The Avalanche: A Mystery StoryThey were standing near the staircase and some distance from the lift.
Mrs. Thornton ran up the stairs, pausing for an irresistible moment and looking down at the company. As she stood there, poised, she looked a royal figure with her cloth of gold train covering the steps below her and her high and flashing head. "Wait for me," she said, imperiously to Price. "I cannot meander down that corridor, deserted and alone."
Ruyler smiled at her, but said to Gwynne: "I'll just go and engage my wife for a dance and be back in a jiffy--"
Gwynne clasped his hand about Ruyler's arm. "Just a moment, old chap. I want your opinion--"
"But there is the music again. I'll be knocking people over--"
"You will if you go now, and there'll be dancing for hours yet. Your wife has been dividing up--now, tell me if you back me in this proposition or not. I'm going to Washington to represent you fellows--"
But Ruyler had broken politely away and was walking down the long corridor. When he arrived at the ballroom he saw at a glance that his wife was not there, for the floor was only half filled. But there were other rooms where dancers sat in couples or groups when tired. He went hastily through all of them, but saw nothing of his wife. Nor of Doremus.
Mrs. Thornton had gone in search of her.
And Gwynne knew.
This time the hot blood was pounding in his head. He felt as he imagined madmen did when about to run amok. Or quite as primitive as any Californian of the surging "Fifties."
He was in one of the smaller rooms and he sat down in a corner with his back to the few people in it and endeavored to take hold of himself; the conventional training of several lifetimes and his own intense pride forbade a scene in public. But his curved fingers longed for Doremus'
throat and he made up his mind that if his awful suspicions were vindicated he would beat his wife black and blue. That was far more sensible and manly than running whining to a divorce court.
The effort at self-control left him gasping, but when he rose from his shelter he was outwardly composed, and determined to seek Gwynne and force the truth from him. He would not discuss his wife with another woman. And whatever this hideous tragedy brooding over his life he would go out and come to grips with it at once.
III
And in the corridor he saw his wife chatting gayly with a group of young friends. Her color was paler than usual, perhaps, but that was not uncommon at a party, and otherwise she was as unruffled, as normal in appearance and manner, as when they had parted at the Gwynnes'.
Nevertheless, he went directly up to her, and as she gave a little cry of pleased surprise, he drew her hand through his arm. "Come!" he said imperiously. "You are to dance this with me. I broke away on purpose--"
"But, darling, I am full up--"
"You have skipped at least two. I have been looking everywhere for you--"
"Polly Roberts dragged me upstairs to see the new gowns M. Dupont brought her from Paris. They came this afternoon--so did Mrs. Thornton's--but of course I'll dance this with you. You don't look well," she added anxiously. "Aren't you?"
"Quite, but rather tired--mentally. I need a dance...."
He wondered if she had gently propelled him down the corridor. They were some distance from the group. It was impossible for him to go back and ask if his wife's story were true. Mrs. Thornton was nowhere to be seen, neither in the corridor nor in the ballroom. Nor was Doremus. He set his teeth grimly and managed to smile down upon his wife.
"I shall insist upon having more than one," he said gallantly. "At least three hesitations."
She drew in her breath with a mock sigh and swept from under her long lashes a glance that still had the power to thrill him. "Outrageous, but I shall try to bear up," and the next moment they were giving a graceful exhibition of the tango.
"I don't see your friend Doremus," he said casually, as he stood fanning her at the end of the dance.
She lifted her eyebrows haughtily. "My friend? That parasite?"
"You seemed very friendly at dinner."
"I usually am with my dinner companion. One's hostess is to be considered. Oh--I remember--he was telling me some very amusing gossip, although he teased me into fearing he wouldn't. Now, if you are going to dance this hesitation with me you had better whirl me off. It is Mr.
Thornton's, and I see him coming."
Ruyler did not see Doremus until supper was half over and then the young man entered the dining-room hurriedly, his usually serene brow lowering and his lips set. He walked directly up to Helene.
"Beastly luck!" he exclaimed. "h.e.l.lo, Ruyler. Didn't know you honored parties any more. I had to break away to meet the Overland train--beastly thing was late, of course. Then I had to take them to five hotels before I could settle them. They had two beastly little dogs and the hotels wouldn't take them in and they wouldn't give up the dogs. Some one ought to set up a high-cla.s.s dog hotel. Sure it would pay. But you'll give me the first after supper, won't you?"
Helene gave him a casual smile that was a poor reward for his elaborate apology. "So sorry," she said with the sweet distant manner in which she disposed of bores and climbers, "but Mr. Ruyler and I are both tired. We are going home directly after supper."
CHAPTER VI
I
On the following day at six o'clock Ruyler went to Long's to meet Jake Spaulding. By a supreme effort of will he had put his private affairs out of his mind and concentrated on the business details which demanded the most highly trained of his faculties. But now he felt relaxed, almost languid, as he walked along Montgomery Street toward the rendezvous. He met no one he knew. The historic Montgomery Street, once the center of the city's life, was almost deserted, but half rebuilt. He could saunter and think undisturbed.
What was he to hear? And what bearing would it be found to have on his wife's conduct?
He had gone to sleep last night as sure as a man may be of anything that his wife was no more interested in Doremus than in any other of the young men who found time to dance attendance upon idle, bored, but virtuous wives.
If the man knew her secret and were endeavoring to exact blackmail he would pay his price with joy--after thrashing him, for he would have sacrificed the half of his fortune never to experience again not only the demoralizing attack of jealous madness of the night before, which had brought in its wake the uneasy doubt if civilization were as far advanced as he had fondly imagined, but the sensation of amazed contempt which had swept over him at the dinner table as he had seen his wife, whom he had believed to be a woman of instinctive taste and fastidiousness, manifestly upon intimate terms with a creature who should have been walking on four legs. Better, perhaps, the desire to kill a woman than to despise her--
He slammed the door when he entered the little room reserved for him, and barely restrained himself from flinging his hat into a corner and breaking a chair on the table. His languor had vanished.
Spaulding followed him immediately.
"Howdy," he said genially, as he pushed his own hat on the back of his head and bit hungrily at the end of a cigar. "Suppose you've been impatient--unless too busy to think about it."
"I'd like to know what you've found out as quickly as you can tell me."
"Well, to begin with the kid. I had some trouble at the convent. They're a close-mouthed lot, nuns. But I frightened them. Told them it was a property matter, and unless they answered my questions privately they'd have to answer them in court. Then they came through."
"Well?"
Spaulding lit his cigar and handed the match to Ruyler, who ground it under his heel.
"Just about nineteen years ago a Frenchwoman, giving her name as Madame Dubois, arrived one day with a child a year old and asked the nuns to take care of it, promising a fancy payment. The child had been on a farm with a wet-nurse (French style), but Madame Dubois wanted it to learn from the first to speak proper English and French, and to live in a refined atmosphere generally from the time it was able to take notice.
She said she was on the stage and had to travel, so was not able to give the kid the attention it should have, and the doctor had told her that traveling was bad for kids that age, anyhow. Her lawyers would pay the baby's board on the first of every month--"
"Who were the lawyers?"
"Lawton and Cross."
"I thought so. Go on."