New Name

by Grace Livingston Hill

  But the girl thought about it all day long. Could not getaway from that bit of news in the society column. Was Murray really missing? What had become of him? Didn’t they really know where he was? Could he be in a hospital unconscious somewhere? Oughtn’t she perhaps to do something about it? What could she do? By night she had fully decided that she would do something.

  Chapter 22

  The first thing she did about it was to stop at a public telephone on her way home and call up her mother to tell her she might be delayed a few minutes with some extra work, and not to worry. Then with a heart that beat twice as quickly as it usually did, she turned the pages of the telephone book rapidly and found the Van Rensselaer number.

  Ordinarily she would have consulted her mother before taking as decided a step as this, but something told her that her mother’s sense of protection toward her would bias her judgment in this matter. She was a girl who prayed a great deal, and had great faith in prayer. She had been quietly praying all day long in her heart for guidance in this matter, and she believed she was doing the right thing. No need to trouble her mother with it yet. She would tell her before long, of course, but Mother might be alarmed and think she was more troubled than she really was, so she decided notto tell her yet. Besides, this was something that must be done at once if it really was necessary to do at all. She was going to find out.

  The ring was answered promptly enough, evidently by a house servant.

  No, Mr. Murray Van Rensselaer was not in. No, he was not at home. No, they could not tell her just when he would be at home, nor where she could reach him by phone.

  There was a pause. She found her heart beating very wildly indeed. It seemed as though it would choke her. Then it was true! They really did not know where he was! But this was only a servant. Probably he would not know. She ought to get one of the family. After all, what had she to tell that would do them any good if they really were looking for him? Only that he had had an automobile accident and had disappeared from the hospital. Would that do them any good? Could they trace him from there if he had been injured?

  The thought of Murray alone, delirious, perhaps, in a hospital, and his mother worrying, if such mothers ever worried, set her fluttering voice to going again.

  “May I speak to Mrs. Van Rensselaer?”

  “Mrs. Van Rensselaer will be dressing now,” said the impersonal voice of the butler. “We don’t disturb her when she’s dressing unless it’s for something very important.”

  “This is most important!” said Elizabeth firmly. She had started it; now she would see it through.

  “Wait a minute. I’ll put you on the other phone, and you cantalk to the maid.”

  She heard a click, and a voice with a French accent answered her.

  “Mrs. Van Rensselaer is having a shampoo and a wave now. Could you leave a message?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Bessie desperately. “Do you think she could see me if I stopped by in about half an hour? Just for five minutes?”

  “She might,” said the maid. “You’d have to be very brief; she’s giffing a dinner tonight. She’ll not haf mooch time.”

  “I’ll be brief,” said the girl with relief in her voice.

  “Who shall I say called?”

  “Oh, Miss Chapparelle. But she won’t know me.”

  Bessie was waiting in a small reception room to the right of the front door when the maid came down and eyed her from head to foot appraisingly. She was sorry she had not waited to dress instead of coming straight up from the office.

  “Mrs. Van Rensselaer says she don’t know you. Who are you?”

  Bessie’s cheeks were burning. Now that she was here, she felt that she had intruded, and yet her conscience would not let her run away with her errand uncompleted. She stood her ground with her gravest little manner of self-respecting confidence.

  “She would not know me.” She smiled. “I’m only a neighbor who used to know Murray when we were children. I had something to tell her I felt she perhaps would be glad to know.”

  “Are you an agent? Because she won’t see agents.”

  “Mercy, no!” said Bessie, smiling. “Tell her I won’t keep her a moment. I would send a message if I could—but—I think I ought to speak with her.”

  The merciless eye of the maid gave her one more searching look and sped away up the stairs again. A slight movement in a great room like a library across the wide, beautiful hall drew the girl’s attention, as if someone were over there listening. Perhaps it was Murray. Perhaps she was making a fool of herself. But it was too late now. She must see this thing through. It was always wrong to do a big thing like this on impulse. She ought to have talked it over with her mother first. But she had prayed! And it had seemed so right, so impossible not to do it. Well, the maid was coming back.

  “Madame says she can’t see you. She says she has no time to listen to complaints from the girls that hang on to her son. She says she remembers you now. You’re the girl she sent him away from to boarding school to get rid of years ago!”

  “That will do, Marie!” said the stern voice of the master of the house. “You may go back to Mrs. Van Rensselaer!”

  The maid gave a frightened glance behind her and sped away up the stairs in a hurry. The occasions were seldom when the master interfered with his wife’s servants, but when he did, he did it thoroughly. Marie had no wish to incur his disfavor. Who could know the master was in that room?

  Mr. Van Rensselaer came out from the shadow of the dimly lit doorway and approached Bessie, eyeing her keenly.

  “You had something to say about my son?” he asked in a courteous tone.

  Bessie lifted eyes that were bright with unshed tears of wrath and mortification, but she answered firmly and with a tone of dignity: “Yes, Mr. Van Rensselaer. Will you tell me, is it true that your son is away and you do not know where he is?”

  The father gave her a startled look.

  “Why should you ask that?”

  “Because I happened to read an article in the paper this morning that implied that. If it is not true, just tell me, and I will go about my own affairs. I did not want to come here. I thought I ought to.”

  “But if it were true, why should that interest you?”

  “Because I was there at the time of the accident.” She spoke in a low clear voice, very haughtily, her manner quite aloof. “I thought perhaps you might not know.”

  “Accident?” he said sharply. “Step into this room, please, won’t you? We shall not be disturbed in here.”

  He drew a deep, luxurious chair for her before a softly flickering fire and turned on the electric light, looking keenly into her face.

  “Now, will you first tell me who you are?”

  Bessie was quite herself again. She was resolved to tell her story clearly in every detail as quickly as possible and then leave this dreadful house, forever, she hoped. How awful that she should be mixed up in a thing like this and be so misunderstood.

  “I am Elizabeth Chapparelle, from the next street. Our houseis just behind yours. I used sometimes to play with Murray when we were little children. We were in the same classes in school for a while.”

  “I see,” said the father, studying her speaking face. “Could that possibly be your kitchen window that I can see from the back of the house?”

  “Probably.” Bessie was in no mood to discuss the relative position of their houses. “I had not seen your son for several years, until the day of the accident.”

  The father started sharply now and came to attention.

  “Will you tell it to me in detail just as it happened, please?” he asked. “Begin when you met him, and tell me everything.”

  Bessie noticed that he had not said whether he knew of the accident or not. He wanted to get every detail from her without letting her know anything. Well, that was all she wanted, too.

  “I was standing on the corner of the avenue waiting for the trolley at two o’clock, three weeks ago today. I noticed a ca
r coming down the avenue and was admiring it. I did not see who was driving it until Murray stopped the car and spoke to me. I had not seen him for years before then.”

  An alert movement of the father showed that he was giving all attention.

  “The traffic was congested, and the policeman wanted him to move on, so he asked me to get in and let him take me to wherever I was going. There was no time to hesitate, so I got in, not intending to go but a block or two till I could be polite andmake him let me out. The car seemed to go pretty fast—” She hesitated and looked troubled, as if she thought she were at fault for being in the car at all.

  “It does,” said Mr. Van Rensselaer dryly. “It has a habit of going fast.”

  Elizabeth lifted troubled eyes to find a shadow of a twinkle in the eyes that met hers. She hurried on:

  “I told him I was going to the library, but he asked me to take a spin in the park, just a few minutes, to talk over old school days. He did not really wait for me to say whether I would. He just went—”

  She was quite the most conscientious girl the father had met in thirty-five years. He wondered where she was brought up. He wondered if it could be genuine.

  “Then when I said I must go back, he asked me if I would just stop at a shop and help him pick out a gift for a friend. Of course I consented. It was on our way from Grevet’s to the library that the truck ran into us. We were overturned.”

  “Murray was hurt?” There was a sharp ring of pain in the father’s tone, the first evidence of anxiety he had shown.

  “I don’t know,” said Elizabeth. “I didn’t think so at first, because they said he took me to the hospital. But after I read that in the paper, I thought if he had really disappeared perhaps he was hurt, and was somewhere in a hospital unconscious, and I ought to tell somebody. They say he brought me to the hospital in a taxi, so his car must have been wrecked.”

  The father’s jaw hardened.

  “What became of him after he brought you to the hospital? Were you hurt?”

  “Not much, only shaken up, I guess, but I was some time coming to consciousness, and when they took me downstairs again they couldn’t find him. They said he had been very anxious and impatient to know how I was, so I supposed perhaps he had an appointment and had to go. I went home. I thought probably he would call up to know how I was, but when he didn’t, I decided he must have found out at the hospital that I was all right and hadn’t thought anything more of it.”

  “H’m! That would have been a very gentlemanly thing to do, of course, get a girl smashed up and then go off without finding out whether she was dead or alive! I’m sure I hope that’s not what my son did, but there’s no telling!”

  “Oh, we were not close at all, you know,” explained the girl. “It was seven years since I had seen him. It was just the ordinary acquaintance of schoolmates.”

  “I can’t see that that alters the discourtesy. But go on.”

  “Why, that’s all,” said the girl, suddenly feeling as if she had been very foolish indeed to come. “I—just thought—if you didn’t know where he was—that perhaps I was the last one who had seen him, and you would want to make some inquiries if you knew there had been an accident. But of course it was foolish. You probably know all about him, and I beg you won’t say anything to him about me. I’m sorry I have troubled you. I’m always doingsomething impulsive! I hope you will pardon my intrusion—” She turned quickly toward the door with an odd little look of sweet dignity. She felt she was almost on the verge of tears and must get away quickly, or she would break down right here before him.

  “Wait a minute!” said the man sharply. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Oh, please, it doesn’t matter,” she said with her hand on the doorknob.

  “Excuse me, it does matter. I might want to ask some more questions. You’ve guessed right about Murray; I don’t know where he is. I am taking it for granted that he will turn up all right, as he usually does, but at the same time there may be something in what you have suggested, and I’ll look around and make sure. In the meantime, may I ask you to keep this just between ourselves?”

  “Certainly,” said the girl.

  “And—I wouldn’t try to see Mrs. Van Rensselaer again—she’s—rather excitable—”

  “I certainly shall not!” said Elizabeth, her cheeks growing very red at the remembrance of the insult.

  “And I’m sorry that you had to endure such impudence from that cat of a maid. She’s insufferable!”

  “That doesn’t—matter—” She turned toward the door again, wishing she were out on the sidewalk now in the cool air. Her heart was beating so fast again, and she was sure she was going to cry!

  Perhaps the dewy look about her eyes gave warning of this, for the man suddenly changed his tone toward her:

  “Look here, young lady, don’t take this thing too seriously. You’ve done an awfully sporty thing, coming here to tell me this, after the way that young rascal of a son of mine treated you. There’s just a chance that you may be right, and he is unconscious in a hospital somewhere. I shall leave no stone unturned, of course, to make sure. But in the meanwhile we’ll keep this thing quiet. Now please give me your name. I’ll keep it to myself, understand, and I won’t let the kid know you’ve been here either, if you don’t want me to. Chapparelle, you say, Elizabeth Chapparelle? Your father living? I used to know a man in business by that name, but that’s a good many years ago. Fine chap he was, too.”

  “My father has been dead a good many years,” said Elizabeth with a delicate withdrawal in her voice.

  “You live on Maplewood Avenue? What number? You won’t mind if I drop in perhaps, to ask you a few more questions, in case anything turns up?”

  “Of course,” said Elizabeth.

  “By the way, what was the name of that hospital? And about what time did the accident occur? You understand, you know, that we’re going to keep this out of the papers. And by the way, who else knows all this?”

  “Nobody but my mother.”

  “Your mother?” There was speculation in the tone, a rising inflection.

  “You needn’t be afraid of my mother!” she said haughtily. “She was quite annoyed with me for having gotten into the car at all, and she is terrified at what might have happened.”

  “Too bad!” said the father with sudden sympathy. “I’m sorry you’ve had all this trouble. Wait! I’m going to ring for my car and send you around.”

  “Indeed, no!” said the girl firmly. “I should much prefer to walk. It’s only a step anyway.”

  He opened the door for her himself and thanked her again most cordially, and she gave him a faint fleeting smile in acknowledgment.

  He stood for a moment watching her walk away in the darkness. There was a sweet girl! Why couldn’t Murray get her for a friend, instead of smashing her up! Just like Murray to lose his head over a countess and a dance-hall favorite and let a peach of a girl blossom at his feet and never notice her! Oh well, life was a disappointment anyway, whichever way you turned. Now here was Murray! What a bitter disappointment he was! Just when he might have been a comfort. Of course there was a slight possibility of his being injured somehow, but if he had been able to take a girl to the hospital, he couldn’t have been very badly off. No, he was probably off with the fellows somewhere having a good time, or off with his countess or his latest fancy! What a son! But he must do his duty as a father anyway. So Murray’s new car was wrecked! That was probably the reason Murray did not come home. He was waiting till his father’s fury should blow over. Of course the car was covered by insurance, but what kind of a thing was that to do, wreck a new car all to bits the first week!

  So he called up the Blakely Hospital first, and it being about the same hour as the accident, he got the same stiff-arched nurse with double lenses who had been on duty at the desk that day.

  “Yes, sir, I was here when they came in. Yes, I remember him. Kind of a snob he was. Good-looking. They always are lookers when the
y’re that way, but looks aren’t everything. He thought he owned the earth. Said his name was Van something, as if that made any difference here! What’s that? Yes, I guess it was Van Rensselaer. One of those millionaire families that think they come of a different race from the rest of us. Oh yes, I remember him. He pranced around here and got upset because we couldn’t stop the whole hospital for his benefit. And then he got mad and left before his girl came down after all. Yes, she was a pretty little thing. No, I don’t know what the doctor said about her. I guess she was pretty bad at first. They mighta thought she was going to die. I don’t know. But they took her home, and I guess she’s all right. No, I didn’t see the young man go out. There was another patient come in to get a wound dressed, and about that time the nurse come down to report on the case, but she had to call the police station first about a drunk they had brought in, and when she went to say the girl was coming round all right, the young fella was gone.”

  The father thanked her and hung up. He sat thoughtfully for a few minutes in his big chair, trying to work it all out. Then he picked up the telephone again and went the rounds of the hospitals, but found no trace of any patient in any of them whofit the description of his son. After more thought he even called up the countess, and a few of the other various stars and favorites, without giving his name of course, but each of them professed not to have seen Murray. So that was that! Of course, if Murray was in hiding, he wouldn’t have let anybody find him, and they would be in league with him. Well!

  So he called up a very extra-secret detective, a private one, who frequented fashionable haunts, and was one of the crowd, knew everybody, and was known, but not in his secret capacity except to a few.

  “That you, Eddie? Well, I want you to hunt up Murray. He’s off somewhere. Just found out he had a wreck with his new car. Guess he’s lying low till it blows over. We had a few words about some bills the other day, and he got upset. But something has come up I want him to sign. You just look around and get hold of him. Tell him I won’t say anything about the car or the bills. Tell him I’m in need of him. Get me, Eddie? All right. Let me hear from you as early as convenient, even if it’s in the night. The business is important and immediate. All right, Eddie. You understand.”