VIII
THE AXTON LETTERS
The sounds in her dressing-room had waked her just before five. Ethel Waldron could still see, when she closed her eyes, every single, sharp detail of her room as it was that instant she sprang up in bed, with the cry that had given the alarm, and switched on the electric light. Instantly the man had shut the door; but as she sat, strained, staring at it to reopen, the hands and dial of her clock standing on the mantel beside the door, had fixed themselves upon her retina like the painted dial of a jeweler’s dummy. It could have been barely five, therefore, when Howard Axton, after his first swift rush in her defense had found the window which had been forced open; had picked up the queer Turkish dagger which he found broken on the sill, and, crying to the girl not to call the police, as it was surely “the same man”—the same man, he meant, who had so inexplicably followed him around the world—had rushed to his room for extra cartridges for his revolver and run out into the cold sleet of the March morning.
So it was now an hour or more since Howard had run after the man, revolver in hand; and he had not reappeared or telephoned or sent any word at all of his safety. And however much Howard’s life in wild lands had accustomed him to seek redress outside the law, hers still held the city-bred impulse to appeal to the police. She turned from her nervous pacing at the window and seized the telephone from its hook; but at the sound of the operator’s voice she remembered again Howard’s injunction that the man, whenever he appeared, was to be left solely to him, and dropped the receiver without answering. But she resented fiercely the advantage he held over her which must oblige her, she knew, to obey him. He had told her frankly—threatened her, indeed—that if there was the slightest publicity given to his homecoming to marry her, or any further notoriety made of the attending circumstances, he would surely leave her.
At the rehearsal of this threat she straightened and threw the superfluous dressing gown from her shoulders with a proud, defiant gesture. She was a straight, almost tall girl, with the figure of a more youthful Diana and with features as fair and flawless as any younger Hera, and in addition a great depth of blue in very direct eyes and a crowning glory of thick, golden hair. She was barely twenty-two. And she was not used to having any man show a sense of advantage over her, much less threaten her, as Howard had done. So, in that impulse of defiance, she was reaching again for the telephone she had just dropped, when she saw through the fog outside the window the man she was waiting for—a tall, alert figure hastening toward the house.
She ran downstairs rapidly and herself opened the door to him, a fresh flush of defiance flooding over her. Whether she resented it because this man, whom she did not love but must marry, could appear more the assured and perfect gentleman without collar, or scarf, and with his clothes and boots spattered with mud and rain, than any of her other friends could ever appear; or whether it was merely the confident, insolent smile of his full lips behind his small, close-clipped mustache, she could not tell. At any rate she motioned him into the library without speaking; but when they were alone and she had closed the door, she burst upon him.
“Well, Howard? Well? Well, Howard?” breathlessly.
“Then you have not sent any word to the police, Ethel?”
“I was about to—the moment you came. But—I have not—yet,” she had to confess.
“Or to that—” he checked the epithet that was on his lips—” your friend Caryl?”
She flushed, and shook her head.
He drew his revolver, “broke” it, ejecting the cartridges carelessly upon the table, and threw himself wearily into a chair. “I’m glad to see you understand that this has not been the sort of affair for anyone else to interfere in!”
“Has been, you mean;” the girl’s face went white; “you—you caught him this time and—and killed him, Howard?”
“Killed him, Ethel?” the man laughed, but observed her more carefully. “Of course I haven’t killed him—or even caught him. But I’ve made myself sure, at last, that he’s the same fellow that’s been trying to make a fool of me all this year—that’s been after me, as I wrote you. And if you remember my letters, even you—I mean even a girl brought up in a city ought to see how it’s a matter of honor with me now to settle with him alone!”
“If he is merely trying to ‘make a fool of you,’ as you say—yes, Howard,” the girl returned hotly. “But from what you yourself have told me of him, you know he must be keeping after you for some serious reason! Yes; you know it! I can see it! You can’t deny it!”
“Ethel—what do you mean by that?”
“I mean that, if you do not think that the man who has been following you from Calcutta to Cape Town, to Chicago, means more than a joke for you to settle for yourself; anyway, I know that the man who has now twice gone through the things in my room, is something for me to go to the police about!”
“And have the papers flaring the family scandal again?” the man returned. “I admit, Ethel,” he conceded, carefully calculating the sharpness of his second sting before he delivered it, “that if you or I could call in the police without setting the whole pack of papers upon us again, I’d be glad to do it, if only to please you. But I told you, before I came back, that if there was to be any more airing of the family affairs at all, I could not come; so if you want to press the point now, of course I can leave you,” he gave the very slightest but most suggestive glance about the rich, luxurious furnishings of the great room, “in possession.”
“You know I can’t let you do that!” the girl flushed scarlet. “But neither can you prevent me from making the private inquiry I spoke of for myself! “She went to the side of the room and, in his plain hearing, took down the telephone and called a number without having to look it up.
“Mr. Caryl, please,” she said. “Oh, Henry, is it you? You can take me to your—Mr. Trant, wasn’t that the name—as soon as you can now.… Yes; I want you to come here. I will have my brougham. Immediately!” And still without another word or even a glance at Axton, she brushed by him and ran up the stairs to her room.
He had made no effort to prevent her telephoning; and she wondered at it, even as, in the same impetus of reckless anger, she swept up the scattered letters and papers on her writing desk, and put on her things to go out. But on her way downstairs she stopped suddenly. The curl of his cigarette smoke through the open library door showed that he was waiting just inside it. He meant to speak to her before she went out. Perhaps he was even glad to have Caryl come in order that he might speak his say in the presence of both of them. Suddenly his tobacco’s sharp, distinctive odor sickened her. She turned about, ran upstairs again and fled, almost headlong, down the rear stairs and out the servants’ door to the alley.
The dull, gray fog, which was thickening as the morning advanced, veiled her and made her unrecognizable except at a very few feet; but at the end of the alley, she shrank instinctively from the glance of the men passing until she made out a hurrying form of a man taller even than Axton and much broader. She sprang toward it with a shiver of relief as she saw Henry Caryl’s light hair and recognized his even, open features.
“Ethel!” he caught her, gasping his surprise. “You here? Why—”
“Don’t go to the house!” She led him the opposite way. “There is a cab stand at the corner. Get one there and take me—take me to this Mr. Trant. I will tell you everything. The man came again last night. Auntie is sick in bed from it. Howard still says it is his affair and will do nothing. I had to come to you.”
Caryl steadied her against a house-wall an instant; ran to the corner for a cab and, returning with it, half lifted her into it.
Forty minutes later he led her into Trant’s reception-room in the First National Bank Building; and recognizing the abrupt, decisive tones of the psychologist in conversation in the inner office, Caryl went to the door and knocked sharply.
“I beg your pardon, but�
�can you possibly postpone what you are doing, Mr. Trant?” he questioned quickly as the door opened and he faced the sturdy and energetic form of the red-haired young psychologist who, in six months, had made himself admittedly the chief consultant in Chicago on criminal cases. “My name is Caryl. Henry Howell introduced me to you last week at the club. But I am not presuming upon that for this interruption. I and—my friend need your help badly, Mr. Trant, and immediately. I mean, if we can not speak with you now, we may be interrupted—unpleasantly.”
Caryl had moved, as he spoke, to hide the girl behind him from the sight of the man in the inner office, who, Caryl had seen, was a police officer. Trant noted this and also that Caryl had carefully refrained from mentioning the girl’s name.
“I can postpone this present business, Mr. Caryl,” the psychologist replied quietly. He closed the door, but reopened it almost instantly. His official visitor had left through the entrance directly into the hall; the two young clients came into the inner room.
“This is Mr. Trant, Ethel,” Caryl spoke to the girl a little nervously as she took a seat. “And, Mr. Trant, this is Miss Waldron. I have brought her to tell you of a mysterious man who has been pursuing Howard Axton about the world, and who, since Axton came home to her house two weeks ago, has been threatening her.”
“Axton—Axton!” the psychologist repeated the name which Caryl had spoken, as if assured that Trant must recognize it. “Ah! Of course, Howard Axton is the son!” he frankly admitted his clearing recollection and his comprehension of how the face of the girl had seemed familiar. “Then you,” he addressed her directly, “are Miss Waldron, of Drexel Boulevard?”
“Yes; I am that Miss Waldron, Mr. Trant,” the girl replied, flushing red to her lips, but raising her head proudly and meeting his eyes directly. “The step-daughter—the daughter of the second wife of Mr. Nimrod Axton. It was my mother, Mr. Trant, who was the cause of Mrs. Anna Axton getting a divorce and the complete custody of her son from Mr. Axton twenty years ago. It was my mother who, just before Mr. Nimrod Axton’s death last year, required that, in the will, the son—the first Mrs. Axton was then dead—should be cut off absolutely and entirely, without a cent, and that Mr. Axton’s entire estate be put in trust for her—my mother. So, since you doubtless remember the reopening of all this again six months ago when my mother, too, died, I am now the sole heir and legatee of the Axton properties of upwards of sixty millions, they tell me. Yes; I am that Miss Waldron, Mr. Trant!”
“I recall the accounts, but only vaguely—from the death of Mr. Axton and, later, of the second Mrs. Axton, your mother, Miss Waldron,” Trant replied, quietly, “though I remember the comment upon the disposition of the estate both times. It was from the pictures published of you and the accompanying comment in the papers only a week or two ago that I recognized you. I mean, of course, the recent comments upon the son, Mr. Howard Axton, whom you have mentioned, who has come home at last to contest the will.”
“You do Miss Waldron an injustice—all the papers have been doing her a great injustice, Mr. Trant, Caryl corrected quickly. “Mr. Axton has not come to contest the will.”
“No?”
“No. Miss Waldron has had him come home, at her own several times repeated request, so that she may turn over to him, as completely as possible, the whole of his father’s estate! If you can recall, in any detail, the provisions of Mr. Axton’s will, you will appreciate, I believe, why we have preferred to let the other impression go uncorrected. For the second Mrs. Axton so carefully and completely cut off all possibility of any of the property being transferred in any form to the son, that Miss Waldron, when she went to a lawyer to see how she could transfer it to Howard Axton, as soon as she had come into the estate, found that her mother’s lawyers had provided against every possibility except that of the heir marrying the disinherited son. So she sent for him, offering to establish him into his estate, even at that cost.”
“You mean that you offered to marry him?” Trant questioned the girl directly again. “And he has come to gain his estate in that way?”
“Yes, Mr. Trant; but you must be fair to Mr. Axton also,” the girl replied. “When I first wrote him, almost a year ago, he refused point blank to consider such an offer. In spite of my repeated letters it was not till six weeks ago, after a shipwreck in which he lost his friend who had been traveling with him for some years, that he would consent even to come home. Even now I—I remain the one urging the marriage.”
The psychologist looked at the girl keenly and questioningly.
“I need scarcely say how little urging he would need, entirely apart from the property,” Caryl flushed, “if he were not gentleman enough to appreciate—partly, at least—Miss Waldron’s position. I—her friends, I mean, Mr. Trant—have admitted that he appeared at first well enough in every way to permit the possibility of her marrying him if she considers that her duty. But now, this mystery has come up about the man who has been following him—the man who appeared again only this morning in Miss Waldron’s room and went through her papers—”
“And Mr. Axton cannot account for it?” the psychologist helped him.
“Axton won’t tell her or anybody else who the man is or why he follows him. On the contrary, he has opposed in every possible way every inquiry or search made for the man, except such as he chooses to make for himself. Only this morning he made a threat against Miss Waldron if she attempted to summon the police and ‘take the man out of his hands’; and it is because I am sure that he will follow us here to prevent her consulting you—when he finds that she has come here—that I asked you to see us at once.”
“Leave the details of his appearance this morning to the last then,” Trant requested abruptly, “and tell me where you first heard of this man following Mr. Axton, and how? How, for instance, do you know he was following him, if Mr. Axton is so reticent about the affair?”
“That is one of the strange things about it, Mr. Trant “—the girl took from her bosom the bundle of letters she had taken from her room—“he used to write to amuse me with him, as you can see here. I told you I wrote Mr. Axton about a year ago to come home and he refused to consider it. But afterwards he always wrote in reply to my letters in the half-serious, friendly way you shall see. These four letters I brought you are almost entirely taken up with his adventures with the mysterious man. He wrote on typewriter, as you see”—she handed them over—“because on his travels he used to correspond regularly for some of the London syndicates.”
“London?”
“Yes; the first Mrs. Axton took Howard to England with her when he was scarcely seven, immediately after she got her divorce. He grew up there and abroad. This is his first return to America. I have arranged those letters, Mr. Trant,” she added as the psychologist was opening them for examination now, “in the order they came.”
I will read them that way then,” Trant said, and he glanced over the contents of the first hastily; it was postmarked at Cairo, Egypt, some ten months before. He then re-read more carefully this part of it:
But a strange and startling incident has happened since my last letter to you, Miss Waldron, which bothers me considerably. We are, as you will see by the letter paper, at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo, but could not, after our usual custom, get communicating rooms. It was after midnight, and the million noises of this babel-town had finally died into a hot and breathless stillness. I had been writing letters, and when through I put out the lights to get rid of their heat, lighted instead the small night lamp I carry with me, and still partly dressed threw myself upon the bed, without, however, any idea of going to sleep before undressing. As I lay there I heard distinctly soft footsteps come down the corridor on which my room opens and stop apparently in front of the door. They were not, I judged, the footsteps of a European, for the walker was either barefooted or wore soft sandals. I turned my head toward the door, expecting a knock, but none followed. Neither did the door op
en, though I had not yet locked it. I was on the point of rising to see what was wanted, when it occurred to me that it was probably not at my door that the steps had stopped but at the door directly opposite, across the corridor. Without doubt my opposite neighbor had merely returned to his room and his footsteps had ceased to reach my ears when he entered and closed his door behind him. I dozed off. But half an hour later, as nearly as I can estimate it, I awoke and was thinking of the necessity for getting undressed and into bed, when a slight—a very slight rustling noise attracted my attention. I listened intently to locate the direction of the sound and determine whether it was inside the room or out of it, and then heard in connection with it a slighter and more regular sound which could be nothing else than breathing. Some living creature, Miss Waldron, was in my room. The sounds came from the direction of the table by the window. I turned my head as silently as I was able, and was aware that a man was holding a sheet of paper under the light of the lamp. He was at the table going through the papers in my writing desk. But the very slight noise I had made in turning on the bed had warned him. He rose, with a hissing intake of the breath, his feet pattered softly and swiftly across the floor, my door creaked under his hand, and he was gone before I could jump from the bed and intercept him. I ran out into the hallway, but it was empty. I listened, but could hear no movement in any of the rooms near me. I went back and examined the writing desk, but found nothing missing; and it was plain nothing had been touched except some of my letters from you. But, before finally going to bed, you may well believe, I locked my door carefully; and in the morning I reported the matter to the hotel office. The only description I could give of the intruder was that he had certainly worn a turban, and one even larger it seemed to me than ordinary. The hotel attendants had seen no one coming from or entering my corridor that night who answered this description. The turban and the absence of European shoes, of course, determined him to have been an Egyptian, Turk or Arab. But what Egyptian, Turk or Arab could have entered my room with any other object than robbery—which was certainly not the aim of my intruder, for the valuables in the writing desk were untouched. That same afternoon, it is true, I had had an altercation amounting almost to a quarrel with a Bedouin Arab on my way back from Heliopolis; but if this were he, why should he have taken revenge on my writing desk instead of on me? And what reason on earth can any follower of the Prophet have had for examining with such particular attention my letters from you? It was so decidedly a strange thing that I have taken all this space to tell it to you—one of the strangest sort of things I’ve had in all my knocking about; and Lawler can make no more of it than I.”
The Mystery & Suspense Novella Page 40