“No, sir, his clown make-up was perfect. The only thing I would recognize would be his slicked-back black hair and hundreds of men have hair like that.”
She went on without further interruption to the moment when she had been roused from semiconsciousness by a glare of light, followed by a voice shouting:
“Hey! See what I’ve found, fellas. Come here.”
As she talked she had been aware of the sound of scribbling pens and pencils; of an occasional off-stage phone ring; of the assenting nods of the presiding dignitary, of his twirling thumbs as he listened. He pulled a big book toward him.
“You have told a convincing story. Your name.”
The pencils stopped scribbling. It seemed to Cindy as if the walls had closed in to listen. She looked up at Ken Stewart.
“Cinderella Clinton,” she acknowledged in response to his affirmative nod. One of the reporters gave vent to a surprised whistle.
Now he will have something to write home about, she thought. He has me all tied up with that “marriage by proxy” which was publicized from coast to coast. Ken Stewart approached the desk.
“Doesn’t that fill the bill for tonight, Chief? Miss Clinton was dragged here, suspected of being a person she must have convinced you she isn’t, a mistake for which we will seek redress later. She is minus a shoe, is shaking with cold.” His voice was as frigid as she felt.
“Certainly, certainly. Don’t blame my men too much. They were working under orders. We’ve got to nab those auto thieves. They are thumbing their noses at us. You’ll have to admit it isn’t customary for a young lady like Miss Clinton to ride round the country rolled up in a rug in the back seat of a limousine. Case dismissed.”
When they reached the roadster Ken Stewart pulled a coat from the front seat and held it.
“Put this on. Sarah gave it to me. Drop that rug.”
“It should be returned to the owner.”
“I’ll attend to that. Sit in front. I have something to say to you.” As she hesitated he added, “Not about what you think. Get in. Stick out your feet while I put on your shoes.”
“How did you know I needed them?” she asked from the seat beside the wheel.
“We heard that Cinderella lost a slipper while racing away from the ball. There you are, shod again. All set? Let’s go.”
Dawn was breaking in a sky intensely blue, clear except for a low cloud bank on the eastern horizon. A rim of gold crowned its entire length. Above that a pink glow rose and slowly spread. One by one stars faded and disappeared. A lonely crow cawed in the distance. A frog croaked hoarsely from the faint glimmer of a pond. A breeze touched her hair lightly and sped on. Cindy put her hand to her head.
“I hadn’t realized it was gone. Somewhere I lost my white cap,” she explained, not that she cared, but to break a silence which was becoming unbearable.
“You wore it when you were on the porch with Slade and me.”
The porch. Skiddy ground.
“How did you know where to find me?” she asked hurriedly.
“We had a phone message from Slade. That is what I have to tell you.”
“Tom! I remember now. That sergeant said a convertible crashed. Was it his? He isn’t dead? That isn’t what you have to say to me, is it?” Her breath caught in a frightened sob.
“No. He isn’t dead. He isn’t seriously hurt. He was following a car in which he thought you had been kidnaped. A tire burst. He was going so fast that the convertible crashed off the road. When he roused from unconsciousness at the hospital he insisted upon getting in touch with Sarah Ann Parker. I happened to be at The Castle when the call came through. She was too frightened to speak. I took the message. The nurse relayed to me as he talked, he was too weak for his voice to carry.”
Cindy listened breathlessly as he repeated Tom Slade’s story. The sun rose from behind the cloud bank, a sudden dazzle of light, and touched the dark crouching tops of hills; cool, limpid surfaces of ponds shone like mirrors.
Shafts of sunrise sifting through the foliage of tall willows and stocky alders, sprinkled glinting pink sapphires on the purling water of a brook on its way to join a river. Glistening silver wires hummed as they swung from pole to pole. Heavy dew coating fields, trees and roadside shrubs sparkled like diamond dust. An oriole perched on his nest swinging from the tip of an oak branch poured out his heart in song.
“That is the story,” he concluded.
“Tom smashed up and I responsible. I just can’t bear it,” Cindy declared brokenly.
“Don’t blame yourself. The guy who stole the limousine is responsible.” He slowed the roadster to look up at a sign. “This is the road.”
“Not to The Castle. You’ve made the wrong turn.”
“I’m not going to The Castle — yet. This is the road to the hospital.”
“The hospital? You haven’t deceived me? Tom isn’t dy —”
“He is not dying. I told you he is not seriously injured, but he is so sure you are in danger, I thought if he could see you for a moment, hear your voice, his intolerable anxiety would be eased. Ready to be a good girl now and stop worrying?”
The tenderness of his voice sent a surge of tears to her eyes. Maddening when she detested the man. She couldn’t speak. She nodded.
“That being decided we’ll go on. Don't stay but a moment. Remember that I am waiting for you.”
In the corridor of the hospital redolent of disinfectant, she explained^ her presence to a white capped nurse.
“I am glad you have come, Miss Clinton. It has been difficult to keep Mr. Slade in bed, he has fought sleep, deliriously determined to start out to find you. He’s quiet at present. He finally let us take a red satin slipper he had been clutching. This way. Don’t stay but a few minutes. I will be outside the door.”
Cindy cleared her eyes of tears as she looked down at the man in the narrow bed. She touched his hand which lay like a model in red-bronze against the white sheet. His eyes opened. A flash of recognition irradiated his face. His fingers closed over hers.
“You’re safe, Cindy!”
“Safe and absolutely unhurt, Tom. I came so you would stop worrying about me and sleep.”
“I found that —” he moved his head in the direction of a stand beside the bed. “See it? Cinderella’s slipper — not glass — red satin. I’ll fit it to her foot — you remember about the Prince —” His eyes closed.
The nurse touched her sleeve.
“He’ll sleep now that he has seen you,” she said softly. “You’d better slip away.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“‘FAITH, the substance of things hoped for, The evidence of things to come.’”
Sonorously the blond young clergyman in his black robe announced his text from the high pulpit in the old church. The same pulpit from which countless men of God had proclaimed their belief in the invincibility of the Divine Spirit in man for decade after decade as the universe continued on its eternal rounds.
“Faith.” Cindy repeated the word to herself and lost the preacher’s elaboration of the quotation and his acknowledgment of its source. Faith. Without knowing anything of his past she had had unbounded faith in the man who had called himself Bill Damon and where had it landed her? Certainly there was no evidence of things she had hoped for from him. She had hoped, why not be honest with herself and admit it, she had hoped he would love her as she loved him. Now, in this aching sense of loss she was paying the inevitable purchase price of loving with heart and soul a man who didn’t love her, hadn’t wanted her — she must keep reminding herself — otherwise would he have allowed the annulment of the written contract marriage to go through without a protest? Love, how it tore at one’s heart.
That train of thought wouldn’t get her anywhere, it would land on a turntable and shoot her back where she started. She looked at the world visible beyond the long open window beside her. One could have faith in the rotation of the seasons, they never disappointed. August was showing definite signs of a
utumn; there was a new tang in the air. The portion of the sky visible from her seat in the old pew of the Clintons was cold and blue as a lump of turquoise. Maples flaming. Weeds in the garden were lagging. Baldwin apples in the orchard beside the church were showing rosy cheeks; the weight of luscious, juicy blackberries on the bushes along the bank of the brook beneath the window bent till the tips almost touched the rippling water. September on the threshold. What would the month bring?
“Faith, your fortress against fear.”
She shut out the confident voice from the pulpit and allowed her thoughts to drift. That shivery, unbelievable experience in the police court yesterday morning definitely belonged to August, that couldn’t happen again.
The weekly local newssheet had carried no account of it. Had Ken Stewart been able to suppress the report? He appeared to have unlimited influence. He had shown his billfold to the Chief at police headquarters and immediately the man’s attitude had changed. Her story had been listened to and believed.
Why live over that? Why anticipate September when she had a chill uncertainty as to what trap tomorrow might spring? Trouble was bound to break soon about the jewels in the turret room. Was it only two days ago she had discovered them? Was the theft of the limousine tied in with the gang which had hidden the loot? She had protested against leaving The Castle this morning but Sary had said Joe would be there —
Joe! “Brother Joe” who came from Grand Manan on a lobster deal. She had swallowed Sary’s yarn hook, line and sinker. Of course he was Bill Damon’s — Ken Stewart’s — man. Sary was missing her vocation. She should be doing character parts on the stage. Hadn’t Tom Slade seen Bill Damon in a shop with “a heavy-built guy who looked like a plain-clothes man”? A perfect description of Brother Joe. He rated an Oscar for acting. One couldn’t think of him as other than a lobster man from Grand Manan.
Tom. Another problem, life seemed beset with them. When she had phoned the hospital this morning his nurse had reported that he would be discharged soon. She remembered the sharp stab of her conscience as she left his room. She didn’t love Tom Slade, never could, she knew now, she should have told him before he came East this summer, but she had deceived herself with the thought that as she didn’t love anyone else, he was so fine that perhaps when she was free —
Free. The word brought the fierce emotional storm she had been holding back down on her spirit like a collapsing house. Why hadn’t she felt who Bill Damon was? That day at the beach the curious sense that he was not the person he claimed to be must have been instinct trying to get through a message to her brain.
Why, why hadn’t Ken Stewart during that interminable drive home from the hospital seized the opportunity to excuse himself for the deception? Excuse himself? Not he. Hadn’t he flung back at Lydia Fane in the voice of a man sure in his convictions, the voice of a fighter who would not admit defeat:
“Deny it? My dear woman, why should I? It is my name.”
She had been braced to combat any defense he might offer as the reason for his alias, had fought an inexplicable power that was drawing her head to his shoulder, an aching desire to feel his arms about her, his lips on hers. She could have spared herself the strain. After inquiring as to Tom Slade’s condition he had not spoken again until at the door of The Castle he had said:
“This is the second time I have rescued you, Cinderella. The third, if there is a third time, I shall consider findings keepings. Good night.”
What had he meant by that?
The nudge of Sarah Ann Parker’s sharp elbow brought her crashing back to the present.
“Sakes alive, Cindy, you asleep? Stand up. It’s the closing hymn.”
She rose quickly in response to the reminding whisper while the organ pealed a prelude.
“My Country ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of Liberty,
Of Thee I sing.”
The volume of voices rose and swelled to the accompaniment of the organ till the magic and music of the song filled every inch and crevice of the old church and set the air outside the open window vibrating.
“Protect us by Thy might,
Great God our King.”
As Cindy and she walked slowly down the center aisle Sarah Ann Parker indulged in a low-tone monologue, the black coque feather on her hat nodding with each emphatic word.
“That last hymn was rousin’, Cinderella. Congregations will go to town on that if they never sing anything else. Funny how the preachers keep on proddin’ folks to better living, more unselfish lives. With all the deviltry in the world you’d think they’d kinder lose faith in human nature, but they keep on believin’ in it, keep on fishing for the divine spark in man and after hearin’ that sermon I’m sold on the idea myself, I guess it’s in all of us.
“There’s that Mrs. Sally Drew from Rockledge dressed up to kill in aqua linen. She’s bowin’ and smirkin’ right and left. Looks like being invited to the Armstrongs’ to dinner kind of set her up. Alida Barclay near the big door is lookin’ at you, Cindy, as if she wanted to catch your eye. She’s stylish in that thin black rig but not so smart lookin’ as you all in white. Mr. Damon has joined her. I thought he was the kind of man who would come to church. Want to know somethin’? I wouldn’t be surprised if that turned out to be a match.”
“You mean a marriage? Mrs. Barclay is years older than he.”
“How do you know? Men keep awful young-looking these days.”
She let that go. She did know Ken Stewart was thirty-two. She turned her back on the woman and man near the door and hailed Hal Harding who stood on the upper step outside.
“Hi, Hal. Waiting for me?” Her cordial laughing greeting widened his eyes in surprise, deepened the color of his face.
“Sure I am waiting for you, Cinderella. Didn’t know if you would speak to me after we showed up your ex,” he admitted as they went down the steps together.
“You and Lyd got off on the wrong foot. It was not much of a show-up when I knew who he was all the time.”
“You really have nothing to forgive. The laugh is on us. We were knocked silly when he said he was Stewart. We planned for the boy to announce the name at midnight as a sort of Cinderella act, thinking to give you a start for a minute. Our joke was a boomerang. We had no idea that the name Bill Damon was an alias. Lyd put up a great bluff pretending she knew, but she was as flabbergasted as I.”
“It was a mean trick, Hal.”
“You are one hundred per cent right, sugar. I tried to find you in the supper room that night but you had disappeared. Now that we’re pals again, come to a steak party tomorrow at my playhouse at sunset, will you? I will invite a few congenial spirits. Nix on your ex, though. We’ll have a celebration. Don’t stiffen. Nothing to do with your freedom. Just an early autumn binge, the days are getting too short for many more.”
“I’ll come.”
“Hooray! Now I know we’re pals. Thought I would count in the tenant at Rockledge. Have you met her?”
“You’re slipping. Have you forgotten I was at the dinner the Armstrongs gave for her?'”
“Sure you were. Boy, am I losing my memory? Here comes Lyd Fane.” He waved to the girl approaching. “I wonder why she always wears green?”
“Thinks it matches her eyes, probably,” she answered his impatient question. “I must hustle. I have to drive Sarah Ann Parker home. Her brother is staying with us. He’s a lobster man from Grand Manan.”
“Her brother?”
“What’s so startling about that? Most women have a brother, haven’t they?”
“I wasn’t startled. I’ve thought of good old Sary as being the lone twig on the family tree. I’ll call for you in the speed runabout tomorrow at four-thirty so we can get an early start on the fun.”
“I’ll be ready and waiting. I’m keen for a real party. Life has been deadly dull lately.” Her response was unnecessarily loud, to make sure that Alida Barclay and Ken Stewart behind them didn’t miss her enthusiastic reply.
Tha
t’s a darned ungrateful remark, she told herself as she walked away. The gremlins will get you if you don’t watch out, Cinderella Clinton. You discover hidden jewels; make a smash hit at the masquerade with your skating act; discover that the man you’ve gone all out for is a person you hate; and get kidnaped all within two days. You couldn’t crowd much more into forty-eight hours.
*
Monday afternoon Cindy stopped at the door of the kitchen.
“Where you goin’ now?” Sarah Ann Parker inquired.
“You know. I told you this morning that Hal Harding is giving a steak party at his playhouse this afternoon and that I wouldn’t be here for dinner.”
“Hmp! That’s why you’re wearin’ that white silk shirtwaist dress an’ the light blue cardigan with C.C.S. on the pocket at this time of day. Better tie the bright kerchief drawn through your belt over your hair. Don’t stay late, child. After your experience Friday night I’m scared to have you off the place after dark. That reminds me,” she drew a square of paper from the pocket of her red print dress. “Most forgot to give it to you. When I was putting your great-grandmother’s skatin’ costume back in the trunk this morning I found this in the pocket. Sealed so careful thought it might be a love letter. Time you was having them, child.”
“A love letter?” Cindy ignored Sary’s affectionate chuckle and turned over and over the folded paper fastened at one edge with Scotch tape. “You found this in the pocket of that red skirt? My name isn’t on it.”
“’Twas in the same pocket with your mask. Funny you didn’t know it was there. You were havin’ such a good time I guess you forgot someone gave it to you.”
Had one of her unrecognized partners slipped it into her pocket while they were dancing? Why not give it to her? Queer. Perhaps it was tied up with the cache of jewels in the turret room. The thought set her heart drumming like a partridge on a log. Sary mustn’t get an inkling of that suspicion till she had found out what it was. She tucked the folded paper into a pocket of her light blue cardigan and laughed.
“I was having a good time and I did forget someone gave it to me. Perhaps it is the question I was to ask at an Information Please quiz that was to follow supper at the masquerade. Something happened to wreck the plan.” You’re getting to be a slick prevaricator, my girl, she told herself before she added aloud, “I’m off.”
To Love and to Honour Page 19