“It was a dark one. I’m sure it was a dark one, but colors are not much in my line. I know she looked well—they can tell you about it at the house. All that I distinctly remember is the veil she had wound so tightly around her face and hat to keep the rice out of her hair that I could not get one glimpse of her features. All nonsense that veil, especially when I had promised not to address her or even to touch her in the cab. And she wore it into the office. If it had not been for that I might have foreseen her intention in time to prevent it.”
“Perhaps she knew that.”
“It looks as if she did.”
“Which means that she was meditating flight from the first.”
“From the time she saw that man,” Mr. Ransom corrected.
“Just so; from the time she left her uncle’s house. Your wife is a woman of means, I believe.”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
“Why unfortunately?”
“It makes her independent and offers a lure to irresponsible wretches like him.”
“Her fortune is large, then?”
“Very large; larger than my own.”
Every one knew Mr. Ransom to be a millionaire.
“Left her by her father?”
“No, by some great-uncle, I believe, who made his fortune in the Klondike.”
“And entirely under her own control?”
“Entirely so.”
“Who is her man of business?”
“Edward Harper, of—Wall Street.”
“He’s your man. He’ll know sooner or later where she is.”
“Yes, but later won’t do. I must know tonight; or, if that is impossible, tomorrow. Were it not for the mortification it would cause her I should beg you to put on all your force and ransack the city for this bride of five hours. But such publicity is too shocking. I should like to give her a day to reconsider her treatment of me. She cannot mean to leave me for good. She has too much self-respect; to say nothing of her very positive and not to be questioned affection for myself.”
The detective looked thoughtful. The problem had its difficulties.
“Are those hers?” he asked at last, pointing to the two trunks he saw standing against the wall.
“Yes. I had them brought up, in the hope that she had slipped away on some foolish errand or other and would yet come back.”
“By their heft I judge them to be full; how about her hand-bag?”
“She had only a small bag and an umbrella. They are both here.”
“How’s that?”
“The colored boy took them at the door. She went away with nothing in her hands.”
Gerridge glanced at the bag Mr. Ransom had pointed out, fingered it, then asked the young husband to open it.
He did so. The usual articles and indispensable adjuncts of a nice woman’s toilet met their eyes. Also a pocketbook containing considerable money and a case holding more than one valuable jewel.
The eyes of the officer and manager met in ill disguised alarm.
“She must have been under the most violent excitement to slip away without these,” suggested the former. “I’d better be at work. Give me two hours,” were his parting words to Mr. Ransom. “By that time I’ll either be back or telephone you. You had better stay here; she may return. Though I don’t think that likely,” he muttered as he passed the manager.
At the door he stopped. “You can’t tell me the color of that veil?”
“No.”
“Look about the room, sir. There’s lots of colors in the furniture and hangings. Don’t you see one somewhere that reminds you of her veil or even of her dress?”
The miserable bridegroom looked up from the bag into which he was still staring and, glancing slowly around him, finally pointed at a chair upholstered in brown and impulsively said:
“The veil was like that; I remember now. Brown, isn’t it? a dark brown?”
“Yes. And the dress?”
“I can’t tell you a thing about the dress. But her gloves—I remember something about them. They were so tight they gaped open at the wrist. Her hands looked quite disfigured. I wondered that so sensible a woman should buy gloves at least two sizes too small for her. I think she was ashamed of them herself, for she tried to hide them after she saw me looking.”
“This was in the cab?”
“Yes.”
“Where you didn’t speak a word?”
“Not a word.”
“Though she seemed so very much cut up?”
“No, she didn’t seem cut up; only tired.”
“How tired?”
“She sat with her head pressed against the side of the cab.”
“And a little turned away?”
“Yes.”
“As if she shrank from you?”
“A little so.”
“Did she brighten when the carriage stopped?”
“She started upright.”
“Did you help her out?”
“No, I had promised not to touch her.”
“She jumped out after you?”
“Yes.”
“And never spoke?”
“Not a word.”
Gerridge opened the door, motioned for the manager to follow, and, once in the hall, remarked to that gentleman:
“I should like to see the boy who took her bag and was with them when she slipped away.”
CHAPTER II
THE LADY IN NUMBER THREE
The boy was soon found and proved to be more observing in matters of dress than Mr. Ransom. He described with apparent accuracy both the color and cut of the garments worn by the lady who had flitted away so mysteriously. The former was brown, all brown; and the latter was of the tailor-made variety, very natty and becoming. “What you would call ‘swell,’” was the comment, “if her walk hadn’t spoiled the hang of it. How she did walk! Her shoes must have hurt her most uncommon. I never did see any one hobble so.”
“How’s that? She hobbled, and her husband didn’t notice it?”
“Oh, he had hurried on ahead. She was behind him, and she walked like this.”
The pantomime was highly expressive.
“That’s a point,” muttered Gerridge. Then with a sharp look at the boy: “Where were you that you didn’t notice her when she slipped off?”
“Oh, but I did, sir. I was waiting for the clerk to give me the key, when I saw her step back from the gentleman’s side and, looking quickly round to see if any one was noticing her, slide off into the reception-room. I thought she wanted a drink of water out of the pitcher on the center-table, but if she did, she didn’t come back after she had got it. None of us ever saw her again.”
“Did you follow Mr. Ransom when he walked through those rooms?”
“No, sir; I stayed in the hall.”
“Did the lady hobble when she slid thus mysteriously out of sight?”
“A little. Not so much as when she came in. But she wasn’t at her ease, sir. Her shoes were certainly too small.”
“I think I will take a peep at those rooms now,” Gerridge remarked to the manager.
Mr. Loomis bowed, and together they crossed the office to the reception-room door. The diagram of this portion of the hotel will give you an idea of these connecting rooms.
There are three of them, as you will see, all reception-rooms. Mr. Ransom had passed through them all in looking for his wife. In No. 1 he found several ladies sitting and standing, all strangers. He encountered no one in No. 2, and in No. 3 just one person, a lady in street costume evidently waiting for someone. To this lady he had addressed himself, asking if she had seen any one pass that way the moment before. Her reply was a decided “No”; that she had been waiting in that same room for several minutes and had seen no one. This staggered him. It was as if his wife had dissolved into thin air. True, she might have eluded him by slipping out into the hall by means of door two at the moment he entered door one; and alert to this possibility, he hastened back into the hall to look for her. But she was now
here visible, nor had she been observed leaving the building by the man stationed at entrance A. But there was another exit, that of B. Had she gone out that way? Mr. Ransom had taken pains to inquire and had been assured by the man in charge that no lady had left by that door during the last ten minutes. This he had insisted on, and when Mr. Loomis and the detective came in their turn to question him on this point he insisted on it again. The mystery seemed complete—at least to the manager. But the detective was not quite satisfied. He asked the man if at any time that day, before or after Mrs. Ransom’s disappearance, he had swung the door open for a lady who walked lame. The answer was decisive. “Yes; one who walked as if her shoes were tight.”
“When?”
“Oh a little while after the gentleman asked his questions.”
“Was she dressed in brown?”
That he didn’t know. He didn’t look at ladies’ dresses unless they were something special.
“But she walked lame and she came from Room 3?”
Yes. He remembered that much.
Gerridge, with a nod to the manager, stepped into the open compartment of the whirling door. “I’m off,” said he. “Expect to hear from me in two hours.”
At twenty minutes to ten Mr. Ransom was called up on the telephone.
“One question, Mr. Ransom.”
“Hello, who are you?”
“Gerridge.”
“All right, go ahead.”
“Did you see the face of the woman you spoke to in Room No. 3?”
“Of course. She was looking directly at me.”
“You remember it? Could identify it if you saw it again?”
“Yes; that is—”
“That’s all, good-by.”
The circuit was cut off.
Another intolerable wait. Then there came a knock on the door and Gerridge entered. He held a photograph in his hand which he had evidently taken from his pocket on his way up.
“Look at this,” said he. “Do you recognize the face?”
“The lady—”
“Just so; the one who said she had seen no one come into No. 3 on the first floor.”
Mr. Ransom’s expression of surprised inquiry was sufficient answer.
“Well, it’s a pity you didn’t look at her gloves instead of at her face. You might have had some dim idea of having seen them before. It was she who rode to the hotel with you; not your wife. The veil was wound around her face for a far deeper purpose than to ward off rice.”
Mr. Ransom staggered back against the table before which he had been standing. The blow was an overwhelming one.
“Who is this woman?” he demanded. “She came from Mr. Fulton’s house. More than that, from my wife’s room. What is her name and what did she mean by such an outrage?”
“Her name is Bella Burton, and she is your wife’s confidential maid. As for the meaning of this outrage, it will take more than two hours to ferret out that. I can only give you the single fact I’ve mentioned.”
“And Mrs. Ransom?”
“She left the house at the same moment you did; you and Miss Burton. Only she went by the basement door.”
“She? She?”
“Dressed in her maid’s clothes. Oh, you’ll have to hear worse things than that before we’re out of this muddle. If you won’t mind a bit of advice from a man of experience, I would suggest that you take things easy. It’s the only way.”
Shocked into silence by this cold-blooded philosophy, Mr. Ransom controlled both his anger and his humiliation; but he could not control his surprise.
“What does it mean?” he murmured to himself. “What does it all mean?”
CHAPTER III
“HE KNOWS THE WORD”
The next moment the doubt natural to the occasion asserted itself.
“How do you know all this? You state the impossible. Explain yourself.”
Gerridge was only too willing to do so.
“I have just come from Mr. Fulton’s house,” said he. “Inquiries there elicited the facts which have so startled you. Neither Mr. Fulton nor his wife meant to deceive you. They knew nothing, suspected nothing of what took place, and you have no cause to blame them. It was all a plot between the two women.”
“But how—why—”
“You see, I had a fact to go upon. You had noticed that your so-called bride’s gloves did not fit her; the boy below, that her shoes were so tight she hobbled. That set me thinking. A woman of Mrs. Ransom’s experience and judgment would not be apt to make a mistake in two such important particulars; which, taken with the veil and the promise she exacted from you not to address or touch her during your short ride to the hotel, led me to point my inquiries so that I soon found out that your wife had had the assistance of another woman in getting ready for her journey and that this woman was her own maid who had been with her for a long time, and had always given evidence of an especial attachment for her. Asking about this girl’s height and general appearance (for the possibility of a substitution was already in my mind), I found that she was of slight figure and good carriage, and that her age was not far removed from that of her young mistress. This made the substitution I have mentioned feasible, and when I was told that she was seen taking her hat and bonnet into the bride’s room, and, though not expected to leave till the next morning, had slid away from the house by the basement door at the same moment her mistress appeared on the front steps, my suspicions became so confirmed that I asked how this girl looked, in the hope that you would be able to recognize her, through the description, as the woman you had seen sitting in Reception-room No. 3. But to my surprise, Mrs. Fulton had what was better than any description, the girl’s picture. This has simplified matters very much. By it you have been able to identify the woman who attempted to mislead you in the reception-room, and I the person who rode here with you from Mr. Fulton’s house. Wasn’t she dressed in brown? Didn’t you notice a similarity in her appearance to that of the very lady you were then seeking?”
“I did not observe. Her face was all I saw. She was looking directly at me as I stepped into the room.”
“I see. She had taken off her veil and trusted to your attention being caught by her strange features—as it was. But that dress was brown; I’m sure of it. She was the very woman. Otherwise the mystery is impenetrable. A deep plot, Mr. Ransom; one that should prove to you that Mrs. Ransom’s motive in leaving you was of a very serious character. Do you wish that motive probed to the bottom? I cannot do it without publicity. Are you willing to incur that publicity?”
“I must.” Mr. Ransom had risen in great excitement. “Nothing can hide the fact that my bride left me on our wedding-day. It only remains now to show that she did it under an influence which robbed her of her own will; an influence from which she shrank even while succumbing to it. I can show her no greater kindness, and I am not afraid of the result. I have perfect confidence in her integrity”—he hesitated, then added with strong conviction—“and in her love.”
The detective hid his surprise. He could not understand this confidence. But then he knew nothing of the memories which lay back of it. Not to him could this grievously humiliated and disappointed man reveal the secrets of a courtship which had fixed his heart on this one woman, and aroused in him such trust that even this uncalled-for outrage to his pride and affection had not been able to shake it. Such secrets are sacred; but the reflection of his trust was strong on his face as he repeated:
“Perfect confidence, Mr. Gerridge. Whatever may have drawn Mrs. Ransom from my side, it was not lack of affection, or any doubt of my sincerity or undivided attachment to herself.”
The detective may not have been entirely convinced on the first point, but he was discretion itself, and responded quite cheerfully with an emphatic:
“Very well. You still want me to find her. I will do my best, sir; but first, cannot you help me with a suggestion or two?”
“I?”
“There must be some clew to so sudden a freak on the part
of a young and beautiful woman, who, I have taken pains to learn, has not only a clean record but a reputation for good sense. The Fultons cannot supply it. She has lived a seemingly open and happy life in their house, and the mystery is as great to them as to you. But you, as her lover and now her husband, must have been favored with confidences not given to others. Cannot you recall one likely to put us on the right track? Some fact prior to the events of today, I mean; some fact connected with her past life; before she went to live with the Fultons?”
“No. Yet let me think; let me think.” Mr. Ransom dropped his face into his hands and sat for a moment silent. When he looked up again, the detective perceived that the affair was hopeless so far as he was concerned. “No,” he repeated, this time with unmistakable emphasis, “she has always appeared buoyant and untrammeled. But then I have only known her six months.”
“Tell me her history so far as you know it. What do you know of her life previous to your meeting her?”
“It was a very simple one. She had a country bringing up, having been born in a small village in Connecticut. She was one of three children and the only one who has survived; her sister, who was her twin, died when she was a small child, and a brother some five years ago. Her fortune was willed her, as I have already told you, by a great-uncle. It is entirely in her own hands. Left an orphan early, she lived first with her brother; then when he died, with one relative after another, till lastly she settled down with the Fultons. I know of no secret in her life, no entanglement, not even of any prior engagements. Yet that man with the twisted jaw was not unknown to her, and if he is a relative, as she said, you should have no difficulty in locating him.”
“I have a man on his track,” Gerridge replied. “And one on the girl’s too; I mean, of course, Bela Burton’s. They will report here up to twelve o’clock tonight. It is now half-past eleven. We should hear from one or the other soon.”
“And my wife?”
“A description of the clothing she wore has gone out. We may hear from it. But I doubt if we do tonight unless she has rejoined her maid or the man with a scar. Somehow I think she will join the girl. But it’s hard to tell yet.”
Mr. Ransom could hardly control his impatience. “And I must sit helpless here!” he exclaimed. “I who have so much at stake!”
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 144