The Impending Sword: A Novel (Vol. 3 of 3)

By Edmund Yates

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Title: The Impending Sword (Vol. 3 of 3)
       A Novel

Author: Edmund Yates

Release Date: June 1, 2020 [EBook #62298]

Language: English


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THE IMPENDING SWORD.






LONDON:
ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.






THE
IMPENDING SWORD.



A Novel.



BY
EDMUND YATES,

AUTHOR OF 'BLACK SHEEP,' 'THE ROCK AHEAD,' 'THE YELLOW FLAG,' ETC.
ETC.



   'Put we our quarrel to the will of Heaven,
    Who, when He sees the hours ripe on earth,
    Will rain hot vengeance on the offenders' heads.'
                                         SHAKESPEARE.



IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.



LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8 CATHERINE ST. STRAND.
1874.
[_The right of translation, dramatic adaptation, and reproduction is
reserved._]






CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

Book the Third.
THE DISCOVERY.


CHAP.
       I. CONSULTATION.
      II. RECOGNISED.
     III. A WAY OF ESCAPE.
      IV. ESCAPED.
       V. A CLUE.
      VI. HARKING BACK.
     VII. MR. DUNN.
    VIII. IDENTIFIED.
          EPILOGUE.
          A NOTE BY THE AUTHOR.




Book the Third.
THE DISCOVERY.




CHAPTER I.
CONSULTATION.


Thornton Carey stood as one transfixed; in all his recollection of
Helen he had never seen her like this before--wonderfully pretty, but
deadly white, and almost rigid.

'You wish to see me,' she said, advancing towards him, and placing her
cold hand in his; 'you have bad tidings, and you hesitate to tell me;
you need not be afraid--directly your arrival was announced I had a
presentiment.'

'I have, indeed, something very serious to say to you,' said Thornton
Carey, motioning her to a seat, 'and you judge me truly when you say
that I find it difficult to break it to you.'

'What you have to tell me concerns Alston--concerns my husband,' said
Helen, with unnatural calmness; 'don't fear to speak it at once--he
is--is dead!'

'Helen,' said Thornton Carey, laying his hand softly on hers, 'I have
known you from your earliest youth, and no brother could have a deeper
interest in or affection for you than I have. It is my lot to bring
you the news of the most serious trial that you could be put to, and I
must not shrink from the obligation. So long as there was any hope, I
kept silence myself; and enjoined it on others. Now there is none, and
in mercy to you, as well as in justice to myself, I must speak. Summon
your womanly fortitude to your aid, my poor child, for you will need
it all. Helen--your husband is dead!'

She sunk back in her chair, closing her eyes, and pressing her hands
before her face. From time to time a strong shiver shook her entire
frame, and her interlaced fingers were convulsively twisted together.
Once or twice, too, she uttered a deep groan, but there were no tears,
nor any of the usual signs of grief.

After a few moments, still lying back, and with her face still covered
by her hands, she asked, in a voice such as Thornton Carey had never
heard from her before--dull, toneless, and metallic: 'Did he die in
England?'

'He did,' replied Carey. 'Ah, Helen, I have not told you all even
yet--you have much to hear and bear.'

'You can proceed,' she said. 'You see that I am perfectly quiet.'

Thornton Carey glanced at her uneasily; his good sense told him that
this forced calmness was unnatural, and might be dangerous, and yet,
now that he had once entered upon his mission, he could not hesitate
to go through with it.

'There is reason to believe,' he said, half averting his head, for,
though her eyes were covered by her hands, he felt as though her gaze
was directed towards him, 'there is reason to believe that poor
Griswold was the victim of foul play--that he met his death
unfairly--' he saw that she failed to perceive his meaning, and added
slowly--'that he was murdered!'

'O my God!' she cried; and with a piercing shriek she threw herself
forward on the table, burying her head in her arms, which were
enshrouded in her loose hair.

Thornton Carey sprang to his feet, and hastened to fetch her some
iced-water from the pitcher which stood on the buffet. When he
returned with the tumbler, she was sobbing fearfully, and rocking
herself to and fro, moaning dismally the while.

'O, my Alston, my darling, my own husband--O, why did you leave me?
Why did you not listen to me when I implored you not to go this fatal
journey?'

'Helen,' said Thornton Carey, touching her lightly on the shoulder,
'where is the courage you promised to show me?'

'O, to think that he is dead! that I shall never see him again! O, my
own darling, my own Alston--to think that he has been killed!'

'You are right to mourn him,' said Carey gently, 'for he was the best,
the kindest, the most generous of men.'

'O, who could speak of that so well as I could?' murmured Helen, her
face still covered. 'Did he not give me everything I wanted? Was it not
for my sake that he took this journey in which he lost his life?'

'Recollect then, Helen, that, however much you may deplore his loss,
there is yet another duty owing to his memory. If my suspicions are
correct, he was treacherously and basely murdered, and our first duty
is to avenge his death, and bring the murderer to justice.'

He had scarcely uttered the words before she raised her head and
confronted him, with difficulty recognisable as the woman who, pale
and shrinking, had so recently entered the boudoir; her eyes blazed
with a fierce, lurid light, her cheeks flushed and tear-blurred, and
her lips tightly set together.

'You are right, Thornton Carey,' she said very quietly; 'that is, of
course, the first thing to be done. Who are these wretches? Are they
known?'

'Not yet,' said Carey; 'but I hope they will be before long. I will
leave you now; some other day--to-morrow, perhaps--when you are more
calm, I will tell you the particulars of this dreadful affair, and we
will consult as to what is to be done.'

'To-morrow,' she repeated; 'why not now? Why lose one moment? Is
calmness required when the means of punishing my Alston's murderer is
in question? For God's sake, talk to me, Thornton Carey, and give me
something to employ my mind, for when I think of his loss and my own
desolate position, I feel as if I should go mad.'

An instant's rapid reflection convinced Carey that to do as she
requested would be the best means of serving her--the best chance of
staving off that access of grief which he had so much dreaded.

'I will do what you wish, Helen,' he said, after a pause, 'if you will
promise me to keep guard over yourself, and to strive hard against
being betrayed into any exhibition of feeling; this will be the more
necessary as I shall have to bring two strangers to you, people who
made the acquaintance of our poor Alston in England, and who were the
first to form the idea that he was indeed the murdered man.'

'To form the idea!' cried Helen. 'Is it not certain--is there any
possible doubt?'

'None,' said Carey gently, but decisively. 'From all that I can make
out, and you will understand that I have done my best to sift the
matter thoroughly, I can have no doubt that the American gentleman
passing under the name of Foster, whose murder in Liverpool is now
reported in the newspapers, was your husband, and my poor friend,
Alston Griswold.'

'Passing under the name of Foster!' repeated Helen. 'Alston would never
have descended to such duplicity. What reason could he have,' she
added, looking up, 'for concealing his real name?'

'That is more than I can say,' cried Carey; 'but whether he did or not
you ought to be able to tell at once. How were your letters to him
addressed?'

Helen's face fell, and her eyes were downcast; she did not like such
an intimate friend even as Thornton Carey to know that her husband had
not trusted her with his address. There was, however, no help for it,
so she said:

'I did not write direct to Alston in England--my letters have been
sent under cover to Mr. Warren, and have been forwarded by him.'

Carey was silent for a moment. Then he said:

'That intelligence goes far to confirm my worst fears. If Alston had
not been under an assumed name, you would have written to him direct;
that he had an assumed name, which must have been known to Warren,
proves that the disguise must have been for business purposes. It is
as I thought at first,' he said, lifting up his hands; 'that his
business operations might not be known he took the name of Foster; by
some one interested in thwarting those business operations he has been
killed.'

Helen bowed her head.

'All things seem to point to that, I confess,' she said; 'but Foster
is not an uncommon American name--there are hundreds and thousands of
Americans now in England on business. The circumstance of Alston
having thought fit to conceal his identity is merely a coincidence,
and if no personal description of the murdered man has arrived, you
may yet be wrong.'

'Would to God I could think so,' said Thornton Carey; 'but after you
have heard the story of the two persons from England whom I spoke of,
I am afraid even you will have to surrender that hope. I have brought
them with me--will you see them?'

'No,' she said quickly, 'I cannot, not to-day, not for some time. You
surely cannot consider it necessary?'

'Not if the matter is to be dropped,' he replied quietly; 'but if any
action is to be taken upon it, if finding we are right in our surmise,
we are at once to take steps to discover and pursue the perpetrators
of this dreadful act, then I think no time should be lost in our
availing ourselves of all the aid and assistance we can command.'

'That has decided me,' said Helen. 'I will see them at once. Who are
they?'

'I think you have seen them,' said Thornton Carey; 'at all events
their names are well known to you--they are Mr. Bryan Duval and Miss
Clara Montressor.'

'The actors?' cried Helen.

'Exactly,' said Thornton Carey. 'You recollect poor Alston's love for
the drama and its professors, and how he used to declare that the
theatre was the only place in which he could forget the cares and
troubles of business. He seems to have carried this idea over to
England with him, and to have made the acquaintance of and become
tolerably intimate with this lady and gentleman. It was after
accompanying them to Liverpool, and seeing them start on their journey
here, that the fatal attack was made upon him. They are, as I need
scarcely tell you, highly-intelligent people, and with the kindliest
feelings towards you; and as, from the manner in which they were mixed
up with poor Griswold in England, their information and advice is
highly valuable, I would you should see them at once.'

'I will do so,' said Helen; 'I will come down with you at once to the
parlour, where I suppose they are.'

She went down-stairs, only pausing for an instant and trembling
violently as she passed the door of the library, when the remembrance
flashed across her of her interview with Alston on the night of their
ball, and of the manner in which, acting under the presentiment which
would seem to have been carried out, she had implored him to give up
the idea of this journey. Then, summoning all her courage to her aid,
she opened the door, and followed by Thornton Carey, entered the
parlour.

A lady, who was turning over the leaves of a photographic album, and a
gentleman, who seemed to be reading some memoranda in a note-book,
rose at their entrance. She bowed as Thornton Carey muttered hastily
some formal words of introduction, and looked at them keenly. Months
afterwards Helen remembered that, notwithstanding the acuteness of the
mental agonies she was suffering, she could not help remarking the
difference between the quietly-dressed, mild-mannered lady who sat
before her and the shrieking heroine of the stage, between the sharp,
shrewd, worldly-wise Bryan Duval and the steeple-hatted,
velvet-cloaked utterer of romantic rhapsodies.

Bryan Duval was the first to speak: 'Your friend Mr. Carey has an
idea, Mrs. Griswold, that we may be able to be of some service to you
by giving information which, combined with such knowledge as you
yourself possess, may tend to elucidate the causes which prompted this
dreadful deed, and enable you to recognise its perpetrator. I need
scarcely assure you of our warm sympathy, or the earnest desire on our
part to help you.'

Helen bowed, and steadying herself by a great mental effort, said: 'I
am very grateful for the interest you have displayed towards me. Mr.
Carey has given me no details, preferring that I should hear them all
from you. I should like to know, in the first place, what gave you the
idea of the identity of my husband, Mr. Griswold, with the victim of
this cruel deed?'

'I think I can answer that question,' said Miss Montressor, bending
forward. 'The gentleman whom we knew as Mr. Foster once showed me a
portrait of a lady which he described as his wife's. I had the
portrait in my hands for some time, and its features were vividly
impressed in my mind. Before we made our first appearance at the
theatre here, I had heard accidentally that you were to occupy a
certain seat, and I was instructed to look out for you. You may judge
of my astonishment when in that seat I saw a lady whom I recognised as
the original of the portrait which Mr. Foster had shown me.'

'You must pardon my appearing a little confused,' said poor Helen,
putting her hand on her head. 'Do I understand that you recognise me
as the original of the portrait shown to you?'

'Certainly,' replied Miss Montressor; 'there could be no doubt about
it.'

'And this portrait,' asked Helen, 'what was it like--how was it set?'

'It was a miniature, a very beautifully coloured photograph, I should
say, and it was set in the inside case of a plain gold watch, the
spring which discovered it being very difficult to find.'

'That was my parting gift to Alston,' murmured Helen. 'Either he must
have shown it to you or it must have been stolen from him.'

'That I think can easily be decided,' interrupted Bryan Duval, 'by a
description of the gentleman whom we knew as Mr. Foster, and who
showed the portrait to this lady. A man between five-and-thirty and
forty years of age, about my height, with hair somewhat lighter than
mine, a thick dark moustache and imperial, or chin tuft; his
expression somewhat prematurely grave and thoughtful, but brightening
in an instant whenever anything struck his fancy; his manner rather
English than American, perhaps a little formal at first, but frank and
warm when he was known--I beg your pardon,' he added hurriedly, seeing
that Helen had placed her handkerchief to her eyes, 'I fear I have
said too much.'

'It was only for an instant,' she said, looking up. 'Your description,
to my mind, is singularly accurate, and I fear that it would be
useless to indulge in any further hope. It seems now only too certain
that the worst is true.'

'What we have to do now, then,' said Thornton Carey, striking in
quickly, and with a significant glance at Duval, 'is to try and
discover what instigated the deed, and by whom it was perpetrated.'

'To aid us in that endeavour,' said Duval, who perfectly comprehended
the reasons which actuated his companion, 'we must get Mrs. Griswold to
answer as freely and as closely as she possibly can.'

'I will do so to the best of my ability,' said Helen; 'but I must warn
you from the first that my knowledge of Mr. Griswold was mainly
restricted to his home, where he was the best, the truest, and the
most generous of men. He had not, and I have no doubt correctly, a
very high estimate of woman's value in business matters; he imagined
that they could not grasp the details, and if, during the first days
of our marriage, I ever attempted to talk of his affairs, he
invariably put me off with a pleasant word and a jest. Seeing how he
felt about the matter, I had long since given up attempting to speak
to him concerning them.'

'But surely this voyage to Europe, which was not an ordinary business
matter, but one entirely out of the way, might have tempted you to
break your rule?' said Bryan Duval.

'It did,' said Helen. 'I spoke to Mr. Griswold about it on several
occasions; the last I remember perfectly. There had been a little
social gathering at this house, and after our friends had gone my
husband went into his library, to arrange some papers. I joined him
there, and besought him to give up his intended voyage.'

'What a mercy it would have been if you had succeeded!' said Miss
Montressor.

'I think I might have succeeded if he alone had been engaged in the
undertaking, for he was much moved by my evident distress; but he told
me that he was merely one of several; that certain of his friends had
joined in the speculation on the strength of his having guaranteed to
carry it out; and that it was impossible for him to back out of it
with honour.'

'Certain of his friends,' repeated Bryan Duval slowly. 'Did he name
any of them to you?'

'He did not,' replied Helen.

'This information gives colour to your idea, Mr. Carey,' continued
Bryan, 'that the prompting of the deed may have come from this side of
the water. You were acquainted with most of your husband's friends, I
suppose, Mrs. Griswold?'

'In a casual way,' replied Helen. 'Mr. Griswold was of a very
hospitable nature, and was in the habit of inviting them to dinners at
Delmonico's or at this house, at most of which I was present, while
they, in their turn, would invite us.'

'Now, among these acquaintances, can you think of any one who could be
jealous of Mr. Griswold in any possible way, of his position in
Wall-street, his social status, or--anything else?' asked Bryan Duval,
looking narrowly at her.

'No,' answered Helen, whose cheeks flushed crimson as the remembrance
of her last interview with Trenton Warren rose unbidden to her
mind--'no, I think not.'

'It is useless to ask if he had any enemies; none of us, even the most
insignificant, is without them; but had he any enemy, open and
avowed--have you ever heard of any one whom he had crossed in
business, or--in anything else, and who was likely to revenge himself
upon him?'

'Never,' said Helen decisively; 'never.'

'And you are absolutely not aware of the existence of any motive
likely to prompt such a crime?'

'I am not,' replied Helen.

Bryan Duval shrugged his shoulders, and sank back in his chair.

'Mr. Duval's questions have been very skilfully put, my dear Mrs.
Griswold, and you have answered them plainly and conscientiously. I
will ask you--'

'Pray excuse me one minute,' said Miss Montressor; 'there is one point
in connection with the identity of Mr. Foster with Mr. Griswold which
has not yet been brought forward. On the same evening on which your
portrait had been shown to me,' she continued, turning to Helen, 'as we
were driving to London in an open carriage, I complained of the cold,
and Mr. Foster--I may as well continue to call him so--lent me this
pin, which he took from his cravat, to secure my shawl--do you
recognise it?'

As she spoke she handed the pin to Mrs. Griswold.

Helen looked at it attentively. 'I have seen this stone before, but I
cannot tell where.' Then, after a pause, she said: 'Now I recollect
perfectly. It was not set as a pin when I saw it, but as a sleeve
link. I found it on the floor of the room after the little party which
I have mentioned, and I do not remember having come across it since.'

'You are quite right,' said. Miss Montressor. 'Mr. Foster mentioned
having found the link when he unpacked his trunk on his arrival in
England. He imagined it to be one of a set belonging to you, and had
it mounted as a pin. The evidence is not worth much, I know,'
continued Miss Montressor, taking the pin from Helen's hand, and
laying it on the table, 'but it is a small additional proof that Mr.
Griswold and the victim of this horrible crime were one. I am sorry I
interrupted you, Mr. Carey.'

'Not at all,' replied Thornton. 'I was merely going to sum up all Mr.
Duval's skilful questions in one commonplace one. Have you, my dear
Mrs. Griswold, no idea of anything which could have tempted any one to
assassinate your husband?'

'Not the slightest in the world,' said Helen, shaking her head
wearily; unless, 'indeed, my poor Alston was mistaken for some one
else. I think that must have been it. I think he must have been
mistaken for some one else.'

'Mrs. Griswold is growing a little fatigued,' said Bryan Duval, who
had been watching her closely, 'and naturally requires rest and quiet.
I do not think that we can say any more just now, and we had better
bring this painful interview to a close.'

'I agree with you,' said Thornton Carey; 'one word more and I have
done. I had concluded,' he added, turning to Helen, 'even before what
you told me this morning concerning your letters, that the man who
knew most about your poor husband's affairs, and who was most
thoroughly in his confidence, was Trenton Warren. I have been to his
office, and find that he is at Chicago. I have, accordingly, ventured
to telegraph to him there in your name, desiring him to return at
once, stating that it was of the utmost importance that you should see
him, but not mentioning what has occurred. I hope I did rightly.'

'I--I suppose so,' Helen replied. 'But you will remain in town, Mr.
Carey, and--this gentleman, and you, madam, will continue to advise
me--will you not?'

'I may say, speaking for both of us, that we shall be too happy to be
of any service to you,' said Bryan Duval. 'I have had some experience
in the elucidation of mysteries, and I shall devote some time in the
endeavour to bring this villany home to the proper person.'

'I would offer to stay with you,' said Miss Montressor, 'but,
unfortunately, as you are aware, my avocations do not permit me. I
cannot bear to think of you sitting alone here, without any one to
console you in your trouble.'

'You are very kind,' said Helen; 'but I feel that I have overtaxed my
strength, and I shall get to bed as soon as possible. Fortunately, my
child's nurse, Mrs. Jenkins'--here Miss Montressor winced--'is a most
attentive and considerate person, and will, I am sure, take every care
of me.'

'She seems, indeed, quite a treasure,' said Thornton Carey. 'I will
call upon Dr. O'Connor as I go down town, and ask him to look in upon
you when he is driving this way. You must be careful, my dear Mrs.
Griswold; you will need all your strength to help us in the
unravelment of this mystery.' Then they took their leave.

When they reached the street, Thornton Carey parted from them, with
promises to see them on the morrow; and Bryan Duval, who seemed to
have recovered all his old manner, said to Miss Montressor: 'I am
going down, my dear Clara, on a little mission to the Tombs, which is
the cheerful name they give to the police office here. The judge is an
old friend of mine, and I have already started inquiries among some of
the police officers. It is not a place that I can conveniently take
you to, so I advise you to get into the approaching omnibus, which
these Americans, with their usual perversity, insist on calling a
"stage," and which will put you down at the hotel. You will find the
step very high, but woman is privileged in America, and you can seize
the knee or the nose of the nearest gentleman, and help yourself in by
it, without giving him any offence. You can add to the compliment, so
soon as you are seated, by handing him this ten-cent bill, and
observing his graceful attitudes as he pushes it through the hole in
the roof to the driver. Adios, my child; I shall be back by dinner
time.'

'Our Clara is a very nice little girl,' said Bryan Duval, as he
strolled down the street, 'and Mr. Thornton Carey is a worthy, good
man--rather of the steady-going beef-and-potatoes kind of order,
without any particular originality or fancy about him, and they both
do their best, and very possibly be of use in helping to puzzle out
the inquiry; but there are times when a man of any genius likes to be
alone, and not to be yoked to any of his humdrum fellow creatures.
Collaboration, working with another person, is a thing that I never
appreciated--I mean working at the same time with another person. If
a fellow has been before me with certain excellent crude notions,
which he had brought to a certain point, and then gave them up because
he lacked the ability to carry them further, and I take them up where
he dropped them, and trundle them into a triumph, I do not call that
collaboration; they become my ideas, and his failure becomes my
success.

'This is a very singular case,' continued Mr. Duval, taking from his
pocket a small plaited-straw case of cigarettes, opening one, lighting
it, and smoking it in the true Spanish fashion, 'a very singular case,
and one which, properly manipulated, and placed on the boards with
care, ought to bring me in something like a thousand pounds. I have no
doubt there are men in London who are on to it already, who will make
a wretched coarse bungle of the story, ascribing the cause of the
murder to the usual motive, an improper lady, a horrible creature,
with crimson cheeks and tow hair, and who will produce their garbage
at the Surrey, where it will play for ten nights to overflowing
galleries, and never be heard of afterwards. Now, let me see, if
business continues well at the Varieties, I shall remain here till
June; I can sketch out this story on the voyage home, and get it all
ready for some London house to open with in September. Which manager
shall I give it to? Wogsby, at the Parthenon, is too old; wants to
play the principal parts himself, and though he has the remains of
greatness about him, cannot recollect his words. Rowley, at the
Coliseum, can't get on without a show piece; he would want to put
lions and tigers, elephants, camels, and spotted horses into this, and
somehow, as the scene must be laid in Liverpool and thereabouts, that
would spoil the local colour. Hodgkinson, of the Gravity, is, I think,
my man. He is a true showman; French farces, show-leg and break-down
burlesques, fine old English comedy and opera bouffe, are all the same
to Hodgkinson, so long as they draw the coppers, and I think I can
make him see his way to this pretty clearly.

'I wonder if we are on the right scent or not? Carey's notion that the
crime may have arisen from some business complication is not a bad
one, and I took care immediately to adopt it as my own--there is never
any use in losing the credit of these things. Whether he is right or
not remains to be proved. Of course, in a dramatic version, one would
have to give another motive; business is a deuced unromantic thing,
and no audience could feel any sympathy for a man who was knocked on
the head by some one who had projected an opposition gas-works or a
rival railway line. On the stage, the woman interest must be brought
out, and that is easy enough to do, only just now one has pure prose
to deal with, and I should much like to know the truth of the case.
Union-square, by Jove! How quickly I must have walked. I think the
faintest suspicion of a lunch would recruit exhausted nature before I
plunge into the dirt and desolation of the Tombs.'

As he said these words, Mr. Duval turned down Fourteenth-street, and
walked into Delmonico's. He was received by the two clerks, who sat at
the counter facing the door, with a grave bow, which he gravely
returned; then he entered the public room, took up his position at a
table in a window, and speedily found one of the sable-clad managers
by his side.

'Delighted to see you again amongst us, M. Duval,' said this
functionary, speaking in French. 'Every night this saloon is filled
with ladies and gentlemen who, during their supper, _raffolent_ of you
and your success. You were here the other night yourself, I
understand, but I had not the pleasure of seeing you.'

'Thanks, my dear M. Adolphe,' replied Bryan, in the same language.
'These good New Yorkers are always kind to one, who has happened once
to please them, and I may truly say that they never forget old
friends. And you are looking as young as ever; the cares of business
sit lightly on your shoulders, _mon brave_,' and he tapped the little
Frenchman lightly on the back. 'Say, Adolphe, is the brand of Chablis
as good as ever?'

'I think I may say better, M. Duval. We have some now which is--' And
the little man, instead of finishing his sentence, kissed the fingers
of his right hand and waved them in the air.

'Very well then, Adolphe, send me half a bottle of it and a dozen Blue
Points. I am keeping to small oysters just now, for I am not yet
acclimatised to the American monsters, and come back here yourself
when you have ordered them, for I want to have a few words with you.'

The oysters were perfectly served, and the Chablis was delicious.
After Mr. Duval had smacked his lips over his first glass of wine, he
turned to M. Adolphe, who stood with a pleased look by his side, and
said: 'Adolphe, you know me of old, and you can be sure that all you
say to me will be treated with perfect confidence.'

M. Adolphe bowed.

'You know Mr. Griswold, I suppose?'

'Why, certainly. He has now gone to Europe, but when he is at home
there is scarcely a day that Mr. Griswold is not here.'

'Dines here by himself?'

'Dines and breakfasts here by himself, and with madame, and with his
friends. There are few of our customers whose bills are so long as Mr.
Griswold's, fewer still, alas, who are so prompt in paying them.'

'Exactly. Now,' continued Mr. Duval, 'I know the excellent rule of
this house, that no one, however well known to the proprietor, is
permitted to be served with a meal in a private room alone with a
lady, even though there is no possible doubt that that lady is his
wife; but I know also that, of course, there are various jolly
supper-parties given up-stairs, at which all sorts of people are
present. Was Mr. Griswold a frequent attendant of any of these?'

'Never,' said M. Adolphe energetically, 'I am perfectly prepared to
say never. The people with whom Mr. Griswold consorted, male and
female, were always _les gens comme faut_.'

'So I should have thought,' said Mr. Duval cheerfully. 'Thank you very
much, Adolphe; in such matters, yours is an opinion to be relied upon.
If ever, when you are off duty of an evening, you would like to come
into the Varieties, send round to the Fifth-avenue Hotel, and I will
give you my card. We are doing great business, but can always find
room for friends.' And Mr. Duval paid his bill, and with a pleasant
nod, strolled leisurely into the street.

'So far so good,' said he to himself, when he got outside. 'Now, to
make myself quite certain, I will put the question to my old friend,
O'Meara, and if he endorses Adolphe's opinion, I shall have no doubt
about it that Thornton Carey is right; that this has been some
business jealousy, and that there is no woman in the case.'

Judge O'Meara was the presiding justice, or what would be called in
England the police magistrate, at the Tombs. Looking at him, there was
little reason to ask from what country he originally sprang; his clear
blue eyes, short, turn-up nose, and full, red lips proclaimed him a
genuine son of Erin. His face was clean shaved, with the exception of
a moustache, which, with his reddish-brown hair, was close cropped.
His style of administering justice was peculiar, rough and ready, but
admitted to be well suited to those with whom he had to do.

As Bryan entered the court, by a door behind the bench, a
wretched-looking object had just been hauled before the judge by a
stalwart Irish policeman.

'What's this?' cried Judge O'Meara.

'A dead drunken case, your honour,' said the policeman.

'Any violence?'

'No, sir.'

'Go along with you,' said the judge to the prisoner, who hurried off
delighted at his discharge.

'What's this?' next asked the judge, as a woman with unkempt hair and
a fearfully black eye was placed before him.

'Fighting and making a muss in Green-street,' said the policeman.

'Isn't it Mrs. McCleary?' said the judge, looking hard at her. 'Ah,
Bridget, you villain!' he continued, 'you may well hang your head, but
we are too old friends for me not to recognise you. Is this the three
or four hundredth time I have had you here, Bridget, for battering the
boys when you have taken a drop?'

'Judge, darling--' said Mrs. McCleary.

'Whist, Bridget! none of your familiarities before strangers. If I let
you go this time, will you swear to keep straight, and not be bringing
your country and mine into disgrace?'

'I will, judge, by the Blessed--'

'Get along out of that,' interrupted the judge, and Mrs. McCleary left
the court rejoicing.

'Bryan, my dear boy,' said the judge, turning round at the light touch
which Duval had laid on his shoulder, 'the sight of you is good for
sore eyes. I hear you are packing them in like herrings at the
Varieties, and I have not yet had time to come and see you.'

'So I have come to see you, my dear judge,' said Duval, 'and on a
little matter of business. They used to say, when I was here before,
that you knew every one in New York.'

'It is a little pride of mine to do so,' said the judge. 'I will walk
up Broadway this afternoon, and there is not a man, woman, or scarce a
child that I cannot tell you something about.'

'Of course, then, you knew Griswold?'

'Is it Alston Griswold, corner of Wall and William? I knew him well.'

'What sort of a fellow is he in his habits?' asked Duval. 'Like you and
me, judge, with a tender leaning towards the tender sex?'

'My dear Bryan,' said the judge, 'Alston Griswold is the only one man
of my acquaintance who has the least touch of the saint in him that
way. I firmly believe he is devoted to his wife, and that even on this
journey to Europe, which I hear he has undertaken, he will never let
another woman cross his thoughts.'

'Many thanks, judge; you have told me just what I wanted to know. I
won't detain you now, more especially as we are to meet at supper
to-night at Sutherland's.'

'Delighted to hear you are to be of the party, my boy,' said the
judge, waving his hand and returning to his business.

'I beg your pardon, Mr. Duval,' said one of the police
superintendents, stepping up to Bryan, as he was making his way out,
'but the mail from Europe has brought us further information about that
murder in which you were interested.'

'Ah, indeed, and what is it?' asked Bryan quickly.

'We have got full particulars of the inquest from London, and copies
of the photograph which was found in the watch.'

'The deuce you have,' said Bryan; then muttered to himself, 'It will
be known all over the city now.'

'The Liverpool police,' continued the constable, 'are said to be
investigating the matter with vigilant intelligence, but the coroner's
verdict is an open one, "by some person or persons unknown."'

'Has the body been identified?' asked Bryan.

'By one person only,' said the constable, 'a passenger on board the
Birkenhead ferry, who recollected seeing the gentleman leave it in the
company of a man dressed as a Methodist preacher, and carrying a
parcel wrapped in tarpaulin.'

'Many thanks,' said Bryan. Then, as he turned away, he said to
himself: 'I don't mind parsons of the Establishment, but I never did
like Methodists; they always do their best to spoil my successes.'




CHAPTER II.
RECOGNISED.


In the course of either her professional or private career, Miss
Montressor had never before found herself mixed up with so interesting
a concatenation of circumstances. She was too true and intentional an
actress, the concentrativeness to which she was hereafter to owe a
very considerable success in her profession, ever to be able to lose
sight of the dramatic side of any event, but it would be doing her a
grievous wrong to say that it was uppermost in her mind on this
occasion. She, like most women in her profession, had rarely had an
opportunity of coming in contact with well-bred and well-educated
women in any other than the most formal and superficial relations.
Such an opportunity was now afforded her, though under melancholy and
deeply-affecting circumstances, by the catastrophe which had befallen
Helen Griswold, and there arose in the mind of the actress a genuine
womanly sympathy, and strong liking for the young widow who bore her
trouble with a calmness and a submission which the other, accustomed
to the strong lines and the forced expressions of the dramatic
rendering of feeling, instinctively admired, though she could not
analyse.

Strictly speaking, her one interview with Helen Griswold had served
the purposes for which Bryan Duval and Thornton Carey had relied upon
her, and she was in no way bound to undergo any further painful
emotion in connection with this subject. There had been indeed almost
a tone of dismissal in Bryan Duval's manner, when he parted with her
after their interview with Mrs. Griswold--something which intimated
that she was now free to go and enjoy herself, and make the most of
her stay in a new and delightful scene, where all the honours of
popularity awaited her at the hands of the people who best knew how to
make popularity pleasant. But Miss Montressor could not shake off the
impression which Helen had made upon her, and the following morning,
at an hour which rarely witnessed her curtains undrawn or her eyes
unclosed, saw her again at the now desolate house in Fifth-avenue. The
solemn silence which succeeds to the confusion and dismay of such
intelligence as that of which the three had been the bearers on the
previous day, had settled down upon the home of the murdered man; the
tall front of the house showed long lines of white blinds, there was
not a sound to be heard, not a head to be seen at the windows, and for
any stir about it, the house itself might have been as dead as its
master.

Miss Montressor rang at the bell very gently, and, after a slight
delay, was admitted by a servant whom she had not seen before, and
who, therefore, could not identify her with the visitor to Mrs.
Jenkins of a previous occasion, but who had no difficulty in
discovering that he was addressing the celebrated actress, curiosity
concerning whom even present circumstances had not been able
thoroughly to repress among the household. Miss Montressor had had no
fixed purpose in her mind beyond making an inquiry for Mrs. Griswold,
but when she had done so, had been assured that 'she was wonderfully
well, considering,' the man, with a thoughtful regard for the feelings
of his fellow servants who had not the chance of opening the door to
Miss Montressor, suggested that perhaps that lady would like to see
the nurse, who could give her full particulars of Mrs. Griswold's
state.

Miss Montressor thought she would very much like to see the nurse. The
man then showed her into the dining-room, and went joyfully to inform
Mrs. Jenkins of the great chance that had turned up for her.

Mrs. Jenkins glanced into Helen's room, where she was still sleeping
heavily under the influence of the opiate, and laying the child, who
had dozed off so soundly asleep, by the mother's side, where she must
touch her on awakening, went softly down the stairs to meet her
sister.

There was no longer any disguise or concealment in the household; the
nature of the accident to their master, at which Thornton Carey had
dimly hinted when he entreated their care and caution of observing
Mrs. Griswold, was now fully known and incessantly discussed among the
servants, who had become in some mysterious way thoroughly acquainted
with the facts revealed by Bryan Duval and Miss Montressor to their
mistress on the preceding day.

Their horror and regret were extreme. Alston Griswold had the good
will and good word of all who held a dependent position with regard to
him, and it never occurred to them, as it would have done to English
people under similar circumstances, to discern anything sinister in
his change of name. If he had called himself Foster instead of
Griswold, it was because he had good reasons for it; every one knew
how sharp was the practice in his line of business. The newspapers
containing accounts of the murder at Liverpool, had been eagerly
looked up and read all over again, now that the details had gained
additional and ghastly importance, for the members of the Griswolds'
household and Mrs. Jenkins had been made thoroughly familiar with all
the particulars, extending to Thornton Carey's commission to Jim with
regard to the speedy delivery of the telegram. On only two points she
had not been informed, for the good and sufficient reason that they
had not come to the knowledge of Jim himself. One of these points was
the name of the person to whom the telegram had been despatched, the
other was the place from whence the answer was expected.

Mrs. Jenkins closed the door of the dining-room as noiselessly as if
Helen, two stories above, might have been disturbed by its sound, and
instinctively the two women addressed each other in a whisper.

'O, my dear Bess,' said Miss Montressor, 'what an awful thing this is!
To think of our having talked about her that night and what she would
wear at the play, and her husband being murdered all the time, and our
knowing him.'

'Awful, indeed,' said Mrs. Jenkins, as she seated herself by her
sister and possessed herself of her hand, 'but tell me, what is this
about this pin?'

'What pin? asked Miss Montressor, momentarily oblivious.

'The pin you left on the table here yesterday--how did you come by
it?'

'How did I come by it--didn't Mrs. Griswold tell you?'

'She! bless you, she has not been able to speak two rational words
since the doctor came yesterday.'

'Why, that is one of the great points in the case, Bess. Mr. Foster,
or rather Mr. Griswold, gave me that pin a few days before we left
London, and told me himself that it belonged to his wife. It went a
great way in making us sure that he was Mr. Griswold, and they say it
is a most important piece of conviction in case they catch the
murderers.'

'Well,' said Mrs. Jenkins, shaking her head, and looking extremely
puzzled, 'it is very odd; I have seen that carved head before, only
there were two of them, and they were not pins, they were wrist
buttons. I know the thing as well as I know my own wedding-ring; and
how Mrs. Griswold ever got hold of them is strange, for my Ephraim
bought those very heads--I can swear by the little speck in the edge
of the cap in that one of them up-stairs now--when he was travelling
with Mr. and Mrs. Moffat, as a courier at Rome, for a mere nothing. He
believed them to be shams, but some one who knew all about such things
told him afterwards they were nothing of the sort; that they were real
antiques--I suppose you know what that means, Clara? I don't, except
being very old, and dug up somewhere; and the same person said that
the man who sold them to my Eph must have stolen them, for they were
worth ten times the price he gave for them, and he got ten times the
price when he sold them afterwards to Warren.'

'Who is Warren?' said Miss Montressor.

It was on the tip of Mrs. Jenkins's tongue, when she happily
remembered her husband's injunctions not to talk of him, so she simply
said:

'Nobody particular; a man Eph knew in the way of business; but I
cannot understand how Mrs. Griswold came by them.'

'She probably bought them,' said Miss Montressor, 'from the other man,
and very likely paid him ten times as much as he paid to Eph. That's
the way people who have lots of money get done. I don't see any beauty
in the pin; and you must understand, Bess,' she continued, assuming a
sudden air of very amusing propriety, 'that it was not as a present--at
least not deliberate and intentional--I came by the pin. I just could
not manage to keep my shawl on with a stupid little pin I had in it,
and Mr. Foster took this one out of his scarf, and lent it to me. I
never thought more of it till I found it in my shawl here at New
York.'

Mrs. Jenkins let the subject drop. She had so nearly erred from her
strict fidelity to Eph's directions, that the sooner she put herself
out of reach of a similar danger the safer she felt. 'Well, it don't
matter,' she said. 'It will be many a long day before Mrs. Griswold
will have any thought of such things again. She kept up wonderfully
yesterday, when you and Mr. Carey were here, and even till after the
doctor had seen her, but she must have suffered horribly when she shut
herself up in her own room, for when it got quite dark, and she hadn't
rung her bell, or made no sign, Justine and I got frightened, and we
consulted as to what we had better do about going into the room
without she had rung her bell; but, at last, I made up my mind I could
not bear it any longer, and I took the baby and went in. She was lying
all her length on the hearth-rug, with her face hidden in her hair and
her hands; not insensible, she was in a kind of stupid despair. She
let us lift her up like a log, and she never spoke one word, not even
when I brought the baby to her. She just took her little hand up
listlessly in hers for a minute, and let it drop.'

In the fulness of her heart, Mrs. Jenkins's homely manner gained a
certain dignity of refinement, which acted immediately upon the
sensitive nerves of her sister, whose tears fell silently, and who saw
with her mental vision the scene her sister's words represented.

'And then we got her into bed, and sent for the doctor. He gave her a
sleeping draught, and said she was to be watched. Justine wanted to
sit up with her, but I would not let her--she is young, and young
people are never wakeful--so I stayed and sat until this morning, just
outside the curtain, peeping at her through a little chink where it
joined the tester; and through the chink I could see her eyes wide
open, quite unchanged all through the hours of night. I suppose it was
the medicine that kept her so still, for she neither sighed, moaned,
spoke, nor stirred. She might have been a dead woman, with only the
eyes alive, until after the sun rose, and then she began to shiver. I
put an eider-down over her, and in a few minutes she dropped asleep. I
suppose it was the medicine had its own way at last, and there she is
now.'

'The longer she sleeps the better; she has nothing but trouble to wake
to,' said Miss Montressor. 'My goodness! I wonder why it is so--what
harm did this creature ever do?'

'Ah,' said Mrs. Jenkins, 'and what harm did Mr. Griswold ever do, or
anything but good, so far as I can find out? They say here he hasn't
an enemy in the world.'

'O, that's all nonsense, my dear!' said Miss Montressor. 'No man ever
was so rich, so prosperous, and so happy as Mr. Griswold without
having lots of enemies; the only wonderful thing is, that he could
have any enemies so much in earnest about it as to run the risk of
killing him. I suppose they will find out who did it?'

'Suppose they will find out!' said Mrs. Jenkins. 'Of course they will
find out--what's the police for?'

'A good many people have been asking that same question lately,' said
Miss Montressor, with a smile at her sister's simplicity. 'That is
not, by a long way, the worst murder that they have not found out. You
manage things better over here, I daresay, but in England, for some
time past, the police have been making themselves famous either by
catching no one at all in cases of crime, or by catching the wrong
man.'

'They say it was not robbery,' said Mrs. Jenkins, 'but that he was
taken for somebody else.'

'That's all hearsay, my dear,' replied Miss Montressor, with an air of
superior wisdom. 'Don't talk about it to the other servants, but I may
tell you in confidence that Bryan Duval, who is about the best
detective going, has very little doubt that the motive, if not the
murderer, is to be found on this side the Atlantic.'

'No,' said Mrs. Jenkins; 'you don't say so! Then you may depend upon
it he will be hunted down, because they tell me here there is no man
more respected or liked than Mr. Griswold, in general; but that he has
one friend whose devotion is quite a talk in the place.'

'Ah,' said Miss Montressor; 'I suppose that is Mr. Warren they were
inquiring about yesterday? It is rather a pity he is away just now.'

Again Mrs. Jenkins felt herself on dangerous ground, and once more
withdrew from it, changing the conversation to her sister's prospects
and proceedings in New York.

The interview between the sisters lasted long, and was undisturbed by
any summons from Helen. Once, in the course of it, Mrs. Jenkins went
softly up-stairs, and looked into the room, whose stillness she
dreaded to find roused into act of suffering. But Helen was still
sleeping, with her child by her side. At first sight the scene was one
of quiet and touching beauty, for the baby's face lay close to that of
the girlish mother, and both looked equally fair; but on a nearer
inspection, it might be seen that Helen's lips were colourless, and
were marked with a dry, black line that comes of artificial sleep
supervening upon acute suffering; and the waxen eyelids, which ranked
among the chief beauties of her face, were tinged with purple; the
weight of the weary head indented the pillow deeply, and the hands,
listlessly stretched out, were cold and heavy. Mrs. Jenkins made some
slight change in the attitude of the sleeper, fearing the constrained,
long-maintained position, and again left her.

'She is sleeping still,' she said. 'One cannot look at her without
thinking what a good thing it would be if she were never to wake.'

'O, nonsense, my dear Bess,' said Miss Montressor, who, having talked
it out fully, was experiencing release from the tension of nerves
occasioned by her excitement and genuine sympathy. 'It is an awful
thing, no doubt, but she has youth, strength, and wealth to pull her
through it--and these things do pull people through, somehow or other.
She will be bright and happy again after a while, and then you will be
very glad that the poor child is not left fatherless and motherless
too, at one blow.'

'Yes, to be sure, Clara--you are right,' said Mrs. Jenkins. 'If women
were easily killed, especially by trouble, there would not be much
gray hair to be seen on women's heads in the world--what a deal they
have to go through in comparison with men!'

'Well, men are mostly let off easy,' said Miss Montressor; 'but after
all, it is Mr. Griswold that has been murdered, recollect.'

They entered no further upon this metaphysical subject, and Miss
Montressor shortly after rose to go.

'Are the gentlemen coming again today?' asked Mrs. Jenkins, while her
sister was resuming her bonnet and jacket.

'I believe so,' replied Miss Montressor. 'Bryan Duval said something
about it being necessary that Mrs. Griswold should see some of the
police authorities, in order to give any information in her power that
may throw light upon Mr. Griswold's correspondents. It appears that he
wrote a great many business letters at home, so that the office papers
are not sufficiently explicit to account for all his business
transactions. I don't know when they are coming, but I think it is
settled for to-day.'

'Then,' said Mrs. Jenkins, looking very serious, 'I think that is
exceedingly wrong. I am quite certain Mrs. Griswold will be unable to
see anybody, judging by her looks at present; for even when she was in
no trouble I have known her perfectly stupefied for twenty-four hours
after taking an opiate. I think it would be very cruel to hurt her,
and I am quite sure it would be useless. They had much better not come
here to-day, and I am quite certain that the doctor would strongly
object to anything of the sort if he knew how long it was before she
got rest.'

'Has he not been here this morning?'

'No; the orders were that he was to be sent for when she woke, but
that she was not to be disturbed on any account, until the effect
should go off naturally.'

'Shall I, then, tell Bryan Duval,' said Miss Montressor, 'that you
think it would be useless to make any attempt at taking her evidence
to-day? He is very energetic and deeply interested in this business,
but he has a great objection to wasting his time on his own account,
or on other people's account; and if she could not see them, he would
be greatly annoyed at having been brought up here on a useless errand.
Suppose you were to send round and ask the doctor, Bess?'

Mrs. Jenkins thought this an excellent suggestion, and forthwith
proceeded to carry it out by means of Jim, who she interviewed in the
hall, mindful of her sister's incognito.

'You've a head worth half a dozen,' was Jim's approving comment upon
the commission with which he was intrusted, to the increase of his own
sense of importance, which had been largely cultivated by Thornton
Carey's confidence. 'I will just go round at once, and ask whether
Mrs. Griswold is to be disturbed on any account whatever.'

Jim departed on his errand, and returned with marvellous celerity. The
doctor's orders were that Mrs. Griswold was not to be disturbed, was
not to be allowed to see any one, and he added that he would look in
at five o'clock in the afternoon.

'Then I tell you what it is, Bess,' said Miss Montressor. 'I will just
make the best of my way back to the hotel, and put off this
appointment; Bryan Duval will know where Mr. Carey is to be found.'

Mrs. Jenkins accompanied her sister to the street-door, and once again
encountered Mr. Thornton Carey there. He had come in order to
ascertain the very fact of which Miss Montressor was about to apprise
him, and perfectly agreed, on hearing their report, that no further
steps should be taken on that day. He looked exceedingly worn and
weary, and in answer to Miss Montressor's eager inquiries, informed
her that no further information had transpired, but that his own
conviction that the murder had been at first instigated from this side
was deepened by every additional item of information which he had been
able to gain respecting the magnitude and complication of Mr.
Griswold's commercial transactions, and the conflicting interests
involved in their failure or success.


*    *    *    *    *    *

When her sister left her, accompanied by Thornton Carey, Mrs. Jenkins
returned to her watch in Helen's room, from which she removed the
infant, by this time awake.

Lurking under all her true womanly sympathy and acts of helpfulness in
the great calamity of the household was a sense of deep personal
disappointment; the heart of Mrs. Jenkins was filled with two great
affections, one towards her husband, the other towards her sister, and
her intellect contemplated but two absorbing pleasures; the first, the
presence of her Ephraim was denied to her by Fate in so conclusive a
manner that she had ceased to fret over it, for practical common sense
had a large share in her organisation; the second, a personal
observation of her sister's celebrity, success, and proficiency in her
profession she had counted upon as within her reach, and now the great
event had taken place, the star actor and his company were in
possession of the boards of the Varieties, all New York was talking of
Miss Montressor, the papers contained specific and voluminous
descriptions of her appearance, dress, manners, and also indulged in
dainty anecdotes respecting off-the-boards utterances of hers to the
favoured few who had yet seen her in private. From all these glories
and delights Mrs. Jenkins was excluded by hard Fate, which had hit her
by a back-handed blow. Once or twice she had cherished for a moment
the notion of slipping out for half an hour, and occupying some
unobtrusive corner of the theatre, where she might see her sister for
a few minutes in one of her great impersonations, and slipping back
again unsuspected, but her better feelings utterly prevailed over the
temptation. She could not leave her mistress, and she could not bear
the contrast which the gaiety and brilliancy and pleasure of a theatre
would present to the awful desolation of the fine house to which she
had once thought of coming from the poverty and the difficulties that
had condemned her to parting with Ephraim. 'It must be sheer heaven to
live so,' she said with just one sigh, given to the recollection of
the high hope with which she had heard the promise of her sister's
coming, she went back to the painful round of her duties, many of them
self-imposed.

Helen Griswold had the faculty of winning the love of all those in her
employment, and there was not a servant in the house who would not
willingly have shared Mrs. Jenkins's watch, but she had a notion that
as she was the only wife and mother among them, she could draw nearer
to the bereaved wife and mother who still lay there in merciful
unconsciousness; so the hours wore away and Mrs. Jenkins watched her
patient. The doctor came, looked at the sleeping form on the bed, felt
the pulse, touched the clammy forehead, listened to the faltering
breath, and went his way, declaring it still safe to leave her
undisturbed.

'If she could sleep all round the clock,' said he, 'so much the
better. Twenty-four hours' oblivion is not to be lightly thought of in
such a case as hers.'

'I am afraid, sir,' said Mrs. Jenkins, 'she will have to see the
police people tomorrow, that it cannot be put off longer, because they
talk of sending an agent to England by the next mail.'

'In that case,' said the doctor, 'when she wakes let her have food and
stimulants; take her up, give her a warm bath, and, according as you
find her nerves stronger and her mind clearer, prepare her for the
task that lies before her. I shall see her in the morning, and will
remain here to meet the gentlemen who are coming.'

Late that night Thornton Carey again called to hear the doctor's last
report, which he did from Mrs. Jenkins, and then, begging, if
possible, to prepare Mrs. Griswold for the trying visit upon which
they were obliged to insist, at eleven o'clock on the following day,
he went down to the theatre, where the performance was just coming to
a close, and joined Bryan Duval. They returned to the Fifth-avenue
Hotel together, and held a long conference, which lasted long into the
night.

Immediately after Thornton Carey left Mrs. Jenkins, she once more
pressed into her service the indefatigable Jim, despatching him with a
note to Miss Montressor, adopting the periodical fiction that Mr.
Carey had employed her to communicate on his behalf with that lady,
who wished to know the latest accounts of Mrs. Griswold; but the
purport of her note was to beg that Clara would come up to the house
as early as she could on the following morning. 'The truth is,' wrote
Mrs. Jenkins to her sister, 'I am exceedingly worn out, and though
they are very willing up here, they have not much sense; and in case
there is a great to-do to-morrow morning with the gentlemen and the
police people, I do not feel equal to it all by myself or with only
Justine, who is as incapable as any foreigner I have ever met, though
not bad meaning. So, my dear Clara, come up if you can at all. Mrs.
Griswold, who has been sitting up and talking quite rational, has
taken a great fancy to you, and would, I am sure, be very glad that
you should be with her in case I broke down altogether, which does not
seem unlikely, and would be a very had job, especially for baby.'

As this invention jumped  precisely with Miss Montressor's own wishes,
she acceded to it with great alacrity, and with the full and cordial
consent of Bryan Duval, with whom she communicated that very night.

'Quite right, my dear Clara; you are a capital person in emergencies,
and everything of the sort is first-rate study.'

Miss Montressor arrived early, and was again conducted to the
dining-room where her sister soon joined her.

'Mrs. Griswold had passed a good night, and was wonderfully composed.'
Mrs. Jenkins related admiringly how she had risen early that morning,
allowed herself to be carefully dressed, striven to eat the food which
was prepared for her, and made a great effort to be cheerful and
considerate towards her attendants. 'The only thing she is not equal
to,' said Mrs. Jenkins, 'is trying to play with baby. She just looks
at her until the tears come, and then she turns away. Now she is quite
ready to see Mr. Duval and Mr. Carey, and I have left her sitting
before her writing-table, with a pile of papers and letters, sorting
them all as regularly and orderly as possible. She said so meekly, "I
must not waste these gentlemen's time, or give them trouble, you know.
I must be prepared for them." They do say in the house that she never
knew anything about business, and that Mr. Griswold thought she had no
head for it; but I am greatly mistaken if she hasn't a head for
anything she might choose to employ it in. She knows you are coming,
Clara, and said she thought it very kind of you, indeed, and that she
would be quite able to see you before the gentlemen came; but I think
that would be a risk. She would get talking to you about everything
Mr. Griswold said and did during the time you knew him, and that would
be sure to make her cry. I daresay there is not much composure really
in her; but the more she can keep her manner composed the better, and
those violent fits of crying are so exhausting.'

'You are quite right, Bess,' returned Miss Montressor. 'I would much
rather not see her until after they have all gone away; then it will
do her good to talk it over in detail with me, and then to cry her
poor eyes out if she likes. So if you will just put me into a room
handy to the one you will put these people in, I will be ready in case
you are wanted. The only thing you must not do is give me the baby to
hold, for I don't know anything about babies, and, to tell the truth,
I don't like them.'

With this amicable understanding, the two sisters were about to walk
up-stairs, and Mrs. Jenkins had assumed the distant manner which she
always put on when there was a risk of their encountering any of the
other servants, when their progress was interrupted by overhearing a
dialogue which was taking place in the hall between Jim and an unknown
individual.

'Whoever can it be?' said Mrs. Jenkins. 'There are such strict orders
for no one but Mr. Duval and Mr. Carey, and the people with them, to
come in, that I cannot understand who Jim can be parleying with. I
will just go and see.'

Mrs. Jenkins opened the dining-room door just sufficient to enable her
to catch sight of the unknown individual, and to whom Jim was
protesting, with characteristic vehemence, that something or other
which he had demanded was an out-and-out impossibility.

The stranger was a man of rather low stature and slight figure,
dressed in a loose, shaggy coat, with a low felt hat pulled down over
his eyes, so as effectually to hide all the upper part of the face,
and he was speaking to Jim with great urgency, placing one hand
against the door, as if he dreaded that the servant, in the strict
appreciation of his duty, would close it against him by force. 'I must
see Mrs. Griswold,' he said; 'I must, indeed.'

'It is quite impossible, sir; Mrs. Griswold cannot see any one. You
surely do not know the trouble the house is in, or you would not think
of asking such a thing. You must send up your message.'

'I cannot send up my message,' said the stranger, 'it is totally
impossible; pray take up my request to Mrs. Griswold.'

'I assure you, sir, it is useless to persist,' said Jim, 'and quite
out of the question that you should see Mrs. Griswold. Do you really
not know what has happened?'

'I know nothing,' returned the man.

'Then, sir,' said Jim, 'you had better know it--Mr. Griswold is dead,
and what's more, he has met with foul play.'

The stranger started a little and exclaimed: 'How very dreadful! But
is there nothing else wrong? Is there nothing wrong with any one in
the house?'

'No, nothing,' replied Jim, 'except that Mrs. Griswold is very ill
indeed, as might be expected; and you will now see, sir, how
impossible it is that she could receive you.'

'I fear it is impossible. Can I not see any other member of the
family?'

'There is no female,' returned Jim, 'except the baby, and she ain't
weaned; but you can see Mrs. Jenkins, the nurse, if you will step into
the dining-room; in case that can do you any good, I will go and call
her down to you.'

In the general confusion, Jim, who had momentarily forgotten all about
Miss Montressor, advanced to the dining-room, followed by the
stranger, simply threw the door open, allowed him to pass through it.
and without having glanced into the room, went on his errand in search
of Mrs. Jenkins, who had withdrawn from the door and closed it as the
sound of the stranger's voice reached her ears; also, to Miss
Montressor's amazement, she had sat down, looking exceedingly pale and
faint; she was realising her apprehensions, Miss Montressor thought,
and breaking down in earnest.

It was only a minute from the time Mrs. Jenkins stepped back from the
door until the stranger walked into the dining-room, at the farther
end of which were the two women, who both rose at the sight of him.
One, Mrs. Jenkins, cried out, 'Ephraim!' and rushed towards him; while
the other, standing still in rigid amazement, exclaimed, 'Mr. Dolby!'




CHAPTER III.
A WAY OF ESCAPE.


The amazement of Miss Montressor had a double origin; the primary one,
that Mr. Dolby should turn up, in this unexpected and extraordinary
manner, in a place with which he had no connection that she had the
most remote suspicion of; the secondary one, that her sister should
have rushed into that gentleman's arms, and called him 'Ephraim.'
Within the last few days her mind had been so absorbed in the terrible
details of the Griswold story, that Mr. Dolby had hardly crossed it;
and positively since that morning she had never remembered his
existence until the fact was recalled to her in this unprecedented
fashion. When she had thought of him at all, it was always with the
fixed idea that he had preceded her to America for the purpose of
watching her, and now she firmly believed her suspicions to be
realised; but even the rapidity of thought did not enable her to do
more than realise this fact before her sister said, turning to her,
while she still clutched the stranger by the arm, 'This is my husband,
Clara; what can you mean by calling him Mr. Dolby?'

Never had the self-possession inseparable from anything like a fair
proficiency in her art stood Miss Montressor in such stead as at this
moment. She recovered herself instantly, and replied, 'My dear Bess,
is this really your husband, your Ephraim of whom we were talking only
a few minutes ago? How very odd that an accidental but strong likeness
should have led me to have imagined he was a friend of mine!'

'So he will be a friend of yours, I suppose,' said Mrs. Jenkins, with
just the slightest possible revival of a combatant tone in her voice;
for even the joy of her husband's unexpected return could not silence
her from some measure of protest against her sister's indifference.
'And what in the world has brought you back, Eph, and why did you not
tell me you were coming?'

'Why in the world was I sent for, Bess?' was Ephraim Jenkins's reply,
as he fixed his eyes upon his wife's face with an unmistakably sincere
expression of surprise.

Miss Montressor was not prepared to find her sister's husband a
good-looking, gentlemanly, and well-dressed man; but these
circumstances made no difference at all in the sensation of quiet,
sincere, and irrepressible vexation with which she regarded this
meeting. It was her most earnest wish that she should never be brought
in contact with Jenkins under any circumstances; but to meet him under
the present, and at Mrs. Griswold's, where she had such strong motives
for disguising her identity with Mrs. Jenkins's sister, was especially
annoying to her. Of course the secret could not be kept now, was
almost her first thought, but it was worth trying for, and so she
unceremoniously interrupted the explanation which Ephraim was about to
give to his astonished wife by hurriedly explaining to him that no one
must know of their relationship.

'Bess has made me a solemn promise,' she said, 'that she will not tell
it, and I expect you to observe it for her sake.'

'Whoever do you suppose I am going to talk to about you,' said Jenkins
roughly, with an instantaneous relief, throwing off all the
gentlemanly manner and appearance, which was the merest disguise, and
with which he equally discarded his previously striking resemblance to
Mr. Dolby. 'Bess knows her own business, so do you; and if you don't
want to acknowledge her, I'm not going to peach.'

'Thank you,' said Miss Montressor, with great self-command, and she
actually put out her hand graciously to her detested brother-in-law.

He took it rather sulkily, and growled out that she need not be in
such a hurry to disavow folks that didn't want anything from her.

'That's not my motive,' said Miss Montressor, 'as Bess will explain to
you. But I must go now; she won't want me to stay with her now she has
got you.'

'O, pray don't go!' exclaimed Mrs. Jenkins. 'I do want to talk to
Ephraim, and find out how it is that he has dropped from the clouds in
this unexpected way, but perhaps you won't mind staying all the same.
There is no one in the boudoir, and I could take you up there while I
talk to Ephraim. Mr. Duval and Mr. Carey will be here very shortly.'

Good-nature and curiosity united induced Miss Montressor to comply
with her sister's request. 'Very well,' she said; 'I will go to the
boudoir; you need not take me up, I know my own way there. Don't you
remember, Bess, I have been all over the house with you.' And she went
towards the door, but just as she had reached it, Ephraim Jenkins
stopped her with a question.

'Would you mind telling me, Miss Montressor,' he said ceremoniously,
and with a half-ironical sort of bow, 'who was the individual for whom
you did me the honour to mistake me just now? Would you mind
mentioning his name? I find it quite unpleasant enough to have one
double, as I have already, without being accommodated with two.'

'I mistook you,' she said, 'for Mr. George Dolby, who is an American,
like yourself, whom I knew very well in London. Pray don't be
offended; I assure you you might very well accept my error as a
compliment.'

'Mr. George Dolby,' repeated Ephraim, with an intent frown upon his
face as of one trying painfully to retrace a track of thought or to
work out a puzzle; 'Mr. George Dolby, an American? Is the gentleman in
New York just now?'

'To the best of my belief,' returned Miss Montressor briefly, 'he is;'
and with that she left the room.

'By Jove, Bess,' said Jenkins, laying his hand upon his wife's
shoulder, holding her at a little distance from him, and looking into
her face with an expression of strange mingled suspicion, curiosity,
and amusement, 'it is Warren, and he has been up to his game with her
in London--it must be, you know; but I am precious glad he has come
back, though why he should not have let me know he is back, I cannot
tell. However, his being here at New York gets me out of a devil of a
mess that I should have been very much puzzled how to get out of
myself; though I will tell you what it is,' he continued, drawing her
close to him and kissing her fondly, 'I would have got into it ten
times over, and trusted to my own luck, or the devil's own luck, to
get out of it, for the relief the sight of your face gave me, and when
I found there was nothing wrong with you.'

'But what brought you here, Eph, and how came you to think there was
anything wrong with me?'

His wife was not to be won from her uneasiness, or diverted from her
wish to understand precisely what had occurred, by even the
affectionate assurance which was so dear to her, and she reiterated
her question very earnestly.

'We shall have very little uninterrupted time, Eph,' she said;
'awful things have happened here. Mr. Griswold has been murdered in
England--you must have seen all about it in the papers?'

'No, I didn't; I should have known the meaning if I had, on account of
Warren as well as on account of you, Bess; for I haven't forgot, and I
don't mean to, how kind Mrs. Griswold has been to you. Poor thing, she
is awfully cut up, I suppose.'

'She's just heartbroken, Eph, and the police are coming here presently
to make her tell all she knows, poor soul; and as I was saying to
Nelly--to Clara, I mean--just now, that's not much, for they do say
Mr. Griswold was the closest man in New York about his affairs; and I
must leave you then and go to her; so you must tell me as much as you
can as quick as you can. Take off that great heavy coat, Eph, and that
hat, and sit down.'

'No, no; I mustn't do that, Bess,' replied Jenkins, drawing the coat
still more closely round him, and ramming the hat still further down
over his eyes by a blow on the crown. 'Whatever are you thinking
about? They know Warren perfectly well here, and if they either took
me for him, and found out I'm somebody else, or else if they
discovered that there's anybody about so uncommon like him as I am,
they might have their suspicions roused, and set to look for him
directly. And that would not pay, Bess, my dear, neither on his
account nor on my own; for though I don't suppose they could do me
much harm, and for certain they couldn't make me out to be up to
any--deliberate harm, I mean--of course, it ain't altogether on the
square, this lay I'm on for Warren. And, then, if he should be up to
anything out-of-the-way-fishy, which I'm sometimes tempted to suspect,
and they find out that he is not at Chicago while he's pretending to
be there, even suppose they couldn't molest me at all, they certainly
could stop _his_ little game; and in our present circumstances, Bess,
my girl, we must remember that stopping his little game means stopping
our rations.'

'Yes, yes,' said Mrs. Jenkins mournfully, twisting the end of her
apron about in her fingers in a way habitual to her in perplexity. 'I
know that, Eph; and yet I cannot tell you how uneasy and wretched I am
feeling, and have been feeling ever since we parted, and you went to
undertake this dark and dirty business for Warren. Dark we know it is,
and dirty I cannot but suspect it to be. O Eph, could you but give it
up? If you only would be satisfied to stick regularly to some kind of
fixed work, and let us live respectable, however poor!'

'We couldn't easily be poorer than we've been when we lived
disrespectable,' said Jenkins, with a kind of surly good humour; 'and
I think I could stick to work if only the pay would stick _to me_--but
where is it to be had? You can't have forgotten, Bess, how hard I
have had to work in this place, and how I never got any for a
constancy--yes, yes, I know what your shake of the head means, and
you've good right to shake it, I'm not going for a moment to deny
that--and how, then, Warren was always giving me, or getting somebody
else to get me, odd jobs. Well, one can't work steadily at odd jobs;
it ain't in the nature of things, nor yet in one's own nature. If
one's business is unsteady, one must be unsteady with it; and where
any thing except odd jobs is to come from, especially if I vex Warren,
and he shunts me off in earnest, I cannot guess. Can you?'

'I think, Eph--indeed I am sure--Mrs. Griswold would be a good friend
to us, if you would let me tell her the truth--I don't mean about
Warren, of course, but about our difficulties. I think she would get
you a fixed place somewhere, through Mr. Carey's influence--and Warren
would never hear of it; or if he did hear of it, he would know, by her
ignorance of your being his brother, that you had not betrayed his
secret. And, after all, he would then be effectually rid of us,
Ephraim, and I think he would be very glad to be rid of us--or I
should say of you, because he does not know of my existence--at the
price of having his pride hurt by Mrs. Griswold or Mr. Carey observing
that there is a strong likeness between him and the husband of her
baby's nurse. Do think of it, Ephraim, and let me ask her, when she
has got over her great trouble a little, and can look beyond it for
the sake of other people. It will not be long first, for she is the
most unselfish woman, I do believe, in all the world. Will you let me
speak to her, Eph, when I can get an opportunity?'

'Well,' replied Ephraim Jenkins, with a little reluctance in his tone,
as of an instinctive, irrepressible shrinking from the burden of a
threatened respectability in the future, combined with regular hours
and regular work, 'I don't mind--only, you know, _I must_ see this
piece of business through to the end; and now, Bess, I must tell you
what has brought me here; you were awfully anxious to know a few
minutes ago, until you went off at a tangent all about Mrs. Griswold,
and a fixed occupation and what not, and now you seem to have
forgotten all about it.'

'No, I haven't, Ephraim dear,' replied his wife, as she put her arm
round his neck, and looked earnestly into his face; 'only the first
feeling of fright has gone off in the pleasure of seeing you again so
unexpected--for it did give me a shock of fright as well as a shock of
joy. I suppose it was some business of Warren's?'

'_I_ suppose it is too,' he said; 'but I only suppose, for I don't
_know_--and you have thrown more light on it since I came than it has
had on it all through the journey, and before I started; for I came
off in such a desperate mortal fright about you, my girl, that I never
remembered, until I was hours on my way, that the telegram was
intended for Warren, and not for me at all.'

'What telegram, Ephraim? I am all astray--I don't understand you. Did
you get a telegram? From whom?'

'Yes, _I_ got a telegram, but I suppose, as you are all right, the
message could not have had anything to do with me.'

He took out of a breast-pocket in his shaggy overcoat a crumpled and a
dirty telegraph form, which was to the following effect:

'From Thornton Carey, New York, to Trenton Warren, 3 Bryan's Block,
Chicago. You are earnestly requested by Mrs. Griswold to come to New
York without delay. It is of the utmost importance that she should see
you. A terrible calamity has occurred.'

Mrs. Jenkins read this document twice over with the seriousness of a
person unaccustomed to telegrams, and then returned it to Ephraim.
'The terrible calamity, of course, means Mr. Griswold's murder.'

'Of course that is clear enough now; but can you not understand, Bess,
that not knowing a word of that, and merely having this vague
instruction, and being so accustomed to be and see myself called
Trenton Warren in words and in writing, and, above all, having my mind
so full of you, the mere notion of a calamity in connection with this
house meant merely _you_ for my fears, and I started at once, never
remembering that Mrs. Griswold could not possibly have meant to
address me. It all came quite clear to me after a while, but then I
began to torment myself again with fresh fears. "What," I thought, "if
Bess should be very ill and dying, and have confessed it all to this
kind woman whom she likes, and Mrs. Griswold should have taken this
clever way of letting me know that she knows, and that I need not be
afraid of anything but just come to her at once?" From the instant
that flashed into my thoughts, Bess, you may guess I was in an agony
to get on every mile of the road, and I give you my word I could
hardly drag myself up the stoop to ring at the door-bell, so
completely had that second notion taken possession of my mind. I was
in such a state of alarm and suspense that, God forgive me, I do
believe the news that old fellow told me at the door did not seem half
terrible to me.'

'You were always fond of me, Eph, any way,' said his wife, as she
kissed him heartily, while tears glittered in her frank sweet eves.

'I should think so, Bess,' he replied. 'I am bad enough, I know, but
not such a duffer, no, nor such a brute neither, as I should be if I
ever leave off being _that_. Hollo! there's somebody coming. I hope it
isn't the police people, in which case I had better clear out. I can
come back, you know, when they're gone; but I've a constitutional
objection, to say nothing of the present circumstances, to being
inside a house with them.'

The approaching steps were not those of undesirable intruders. It was
only Annette, who had brought the baby--she carried the little
creature very much as Moggs carried Gabriel Varden's sword, as if she
was terribly afraid of it--to her nurse. Annette explained that the
child having grown restless, madame had rung her bell, and asked for
Mrs. Jenkins and on being told that Mrs. Jenkins had a friend to see
her, she had merely asked her to carry the child down to her. Annette
reported that madame was still where Mrs. Jenkins had left her,
sitting at her writing-table sorting letters and other papers, and
that she was quite composed, though looking very ill and mortally
pale. And Annette, to whom Miss Montressor had been most gracious, had
just glanced into the boudoir as she came down-stairs, and found the
celebrity fast asleep.

Mrs. Jenkins laughed. Her sister had always been famous for a most
enviable power of going to sleep. 'I never remember a time when
Nelly--Clara, I mean--could not eat and sleep, no matter what
happened, or to whom it occurred,' she said admiringly to Ephraim, who
remembered that those faculties were useful, but not particularly
sentimental, 'and that for his part, he liked a touch of nerves about
a woman; least-ways what some people called nerves, but he called
feelings.'

In this pointed remark Ephraim Jenkins did injustice to his fair
sister-in-law. Miss Montressor was by no means deficient in feeling,
but she was very healthy, and just now she was very tired, so that it
was her nature to sleep under the circumstances, and sleep she
accordingly did. Having made her communications, Annette tripped out
of the room, after having honoured Mrs. Jenkins's visitor with a
condescending bow and a long, steady, attentive stare, of which he was
uncomfortably conscious, and which he tried to avoid, but in vain.

He need not have felt alarmed, however, at any risk of recognition by
Mdlle. Annette. She merely remarked in soliloquy, 'How all these
Yankees resemble one another in an astonishing fashion. When one has
seen one of them, one has seen them all, except just in the regard of
height and thinness. It is only in France that we find variety of
physiognomy.'

'What a pretty child!' said Ephraim Jenkins, touching the infant's
dimpled cheek with his finger, as it lay close to his wife's
breast--'not much like our poor little man, Bess?'

'No, bless her heart; not like him in the plump healthy face, but
sweet and clever like him;' and the mother, who had not buried
her dead out of her memory, hugged the baby with a slight
rapidly-suppressed sob, and loved her husband all the more dearly for
the reference to the little crippled sufferer who had been her
treasure and her heartache in one.

'Now then, Bess, we must consult about what is to be done, for I do
think things look extremely queer. The last communication I had from
Warren was from London, and there was nothing at all unusual in it; he
merely enclosed some letters to be sent on to New York, and sent me a
lot of blank signatures. He has never given me the slightest inkling
of what his business in England is really about. By the bye, isn't it
odd that there should be the same sort of mystery about what Mr.
Griswold has been doing over there? I wonder if they were in the same
boat.'

'I have heard Mr. Warren spoken of among the servants,' said Mrs.
Jenkins, 'as being Mr. Griswold's greatest friend, but I have never
heard them say anything about any business partnership between them,
and there is no other name in the firm that I know of.'

'O, then I suppose they were not mixed up in business,' said Ephraim,
'and I must say, knowing what I do of my worthy brother, I should feel
inclined to add, so much the better for poor Mr. Griswold during his
own lifetime, and for those whom he has left to profit by his gains. I
suspect they would find them materially reduced if Warren had had the
handling of any of them. Of course, I have not had much to do with his
affairs down at Chicago; but there is a precious lot of bogus in what
I have had to do with, and I have been asked some very nasty questions
lately--in writing, of courser I mean, and in his person, which I was
totally unable to answer; and as he didn't authorise me to go in for
cable expenses, I have been obliged to leave them unanswered, and I
expect some of my correspondents are getting rather impatient under
these circumstances. Bess, you will observe that what Miss Montressor
let out just now when she took me for Mr. Dolby has rather a curious
meaning; for suppose Warren should have left London, as her account of
Mr. Dolby seems to imply, he will not have got my last letters
informing him of the dilemma in which I find myself; and how I am to
get out of it I am sure I can't tell should this be the case. Of
course, as long as I felt sure he was in England, it was tolerably
plain sailing; there was nothing to fear but delay; but if he has left
England and come back here, and is hiding about anywhere and not
communicating with me, I consider something much worse than delay is
to be apprehended, and I don't at all bargain for getting into any
extensive and difficult scrape in the matter. So that you see I had
more motives than one in coming up immediately on receipt of the
telegram; because, though I really did make the blunder I have told
you of in forgetting that it could not be addressed to me in reality,
I have had for some weeks a great wish to find out, if possible, what
Warren is about. I don't think I can be involved in any serious
mischief, because I have taken such care never to forge his name--all
papers that have left my hands bearing it are genuine signatures.'

'That's a comfort,' said Bess; 'but how can you find out anything about
him here? You can't go to any of the places where he is known without
betraying him.'

'That's just my difficulty,' said Jenkins, 'because it's a perfectly
new light to me that his real business friends here, the people with
whom he is actually mixed up in big transactions, verily and indeed
believe him to be at Chicago. My notion was that it was only some one
or two particular persons he wanted to impose upon; but the matter
takes a completely different complexion now that I find out his most
confidential people here believe him to be where he is not.'

'How do you know they are also imposed upon?' asked Bess.

'By the telegram, my dear. Of course Mr. Carey must have got the
address from Mrs. Griswold, or at Warren's office--there can be no two
ways about that--and of course, under the circumstances, they would
not deceive him, nor can Mrs. Griswold be reasonably supposed to be in
ignorance of his whereabouts. If any one was to be in the secret, it
would be the people in this house; and now it is plain that Warren is
deceiving them all round, and, you see, it isn't pleasant. He was
always a good hand at getting from out of one more than one bargained
for; but I must say, in this matter I should like to know what amount
of dirty work I am expected to do, and how deep the dirtiness is.'

Jenkins had said all this in his usual light and careless way, and
while he was speaking had kept playing with the baby in his wife's
arms; but she, watching him closely, discerned very real alarm and
anxiety under his slightly-swaggering manner and at once well-founded
fright.

'Ephraim,' she said, laying her hand upon his arm impressively, 'have
you ever been sorry for listening to my advice?'

'Never, Bess', he replied; 'but I have very often been sorry for not
listening to it.'

'Well,' she said, 'hear it and take it now. Of course, I understand no
more, but a good deal less, of what your brother's object and actions
are than you do; but something within me, something which I have heard
before now in my life, and which never told me a lie, says plainly to
me that you have put yourself into a dreadful danger; that whatever
Warren is about it can be no good, and it is going wrong. Just think
for a moment. I suppose it was for the best of purposes in the world,
but how mad a thing it must be for any man well known in business in a
great city like New York to imagine that he could successfully pretend
to be in one place while he is in another, in these days of
telegraphs, for any length of time beyond a few hours or days at the
outside. He is a clever man, well up in business, and must have known
this,--the difficulty would have been quite plain to him,--and
therefore it is only reasonable to conclude that he had some motive
for running this great risk strong enough to induce him to throw aside
all his knowledge of business, and all his shrewd habits of
calculating the consequences. Is this motive likely to be a good one,
to say nothing of the crooked ways and the deceit through which he has
to carry it out? I think you know your brother by this time too well
to give him credit for good motives; besides, good things do not need
doing in the dark. Now I will tell you what you must do, Eph, and you
must do it at once if you want to save me from distraction, and
yourself from being mixed up in the ruin which I am certain is coming
on Warren. Whatever he intended to do while he was supposed to be at
Chicago he intended to do quicker than this; he never can have
imagined that the sham could be prolonged up to this time; and your
not having heard from him, his not having returned, or, if what Miss
Montressor says is the case, that he has been passing under the name
of Dolby, and that he has come back to America, which would make it
all look much more extraordinary and more dangerous, it is plain that
he has failed, and failure in any object which he had to gain by such
risky means must have a big meaning, and you must get out of it, Eph.'

'Get out of it, Bess? How am I to get out of it? I will do anything
you tell me; you have got a clearer head than mine--since I have been
down there at Chicago I have come to think myself no end of a
bungler--but all your clear-headedness won't see my way out of this
fix, at all events until we can get hold of Warren. If he comes back
and shows up, I will promise you I will face him, and tell him at once
that I will have no more of it, come what may; and I can't stir a peg
until he does come.'

'Yes you can, Eph, and you must,' said his wife; 'you must, or we
shall be utterly ruined, without doing him any good. I feel convinced
this is no business matter, but something very bad, in which he has
not succeeded, and which will involve us all. Now this is what you
must do. Get back to Chicago without an hour's delay, without seeing
any one, bring away all the business papers, take them to Warren's
real place of business, and get off to England.'

Jenkins stared at her in open-eyed wonder. 'Get off to England! What
on earth for?'

'How can I tell?' she said, rather impatiently. 'I speak under an
irresistible impulse and a great fear. You must have done with this
thing, and this is the only way to get rid of it.'

'But I haven't money to do all this,' said Jenkins. 'You don't suppose
Warren would trust me with more than he could help; and if I were to
leave him in the lurch in this way, I shouldn't like to take any in
advance, you know; that would look as ugly as anything he may have
been doing, for I suppose the worst of it has been dabbling in other
people's dollars.'

'Don't fret about that,' said his wife; 'there is a good deal coming
to me, and I have had some handsome presents since I have been here,
from people who have come to see the baby. I said nothing about it to
you in my letters, because I thought I should like to have a little
fund saved to give you a pleasant surprise. How thankful I am for it
now! Even if it should not be enough, I know Mrs. Griswold, who has
been most kind and generous to me, will help me, help me too in her
ladylike and considerate way, without asking me any distressing
questions. Besides, there is Nelly--Clara, I mean--she would help me
in a minute; but I would rather not ask her for any help of that kind,
but rather trust her to get you some employment in England.'

'You're settling it all, Bess,' said Eph, shaking his head doubtfully,
but still with a lightening of his countenance and an additional
cheerfulness in his voice, which brought the consoling conviction to
his wife's mind that he was rapidly being swayed by her argument, and
seeing in her own she was tracing relief and a future. 'You're
settling it all very comfortably, and I believe you're right that it
is about the best thing I could do.'

'It is the only thing!' said Bess emphatically.

'I don't like leaving you behind,' he said; 'there's a big difference
between being parted as we are now, you in New York and I in Chicago,
and being parted as we should be then, you in New York and I Heaven
knows where, on the other side of the ferry; and I don't like it.'

'I don't like it either,' said Mrs. Jenkins; 'but it can't be
otherwise, Eph dear, just now. You and I have to turn over a new
leaf--you know you have promised me you will begin, and I believe
you--but it is likely to be hard work just at first, and we shall want
help from good friends. The best I have in the world, I feel quite
sure, is Mrs. Griswold, and I could not desert her in this great
trouble; first, for gratitude sake; secondly, for policy sake; and
thirdly, because if I ask her to help us I must be ready to say I am
prepared to help her. That is only fair, you know; but I will follow
you, Eph, before very long, before the little store of money I shall
be able to let you take with you is exhausted, even if you should not
have good luck. But I feel you will have good luck, and Nelly--Clara,
I mean--will be sure to be able to get something for you, even from
the very first; now that she has seen you, she will know that you
won't disgrace her recommendation.'

A rapidly-suppressed smile at his wife's enthusiasm crossed Jenkins's
face. He did not absolutely believe that Miss Montressor had been
captivated by her brief interview with him; but he secretly thought it
by no means improbable that Miss Montressor would be glad to secure
herself from any ill-timed allusion on his part to his extraordinary
likeness to her very intimate friend Mr. Dolby, which might be
embarrassing on this side the Atlantic, by facilitating his passage to
the other; so that as his reflections on those Bess had reached the
same result, he did not think it necessary to descant upon the
divergence of their mental paths.

The desperate intentness of his wife's representations was seconded by
Ephraim Jenkins's own conviction, and he became more and more serious
as she pointed out how it must be known that Warren was being
personated, since he was mixed up with the affairs of the Griswolds,
and had been sent for in this emergency. She impressed upon her
husband that his own danger of discovery could at best be delayed only
until, weary of getting no reply to their telegrams and letters, Mrs.
Griswold's friends should send some one to Chicago, and their
ambassador would instantly discover that Warren was not at that city.
This final representation had more effect upon him than any of her
foregoing arguments. It showed him that the bubble was close upon
bursting, and immediately won him to obedience to her wishes.

After that their interview lasted only a few minutes. It was arranged
that he should start for Chicago that night, and immediately on his
arrival should telegraph, in reply to Mrs. Griswold's message, that
Warren was absent when it arrived; that he should then make immediate
preparations for his own departure, warning Warren by letter to London
of his determination, and come away, bringing all the business papers
with him for deposit at Warren's office. This done, he was again to
see his wife, receive from her the promised funds, and sail for
England within a week, leaving Warren forewarned as far as lay in his
power, but otherwise to get out of the Chicago scrape as well as he
could.

It did not escape either Ephraim or his wife that there might be
danger, supposing Warren should have returned to New York, of Eph's
encountering him, which would have the double disadvantage of
involving Ephraim in either the abandonment of his project of escape,
or in a violent quarrel with his arbitrary brother. Mrs. Jenkins was
much more disturbed when this possibility occurred to her mind; but
recollecting that if Warren should be skulking about New York, he
would be quite certain to avoid either his own offices or the steamer
wharves, Eph would be safe from the risk of encounter, provided on his
return he went to only those two places.

All this, and much more, having been hurriedly agreed upon between
them, the husband and wife parted most affectionately, and though with
much distress, with a dawning of hope in both hearts, and a conviction
on the part of Mrs. Jenkins that Ephraim had really and truly turned
over a new leaf.




CHAPTER IV.
ESCAPED.


A few minutes after Ephraim Jenkins had left the house, and before his
wife had checked her tears and resumed her composure sufficiently to
present herself before Helen, Bryan Duval and Thornton Carey arrived.
They were accompanied by two persons of grave exterior and formal
manner, with that peculiar stamp upon them which distinguishes the
police-officer, whether of Scotland-yard, or the Rue Jérusalem, or the
Tombs; calm men, lean and inscrutable, to whom the atmosphere of crime
and difficulty was air naturally breathed, and on which they throve in
a not jubilant, but nevertheless satisfactory, sort of way.

'It gave me a dreadful turn, my dear,' said Mrs. Jenkins to Miss
Montressor, 'when they came in. I was just crossing the hall and going
up-stairs with baby, and I cannot tell you what a curious feeling it
was, and how glad I was my Ephraim was out of the house.'

'Why, what on earth had your Ephraim been doing, that you should be
afraid of two police-officers?' said Miss Montressor, who was not
easily impressed by sentimental imaginations.

'He hadn't been doing anything,' returned her sister rather
indignantly; 'but they had such an extraordinary manner about them, as
though everything in the place belonged to them, and after they came
in our souls were not our own, that I assure you I felt as if I had
been doing something that I might be taken up for, and every one of
the servants might have been stealing the plate, to judge by their
looks. As for Annette, she disappeared altogether. Mrs. Griswold
wanted her to find some keys for her, and I had to go up-stairs and
cause her to come out of her room, where she was double-locked in, as
if there were a warrant out for her.'

'Silly French idiot!' said Miss Montressor parenthetically. 'I should
rather like to have a look at these police-officers. I have seen our
magistrates at home, you know, at least some of them--beaks, they call
them--remarkably jolly and good-natured men, I thought.'

'Then, you see, you were not a prisoner, my dear,' said Mrs. Jenkins.

'Well, no more are you, nor any other people in the house.  What a
set of geese you all are!'

'You're so strong-minded, Clara; and it is uncomfortable, and always
seems like bad luck somehow, when any of these people come about a
quiet, well-conducted house.'

'Ah,' said Miss Montressor, with a very genuine sigh, 'the bad luck
has come in here before the police, not with them, and it will stay
after them. Poor creature, how is she?'

'She received the gentlemen quite calm and quiet,' said Mrs. Jenkins;
'but of course I don't know anything, since I was only a minute in the
room.'

This short dialogue took place in Helen's boudoir, whither Mrs.
Jenkins had gone to seek her sister after she had ushered Helen's
ominous visitors into her husband's library, where she was awaiting
them. Miss Montressor had by this time awakened from her nap, greatly
refreshed and reinvigorated, and was looking very dainty and
captivating; she had arranged her hair by the aid of a pocket-comb and
a pocket-mirror which invariably accompanied her, together with a
cunningly-devised little casket containing pearl-powder, to the use of
which, to say the truth, she was too much addicted off the stage; and
she was now perfectly prepared to undergo a whole set of new
sensations with regard to the Griswold murder, for in that familiar
phrase had the at-first-vague calamity ranged itself in the minds of
Miss Montressor and Bryan Duval.

The interview between Helen Griswold, her two friends, and the police
officers lasted so long, that the grievous apprehension possessed Mrs.
Jenkins as to the effect which such sustained interrogation, with all
its horrors of assumption and actual pain, must produce on Helen's
enfeebled frame. To the acute and experienced eye of Mrs. Jenkins, who
had done a great deal in the way of nursing invalids in her time, and
who had that quick perception of illness natural to woman, however
uneducated, Helen's health had suffered much more severely under the
excruciating trial of the last three days than Thornton Carey or Bryan
Duval believed. In her very composure Mrs. Jenkins saw partly an
unnatural effort and partly physical exhaustion; she did not cry, or
scream, or throw herself about, or give way to any violent
demonstration of the suffering which was racking her, quite as much
because she was unable to do so, as because her good sense and her
resolution induced her to give as little trouble and inflict as little
distress upon the friends who were nobly endeavouring to aid her as
possible; but they perceived only one of these reasons for her
quietude.

In voice, that most distinctive symptom, as well as in face, Helen
Griswold was changed; something was gone from both destined never to
return to them: the sweet clear _timbre_ in the former, the roundlike
brightness in the latter. In after years Helen was a handsomer woman
than she had been in those days of honoured and happy matronhood, in
her splendid home with the husband who was so devoted to her; but the
beauty of these latter years was of a different cast from that in
which he had taken such delight and it indicated a mind matured and a
heart strengthened, both results reached by a process of untold
severity.

That Helen would be very ill, so seriously ill that she would be
unable to think of anything except her bodily ailments for some time
after the immediate pressure of the actual business imposed upon her
by her calamity should have been removed, Mrs. Jenkins felt thoroughly
convinced, and therefore she was anxious that all the business which
could be got through to-day should be got through; and as the time
went on, and no sound of departing footsteps could be heard passing
the door from the boudoir, where she and Miss Montressor remained, she
was satisfied that they were going into all the matters connected with
Mr. Griswold's affairs within Helen's sphere of knowledge thoroughly
and at once.

In this supposition Mrs. Jenkins was perfectly correct. It had been
agreed between Bryan Duval and Thornton Carey that all the information
which could possibly be extracted from Mrs. Griswold should be
acquired on the present occasion; so that, if possible, she should not
again be troubled with the distressing presence of the judicial side
of the dreadful occurrence, but left to the tranquillising effect of
time and quiet.

So, when the four men were ushered into the presence of the young
widow, who received them in her husband's library, to enter which and
meddle with the papers to which she had never had, during his
lifetime, any access, gave her a pang of exceeding sharpness, they
found her, as Mrs. Jenkins had described her to her sister at an
earlier hour in the morning, very calm, but mortally pale.

Throughout the whole of that prolonged interview, under all the forms
interrogative, retrospective, speculative, and narrative which it
assumed, no change fell upon Helen's face, no tinge of colour touched
its waxen paleness; she was perfectly collected, and her natural
quickness of apprehension was entirely unimpeded, but her eyes had a
fixed vagueness and lightness, produced by overwhelming fatigue and
the influence of opiate. Her mechanical, unexcited manner, and patient
waiting and submission to the question-and-answer mood adopted by her
interlocutors, assisted them materially, and caused them no little
astonishment. A woman who always gave the exact answer to the exact
question, and never required to have it asked twice, was a novelty in
their experience; and as the examination, including in it all the
circumstances which had preceded Alston Griswold's departure,
progressed, it was plain that unless they could find a clue in the
information which they were receiving from Mrs. Griswold, that clue
must be sought for in a totally different set and combination of
circumstances, for there could be no doubt of the retentiveness and
accuracy of her memory and the unembarrassed plainness of her
statement of facts.

Copious notes were taken of her narrative of everything which had
occurred up to the eve of Alston Griswold's departure. She was closely
questioned as to his and her own social relations. Her statements on
that point were few and simple. She and her husband had a large
acquaintance but few friends, in the sense of habitual daily
intimates. It was not her taste to cultivate such, and Mr. Griswold,
though a man of very genial disposition, was almost as reserved and
home-loving as an Englishman; she could, in fact, indicate but one
intimacy on her husband's part of the nature and extent which the
questions put to her indicated--this intimacy existed in the person of
Trenton Warren.

At this point in Helen's statement Thornton Carey informed her for the
first time of the steps that had been taken in order to procure
Trenton Warren's attendance at New York, and his intervention in the
efforts which they were making to obtain a clue to the perpetrators of
the crime.

She had almost forgotten him, until the questions of the
police-officers respecting the daily habits and associates of her
husband had recalled him to her mind; the recollection arose even
while she was speaking of him, with a dreary wonder that a few days
ago a complication in her domestic history caused by him should have
seemed so serious, and have been struck into absolute nullity by the
undreaded calamity that had come to teach her how far facts might
outweigh fancies in terror and in pain. While the men were speaking to
her, asking her questions, to which she was giving almost mechanical
answers, her mind was busy with that interview between herself and
Trenton Warren, which now seemed hundreds of years old, and of
infinite unimportance; and she had suffered it to worry her, she had
thought about it and let it interfere with the frankness and
brightness of her very last communications with the husband who was
never to know a thought or word of hers more.

How she hated her folly, but doubly she hated the man who had inspired
it! What did it matter now--what could it really have mattered then?
Had she not allowed a chimera to take possession of her mind, to
intervene between her and that full confidence, that full
acquiescence, in every wish of Alston's that was due to him? Then
Helen's good sense told her that she must not allow feelings of this
kind to intrude just at present; that she was not in a fit state to
disentangle the real from the imaginary, or to weigh with the
scrupulous exactitude which it deserved the influence that that
interview had had upon her recent life. Then she said simply, in reply
to Thornton Carey's communication with regard to the telegram, 'I
suppose he has arrived?'

'No, he has not,' said Carey; 'and that forms one of the difficulties
in our way of proceeding just at present, besides constituting a very
vexatious delay in the information, which we hoped to have completed
by this time for transmission to Liverpool.'

'Where is he, then?'

'We don't know.'

'In what terms did he answer the telegram?'

'We have received no answer, and this puzzles us extremely.'

'Would you mind telling me,' asked Helen, 'in what words you put your
message?'

Thornton Carey took out his pocketbook, and read a memorandum of the
exact form of his despatch to Trenton Warren at Chicago.

Helen repeated it slowly, and then said, 'I am not so surprised at
your receiving no answer. It is best, gentlemen, though this is a
matter which cannot possibly have any bearing upon the subject into
which you are inquiring, that I should tell you at once, in justice to
Mr. Warren, who would otherwise seem to have acted a strange part with
regard to so intimate a friend as my Alston, that he did not extend
his friendship to me, and that Mr. Warren and I are not at present on
good terms. I therefore think it very likely that your having sent the
message in my name has occasioned him to take no notice of it. He
would not associate it with Alston, because he is in direct
communication, as he believes, with him, whereas he knows that I have
not been; so he would naturally suppose that any news affecting him in
any way would have been transmitted direct to Chicago, and therefore
his mind would be quite easy with regard to anything which might have
occurred here.'

Thornton Carey and Bryan Duval exchanged looks. They admired the
candour and the courage of this woman, who thus told a fact which
might naturally excite grave suspicions in the minds of the two
officers in her presence, grave suspicions of her own loyalty to her
dead husband, by the admission that, so far as this man's intimate
friendship was concerned, there had been a decided division of
interest between them.

The police-officers also exchanged looks, and probably each understood
the meaning of that of the other--they were not identical with those
of the two gentlemen. In that moment Helen Griswold put the end of the
thread into the hands of Justice; the ball was a long way off and
hidden in some windings of the mass, but the way to it would be found
by that hint.

'I think, gentlemen,' continued Helen, 'that if you believe Mr.
Warren's presence at New York to be indispensable to your arriving at
a true comprehension of my husband's affairs, you had better telegraph
to him again in the name of the police authorities.'

The two men bowed acquiescence.

'And tell him in the message quite distinctly what it is that has
occurred.'

'Certainly, Helen,' said Thornton Carey; 'this shall be done at once.
If you had been able to hear that I had already telegraphed for
Warren, or that I had anticipated any delay in his reply, I would have
told you, and thus a great many hours would have been saved. If I
telegraph immediately, at what hour could he leave Chicago, do you
know?' he said, addressing one of the police-officers.

'If he left to-night,' was the reply, 'we could not possibly see him
until Saturday morning. You must send your message at once, Mr. Carey,
and make it as pressing, conclusive, and indeed imperative, as may
be.'

'That's a long and serious delay,' said Bryan Duval. 'At what hour on
Saturday does the steamer sail for England?'

'It will be late next Saturday,' said Thornton; 'the tide doesn't
serve till five.'

'Lots of time,' returned Bryan Duval cheerfully. 'We shall have Mr.
Warren here in the middle of Friday night, interview him on Saturday
morning, and send our man by the mail.'

'Sharp practice, Mr. Duval,' said the police-officer who had spoken
before, 'but quite within possibility, provided Mr. Warren can put us
on the track so unerringly as it looks like.'

'Then, as it is clear that nothing more can be settled at present,'
said Thornton Carey, rising from his seat and approaching Helen, whose
hand he took gently in his own, 'I think, dear Helen, we may now
release you. You have told us everything which you can tell; you have
given us all the papers which poor Alston left here. Your immediate
concern with our wretched business has come to an end; we will leave
you to rest and peace.'

'Peace!' she interrupted, but her face was still unchanged, and no
tears came to refresh the dimness of her black eyes.

Bryan Duval and the two police-officers rose.

'Have you any further suggestion to make, madam?' asked the one who
had already spoken.

'No,' she replied faintly.

'Perhaps you will allow me to make one?' he continued.

She bowed acquiescence.

'Though your husband's letters from London have been, as you have
explained to us, entirely free from any allusion to business, they may
have contained indications which would escape your notice, but which
may be of much utility in our researches. Have you any objection to
confide them to us, in addition to the business papers you have
already given us?'

A large packet tied up with red tape lay on the table by the speaker's
elbow.

'I have not the slightest objection,' returned Helen. 'Every word he
wrote to me from England was, like himself, generous and affectionate,
and I cannot conceive that any such traces as you allude to exist in
them, but I will put neither my judgment nor my will against your
experience. Thornton, will you kindly ring for Annette?'

In reply to the summons Annette made her appearance, with a scared
expression of countenance and a tight hold of her skirts. She glanced
askance and fearful at the harmless-looking gentlemen, who were
standing bolt upright in front of her mistress's chair, and received
in silence Mrs. Griswold's order to bring her a certain green-morocco
casket which stood upon the little shelf at her bedside.

Silence was maintained during the few moments of Annette's absence.

She presently returned, and placed the casket on the table before Mrs.
Griswold, who opened it and took out a large packet of letters,
carefully arranged according to the date of their receipt, and tied
with pink ribbon.

'They are all there,' she said sadly, as she handed the packet to
Thornton Carey. 'I placed the last there on the day I expected to hear
from him again--I little thought that story was true.' Still her face
was unchanged and her eyes were tearless.

The quick eye of the police-officer had seen another object lying at
the bottom of the box from which Mrs. Griswold had taken her husband's
letters. It was a prettily-bound and gilt manuscript-book, with a
lock, indorsed in gold letters, 'My Journal.'

'I beg your pardon,' he said, advancing and laying his hand upon the
open box, as Helen stretched out hers for the purpose of closing it;
'may I ask if this journal is yours?'

'It is,' she replied simply; 'it is my journal since the day of my
husband's departure, kept at his request, written up for transmission
to him by every mail, and copied into this book.'

'Madam,' said the police-officer, 'I have a difficulty in expressing
the wish that you should confide this journal, not indeed to us, but
to your friends. The smallest and most unexpected particular of the
occurrences of your life and household at home may aid in this
investigation. We are at present all abroad, and we must neglect no
source of information within our reach. May I ask if you have recorded
visits made to you, letters received by you, and any reports or
impressions in any way connected with Mr. Griswold's business, of
which he unfortunately kept you in ignorance, which may have reached
you during his absence?'

'I do not think so,' said Helen. 'I know it is very full of gossiping
and trivial things, as well as of the daily occupations of my life;
but such as it is, Mr. Carey and Mr. Bryan Duval are perfectly at
liberty to read it, and, indeed, you gentlemen also, should you think
it well to do so. I had but a simple story to tell, and I have told it
simply.'

With the same gentleness, the same mechanical steadiness that had
marked her conduct throughout, Helen removed the manuscript-book from
the box, and handed it, not to Thornton Carey, but to Bryan Duval, who
received it from her hands in silence and with a bow. He was
infinitely touched by the whole scene, and by the almost solemn
simplicity of the young widow.

As had been arranged on their way, the two police-officers now took
leave of Mrs. Griswold, Thornton Carey and Bryan Duval remaining with
her for a few minutes after their departure. On leaving her they were
to go direct to the telegraph-office, to send the despatch in the
terms agreed upon to Trenton Warren.

'I fear you are extremely exhausted,' said Thornton Carey, when he and
Duval remained alone with Helen. 'This has been a most trying ordeal
for you; but I trust it will be the last.'

'There will be no need for my seeing Mr. Warren, will there?' said
Helen, in a low voice, her face for the first time changing and
assuming an expression of deep distress and anxiety. 'O Thornton, keep
that from me if you can!'

'I don't foresee that there will be any necessity at all for your
seeing him,' returned Thornton, 'if it is repugnant and unpleasant for
you to do so; and I need not say that we will make every effort to
extract such full information from him as to enable us to act without
any further reference either of him or ourselves to you. You know that
well, Helen, and therefore you will be prepared, in case we should
find it indispensable to bring him in contact with you, to acquiesce
in the necessity--will you not?'

'Of course I will. I have only asked you to spare if possible, and "if
possible" means not at the expense of avenging my Alston. I will bear
anything for that purpose, and few things could be more painful to me
than an interview with Trenton Warren.'

'I think I know why,' was Mr. Duval's comment upon her words and her
expression, spoken inwardly of course, and with the additional
reflection that he had known few stronger situations, with more to be
made out of them, than the present.

'What are you going to do for the rest of the day?' said Thornton
Carey. 'Are you going to try to sleep?'

'No,' she replied; 'I have had enough of unnatural sleep, and natural
sleep won't come to me just yet. I am going to see my child for a
while, as long as I can bear it, and Miss Montressor has been good
enough to promise to come to me.'

'Clara is a good soul,' said Bryan Duval parenthetically and heartily.
'Is she here now?'

'I think so,' said Mrs. Griswold. 'She promised Mrs. Jenkins that she
would come early, and I fear that she has been detained. Now that this
morning's work is over, you will not object, will you, Thornton,' she
said, raising her eyes to him with a look of dependence and
submission, from which he shrunk, so full was it of her helplessness
and her pain, 'that I should take to her who saw my Alston last? Do
you know, Mr. Duval,' she continued, turning to the actor, and
producing the same effect upon him by that infinitely pathetic look,
'I have been thinking that the very last person to whom he ever spoke
a friendly word must have been Miss Montressor or yourself--I wonder
which it was?'

'I don't remember, my dear Mrs. Griswold,' said Bryan, 'but I have no
doubt she will; women have fine memories for these small points, which
sometimes are of so much importance in their world of feeling. I don't
doubt that you will find hers faultless, and I am sure no friend of
yours will object to your talking it out now with this kind creature,
who feels for you, as I can bear witness, more than I thought it was
in her to feel. You have been very good and wonderfully composed
hitherto, and I confess I should not be sorry to hear that you had
given way to your feelings, and that all this composure was broken up
for a while at least. So Carey and I will go and work for you and do
our very best, and you must try and put this part of it out of your
mind for the present, knowing that you will not be disturbed or called
upon again unless it is a very desperate necessity indeed, and Clara
Montressor shall come and talk to you about your husband, and go over
every word he said to her; and, if I remember her account of it right,
there were few of them that were not about yourself.' With these words
he raised her hand respectfully to his lips, turned on his heel and
left the room, buttoning his tight-fitting frock-coat over the flat
manuscript volume which she had confided to him.

He had stood in the corridor little more than a minute when Thornton
Carey joined him. They went down-stairs and out of the house without
exchanging a word; but when they had reached the street, they fell
into close consultation, and walked away towards the telegraph station
arm in arm.

From her long interview with Helen Griswold, which came to an end
barely in time to enable Miss Montressor to get back to the hotel for
dinner, that kind-hearted celebrity returned very deeply affected. The
simplicity of Helen's life and mind, the quiet and matter-of-course
devotion to her duties, and her great courage and submission in her
trouble, affected the actress strangely, giving her glimpses of
realities in life and heroism in character to be found in everyday
spheres and commonplace actions of which she had entertained no
previous conception.

She and Bryan Duval had a long talk that night after the performance
at the Varieties about Helen Griswold. In the interval Bryan Duval had
peeped into the pages of the manuscript volume which she had confided
to him, but which, together with the letters written by Alston
Griswold to his wife during his residence in England, it had been
arranged was to be formally examined by himself and Thornton Carey on
the following day.

Until the arrival of Trenton Warren this was all that could be done,
and neither Duval nor Carey cared to meet before the appointed time.
The delay was trying them a good deal, and though their expectations
of success in ultimately bringing the murderer to justice were not
affected by it, they both felt considerable weariness and strong
inclination to be alone. This did not, however, interfere with the
curiosity with which Bryan Duval heard Miss Montressor's account of
the hours which she had passed with Helen Griswold. Bryan Duval was
accustomed to reading between the lines; he had read between the lines
of Helen's innocent, unsophisticated, and perfectly sincere record of
her life under its past and its present aspects, and he had formed a
theory of her mind, conduct, and future singularly near the truth,
though he believed implicitly that she was entirely unconscious that
any such indications as he had extracted from it were contained in the
simple annals of her girlhood and her married life, which had been
continued in her journal literally up to the day of its unconscious
close.

On this point he said not one word to Miss Montressor, nor did he then
confide to Thornton Carey even the last of his impressions of Helen's
journal when they came to discuss it. He bestowed many words of
good-humoured approval upon the actress for her womanly kindness and
sympathy with Mrs. Griswold, and when they parted, Miss Montressor
carried away with her a not unpleasant impression that Bryan Duval
entertained rather a higher opinion of her as an individual than he
had previously done; an impression which was perfectly well founded,
and had arisen quite as much to the surprise as to the pleasure of Mr.
Duval, who entertained but a low estimate of human nature in general,
and was much too philosophical to exclude the types with which he was
most familiar and most closely allied.

Thornton Carey had gone straight home after the despatch of the
telegram, which, as agreed upon, he had couched in most decisive words
and supported with the authority of emanation from the police
magnates. He strove hard to turn his mind away from the subject of his
grave preoccupation during the evening, reading resolutely on one of
his old lines of study, and resolved to rest his faculties thoroughly
in order to recommence his work upon the morrow with brightness and
efficiency.

Most of the visitors to the hotel in which he was staying had
breakfasted before he came down to the dining-room, only a few almost
as belated as himself were finishing their meal. He stopped in the
hall as usual, and bought his morning supply of journalistic
literature, and having seated himself and called for his coffee, he
turned the pages of the _New York Herald_ with but languid interest,
which, however, was changed into vehement excitement by the very first
announcement in the long list of latest intelligences which met his
eye, stated in the largest capitals, and with all the emblems which
indicate the record of a great disaster.


Twenty minutes later, Thornton Carey was at Helen Griswold's door,
which was opened to him as usual by the faithful Jim, to whose
astonishment Mr. Carey addressed to him, instead of his ordinary
inquiry as to the condition of Mrs. Griswold, the abrupt question,
'Have any newspapers come today?'

'They have come, sir,' said Jim; 'have got them here.'

'Has Mrs. Griswold seen them?'

'No, sir; no paper has been taken up to her room these two days. There
is no more news of Mr. Griswold, is there? They haven't caught those
villains?'

'Good heavens, no; if they had I should want her to see the papers,
not to have them kept from her. Give me that one out of your hand,
Jim'--it was also a copy of the _Herald_--'and go up-stairs at once,
see if Mrs. Griswold is up, and say I beg her most particularly to see
me.'

Jim obeyed with alacrity, and Thornton Carey followed him closely up
the long staircase, halting only in the corridor which led to Helen's
room. It was her voice that replied to Jim's knock, bidding him come
in, and he heard her say, in reply to the servant's inquiry, 'Mr.
Carey? I thought it was understood he would not require to see me
to-day. Something new must have happened. Show him in at once.'

Helen met him almost at the door, and immediately accosted him. 'What
have you come to tell me, Thornton? Do not be afraid; my child is
saved,' she laid her hand upon the snow-white curtains of the bassinet
in which the infant was sleeping as she spoke, 'and my husband is
gone. Fate can hardly harm me sorely any more. Come in and tell me at
once.'

Thornton followed her into the room, and noticed that Mrs. Jenkins was
busy at the dressing-table with some little matters of the child's
toilet. Helen had been up early, was fully dressed, and about to
breakfast in her dressing-room. She looked better than on the previous
day, and before Thornton answered her eager questions, he insisted
upon knowing what sort of night she had passed, and whether she had
taken a proper quantity of food.

These questions he put to Mrs. Jenkins, who answered both
satisfactorily. 'Come, come,' said Helen, interrupting and
remonstrating, 'you have something to say. Again I ask you tell me at
once--what is it? Does Mr. Warren refuse to assist us, even when he is
not asked by me? Is he so false to his friendship with Alston, or does
he carry his resentment into refusing to aid in punishing his
murderer?'

She seated herself on a small sofa by the fireplace, and pointed to
the chair near her, which Thornton Carey took. As they were now
placed, she faced the dressing-table at which Mrs. Jenkins was
engaged, the child's cradle was on her right hand, the chair occupied
by Thornton Carey on her left.

Mrs. Jenkins paused slightly in her occupation, and asked, 'Shall I
leave the room?'

'Certainly not,' replied Helen. 'I have no secrets from you.'

'Pray do not go, Mrs. Jenkins,' said Thornton earnestly: he infinitely
dreaded the effect of the news he had come to tell Helen Griswold, and
eagerly caught at the chance of that efficient person's presence in.
case she should be quite overcome by it. 'The fact is, my dear Helen,'
he went on, glancing at Mrs. Jenkins, and by a stealthy gesture of his
hand drawing her attention to what he was about to say, and her
vigilance for Helen, 'an unexpected obstacle to our thorough
investigation of Griswold's affairs has arisen. It comes, as you have
divined so quickly, from Chicago.'

At the mention of the word Mrs. Jenkins started irrepressibly, came a
step or two forward, holding some toilet article unconsciously in her
hand, and in evident undisguised suspense upon Thornton Carey's words.

'The newspapers too,' he went on, 'contain intelligence of an accident
upon the railway between New York and Chicago. We had no reason to
suppose that Trenton Warren had left Chicago, or was either at New
York or in the vicinity at any time within several weeks, but it may
have been so, and his absence from Chicago would account otherwise
than as you accounted for it, for his having returned no answer to our
first telegram. Whatever may have been the cause, there is no doubt
that he was in the train to which this serious accident occurred last
night on his way from New York to Chicago. I regret to tell you that
the accident was a very serious one, and that among the list of
passengers killed is the name of Trenton Warren.

'This is another blow for you, my dear Helen,' he continued, as she
sank back in her chair, and clasped her hands.

But at that instant Mrs. Jenkins sprang towards him with a piercing
scream and crying out, 'No, no! for me--for me!' fell down senseless
at Helen's feet.




CHAPTER V.
A CLUE.


It was Thornton Carey who darted forward, and kneeling by Mrs.
Jenkins's prostrate form, endeavoured, in the helpless manner which
all men employ under similar circumstances, to restore animation by
raising her head and chafing her hands; for Helen, overcome by the
suddenness of the nurse's attack, at first sat motionless in her
chair. After a moment all her womanly readiness and sympathy returned
to her, and having summoned Annette to her aid, they lifted Mrs.
Jenkins on to an adjacent sofa and busied themselves in their work of
restoration. Not that the French waiting-maid was of much use as an
assistant; she seemed to think that the seizure of Mrs. Jenkins, on
whose clear-headedness and promptness of action the whole household
had been for the last few days reliant, was the climax to the family
misfortune; and she wrung her hands and beat her breast and _Mon
Dieu_'d in a manner which, under other circumstances, would have been
extremely irritating. But Helen was busily engaged in gently bathing
the sufferer's head with eau de Cologne, and paid no attention to the
waiting-maid's lamentations; while Thornton Carey, who had a keen
sense of delicacy, had retired to the window, where, while apparently
gazing with great interest into the street, he was drumming with his
fingers on the glass, and endeavouring to-arrive at an elucidation of
the scene which had just passed before his eyes.

'For me--for me!' this strange woman had cried out just before she
sank upon the floor; her meaning, taken with the context of what had
passed before, being that the death of Trenton Warren, which had just
been announced, was as a blow, not to Helen, but to her. Who was she,
this mysterious woman, who had of late assumed so important a position
in the household, from whom, as Helen herself allowed, she had
received so much affectionate assistance, and in whom she seemed so
thoroughly to confide? She had even been, to a certain extent,
admitted into the secret of their hopes and fears and their method of
procedure in attempting to detect poor Alston's assassins; Helen had
vouched for her fidelity, and, notwithstanding the sympathy of all the
household, had declared that in this nurse alone could she place
reliance. What had been her antecedents? It was as likely as not that
Helen, in her trusting girlish way, had taken the woman without any
proper references, simply because her face or manner pleased her, and
had suffered herself to be beguiled by an assumed sympathy and a
smooth tongue. Who could the woman be, and what could be her motive
for introducing herself into that quiet home? That she knew Warren was
clear--she herself had made it clear by this recent betrayal of her
feelings. What could Trenton be to her that she should fall senseless
at the news of his death? In the position which Warren occupied with
regard to the murdered man, Helen's friends were more deeply
interested in him than in any other person in the world; and now he
was dead, and here was this woman, usually so calm and collected,
unable to refrain from showing signs of violent grief at the news.
Could it be possible--and Thornton Carey's cheeks tingled at the mere
thought--that this woman had been some former mistress of Warren's,
and that he had taken advantage of his intimacy with Griswold to
obtain for her a comfortable place in his friend's household? No.
Thornton Carey knew little of Warren, but all that he heard of him
went to contradict such an idea; a man so generally represented as
cold, impassive, and even more immersed in the accumulated cares of
business than Griswold himself; there must be some other explanation
of the mystery, but what it was Thornton Carey could not at the moment
attempt to define. He began to find himself wishing that he had
brought Bryan Duval with him to the house; for that gentleman's ready
acuteness had made a great impression on Thornton Carey's mind, and he
felt half inclined to start off at once and lay before his friend this
newest phase in the mystery which they were endeavouring jointly to
penetrate. It was absolutely necessary that some explanation should be
given, and he thought he would say as much to Helen, whom he saw
crossing the room to speak to him.

'She's a little better now,' murmured Helen, as she approached; 'she
has regained her consciousness, but her heart is still beating wildly,
and she has once or twice made an effort to speak, though her physical
strength seems scarcely sufficient to admit of her doing so. What an
extremely sudden seizure, was it not?'

'So sudden and so extraordinary, my dear Helen,' said Thornton Carey
impressively, 'that I am eagerly desirous of having it accounted for;
and even at the risk of somewhat tasking this woman's strength, I
shall ask her to explain it as soon as possible.'

'You imagine, then, as I do,' said Helen, 'that it was her hearing the
news of the accident which has happened to Mr. Warren that caused her
to faint?'

'That and nothing else,' said Carey bluntly. 'Had you any idea that
she was acquainted with Warren? Has she ever mentioned his name, or
referred to him in any way? More than that, can you recollect whether
she has ever shown any emotion when his name has been alluded to in
her presence?'

'I had no idea that she was even aware of his existence,' said Helen.
'She came to me since poor Alston's departure, and in this house, at
least, I am certain she has never set eyes upon Mr. Warren.'

'It is essential for the purposes of our investigation that we should
know exactly what her relations with Warren are or were; and under
your approval I purpose asking her a few questions.'

'You will not be hard upon her, Thornton?' said Helen, looking up at
him. 'You will remember that the woman is poor and ill, and has
already suffered a good deal from the loss of her own child--you will
think of these things when you speak to her, I am sure?'

'You may rely upon my discretion,' said Thornton Carey. 'I only want
to come at the truth, and I will evolve that in the gentlest manner
possible.'

'Mrs. Jenkins is better,' said Annette, crossing the room from the
side of the couch where she had been standing, 'and would wish to
speak to madame.'

'Now is your opportunity, Thornton,' whispered Helen to him. 'Come
with me.'

Mrs. Jenkins, who had raised herself to a sitting posture on the
couch, was perfectly pale; there was a tremulous motion in her lips
and a nervous wandering of her hands, which showed that she had not
yet got over the recent shock; but she did her utmost to nerve herself
as Mrs. Griswold approached her, and her eyes, as they rested on her
benefactress, had a soft and imploring expression.

'Annette tells me you are better, nurse, and that you want to speak to
me,' said Helen, laying a kind light touch upon the patient's arm.
'You, however, scarcely yet seem to be yourself, and if there is
anything in what you have to say calculated to excite you, perhaps it
would be better to defer it until you are a little stronger.'

'What I have to say, dear madam,' said Mrs. Jenkins, in a low and
feeble voice, 'ought, in the interests of truth and justice, to be
told at once; the longer it is kept to myself the longer I shall feel
myself guilty of gross deception to you, who have been so kind and
good to me.'

'Deception, nurse?'

'Deception, I am afraid, it must be called, dear madam; not that I
have myself actually deceived you, or that I would allow anybody
connected with me to do so; but that certain things have been going on
in which you were to some extent interested with which I was
acquainted, and which I have kept from your knowledge.'

'I am perfectly certain,' said Helen, in her calm sweet voice, 'that
you have knowingly done me no harm; I am perfectly certain, from the
attention and devotion which you have shown to me since you have been
in this house, that if you could have stood between me and harm's way,
you would have done so. If; however, there is anything on your mind
which it will render you easier to get rid of, if you think to clear
your conscience by telling us--for this gentleman, Mr. Carey, is
entirely in my confidence--anything which you think it behoves me to
know, speak at once.'

'You are right in saying that there is nothing I would not do to
shield you from harm, dear madam,' said Mrs. Jenkins, touching Helen's
hand with her wan lips. 'The intrigue in which I was passively mixed
up was arranged before I entered your house, and it is only within the
last few minutes--when I fainted, in fact--it flashed upon me that the
affair could possibly have any connection with your present dreadful
sorrow.'

At these words Thornton Carey started, and bent forward his head to
listen more attentively.

'Well, when you first engaged me to come to you,' said Mrs. Jenkins,
'you took for granted that I was respectable all through, and I hadn't
courage enough to avow the truth. I ought to have said who and what my
husband was and where he was then living. I should, but that he--but
that I--but that there had been something against him. Not that he was
not loving and good to me, and always had been, understand that, but
he got into trouble when he was a young man, and the memory of that
seems to have stuck to him, and respectable people were consequently
unwilling to give him employment, and he was thus forced to do what he
could, often what he hated, to gain a bare subsistence.

'The knowledge of this sin of his early youth,' she continued, 'was
not confined to me. I shared it with his only brother, a man exactly
resembling him in size, feature, and complexion, but who has risen in
the world, while my poor Ephraim has sunk, and who made use of the
knowledge of the cloud hanging over Ephraim's head to employ him as
his agent in all kinds of dirty work in which he did not choose
himself to appear. My husband was known as Ephraim Jenkins, but his
brother of whom I speak, who has wrought upon us all this woe, and
through whom indirectly, if all I believe is true, I am now a widow
indeed, is called Trenton Warren.'

'Trenton Warren!' cried Carey.

Helen said no word, but sat with her eyes distended and fixed upon the
speaker.

'Trenton Warren,' repeated Mrs. Jenkins; 'the man whom you now suppose
to be dead, but who, I fear, has been left for the commission of still
further crime, being, as I know him to be, the wickedest man on the
face of the earth. Listen. Some months ago now, Trenton Warren sent
for Ephraim, my husband, who was always at his brother's beck and
call, and had to do whatever he was told; this time he was desired not
to go to his brother's office as usual, but to name some place where
Warren was not likely to be recognised. They met, and Warren developed
his scheme to Ephraim, not then or by word of mouth, but in a letter
of instructions which he handed to him, and told him to read
afterwards. The main point in these instructions was this. I have told
you that the two brothers were exactly alike, so much so that it was
impossible for those who knew them best to distinguish between them. I
don't suppose it had often been much noticed, for Trenton Warren was
always well-dressed, and my poor Ephraim was scarcely ever out of
rags; but Warren knew of the likeness, and admitted it, and determined
to use it to serve his purpose; and the main point of the instructions
was this: that Ephraim was to personate his brother; that he was to
have plenty of money and live like a gentleman, and, in fact, to pass
himself off as Trenton Warren down at Chicago.'

'At Chicago!' cried Thornton Carey, springing up from his chair, Helen
still preserving a stony silence.

'Stay,' said Mrs. Jenkins, lifting her hand in supplication; 'stay and
hear me out. It was wicked, I know, but what were we to do, we were
near starving then? And besides, Trenton Warren knew the hold that he
had over Ephraim, and would have exercised it had there been the
slightest attempt to thwart him. What his motive for this duplicity
may have been, I know not, except that, being a motive of Trenton
Warren's, it was sure to be a bad one.'

'It was your husband, then, who was at Chicago, and not Trenton
Warren?' said Thornton Carey. 'The information which I received at his
office as to his being at Chicago was, then, false?'

'As to his being at Chicago, certainly, said Mrs. Jenkins; for part of
the time at least he has been in England, and not in Chicago, for my
poor Ephraim told me so.'

'In England!' cried Helen, speaking for the first time.

'Yes, dear madam; my poor Ephraim was here yesterday; he had come up
from Chicago in great trouble, in consequence of not having heard from
his brother, and also fearing that the telegram which Mr. Carey
addressed to Mr. Warren was really meant for him, and imagining that I
was ill; and I had a long talk with him here in this very house; and I
told him that come what might he must break with this horrible
connection, and assert himself, and turn over a new leaf; and live
like an honest man in the future. He said, at first, it was
impossible; but I told him we should find friends to help us; above
all, you, my dear madam, who have been so kind to me. And then he
seemed to be convinced, and he told me he would do all I asked him,
and he left me with the intention of becoming a reformed man; and now
he is dead--for I am sure it was he who was killed on the railway, and
not Trenton Warren--he is dead, and I shall never see him more.'

While Mrs. Jenkins was concluding this speech, Helen had been writing
with a pencil on a slip of paper. As the poor woman finished speaking
she burst into a flood of tears, and seemed so thoroughly overcome
that Helen judged it better that Thornton Carey should leave the room;
and Helen motioned him to do so. As he passed by her, she placed in
his hand the paper on which she had been writing. Immediately on
gaining the library he opened it, and read these words: 'As sure as
God is in heaven, Trenton Warren is the man who has murdered my
husband.'


Thornton Carey read the paper, but made no comment on its contents.
His mind was too full to find any utterance just then; he too, as he
had listened to Mrs. Jenkins's narrative, had become impressed with
the idea that Trenton Warren might in some way be mixed up with the
terrible matter to the discovery of which he had pledged himself. But
he was a man; and one, moreover, with a calm judicial mind, accustomed
to weigh matters with deliberation, and not to leap hastily at
conclusions. He passed out of the room, and out of the house; he
thought it better not to allow himself the chance of any farther
discussion of the subject with Helen until he had fully thought it out
by himself. That was Thornton Carey's great secret of work; he held
that there was no problem so knotty that it could not finally be
'thought out' if due time were given to the process. Education and
circumstances had made him self-reliant; and he believed that in most
instances more could be done by his own unaided wits, when duly
applied to the solution of a difficulty, than by a discussion with
others, in which the proposition of various schemes would tend to
divert the mind from the due consideration of any explanation, no
matter how striking or original.

Out of the house he went, then, and on descending the stoop, instead
of going down town as usual, he turned sharply to his left, and walked
away up Fifth-avenue at a swinging pace. Just at that time of day the
avenue was alive with people, some in search of pleasure, some in
search of health, who had come out to enjoy the soft mild weather, and
on foot and on horseback, in buggies, coupés, and open carriages were
making their way to Central Park. Scarcely one of these persons but
was attracted by the tall slight figure of the young man, who hurried
along with seven-league stride among them, but not of them, evidently
enwrapt in his own cogitation. The valetudinarians envied his free
step and the ease with which he carried himself; the pleasure-seekers
made their little jokes to each other about him as a philosopher, a
student, an eccentric, perhaps a madman. Thornton Carey heard none of
their remarks, and if he had, he would not have heeded them. He did
not see the people who whirled by him in carriages; he was scarcely
aware of the presence of those whose coat-sleeves he brushed in his
onward flight. While the human hive was still buzzing around him, he
could not give himself up to the luxury of untrammelled thought; with
all this whirling of wheels and clacking of horses' hoofs sounding in
his ears, he could not concentrate his mind upon working out the
problem which he had set himself. When once he found himself within
the limits of the Central Park, he turned rapidly out of the
fashionable promenade, and striking across a green expanse, dived into
a shrubbery, the narrow path through which was entirely deserted; and
there, unseen and alone, Thornton Carey, walking up and down,
commenced his self-appointed task of 'thinking it out.'

Could it be possible, in the exercise of that woman's instinct which,
without any possibility of explanation, without any apparent rhyme or
reason, is so often exactly correct, that Helen Griswold had hit upon
the truth when she stated that Trenton Warren was the murderer of her
husband? He, Thornton Carey, must allow that some faint suspicion had
been engendered in his mind as Mrs. Jenkins's narrative proceeded; but
now was the time for him to sift and winnow the evidence which it
contained, and to come to his own straightforward conclusion. In the
first place, was the woman speaking the truth? He thought that might
be clearly answered in the affirmative. She was under obligations to
Helen, of whom she professed to be very fond, to whom indeed she had
previously shown a certain amount of fidelity and devotion, and there
was an air of veracity about her which, to him, was convincing. The
facts which she narrated she had received from her husband; and then
the question arose, was he to be believed? This was plainly a very
different matter. According to his wife's own showing, he had been
early in life mixed up in some dishonest transactions, the memory of
which clung to him in after years, and prevented his getting
respectable employment. Would not such a man, tabooed, disgraced, kept
down by his own brother, in order that he might use him for an
instrument in his dirty work--would not such a man be likely to tell
lies for his own advantage? Granted; but what advantage had he in this
instance? He and his wife were one; she was his confidante; she knew
the power which his brother held over him; why then should he attempt
to deceive her in the way in which that power was exercised? No; upon
a clear review of all the circumstances, Thornton Carey was compelled
to admit that the story told by Mrs. Jenkins was probably true, and
that while Jenkins was personating him at Chicago, Trenton Warren had
gone to London.

He would have been in England, then, at the time of the murder: so
far, that was in favour of Helen's hypothesis. It agreed, too, with
the idea proclaimed with so much earnestness by Bryan Duval, that the
necessity for the crime had originated in New York and not in England.
The question of motive was, however, above all others, the one which
would require to be clearly and calmly examined, and Bryan Duval, with
his leanings towards the picturesque and the dramatic, was, Thornton
Carey thought, hardly the man to decide upon it. If Warren had taken
advantage of the confidence reposed in him by Alston Griswold to
pillage his friend to any considerable extent, if he, on his own
account, had been engaged in any schemes or speculations in direct
opposition to those in which he was ostensibly in partnership with
Griswold, then there would have been some slight reason, some shadow
of pretext for imagining that it would have been to his advantage to
silence his friend and prevent his own exposure. But that Warren, a
business man, and not a bravo, would risk the vast penalty accruing to
the crime of murder for the sake of accomplishing such a result--a
phase of civilisation by no means uncommon in New York commercial
circles--was what Thornton Carey could not and would not believe.
Still the mystery of Warren's being in London at the time when even
those in his employ believed him to be in Chicago, and the fact of his
having induced his brother to personate him in the latter place, in
order to throw all inquiries off the scent, was so suspicious, that
Carey deemed it right at once to make Bryan Duval acquainted with Mrs.
Jenkins's story, and with the result of his deliberations thereon. So
he came out of the shrubbery far less eager and impetuous than he had
entered it, and walked down at a quiet pace to the Fifth-avenue Hotel.

On entering Mr. Duval's room, he found that gentleman lying at full
length upon the sofa, wrapped in a gorgeous blue-silk dressing-gown
faced with red, and his feet encased in Turkish slippers. It was Mr.
Duval's habit to indulge in an hour's siesta before going down to his
theatrical duties, and Thornton Carey was afraid that he had
interrupted the popular favourite while thus refreshing himself; but
Mr. Duval, hearing the door open, raised his head, and seeing who was
there, called to his friend to come in.

'Sit down,' he said, 'and smoke a quiet cigar. I was not asleep; I
have been reading that diary of poor Mrs. Griswold's all day, and I
had just laid it down and shut my eyes to reflect upon two or three
points which struck me as curious. I find,' continued Mr. Duval,
slightly stretching himself, 'that to close the eyes conduces very
much to reflection, and is occasionally anything but disagreeable.'

'I have been engaged nearly all day in consideration of the same
subject,' said Carey, 'and I came to see if you had a few moments to
devote to its discussion with me.'

'A few moments, my dear fellow!' said Bryan, raising himself up on his
elbow to look at the clock, 'a couple of hours! The enlightened
citizens of this great republic do not expect to see their cultivated
entertainer before nearly eight o'clock--it is now little more than
five--so that I shall have ample time to hear you talk, to interpose
maybe a few humble suggestions, and to get down to the theatre with
the greatest ease. Proceed now; I am all attention.'

Thus encouraged, Thornton Carey began the narration of the day's
experiences. When he began to describe his arrival at Mrs. Griswold's,
it was obvious to him that the great actor, notwithstanding his
professions of interest, was scarcely so attentive, or indeed so wide
awake, as he might have been; he kept up indeed a continuous refrain
of 'Hum!' and 'Ah!' and 'Dear me!' but his eyes were closed, perhaps
for the advantage of deeper thinking, his lower jaw relapsed, and a
soothing sound issued from his nose. When, however, Thornton came to
relate the accident which had happened to the train, and the death of
the supposed Trenton Warren, his companion roused in an instant. As he
proceeded to describe the terror which had seized Mrs. Jenkins, the
exclamation which she had uttered, and the fainting fit which had
ensued, Bryan's interest grew more and more intense. He sat upright
upon the sofa, leaning eagerly forward and drinking in every word; and
at length, when Thornton Carey had come to the end of Mrs. Jenkins's
confession, and had revealed the message which Helen had given him on
the slip of paper, to the effect that Trenton Warren was the murderer
of her husband, Bryan Duval brought his hand down heavily on the
table, and cried in a hoarse voice, 'By God, she's right!'

'You think so?' said Thornton Carey. 'All the time the woman was
speaking I was haunted by an idea that such might be the case, and
when I read Mrs. Griswold's avowal of her strong impression I was
almost convinced; but I have been walking about in the Central Park
ever since, arguing the question out with myself, and I am fain to
confess that I am now strongly sceptical about it.'

'For what reason?' asked Duval.

'The absence of motive,' said Thornton Carey. 'Suppose Trenton Warren
had taken advantage of the confidence reposed in him by Griswold, had
used his knowledge of and power over their joint business affairs
heavily to pillage his friend, he had opportunities during Griswold's
absence of twisting accounts and destroying evidence, and would never
have gone to the extent of murder for the sake of concealing his
dishonesty.'

'You are right,' said Bryan Duval. 'From all I have heard of Mr.
Warren, he would know far too much for that; but even he is human, I
suppose, and I think I can supply another motive by which most of us
are liable to be actuated, and which in this instance, if I am right,
has been all-powerful.'

'And what is that?' asked Carey.

'Combination of offended vanity and a desire for vengeance,' said
Bryan. 'When you came in, I told you that during the day I had been
engaged in reading Mrs. Griswold's journal, and that I had laid myself
down on the sofa the better to reflect over certain passages which had
struck me. This was the case just now, though you thought I was going
to sleep. Up to the time of your arrival I had not discovered the
meaning of those passages, but what you have said has given me the
clue.'

'You think so?' asked Carey.

'I am sure of it,' said Bryan Duval. 'But you shall judge for
yourself. I have read this diary through with the greatest attention,
and have marked certain portions of it for reference. It seems that it
was commenced at Alston Griswold's request; he intended that it should
be a record of all the events of her daily life, and should be sent to
him from time to time in lieu of ordinary letters. And that,' said Mr.
Duval, looking up, 'shows what a strange fellow he was and what
confidence he had in his wife. The idea of expecting any woman to tell
you all that she has been doing, much more all that she has been
thinking! Mrs. Griswold seems to have been a kind of pattern wife, for
there is certainly no one else of my acquaintance whom I should have
thought capable of strictly following such a behest.'

'Mrs. Griswold,' said Carey, 'would obey her husband to the letter.'

'Exactly,' said Duval. 'Now let us get back to the journal. You will
observe in this first marked passage that her idea of writing a
journal is that he may "follow her life from day to day, through all
the familiar hours of it, so that he may cheat himself out of the idea
of separation," and a little farther on she writes: "So I begin it
thus, in an irregular and unskilful fashion, no doubt, but with the
utmost sincerity of intention to write in it everything which can
interest him." I have read these passages to you to show how simple
and single-minded the woman was when she commenced her task; how fully
she intended that every thought of her heart, every prompting impulse
should be laid bare to the loved one far away. I will read you farther
passages now, which will show you how the idea had to be given up; how
certain experiences in her life were written indeed, but not for
submission to her husband's eye; and how the entries for his perusal
are mere domestic details about the baby, the nurse, and the doctor,
omitting any reference to the one great event in her life which had
happened since her husband's departure.'

'Do you mean to say that this book shows any duplicity of Mrs.
Griswold's?' asked Carey earnestly.

'Not the least in the world,' said Bryan Duval. 'God forbid for an
instant that I should be supposed to hint such a thing of so estimable
a lady. It was out of love and regard for her husband that she had to
keep back certain facts from his knowledge, as you shall now hear. My
next quotation, as you will see, is taken later in the book.

"With all the relief which the absence of Alston's friend has given
me, there is a great pang of pain for Alston himself, and a horrid
sense of a barrier of concealment between us."'

'She alludes here to Alston's friend. You see farther on she speaks
more plainly:

"I have allowed so many days to elapse before I force myself into
commencing this self-communing, in sheer uncertainty of what my line
of duty is; and though I am now tolerably clearly convinced that
neither now nor ever must I reveal to Alston what has passed, the
conviction invests my task of writing to him with great pain and
difficulty. Somehow we seem to be doubly parted; first by distance,
then by a secret. How shall I bear to see him take up his relations
with Warren just where he dropped them, and to know, as I do know, how
his confidence is betrayed?"

'There you see for the first time comes out the man! There is then a
passage to say she does not think that Warren has been false to her
husband in their business relations; but mark the next passage:

"It would do my husband such harm in every way to know what has
occurred; his own frankness and loyalty of nature could hardly
withstand so great a shock; the world would be changed for him. No, he
shall never know it; I will trust to the chapter of accidents, or
rather, I should say, to the beneficence of Providence, to preserve us
harmless from his false friend."'

'Good God!' cried Carey, starting up, 'this scoundrel must have made
love to Helen! Is not that how you interpret it?'

'Exactly,' said Bryan Duval; 'and immediately after Griswold's
departure; but he must have met his match in Mrs. Griswold. By the
context, it would seem that she must have insisted upon his never
setting foot in her house again, and that he thereupon agreed to go,
as he told her, to Chicago, as this passage would seem to insinuate:

"How cleverly, how skilfully this man has carried out this sudden and
complete change of all his plans; how reasonably he seems to have
accounted for leaving New York; no one seems surprised, and I am quite
certain not the slightest shade of suspicion that his departure is of
any consequence to me has presented itself to the mind of any of our
common acquaintance, though the close tie between him and Alston is
perfectly well known."'

'The existence of that tie between them would have called public
attention to the fact that there was no intimacy between Warren and
his partner's wife, no acquaintance even, it would be imagined, if he
was forbidden calling at the house; and it was no doubt this that
suggested to him the advisability of going to Chicago.'

'Probably,' said Duval. 'By the way, if we had had any doubt as to
whether this ruffian had dared to pay his addresses to Mrs. Griswold,
we should find it solved in this passage:

"I believe the love of a man like Warren is half passion, half hatred,
and that the hatred swallows up the passion when it is effectually
checked. Whence that notion has come to me I know not; but it has
come, and with it a fear of this man's hatred, greater, if possible,
than my horror of his love."'

'There is no doubt of it now,' said Thornton Carey, rising and pacing
the room with set teeth and clenched hands, 'nor have I a doubt that
he murdered poor Alston. He is doubly a villain, and I have a double
motive for revenge.'

'What is to be done we will consult farther to-morrow morning,' said
Duval. 'I must be off to the theatre now; but I entirely agree with
all you say.'

At this moment a boy brought a note to Thornton Carey, which he opened
and read.

'It is from Mrs. Griswold,' he said. 'That poor woman, the nurse, has
been to the scene of the accident, and recognised the dead body,
supposed to be that of Trenton Warren, as her husband.'




CHAPTER VI.
HARKING-BACK.


The evening papers had full details of the accident, which were
eagerly discussed and speculated upon; Trenton Warren was a man of
such mark in New York society, that the news of his death created more
than an average amount of interest. Not that the news that he was dead
was received without question; Warren was considered far too smart a
man to allow himself to be gotten rid of in any unexpected manner; and
while one set of his friends maintained that some swindler had
endeavoured with dishonest intent to personate the great speculator,
others averred that it was merely a case of accidental though
extraordinary resemblance; while the third party, consisting of those
who had found themselves mixed up in opposition schemes, believed that
Warren was really dead, and that Providence had thus rid them of a
dangerous enemy.

The next morning, Bryan Duval, attired in the gorgeous dressing-gown,
was sipping his coffee, when Thornton Carey, with somewhat of a worn
look on his usually bright face, entered the room.

'You will think me an unconscionable bore,' he said, 'but I am so
haunted by this painful subject that I can think of nothing else, and
I have only you to turn to for assistance and advice.'

'My dear sir,' replied Bryan Duval, looking up at him from under his
very effective eyebrows, 'you cannot do me a greater favour than to
interest me in the great drama of life; a study which has for me the
strongest and purest charm; a study the results of which I endeavour
to make manifest in those works which the public on both sides of the
Atlantic is pleased to approve of. Have you any farther news--you look
pale and anxious, my dear sir, as though you had been worried by some
farther complication?'

'I have no farther news, and there are no farther complications that I
know of,' replied Carey, 'and my paleness is probably occasioned by the
fact of my having laid awake nearly all night thinking over those
which already existed. That woman's confession yesterday, and the
information which we received from the perusal of Mrs. Griswold's
diary, prove to me incontestably that Helen is right in fixing the
suspicion of her husband's murder on Warren by supplying the motive
for his crime.'

'I am entirely of your opinion,' said Bryan. 'The scoundrel had made
love to Mrs. Griswold, and, afraid that she would communicate his
baseness to her husband on his return, made away with him; the
incident is not at all unnatural, or rather I should say is perfectly
dramatic. I have used it more than once in the course of my career,
and never knew it fail to bring down the house.'

'I guess we shall find that he was influenced by other motives as
well,' said Carey. 'After I left you last night, I went carefully
through a portion of Griswold's papers, and by what I could glean from
them, I have little doubt that the poor fellow has been mercilessly
robbed by his trusted friend. It would be most important if we could
learn fuller particulars of Griswold's method of life while in
England; you have furnished us with most valuable information, but of
course yours was but a casual acquaintance with him. If we could only
get at some of those who were there mixed up with him in his business
transactions, it might materially assist us.'

'I have been thinking of that also,' said Bryan Duval, 'and it appears
to me that our first step should be to try and find out what has
become of a certain Mr. Dolby, an American gentleman whom you may or
may not have heard mentioned by Miss Montressor. He was in England
immediately before the day of the murder, but I think spoke of
returning to America very soon.'

'There would be no difficulty in ascertaining his whereabouts, I
should imagine,' said Carey, 'from Miss Montressor herself.'

'Well,' said Bryan Duval, speaking slowly, 'that is a matter in which
we must proceed with a good deal of delicacy. There were, I imagine,
certain relations between Mr. Dolby and our dear friend Clara which
you, in your virtuous and secluded life, my dear sir, probably know
very little about, which nevertheless do exist in this wicked world,
and, so far as my experience goes, have great weight in the conduct of
its affairs. This being the case, in conversation with Miss Montressor
we must handle the subject very gingerly; for Clara, though a flirt
and a coquette, is thoroughly staunch and loyal, and nothing could
induce her to betray her friend.'

'To betray him?' said Carey.

'I use the word advisedly,' said Bryan. 'I have certain reasons in my
own mind concerning Mr. Dolby, and if they are correct--However, we
will go and see Miss Montressor, and you may leave the manipulation of
the subject to me. You will at once see the key-note I strike, and
then you can join in in the same strain.'

They found Miss Montressor in one of the drawing-rooms, and happily
found her alone. She was standing at the window, looking down on
the gay crowd thronging Union-square, and reflecting with much
self-complacency that to most members of that crowd her name was
known, and that to many she was an object of admiration. How lucky it
was, she thought, that Bryan Duval's attention had been directed
towards her, and that she had come out to America, instead of wearing
away her life in the dull level of London theatricals! Now the success
which she had made in New York would be recognised in London (she had
taken care to have all her best notices regularly inserted in the
great London theatrical journal, the _Haresfoot_), and on her return
she would take up an undeniably leading position, and defy all the
intriguing efforts of Patty Calvert or Theresa Columbus for supremacy.

In the midst of this agreeable reverie she felt a light touch on her
elbow, and on looking round she saw Thornton Carey and Bryan Duval
close by her side.

'We want you to give us ten minutes' talk, my dear Clara,' said the
latter, leading her to a chair, while he and his friend seated
themselves close by her; 'we want a little information from you to
assist us in getting up evidence in this police investigation, which,
as you know, is now being made.'

'Still upon that dreadful subject,' said Miss Montressor with a sigh,
but really delighted to be made of some importance; she had been long
enough with Bryan Duval to perceive the advantages of extensive
advertisements, no matter in what way--'still upon that dreadful
subject of poor Mr. Griswold's murder?'

'Still,' said Bryan. 'You see the poor fellow talked more freely with
you than any one else, and as his life in England is a blank to the
police, they want to hear as much about it as possible. It is very
important that they should know with whom he associated while in
London, and I want you to tell us whether he ever named to you any
American friends whom he had ever met over there.'

'Never,' said Miss Montressor, 'save when talking about his wife and
his home-life. He was what may be called a reserved man, and I never
heard him mention the names of any friends either in America or
England.'

'Of course,' said Bryan Duval, who had been playing with his
watch-chain, but as he put the question raised his keen eyes and
looked her steadily in the face--'of course Griswold, or Foster as he
called himself, was well acquainted with your friend Mr. Dolby?'

'O dear no,' said Miss Montressor promptly; 'Mr. Dolby particularly
avoided him.'

'Avoided him!' cried Carey.

'Not merely that; but desired me never to mention his name to Mr.
Foster, or indeed to any American. He said that his business interests
required that his presence in England should not be known.'

The two men exchanged glances.

'It would be of the utmost service to us in this painful business,'
said Bryan Duval to Miss Montressor, 'if we could be placed in
communication with Mr. Dolby. Your own intelligence, which I have
never hitherto known to be at fault, my dear Clara,' he  added
gallantly, 'and which has come out very strong and clear indeed all
through these investigations, will show you at once that we must not
let any circumstance, however apparently trivial, slip, or any
indication, however faint, escape us.'

Miss Montressor, whose ready appreciation of a compliment was not to
be influenced by any external circumstances, however serious, replied
at once that she thoroughly understood that point in the case, and
assuming a becoming gravity of demeanour, offered herself for
cross-examination concerning Mr. Dolby. She made, however, one mental
reservation, on which she resolved she would act with unflinching
determination; it was that she would not betray, in the course of that
cross-examination, however tortuous and severe it might be, the secret
of her former relations with Mr. Dolby. And as she made this mental
reservation, Bryan Duval knew she was making it, and did _not_ smile
at her simplicity in supposing he was likely to put any question to
her of the kind. For though Bryan Duval had no personal acquaintance
with Mr. Dolby, he knew all about Miss Montressor, and could have
astonished that lady not a little if he had thought proper to treat
her to a biographical sketch of herself. The same thing might have
been said of a good many persons in Miss Montressor's profession; they
would have been considerably surprised if he had revealed to them his
intimate acquaintance with their history.

Miss Montressor accordingly gave a somewhat garbled and embellished
account of her relations with Mr. Dolby, and though Bryan could
plainly see that Thornton Carey was more puzzled than enlightened by
her story, and that he was very anxious to get her to be more explicit
and direct, he checked him in every attempt to give expression to such
puzzlement and anxiety by a series of looks which said, 'Leave her to
me, I know how to manage her,' much too plainly for contradiction.
Bryan Duval had early in their acquaintance impressed Thornton, as he
impressed everybody, with a sense of his great and versatile ability,
but equally with a sense that he liked to do things exactly his own
way, and had an unmistakable conviction that that way was the best. So
when Miss Montressor rambled, and Bryan Duval merely beamed upon her,
Carey submitted, and was presently rewarded by a peculiarly
intelligent glance from the actor, who was playing so admirably the
unaccustomed part of examining counsel, which unmistakably bespoke
Carey's vigilant attention, and indicated his own belief that a point
was being made. And yet Miss Montressor had only said:

'I don't think Mr. Dolby was at all a sociable sort of person; he
never seemed to care about going anywhere, and he had a most special
dislike to being introduced to strangers.'

'And that was the reason why you never extended the advantage and
pleasure of his acquaintance to me, eh, Clara?' asked Duval slyly; and
it was at this point of the interrogatory that he gave to Thornton
Carey the before-mentioned intelligent look. 'That was all right, of
course, as he was such a morose fellow, and you could not help
yourself--otherwise, your new friends ought to have been made known to
your old.'

'Ah, but you weren't such an old friend then as you are now!' said Miss
Montressor ingenuously; 'and I am quite sure he would have objected
most strenuously to my having introduced him to you.'

'Indeed! and why? Why should the general taboo have been made
particular in the case of your most devoted? Was Mr. Dolby of a
jealous turn?'

'Nonsense!' said Miss Montressor, becoming very much confused on
finding that she was entangling herself in her explanation. 'How can
you ask such foolish questions? Of course not; but he had some strong
objection to be acquainted with actors.'

'Not extending to actresses, eh?' said Duval, whose care it now was to
get her to commit and confuse herself as much as possible.

'Don't be absurd, and do let me go on, if you want me to tell you
anything. I was going to say he had some peculiar objection to be
acquainted with actors, because he thought they would be injurious to
the serious and solid business connection he wanted to form in London.
He never told me what his business was, and I'm sure I never wanted to
know. All business is a bore until it comes to spending the money, and
I hate hearing about it; so I never bothered him on that score. He
once told me that as Mr. Foster was also a man of business, he might
be possibly mixed up with some transactions which would clash with his
own.'

'Did he say that?' asked Thornton Carey eagerly.

'Certainly,' said Miss Montressor; 'I recollect the expression.'

'Now, Clara, pull your wits together, and answer this question
clearly--Did Mr. Dolby ever allude in any way to Foster's wife?'

'Only in this way. At this same interview he asked me if Mr. Foster
were married; and when I told him "yes," and that he was always raving
about his wife, Dolby sneered, and said he hated men who aired their
domestic affairs before the world.'

'Was that the last time you saw him?'

'The very last. He took the precaution of calling himself Dolby when
he came to see me,'. continued Miss Montressor, floundering more and
more: of which fact Bryan Duval looked, this time, profoundly
unconscious.

'The precaution!' he repeated; 'why the precaution? Was not Dolby his
real name?'

'I really cannot tell you--I only know it was not the name he went by
in society, at his lodgings and so forth, for there he was known as
Mr. Dunn.'

'Did he tell you so?'

'Ye-yes, he did. I had occasion to write to him a few times, just a
trifling note now and then, and he told me I must not address him as
Mr. Dolby, but as Mr. Dunn.'

Duval and Carey exchanged glances, and now listened to and watched her
with the deepest attention. This piece of information was of the
utmost importance, as pointing to something at least equivocal in the
character and position of the man who bore so strange a resemblance to
that other man whose fate was interwoven with that of Helen Griswold's
murdered husband.

'Did, you not think that rather odd?'

'Well, no, I didn't. I suppose I am too, much accustomed to people
having more names than one to think it at all remarkable. But I quite
understood him that he was obliged to be very careful, because he was
mixed up in business with a lot of puritans, who would be sure to
think he was neglecting his work and going to the bad if they ever
found out that he amused himself like other people. And that was one
reason, I think, why he was so particularly anxious not to be brought
in contact with Mr. Foster, because he would be sure to meet him under
another name, and it would be suspicious and unpleasant.'

'You are quite clear that he was especially desirous that Mr. Foster
should not know anything about him?'

'I am perfectly clear on that point;' and Miss Montressor's vivid
memory recalled every particular of the last interview between herself
and Mr. Dolby, shaking her head the while with an emphasis
confirmatory of her words.

'That is an exceedingly important point,' said Bryan Duval, 'because
you see, my dear Clara, it is plain that Mr. Dolby must have known
something previously concerning Mr. Foster and the nature and purport
of his business in London, otherwise he would not have so regarded the
probabilities of their meeting as to make it indispensable that he
should keep out of his way when passing as Mr. Dolby; and it is just
this presumable knowledge of poor Griswold's business that makes Mr.
Dolby of so much importance to us in the unravelling of this story,
since we cannot get hold of any one who really does know enough about
it to be able to suggest a possible motive for his murder.'

'I quite understand all that,' replied Miss Montressor, 'and I have
told you everything that can possibly throw any light upon it. Stay,
there's just one thing more. I called at his lodgings in Queen-street,
Mayfair, once--only once--it was after the last time I saw him, and I
inquired for him by the name of Dunn; but he had left, and gone, the
woman of the house thought--believed, I ought to say--to America.'

'You and he had quarrelled, Clara, and you expected to find him
there, you sly puss!'

'Perhaps so,' she answered, with a coquettish toss of her head; 'but he
didn't show up, you see; and I know nothing more about him.'

'I hope you care as little as you know?'

'You may make your mind quite easy on that score. My heart is not
fragile, and when it is broken, it will not be by Mr. Dolby.'

'That's right, Clara, or by "the likes of him," as we make the Irishry
say in our Emerald Isle pieces. And now I'm sure you must be awfully
tired of all this _interrogatoire_, in which you have acquitted
yourself nobly, though your last little bit of information makes it
plain that Mr. Dolby, or Mr. Dunn, came out to America before we came,
and can therefore throw no light upon the murder of poor Griswold.'

'I don't see that,' said Thornton Carey; 'if we could find him here in
New York, he could tell us what he knew of Griswold's secret business
in London, and in _that_ lies the germ of the murder.'

'You think so, do you, my young friend? But then you are young, and
your knowledge of men and cities is a good deal limited.' This was
Bryan Duval's mental comment on Thornton Carey's remarks. His spoken
reply was more respectful, though vague. He merely said:

'Of course, of course. But we need not detain Miss Montressor any
longer. You have some shopping to do, I know;' and he gallantly
conducted the lady to the door, after she had taken leave of Thornton
Carey in a most gracious and engaging manner. Then he returned to
Thornton, his manner entirely changed, his face lighted with a glow of
success, his eyes sparkling, and a hardly subdued excitement all over
him.

'She has done it,' he said; 'she has unconsciously given us the clue.
And now she must be put aside, clean out of the whole business.'

'What do you propose doing now?' asked Carey.

'I propose devoting a few hours to work,' said Bryan. 'I have a
collaborateur whom I have kept waiting all the morning, and whose
claims I can no longer put off.'

'I am exceedingly sorry that I should have detained you,' said Carey.
'Pray explain to the gentleman that the affair was of the utmost
importance, or I would not have--'

'There is no gentleman to explain to,' interrupted Bryan, with a smile.
'My collaborateur is here,' he said, taking up a book of French plays
which lay upon his table. 'Messrs. Scribe, Dumas, Macquet, and other
French gentlemen, are good enough to work with me. Some foolish people
call it translation. I call it collaboration--a much prettier word,
and one which better expresses the process. And what are you going to
do?'

'I am going to see Mrs. Griswold.'

'Do you propose to tell her that the result of our inquiries so far is
that she was right in the communication she made to you--that Warren
murdered her husband?'

'I do,' said Carey. 'I do not see how it can be avoided.'

'Then I don't envy you your task,' said Bryan. 'You will have to tell
her about our perusal of her journal, and our discovery that that
scoundrel made love to her. You will have to give his dread of her
informing her husband on his return as the motive for the murder.'

'I think I can save myself that pain and Mrs. Griswold that
humiliation,' said Thornton Carey. 'I told you, I think, in the early
part of our conversation that in my search through Griswold's private
papers I had lighted upon what I imagined to be traces of large
defalcations on Warren's part. These will require farther
investigation; but I am now in possession of the fact that Warren's
pecuniary position was not what was always imagined, and that he was
heavily indebted to his partner, no one else being cognisant of the
fact. This will be sufficient explanation to Mrs. Griswold, though I
have little doubt that amongst the reasons which impelled the wretch,
the other motive was the strongest.'

'That certainly seems to afford a way of escape,' said Bryan, 'and I
wish you well through your mission. Let us meet to-night or
to-morrow.'

He then left the room, and Thornton Carey fell into a deep and
serious fit of meditation, with the direct results of which, except in
so far as Miss Montressor's share in this story is involved, we have
no immediate concern.

Before they parted, Bryan Duval and Thornton Carey reduced Miss
Montressor's statement to writing, and on the same evening Thornton
took the document to Helen, and read it to her, confiding to her in
detail the conclusions at which Bryan Duval and himself had arrived,
and the plan of action which they had determined upon, subject, of
course, to her approval and concurrence. Helen listened in the sad and
heavy silence which had succeeded to her first vehement and agonising
grief, and thoroughly approved of the project.

In the mean time Bryan Duval had had a brief talk with Miss Montressor
at the theatre. She had had a reception of unabated warmth, and was in
high good-humour, so that she took Bryan Duval's advice that she
should not seek to see poor Mrs. Griswold again just at present, as
her health and nerves were exceedingly shaken, and the most perfect
quiet was indispensable to her, with entire equanimity. Miss
Montressor was quite sincere in her regard for Helen, and was truly
sorry for her; but she was a little tired of the murder and the
melancholy now that the excitement had worn off, and was not sorry to
give herself up with a sanctioned engrossment to the glories of
starhood.


The next day Thornton Carey had a second interview with Helen, and
informed her that he had succeeded in finding a substitute to
undertake his duties, and in obtaining leave of absence from his post.
Helen's strength and courage were beginning to revive with the hope of
the detection and punishment of the murderer of her husband. To that
detection and the insurance of that punishment the friend of all her
lifetime was about to devote himself. He left her presence for a long
interview with Mrs. Jenkins, who had returned from the scene of the
railway accident, bringing poor Eph's remains for burial at New York.
She had suffered so much from the shock of the calamity which had
befallen her that she had been forced to wean the infant, and thus her
formal nominal occupation in Helen's household had come to an end. But
mistress and servant were bound together by a new tie, that of a
common widowhood, and that tie would never be broken in this world.

When Miss Montressor returned from the theatre that night, she found a
letter and an _écrin_ awaiting her. The latter contained a very
handsome bracelet of black enamel, with diamond stars and a monogram
in the same precious gems; the former was a kind and grateful _mot
d'adieu_ from Mrs. Griswold, who was going away to the Springs, and
deeply regretted that she was too ill to say good-bye in person. Miss
Montressor was delighted with the bracelet; but she wondered what Mrs.
Griswold would have thought had she known that she was carrying off
her sister without letting her bid her good-bye. But she was of a
philosophical disposition, and just then pleased, amused, and popular;
so that on the whole he regarded the circumstance as 'all for the
best.'




CHAPTER VII.
MR. DUNN.


The solemn but beautiful days of a fine English October, surely dreary
nowhere except in London, but there preëminently so, were half through
their number, when Mrs. Watts, the owner of a highly respectable
lodging-house in Queen-street, Mayfair, received with surprise and
gratitude the naturally unexpected application for apartments to let.

It was just the time of year when there was least going on, when
people were quite decidedly 'out of town' whoever went out of town at
all, and people who hurriedly came back had not yet made up their
minds to do so.

Mrs. Watts had quite a superfluity of rooms to let, though her
drawing-rooms were taken for what she had hoped as a permanency. The
disappointment of this expectation, however, did not enable her to
hold out the hope to the new applicants that she should be able to
afford them the accommodation of what Mrs. Watts quite sincerely
believed to be an unparalleled drawing-room floor; she was only going
to lose her lodger, she hadn't yet lost him; and the new applicants,
who made their appearance under exceptionably respectable
circumstances, with a large quantity of luggage, and in a handsome
hired carriage, were obliged to content themselves with the
dining-room, a large and commodious bedroom at the back of it, and a
pleasant bedroom upstairs, at a considerable height, for the
gentleman.

The applicants were a gentleman and a lady, brother and sister, as
they hastened to explain; and Mrs. Watts was afterwards heard to
remark, 'That never was she more took by the looks of any one than by
those of the gentleman. She had nothing to say against the lady
either, who was very good-looking and quiet mannered, only she didn't
seem quite so much of a lady as the gentleman seemed of a gentleman;
and if there is anybody,' Mrs. Watts would add in conclusion, 'as can
see far through a deal board, a lone woman as lets lodgings in
Queen-street, Mayfair, is that person.'

The arrangements were quickly concluded, and it was understood that
the new lodgers would come in that night; in fact, after a short
parley, it was proposed that the lady should remain with Mrs. Watts
then and there; while the gentleman went out to luncheon at a
restaurant, and undertook not to return until everything was in order.
This bargain concluded, the gentleman went his way; and the lady
applied herself, with the hearty coöperation of Mrs. Watts and a prim
housemaid, to the disposition and arrangement of the voluminous
luggage which had accompanied them, and which, considering the very
quiet appearance of the lady, who was attired in deep mourning weeds,
and had anything but a dressy appearance, might perhaps have been
brought rather as a certificate of character, in the event of it being
inconvenient to apply for recommendations, than as representing actual
necessity.

Mrs. Watts was a very good-humoured woman, with  a turn for
sociability, and a decided taste for gossip, which just at this season
of the year she found it particularly hard to indulge; for not only
were her own rooms standing empty, but those of her neighbours; and
her neighbours themselves were for the most part gone off on their
annual jaunts; an indulgence which Mrs. Watts did not allow herself.
She found the autumn particularly dull, and to the unexpected
gratification of letting rooms and taking money for them at an
unlikely period, when her neighbours were not letting their rooms, and
were spending the money they had accumulated during the summer, was
added the prospect of some pleasant talk with her strange lodger, in
whom she at once recognised a thoroughly approachable person.

Accordingly, when the luggage was disposed of, a friendly cup of tea,
to be partaken of jointly in the dining-room, was gratefully accepted
by Mrs. Watts; who shortly found herself in the high tide of talk
respecting London, its goings-on, the advantages of the situation in
any street in Mayfair, and the difficulties of lone women who let
lodgings, with a person who frankly acknowledged herself totally
unacquainted with the great metropolis.

'Your first visit, ma'am? Dear me,' said Mrs. Watts, 'how odd that
seems, to be sure! But your brother's been here before, and knows the
ways of town well?'

'Yes,' said the stranger, 'I believe my brother, Mr. Clarke, knows
London very well indeed; but I feel rather timid about it, and it has
been a great anxiety with me as to where we should settle down for the
six weeks of important business that he has to carry through. I don't
want any gadding about or sight-seeing; I only want to feel sure of
being in a respectable house, where I can go my own ways and carry on
my own occupations just as if I was at home in my country village,
though, of course, I shall not object to a peep at the gay streets
sometimes.'

'You won't see much gaiety in the streets or anywhere else in October
in London,' said Mrs. Watts; 'but if you like to be quiet and carry on
just as if you were in your own home, you could not be better off.
Then, as I say, for six weeks to come we've not a soul in the house
but Mr. Dunn, even if he was to stay, which I fear there is no chance
of; for he did tell me on Wednesday as he was going to America in
earnest.'

'That's the gentleman in the drawing-room, isn't it,' said the
stranger, 'you are speaking of?'

Mrs. Watts assented. 'And a very nice gentleman he is. We like him
very much, only we sometimes think he is rather odd; and I never saw a
man in my life as could not bear to be asked the slightest question
except Mr. Dunn. I do assure you he was quite angry with me for
wanting to know, which I thought was reasonable, when the
drawing-rooms was likely to be vacant; which I had to remind him that
it was fair on my part, for if he didn't give me notice he would have
to give me money. Well, do you know, he is that peculiar, that I think
he would rather have had to pay up when the time came, than tell me
out downright plain that he was going back to America in a fortnight.'

'Really,' said the stranger, 'he must be an odd sort of man. Has he
been with you long?'

'A goodish while now. He came back to us once after he had left us,
and I am sure then he went with the intention of going to America,
though he didn't say so; and something, I suppose, changed his mind at
the last minute, for back he came with all his luggage and reëngaged
his rooms, and here he's been quite quiet and contented ever since;
never gives a bit of trouble nor has anybody in to give more. However,
he's one of them lodgers, as I always say, as is too good to last, and
vexed that he was when I had asked the question, he did tell me that
he was really going this time.'

'Really going! I should think everybody "really" went when such a
journey as America was in question.'

'Not him, though, mum. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if we saw him
back again after he starts next time.'

'What aged man is he?' asked the stranger carelessly. 'I ask, you
know, because it seems so odd that an old man should be so restless
and not know his own mind.'

'O, he isn't old, bless you,', said Mrs. Watts; 'he isn't much above
thirty, if he's that; a small, slight, wiry little man; leastways I
call him little--I daresay you wouldn't--because all my brothers were
so uncommon big; looks as if he could bear any amount of journeys to
America or anywhere else, and think nothing at all about them, if he
had the spirits.'

'Hasn't he spirits, then?'

'No, he's very dull at times. He used to be a good deal jollier when
he first came, and he used to go to the theatre a good deal, and out
to dinner--leastways he didn't dine at home; but he's dropped all that
now, I suppose he hasn't any place to go to, and there are no theatres
at this time of the year, at least not theatres for gentlefolk, you
understand; there's places where they plays Shakespeare and that,
which people like him would never think of looking at; and so he stays
at home and mopes a good deal, I should think. At what hour did you
say you would dine every day, mum?'

The stranger named the hour, and then went on to say, 'Then there
really is no one in the house but Mr. Dunn at present?'

'Not a soul!' was the decisive answer.

'I ask, you see, Mrs. Watts, because I have a great fancy for seeing
after my brother's room myself. When it has been made up in the
morning, I like to put his things tidy, lay out his dressing things
and collect his letters, and all that sort of thing; and as he will be
sleeping at the top of the house, and I at the bottom, I should have
to go up and down stairs to get at his things, and I would rather know
that I should not run the risk of meeting people about the house. If
there was any such risk, I should get you to tell me when was the best
time to make sure of their all being out.'

Again Mrs. Watts assured the stranger that she could run no possible
risk of meeting anybody who could alarm the shyest individual. She had
already made her acquaintance of the housemaid; and unless she put
herself personally in his way she was extremely unlikely to encounter
Mr. Dunn, who hardly ever came down the lower flight of stairs except
to leave his letters on the hall-table, just before post hour, after
which he usually went out for a stroll, to return with exemplary
punctuality at dinner-time.

The stranger thanked her for these assurances and for her general
civility, and Mrs. Watts retired to the lower regions, to issue orders
for the preparation of dinner for her new lodger in a satisfactory and
confidence-inspiring style.

The arrival down-stairs and the stir in the house had apparently not
disturbed the secluded tenant of the drawing-room floor. He had indeed
thrown aside the window-blind and looked out for a moment, as the
heavily-laden carriage rumbled up to the door, but it was only because
the habitual emptiness of the street had hardly been interrupted
before that day. He saw a woman in deep widow's weeds step out of the
carriage, attended by a slight, active-looking young man, and enter
the house; then he let the blind fall, and returned to his occupation,
and thought no more of the incident.

Mrs. Watts had some reason to be proud of her drawing-room floor. It
consisted of two very well-proportioned apartments, and a smaller
room, intended for the dignified purposes of a boudoir, but which,
under the lodging-house régime, served as dressing and bath room. The
sitting-room and bedroom were handsomely furnished, and presented an
aspect of very decided comfort, though it was a London house in
October; a cheerful wood fire, just enough to brighten the room
without overheating it, burned in the bright steel grate; a handsome
easy-chair stood near it, the castors buried in the thick white
sheep-skin rug; while a writing-table, laden with papers and the
paraphernalia of a business man, was wheeled into a convenient
position with regard to both fire and light.

Let us have a look at Mr. Dunn, Mrs. Watts's model lodger, as he paces
the sitting-room from end to end, absorbed in meditations, which, to
judge by the abstraction of his countenance, have nothing whatever to
do with the actual scene. Mrs. Watts's brothers must have indeed
confused her notions of the stature of human beings out of Yorkshire,
to which county she belonged, if she considered Mr. Dunn a little man.
Other people would have pronounced him decidedly tall; his figure was
slim but wiry built, about twenty-eight years of age, with long, thin,
close-shaved face, small deeply-set eyes, and thin bloodless lips. He
walked up and down with a slow measured pace, his arms folded tightly
on his chest, and the fingers of each hand gripping the coat-sleeves
with a curious fixity of grasp, corresponding with his set teeth and
intent frowning eyes. Occasionally in his walk he stopped at his
writing-table, uncrossed his arms, took up a sheet of paper from the
number which lay scattered on the blotting-book, read it, laid it down
again, refolded his arms, and commenced his uneasy, ill-regulated
perambulation.

If the reader, Asmodeus-like, had been permitted to glance over his
shoulder while he read these pages, he would have perceived how far
Mrs. Watts's estimate of the good-nature and affability of her
gentleman-like and most desirable lodger was to be relied upon. When
he had taken up the third, he glanced over it viciously, as though
uncertain whether he had made the terms of it bitter and imperative
enough.

With the matter of these documents we have, however, no immediate
concern. He read and re-read them; and then, having lighted the gas in
his rooms, he sat down at the writing-table, collected the sheets,
which, as they were written on very thin paper, he was enabled to fold
into a small compass, and made a kind of précis of their contents in
cipher in a memorandum-book, which he locked away in one of the
drawers of the writing-table before he proceeded to place the address
on the envelope into which he had carefully packed the written sheets.
The envelope was of the buff colour and medium texture which we are
accustomed to associate with letters of business from America; but
contrary to usual custom, no part of the address was printed, nor was
there any printing upon the impressed wafer.

His task completed, Mr. Dunn drew his chair closer to the fire and
took up a book, but he seemed unable to occupy his attention with its
contents, and after turning over a few pages in a desultory way, he
flung it down and went into his bedroom, from which he emerged in a
quarter of an hour, dressed for walking. Once more he crossed the
sitting-room, approached the fire, and leaning against the
mantelpiece, hat in hand, muttered, 'I cannot account for it, I cannot
account for the delay of those letters; it is either foul play or an
accident. If it is foul play, he is the most ungrateful scoundrel
unhanged; if it is an accident--ah, "if!" where am I?'

With these words, uttered half aloud, and which seemed to have in them
some mysterious and weighty meaning, Mr. Dunn took up the letter which
he had just addressed, and went slowly down-stairs, carrying it in his
hand.

The business of putting out of sight the luggage appertaining to the
new arrivals was not yet quite completed, and Mr. Dunn's eyes lighted
upon a very shiny black-leather valise, which was resting on one end
against the clock-case until such time as it should be convenient to
have it carried up to the new gentleman's room at the top of the
house; for his appellation, Mr. Clarke, had not yet come pat to the
tongues of Mrs. Watts and her domestics.

There was nothing remarkable about the valise, except its newness and
its shininess, and painted in white upon the lid were the initials
'T.C.;' and as Mr. Dunn looked at it he thought idly, 'That hasn't
seen much travel, anyhow.'

He laid his letter on the table in the hall, from which it would be
duly conveyed to the post at five o'clock; and also observing
carelessly that the door of the dining-room was ajar and that the gas
was alight within, an appearance from which he arrived at the
conclusion that the lady and gentleman whom he had seen getting out of
the carriage had made it all right with Mrs. Watts, and were actually
then in occupation, he opened the hall-door for himself, felt
mechanically in his pocket to make sure that he had his latch-key, in
case of a late return, and went out into the soft chill October
evening.

The dining-room in the house which Mr. Dunn had just quitted was
looking as cheerful as a dining-room not used for any other purpose
than that of eating in ever can look. Mr. Clarke's sister, who had
informed Mrs. Watts that her own unassuming name was Jones, and who
had not needed to inform her that she was a widow, the fact being made
abundantly evident by her dress, had set to work with a quiet
notability to arrange it comfortably, and was now seated by the fire
with a piece of needlework in her hands, and looked as much at home as
if she had lived there all her life.

There was only one sign of innovation, only one instance of discomfort
to be observed about the room: the door was open, and suffered to
remain so. Presently, Patty, the housemaid, came to speak to Mrs.
Jones, and announced that they were about to take the gentleman's
valise up-stairs. She also asked should she shut the door, having
found it open.

'No, thank you,' was Mrs. Jones's reply; 'the room is rather warm.'

'Very odd,' said Patty to herself, 'people are about doors. She likes
it open; but the fuss as some of 'em make if one doesn't shut it every
minute after the lock slips in one's hand, as would make one think one
would die at a breath from a key-hole! She doesn't look a fanciful
sort, nor a delicate sort neither, for that matter.'

Presently Mrs. Jones heard Patty's by no means fairy footfall
redescending the lower flight of stairs, and she appeared at the
dining-room door, and asked the girl with a kindly civility, which had
already gone far to win her in several small matters since the arrival
of the new lodger--an event not quite two hours old--whether she was
going to the post shortly.

Patty replied by a glance at the hall table. 'O dear, yes, ma'am,'
said she, 'I have got to go. There is that Mr. Dunn passes the pillar
two minutes after he goes out of the house, and would never have the
thought to post his letters himself, and I am as busy as I can be.'

'Never mind, Patty,' replied Mrs. Jones gently, 'I have a letter or
two to write; they will be done in a few minutes, and if you will tell
me on which side I shall find the pillar-post, I will take them
myself. I shall be glad of a breath of fresh air, and I want to buy a
few trifles at that famous brush-shop round the corner. Mr. Clarke
showed it to me this morning when we were coming up here.'

'O, thank you,' said Patty, 'there won't be any more except yours; for
Mr. Dunn has gone out, as I said just now, and he won't be in till
goodness knows when, so I know he's got no more to write.'

'Then I will just put it in my bag now,' said Mrs. Jones, opening a
small leather reticule and placing the letter with ostentatious care
in it, and she immediately reëntered the dining-room and took out her
own writing materials.

Mrs. Jones did not, however, seem to be in any hurry to get on with
her letters; she merely laid a half-written page of note-paper open on
the blotting-book, dipped her pen in the ink, and sat down before the
table, but made no attempt to write. In about five minutes she rang
the bell, which was answered by Patty.

'I have been so stupid,' said Mrs. Jones, 'as to forget to buy some
sealing-wax, and I particularly want to seal the letter I am writing;
do you think your mistress can lend me a bit?'

'Certainly, madam,' said Patty, and ran away with alacrity to fetch
the desired article, which she brought back.

'Stay a moment,' said Mrs. Jones, 'I shall have done with it
presently, and I would rather return it to Mrs. Watts, if you please;
I shall get some when I am out.' She then proceeded to seal two
directed envelopes, which she stamped and placed in a bag beside Mr.
Dunn's letter.

Having thus elaborately established the fact that she had been writing
letters and was about to post them, Mrs. Jones put on her bonnet and
cloak and went out, having received accurate instructions from Patty
as to where she could find the pillar-post, and how she was to turn in
order to reach the brush-shop.

In about half an hour Mrs. Jones returned. In her hand was a small
paper parcel, and on her arm hung the leather reticule, with the
spring gaping open, so that as Patty opened the door to admit her she
could see that the bag was empty. During the time that had elapsed
between her coming in and the return of her brother, Mr. Clarke, Mrs.
Jones made no attempt to occupy herself in any way whatever. She sat
by the fire with an intent and brooding face, while the cloth was laid
for dinner and Patty was coming in and out of the room. She held a
newspaper between her face and the light, and the girl concluded that
Mrs. Jones was very tired, for she did not seem so friendly or
inclined to talk as she had done in the beginning.

At six o'clock Mr. Clarke returned, and greeted his sister cheerfully,
with an inquiry as to how she found the rooms, and whether she was
getting things straight and comfortable. Mrs. Jones assured him that
everything was all right, and told Patty that dinner might be sent up
as soon as it was ready.

At length the two were alone, and then Mrs. Jenkins told Thornton
Carey, with eager though subdued excitement, that she had secured
possession of a priceless document, which had, she believed, placed
their prey securely within their reach.


No time had been lost by Thornton Carey in carrying out the resolution
of noble and disinterested friendship at which he had arrived. The
details of what he was to do on reaching England had been fixed
between him and Bryan Duval and their professional advisers; in fact,
it was most important so to fix them, it was indispensable that he
should be guided to a certain extent by circumstances, and that he
should act with such caution and circumspection as to avoid the danger
of awakening any suspicion on the part of Warren at his presence in
England.

When a full statement of the conclusion at which our friends had
arrived had been laid before Helen Griswold, she was entirely
overwhelmed by the conviction that they were right. That she had no
power to contend with the active and operative part of their decision,
that some one must undertake the unmasking of her deadly enemy, was
clear to her; but that Thornton Carey should be the person to do it
appeared a curious complication of the difficulties and distress of
her fate. To one man who had loved her, her love had brought death in
its most horrible and appalling form--that of base, cruel, cowardly
murder; to another man whom she had loved purely and nobly indeed, but
with a sentiment which was a growing force according as every day,
hour, made her more and more dependent upon him for support and
counsel and encouragement, her love was about to bring trouble and
danger.

That there could be danger in his pursuit of Warren, Thornton Carey
utterly denied, but uselessly; nothing could remove from Helen's mind
the conviction of the power as well as the villany of this man. The
frightful skill, the deadly calculation, and the hideous success with
which he had carried out his machinations against her husband, had
impressed Helen with an almost preternatural dread of him.

It was not that she believed he would escape, it was not that she for
a moment supposed Thornton Carey's designs would utterly fail or be
frustrated; but that she had a rooted conviction that terrible and
deadly danger would befall him in the carrying of them out. In the
extreme weakness and nervous excitement and spirit-broken timidity of
her grief she felt herself a doomed and a cursed person.

'I bring evil,' she said, lamenting freely and with all her full heart
to her humble but true friend, between whom and herself there now
existed the bond of a common grief, 'and now he will be involved in my
doom!' But she made no remonstrance, she felt sure that so it must be.

Thornton Carey had left New York without any formal leave-taking with
Helen, and it was only two days prior to his departure that Mrs.
Jenkins announced her intention of accompanying him. The idea had
occurred to her when Mrs. Griswold had first told her that Thornton
Carey was about to proceed to England on this mission of vengeance, in
which she and Mrs. Jenkins were equally concerned, for had not the
murderer of Alston Griswold been also the cause of Ephraim Jenkins's
death?

The argument was not very sustainable, but it was very readily
accepted by the two women who were suffering together. If Warren's
conduct had not in reality caused his brother's death, his influence
had at least caused him to die under circumstances to which his wife
could never look back without horrible regret, and in her mind there
was a little longing that the punishment of this man's crimes should
come down upon him, and that she should have a share in the agency
which should bring it about.

'Let me go with him,' she had said to Helen Griswold; 'I will travel
with him as his sister, and if I cannot be of any use to him, I will
at least be no drawback.'

Helen had from the first encouraged the notion, simply from the sense
that to avoid utter loneliness for Carey in his dismal task would be a
comfort to her; but a few moments' reflection showed her the full
value of the suggestion, which was received with applause and
enthusiasm by Bryan Duval, to whom she at once confided it.

Thornton Carey had never seen Trenton Warren; he was therefore not in
a position to identify him absolutely, how complete the chain of
evidence might otherwise be. Trenton Warren was also totally
unacquainted with the personal appearance of Thornton Carey, would not
recognise him if he saw him, and therefore would associate no
suspicion with him. Neither had Mrs. Jenkins seen her husband's
brother, who was, it must be remembered, in total ignorance of her
existence; but she had had so much evidence, so many proofs of the
strong resemblance which existed between Ephraim Jenkins and Trenton
Warren, proofs which had culminated in Miss Montressor's exclamation
upon seeing him, that Mrs. Jenkins felt convinced she would be able to
identify him for the information and satisfaction of Thornton Carey,
who might otherwise be entirely thrown off the scent by a change of
name. Supposing on his arrival in London he were to find out that Mr.
Dolby had ceased to be Mr. Dolby, he would be perfectly helpless in
the matter; but it was of no consequence to her by what name the
murderer should be passing among the unconscious crowd; the man whose
face and figure might be mistaken for those now mouldering in the
grave, the face and figure of him who had been so dear to her with all
his faults and shortcomings, could not escape her lynx-eyed
recognition and her determined pursuit.


Thornton Carey and Mrs. Jenkins were not long in getting through the
ceremonial of dinner, after which, when their undisturbed solitude was
assured, they opened the letter which Mr. Dunn had with unsuspecting
reliance placed that day upon the table in the hall.

The object of Thornton Carey's absence during the afternoon had been
to obtain an interview with some of the police authorities in London,
to whom he had made certain statements, which had resulted in a close
watch being set upon the movements of the occupant of Mrs. Watts's
incomparable drawing-room floor.

It was not with any remarkable reluctance, or any sense that she was
doing what, under other circumstances, would have been a felony, that
Mrs. Jenkins had abstracted the letter upon which so much depended. In
her eyes, everything that could be done for the furtherance of the
project upon which she and her companion were bent would have been
strictly allowable, if not praiseworthy. Thornton Carey's notions were
a good deal more formal; but he had secured himself against risk in
this matter. The trap in which Mr. Dunn was to be caught when all
their preparations were so complete that it was impossible he should
set himself free from it by any exercise of teeth or claws, or their
equivalent in human cunning--when he would walk into it was not even
left to his discretion--we shall shortly see.

For a moment, when Mrs. Jenkins put the letter into his hand and drew
her chair up to the table alongside of his, that they might peruse its
contents together, Thornton Carey experienced a passing pang of pity
for the villain who had wrought such wrongs and misery to others in
order that he might involve himself in the deepest and most
ignominious ruin. As he broke open the envelope, he said drearily:
'What a clever fool this man is; what invention and ingenuity he has
displayed in putting the rope round his neck!' Then he took up the
sheets one by one as their writer had put them in, smoothed them out
upon the blotting-pad as their writer had smoothed them out, and
proceeded to read their contents aloud for his companion, who was soon
sobbing bitterly, but in a guarded manner, over the terms of abuse and
tyranny lavished upon him whom they were never to wound.

Mrs. Jenkins and Thornton Carey had met on that morning for the first
time, after a short absence on Thornton's part, whose purport will
shortly be explained; but they had known all about Mr. Dunn's
residence at Mrs. Watts's before he had left her for Liverpool.
Hitherto, not a hitch had come in their plan; they had carried out
their programme from step to step with exact punctuality and with
undeviating success; the finishing touch had been put to their
projects in a respect which they had been obliged to leave to the
mercy of chance. They had concluded to a nicety that Mr. Dunn would be
writing to Trenton Warren at Chicago, on this day preceding the
departure of the American mail; but what they had not calculated upon
was, that Mr. Dunn would entrust the posting of his letter to any
other hands. An unexpected piece of conviction had therefore come into
theirs, and Mrs. Jenkins, with unfeigned thankfulness, blessed
Providence for the fortunate accident.

Thornton Carey hardly felt that he dared be so demonstrative; the
subject presented itself in a more complex aspect to his mind than to
that of his companion and coadjutor.

The sheets of paper were still lying upon the table, and Thornton
Carey and Mrs. Jenkins were still discussing their contents and
exulting in the acceleration of their projects rendered possible by
this most fortunate turn of fate, when Mr. Dunn, returning to his
lodging at an unusually early hour, let himself in with his latch-key,
and went softly up-stairs, remarking to himself as he did so, that
'They seem to be quiet people who have taken the dining-room floor.'




CHAPTER VIII.
IDENTIFIED.


Early on the following day Thornton Carey paid another visit to the
police authorities, with whom he had already been in communication. As
much to their surprise as his own, and their mutual congratulation, he
was enabled to lay the case before them with all the detail,
explanation, and certainty acquired by the perusal of Mr. Dunn's
letter. With the exception of certain inquiries which he had made
during his brief absence at Liverpool and his interview with certain
magnates of Scotland-yard on the previous day, Thornton Carey had, so
far, worked up this case without professional assistance; but he now
asked for such assistance in the practical form of a warrant for the
arrest of Mr. Dunn.

There was no difficulty about the granting of the warrant, but Carey
was advised that it would be much better to have it carried into
effect at Liverpool, the scene of the murder, and whither it was
evident Mr. Dunn was about to transfer himself within a very few days.
To this advice Thornton Carey deferred perhaps a little unwillingly;
he had a mortal dread that his prey might escape him, that the cunning
which had availed the murderer so far might be put forth in a final
effort, which would elude all their vigilance. But a little
professional reasoning tranquillised his mind on this subject. It
would be totally impossible for Mr. Dunn to escape the vigilance of
the police at the port of Liverpool; and if he should leave his
present lodgings without the knowledge of Thornton Carey and Mrs.
Jenkins, the fault would be theirs. The gaoler of the prison to which
he would be inevitably transferred before long would not have him in
surer watch and ward than the quiet-looking, business-like, and
unsuspicious lady and gentleman occupying the dining-room floor. With
this assurance, and instructions that he was to communicate with a
certain person to whom he was introduced, and who was desired to hold
himself at the applicant's disposal, Thornton Carey returned home just
in time to see Mr. Dunn, in his usual neat attire and with his
accustomed deliberation of step, turn into Piccadilly with the air of
a gentleman who had nothing whatever on his mind but the procuring of
air and exercise.

Two days, which both Thornton Carey and Mrs. Jenkins found exceedingly
tedious and hard to dispose of, elapsed, and on the morning of the
third, Mrs. Watts, who had made great friends with her lady lodger of
the dining-room floor, came to inform her that she was really about to
lose Mr. Dunn at last.

Yes, it was just like her luck. He was going for good, and the
quietest and most accommodating of lodgers would be known no more in
Queen-street, Mayfair.

Indeed, Mrs. Jenkins sympathised. It was rather sudden, wasn't it? Had
Mr. Dunn had any bad news from home, or had he completed all his
business in London?

That Mrs. Watts could not tell her. He had seemed exceedingly put out
over some American papers that had come in a great batch from
somewheres in the City, and he had told her that he was very much
disappointed that his employers did not require him to remain for
another year in England. Mrs. Watts did not know much of Americans,
but she had noticed that Mr. Dunn was the only one who had ever
acknowledged that he liked England better than his own country; if it
was his own country, which she could not say; perhaps he had gone out
there young.

But Mrs. Jenkins was obliged to ask Mrs. Watts to excuse her for
cutting short their interview--on that morning her brother was going
out on business, and she must see him before he left the house. After
he had gone she would return and resume their talk; so in the fewest
possible words Thornton Carey was rapidly informed that the time had
come. Mr. Dunn was going to Liverpool by the twelve-o'clock train.

Thornton Carey needed no details; he had merely to transmit that fact
to the person with whom he had been put in communication on the
previous day.

At noon that day the train for Liverpool started with its accustomed
punctuality, and without the slightest indication that it conveyed any
passenger more interesting or important than its ordinary freight.

Mr. Dunn occupied a corner-seat in a first-class carriage, and was
profoundly unconscious of the presence in the next compartment of the
remarkably quiet lady and gentleman who had been of late his fellow
lodgers. He was looking ill and much preoccupied; he duly wrapped
himself up, settled himself in his seat, and strewed the adjoining
division with miscellaneous literature, but it lay there untouched,
and Mr. Dunn's fidgetiness was such that it might not unreasonably
have provoked the remonstrances of the stout elderly gentleman, with
light fluffy whiskers and remarkably unexpressive eyes, who sat
opposite to him, and read newspapers one after another, with
engrossing interest and undeviating steadiness, for fully two-thirds
of the journey.

But the stout gentleman took absolutely no notice whatever of his
companion's movements, which alternated between excessive
restlessness, in which he would throw off his wraps, pull the window
up and down, and gape audibly, and extreme moody depression, in which
he sat back, his chin dropped upon his breast, and his eyes fixed upon
the flying landscape, and evidently totally unconscious of the objects
passing before them.

It was remarkable that, though the train was rather crowded, Mr. Dunn
and the elderly gentleman, with so insatiable an appetite for details,
had this particular first-class compartment to themselves all the way,
with the trifling exception hereafter to be noted. There might almost
have been an understanding between the railway people and the elderly
gentleman--perhaps there was, perhaps also he saw and remarked Mr.
Dunn's moves more clearly than he appeared to see and remark them; for
when Mr. Dunn (they were then three-quarters of an hour from
Liverpool) took a crumpled packet of letters out of his pocket, though
the elderly gentleman interposed a newspaper directly between his own
face and that of Mr. Dunn's, he slid his hand gently into the pocket
of his heavy overcoat, and at the same moment handled something
metallic which lay within it.

Mr. Dunn pored over these letters with an absorbed attention, which
could not have been greater had he been in absolute solitude. He
compared their dates, he counted them, he carefully rearranged them,
each in its respective former position in the packet, and when he had
read and re-read them, he tied them up again and replaced them in an
inner pocket.

During all this time his companion kept his hand upon the something
metallic in the pocket of his rough greatcoat, and when Mr. Dunn,
apparently yielding to a momentary temptation to tear up the letters
and strew them by the roadside, made a slight motion towards letting
down the window next him, he almost instantly withdrew his hand, the
barrier of the newspaper was withdrawn for a second, and the usually
inexpressive face of the elderly gentleman was set in a very stern
purpose indeed.

Nothing came, however, of the temptation. Mr. Dunn replaced the
letters; his companion reinterposed the barrier; and the train glided
smoothly on but another quarter of an hour, during which Mr. Dunn
subsided from his restless into his depressed alternative, and
occasionally took out a photographic likeness of a woman, at which he
gazed moodily.

Just as the train was running into Lime-street station its speed
slackened, it stopped in an instant, and a man stepped with wonderful
swiftness into the compartment hitherto occupied only by Mr. Dunn and
the persistent reader.

Mr. Dunn slipped the photograph at which he was looking into his
breast-pocket, and glanced round surprised, but the elderly gentleman,
with a satisfied wink at the new arrival, stuffed his newspaper under
the back of the cushion, and bending over and approaching Mr. Dunn,
laid his hand on his shoulder.

Mr. Dunn started up, or rather attempted to do so, but found himself
held firmly in his seat by a grasp apparently gentle, but wholly
irresistible, while his companion informed him, in the briefest of
phrases, that he was arrested on the charge of murder, and had better
not say anything lest it should be used to his disadvantage. Pale,
speechless, and bewildered, the trapped criminal stared at the
police-officer, who made a sign to his assistant, who, with
businesslike imperturbability and the deftness of long practice,
slipped a pair of handcuffs on Mr. Dunn's wrists.

In another minute the train had stopped, and the police-officer,
considerately arranging Mr. Dunn's wraps so as to disguise the fact
that he was a prisoner, stepped out with his charge upon the platform,
closely followed by his assistant.

Thornton Carey and Mrs. Jenkins retained their seats until the three,
whose movements they were watching, had passed the door of the
compartment in which they were. Then they immediately left the
carriage and followed.

Among the persons assembled on the arrival platform at Lime-street was
a respectable-looking woman, who carried a large basket, with that
air of inseparability habitual to females of her class. She was
probably there by appointment with somebody, for she had taken her
seat on a bench and waited with the inevitable basket on her knees for
the arrival of the train.

As Mr. Dunn passed down the platform in the custody of his two
travelling companions, the elderly gentleman slackened his pace for a
moment when they came alongside the bench where this woman sat, and
laid his hand, as if accidentally and in passing, upon the cover of
her basket. She gave him a quick look; but on the prisoner she
conferred a prolonged stare, of which, however, the wretched man was
wholly unconscious. A few persons only came between Mr. Dunn and his
companions and Thornton Carey and Mrs. Jenkins, who walked up to the
woman arm-in-arm. Thornton Carey addressed her:

'Have you seen him?'

'I have, sir.'

'Is it he?'

'It is, sir; I could swear to the Methodist preacher that talked to
the poor gentleman and to me in the Birkenhead ferry anywhere in the
world!'


They took him to the police-office. He went quietly, in absolute
silence, only looking from time to time at the men who walked one on
each side of him with a confused and helpless stare.

Thornton Carey, Mrs. Jenkins, and the woman, whose evidence Thornton
Carey had skilfully hunted up during his short stay in Liverpool,
exercising the ingenuity which subsequently won him many warm
congratulations from Mr. Dunn's travelling companion, and whose
evidence was the last link in the chain of identification which
convicted Mr. Dunn of the crime committed by Trenton Warren, had
reached the police-court some minutes in advance. The prisoner
recognised his inoffensive fellow lodgers of the dining-room floor in
Queen-street, Mayfair, with an irrepressible start, and spoke for the
first time. 'Who are they?' he asked.

Thornton Carey replied: 'I am Thornton Carey, whose benefactor Mr.
Griswold was; and this woman,' drawing forward Mrs. Jenkins, 'is your
brother's widow--your brother whose blood is on your head. We
represent your victims!'


The usual formalities were quickly accomplished; and when the prisoner
was searched, it appeared that he would have done wisely had he
yielded to that momentary temptation which had moved him to tear the
letters which he had read in the train and to scatter them in
fragments from the carriage window; for the letters in question were
those written by Helen Griswold to her husband, and the photograph was
that which the murdered man had carried in his pocket-book, and the
murderer had robbed him of both.

'On the whole,' as Mr. Dunn's travelling companion remarked to
Thornton Carey, as they walked away from the police-court together,
'it isn't often one has the handling of a case that fits together so
satisfactorily; in this there isn't a loop-hole.'


EPILOGUE


During the weeks, now numbering months, of their intimate association,
a strong mutual regard had sprung up between Thornton Carey and Mrs.
Jenkins. The bereaved woman's character had a great attraction for
Thornton, who thoroughly appreciated her sincerity, disinterestedness,
and depth of feeling. The earnestness and vehemence of Mrs. Jenkins's
grief for the loss of a husband who perhaps had not precisely merited
her love or her sorrow had struck the young man by its pure
womanliness, and her sound practical common sense had been of immense
assistance to him in every detail of his task. Thus the relation
between the two confederates, which, owing to the discrepancy between
their respective social stations, might have been attended by a
certain awkwardness and reserve, had, on the contrary, been frank and
pleasant from the first, and had very soon merged into genuine
unreserved confidence and intimacy.

Thornton Carey, though perhaps more deeply a student of books, was
also an observer of human nature, and in his long talks with Mrs.
Jenkins, when it was a relief for them both to escape from the great
purpose and topic of their lives into byways of conversation, would
question Mrs. Jenkins concerning her own history, and the scenes she
had witnessed, the experiences she had undergone as the wife of a man
whose life had been so shifting and shifty, so disreputable and
sometimes hard, in that wonderful microcosm, the city of New York.

Mrs. Jenkins had no reserve with Thornton Carey, towards whom she
gradually assumed quite a motherly tone, and she answered his
questions readily, and drew for him the kind of pictures which he
wished to see with his mind's eye with an untutored reality and a
quaint force that he found most interesting. But on no topic was it so
pleasant to him to hear Mrs. Jenkins discourse as on that of Helen
Griswold, and on none was she more disposed to gratify him to the
full. There was a deep vein of enthusiasm in Mrs. Jenkins, and the
gentle, gracious, thorough lady into whose house she had gone with her
heart bleeding its two sorest wounds--the death of her child and
parting with her husband--had roused it. And then had come the
remarkable combination of circumstances which had bound her life up in
the same chapter of accidents with Mrs. Griswold's.

She would tell Thornton Carey over and over again innumerable small
particulars of her first days in Helen's house, of her first
impressions, and of the generous kindliness with which Helen had
turned her first feeling of loneliness and dependence into one which
she had never thought to experience again--the tranquil happiness of
home. She would tell of Helen's quiet regret for her husband's
absence, of her rational life, her charities, her unselfishness, her
love and pride for the child, until any listener less deeply
interested than Thornton must have wearied of the subject. But he
never wearied of it, and in return he would tell Mrs. Jenkins tales of
Helen's childhood and his own, reproducing the old familiar scenes
with a skill and vividness at which the simple woman, who, though
uneducated, had the intuitive perception of good taste, wondered.
Listening to Thornton's talk, she thought, was like reading a pleasant
book, or looking at pictures. And so it came to Mrs. Jenkins's mind
one day, that ever since that childish time, which had passed so
happily amid the rural scenes and surroundings of Holland Mills,
Thornton Carey had had but one love in his life--the love of
Helen--and that it had grown with his growth, and strengthened with
his strength. When this belief took possession of her, she went to
work in her own clever yet simple way to verify it, by asking him in
her turn about his life since the breaking up of the old childish
associations, about his friends and his pursuits, and through all the
narrative which she thus elicited she could trace no other influence
than that of Helen. He had lived the life of a recluse and a student,
not gloomy or morose indeed, but sufficing to himself; and desiring
nothing beyond, in all the hours that were outside his work. He spoke
of some men-friends, and they were chiefly men older than himself, but
no woman's name ever turned up in his account of his life. When he
mentioned Mr. Griswold, it was always vaguely, though with gratitude,
but it was evident he had not known very much of him; and the awful
termination of his life, the wonderful train of circumstances which
had turned the _protégé_ into the avenger, made it difficult for
Thornton to speak of him so freely as of other subjects.

Long before their task was accomplished Mrs. Jenkins believed herself
to be in possession of the secret history of two hearts, with this
great difference between them--that Thornton Carey knew and
acknowledged to himself that he loved Helen Griswold, that he had
loved her, and no other, all his life, but that Helen entertained no
suspicion either of his feelings or her own. Mrs. Jenkins could not
have analysed her conviction that Helen, excellent and devoted wife
that she was, and true as was the affection with which she regarded
her husband, had not been _in love_ with him, but it was clear and
strong, the growth of constant observation of innumerable trifles,
those small but significant symptoms which only a woman notices and
interprets aright. Then Mrs. Jenkins, who, for all her inferiority to
Helen in the social scale, had some strong points of resemblance to
her, and was an instance of the absolute level on which classes stand
when the only ruling feeling of the human heart is in question, asked
herself whether it was that Helen had never been in love with any one,
or whether it was that she was in love with some one else. The latter
question did not present itself for a moment to the mind of Mrs.
Jenkins in a light unfavourable or derogatory to Helen; she knew that,
if such were indeed the case, Helen was entirely guiltless. Now the
whole story made itself clear to the perception of Mrs. Jenkins, and
she knew that the unconscious presence of an influence which had
existed since her childhood, and been stronger than any which had
since come into her life, had closed Helen's heart against every
whisper of passion for the man she had married and, in one sense,
loved.

With this discovery there had come to Mrs. Jenkins a still deeper pity
and regard for the young widow, so awfully bereaved, for there had
come a clearer comprehension of how admirably she had fulfilled her
duty as a wife. Thus it happened that the secret of both these hearts,
which had never been mutually disclosed, had been revealed
unconsciously by each to this humble friend; and in all the talks
which they had together, Mrs. Jenkins had had floating before her
fancy a vision of the future, in which the beautiful old story of the
childhood of these two should be taken up again and brought to its
perfection after such a trial as happily comes but rarely into human
lives. She was far too discreet to breathe a hint of her discovery or
her hope to Thornton Carey; and she promised herself that she would
exercise an equal discretion when she should have returned to New
York, and resumed her position in Mrs. Griswold's house.

It had been agreed that Mrs. Jenkins was to return before she and
Thornton Carey started on their journey to England. She had no friends
in England that her friends in America knew of, and she felt in her
inmost heart that the relations between herself and her sister would
not be sufficiently satisfactory to compensate for an entire
separation from Helen and her child. Besides, there was a very good
chance that she night see as much of her sister by residing in New
York as she should see of her if she lived in London; for Miss
Montressor's success was so marked, that there was a brisk competition
among American managers for the promise of her services during a long
series of seasons. On the whole New York had become much more like
home to Mrs. Jenkins than England was, though she felt that it would
be long before the word would seem to have any meaning for her in a
world where her Ephraim was not. With Helen Griswold she would have
peace, respectability, and a strong interest in her surroundings;
while to Helen, her presence must always be beneficial, to an extent
which would far out-measure the pain of their respective and common
associations.

When the task which they had come to fulfil was finished; when the
sentence of a righteous doom had been passed upon one of the most
cruel and treacherous murderers who had ever incurred the curse
pronounced against the shedder of man's blood; and the time fixed for
Mrs. Jenkins's departure drew near (she wished to leave England before
the execution of Trenton Warren), she discovered that Thornton Carey
was hesitating about his own return to America. It had never been
intended that he should accompany her; he meant to be in Liverpool
when the dread penalty of his crime should be inflicted on Helen's
enemy; but she had taken it for granted he would not make much further
delay, and was quite unprepared for the announcement which he made to
her the day before the sailing of the mail steamer in which a passage
had been taken for her. He came round to see her at the Railway Hotel
(he was at the Adelphi) late in the evening, and after talking
cheerily to her about the voyage back, he said:

'I hope you will drop talking of all this awful affair to poor Mrs.
Griswold as soon as you can reasonably persuade her to let it rest. It
is quite useless to keep up the misery and excitement of it any longer
than they must necessarily last; and that will be over when this
wretched man shall have been sent to his account. Then she had better
be led to dwell on the happier features of the past, and to let its
miserable ending die down into oblivion. You will be the best person
to lead her mind into that channel, and I, and all her friends, will
trust you to do it.'

'But, Mr. Carey, you will have a great deal more influence than I
shall. Of course, I must let her talk at first as much as she likes;
but if she will be kept from dwelling on the past by what I can do,
she will look more to you than to any of her friends for such things
as can cheer her up, and do her real good.'

Thornton Carey smiled rather sadly.

'She will not have me to cheer her up for many a long day,' he said.

'Why, whatever do you mean?' asked Mrs. Jenkins in unfeigned
amazement; 'ain't you coming very soon--as soon as--'

Her face fell, and she turned her eyes away. The subject was a
terrible one, and they had avoided reference to it by common consent.

'No, my dear friend, I am not. I have been thinking it all over since
I have been here, and I have come to the conclusion that I had better
not go back just yet. I have made some friends here quite
unexpectedly. Mr. Whitbread, the magistrate's brother, among others,
has been kind enough to form a good opinion of me, and he has just
been returned for B--. I dined with him last evening, and he talked to
me a good deal about myself; asked about my post at New Orleans,
whether it was a permanent one, and so on. I told him exactly how the
matter stood, and that poor Mr. Griswold had been negotiating a better
post for me, but one which would not be likely to be vacant for at
least twelve months from the present time. Then Mr. Whitbread offered
to engage me as his private secretary for that time certain. He
represents an important constituency, and will be a very active member
of the House of Commons. He is an advanced Liberal, and there would be
no better opportunity for me to learn the routine of public business
than in his employment. So I have accepted the offer, and I shall be
in England at least one year.'

'I do not regret it, sir, for your sake,' replied Mrs. Jenkins,
'though I doubt it will come very hard on Mrs. Griswold. But, then,
she is one who does not think of herself, and if it's good for you,
she will be content.'

Thornton Carey looked at her inquiringly, and a sudden deep flush
suffused his face. Mrs. Jenkins saw the sudden flush, and perfectly
understood its origin, but she made no sign, and continued:

'Have you written to her, Mr. Carey, or am I to take her the news? It
will be a surprise to Mr. Duval, too, though he will be very glad to
find you here when he comes back. Very likely he'll be writing a play
about it, and be glad of your help.'

'Writing a play, you dear droll woman, half a century behind the speed
of the age! I would lay a stout wager the play is ready for
rehearsal!'


Once more the scene of this story is by the seaboard. The mail steamer
for New York is just about to sail, and the landing-stage is as usual
crowded by sightseers anxious to witness its departure. It is a fine,
cold, wintry day, and the sky is bright, the wind fair. Unrecognised,
unnoticed by the crowd, who have no notion that the woman in widow's
weeds, and the handsome young man who takes her on board the tender so
carefully, were directly concerned in the great criminal trial which
has been the central object of interest in Liverpool, Mrs. Jenkins and
Thornton Carey pass the last few minutes of their companionship
together.

Mrs. Jenkins is quite composed when she goes on board the Cuba, but
she has been crying a good deal in the early hours of morning. She
feels, now that the parting has come, how much Thornton Carey has
cheered up and helped her through the anguish of her own bereavement;
and now that all the excitement is over, her womanly heart has a touch
of pity in it for the doomed wretch they have so effectually punished.
But that is a weakness which she dares not betray to Thornton Carey,
and which indeed she very soon gets over.

Thornton has seen to all the comforts of her state room--for Mrs.
Jenkins is travelling 'like a lady,' and is not in the least likely to
disgrace the character, as she is reticent and unassuming always--and
has added to them many a little 'surprise,' which will bring tears of
gladness to her eyes when she shall find them out; and they are now
standing side by side in the saloon, waiting, with the dreary mingling
of dread and impatience which characterises all scenes of parting, for
the signal 'for shore.'

'What shall I say for you to Mrs. Griswold?' she asks, with her hand
in his.

'What shall you say? Have I not given you a thousand messages to Mrs.
Griswold?'

'You have,' she answered, and yet she looked at him with such a look
as might have shone in his mother's eyes, 'and I will not ask you for
another. But I will say this to you as my parting words--and you must
forgive me, Mr. Carey, and think me not too bold--see your year out in
England, and then come home _for your reward!_'

She pressed his hand, close, close, and clung to him, as a mother
might cling to a son, for a minute or two, and he spoke no word, but
stooped over her, and kissed her on the forehead; and then the signal
was given 'for shore,' and they parted.


--------------------


A NOTE BY THE AUTHOR.

The story which I have here narrated is not original. I hasten to avow
it, lest I should be detected, and obliged to confess the fact. It is
one of those truths which look like fiction, only because they are so
truly true. I am indebted for the 'heads' from which I have
constructed it to Thornton S. Carey, the well-known merchant and
_millionnaire_ of New York, U.S.A., whose acquaintance, together with
his charming wife, formerly Mrs. Helen Griswold, and his if possible
more charming stepdaughter, I had the privilege of forming, last fall,
at Saratoga Springs.




THE END.




LONDON:
ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.











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