XLIV
Next day I received a telegram from Mr. Jackson. It was to the effect that he would like some information concerning a man named John E. Miller, who had his office somewhere on Thirty-fifth Street. He was an attorney and in some way connected with the business in which we were interested.
This, as you will see, brings us to the incident related in the first chapter of this story. Having obtained Mr. Miller’s address from the telephone book, I was searching the block for his number when the gentleman himself, anxious to be off to his injured child and, observing how I looked this way and that, rushed up to me and making sure that I answered to the name of Edgar Quenton Bartholomew, thrust into my hands a letter and after that a package containing, as he said, a key of much importance, both of which were obviously meant for Edgar and not for me.
Why, in the confusion of the moment, I let him go, leaving the key and letter in my hand, and why, after taking them to my hotel, I had the struggle of my life deciding what I should do with them, should now be plain to you. For I felt as sure then as later, that the key which had thus, by a stroke of Providence, come into my possession was the key found by some one and forwarded by some one, without the knowledge of the police, to this Mr. Miller who in turn supposed he had placed it in Edgar’s hands.
Believing this, I also believed that it was the only Open sesame to some hitherto undiscovered drawer or cupboard in which the will might be found. If passed on to Edgar what surety had I that if this will should prove to be inimical to his interests it would ever see the light.
There is a devil in every man’s soul and mine was not silent that night. I wanted to be the first to lay hands on that will and learn its contents. Would I be to blame if I kept this key and made use of it to find what was my own? I would never, never treat Edgar as I felt sure that he would treat me, if this advantage should be his. The house and everything in it had been bequeathed to me. Morally it was all mine and soon would be legally so if I profited by this chance. So I reasoned, hating myself all the while, but keeping up the struggle hour in and hour out.
Perhaps the real cause of my trouble, the furtive sting which kept me on the offensive, was the fear—shall I not say the belief—that the unknown person who had thus betrayed her love and sympathy for Edgar was Orpha. Had I not seen her in my dream with a key lying in her hand? That key was now in mine, but not by her intention. She had meant it for him;—to give him whatever advantage might accrue from its possession—she, whom I had believed to be so just that she would decline to favor him at my expense.
Jealousy! the gnawing fiend that will not let our hearts rest. I might have gathered comfort from the thought that dreams were not be relied upon; that I had no real foundation for my conclusions. The hand-writing was not hers either on packet or letter; and yet the human heart is so constituted that despite all this; despite my faith, my love, the conviction remained, clouding my judgment and thwarting my better instincts.
But morning brought me counsel, and I saw my duty more clearly. To some it may seem that there was but one thing to do, viz: to hand over packet and letter to the police. But I had not the heart to place Orpha in so compromising a position, without making an effort to save her from their reprobation and it might be from their suspicion. I recognized a better course. Edgar must be allowed to open his own mail, but in my presence. I would seek him out as soon as I could hope to find him and, together, we would form some plan by which the truth might be made known without injuring Orpha. If it meant destruction to him, I would help him face it. She must be protected at all hazards. He was man enough still to see that. He had not lost all sense of chivalry in the débâcle which had sapped his courage and made him the wreck I had seen him the night before. But where should I go? Where reach him?
The police knew his whereabouts but as it was my especial wish to avoid the complication of their presence, this afforded me small help. Mr. Miller was my man. He must have Edgar’s address or how could he have made an appointment with him. It was for me to get into communication with this attorney.
Hunting up his name in the telephone book, I found that he lived in Newark. Calling him up I learned that he was at home and willing to talk to me. Thereupon I gave him my name and asked him how his child was, and, on hearing that she was better, inquired when he would be at his office. He named what for me, in my impatience, was a very late hour; and driven to risk all, rather than lose a possible advantage, I told him of the mistake we had made, he in giving and I in receiving a package, etc., belonging, as I now thought to my cousin of the same name, and assuring him that I had not opened either package or letter, asked for my cousin’s address that I might immediately deliver them.
Well, that floored him for the moment, judging from the expletive which reached my ear. No one could be ignorant of what my name stood for with the mass of people. He had blundered most egregiously and seemed to be well aware of it.
But he was a man of the world and soon was explaining and apologizing for his mistake. He had never seen my cousin, and, being in some disorder of mind at the time, had been misled by a certain family resemblance I bore to the other Edgar as he was presented to the public in the newspapers. Would I pardon him, and, above all, ask my cousin to pardon him, winding up by giving me the name of the hotel where Edgar was to be found.
Thanking him, I hung up the receiver, put on my hat and went out.
I had not far to go; the steps I took were few, but my thoughts were many. In what mood should I find my cousin? In what mood should I find myself? Was I doing a foolish thing?—a wrong thing?—a dangerous thing? What would be its upshot?
Knowing that I was simply weakening myself by this anticipatory holding of an interview which might take a very different course from any I was likely to imagine, I yet continued to put questions and answer them in my own mind till my arrival at the hotel I was seeking put a sudden end to them.
And well it might; for now the question was how to get speech with him. I could not send up my name, which as you will remember was the same as his; nor would I send up a false one. Yet I must see him in his room. How was this to be managed? I thought a minute, then acted.
Saying that I was a messenger from Mr. John E. Miller with an important letter for Mr. Bartholomew, I asked if that gentleman was in his room and if so, whether I might go up.
They would see.
While I waited I could count my own heart-beats. The hands of the clock dragged and I wondered how long I could stand this. Finally, the answer came: he was in and would see me.
He had just finished shaving when I entered and for a moment did not turn. When he did and perceived who it was, the oath he uttered showed me what I might expect.
But the resolution with which I faced him calmed him more quickly than I had any reason to anticipate. Evidently, I had not yet found the key to his nature. Edgar at that moment was a mystery to me. But he should not remain so much longer.
Waiting for nothing, I addressed him as brother to brother. The haggard look in his eye had appealed to me. Would to God there was not the reason for it that I feared!
“Edgar, the message I sent up was a correct one. I come as an agent from Mr. John E. Miller with a letter and a package addressed to your name which you will remember is identical with my own. Do you know any such man?”
“I have heard of him.” Why did his eyes fall and his cheek take on a faint flush?
“Have you heard from him?”
“Yes, I got a message from him yesterday, asking me to call at his office, but—but I did not go.”
I wanted to inquire why, but felt it unwise to divert his attention from the main issue for the mere purpose of satisfying my curiosity.
“Then,” I declared, “these articles must belong to you. They were handed to me under the supposition that I was the man to whom they were addressed. But, having some doubts about this myself, I have brought them to you in the same state in which I received them—that is, intact. Edgar, there is a key in this package. I know this to be so because Mr. Miller said so particularly. We are both interested in a key. If this is the one our uncle wore about his neck I should be allowed to inspect it as well as yourself.”
I had expected rebuff—an assertion of rights which might culminate in an open quarrel. But to my amazement the first gleam of light I had discerned on his countenance since the inquest came with that word.
“Give me it,” he cried. “I am willing that you should see me open it.”
I laid down the package before him, but before he had more than touched it, I placed the letter beside it, with the intimation that perhaps it would be better for him to read that first.
In an instant the package was pushed aside and the letter seized upon. The action and the glance he gave it made my heart stand still. The fervor and the devouring eagerness thus displayed was that of a lover.
Had his affection for Orpha already reached the point of passion?
Meanwhile, he had thrust the letter out of sight and taken up the small package in which possibly lay our mutual fate. As he loosened the string and pulled off the wrappers, I bent forward, and in another moment we were gazing at a very thin key of the Yale type he held out between us on his open palm.
“It is according to description,” I said.
To my astonishment he threw it down on the table before which we were standing.
“You are right,” he cried. “I had better read the letter first. It may enlighten us.”
Walking off to a window, he slipped behind a curtain and for a few minutes the earth for me stood still. When he reappeared, it was with the air and presence of the old Edgar, a little worse for the dissipation of the last few weeks, but master of himself and master of others,—relieved, happy, almost triumphant.
“It was found by Orpha,” he calmly announced. (It was not like him to be calm in a crisis like this.) “Found in a flower-pot which had been in Uncle’s room at the time of his death. She had carried it to hers and night before last, while trying to place it on a shelf, it had fallen from her hands to the floor, breaking apart and scattering the earth in every direction. Amid this débris lay the key with the chain falling loose from it. There is no doubt that it is the one we have been looking for; hidden there by a sick man in a moment of hallucination. It may lead to the will—it may lead to nothing. When shall we go?”
“Go?”
“To C——. We must follow up this clew. Somewhere in that room we shall find the aperture this key will fit.”
“Do you mean for us to go together?” I had a sensation of pleasure in spite of the reaction in my spirits caused by Edgar’s manner.
With an unexpected earnestness, he seized me by the arm and, holding me firmly, surveyed me inquiringly. Then with a peculiar twitch of his lips and a sudden loosening of his hand he replied with a short:
“I do.”
“Then let us go as quickly as the next train will take us.”
He nodded, and, lifting the key, put it in his pocket.
Ungenerously, perhaps, certainly quite foolishly, I wished he had allowed me to put it in mine.