CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE BLACKMAILER BAFFLED.
Mr. Finley had left Pansy and sought his home again in a tempest of fury and baffled cupidity, realizing fully that his scheme of blackmailing her would not succeed, and that he must look elsewhere for booty.
Pansy’s dauntless bravery and defiance had certainly staggered his bold courage, and he began to fear that he was not going to receive such a windfall as he had expected from Pansy’s secret. Having a dangerous secret of his own, which would be sure to come to light if he proceeded openly against her, he found himself in a quandary.
“The plucky little wretch! Who would have believed that she would openly defy me, and deny her identity? Why, she would have handed me over to that policeman in another moment if I hadn’t cut and run,” he exclaimed angrily, feeling that he would like to shake the little beauty for her bold defiance.
He slept but little that night for thinking about her, and the next day he came to the conclusion that, of all those concerned in the drama in which he was so cleverly enacting the villain’s part, there was no chance of blackmailing any but Colonel Falconer.
“He is rich and will pay liberally for the keeping of the secret I hold against his wife,” he decided, and then he set his cunning brain to work to devise a plan by which to approach Colonel Falconer on the delicate subject of his wife.
Poor little Mrs. Finley, whom he had long ago reduced to the status of a trembling, obedient slave, looked at him in wonder as he lounged about the house, paying no attention to the grocery, for he had long ago placed Willie in his store as a clerk, and the youth was very reliable. She thought fearfully:
“There is something brewing in his cunning mind. Has he found out that I have been seeing my poor little grandchild by stealth, and is he planning some punishment for me?”
She trembled at the thought, for she knew that he was both cunning and vindictive. He ruled her and her children with a rod of iron.
He had never forgotten or forgiven the assertion of his wife, that she would never have married him if she had known that he would not care for her children, and he made her and them suffer for it in various ways. One of his favorite methods was to taunt them with the disgrace that Pansy had brought upon them, and another was to keep alive in Willie’s breast the fierce resentment and murderous wrath that had taken hold of him when he first learned that his beautiful sister had gone astray.
Left to himself and to the remorseful pleadings of his mother, the young man might have got over some of his anger, more especially as poor Pansy had atoned for her fault with her life. There were times when the remembrance of her message to him, her pitiful promise that she would never disgrace him again, stung keenly, and forced him to accuse himself of being accessory to her death; but these moods never lasted long, for whenever Mr. Finley found these kinder impulses taking root in the youth’s mind he would dispel them by maliciously hinting that, in all probability, Pansy was yet alive, and might turn up at any time to recall to the world the scandal that had trailed its slime over the name of Laurens.
“Pretty Kate North would not smile so sweetly then when she saw you waiting at the church door on Sundays,” he suggested, with a leer that brought the hot color to Willie’s cheeks, for this, his first real love affair, was a very tender point with him, and he had often wondered to himself if pretty little Kate North, with her black eyes and dimpled red cheeks, thought any the less of him because of the family disgrace.
His love for Kate made him all the more bitter in his thoughts toward Pansy.
“How dared she disgrace the family so? I hate her memory, even though believing her dead and if I knew she were alive I should be tempted to carry out my threat, and shoot her on sight,” he replied angrily to the taunt of his stepfather that day on which Mr. Finley’s mind was so engaged in plotting the best means by which to extort money from Colonel Falconer for keeping the dark secret of his wife’s past.
He did not know that his malice had overreached itself, and that the fury smoldering in Willie’s impetuous mind, and fanned into flame by his sneers and gibes, would bear fruit to disappoint him of all his avaricious hopes.
Willie was almost twenty now, with an overstrained sense of honor, sharpened in intensity by his sister’s fault. He was sensitively alive to the disgrace that rested on the family name, and had brooded over it until he had grown morbid. His handsome young face remained dark and cloudy after Mr. Finley went out, and his thoughts were so absorbed that he could scarcely wait upon the customers who came in and out of the neat store.
“Strange that he is always suggesting the thought that Pansy may be alive, after all. Perhaps he knows more than he chooses to tell,” he muttered. And the thought wore on him so that he went to the corner of a shelf, where his stepfather kept a private bottle, and took a drink of brandy to steady his shaking nerves.
Then, from a case in a hiding place of his own he took a small pistol and examined it with gloomy eyes.
“It is all right,” he muttered hoarsely; then, at the sound of a step entering the store, he replaced it hurriedly, and turned around, to face Mr. North, the father of the girl he loved.
“Good afternoon, Mr. North. What can I do for you?” he inquired politely.
Mr. North was only a clerk, but he was inordinately proud and ambitious, and his face darkened with anger as he returned brusquely:
“I want a few words with you, young man. My wife tells me that you have been paying some attention to my daughter Kate?”
“Ye-es, Mr. North,” Willie stammered, with a boyish flush, adding anxiously: “I trust you have no objection to my love for her?”
“Nonsense! You are nothing but a boy,” replied Mr. North curtly, and the handsome young face before him deepened in color at the taunt; but he answered, in a manly way:
“I am almost twenty, and my stepfather has promised to give me a partnership in the store when I am twenty-one. My prospects are fair.”
“I care nothing for your prospects! It is your family I object to,” was the brusque, startling reply. Then, as if ashamed of the taunt, Mr. North went on, more gently: “I am sorry to wound your feelings, Willie; I believe you are a good boy, in the main, although it was said at one time that you were dissipated and wild. Still, you had an excuse for that—the same excuse that I have in forbidding your attentions to my daughter.”
“Mr. North!”
“I said that I forbade any more attentions to Kate. When she marries, it must be one with a stainless family record. Your sister’s fault has disgraced her family, and may do so even more terribly, for there are many who doubt that she was ever drowned, and she may reappear at any time.”
“Mr. North, are there any grounds for this belief?” the poor fellow asked hoarsely.
“A face like hers has been seen several times in Richmond lately. Some of the factory girls believe that they saw her yesterday as they came from work. She is always richly dressed, and it must be that she is leading a life of gilded shame in this city.”
A hoarse groan came from the stricken young man’s lips; then, with flashing eyes, he exclaimed:
“Then she is running a terrible risk, for only let me find her, and I will send a bullet crashing through her shameless heart!”
“No, no!” the gentleman exclaimed, recoiling in dismay, but Willie Laurens angrily reiterated his threat.
“You will see,” he said. “She wrecked my life, and I will wipe out the family disgrace in her heart’s blood.”
“You are mad, simply mad! Would you become your sister’s murderer, and break your poor mother’s heart?” cried Mr. North, shocked and pained by his furious mood, and not dreaming of the fiery fluid that had inflamed the young man’s blood. He turned away from the reckless boy, and was going abruptly out of the store when a horseman drew rein on the pavement before him, and asked excitedly:
“Does the mother of Miss Alice Laurens live here?”
“Yes; is there anything wrong?” inquired Mr. North curiously, and at the same moment the pale, agitated face of Willie Laurens appeared in the doorway, and he said:
“I am the brother of Alice Laurens. What is wrong?”
The man looked at him with pitying eyes, and answered:
“Heaven knows I hate to tell you, but I have no choice. An accident has befallen your sister. She fell through an open hatchway at Arnell & Grey’s a few minutes ago, and—break it to her mother as gently as you can, for they are bringing her here now. She is very badly hurt. It is not believed that she can live.”
“Terrible!” cried Mr. North, as he flung out his arms to support Willie Laurens, who had reeled and staggered in agony at that heart-rending announcement.