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Title: A Husband by Proxy

Author: Jack Steele

Release Date: October 10, 2006 [EBook #19523]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HUSBAND BY PROXY ***




Produced by Al Haines










A HUSBAND BY PROXY


By

JACK STEELE




NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS




Copyright, 1909, by

Desmond FitzGerald, Inc.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

      I.  THE PROPOSITION
     II.  A SECOND EMPLOYMENT
    III.  TWO ENCOUNTERS
     IV.  UNSPOKEN ANTAGONISM
      V.  THE "SHADOW"
     VI.  THE CORONER
    VII.  A STARTLING DISCOVERY
   VIII.  WHERE CLEWS MAY POINT
     IX.  A SUMMONS
      X.  A COMPLICATION
     XI.  THE SHOCK OF TRUTH
    XII.  A DISTURBING LOSS
   XIII.  A TRYST IN THE PARK
    XIV.  A PACKAGE OF DEATH
     XV.  SIGNIFICANT DISCOVERIES
    XVI.  IN QUEST OF DOROTHY
   XVII.  A RESCUE BY FORCE
  XVIII.  THE RACE
    XIX.  FRIGHT AND A DISAPPEARANCE
     XX.  NEW HAPPENINGS
    XXI.  REVELATIONS
   XXII.  A MAN IN THE CASE
  XXIII.  THE ENEMY'S TRACKS
   XXIV.  A NEW ALARM
    XXV.  A DEARTH OF CLEWS
   XXVI.  STARTLING DISCLOSURES
  XXVII.  LIKE A BOLT FROM THE BLUE
 XXVIII.  A HELPLESS SITUATION
   XXIX.  NIGHT-WALKERS
    XXX.  OVERTURES FROM THE ENEMY
   XXXI.  THE FRET OF WAITING
  XXXII.  A TRAGIC CULMINATION
 XXXIII.  FOSTER DURGIN
  XXXIV.  THE RICHES OF THE WORLD
   XXXV.  JOHN HARDY'S WILL
  XXXVI.  GARRISON'S VALUED FRIEND
 XXXVII.  A HONEYMOON




A Husband by Proxy


CHAPTER I

THE PROPOSITION

With the hum of New York above, below, and all about him, stirring his
pulses and prodding his mental activities, Jerold Garrison, expert
criminologist, stood at the window of his recently opened office,
looking out upon the roofs and streets of the city with a new sense of
pride and power in his being.

New York at last!

He was here--unknown and alone, it was true--but charged with an energy
that he promised Manhattan should feel.

He was almost penniless, with his office rent, his licenses, and other
expenses paid, but he shook his fist at the city, in sheer good nature
and confidence in his strength, despite the fact he had waited a week
for expected employment, and nothing at present loomed upon the horizon.

His past, in a small Ohio town, was behind him.  He blotted it out
without regret--or so at least he said to himself--even as to all the
gilded hopes which had once seemed his all upon earth.  If his heart
was not whole, no New York eye should see its wounds--and the healing
process had begun.

He was part of the vast machine about him, the mighty brain, as it
were, of the great American nation.

He paced the length of his room, and glanced at the door.  The
half-painted sign on the frosted glass was legible, reversed, as the
artist had left it:

    JEROLD --------
    CRIMINOLOGIST.


He had halted the painter himself on the name, as the lettering
appeared too fanciful--not sufficiently plain or bold.

While he stood there a shadow fell upon the glass.  Someone was
standing outside, in the hall.  As if undecided, the owner of the
shadow oscillated for a moment--and disappeared.  Garrison, tempted to
open the door and gratify a natural curiosity, remained beside his
desk.  Mechanically his hand, which lay upon a book entitled "A
Treatise on Poisons," closed the volume.

He was still watching the door.  The shadow returned, the knob was
revolved, and there, in the oaken frame, stood a tall young woman of
extraordinary beauty, richly though quietly dressed, and swiftly
changing color with excitement.

Pale in one second, crimson in the next, and evidently concentrating
all her power on an effort to be calm, she presented a strangely
appealing and enchanting figure to the man across the room.  Bravery
was blazing in her glorious brown eyes, and firmness came upon her
manner as she stepped inside, closed the door, and silently confronted
the detective.

The man she was studying was a fine-looking, clean-cut fellow,
gray-eyed, smooth-shaven, with thick brown hair, and with a
gentleman-athlete air that made him distinctly attractive.  The
fearless, honest gaze of his eyes completed a personal charm that was
undeniable in his entity.

It seemed rather long that the two thus stood there, face to face.
Garrison candidly admiring in his gaze, his visitor studious and
slightly uncertain.

She was the first to speak.

"Are you Mr. Jerold?"

"Jerold Garrison," the detective answered.  "My sign is unfinished.
May I offer you a chair?"

His caller sat down beside the desk.  She continued to study his face
frankly, with a half-shy, half-defiant scrutiny, as if she banished a
natural diffidence under pressure of necessity.

She spoke again, abruptly.

"I wish to procure peculiar services.  Are you a very well-known
detective?"

"I have never called myself a detective," said Garrison.  "I'm trying
to occupy a higher sphere of usefulness.  I left college a year ago,
and last week opened my office here and became a New Yorker."

He might, in all modesty, have exhibited a scrap-book filled with
accounts of his achievements, with countless references to his work as
a "scientific criminologist" of rare mental attainments.  Of his
attainments as a gentleman there was no need of reference.  They
proclaimed themselves in his bearing.

His visitor laid a glove and a scrap of paper on the desk.

"It isn't so much detective services I require," she said; "but of
course you are widely acquainted in New York--I mean with young men
particularly?"

"No," he replied, "I know almost none.  But I know the city fairly
well, if that will answer your purpose."

"I thought, of course--I hoped you might know some honorable----  You
see, I have come on rather extraordinary business," she said, faltering
a little helplessly.  "Let me ask you first--is the confidence of a
possible client quite sacred with a man in this profession?"

"Absolutely sacred!" he assured her.  "Whether you engage my services
or not, your utterances here will be treated as confidential and as
inviolate as if spoken to a lawyer, a doctor, or a clergyman."

"Thank you," she murmured.  "I have been hunting around----"

She left the sentence incomplete.

"And you found my name quite by accident," he supplied, indicating the
scrap of paper.  "I cannot help observing that you have been to other
offices first.  You have tramped all the way down Broadway from
Forty-second Street, for the red ink that someone spilled at the
Forty-first Street crossing is still on your shoe, together with just a
film of dust."

She withdrew her shoe beneath the edge of her skirt, although he had
never apparently glanced in that direction.

"Yes," she admitted, "I have been to others--and they wouldn't do.  I
came in here because of the name--Jerold.  I am sorry you are not
better acquainted--for my business is important."

"Perhaps if I knew the nature of your needs I might be able to advise
you," said Garrison.  "I hope to be more widely acquainted soon."

She cast him one look, full of things inscrutable, and lowered her
lashes in silence.  She was evidently striving to overcome some
indecision.

Garrison looked at her steadily.  He thought he had never in his life
beheld a woman so beautiful.  Some wild, unruly hope that she might
become his client, perhaps even a friend, was flaring in his mind.

The color came and went in her cheeks, adding fresh loveliness at every
change.  She glanced at her list of names, from which a number had been
scratched.

"Well," she said presently, "I think perhaps you might still be able to
attend to my requirements."

He waited to hear her continue, but she needed encouragement.

"I shall be glad to try," he assured her.

She was silent again--and blushing.  She looked up somewhat defiantly.

"I wish you to procure me a husband."

Garrison stared.  He was certain he had heard incorrectly.

"I do not mean an actual husband," she explained.  "I simply mean some
honorable young man who will assume the rôle for a time, as a business
proposition, for a fee to be paid as I would pay for anything else.

"I would require that he understand the affair to be strictly
commercial, and that when I wish the arrangement to terminate he will
disappear from the scene and from my acquaintance at once and
absolutely.

"All I ask of you is to supply me such a person.  I will pay you
whatever fee you may demand--in reason."

Garrison looked at her as fixedly as she was looking at him.

Her recital of her needs had brought to the surface a phase of
desperation in her bearing that wrought upon him potently, he knew not
why.

"I think I understand your requirements, as far as one can in the
circumstances," he answered.  "I hardly believe I have the ability to
engage such a person as you need for such a mission.  I informed you at
the start that my acquaintance with New York men is exceedingly narrow.
I cannot think of anyone I could honestly recommend."

"But don't you know any honorable young gentleman--like some college
man, perhaps--here in New York, looking for employment; someone who
might be glad to earn, say, five hundred dollars?" she insisted.
"Surely if you only know a few, there must be one among them."

Garrison sat back in his chair and took hold of his smooth-shaved lip
with his thumb and finger.  He reviewed his few New York experiences
rapidly.

"No," he repeated.  "I know of no such man.  I am sorry."

His visitor looked at him with a new, flashing light in her eyes.

"Not one?" she said, significantly.  "Not one young _college_ man?"

He was unsuspicious of her meaning.

"Not one."

For a moment she fingered her glove where it lay upon the desk.  Then a
look of more pronounced determination and courage came upon her face as
she raised her eyes once more to Garrison's.

She said:

"Are you married?"

A flush came at once upon Garrison's face--and memories and heartaches
possessed him for a poignant moment.  He mastered himself almost
instantly.

"No," he said with some emotion, "I am not."

"Then," she said, "couldn't you undertake the task yourself?"

Garrison leaned forward on the table.  Lightning from an azure sky
could have been no more astonishing or unexpected.

"Do you mean--will I play this rôle--as your husband?" he said slowly.
"Is that what you are asking?"

"Yes," she answered unflinchingly.  "Why not?  You need the money; I
need the services.  You understand exactly what it is I require.  It is
business, and you are a business man."

"But I have no wish to be a married man, or even to masquerade as one,"
he told her bluntly.

"You have quite as much wish to be one as I have to be a married
woman," she answered.  "We would understand each other thoroughly from
the start.  As to masquerading, if you have no acquaintances, then who
would be the wiser?"

He acknowledged the logic of her argument; nevertheless, the thing
seemed utterly preposterous.  He rose and walked the length of his
office, and stood looking out of the window.  Then he returned and
resumed his seat.  He was strangely moved by her beauty and some
unexplained helplessness of her plight, vouchsafed to his senses, yet
he recognized a certain need for caution.

"What should I be expected to do?" he inquired.

His visitor, in the mental agitation which had preceded this interview,
had taken little if any time to think of the details likely to attend
an alliance such as she had just proposed.  She could only think in
generalities.

"Why--there will be very little for you to do, except to permit
yourself to be considered my lawful husband, temporarily," she replied
after a moment of hesitation, with a hot flush mounting to her cheek.

"And to whom would I play?" he queried.  "Should I be obliged, in this
capacity, to meet your relatives and friends?"

"Certainly--a few," said his visitor.  "But I have almost no relatives
in the world.  I have no father, mother, brothers, or sisters.  There
will be, at most, a few distant relatives and possibly my lawyer."

Garrison made no response.  He was trying to think what such a game
would mean--and what it might involve.

His visitor presently added:

"Do you consent--for five hundred dollars?"

"I don't know," answered the man.  Again he paced the room.  When he
halted before his client he looked at her sternly.

"You haven't told me your name," he said.

She gave him her card, on which appeared nothing more than just merely
the name "Mrs. Jerold Fairfax," with an address in an uptown West Side
street.

Garrison glanced at it briefly.

"This is something you have provided purposely to fit your
requirements," he said.  "Am I not supposed to know you by any other
name?"

"If you accept the--the employment," she answered, once more blushing
crimson, "you may be obliged at times to call me Dorothy.  My maiden
name was Dorothy Booth."

Garrison merely said: "Oh!"

They were silent for a moment.  The man was pondering the
possibilities.  His visitor was evidently anxious.

"I suppose I can find someone else if you refuse the employment," she
said.  "But you will understand that my search is one of great
difficulty.  The person I employ must be loyal, a gentleman,
courageous, resourceful, and very little known.  You can see yourself
that you are particularly adapted for the work."

"Thank you," said Garrison, who was aware that no particular flattery
was intended.  He added: "I hardly suppose it could do me any harm."

Mrs. Fairfax accepted this ungallant observation calmly.  She
recognized the fact that his side of the question had its aspects.

She waited for Garrison to speak again.

A knock at the door startled them both.  A postman entered, dropped two
letters on the desk, and departed down the hall.

Garrison took up the letters.  One was a circular of his own, addressed
to a lawyer over a month before, and now returned undelivered and
marked "Not found," though three or four different addresses had been
supplied in its peregrinations.

The second letter was addressed to himself in typewritten form.  He was
too engrossed to tear it open, and laid them both upon the table.

"If I took this up," he presently resumed, "I should be obliged to know
something more about it.  For instance, when were we supposed to have
been married?"

"On the 10th of last month," she answered promptly.

"Oh!" said he.  "And, in case of necessity, how should we prove it?"

"By my wedding certificate," she told him calmly.

His astonishment increased.

"Then you were actually married, over a month ago?"

"I have the certificate.  Isn't that sufficient?" she replied evasively.

"Well--I suppose it is--for this sort of an arrangement," he agreed.
"Of course some man's name must appear in the document.  I should be
obliged, I presume, to adopt his name as part of the arrangement?"

"Certainly," she said.  "I told you I came into your office because
your name is Jerold."

"Exactly," he mused.  "The name I'd assume is Jerold Fairfax?"

She nodded, watching him keenly.

"It's a good enough name," said Garrison.

He paced up and down the floor in silence a number of times.  Mrs.
Fairfax watched him in apparent calm.

"This is a great temptation," he admitted.  "I should like to earn the
fee you have mentioned, Miss Booth--Mrs. Fairfax, but----"

He halted.

"Well?"

"I don't exactly like the look of it, to be frank," he confessed.  "I
don't know you, and you don't know me.  I am not informed whether you
are really married or not.  If you are, and the man----  You have no
desire to enlighten me on these matters.  Can you tell me why you wish
to pretend that I am your husband?"

"I do not wish to discuss that aspect of the arrangement at present,"
she said.  "It is purely a business proposition that should last no
more than a month or two at most, and then terminate forever.  I would
prefer to have you remain out of town as much as possible."

"A great many haphazard deductions present themselves to my mind," he
said, "but all are doubtless inaccurate.  I have no morbid curiosity
concerning your affairs, but this thing would involve me almost as much
as yourself, by its very nature."

His brows were knitted in indecision.

There was silence again between them.  His visitor presently said:

"If I could offer you more than the five hundred dollars, I would
gladly do so."

"Oh, the fee is large enough, for up to date I have had no employment
or even a prospect of work," said Garrison.  "I hope you will not be
offended when I say that I have recently become a cautious man."

"I know how strange it appears for me to come here with this
extraordinary request," agreed Mrs. Fairfax.  "I hardly know how I have
done so.  But there was no one to help me.  I hope you will not
consider the matter for another moment if you feel that either of us
cannot trust the other.  In a way, I am placing my honor in your
keeping far more than you are placing yourself in charge of mine."

Garrison looked at her steadily, and something akin to
sympathy--something that burned like wine of romance in his blood--with
zest of adventure and a surge of generosity toward this unknown
girl--tingled in all his being.  Something in her helplessness appealed
to his innate chivalry.

Calmly, however, he took a new estimate of her character,
notwithstanding the fact that his first, most reliable impression had
been entirely in her favor.

"Well," he said, after a moment, "it's a blind game for me, but I think
I'll accept your offer.  When do you wish me to begin my services?"

"I should like to notify my lawyer as soon as possible," answered Mrs.
Fairfax, frankly relieved by his decision.  "He may regard the fact
that he was not sooner notified as a little peculiar."

"Practically you wish me to assume my rôle at once," commented
Garrison.  "What is your lawyer's name?"

"Mr. Stephen Trowbridge."

Garrison took up that much-addressed letter, returned by the post, and
passed it across the table.  The one fairly legible line on its surface
read:

    STEPHEN TROWBRIDGE, ESQ.


"I think that must be the same individual," he said.  "I sent out
announcements of my business and presence here to nearly every lawyer
in the State.  This envelope has been readdressed, as you observe, but
it has never reached its destination.  Is that your man?"

Mrs. Fairfax examined the missive.

"Yes," she said, "I think so.  Do you wish his present address?"

"If you please," answered Garrison.  "I shall take the liberty of
steaming this open and removing its contents, after which I will place
an antedated letter or notification of the--our marriage--written by
yourself--in the envelope, redirect it, and send it along.  It will
finally land in the hands of your lawyer with its tardiness very
naturally explained."

"You mean the notification will appear as if misdirected originally,"
said Dorothy.  "An excellent idea."

"Perhaps you will compose the note at once," said Garrison, pushing
paper, pen, and ink across the desk.  "You may leave the rest, with the
address, to me."

His visitor hesitated for a moment, as if her decision wavered in this
vital moment of plunging into unknown fates, but she took up the pen
and wrote the note and address with commendable brevity.

Garrison was walking up and down the office.

"The next step----" he started to say, but his visitor interrupted.

"Isn't this the only step necessary to take until something arises
making others expedient?"

"There is one slight thing remaining," he answered, taking up her card.
"You are in a private residence?"

"Yes.  The caretaker, a woman, is always there."

"Have you acquainted her with the fact of your marriage?"

"Certainly.  She is an English servant.  She asks no questions.  But I
told her my husband is away from town and will be absent almost
constantly for the next two or three months."

Garrison slightly elevated his brows, in acknowledgment of the
thoroughness of her arrangements.

"I have never attempted much acting--a little at private theatricals,"
he told her; "but of course we shall both be obliged to play this
little domestic comedy with some degree of art."

She seemed prepared for that also, despite the sudden crimson of her
cheeks.

"Certainly."

"One more detail," he added.  "You have probably found it necessary to
withhold certain facts from my knowledge.  I trust I shall not be led
into awkward blunders.  I shall do my best, and for the rest--I beg of
you to conduct the affair according to your own requirements and
judgment."

The slightly veiled smile in his eyes did not escape her observation.
Nevertheless, she accepted his proposal quite as a matter of course.

"Thank you.  I am glad you relieved me of the necessity of making some
such suggestion.  I think that is all--for the present."  She stood up,
and, fingering her glove, glanced down at the table for a moment.  "May
I pay, say, two hundred dollars now, as a retainer?"

"I shall be gratified if you will," he answered.

In silence she counted out the money, which she took from a purse in a
bag.  The bills lay there in a heap.

"When you wish any more, will you please let me know?" she said.  "And
when I require your services I will wire.  Perhaps I'd better take both
this office and your house address."

He wrote them both on a card and placed it in her hand.

"Thank you," she murmured.  She closed her purse, hesitated a moment,
then raised her eyes to his.  Quite coldly she added: "Good-afternoon."

"Good-day," answered Garrison.

He opened the door, bowed to her slightly as she passed--then faced
about and stared at the money that lay upon his desk.




CHAPTER II

A SECOND EMPLOYMENT

For a moment, when he found himself alone, Garrison stood absolutely
motionless beside the door.  Slowly he came to the desk again, and slowly
he assembled the bills.  He rolled them in a neat, tight wad, and held
them in his hand.

Word for word and look for look he reviewed the recent dialogue, shaking
his head at the end.

He had never been so puzzled in his life.

The situation, his visitor--all of it baffled him utterly.  Had not the
money remained in his grasp he might have believed he was dreaming.

"She was frightened, and yet she had a most remarkable amount of nerve,"
he reflected.  "She might be an heiress, an actress, or a princess.  She
may be actually married--and then again she may not; probably not, since
two husbands on the scene would be embarrassing."

"She may be playing at any sort of a game, financial, political, or
domestic--therefore dangerous, safe, or commonplace, full of intrigue, or
a mystery, or the silliest caprice.

"She--oh, Lord--I don't know!  She is beautiful--that much is certain.
She seems to be honest.  Those deep, brown eyes go with innocence--and
also with scheming; in which respect they precisely resemble blue eyes,
and gray, and all the other feminine colors.  And yet she seemed, well,
helpless, worried--almost desperate.  She must be desperate and helpless."

Again, in fancy, he was looking in her face, and something was stirring
in his blood.  That was all he really knew.  She had stirred him--and he
was glad of the meeting--glad he had entered her employment.

He placed the roll of money in his pocket, then looked across his desk at
the clean, white letter which the postman had recently delivered.

He took it up, paused again to wonder at the meaning of what had
occurred, then tore the envelope and drew forth the contents.

He had barely spread the letter open when a knock on the door startled
every thought in his brain.

His first conclusion was that Mrs. Fairfax had returned to repudiate her
bargain and ask the surrender of her money.  With a smile for any fate,
he crossed the room and opened the door.

In the hallway stood a man--a little, sharp-faced, small-eyed, thin-nosed
person, with a very white complexion, and a large, smooth-shaved mouth,
open as if in a smile that never ceased.

"Garrison?" he said sharply.  "Wicks--I'm Wicks."

"Wicks?" said Garrison.  "Come in."

Mr. Wicks stepped in with a snap-like alacrity.  "Read your letter," he
said--"read your letter."

Obediently Garrison perused the missive in hand, typed on the steel-plate
stationery of the New York Immutable Life Insurance Company:


"DEAR SIR:

"At the recommendation of our counsel, Mr. Sperry Lochlan, who is still
abroad, we desire to secure your services in a professional capacity.
Our Mr. Wicks will call upon you this afternoon to explain the nature of
the employment and conclude the essential arrangements.

"Respectfully yours,
  "JOHN STEFFAS,
    "Dep't of Special Service."


A wave of gratitude toward Lochlan, the lawyer who had first employed
him, and advised this New York office, surged with another, of almost
boyish joy, through Garrison's being.  It seemed almost absurd that two
actual clients should thus have appeared within the hour.  He looked up
at the little man with a new, keen interest.

"I am glad to meet you, Mr. Wicks," he said.  "Will you please sit down?
I am at your service."

Mr. Wicks snatched a chair and sat down.  It was quite a violent
maneuver, especially as that sinister grin never for a moment left his
features.  He took off his hat and made a vicious dive at a wisp of long,
red hair that adorned the otherwise barren top of his head.  The wisp lay
down toward his left ear when thus adjusted.  He looked up at Garrison
almost fiercely.

"Obscure, ain't you?" he demanded.

"Obscure?" inquired Garrison.  "Perhaps I am--just at present--here in
New York."

"You are!" stated Mr. Wicks aggressively.

Garrison was not enamored of his manner.

"All right," he said--"all right."

Mr. Wicks suddenly leaned forward and fetched his index finger almost up
against the young man's nose.

"Good at murder?" he demanded.

Garrison began to suspect that the building might harbor lunatics,
several of whom had escaped.

"Am I good at murder?" he repeated.  "Doing murder or----"

"Ferreting murder!  Ferreting murder!  Ferreting murder!" cried the
visitor irritably.

"Oh," said Garrison, "if you wish to employ me on a murder case, I'll do
the best I can."

"You worked out the Biddle robbery?" queried Mr. Wicks.

Garrison replied that he had.  The Biddle robbery was the Lochlan
case--his first adventure in criminology.

"Take the case!" commanded Mr. Wicks in his truculent manner.  "Two
hundred and fifty a month as long as you work.  One thousand dollars
bonus if you find the murderer.  Accept the terms?"

"Yes, I'll take the case," he said.  "What sort of----"

Mr. Wicks made a sudden snatch at his wisp of hair, adjusted it quite to
the other side of his head, then as abruptly drew a paper from his pocket
and thrust it into Garrison's hand.

"Statement of the case," he interrupted.  "Read it."

Garrison accepted the document, spread it open, and read as follows:


STATEMENT: Case of John Hardy.

Name--John Hardy.

Age--57.

Occupation--Real estate dealer (retired).

Residence--Unfixed, changed frequently (last, Hickwood, two days,
boarding).

Family--No immediate family (no one nearer than nephews and nieces).

Rating in Bradbury's--No rating.

Insured in any other companies--No.

Insured with us for what amount--Twenty thousand dollars.

Name of beneficiary--Charles Scott.

Residence--Hickwood, New York (village).

Occupation--Inventor.

Date of subject's death--May 27th.

Place of death--Village of Branchville (near Hickwood).

Verdict of coroner--Death from natural causes (heart failure or apoplexy).

Body claimed by--Paul Durgin (nephew).

Body interred where--Shipped to Vermont for burial.

Suspicious circumstances--Beneficiary paid once before on claim for
similar amount, death of risk having been equally sudden and unexplained.

Remarks--The body was found on the porch of an empty house (said by
superstitious neighbors to be haunted).  It was found in sitting posture,
leaning against post of porch.  No signs of violence except a green stain
on one knee.  Deceased uncommonly neat.  There is no grass growing before
the empty house, owing to heavy shade of trees.  No signs of struggle
near house.  Details supplied by old woman, Mrs. Webber, whose son found
deceased.  Our company not represented, either at inquest or afterward,
as no notification of subject's death was filed until the 31st inst.


At the bottom, written in pencil, appeared the words:

"Quiet case.  Steffas."

That was all.  Garrison turned the paper.  There was nothing on the
reverse.  Placing it face upward on the table, he thrust his hands into
his pockets and looked at Mr. Wicks.

"I'm expected to fasten this crime on Scott?" he inquired.  "Is that what
your company requires?"

"Fasten the crime on the guilty man!" replied the aggressive Mr. Wicks.
"If Scott didn't do it, we'll pay the claim.  If he did, we'll send him
to the chair.  It may not be murder at all."

"Of course," said Garrison.  "Who wrote this report?"

"What's that to you?" said Wicks.

"I wondered why the writer drops out of the case," answered Garrison.
"That's all."

"I wrote it," said Wicks.  "Scott knows me from the former case.  If you
want the case, you will start this evening for Hickwood and begin your
work.  Use your own devices.  Report everything promptly--everything.  Go
at once to the office and present your card for expenses and typed
instructions.  Good-day!"

He had clapped on his hat.  He strode to the door, opened it,
disappeared, and closed it again as if he worked on springs.  Garrison
was left staring at the knob, his hand mechanically closed on the
statement intrusted to his keeping.

"Well," he said, "I'll be scalloped!  Good old New York!"

He was presently out upon the street, a brisk, active figure, boarding a
Broadway car for the downtown office of the company.

At half past five he was back once more in his office with a second
hundred dollars in his pocket, fifty of which was for expenses.

He was turning away from his desk at last to leave for his lodgings,
thence to journey to Hickwood, when a messenger-boy abruptly appeared
with a telegram.

When Garrison had signed, he opened the envelope and read the following:


"Wire me you have arrived unexpectedly and will be here at eight, then
come.

"DOROTHY FAIRFAX."


He almost ran from the building, bought a five-dollar bunch of the
choicest roses, and, after wiring in accordance with instructions, sent
them to the house.




CHAPTER III

TWO ENCOUNTERS

Garrison roomed in Forty-fourth Street, where he occupied a small,
second-story apartment.  His meals he procured at various restaurants
where fancy chanced to lead.

To-night a certain eagerness for adventure possessed his being.

More than anything else in the world he wished to see Dorothy again; he
hardly dared confess why, but told himself that she was charming--and
his nature demanded excitement.

He dined well and leisurely, bought a box of chocolates to present to
his new-found "wife," dressed himself with exceptional care, and at
length took an uptown train for his destination.

All the way on the cars he was thinking of the task he had undertaken
to perform.  Not without certain phases of amusement, he rehearsed his
part, and made up his mind to leave nothing of the rôle neglected.

Arrived in the West Side street, close to the house which should have
been Dorothy's, he discovered that the numbering on the doors had been
wretchedly mismanaged.  One or the other of two brownstone fronts must
be her residence; he could not determine which.  The nearest was
lighted from top to bottom.  In the other a single pair of windows
only, on the second floor, showed the slightest sign of life.

Resolved to be equal to anything the adventure might require, he
mounted the steps of the lighted dwelling and rang the bell.  He was
almost immediately admitted by a serving-man, who appeared a trifle
surprised to behold him, but who bowed him in as if he were expected,
with much formality and deference.

"What shall I call you?" he said.

Garrison was surprised, but he announced:

"Just Mr. Jerold."

A second door was opened; a gush of perfumed air, a chorus of gay young
voices, and a peal of laughter greeted Garrison's ears as the servant
called out his name.

Instantly a troop of brilliantly dressed young women came running from
the nearest room, all in fancy costume and all of them masked.
Evidently a fancy-dress party was about to begin in the house.
Garrison realized his blunder.

Before he could move, a stunning, superbly gowned girl, with bare neck
and shoulders that were the absolute perfection of beauty, came boldly
up to where the visitor stood.  The others had ceased their laughter.

"Jerold!--how good of you to come!" said the girl, and, boldly patting
his face with her hand, she quickly darted from him, while the others
laughed with glee.

Garrison was sure he had never seen her before.  Indeed, he had
scarcely had time to note anything about her, save that on her neck she
wore two necklaces--one of diamonds, the other of pearls, and both of
wonderful gems.

Then out from the room from which she had come stepped a man appareled
as Satan--in red from top to toe.  He, too, was in mask.  He joined in
the laughter with the others.

Garrison "found himself" with admirable presence of mind.

"My one regret is that I may not remain," he said, with a bow to the
ladies.  "I might also regret having entered the wrong house, but your
reception renders such an emotion impossible."

He bowed himself out with commendable grace, and the bold masquerader
threw kisses as he went.  Amused, quite as much as annoyed, at his
blunder, he made himself ready as best he might for another adventure,
climbed the steps of the dwelling next at hand, and once more rang the
bell.

Almost immediately the dark hall was lighted by the switching on of
lights.  Then the door was opened, and Garrison beheld a squint-eyed,
thin-lipped old man, who scowled upon him and remained there, barring
his way.

"Good evening--is my wife at home--Mrs. Fairfax?" said Garrison,
stepping in.  "I wired her----"

"Jerold!" cried a voice, as the girl in the party-house had done.  But
this was Dorothy, half-way down the stairs, running toward him eagerly,
and dressed in most exquisite taste.

Briskly stepping forward, ready with the rôle he had rehearsed, he
caught her in his arms as she came to the bottom of the stairs, and she
kissed him like a sweet young wife, obeying the impulse of her nature.

"Oh, Jerold, I'm so glad!" she said.  "I don't see why you have to go
away at nine!"

She was radiant with blushes.

He recognized a cue.

"And how's the dearest little girl in all the world?" he said, handing
her the box of confections.  "I didn't think I'd be able to make it,
till I wired.  While this bit of important business lasts we must do
the best we can."

He had thrown his arm about her carelessly.  She moved away with a
natural gesture towards the man who had opened the door.

"Oh, Jerold, this is my Uncle Sykey--Mr. Robinson," she said.  "He and
Aunt Jill have come to pay me a visit.  We must all go upstairs to the
parlor."

She was pale with excitement, but her acting was perfect.

Garrison turned to the narrow-eyed old man, who was scowling darkly
upon him.

"I'm delighted to meet you," he said, extending his hand.

"Um!  Thank you," said Robinson, refusing his hand.  "Extraordinary
honeymoon you're giving my niece, Mr. Fairfax."

His manner nettled Garrison, who could not possibly have gauged the
depth of the old man's dislike, even hatred, conceived against him
simply as Dorothy's husband.

A greeting so utterly uncordial made unlooked-for demands upon his wits.

"The present arrangement will not endure very long," he said
significantly.  "In the meantime, if Dorothy is satisfied there seems
to be no occasion for anyone else to feel distressed."

"If that's intended as a fling at me----" started Robinson, but Dorothy
interrupted.

"Please come upstairs," she said, laying her hand for a moment on
Garrison's shoulder; and then she ran up lightly, looking back with all
the smiles of perfect art.

Garrison read it as an invitation to a private confidence, much needed
to put him properly on guard.  He bounded up as if in hot pursuit,
leaving her uncle down there by the door.

She fled to the end of the upper hall, near a door that was closed.
Garrison had lost no space behind her.  She turned a white, tense face
as she came to a halt.

"Be careful, please," she whispered.  "Some of my relatives appeared
here unexpectedly this afternoon.  I had to wire on that account.  Get
away just as soon as you can.  You are merely passing through the city.
You must write me daily letters while they are here--and--don't forget
who you are supposed to be!"

She was radiant again with blushes.  Garrison was almost dazzled by her
beauty.  What reply he might have made was interrupted.  Dorothy caught
him by the hand, like a fond young bride, as her uncle came rapidly up
the stairs.  The door was opened at his elbow by a white-haired, almost
"bearded" woman, large, sharp-sighted, and ugly, with many signs of
both inquisitiveness and acquisitiveness upon her.

"So, that's your Mr. Fairfax," she said to Dorothy.  "Come in here till
I see what you're like."

Dorothy had again taken Garrison's arm.  She led him forward.

"This is Aunt Jill," she said, by way of introduction and explanation.
"Aunty, this is my husband, Jerold."

Aunt Jill had backed away from the door to let them enter.  Garrison
realized at once that Dorothy's marriage had excited much antagonism in
the breasts of both these relatives.  A sudden accession of boldness
came upon him, in his plan to protect the girl.  He entered the room
and faced the woman calmly.

"I'm glad to meet you," he said, this time without extending his hand.
"I beg to impress upon both you and Mr. Robinson that, such as I am,
Dorothy chose me of her own free will to occupy my present position."

Mrs. Robinson was momentarily speechless.  Her husband now stood in the
door.

Dorothy shot Garrison a look of gratitude, but her immediate desire was
for peace.

"Let us all sit down, and try to get better acquainted," she said.
"I'm sure we shall all be friends."

"No doubt," said her uncle somewhat offensively.

Garrison felt himself decidedly uncertain of his ground.  There was
nothing to do, however, but await developments.  He looked about the
room in a quick, comprehensive manner.

It was a large apartment, furnished handsomely, perhaps even richly,
but in a style no longer modern, save for the installation of electric
lights.  It contained a piano, a fireplace, a cabinet, writing-desk,
two settees, and the customary complement of chairs.

The pictures on the walls were rather above the average, even in the
homes of the wealthy.  The objects of art, disposed in suitable places,
were all in good taste and expensive.

Quite at a loss to meet these people to advantage, uninformed as he was
of anything vital concerning Dorothy and the game she might be playing,
Garrison was rendered particularly alert by the feeling of constraint
in the air.  He had instantly conceived a high appreciation for
Dorothy's art in her difficult position, and he rose to a comprehension
of the rôle assigned to himself.

He had earlier determined to appear affectionate; he now saw the need
of enacting the part of protector.

In the full illumination of the room, the glory of Dorothy's beauty was
startling.  His eyes sought her face with no need of acting, and the
admiration blazing in his gaze was more than genuine; it was thoroughly
spontaneous and involuntary.

The moment was awkward and fraught with suspense for Garrison, as he
found himself subjected to the flagrantly unfriendly appraisement of
his newly acquired relations.

Aunt Jill had been wilted for a moment only.  She looked their visitor
over with undisguised contempt.

"Well, I dare say you _look_ respectable and healthy," she said, as if
conceding a point with no little reluctance, "but appearances are very
deceiving."

"Thank you," said Garrison.  He sat down near Dorothy, occupying a
small settee.

If Mrs. Robinson was personally pugnacious, her husband harbored far
more vicious emotions.  Garrison felt this in his manner.  The man was
looking at him narrowly.

"How much of your time have you spent with your wife since your
marriage?" he demanded, without the slightest preliminary introduction
to the subject.

Garrison realized at once that Dorothy might have prepared a harmless
fiction with which his answers might not correspond.  He assumed a calm
and deliberation he was far from feeling, as he said:

"I was not aware that I should be obliged to account to anyone save
Dorothy for my goings and comings.  Up to the present I believe she has
been quite well satisfied with my deportment; haven't you, Dorothy?"

"Perfectly," said Dorothy, whose utterance was perhaps a trifle faint.
"Can't we all be friends--and talk about----"

"I prefer to talk about this for a moment," interrupted her uncle,
still regarding Garrison with the closest scrutiny.  "What's your
business, anyway, Mr. Fairfax?"

Garrison, adhering to a policy of telling the truth with the greatest
possible frequency, and aware that evasion would avail them nothing,
waited the fraction of a minute for Dorothy to speak.  She was silent.
He felt she had not committed herself or him upon the subject.

"I am engaged at present in some insurance business," he said.  "It
will take me out of town to-night, and keep me away for a somewhat
indefinite period."

"H'm!" said Mr. Robinson.  "I suppose you'll quit your present
employment pretty soon?"

With no possible chance of comprehending the drift of inquiry, Garrison
responded:

"Possibly."

"I thought so!" exclaimed the old man, with unconcealed asperity.
"Marrying for money is much more remunerative, hey?"

"Oh, uncle!" said Dorothy.  Her pain and surprise were quite genuine.

Garrison colored instantly.

He might have been hopelessly floundering in a moment had not a natural
indignation risen in his blood.

"Please remember that up to this evening you and I have been absolute
strangers," he said, with some heat.  "I am not the kind to marry for
money.  Had I done so I should not continue in my present calling for a
very modest compensation."

He felt that Dorothy might misunderstand or even doubt his resolution
to go on with her requirements.  He added pointedly:

"I have undertaken certain assignments for my present employers which I
mean to put through to the end, and no one aware of my motives could
charge me with anything sordid."

Dorothy rose, crossed the space between her chair and the small settee
where Garrison was seated, took the place at his side, and shyly laid
her hand upon his own.  It was a natural, wifely thing to do.  Garrison
recognized her perfect acting.  A tingle of strange, lawless joy ran
through his veins; nevertheless, he still faced Robinson, for his anger
had been no pretense.

There was something in his bearing, when aroused, that invited caution.
He was not a man with whom to trifle.  Mrs. Robinson, having felt it
before, underwent the experience anew.

"Let's not start off with a row," she said.  "No one means to offend
you, Mr. Fairfax."

"What do you think he'll do?" demanded her husband.  "Order us out of
the house?  It ain't his yet, and he knows it."

Garrison knew nothing concerning the ownership of the house.  Mr.
Robinson's observation gave him a hint, however, that Dorothy's
husband, or Dorothy herself, would presumably own this dwelling soon,
but that something had occurred to delay the actual possession.

"I came to see Dorothy, and for no other purpose," he said.  "I haven't
the slightest desire or intention to offend her relatives."

If Robinson and his wife understood the hint that he would be pleased
to see Dorothy alone, they failed to act upon it.

"We'll take your future operations as our guide," said Mr. Robinson
significantly.  "Protestations cost nothing."

Mrs. Robinson, far more shrewd than her husband, in her way, had begun
to realize that Garrison was not a man either to be frightened or
bullied.

"I'm sure we shall all be friends," she said.  "What's the use of
fighting?  If, as Mr. Fairfax says, he did not marry Dorothy for
money----"

Her husband interrupted.  "I don't believe it!  Will you tell me, Mr.
Fairfax, that when you married my niece you were not aware of her
prospects?"

"I knew absolutely nothing of her prospects," said Garrison, who
thought he foresaw some money struggle impending.  "She can tell you
that up to the present moment I have never asked her a word concerning
her financial status or future expectations."

"Why don't you tell us you never knew she had an uncle?" demanded
Robinson, with no abatement of acidity.

"As a matter of fact," replied Garrison, "I have never known the name
of any of Dorothy's relations till to-night."

"This is absurd!" cried the aggravated Mr. Robinson.  "Do you mean to
tell me----"

Garrison cut in upon him with genuine warmth.  He was fencing blindly
in Dorothy's behalf, and instinct was guiding him with remarkable
precision.

"I should think you might understand," he said, "that once in a while a
young woman, with a natural desire to be esteemed for herself alone,
might purposely avoid all mention both of her relatives and prospects."

"We've all heard about these marriages for love," sneered Dorothy's
uncle.  "Where did you suppose she got this house?"

Garrison grew bolder as he felt a certain confidence that so far he had
made no particular blunders.  His knowledge of the value of half a
truth, or even the truth entire, was intuitive.

"I have never been in this house before tonight," he said.  "Our
'honeymoon,' as you called it earlier, has, as you know, been brief,
and none of it was spent beneath this roof."

"Then how did you know where to come?" demanded Mr. Robinson.

"Dorothy supplied me the address," answered Garrison.  "It is not
uncommon, I believe, for husband and wife to correspond."

"Well, here we are, and here we'll stay," said Mr. Robinson, "till the
will and all the business is settled.  Perhaps you'll say you didn't
even know there was a will."

Garrison was beginning to see light, dimly.  What it was that lay
behind Dorothy's intentions and her scheme he could not know; he was
only aware that to-night, stealing a glance at her sweet but worried
face, and realizing faintly that she was greatly beset with troubles,
his whole heart entered the conflict, willingly, to help her through to
the end.

"You are right for once," he answered his inquisitor.  "I have known
absolutely nothing of any will affecting Dorothy, and I know nothing
now.  I only know you can rely upon me to fight her battles to the full
extent of my ability and strength."

"What nonsense!  You don't know!" exclaimed Mr. Robinson.  "Why----"

"It's the truth," interrupted Dorothy.  "I have told him nothing about
it."

"I don't believe it!" said her uncle.  "But whatever he knows, I'll
tell him this, that I propose to fight that will, day and night, before
my brother's property shall go to any scheming stranger!"

Garrison felt the need for enlightenment.  It was hardly fair to expect
him to struggle in the dark.  He looked at his watch ostentatiously.

"I did not come here expecting this sort of reception," he said
truthfully.  "I hoped at least for a few minutes' time with Dorothy,
alone."

"To cook up further stories, I presume," said Mr. Robinson, who made no
move to depart.

Garrison rose and approached Mr. Robinson precisely as he might have
done had his right been more than a fiction.

"Do you require Dorothy to go down in the hall, in her own house, to
obtain a moment of privacy?" he demanded.  "We might as well understand
the situation first as last."

It was a half-frightened look, full of craft and hatred, that Robinson
cast upward to his face.  He fidgeted, then rose from his seat.

"Come, my dear," he said to his wife, "the persecutions have commenced."

He led the way from the room to another apartment, his wife obediently
following at his heels.  The door they left ajar.




CHAPTER IV

UNSPOKEN ANTAGONISM

Garrison crossed the room with an active stride and closed the door
firmly.

Dorothy was pale when he turned.  She, too, was standing.

"You can see that I've got to be posted a little," he said quietly.
"To err has not ceased to be human."

"You have made no mistakes," said Dorothy in a voice barely above a
whisper.  "I didn't expect them.  When I found they had come I hardly
knew what to do.  And when they declared I had no husband I had to
request you to come."

"Something of the sort was my conclusion," Garrison told her.  "I have
blundered along with fact and fiction as best I might, but what am I
supposed to have done that excites them both to insult me?"

Dorothy seemed afraid that the very walls might hear and betray her
secret.

"Your supposed marriage to me is sufficient," she answered in the
lowest of undertones.  "You must have guessed that they feel themselves
cheated out of this house and other property left in a relative's will."

"Cheated by your marriage?" said Garrison.

She nodded, watching to see if a look of distrust might appear in the
gaze he bent upon her.

"I wouldn't dare attempt to inform you properly or adequately to-night,
with my uncle in the house," she said.  "But please don't believe I've
done anything wrong--and don't desert me now."

She had hardly intended to appeal to him so helplessly, but somehow she
had been so glad to lean upon his strength, since his meeting with her
relatives, that the impulse was not to be resisted.  Moreover she felt,
in some strange working of the mind, that she had come to know him as
well within the past half-hour as she had ever known anyone in all her
life.  Her trust had gone forth of its own volition, together with her
gratitude and admiration, for the way he had taken up her cause.

"I left the matter entirely with you this afternoon," he said.  "I only
wish to know so much as you yourself deem essential.  I feel this man
is vindictive, cowardly, and crafty.  Are you sure you are safe where
he is?"

"Oh, yes, I'm quite safe, even if it is unpleasant," she told him,
grateful for his evident concern.  "If need be, the caretaker would
fight a pack of wolves in my defense."

"This will?" asked Garrison.  "When is it going to be settled--when
does it come to probate?"

"I don't quite know."

"When is your real husband coming?" he inquired, more for her own
protection than his own.

She had not admitted, in the afternoon, that she had a husband.  She
colored now as she tried to meet his gaze.

"Did I tell you there was such a person?"

"No," said Garrison, "you did not.  I thought----  Perhaps that's one
of the many things I am not obliged to know."

"Perhaps."  She hesitated a moment, adding: "If you'd rather not go
on----"

She lowered her eyes.  He felt a thrill that he could not analyze, it
lay so close to jealousy and hope.  And whatever it was, he knew it was
out of the bargain, and not in the least his right.

"It wasn't for myself I asked," he hastened to add.  "I'll act my part
till you dismiss me.  I only thought if another man were to come upon
the scene----"

The far-off sound of a ringing house-bell came indistinctly to his
ears.  Dorothy looked up in his face with a startled light in her great
brown eyes that awoke a new interest within him.

"The bell," she said.  "I heard it!  Who could be coming here to-night?"

She slipped to the door, drew it open an inch, and listened there
attentively.

Garrison was listening also.  The door to the outside steps, in the
hall below, was opened, then presently closed with a slam.  The
caretaker had admitted a caller.

"Good!  I'd like to see him!" said the voice of a man.  "Upstairs?"

Dorothy turned to Garrison with her face as white as chalk.

"Oh, if you had only gone!" she said.

"What's the trouble?" he asked.  "Who's come?"

"Perhaps you can slip in my room!" she whispered.  "Please hurry!"

She hastened across the apartment to a door, with Garrison following.
The door was locked.  She remembered she had locked it herself, from
the farther side, since the advent of her uncle in the house.

She turned to lead him round, by the hall.  But the door swung open
abruptly, and a tall, handsome young man was at the threshold.  His hat
was on.  He was dressed, despite the season, in an overcoat of
extraordinary length, buttoned close round his neck.  It concealed him
from his chin to his heels.

"Why, hello, Dot!" he said familiarly, advancing within the room.  "You
and your Jerold weren't trying to run away, I hope."

Dorothy struggled against her confusion and alarm.

"Why, no," she faltered.  "Cousin Ted, you've never met Mr. Fairfax.
Jerold, this is my cousin, Mr. Theodore Robinson."

"How do you do?" said Garrison, nodding somewhat distantly, since none
of the Robinson group had particularly appealed to his tastes.

"How are you?" responded Dorothy's cousin, with no attempt to conceal
an unfriendly demeanor.  Crossing to Dorothy with deliberate intent to
make the most of his relationship, he caught her by the arms.

"How's everything with you, little sweetheart?" he added in his way of
easy intimacy.  "What's the matter with my customary kiss?"

Dorothy, with every sign of fear or detestation upon her, seemed wholly
unable to move.  He put his arm roughly about her and kissed her twice.

Garrison, watching with feelings ill suppressed, beheld her shrink from
the contact.  She appeared to push her cousin off with small effort to
disguise her loathing, and fled to Garrison as if certain of protection.

"What are you scared of?" said young Robinson, moving forward to catch
her again, and laughing in an irritating way.  "You used not to----"

Garrison blocked him promptly, subconsciously wondering where he had
heard that laugh before.

"Perhaps that day has passed," he said quietly.

The visitor, still with his hat on, looked Garrison over with anger.

"Jealousy already, hey?" he said.  "If you think I'll give up my rights
as a cousin you're off, understand?"

Garrison stifled an impulse to slap the fellow's face.

"What are your rights as a cousin, if I may ask?" he said.

"Wait and see," replied Robinson.  "Dot was mighty fond of me
once--hey, Dot?"

Garrison felt certain of his ground in suppressing the fellow.

"Whatever the situation may have been in the past," he said, "it is
very much altered at present."

"Is that so?" demanded Theodore.  "Perhaps you'll find the game isn't
quite finished yet."

Dorothy, still white and overwrought, attempted to mediate between the
two.

"I can't let you men start off like this," she said.  "I--I'm fond of
you both.  I wish you would try to be friendly."

"I'm willing," said her cousin, with a sudden change of front that in
no wise deceived Garrison, and he held forth his hand.  "Will you
shake?"

That Dorothy wished him to greet the fellow civilly, and not incur his
ill-feeling.  Garrison was sure.  He took the proffered hand, as cold
as a fish, and dropped it again immediately.

Theodore laughed, and stepped gracefully away, his long coat swinging
outward with his motion.  Garrison caught a gleam of red, where the
coat was parted at the bottom--and he knew where he had heard that
laugh before.  The man before him was no other than the one he had seen
next door, dressed in red fleshings as Satan.

It was not to be understood in a moment, and Theodore's parents had
returned once more to the door.  Indeed, the old man had beheld the
momentary hand-clasp of the men, and he was nettled.

"Theodore!" he cried; "you're not making friends with a man who's
sneaked off and married Dorothy, I hope!  I wouldn't have believed it!"

"Why not?" said his son.  "What's done is done."

His mother said: "Why have you got on an overcoat such a night as this?"

"Because I like it," said Theodore.

Garrison knew better.  He wondered what the whole game signified.

The old man was glaring at him sharply.

"I should think for a man who has to leave at nine your time is getting
short," he said.  "Perhaps your story was invented."

Garrison took out his watch.  The fiction would have to be played to
the end.  The hour lacked twenty minutes of nine.  He must presently
depart, yet he felt that Dorothy might need protection.  Having made up
his mind that a marriage had doubtless been planned between Dorothy and
Theodore--on the man's part for the purpose of acquiring valuable
property, probably veiled to Dorothy--he felt she might not be safe if
abandoned to their power.

He had found himself plunged into complications on which it had not
been possible to count, but notwithstanding which he meant to remain by
Dorothy with the utmost resolution.  He had not acknowledged that the
charm she exercised upon him lay perilously close to the tenderest of
passions, but tried to convince himself his present desire was merely
to see this business to the end.

It certainly piqued him to find himself obliged to leave with so much
of the evening's proceedings veiled in mystery.  He would have been
glad to know more of what it meant to have this cousin, Theodore,
masquerading as the devil in one house, and covering all the signs here
at home.  He was absolutely helpless in the situation.  He knew that
Dorothy wished him to depart.  She could not, of course, do otherwise.

"Thank you," he said to the elder Robinson.  "I must leave in fifteen
minutes."

Dorothy looked at him strangely.  She could not permit him to stay, yet
she felt the need of every possible safeguard, now that her cousin had
appeared.  The strange trust and confidence she felt in Garrison had
given her new hope and strength.  To know he must go in the next few
minutes, leaving her there with the Robinsons, afflicted her abruptly
with a sense of desolation.

Yet there was nothing she could say or do to prevent his immediate
retreat.

Young Robinson, made aware that Garrison would soon be departing,
appeared to be slightly excited.

"I'll go down and 'phone for my suit-case," he said, and he left the
room at once.

Aunt Jill and old Robinson sat down.  It was quite impossible for
Garrison to ask them again to retire.  Dorothy crossed the room and
seated herself before the piano.  Garrison followed, and stood there at
her side.

She had no spirit for music, and no inclination to play, nevertheless
she permitted her hands to wander up and down the keys, calling forth a
sweetly sad bit of Hungarian song that took a potent hold on Garrison's
emotions.

"Is there anything I can do but go?" he murmured, his voice well masked
by the melody.  "Do you think you may need me very soon?"

"I do not know.  I hope not," she answered, for him alone to hear.
"I'm sorry it's been so disagreeable.  Do you really have to go away
from town?"

"Yes."

"To-day you said you had no employment."

"It was true.  Employment came within ten minutes of your leaving.  I
took it.  For you know you hardly expected to require my services so
soon."

She played a trifle louder, and asked him:

"Where are you going?"

"To Branchville and Hickwood."

The playing suddenly ceased.  She looked up at him swiftly.  In nervous
haste she resumed her music.

"Not on detective work?  You mentioned insurance."

"It concerns insurance."

She was silent for a moment.

"When do you return?"

"I hardly know," he answered.  "And I suppose I've got to start at once
in order to maintain our little fiction."

"Don't forget to write," she said, blushing, as she had before; and she
added: "for appearances."  She rose from her seat.

Garrison pulled out his watch and remarked, for the Robinsons to hear:
"Well, I've got to be off."

"Wait a minute, please," said Dorothy, as if possessed by a sudden
impulse, and she ran from the room like a child.

With nothing particularly pleasant to say to the Robinsons, Garrison
approached a center-table and turned the pages of a book.

Dorothy was back in a moment.

"I'll go down to the door," she said.

Garrison said good-night to the Robinsons, who answered curtly.  He
closed the door upon them as he left the room.

Dorothy had hastened to the stairs before him, and continued down to
the hall.  Her face was intensely white again as she turned about,
drawing from her dress a neat, flat parcel, wrapped in paper.

"I told you to-day that I trust you absolutely," she said, in a nervous
undertone.  "I wish you'd take care of this package."

Garrison took it, finding it heavy in his hand.  "What is it?" he said.

"Don't try to talk--they'll listen," she cautioned.  "Just hurry and
go."

"If you need me, write or wire," he said.

"Good-night!"

She retreated a little way from him, as if she felt he might exact a
husband's right of farewell, which the absence of witnesses made quite
unessential.

"Good-night," she answered, adding wistfully; "I am very grateful,
believe me."

She gave him her hand, and his own hand trembled as he took it.

A moment later he was out upon the street, a wild, sweet pleasure in
his veins.

Across the way a man's dark figure detached itself from the darkness of
a doorstep and followed where Garrison went.

Shadowed to his very door, Garrison came to his humble place of abode
with his mind in a region of dreams.

It was not until he stood in his room, and his hand lay against his
pocket, that he thought again of Dorothy's parcel surrendered to his
keeping.  He took it out.  He felt he had a right to know its contents.

It had not been sealed.

He removed the paper, disclosing a narrow, shallow box, daintily
covered with leather.  It was merely snapped shut with a catch.

He opened it, and an exclamation of astonishment escaped his lips.

It contained two necklaces--one of diamonds and one of pearls, the gems
of both marvelously fine.




CHAPTER V

THE "SHADOW"

Nothing more disquieting than this possession of the necklaces could
possibly have happened to Garrison.  He was filled with vague
suspicions and alarms.  The thing was wholly baffling.

What it signified he could not conjecture.  His mind went at once to
that momentary scene at the house he had entered by mistake, and in
which he had been confronted by the masked young woman, with the jewels
on her throat, she who had patted his face and familiarly called him by
name.

He could not possibly doubt the two ropes of gems were the same.  The
fact that Dorothy's cousin, in the garb of Satan, had undoubtedly
participated in the masking party, aroused disturbing possibilities in
Garrison's mind.

What was the web in which he was entangled?

To have Theodore come to the house in his long, concealing coat,
straight from the maskers next door; to have him disappear, and then to
have Dorothy bring forth these gems with such wholly unimaginable trust
in his honesty, brought him face to face with a brand-new mystery from
which he almost shrank.  Reflections on thefts, wherein women were
accomplices, could not be driven from his brain.

Here was Dorothy suddenly requiring a pseudo-husband--for what?  Here
was a party next door to the house--a party on which he had stumbled
accidentally--where a richly dressed young woman chanced to greet him,
with her jewels on her neck.  Here was, apparently, a family
disturbance, engendered by his marriage with old Robinson's niece.  And
now--here were the necklaces, worth, at the least estimation, the sum
of thirty thousand dollars--delivered to himself!

He could not escape the thought of a "fence," in which he himself had
possibly been impressed as a tool, by the cleverest intrigue.  The
entire attitude of the Robinsons might, he realized, have been but a
part of the game.  He had witnessed Dorothy's acting.  It gave him a
vivid sense of her powers, some others of which might well lie
concealed behind her appearance of innocence.

And yet, when he thought of the beautiful girl who had begged him not
to desert her, he could not think her guilty of the things which this
singular outcome might suggest.  He was sure she could clear up the
mystery, and set herself straight in his eyes.

Not a little disturbed as to what he should do with these precious
baubles, sparkling and glinting in his hand, he knitted his brow in
perplexity.  He was due to leave New York at once, on orders from
Wicks.  No safe deposit vault was available at such an hour.  He dared
not leave the things behind in this room.  There was no alternative, he
must carry them along in his pocket.

Inasmuch as the problem could not possibly be solved at once, and in
view of the fact that his mind, or his heart, refused to credit Dorothy
with guilt, there was nothing to do but dismiss the subject, as far as
possible, and make ready to depart.

He opened a drawer to procure the few things requisite for his trip.
On top of a number of linen garments lay a photograph--the picture of a
sweetly pretty young woman.  He took it up, gazed at it calmly, and
presently shook his head.

He turned it over.

On the back was written: "With the love of my heart--Ailsa."

He had kissed this picture a thousand times, in rapture.  It had once
represented his total of earthly happiness, and then--when the notice
of her marriage had come so baldly, through the mail--it had symbolized
his depths of despair.  Through all his hurt he had clung, not only to
the picture, but also to some fond belief that Ailsa loved him still;
that the words she had spoken and the things she had done, in the days
of their courtship, had not been mere idle falsehoods.

To-night, for the first time since his dream had been shattered, the
photograph left him cold and unfeeling.  Something had happened, he
hardly knew what--something he hardly dared confess to himself, with
Dorothy only in his vision.  The lifeless picture's day was gone at
last.

He tossed it back in the drawer with a gesture of finality, drew forth
a number of collars and ties, then went to a closet, opened the door
and studied his two suit-cases thoughtfully.  He knew not which to
take.  One was an ordinary, russet-leather case; the other was a
thin-steel box, veneered with leather, but of special construction, on
a plan which Garrison himself had invented.  Indeed, the thing was a
trap, ingeniously contrived when the Biddle robbery had baffled far
older men than himself, and had then been solved by a trick.

On the whole, he decided he would take this case along.  It had brought
him luck on the former occasion, and the present was, perhaps, a
criminal case.  He lifted it out, blew off some dust, and laid it,
open, on the bed.

To all appearances the thing was innocent enough.  On the under side of
the cover was a folding flap, fastened with a string and a button.
Unremembered by Garrison, Ailsa's last letter still reposed in the
pocket, its romance laid forever in the lavender of rapidly fading
memories.

Not only was the case provided with a thin false bottom, concealing its
mechanism, but between the cover and the body proper, on either side,
were wing-like pieces of leather, to judge from their looks, that
seemed to possess no function more important than the ordinary canvas
strips not infrequently employed on a trunk to restrain the cover from
falling far backward when opened.  But encased in these wings were
connections to powerful springs that, upon being set and suddenly
released, would snap down the cover like the hammer of a gun and catch,
as in the jaws of a trap, any meddling hands that might have been
placed inside the case by a thief, at the same time ringing a bell.  To
set it was a matter of the utmost simplicity, while to spring it one
had barely to go at the contents of the case and touch the trigger
lightly.

The springs were left unset, as Garrison tossed in the trifles he
should need.  Then he changed his clothes, turned off the gas, and was
presently out once more in the open of the street, walking to the Grand
Central Station, near at hand.

The man who had followed all the way from Dorothy's residence not only
was waiting, but remained on Garrison's trail.

At a quarter of ten Garrison ensconced himself in a train for
Branchville.  His "shadow" was there in the car.  The run required
fifty minutes.  Hickwood, a very small village, was passed by the cars
without a stop.  It was hardly two miles from the larger settlement.

The hour was late when Garrison arrived.  He and his "shadow" alighted
from the train and repaired to a small, one-story hotel near the
railway depot, the only place the town afforded.  They were presently
assigned to adjoining rooms.

Garrison opened his suit-case on the bureau, removed one or two
articles, and left the receptacle open, with the cover propped against
the mirror.  Despite the lateness of the hour he then went out, to roam
about the village.  His fellow traveler watched only to see him out of
the house, and then returned in haste.

In the town there was little to be seen.  The houses extended far back
from the railroad, on considerably elevated hills.  There was one main
thoroughfare only, and this was deserted.  The dwellings were dark.  No
one seemed stirring in the place, though midnight had not yet struck.

Garrison was out for half an hour.  When he returned his suit-case was
closed.  He thought nothing of a matter so trifling till he looked
inside, and then he underwent a feeling as if it had been rifled.  But
nothing was gone, so far as he could see.  Then he noticed the
folding-pocket, for its fastening cord was undone.  How well he
remembered placing there the letter from Ailsa, months ago!  A little
surprised that he had so utterly forgotten its existence, he slipped
his hand inside the place--and found it empty!

Even then he entertained no suspicions, for a moment.  The letter, like
the photograph, was no longer a valued possession.  Yet he wondered
where it could have gone.  Vaguely uncertain, after all, as to whether
he had left it here or not, his eye was suddenly caught by the
slightest movement in the world, reflected in the mirror of the bureau.
The movement was up at the transom, above a door that led to the next
adjoining room.

Instantly turning away, to allay any possible suspicion that he might
be aware of the fact that someone was spying upon him, Garrison moved
the suit-case to a chair, drew from his pocket a folded paper that
might have appeared important--although merely a railroad
folder--placed it carefully, as if to hide it, under various articles
of apparel, set the springs of the vicious steel-trap, and, leaving the
suitcase open as before, took a turn around the room.

All this business was merely for the benefit of the man whom he knew to
be watching from over the door.  Starting as if to undress, he paused,
appeared to remember something left neglected, and hastened from his
room, purposely leaving the door more than half-way ajar.  Down the
hall he strode, to the office, where he looked on the register and
discovered the name of his neighbor--John Brown--an obvious alias.

He had hardly been thus engaged for two minutes when the faint, far-off
sound of a ringing bell came distinctly to his ears.

"My alarm-clock's gone off," he said to the man at the desk, and he
fled up the hall like a sprinter.

A clatter of sounds, as of someone struggling, had come before he
reached his room.  As he bounded in he beheld his suit-case, over at
the window, jerking against the sash and sill as if possessed of evil
spirits.  No thief was visible.  The fellow, with the trap upon his
fingers, had already leaped to the ground.

Within a yard of his captured burglar Garrison beheld the suit-case
drop, and his man had made good his escape.

He thrust his head outside the window, but the darkness was in favor of
the thief, who was not to be seen.

Chagrined to think Mr. "Brown" had contrived to get loose, Garrison
took up the case, carried it back to the bureau, and opened it up, by
skillfully releasing the springs.  Three small patches of finger-skin
were left in the bite of its jaws--cards of the visitor left as
announcements of his visit.

The room next door was not again occupied that night.  The hotel saw no
more of Mr. Brown.




CHAPTER VI

THE CORONER

Not in the least reassured, but considerably aroused in all his
instincts by these further developments of a night already full of
mysterious transactions, Garrison, after a futile watch for his
neighbor, once more plunged into a study of the case in which he found
himself involved.

Vaguely he remembered to have noticed that the man who had come here to
Branchville with him on the train carried no baggage.  He had no doubt
the man had been close upon his trail for some considerable time; but
why, and what he wanted, could not be so readily determined.  Certain
the man had extracted Ailsa's letter from the pocket of the case, yet
half convinced that the thief had been searching for the necklaces
intrusted to his care, Garrison was puzzled.

There seemed to be no possible connection between the two.  He could
not understand what a thief who would take the one would require of the
other.  Aside from his money, the gems were the only articles he
possessed of the slightest value or significance.  Half persuaded that
the diamonds and pearls afforded the booty for which his visitor had
searched, he was once more in doubt as to whether he had lost Ailsa's
letter or not.  He might find it still among his things, at his room in
Forty-fourth Street.

He was fully convinced the man would return no more.  Nevertheless,
when he turned in at last, the jewels were under the pillow.

Branchville, in the morning, proved an attractive place of residence.
Half its male population went to New York as commuters.  Its housewives
then bustled about their gardens or their chicken-coops, at the rear of
the houses, and a dozen old men gathered slowly at the post-office
store to resume the task of doing nothing.

Garrison experienced no difficulty in searching out Mrs. Webber, the
woman who had supplied certain details concerning the finding of the
body of the man, John Hardy, whose death had occurred here the previous
week.

The house, at the porch of which the body had been discovered, was
empty.  Mrs. Webber went with Garrison to the place, showed him exactly
where the body had reclined, and left him alone at the scene.

He looked the details over carefully.  The porch was low and roofed;
its eaves projected a foot.  If, as Garrison fancied, the stricken man
might have come here in weakness, to lean against the post, and had
then gone down, perhaps leaving heel-marks in the earth, all signs of
any such action had been obliterated, despite the fact that no rains
had fallen since the date of the man's demise.  Garrison scrutinized
the ground closely.  A piece of broken crockery, a cork, the top of a
can, an old cigar, and some bits of glass and wire lay beside the
baseboard--the usual signs of neglect.  The one man-made article in all
the litter that attracted Garrison's attention was the old cigar.  He
took it up for a more minute examination.

It had never been lighted.  It was broken, as if someone had stepped
upon the larger end; but the label, a bright red band of paper, was
still upon it.  The wrapper had somewhat spread; but the pointed end
had been bitten off, half an inch up on the taper.

Aware that the weed might have been thrown down by anyone save Hardy,
Garrison nevertheless placed it in an envelope and tucked it away in
his pocket.  A visit to the local coroner presenting itself as the next
most natural step, he proceeded at once to his office.

As a dealer in real estate, a notary public, and an official in several
directions, the coroner was a busy man.  He said so himself.

Garrison introduced himself candidly as a New York detective, duly
licensed, at present representing a State insurance company, and stated
the nature of his business.

"All right," said the coroner, inclined at once to be friendly.  "My
name is Pike.  What'd you want to know?  Sit down and take it easy."

"As much as I can learn about the case."  Garrison took a proffered
chair.  "For instance, what did you find on the body?"

"Nothing--of any importance--a bunch of keys, a fountain-pen, and--and
just some useless trash--I believe four dollars and nineteen cents."

"Anything else?"

"Oh, some scraps of paper and a picture postal-card."

"Any cigars?" asked Garrison.

"Yep--three, with labels on 'em--all but one, I mean."  He had taken
one label for his son's collection.

"What did you do with the stuff?"

"Locked it up, waiting orders from the court," replied Mr. Pike.  "You
bet, I know my business."

Garrison was pursuing a point.  He inquired: "Do you smoke?"

"No, I don't; and if I did, I wouldn't touch one of them," said the
coroner.  "And don't you forget it."

"Did anyone help you to carry off the body--anyone who might have
thrown a cigar away, unlighted?"

"No, siree!  When Billy Ford and Tom Harris git a cigar it never gits
away," said Mr. Pike.

"Did you find out where the dead man came from and what he was doing in
the village?"

"He was stopping down to Hickwood with Mrs. Wilson," answered Pike.
"His friend there was Charlie Scott, who's making a flying-machine
that's enough to make anybody luny.  I've told him he can't borrow no
money from me on no such contraption, and so has Billy Dodd."

Garrison mentally noted down the fact that Scott was in need of money.

"What can you tell me of the man's appearance?" he added, after a
moment of silence.  "Did his face present any signs of agony?"

"Nope.  Just looked dead," said the coroner.

"Were there any signs upon him of any nature?"

"Grass stain on his knee--that's about all."

"About all?" Garrison echoed.  "Was there anything else--any scratches
or bruises on his hands?"

"No--nary a scratch.  He had real fine hands," said the coroner.  "But
they did have a little dirt on 'em--right on three of the knuckles of
the left hand and on one on the right--the kind of dirt you can't rub
off."

"Did it look as if he'd tried to rub it off?"

"Looked as if he'd washed it a little and it wouldn't come."

"Just common black dirt?"

"Yes, kind of grimy--the kind that gits in and stays."

Garrison reflected that a sign of this nature might and might not prove
important.  Everything depended on further developments.  One deduction
was presented to his mind--the man had doubtless observed that his
hands were soiled and had washed them in the dark, since anyone with
the "fine" hands described by the coroner would be almost certain to
keep them immaculate; but might, in the absence of a light, wash them
half clean only.

He was not disposed to attach a very great importance to the matter,
however, and only paused for a moment to recall a number of the various
"dirts" that resist an effort to remove them--printers' ink, acid
stains, axle grease, and greasy soot.

He shifted his line of questions abruptly.

"What did you discover about the dead man's relatives?  The nephew who
came to claim the body?"

"Never saw him," said the coroner.  "I couldn't hang around the corpse
all day.  I'm the busiest man in Branchville--and I had to go down to
New York the day he come."

"Did you take possession of any property that deceased might have had
at his room in Hickwood?"

"Sure," said Pike.  "Half a dozen collars, and some socks, a few old
letters, and a box almost full of cigars."

"If these things are here in your office," said Garrison, rising, "I
should like to look them over."

"You bet, I can put my hand on anything in my business in a minute,"
boasted Mr. Pike.  He rose and crossed the room to a desk with a large,
deep drawer, which he opened with a key.

The dead man's possessions were few, indeed.  The three cigars which
his pocket had disgorged were lying near a little pile of money.
Garrison noted at once that the labels on two were counterparts of the
one on the broken cigar now reposing in his pocket.  He opened the box
beneath his hand.  The cigars inside were all precisely like the
others.  Five only had ever been removed, of which four were accounted
for already.  The other had doubtless been smoked.

On the even row of dark-brown weeds lay a card, on which, written in
pencil, were the words:

  A BIRTHDAY GREETING--WITH LOVE.


Garrison let fall the lid and glanced with fading interest at the few
insignificant papers and other trifles which the drawer contained.  He
had practically made up his mind that John Hardy had died, as the
coroner had found, of heart disease, or apoplexy, even in the act of
lighting up to smoke.

He questioned the man further, made up his mind to visit Charles Scott
and Mrs. Wilson, in Hickwood, and was presently out upon the road.




CHAPTER VII

A STARTLING DISCOVERY

Garrison walked along the road to Hickwood out of sheer love of being
in the open, and also the better to think.

Unfortunately for the case in hand, however, his thoughts wandered
truantly back to New York and the mystery about the girl masquerading
to the world as his wife.  His meditations were decidedly mixed.  He
thought of Dorothy always with a thrill of strong emotions, despite the
half-formed suspicions which had crossed his mind at least a dozen
times.

Her jewels were still in his pocket--a burden she had apparently found
too heavy to carry.  How he wished he might accept her confidence in
him freely, unreservedly--with the thrill it could bring to his heart!

The distance to Hickwood seemed to slip away beneath his feet.  He
arrived in the hamlet far too soon, for the day had charmed bright
dreams into being, and business seemed wholly out of place.

The railroad station, a store, an apothecary's shop, and a cobbler's
little den seemed to comprise the entire commercial street.

Garrison inquired his way to the home of his man--the inventor.

Scott, whom he found at a workshop, back of his home, was a thin,
stooped figure, gray as a wolf, wrinkled as a prune, and stained about
the mouth by tobacco.  His eyes, beneath their overhanging brows of
gray, were singularly sharp and brilliant.  Garrison made up his mind
that the blaze in their depths was none other than the light of
fanaticism.

"How do you do, Mr. Scott?" said the detective, who had determined to
pose as an upper-air enthusiast.  "I was stopping in Branchville for a
day or two, and heard of your fame as a fellow inventor.  I've been
interested in aeroplanes and dirigible balloons so long that I thought
I'd give myself the pleasure of a call."

"Um!" said Scott, closing the door of his shop behind him, as if to
guard a precious secret.  "What did you say is your name?"

Garrison informed him duly.

"I haven't yet made myself famous as a navigator of the air, but we all
have our hopes."

"You'll never be able to steer a balloon," said Scott, with a touch of
asperity.  "I can tell you that."

"I begin to believe you're right," assented Garrison artfully.  "It's a
mighty discouraging and expensive business, any way you try it."

"I'll do the trick!  I've got it all worked out," said Scott, betrayed
into ardor and assurance by a nearness of the triumph that he felt to
be approaching.  "I'll have plenty of money to complete it
soon--plenty--plenty--but it's a long time coming, even now."

"That's the trouble with most of us," Garrison observed, to draw his
man.  "The lack of money."

"Why can't they pay it, now the man is dead?" demanded Scott, as if he
felt that everyone knew his affairs by heart and could understand his
meaning.  "I need the money now--to-day--this minute!  It's bad enough
when a man stays healthy so long, and looks as if he'd last for twenty
years.  That's bad enough without me having to wait and wait and wait,
now that he's dead and in the ground."

It was clear to Garrison the man's singleness of purpose had left his
mind impaired.  He began to see how a creature so bent on some wondrous
solution of the flying-machine enigma could even become so obsessed in
his mind that to murder for money, insurance benefits, or anything
else, would seem a fair means to an end.

"Some friend of yours has recently died?" he asked.  "You've been left
some needed funds for your labors?"

"Funny kind of friendship when a man goes on living so long," said the
alert fanatic.  "And I don't get the money; that's what's delaying me
now."

"You're far more fortunate than some of us," said Garrison.  "Some
friend, I suppose, here in town."

"No, he was here two days," answered Scott.  "I saw him but little.  He
died in the night, up to the village."  His sharp eyes swung on
Garrison peculiarly the moment his speech was concluded.

He demanded sharply; "What's all this business to you?"

"Nothing--only that it shows the world's great inventors are not always
neglected, after all," answered Garrison.  "Some of us never enjoy such
good fortune."

"The world don't know how great I am," declared the inventor, instantly
off, on the hint supplied by his visitor.  "But just the minute that
insurance company gives me the money, I'll be ready to startle the
skies!  I'll blot out the stars for 'em!  I'll show New York!  I know
what I'm doing!  And nothing on earth is going to stop me!  All these
fool balloonists, with their big silk floating cigars!  Deadly cigars
is what they are--deadly!  You wait!"

Garrison was staring at him fixedly, fascinated by a new idea which had
crept upon his mind with startling abruptness.  His one idea was to get
away for a vital two minutes by himself.

"Well, perhaps I'll try to get around again," he said.  "I can see
you're very busy, and I mustn't keep you longer from your work.  Good
luck and good-day."

"The only principle," the old man answered, his gaze directed to the
sky.

Garrison looked up, beholding a bird, far off in the azure vault,
soaring in the majesty of flight.  Then he hastened again to the quiet
little street, and down by a fence at a vacant lot, where he paused and
looked about.  He was quite alone.  Drawing from his pocket the
envelope containing the old cigar that Hardy had undoubtedly let fall
as he died at the porch of the "haunted" house, he turned up the
raggedly bitten end.

"By George!" he exclaimed beneath his breath.

Tucked within the tobacco folds, in a small hollow space which was
partially closed by the filler which had once been bitten together, was
a powdery stuff that seemed comprised of small, hard particles, as of
crystals, roughly broken up.

His breath came fast.  His heart was pumping rapidly.  He raised the
cigar to his nostrils and smelled, but could only detect the pungent
odor of tobacco.

That the powder was a poison he had not the slightest doubt.  Aware
that one poison only, thus administered, would have the potency to slay
an adult human being practically on the instant, he realized at once
that here, at the little, unimportant drug-shop of the place, the
simple test for such a stuff could be made in a matter of two minutes.

Eager and feverish to inform himself without delay, he took out his
knife and carefully removed all the powder from its place and wrapped
it most cautiously about in the paper of the envelope in hand.  The
cigar he returned to his pocket.

Five minutes later, at the drug-store down the street, an obliging and
clever young chemist at the place was holding up a test-tube made of
glass, with perhaps two thimblefuls of acidulated solution which had
first been formed by dissolving the powder under inspection.

"If this is what you suppose," he said, "a slight admixture of this
iron will turn it Prussian blue."

He poured in the iron, which was likewise in solution, and instantly
the azure tint was created in all its deadly beauty.

Garrison was watching excitedly.

"No mistake about it," said the chemist triumphantly.  "Where did you
find this poison?"

"Why--in a scrap of meat," said Garrison, inventing an answer with
ready ingenuity; "enough to have killed my dog in half a shake!"




CHAPTER VIII

WHERE CLEWS MAY POINT

Startled, thus to discover that, after all, a crime of the most
insidious and diabolical nature had been committed, Garrison wandered
along the street, after quitting the drug-store, with his brain aglow
with excitement and the need for steady thought.

The case that had seemed but a simple affair of a man's very natural
demise had suddenly assumed an aspect black as night.

He felt the need for light--all the light procurable in Hickwood.

Aware of the misleading possibilities of a theory preconceived, he was
not prepared even now to decide that inventor Scott was necessarily
guilty.  He found himself obliged to admit that the indications pointed
to the half-crazed man, to whom a machine had become a god, but nothing
as yet had been proved.

To return to Scott this morning would, he felt, be indiscreet.  The one
person now to be seen and interviewed was Mrs. Wilson, at whose home
the man Hardy had been lodged.  He started at once to the place, his
mind reverting by natural process to the box of cigars he had seen an
hour before, and from which, without a doubt, this poisoned weed had
been taken by Hardy to smoke.  He realized that one extremely important
point must be determined by the box itself.

If among the cigars still remaining untouched there were others
similarly poisoned, the case might involve a set of facts quite
different from those which reason would adduce if the one cigar only
had been loaded.  It was vital also to the matter in hand to ascertain
the identity of the person who had presented the smokes as a birthday
remembrance to the victim.

He arrived at Mrs. Wilson's home, was met at the door by the lady
herself, and was then obliged to wait interminably while she fled to
some private boudoir at the rear to make herself presentable for
"company."

For the second time, when she at length appeared, Garrison found
himself obliged to invent a plausible excuse for his visit and
curiosity.

"I dropped in to ascertain a few little facts about the late Mr. Hardy,
whose death occurred last week in Branchville," he said.  "The
insurance company that I represent goes through this trifling formality
before paying a claim."

"He certainly was the nicest man," said Mrs. Wilson.  "And just as I
was countin' on the money, he has to up and die.  I didn't think he was
that kind."

"Did he have many visitors?" Garrison asked, hastening at once to the
items he felt to be important.  "I mean, from among the neighbors,
or--anyone else?"

"Well, Charlie Scott come over, that second night and actin' that queer
I didn't know what was the matter.  He went off just about nine
o'clock, and I went to bed, and then I heard him come back in half an
hour, while Mr. Hardy was out, and he went again before Mr. Hardy come
in and started off to Branchville to die."

Her method of narrative was puzzling.

"You mean," said Garrison, "that after Mr. Scott had called and gone,
Mr. Hardy went out temporarily, and in his absence Mr. Scott returned
and remained for a time in his room?"

"I didn't git up to see what he wanted, or how long he stayed," said
Mrs. Wilson.  "I hate gittin' up when once I'm abed."

"And he went before Mr. Hardy's return?"

"Yes, I stayed awake for that; for although Charlie Scott may be honest
enough, he's inventin' some crazy fiddlede-dee, which has been the
crown of thorns of that dear woman all these----"

"Did they seem to be friends, Mr. Scott and Mr. Hardy?" Garrison
interrupted mildly.  "A clever woman, you know, can always tell."

"Ain't you New York men the quick ones to see!" said Mrs. Wilson.  "Of
course they was friends.  The day he come Mr. Hardy was over to
Charlie's all the livelong afternoon."

"Did Mr. Hardy get very many letters, or anything, through the mail?"

"Well, of course, I offered to go to the post-office, and bring him
everything," said Mrs. Wilson, "but he went himself.  So I don't know
what he got, or who it come from.  Not that I read anything but the
postals and----"

"Did he get any packages sent by express?"

"Not that come to my house, for little Jimmie Vane would have brought
'em straight to me."

Garrison went directly to the mark around which he had been playing.

"Who delivered his birthday present--the box of cigars?"

"Oh, that was his niece, the very first evenin' he was here--and she
the prettiest girl I ever seen."

"His niece?" echoed Garrison.  "Some young lady--who brought them here
herself?"

"Well, I should say so!  My, but she was that lovely!  He took her up
to Branchville to the train--and how I did hate to see her go!"

"Of course, yes, I remember he had a niece," said Garrison, his mind
reverting to the "statement" in his pocket.  "But, upon my word, I
believe I've forgotten her name."

"He called her Dot," said Mrs. Wilson.

"But her real name?" said Garrison.

"Her real name was Dorothy Booth before she was married," replied Mrs.
Wilson, "but now, of course, it's changed."

Garrison had suddenly turned ashen.  He managed to control himself by
making a very great effort.

"Perhaps you know her married name?" he said.

"I never forget a thing like that," said Mrs. Wilson.  "Her married
name is Mrs. Fairfax."

It seemed to Garrison he was fighting in the toils of some astounding
maze, where sickening mists arose to clog his brain.  He could scarcely
believe his senses.  A tidal wave of facts and deductions, centering
about the personality of Dorothy Booth-Fairfax, surged upon him
relentlessly, bearing down and engulfing the faith which he strove to
maintain in her honesty.

He had felt from the first there was something deep and dark with
mystery behind the girl who had come to his office with her most
amazing employment.  He had entertained vague doubts upon hearing of
wills and money inheritance at the house where she lived in New York.

He recalled the start she had given, while playing at the piano, upon
learning he was leaving for Hickwood.  Her reticence and the
strangeness of the final affair of the necklaces, in connection with
this present development, left him almost in despair.

Despite it all, as it overwhelmed him thus abruptly, he felt himself
struggling against it.  He could not even now accept a belief in her
complicity in such a deed while he thought of the beauty of her nature.
That potent something she had stirred in his heart was a fierce,
fighting champion to defend her.

He had not dared confess to himself he was certainly, fatefully falling
in love with this girl he scarcely knew, but his heart refused to hear
her accused and his mind was engaged in her defence.

Above all else, he felt the need for calmness.  Perhaps the sky would
clear itself, and the sun again gild her beauty.

"Mrs. Fairfax," he repeated to his garrulous informant.  "She brought
the cigars, you say, the day of Mr. Hardy's arrival?"

"And went away on the six-forty-three," said Mrs. Wilson.  "I remember
it was six minutes late, and I did think my dinner would be dry as a
bone, for she said she couldn't stay----"

"And that was his birthday," Garrison interrupted.

"Oh, no.  His birthday was the day he died.  I remember, 'cause he
wouldn't even open the box of cigars till after his dinner that day."

Garrison felt his remaining ray of hope faintly flicker and expire.

"You are sure the box wasn't opened?" he insisted.

"I guess I am!  He borrowed my screwdriver out of the sewin'-machine
drawer, where I always keep it, to pry up the cover."

Garrison tacked to other items.

"Why did she have to go so soon?" he inquired.  "Couldn't she have
stayed here with you?"

"What, a young thing like her, only just married?" demanded Mrs.
Wilson, faintly blushing.  "I guess you don't know us women when we're
in love."  And she blushed again.

"Of course," answered Garrison, at a loss for a better reply.  "Did her
uncle seem pleased with her marriage?"

"Why, he sat where you're now settin' for one solid hour, tellin' me
how tickled he felt," imparted the housewife.  "He said she'd git
everything he had in the world, now that she was married happy to a
decent man, for he'd fixed it all up in his will."

"Mr. Hardy said his niece would inherit his money?"

"Settin' right in that chair, and smilin' fit to kill."

"Did the niece seem very fond of her uncle?"

"Well, at first I thought she acted queer and nervous," answered Mrs.
Wilson, "but I made up my mind that was the natural way for any young
bride to feel, especial away from her husband."

Garrison's hopes were slipping from him, one by one, and putting on
their shrouds.

"Did Mr. Hardy seem to be pleased with his niece's selection--with Mr.
Fairfax?" he inquired.  "Or don't you know?"

"Why, he never even _seen_ the man," replied Mrs. Wilson.  "It seems
Mr. Fairfax was mixin' up business with his honeymoon, and him and his
bride was goin' off again, or was on their way, and she had a chance to
run up and see her uncle for an hour, and none of us so much as got a
look at Mr. Fairfax."

The mystery darkened rather than otherwise.  There was nothing yet to
establish whether or not a real Mr. Fairfax existed.  It appeared to
Garrison that Dorothy had purposely arranged the scheme of her alleged
marriage and honeymoon in such a way that her uncle should not meet her
husband.

He tried another query:

"Did Mr. Hardy say that he had never seen Mr. Fairfax?"

"Never laid eyes on the man in his life, but expected to meet him in a
month."

Garrison thought of the nephew who had come to claim the body.  His
name had been given as Durgin.  At the most, he could be no more than
Dorothy's cousin, and not the one he had recently met at her house.

"I don't suppose you saw Mr. Durgin, the nephew of Mr. Hardy?" he
inquired.  "The man who claimed the body?"

"No, sir.  I heard about Mr. Durgin, but I didn't see him."

Garrison once more changed the topic.

"Which was the room that Mr. Hardy occupied?  Perhaps you'll let me see
it."

"It ain't been swept or dusted recent," Mrs. Wilson informed him,
rising to lead him from the room, "but you're welcome to see it, if you
don't mind how it looks."

The apartment was a good-sized room, at the rear of the house.  It was
situated on a corner, with windows at the side and rear.  Against the
front partition an old-fashioned fireplace had been closed with a
decorated cover.  The neat bed, the hair-cloth chairs, and a table that
stood on three of its four legs only, supplied the furnishings.  The
coroner had taken every scrap he could find of the few things possessed
by Mr. Hardy.

"Nice, cheerful room," commented Garrison.  "Did he keep the windows
closed and locked?"

"Oh, no!  He was a wonderful hand to want the air," said the landlady.
"And he loved the view."

The view of the shed and hen-coops at the rear was duly exhibited.
Garrison did his best to formulate a theory to exonerate Dorothy from
knowledge of the crime; but his mind had received a blow at these new
disclosures, and nothing seemed to aid him in the least.  He could only
feel that some dark deed lay either at the door of the girl who had
paid him to masquerade as her husband, or the half-crazed inventor down
the street.

And the toils lay closer to Dorothy, he felt, than they did to Scott.

"You have been very helpful, I am sure," he said to Mrs. Wilson.

He bade her good-by and left the house, feeling thoroughly depressed in
all his being.




CHAPTER IX

A SUMMONS

Once in the open air again, with the sunshine streaming upon him,
Garrison felt a rebound in his thoughts.  He started slowly up the road
to Branchville, thinking of the murder as he went.

The major requisite, he was thoroughly aware, was motive.  Men were
never slain, except by lunatics, without a deeply grounded reason.  It
disturbed him greatly to realize that Dorothy might have possessed such
a motive in the danger of losing an inheritance, depending upon her
immediate marriage.  He could not dismiss the thought that she had
suddenly found herself in need of a husband, probably to satisfy
conditions in her uncle's will; that she had paid Mr. Hardy a visit as
a bride, but _without her husband_, and had since been obliged to come
to himself and procure his professional services _as such husband_,
presumably for a short time only.

She was cheating the Robinsons now through him.

Of this much there could be no denial.  She was stubbornly withholding
important information from himself as the masquerading husband.  She
was, therefore, capable of craft and scheming.  The jewel mystery was
equally suspicious and unexplainable.

And yet, when his memory flew to the hour in which he had met her for
the very first time, his faith in her goodness and honesty swept upon
him with a force that banished all doubt from his being.  Every word
she had uttered, every look from her eyes, had borne her sincerity in
upon him indelibly.

This was his argument, brought to bear upon himself.  He did not
confess the element of love had entered the matter in the least.

And now, as he walked and began to try to show himself that she could
not have done this awful crime, the uppermost thought that tortured his
mind was a fear that she might have a _genuine_ husband.

He forced his thoughts back to the box of cigars, through the medium of
which John Hardy's death had been accomplished.  What a diabolically
clever device it had been!  What scheme could be more complete to place
the deadly poison on the tongue of the helpless victim!  The cigar is
bitten--the stuff is in the mouth, and before its taste can manifest
itself above the strong flavor of tobacco, the deadly work is done!
And who would think, in ordinary circumstances, of looking in a cigar
for such a poison, and how could such a crime be traced?

The very diabolism of the device acquitted Dorothy, according to
Garrison's judgment.  He doubted if any clever woman, perhaps excepting
the famous and infamous Lucrezia Borgia, could have fashioned a plan so
utterly fiendish and cunning.

He began to reflect what the thing involved.  In the first place, many
smokers cut the end from every cigar, preliminary to lighting up to
smoke.  The person who had loaded this cigar must have known it was
John Hardy's habit to bite his cigars in the old-fashioned manner.  He
hated this thought, for Dorothy would certainly be one to know of this
habit in her uncle.

On the other hand, however, the task of placing the poison was one
requiring nicety, for clumsy work would of course betray itself at the
cigar-end thus prepared.  To tamper with a well-made cigar like this
required that one should deftly remove or unroll the wrapper, hollow
out a cavity, stuff in the poison, and then rewrap the whole with
almost the skill and art of a well-trained maker of cigars.  To
Garrison's way of thinking, this rendered the task impossible for such
a girl as Dorothy.

He had felt from the first that any man of the inventive, mechanical
attributes doubtless possessed by Scott could be guilty of working out
this scheme.

Scott, too, possessed a motive.  He wanted money.  The victim was
insured in his favor for a snug little fortune.  And Scott had returned
to Hardy's room, according to Mrs. Wilson, while Hardy was away, and
could readily have opened the box, extracted one or two cigars, and
prepared them for Hardy to smoke.  He, too, would have known of Hardy's
habit of biting the end from his weed.

There was still the third possibility that even before Dorothy's visit
to her uncle the cigars could have been prepared.  Anyone supplied with
the knowledge that she had purchased the present, with intention to
take it to her uncle, might readily have conceived and executed the
plan and be doubly hidden from detection, since suspicion would fall
upon Dorothy.

Aware of the great importance of once more examining the dead man's
effects at the coroner's office, Garrison hastened his pace.  It still
lacked nearly an hour of noon when he re-entered Branchville.  The
office he sought was a long block away from his hotel; nevertheless,
before he reached the door a hotel bell-boy discerned him, waved his
arm, then abruptly disappeared inside the hostelry.

The coroner was emerging from his place of business up the street.
Garrison accosted him.

"Oh, Mr. Pike," he said, "I've returned, you see.  I've nearly
concluded my work on the Hardy case; but I'd like, as a matter of form,
to look again through the few trifling articles in your custody."

"Why, certainly," said Mr. Pike.  "Come right in.  I've got to be away
for fifteen minutes, but I guess I can trust you in the shop."

He grinned good-naturedly, opened the drawer, and hurriedly departed.

Garrison drew up a chair before the desk.

At the door the hotel-boy appeared abruptly.

"Telegram for you, Mr. Garrison," he said.  "Been at the office about
an hour, but nobody knew where you was."

Garrison took it and tore it open.  It read:


"Return as soon as possible.  Important.

"DOROTHY."


"Any answer?" inquired the boy.

"No," said Garrison.  "What's the next train for New York?"

"Eleven-forty-five," answered the boy.  "Goes in fifteen minutes."

"All right.  Have my suit-case down at the office."

He returned to his work.

Ignoring the few piled-up papers in the drawer, he took up the three
cigars beside the box, the ones which had come from Hardy's pocket, and
scrutinized them with the most minute attention.

So far as he could possibly detect, not one had been altered or
repasted on the end.  He did not dare to cut them up, greatly as he
longed to examine them thoroughly.  He opened the box from which they
had come.

For a moment his eye was attracted and held by the birthday
greeting-card which Dorothy had written.  The presence of the card
showed a somewhat important fact--the box had been opened once before
John Hardy forced up the lid, in order that the card might be deposited
within.

His gaze went traveling from one even, nicely finished cigar-end to the
next, in his hope to discover signs of meddling.  It was not until he
came to the end cigar that he caught at the slightest irregularity.
Here, at last, was a change.

He took the cigar out carefully and held it up.  There could be no
doubt it had been "mended" on the end.  The wrapper was not only
slightly discolored, but it bulged a trifle; it was not so faultlessly
turned as all the others, and the end was corkscrewed the merest
trifle, whereas, none of the others had been twisted to bring them to a
point.

Garrison needed that cigar.  He was certain not another one in all the
box was suspicious.  The perpetrator of the poisoning had evidently
known that Hardy's habit was to take his cigars from the end of the row
and not the center.  No chance for mistake had been permitted.  The two
end cigars had been loaded, and no more.

How to purloin this cigar without having it missed by Mr. Pike was a
worry for a moment.

Garrison managed it simply.  He took out a dozen cigars in the layer on
top and one from the layer next the bottom; then, rearranging the
underlying layer so as to fill in the empty space, he replaced the
others in perfect order in the topmost row, and thus had one cigar left
over to substitute for the one he had taken from the end.

He plumped the suspicious-looking weed into his pocket and closed the
box.

Eagerly glancing at the letters found among the dead man's possessions,
he found a note from Dorothy.  It had come from a town in
Massachusetts.  The date was over six weeks old.

It was addressed, "Dear Uncle John," and, in a girlish way, informed
him she had recently been married to a "splendid, brilliant young man,
named Fairfax," whom she trusted her uncle would admire.  They were off
on their honeymoon, it added, but she hoped they would not be long
away, for they both looked forward with pleasure to seeing him soon.

It might have been part of her trickery; he could not tell.

The envelope was missing.  Where Hardy had been at the time of
receiving the note was not revealed.  The picture postal-card that Pike
had mentioned was also there.  It, too, apparently, had come from
Dorothy, and had been sent direct to Hickwood.

Once more returning to the box of cigars, Garrison took it up and
turned it around in his hand.  On the back, to his great delight, he
discovered a rubber-stamp legend, which was nothing more or less than a
cheap advertisement of the dealer who had sold the cigars.

He was one Isaac Blum, of an uptown address on Amsterdam Avenue, New
York, dealer in stationery, novelties, and smokers' articles.  Garrison
jotted down the name and address, together with the brand of the
cigars, and was just about to rise and close the drawer when the
coroner returned.

"I shall have to go down to New York this morning," said Garrison.  "I
owe you many thanks."

"Oh, that's all right," Mr. Pike responded.  "If you're goin' to try to
catch fifteen, you'd better git a move.  She's whistled for the station
just above."

Garrison hastened away.  He was presently whirling back to Dorothy.

His "shadow," with his bruised hand gloved, was just behind him in the
car.




CHAPTER X

A COMPLICATION

With ample time in which to wonder what Dorothy's summons might imply,
Garrison naturally found himself in the dark, despite his utmost
efforts at deduction.

He welcomed the chance thus made possible to behold her again so soon,
after what he had so recently discovered, and yet he almost dreaded the
necessity of ferreting out all possible facts concerning her actions
and motives for the past six weeks, the better to work up his case.
Wherever it led him, he knew he must follow unrelentingly.

Masquerading as her husband, he had involved himself in--Heaven alone
knew what--but certainly in all her affairs, even to the murder itself,
since he was alleged to have married her prior to John Hardy's death,
and was now supposed to benefit, in all probability, by some will that
Hardy had executed.

The recent developments disturbed him incessantly.  He almost wished he
had never heard of Mr. Wicks, who had come to his office with
employment.  And yet, with Dorothy entangled as she was in all this
business, it was better by far that he should know the worst, as well
as the best, that there was to be discovered.

He wondered if the whole affair might be charged with insidious
fatalities--either for himself or Dorothy.  He was groping in the
dark--and the only light was that which shone in Dorothy's eyes; there
was nothing else to guide him.  He could not believe it was a baneful
light, luring him on to destruction--and yet--and yet----

His gaze wandered out at the window on a scene of Nature's loveliness.
The bright June day was perfect.  In their new, vivid greens, the
fields and the trees were enchanting.  How he wished that he and
Dorothy might wander across the hills and meadows together!

A sweet, lawless wildness possessed his rebellious nature.  His mind
could reason, but his heart would not, despite all his efforts at
control.

Thus the time passed until New York was reached.

Unobserved, the man who had shadowed Garrison so faithfully left the
train at the Harlem station, to take the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth
Street crosstown car, in his haste to get to Ninety-third Street, where
the Robinsons were waiting.

Garrison went on to the Grand Central, carried his suit-case to his
room, freshened his dress with new linen, and then, going forth,
lunched at a corner café, purchased another bunch of roses, and
proceeded on to Dorothy's.

It was a quarter of two when he rang the bell.  He waited only the
briefest time.  The door was opened, and there stood young Robinson,
smiling.

"Why, how do you do, Cousin Jerold?" he said, cordially extending his
hand.  "Come right in.  I'm delighted to see you."

Garrison had expected any reception but this.  He felt his old dislike
of the Robinsons return at once.  There was nothing to do, however, but
to enter.

"Is Dorothy----" he started.

"Won't you go right up?" interrupted Theodore.  "I believe you are not
unexpected."

Garrison was puzzled.  A certain uneasiness possessed him.  He
proceeded quietly up the stairs, momentarily expecting Dorothy to
appear.  But the house was silent.  He reached the landing and turned
to look at Theodore, who waved him on to the room they had occupied
before.

When he entered he was not at all pleased to find the elder Robinson
only awaiting his advent.  He halted just inside the threshold and
glanced inquiringly from father to son.

"How do you do?" he said stiffly.  "Is Dorothy not at home?"

"She is not," said old Robinson, making no advance and giving no
greeting.  "Will you please sit down?"

Garrison remained where he was.

"Do you expect her soon?" he inquired.

"We shall get along very well without her.  We've got something to say
to you--alone."

Garrison said: "Indeed?"

He advanced to a chair and sat down.

"In the first place, perhaps you will tell us your actual name," said
old Robinson, himself taking a seat.

Garrison was annoyed.

"Let me assure you, once for all, that I do not in the least recognize
your right to meddle in my concerns, or subject me to any inquisitions."

"That's another way of saying you refuse to answer!" snapped Robinson
tartly.  "You know your name isn't Fairfax, any more than it's mine.
Your name is Garrison."

Garrison stared at him coldly.

"You seem to have made up your mind very decidedly," he said.  "Is that
all you have to say?"

"You don't deny it?" cried the old man, exasperated by his calmness.
"You don't dare deny it!"

Garrison grew calmer.

"I haven't the slightest reason to deny anything," he said.  "I
frequently require a pseudonym.  Dorothy knows that I employ the name
Garrison whenever occasion demands."

The old man was wild.

"Will you swear that your right name is Fairfax?" he said.  "That's
what I demand to know!"

Garrison answered: "I came here to see my wife.  I warn you I am
growing impatient with your hidden insinuations!"

"Your wife!" cried old Robinson, making a dive into one of his pockets
with his hand.  "What have you to say to this letter, from the woman
who is doubtless by now your _legal_ wife?"  Suddenly snatching a
letter from his coat, he projected himself toward Garrison and held up
the missive before him.

It was the letter from Ailsa--the one that Garrison had missed--the
letter in which she had agreed to become his wife.  He put forth his
hand to receive it.

"No, you don't!" cried the old man, snatching it out of his reach.
"I'll keep this, if you please, to show my niece."

Garrison's eyes glittered.

"So, it was _your_ hired thief who stole it, up at Branchville?" he
said.  "I don't suppose he showed you the skin that he left behind from
his fingers."

"That's got nothing to do with the point!" the old man cried at him
triumphantly.  "I don't believe you are married to my niece.  If you
think you can play your game on me----"

Garrison interrupted.

"The theft of that letter was a burglary in which you are involved.
You are laying up trouble for yourself very rapidly.  Give that letter
to me!"

"Give it up, hey?  We'll see!" said Robinson.  "Take it to court if you
dare!  I'm willing.  This letter shows that another woman accepted you,
and _that's_ the point you don't dare face in the law!"

Whatever else he discerned in the case.  Garrison did not understand in
the least how Dorothy could have summoned him back here for this.

"That letter is an old one," he replied to Robinson calmly.  "Look at
the date.  It's a bit of ancient history, long since altered."

"There is no date!" the old man shrilled in glee; and he was right.

Garrison's reply was never uttered.  The door behind him abruptly
opened, and there stood Dorothy, radiant with color and beauty.

"Why, Jerold!" she cried.  "Why, when did you come?  I didn't even know
you were in town."

She ran to him ardently, as she had before, with her perfect art, and
kissed him with wifely affection.




CHAPTER XI

THE SHOCK OF TRUTH

For one second only Garrison was a trifle confused.  Then he gave her
the roses he had brought.

She carried them quickly to the table, hiding her face in their
fragrant petals.

"Just a moment, Dorothy," said Garrison.  "You didn't know I'd come to
town?  You wired----"  He halted and looked at the Robinsons.  "Oh," he
added, "I think I begin to see."

Dorothy felt something in the air.

"What is it, Jerold?" she said.  "I haven't wired.  What do you mean?"

Garrison faced the Robinsons.

"I mean that these two _gentlemen_ telegraphed me at Branchville to
come here at once--and signed your name to the wire."

"Telegraphed you?  In my name?" repeated Dorothy.  "I don't believe I
understand."

"We may as well understand things first as last," said her uncle.  "I
don't believe this man is your husband!  I don't believe his name is
Fairfax!  He was registered as Garrison.  Furthermore----"

Garrison interrupted, addressing Dorothy:

"They think they have discovered something important or vital in the
fact that I sometimes use the name Garrison.  And they have managed to
steal an old letter----"

"I'll tell about the letter, if you please!" cried old Robinson
shrilly.  He turned to Dorothy, who was very white.  "There you are!"
he said, waving the letter before her face.  "There's the letter from
his sweetheart--the woman he asked to become his wife!  Here's her
acceptance, and her protestations of love.  She is doubtless his wife
at this moment!  Read it for yourself!"

He thrust it into Dorothy's hand with aggressive insistence.

Dorothy received it obediently.  She hardly knew what she should say or
do to confute the old man's statements, or quiet his dangerous
suspicions.  His arrival at the truth concerning herself and Garrison
had disconcerted her utterly.

Garrison did not attempt to take the letter, but he addressed her
promptly:

"I am perfectly willing to have you read the letter.  It was written
over a year ago.  It is Ailsa's letter.  I told you I was once engaged
to Ailsa; that she married my friend, without the slightest warning;
that I had not destroyed her last letter.  She never acquired the habit
of dating her letters, and therefore this one might appear to be a bit
of recent correspondence."

"A very pretty explanation!" cried old Robinson.  "We'll see--we'll
see!  Dorothy, read it for yourself!"

Dorothy was rapidly recovering her self-possession.  She turned to her
uncle quite calmly, with the folded bit of paper in her hand.

"How did you come by this letter," she inquired.  "You didn't really
steal it?"

Garrison answered: "The letter was certainly stolen.  My suit-case was
rifled the night of my arrival at Branchville.  These gentlemen hired a
thief to go through my possessions."

"I've been protecting my rights!" the old man answered fiercely.  "If
you think you can cheat me out of my rightful dues you'll find out your
mistake!"

"I wouldn't have thought you could stoop to this," said Dorothy.  "You
couldn't expect to shake my faith in Jerold."

She handed Garrison the letter to show her confidence.

Garrison placed it in his pocket.  He turned on the Robinsons angrily.

"You are both involved in a prison offense," he said--"an ordinary,
vulgar burglary.  I suppose you feel secure in the fact that for
Dorothy's sake I shall do nothing about it--to-day.  But I warn you
that I'll endure no more of this sort of thing, in your efforts to
throw discredit on Dorothy's relationship with me!  Now then, kindly
leave the room."

Aware that Garrison held the upper hand, old Robinson was more than
chagrined; he was furious.  His rage, however, was impotent; there was
no immediate remedy at hand.  Theodore, equally baffled, returned to
his attitude of friendliness.

"No harm's been done, and none was intended," he said.  "There's
nothing in family rows, anyhow.  Father, come along."

His father, on the point of discharging another broadside of anger,
altered his mind and followed his son to a room at the rear of the
house.

Garrison closed the door.

Dorothy was looking at him almost wildly.

"What does it mean?" she asked in a tone barely above a whisper.  "They
haven't really found out anything?"

"They suspect the truth, I'm afraid," he answered.  "I shall be obliged
to ask you a number of questions."

Her face became quite ashen.

"I can see that your employment has become very trying," she said, "but
I trust you are not contemplating retreat."

The thought made her pale, for her heart, too, had found itself
potently involved.

"No; I have gone too far for that," he answered, making an effort to
fight down the dictates of his increasing love and keep his head
thoroughly clear.

"In the first place, when you wire me in the future use another name,
for safety--say Jeraldine.  In the next place, I am very much hampered
by the blindness of my mission.  I can see, I think, that the Robinsons
expected some legacy which you are now apparently about to inherit, and
your marriage became necessary to fulfill some condition of the will.
Is this correct?"

"Yes, quite correct."  She remained very pale.

"Who was it that died, leaving the will?  And when did he die?"

"Another uncle, Mr. John Hardy--quite recently," she answered.

"You are not in mourning."

"By his special request.  He died very suddenly.  He left a condition
in his will that I should inherit his fortune provided I should have
been married at least one month prior to his death to a healthy,
respectable man--who was not to be my cousin."

"Theodore?"

She nodded.  "You can see I had to have a husband."

"Exactly."

Garrison thought he saw a light that cleared her as he could have
wished.  He hastened to a question bearing directly upon it.

"Did the Robinsons know of this clause in your Uncle Hardy's will--say,
two or three weeks ago?"

"No.  They knew nothing of it then."

Garrison's heart sank.  "You are sure?"

"Absolutely positive.  Uncle John was very secretive."

The suggestion that the Robinsons, having known the condition in the
will, had destroyed John Hardy in the belief that Dorothy, being
unmarried, would thereby lose the inheritance, was vanishing.  Garrison
still had hope.

"You once alluded to certain obligations that--well, compelled you to
hire a husband," he said.  "You had no urgent need of funds in a large
amount?"

She darted him a startled look.  "I shall have a pressing need--soon.
I suppose you have a right to know."

Garrison was almost in despair.  There was nothing to do but go on.

"Did Mr. Hardy know anything of this need?"

"No."

"You feared he might not be in sympathy with your requirements?"

"No, he----  Have these questions anything to do with our--case?"  She
seemed to be frightened.

"They have," he said.  "You have your diamonds and pearls.  You might
raise quite a sum on such valuable gems."

The look of fear upon her face increased.

"I couldn't!" she said, as if she feared the walls might hear and
betray.  "Please don't mention----"

"You didn't tell me what they are, or why you wish to keep them," he
said.  "What does it mean?"

"Please don't ask!"  She was greatly agitated.  "Please trust me--a
little while longer!  You probably have to return to Branchville and
your work."

He determined then and there upon the one supreme test of the situation.

"That reminds me," he said, averting his gaze; "the work on which I am
engaged in Branchville is the case of a man named Hardy.  I'm glad he
was not your uncle."

Her face took on the hue of death.  Her lips moved, but for a moment
made no sound.  Then, with an effort, she replied:

"You're glad--but--why?"

"Because," he replied, with a forced smile on his lips, "the man up at
Branchville was murdered."

She made no sound.

She simply closed her eyes and swayed toward him, weakly collapsing as
she fell.  He caught her quickly against his breast, a heavy, precious
burden that he knew he must love, though the angels of heaven accuse
her.

"Dorothy--Dorothy--forgive me," he said, but her senses were deaf to
his voice.




CHAPTER XII

A DISTURBING LOSS

Garrison, holding the limp, helpless form in his arms, gazed quickly
about the room and saw the couch.  He crossed the floor and placed her
full length upon its cushions.

She lay there so white and motionless that he was frightened.  He felt
it impossible to call the Robinsons.  He needed water, quickly.  He
knew nothing of the house.  His searching glance fell at once on the
vase of roses, standing on the table.  He caught it up, drew out the
flowers, and was presently kneeling at Dorothy's side, wetting his
handkerchief with the water from the vase and pressing it closely on
her forehead.

She did not respond to his ministrations.  He tore at her dress, where
it fastened at the neck, and laid it wide open for several inches.  On
the creamy whiteness of her throat he sprinkled the water, then sprang
to the window, threw it up, and was once more kneeling beside her.

The fresh breeze swept in gratefully and cooled her face and neck.  She
stirred, slightly turned, opened her eyes in a languid manner, and
partially relapsed into coma.

"Thank God!" said Garrison, who had feared for her life, and he once
more applied his wetted handkerchief.  He spoke to her, gently:

"Forgive me, Dorothy--it's all right--everything's all right," but her
senses accepted nothing of his meaning.

For another five minutes, that seemed like an age, he rubbed at her
hands, resprinkled her throat and face, and waved a folded paper to
waft her the zephyr of air.  When she once more opened her eyes she was
fairly well restored.  She recovered her strength by a sheer exertion
of will and sat up, weakly, passing her hand across her brow.

"I must have fainted," she said.  She was very white.

"You're all right now--the heat and unusual excitement," he answered
reassuringly.  "Don't try to do anything but rest."

She looked at him with wide, half-frightened eyes.  Her fears had
returned with her awakened intelligence.

"You mustn't stay," she told him with a firmness he was not prepared to
expect.  "Please go as soon as you can."

"But--can I leave you like this?  You may need me," he answered.  "If
there's anything I can do----"

"Nothing now.  Please don't remain," she interrupted.  "I shall go to
my room at once."

Garrison realized she was in no condition for further questioning.
Whatsoever the status of the case or his doubts, there was nothing more
possible, with Dorothy in this present condition.  He knew she very
much desired to be alone.

"But--when shall I see you?  What shall I----" he started.

"I can't tell.  Please go," she interrupted, and she sank back once
more on the cushions, looking at him wildly for a moment, and then
averting her gaze.  "Please don't stay another minute."

He could not stay.  His mind was confused as to his duty.  He knew that
he loved her and wished to remain; he knew he was under orders and must
go.  Disturbed and with worry at his heart, he took her hand for one
brief pressure.

"Don't forget I'm your friend--and protector," he said.  "Please don't
forget."

He took his hat, said good-by, saw her lips frame a brief, half-audible
reply, then slipped from the room, to avoid giving undue notice to the
Robinsons, went silently down the stairs to the door, and let himself
out in the street.

Aware, in a dim sort of way, that a "shadow" was onc