I didn't sleep until near daybreak, and was aroused at nine o'clock by Flynn, who appeared at the door in his chauffeur's togs, carrying a tray.
"The wife didn't come back, sorr, but I made coffee and toast. Sorry to waken you, but I'm takin' the new car into the city."
I sat up and rubbed my eyes.
"Who's going to the city?" I demanded.
"The ladies is goin' at once, sorr. They sent orders an hour ago to be ready with the new machine. Orders was to take my bag; it looks like I'd be gone the night. I'm late and you'll have to excuse me, sorr."
I sprang out of bed and plied him with questions, most of which he was unable to answer. I did, however, extract from him the information that nothing had occurred after I retired for the night that could have alarmed the women at the residence and prompted this abrupt departure. There was no reason why Alice shouldn't run to town if it pleased her to do so, and yet it was odd that she hadn't mentioned the matter. Flynn hurried away, and from the window I followed the car's course to the house, and a moment later caught a glimpse of it on its way to the gates.
I was shaving when Antoine appeared, pale from the stirring incidents of the night.
"I suppose you know, sir," he said, straightening the coffee-pot on the tray in an attempt to conceal his emotions.
"When did you first hear that the ladies meant to leave to-day?" I shouted with a flourish of the razor. "If you knew it last night and didn't tell me——"
"I heard it, incidental-like, at breakfast this morning. There was a night letter, sir, read by the agent at Barton to the mistress quite early, sir. I can't tell you what it was, sir."
"Did they seem alarmed or depressed; was there anything to indicate whether they had bad news?"
"They seemed quite merry over it, sir. But you know their goings-on, which I never understand, sir. For all I know it may be a death in the family; you'd never tell it from their actions. You will pardon me for remarking it again, sir; but, considering that they're ladies, their actions and goings-on is most peculiar."
"As to luggage, I hope you had the intelligence to note whether they went for a long stay?"
"Only the suitcases that fits into the rack of the machine. Louise thought they might be going for a week, maybe."
This was all I got out of him. Mrs. Bashford and Mrs. Farnsworth had flown, giving no hint of the length of their absence. They had slipped away and left me with a prisoner that I didn't know what to do with; with an inquiry by the American Department of State hanging over me; with Torrence to reckon with, and, in general, a muddled head that only a vast number of lucid explanations could restore to sanity.
I called from the window to one of the gardeners who knew how to manage a machine and told him to be ready to drive me to the village in half an hour. There was an express at ten-forty, and by taking it I would at least have the satisfaction of being somewhere in New York when the runaways arrived. Antoine packed my suitcase; I am not sure that he didn't shed tears on my belongings. The old fellow was awed into silence by the rapidity with which history had been made in the past twenty-four hours, and clearly was not pleased by my desertion.
We drove past the tool-house, where I found the prisoner seated on a wheelbarrow smoking a cigarette. He was no more communicative than when I had questioned him after his capture. He smiled in a bored fashion when I asked if he wanted anything, and said he would be obliged for cigarettes and reading-matter. He volunteered nothing as to his identity, and the guards said that a thorough search of the captive's clothing had disclosed nothing incriminating. He had three hundred dollars in currency (this was to cover Elsie's bribe money, I conjectured), a handkerchief, a cigarette-case, and a box of matches. I directed that he be well fed and given all the reading-matter he wanted, and hurried on to catch my train.
The futility of my errand struck me hard as I felt the city surging round me. Without a clew to work on, I was utterly unlikely to find the two women, and even if I should stumble upon them, in what way could I explain my conduct in following them? I was visited also by the discouraging thought that New York might not, after all, be their destination.
Flynn was a capable but cautious driver, and they would hardly reach town before five o'clock. I took a room at the Thackeray Club and pondered carefully whether, in spite of my misgivings, I hadn't better see Torrence and tell him all that had happened since his call on Mrs. Bashford. If there was any chance of doing the wrong thing in any matter not prescribed in the laws governing the administration of estates, he would be sure to do it; but I was far from satisfied with the results of my own management of affairs at Barton. I finally called up the trust company and learned that Torrence was in Albany attending the trial of a will case and might not be in town for a couple of days. His secretary said he had instructions to wire my daily report to Albany. I told him there had been no developments at Barton, and went out and walked the Avenue. Inquiries at hotels large and small occupied me until seven o'clock. No one had heard of a Mrs. Bashford or a Mrs. Farnsworth. My inspection of the occupants of several thousand automobiles proved equally fruitless. I ate a lonely dinner at the club and resumed my search. Hanging about theatre doors, staring at the crowd, is not a dignified occupation, and by nine o'clock, having seen the most belated theatre-goers vanish, I was tired and footsore. The flaming sign of Searles's "Who Killed Cock Robin?" over the door of the "As You Like It" caught my eye. I bought a seat—the last in the rack—and squeezed into my place in the middle of the last row. As I had seen the piece at least a dozen times, its novelty was gone for me, but the laughter of the delighted audience was cheering. The first act was reaching its culmination, and I watched it with a glow of pride in Searles and his skilful craftsmanship.
As the curtain fell and the lights went up amid murmurs of pleasure and expectancy, I glanced across the rows of heads with awakened interest. "Who Killed Cock Robin?" had been praised with such unanimity that if Alice were in any playhouse that night I was as likely to see her in the "As You Like It" as anywhere.
The half-turned face of a man three rows in front of me suddenly caught my attention. There was something curiously familiar in his outlines and the gesture with which, at the moment, he was drawing his handkerchief across his forehead. I judged that he too had come late, for he now removed his topcoat and thrust his hat under the seat. It was Montani—beyond any question Montani—and I instinctively shrank in my seat and lifted my programme as he turned round and swiftly surveyed the rows behind him.
I watched his black head intently until I remembered the superstition that by staring at a person in a public place you can make him look at you. Montani knew a great many things I wanted to know, but I must have time to adjust myself to the shock of his propinquity. I satisfied myself that he was alone and as he continued to mop his face I judged that he had arrived in some haste. The house now took note of a stirring in one of the boxes. There was an excited buzz as the tall form and unmistakable features of Cecil Arrowsmith, the English actor, were recognized. I had read that day of his arrival in New York. With him were two women. My breath came hard and I clutched the iron frame of the seat in front of me so violently that its occupant turned and glared.
The trio settled into their places quickly, but not before I had satisfied myself that Arrowsmith's companions were Alice and Mrs. Farnsworth. As they fell into animated talk I saw that Alice was in her gayest humor. The distinguished tragedian seemed greatly amused by what she was saying to him.
"Must be members of Arrowsmith's company," one of my neighbors remarked. "They open in two weeks in Shakespearian repertoire."
Montani had half risen, the better to focus an opera-glass on the box. The gong solemnly announced the second act, and Alice moved her chair to face the stage. Once more Montani scanned the party with his glass. As the lights faded Alice, with the pretty languorous gesture I so well remembered, opened her fan—the fan of ostrich plumes, that became a blur of white that held my eye through the dusk after the curtain rose.
Alice, Montani, and the fan! To this combination I had now to add the new element introduced into the situation by the apparent familiar acquaintance of Alice and Mrs. Farnsworth with Cecil Arrowsmith. And yet, as the play proceeded on its swift-moving course, I reasoned that there was nothing extraordinary in their knowing the eminent actor. He had long been a personage in England and had lately been knighted. Their appearance with him at the theatre really disposed of the idea that they might be impostors. The presence of Arrowsmith had put zest into the company, and I hadn't seen a better performance of Searles's play. The trio in the box joined in the prolonged applause at the end of the act.
As they resumed their talk Alice, it seemed, was relating something of moment for Arrowsmith's benefit, referring now and then to Mrs. Farnsworth as though for corroboration. The scene in the box was almost as interesting as any in the play, and the audience watched with deep absorption. Alice, the least self-conscious of mortals, was, I knew, utterly unaware of the curious gaze of the house; whatever she was saying with an occasional gesture of her gloved hands or a shrug of her shoulders possessed her completely. I thought she might be telling Arrowsmith of her adventures at Barton; but the length of her narrative was against this, and Arrowsmith's attitude was more that of a critic appealed to for an opinion than of a polite listener to a story. He nodded his head several times, and finally, as Alice, with a slight dip of the head and an outward movement of her arms, settled back in her chair, he patted his hands approvingly.
In my absorption I had forgotten Montani's existence, but as the third act began I saw that he had gone. Whether I should put myself in Alice's way as she left the theatre was still an undetermined question when the play ended. With Montani hanging about I felt a certain obligation to warn her that he had been watching her. I was among the first to leave, and in the foyer I met Forsythe, the house manager, who knew me as a friend of Searles.
"You notice that we're still turning 'em away," he remarked. "We don't have to worry about this piece; everybody who sees it sends his friends the next day. Searles hasn't looked in for some time; hope he's writing a new play?"
"He's West visiting his folks. Don't know when he'll be back," I answered. "I must write him that Sir Cecil Arrowsmith enjoyed 'Who Killed Cock Robin?' just as much as common mortals."
Forsythe had paused at the box-office, and in my uncertainty I stuck to him as the crowd began to surge by.
Arrowsmith's approach was advertised by the peculiar type of tall hat that he affected, and the departing audience made way for him, or hung back to stare. At his left were Alice and Mrs. Farnsworth, and they must pass quite close to me. "Who Killed Cock Robin?" was a satisfying play that sent audiences away with lightened hearts and smiling faces, and the trio were no exception to the rule.
Listening inattentively to Forsythe, I was planning to join Alice when the trio should reach me. She saw me; there was a fleeting flash of recognition in her eyes, and then she turned toward Arrowsmith. She drew nearer; her gaze met mine squarely, but now without a sign to indicate that she had ever seen me before. She passed on, talking with greatest animation to Arrowsmith.
"Well, remember me to Searles if you write him," I heard Forsythe saying. I clutched his arm as he opened the office door.
"Who are those women?" I demanded.
"You may search me! I see you have a good eye. That girl's rather nice to look at!"
Crowding my way to the open, I blocked the path of orderly, sane citizens awaiting their machines until a policeman pushed me aside. Alice I saw for a bewildering instant, framed in the window of a big limousine that rolled away up-town.
I had been snubbed! No snub had ever been delivered more deliberately, with a nicer calculation of effect, than that administered to me by Alice Bashford—a girl with whom, until a moment before, I had believed myself on terms of cordial comradeship. She had cut me; Alice who had asked me at the very beginning of our acquaintance to call her by her first name—Alice had cut me without the quiver of a lash.
I walked to the Thackeray and settled myself in a dark corner of the reading-room, thoroughly bruised in spirit. In my resentment I meditated flying to Ohio to join Searles, always my chief resource in trouble. Affairs at Barton might go to the devil. If Alice and her companion wanted to get rid of me, I would not be sorry to be relieved of the responsibility I had assumed in trying to protect them. With rising fury I reflected that by the time they had shaken off Montani and got rid of the prisoner in the tool-house they would think better of me.
"Telephone call, sir."
I followed the boy to the booth in a rage that any one should disturb my gloomy reflections.
"Mr. Singleton? Oh! This is Alice speaking——"
I clutched the shelf for support. Not only was it Alice speaking, but in the kindest voice imaginable. My anger passed, but my amazement at Alice and all her ways blinded me. If she had suddenly stepped through the wall, my surprise could not have been greater.
"You told me the Thackeray was your usual refuge in town, so I thought I'd try it. Are you very, very cross? I'm sorry, really I am—Bob!"
The "Bob" was added lingeringly, propitiatingly. Huddled in the booth, I doubted my senses—wondering indeed whether Alice hadn't a double—even whether I hadn't dreamed everything that had occurred at Barton.
"I wanted to speak to you ever so much at the theatre, but I couldn't very well without introducing you to Sir Cecil, and I wasn't ready to do that. It might have caused complications."
If anything could have multiplied the existing complications, I was anxious to know what they were; but her voice was so gentle, so wholly amiable, that I restrained an impulse to demand explanations.
"Are you on earth or are you speaking from paradise?" I asked.
"Oh, we're in a very nice house, Constance and I; and we're just about having a little supper. I wish you were here, but that can't be arranged. No; really it can't! We shall be motoring back to Barton to-morrow and hope you can join us. Let us have luncheon and motor up together."
When I suggested that I call for them she laughed gayly.
"That would be telling things! And we mustn't spoil everything when everything is going so beautifully."
Remembering the man I had locked up in the tool-house and the explanations I should have to make sooner or later to the unimaginative Torrence, I wasn't wholly convinced of the general beauty of the prospect.
"Montani was in the theatre," I suggested.
Her laughter rippled merrily over the wire. "Oh, he tried to follow us in a taxi! We had a great time throwing him off in the park. I'm not sure he isn't sitting on the curb right now watching the house ungraciously."
"You have the fan with you; Montani jumped right out of his seat when you opened it in the theatre."
This she received with more laughter; Montani amused her immensely, she said. She wasn't in the least afraid of him. Returning to the matter of the luncheon, she suggested the Tyringham.
"You know, I want very much to see Mr. Bashford's old home and the place all our veteran retainers came from. At one?—yes. Good night!" ...
Alice and Mrs. Farnsworth reached the Tyringham on time to the minute. As I had spent the morning on a bench in the park, analyzing my problems, I found their good humor a trifle jarring.
"You don't seem a bit glad to see us," Alice complained as she drew off her gloves. "How can any one be anything but happy after seeing that delicious 'Cock Robin'! It is so deliciously droll."
"I haven't," I remarked with an attempt at severity, "quite your knack of ignoring disagreeable facts. There was Montani right in front of me, jumping like a jack-in-the-box every time you flourished your fan. There's that fellow we've got locked up at Barton——"
"Just hear the man, Constance!" she interrupted with her adorable laugh. "We were thinking that he was beginning to see things our way, the only true way, the jolly way, and here he cometh like a melancholy Jaques! We'll have none of it!"
"We must confess," said Mrs. Farnsworth conciliatingly, "that Mr. Singleton is passing through a severe trial. We precipitated ourselves upon him without warning, and immediately involved him in a mesh of mystery. His imagination must have time to adjust itself."
"Ah, the imagination!" sighed Alice with her wistful smile. "How little patience the world has with anything but the soberest facts! Why should we bother about that lunatic Montani or the gentleman immured in the tool-house? I couldn't introduce you to Sir Cecil without anticipating the end of our story; and I want you to keep wondering and wondering about us. It's all so jolly! I love it all! And really you wouldn't spoil it, Bob! It's dreadful to spoil things."
They were spoiling my appetite; I was perfectly aware of that. I had ordered the best luncheon I knew how to compose, and they were doing full justice to it; but I was acting, I knew, like a resentful boy.
"I love you that way," said Alice as I stared vacantly at my plate. "But you really are not making yourself disagreeable to us—really he is not, Constance!"
Mrs. Farnsworth affirmed this. I knew that I was merely being rude, and the consciousness of this was not uplifting. At the luncheon hour the influx of shoppers gives the Tyringham a cheery tone, and all about us were people apparently conversing sanely and happily. The appearance of Uncle Bash's ghost in the familiar dining-room would have been a welcome diversion. I was speculating as to just what he would say about his widow and the whole mess at Barton when Mrs. Farnsworth addressed me pleadingly.
"If you knew that we want you to play with us only a few days longer—three days, shall we say, Alice?—if you knew that then we'll untangle everything, wouldn't you be nice—very nice?"
In spite of myself I couldn't resist this appeal. I was more and more impressed by the fineness, the charm of Mrs. Farnsworth. When she dropped the make-believe foolishness in which she indulged quite as amusingly as Alice, she appeared to be a very sensible person. The humor danced in her eyes now, but her glance was more than an appeal; it was a command.
"If you knew that our troubles are not at all the troubles you're thinking about, but very different——"
"Please pardon me!" I muttered humbly, and wished that Alice were not so bewitching in a sailor hat. It may have been the hat or only Mrs. Farnsworth's pleading tone that brought me to a friendlier attitude toward the universe and its visible inhabitants. The crowd thinned out, but we lingered, talking of all manner of things.
"We must come in again very soon," said Alice. "And next time we shan't run away, which was very naughty. I suppose when you begin a story you just have to keep it going or it will die on your hands. That's the way with our story, you know. Of course it's unkind to mystify you: but you are in the story just as we are."
My mystification was certainly deep enough without this suggestion that I was a mere character in a tale whose awkward beginning aroused only the gravest apprehensions as to the conclusion. She looked at her watch and continued:
"I'm so absurd—really I am, in ever so many ways, that no one would ever put me in a book. Every one would say no such person ever existed! It's incredible! And so I have to pretend I'm in a story all the time. It's the only way I can keep happy. And so many people are in my story now, not only Montani and the poor fellow locked up at Barton—oh, what if he should escape! Constance, it would be splendid if he should escape!"
"I don't think it would be splendid if he escaped!" I exclaimed, sitting up very straight at the bare thought of such a calamity. "He would either kill me or sue me for damages."
"Oh, that wouldn't fit into the story at all! Murder and damages are so frightfully sordid and generally disagreeable. We must have nothing like that in our story."
"You didn't finish your enumeration of characters," I suggested. "Is my part an important one or am I only a lay figure?"
"My dear boy," cried Mrs. Farnsworth, "you are the hero! You have been the hero from the hour the story began. If you should desert us now, whatever should we do!"
"If I'm the hero," I replied in her own key, "I shall begin making love to Alice at once."
Alice, far from being disturbed by my declaration, nodded her head approvingly.
"Oh, we had expected that! But you needn't be in a hurry. In a story like this one, that runs right on from day to day, we must leave a lot to chance. And there are ever so many chances——"
"Not all on the side of failure, I hope?"
"We must be going." She laughed. I wished she hadn't that characteristic little turn of the head that was so beguiling!
Folly rode with us all the way to Barton. If anything sensible was uttered on the drive, I can't recall it. Our talk, chiefly of knights and ladies, and wild flights from imaginary enemies, had the effect of spurring Flynn to perilous spurts of speed.
"Flynn has caught the spirit!" cried Alice exultingly. "Haven't you, Flynn?"
Flynn, turning to confirm this, caused the car to swerve and graze a truck piled high with household goods.
"We may elude the pursuing knights," I suggested, "but some village constable may take it into his head to pinch us."
"Oh, that would be lovely," cried Alice. "And we'd telegraph dear Mr. Torrence to come and bail us out."
We reached Barton at nine o'clock and after an informal supper I listened to Antoine's solemn reports as I walked to the garage. The prisoner had made no sign, he said, and nothing had occurred during the day.
"But there's this, Mr. Singleton, which you ought to know, sir. The old Tyringham people don't like the goings on here. You'll admit it's all mighty queer. I don't complain, sir, but some of the boys threatens to leave, sir. And I look at it this way, that nobody understanding what the spying and bribes offered and taking prisoners is all about, is most peculiar. We got to know where we stand, that's what it's come to, sir. And the widow being flighty-like and Flynn coming home and saying nothing, but shaking his head when we ask him where he's been—You see for yourself, sir, how it looks to us."
What he said as to the general aspect of things was true, but I didn't admit that it was true. Alice had converted me to the notion that I was a character in a story, a plaything of fate, and I lightly brushed aside Antoine's melancholy plaint.
"Any man of you," I said, "who leaves this property will be brought back and shot. Tell that to the boys!"
Nevertheless, the perfect equanimity of the gentleman in the tool-house when I visited him the next morning shook my faith a trifle in the story-book features of life at Barton. He was an exemplary prisoner, the guards reported, and he had maintained the strictest silence in my absence. He ate, smoked, and read, courteously thanking the men for their attentions, and that was all. When I showed myself at the window he rose and threw down the magazine he was reading and replied good-naturedly to my inquiry as to how he was getting along.
"I have no complaint except that the guards snore outrageously. The poor old chaps will sleep, you know."
"If you're so badly guarded, why don't you escape?" I asked tartly.
"It would relieve your mind a lot if I should disappear?" he asked insinuatingly.
"You are impertinent," I replied, irritated that he should have surmised that his presence was causing me uneasiness. "If you will come to your senses and tell me the meaning of your visits here, we may agree upon terms. As it stands, you're a trespasser; you tried to bribe a servant to rob the house. If you're at all familiar with criminal law in this country, you can estimate the number of years' imprisonment that will be handed you for these little indiscretions."
"If it's all so plain, why don't you hand me over to the authorities?" he asked, provokingly cool.
"I'm giving you a chance to confess and tell who's back of all this. Tell me just why your confederate Montani is annoying Mrs. Bashford, and I'll turn you loose."
"Perhaps, my dear sir, the motive that impels you to detain me unlawfully is the same that enjoins silence upon me! Please consider that a little."
I replied that I would consider nothing short of a confession. In a match of wits he was fully my equal, and in the mastery of his temper he certainly had the best of me.
"If you wait for me to confess anything, you will wait forever," he replied. "I repeat that we are impelled by the same motives, you and I. I think I needn't enlighten you as to what they are."
"I shall be glad to hear your idea of my motives," I answered feebly.
"I shall be frank," he replied readily. "The reason you don't turn me over to the police is the very simple one that you don't want to embarrass the mistress of the house yonder by causing the light of publicity to beat upon her very charming head. You wish to save her annoyance, and possibly something much graver. I can see that you are impressed; but it ought to please you to know that I share your feeling of delicacy where she is concerned. And let me add that the Count Montani is animated by like feeling. So there we are, exactly on the same ground!"
"You haven't answered my questions!" I blustered to hide my annoyance at being thrust further into the dark. "You don't understand Mrs. Bashford," I went on hurriedly. "It is inconceivable that any one should wish to injure her or that she could have committed any act that would cause her to be spied upon. She's tremendously imaginative; she indulges in little fancies that are a part of her charm!"
"Little fancies!" he repeated, hiding a yawn. "It's deplorable for a pretty woman to have an imagination; there's danger there!"
"Your philosophy bores me," I said, and left him. He had lied about the snoring of the guards—Antoine satisfied me of that—but I gave instructions to double the watch.