words in their rhythmic rotation; the horse's hoofs hammered them out on the pavement.

The night clerk at the Argonaut Hotel, drowsing behind his desk, sat up with a start when he saw her. Ladies in such gala array were rare at The Argonaut at any hour, much more so at long past midnight. That this one was agitated even the sleepy clerk could see. Her face was nearly as white as the dress showing between the loosened fronts of her cloak. The voice in which she asked if Mr. Mayer was there was a husky undertone.

The clerk, scrambling to his feet, said yes, as far as he knew Mr. Mayer was in his room. He had come in about ten and hadn't gone out since.

A change took place in her expression; the strained look relaxed and the white neck, showing between the cloak edges, lifted with a caught breath.

"Where is he?" she said, and before the man could answer had turned and swept toward the stairs.

"Second floor--two doors from the stairs on your right--No. 8," he called, and watched her as she ran, her skirts lifted, the rich cloak drooping about her form as it slanted forward in the rush of her ascent.

Mayer was still up and sitting at his desk. Everything was progressing satisfactorily. An excellent dinner had exerted its comforting influence and the telephone message to Chrystie had shown her to be rea.s.suringly uncomplaining and tranquil. Elated by a heady sense of approaching success he had packed his trunk in the bedroom and then come back to the parlor and added up his resources and coming expenses. He had calculated what these would be with businesslike thoroughness, his mind, under the process of addition and subtraction, cogitating on a distribution of funds that would at once husband them and yield him the means of impressing his bride. Through the word "jewelry" he had drawn his pen, subst.i.tuting "candy and flowers," and was leaning back in gratified contemplation when a knock fell on the door. He rose to his feet, frightened, for the first moment inclined to make no answer. Then knowing that the light through the transom would betray his presence, he called, "Come in."

Lorry Alston, in evening dress, pale-faced and alone, entered.

His surprise and alarm were overwhelming. With the pen still in his hand he stood speechless, staring at her, and had she faced him then and there with her knowledge of the facts, admission might have dropped, in scared amaze, from his lips.

But the sight of him, peacefully employed in his own apartment, when she had suspected him of being somewhere else, nefariously engaged in running away with her sister, had so relieved her, that, in that first moment of encounter, she was silent. Bewilderment, verging toward apology, kept her on the threshold. Then the memory of the letter sent her over it, brought back the realization that even if he was here by himself he must know something of Chrystie's whereabouts.

Closing the door behind her she said:

"Mr. Mayer, I'm looking for my sister."

If that told him that she did not know where Chrystie was, it also told that she connected him with the girl's absence. He controlled his alarm and drew his shaken faculties into order.

"Looking for your sister!" he repeated. "Looking for her _here_?"

"Yes." She advanced a step, her eyes sternly fixed on him. He did not like the look, there was question and accusation in it, but he was able to inject a dignified surprise into his answer.

"I don't understand you, Miss Alston. Why should you come to _me_ at this hour to find your sister?"

He did it well, wounded pride, hostility under unjust suspicion, strong in his voice.

"Chrystie's gone," she answered. "She told me she was going to friends, and I find she isn't there. She deceived me and I had reason--I heard something tonight that made me think--" She stopped. It was horrible to state to this man, now frankly abhorred, what she suspected. There was a slight pause while he waited with an air of cold forbearance.

"Well," he said at length, "would it be too much trouble to tell me what you think?"

She had to say it:

"That she had gone to you."

"To _me_?" He was incredulous, astounded.

"Yes. Had run away with you."

"What reason had you for thinking such a thing?"

She made a step forward, ignoring the question.

"She isn't here--I can see that--but where is she?"

"How should I know?"

"Because you must know something about her, because you _do_ know.

Chrystie of herself wouldn't tell me lies; someone's made her do it, _you've_ made her do it."

"Really, Miss Alston--"

But she wouldn't give him time to finish.

"Mr. Mayer, you've got to tell me where she is. I won't leave here till you do."

He had always felt and disliked a quality of cool reasonableness in this girl. Now he saw a fighting courage, a thing he had never guessed under that gentle exterior, and he liked it even less. Had he followed his inclination he would have treated her with the rough brutality he had awarded Pancha, but he had to keep his balance and discover how much she knew.

"Miss Alston, we're at cross-purposes. We'd come to a better understanding if I knew what you're talking about. You spoke of finding out something tonight. If you'll tell me what it is I'll be able to answer you more intelligently."