The Thing Beyond Reason by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding - HTML preview

XXV

After all, Lexy’s search for Charles Houseman was neither difficult nor heroic, except in intention. She found him in the Lymewell Hospital. Joe told her where he was, and Joe took her there.

Houseman himself was rigidly determined not to be heroic. He had refused to go to bed, and Lexy found him in a bare, whitewashed waiting room, where he sat on a bench.

“Just came in to get the hand dressed,” he said. “I’ll go back with you now.”

The doctor advised him not to, but Charles was not very susceptible to advice. He wished to be entirely casual and matter-of-fact, and Lexy tried to humor him. They stood together in the hall of the hospital while a nurse went to get him a bottle of lotion from the dispensary, and he talked in what he intended to be an offhand manner; but Lexy could see that he was in pain, and almost exhausted, and his hair was all on end.

Somehow, that was the thing she couldn’t bear—that his hair should be so ruffled. She could respect his determination to ignore the throbbing anguish of his hand, she would, if he liked, pretend that there was nothing at all tragic or unusual in the night’s adventure; but his hair—

The nurse returned with the bottle, gave him directions for its use, and told him sternly that he must come back the next morning for a dressing.

“All right!” he said impatiently. “Come on, Lexy!”

They got into Joe’s cab together, and off they went.

“What happened to your hand?” inquired Lexy, as if it didn’t much matter.

“Knife through it,” he answered. “You see, I held the old fellow, to give Mrs. Quelton a chance to get away. When I thought it was all right, I gave him a shove backward, and started to climb over the balcony; and he jabbed a knife through my hand. That’s what kept me so long—I couldn’t get it out; and after I did, I—rested for a while. Then I started for Wyngate, and I met Joe coming back to look for me. He said he’d landed Mrs. Quelton all right. So that’s all!”

Lexy was silent for a moment.

“Of course you didn’t know it wasn’t Mrs. Quelton,” she said. “It was Caroline all the time.”

“Caroline?” he cried. “What do you mean? It couldn’t have been Caroline!”

Lexy gave him a very brief, very bare account of Caroline’s narrative.

“Oh!” he said, when she had done; and again there was silence for a time. “Does she still want to go on with the thing—marrying me, I mean?” he asked finally, in a queer, flat tone.

“No,” said Lexy pleasantly. “No—she does not.”

“Oh!” he said again, with undisguised relief. “Well, then—it’s all right, then!”

“You don’t seem to be much surprised,” said Lexy. “Don’t you think it’s the most extraordinary story you ever heard?”

“Well, you see—I’m a bit tired,” he explained. “I haven’t grasped it all yet; only, if she doesn’t want to marry me now, Lexy, dear, will you?”

At last Lexy could do what she had longed to do for the last half hour—she could stroke down his ruffled hair.

And this, as far as they were concerned, was the last act and the fitting climax of the play. They were ready now for the curtain to rise upon another play; but there were other people not so young, or not so sturdy, for whom the first drama was not so readily dismissed.

There was Captain Grey, who was never to see his sister now, never to know if she had really wanted him and needed him. He did not soon forget what had happened at the Tower.

Mrs. Enderby was sent for, and arrived that morning before sunrise, with her husband. She listened to Caroline’s strange story, and made what she could of it. She had not one word of reproach for her daughter.

“We shall not cry over the spilled milk,” she said. “Let us see what is to be done, before the police come.” She had a thoroughly European point of view about the police. “If we are fortunate enough to find an officer with discretion,” she added, “even yet a scandal may be averted.”

For that was still her passionate resolve—that there should be no scandal. She thought and planned with desperate energy; she directed every one as to the part he or she should play; and in the end she succeeded. Nobody knew that Caroline had disappeared, and nobody ever would know. Nobody knew that the so-called Mrs. Quelton was Caroline, and that, too, would never be known. Only let Joe and Mrs. Royce be persuaded to hold their tongues; as for Lexy, Captain Grey, and Houseman, she could of course rely upon them.

So the police were, as they say, baffled. Mr. Houseman told them a tale. He had been alarmed about the lady whom he knew as Mrs. Quelton, and he had climbed up on the balcony, hoping to see her alone; but he had met Dr. Quelton instead, and had been hurt in trying to escape from him.

Captain Grey also had a tale. He, too, had been alarmed about the lady whom he believed to be his sister. He had gone with Miss Moran to call upon her, and they had found the doctor dead, lying across the coffin.

There was an inquest, and Mr. Houseman had a very unpleasant time of it, being the last one who had seen the doctor alive; but there was no really serious suspicion against him. The post-mortem showed that the doctor had died of some unknown poison, at least half an hour after the young man had arrived at the hospital. The verdict was suicide, although the coroner’s jury had its own opinion about the mysterious dark woman who had posed as the doctor’s wife. An autopsy revealed that Mrs. Quelton had died from a natural cause—phthisis of the lungs. In short, as far as could be discovered, there was no murder at all.

This was a disappointment to the public, but there was always the mysterious dark woman. The police instituted a search for her, and there was much about her in the newspapers, but she was never found.

Miss Enderby returned to the city from her visit to Miss Craigie, and friends of the family were interested to learn that while away she had met such a nice young man—a Captain Grey, from India. He had to return to his regiment, but, before he went, Caroline’s engagement to him was announced. Later he was to retire from the army and come back to live in New York.

There was another item of news, of minor importance. That pretty little secretary of Mrs. Enderby’s got married, and the Enderbys were wonderfully kind about it—surprisingly so. It didn’t seem at all like Mrs. Enderby to let the girl be married from her own house, and to give her a smart little car for a wedding present. What is more, Mr. Enderby found a very good position in his office for the young man.

“My dear Sophie,” said one of Mrs. Enderby’s old friends, with the peculiar candor of an old friend, “I’ve never known you to do so much for any one before!”

Mrs. Enderby was standing on the top doorstep of her house, looking after the car in which Lexy and her Charles had driven off for their honeymoon, with Joe, of Wyngate, as their chauffeur.

“So much for her?” she said. “It’s not enough—not half enough!”

And there were actually tears in her eyes as she went back into the house where Caroline was.