NOR UNDERSTAND ALL I SEE
For the next few days I think I must have been nearer to a nervous breakdown than I am ever likely to be again. All the strain and the anxiety of the whole summer seemed to fall upon me in a mass; I had not the relief of taking arms against my trouble, nor of any better business than to brood and to remember, sifting misery by the hour in hopeless search after some grain of decision; and the heat and hurry of the city broke my natural sleep, and went to make a nightmare of my days. Maclean was with me a good deal, taking me with him into strange corners of the town, and trying his best to bring me out of myself; but I could not talk to him of what was on my mind, and the irritation of constant pretense to carelessness vitiated much of the relief he tried to give. Wherever I might be to appearance, the same Spartan Fox was at my breast—Carucci's story and Sheila's attempted contradiction, and the ambiguous trouble that overhung Lady and shut me out from her. I could not fathom it; and I dared not take dangerous action in the dark. Reid had passed through some scandal before his marriage; Sheila had admitted so much; and her denial that Miriam and Lady were the same had been involved in such a maze of surmise and superstition, so evidently and angrily put forward as a defense, that I could not believe what I would of it. It might well be that Mrs. Tabor was oppressed even to insanity by the situation. But what was the situation? If the mother's madness of bereavement were at the root of all, what had the family to conceal? Or why should not the remaining daughter marry whom she chose? Sheila's explanation of the first was absurdly tenuous; and the last she had not attempted to explain. No, there was one shadow over them all: the cause of the mother's grief was the cause of the daughter's terror, and of the irrational behavior of the sane and practical men of the family. I could find no alternative; either Mrs. Tabor was haunted by mediæval ghosts, or some part of the scandal must be true.
At last, one unbearably humid morning, when I was almost on the point of going blindly out to Stamford on the chance of any happening that might let my anxiety escape into action, of any opportunity that might force a climax, Mr. Tabor called me on the telephone.
"Hello, Mr. Crosby? Mr. Laurence Crosby?—Well, Crosby, this is Mr. Tabor talking. Are you free this morning, so that you can give us a few hours of your time? You can help us very much if you will."
"Certainly; I'll be out as soon as I can get a train." The idea of seeing Lady again was a compensation under any circumstances; but the next words destroyed that hope.
"No, don't do that. What I want of you is right there in New York." He hesitated a moment. "Hello—that—that same situation which occurred the other day, when you were alone in the house, and we were in town, has arisen again. You understand me?—We're looking after this neighborhood. The person in question has been gone an hour, leaving no word; may have gone to New York. Now, will you meet all trains until further notice, and keep your eyes open? Call us up about every half hour. In case of success, use your own judgment—don't excite any one, don't be left behind, and telephone as soon as possible. Am I making this explicit enough?"
"Yes, perfectly. I'm to meet trains, let matters take their own course as far as possible, keep in touch, and let you know."
"That's it exactly. I knew we could count on you."
I was not many minutes in getting to the Grand Central, laying my plan of action on the way. To be sure that no one arrived unobserved in that great labyrinth of tracks and exits was no such easy matter, even though I knew the point of departure. I began by a thorough search of the waiting-rooms. Then, finding, as I had expected, no trace of Mrs. Tabor, I learned the times and positions of all the Stamford trains, and set myself to meet each one as it arrived. I had to make certain of seeing every passenger, and at the same time to keep out of the expectant throng that crowded close to the restraining ropes on a similar errand; for if Mrs. Tabor should appear I must not seem to be watching for her. The next hour and a half was divided between studying the clock, running my eyes dizzily over streams of hurrying humanity, racing anxiously from place to place when a late train crowded close upon its successor, and snatching a moment at the telephone in the intervals of nervous waiting. Even so, I could not be morally sure that she might not slip by me somewhere unnoticed. And when at last I recognized her fragile figure far down the long platform, I was less excited than relieved.
She came on quickly, carrying a little shopping-bag, and stepping with a certain bird-like alertness. It was hard to imagine that this eager, pretty lady, with her spun-glass hair and her bright eyes, could be either ill or in trouble. I let her pass me, and followed at a little distance into the waiting-room; then crossed over and met her face to face by the telephone booths on the west side. Her greeting was a fresh surprise.
"Why, Mr. Crosby, this is delightfully fortunate! I was just going to call you up, and here you spring from the earth as if I had rubbed a magic ring. You must have known that I was thinking about you. You're not going away, are you? Or meeting any one?"
If she meant anything in particular, I had reason to feel embarrassed; but the big, childish eyes that smiled into my own seemed wholly innocent of suspicion.
"No," I said. "I've been seeing somebody off, and I'm very gladly at your service for as long as you like." I was praying Heaven to inspire me with mendacity.
"Well, that's the best that could have happened. I came in town to see some friends, and I promised myself to see you at the same time. Excuse me just half a minute, while I telephone them."
She slipped into the booth, leaving me hesitating outside. Evidently here was my chance to call up Mr. Tabor, and report; but she kept glancing out at me through the glass doors as she talked, quite casually, but still with observant interest; and I dared not shut myself in a booth lest she should either suspect or escape. She was out again before I could make up my mind.
"Now take me to lunch," she said gaily, "and after that, if you haven't grown tired of such a frivolous old creature, you may take me where I am going. I'll set you free by two or three o'clock, at the latest."
I took her to the Waldorf, for no better reason than that it was cool and close at hand; wondering all the way how in the world I was to get word to the family, and keeping up my end rather absently in a conversation, which with a younger woman would have been merrily flirtatious, and wanted only relief from preoccupied anxiety to be very delightful fencing. Mrs. Tabor was in that state of fluffy exhilaration, that heightening and brightening of spirit which in a man would have been hilarity, and which in a woman may equally well mean the excitement of pleasure or the tension of imprisoned pain. She was a little above herself, but there was absolutely nothing to tell me why. And she kept me too busy in finding the next answer to plan what I should do the minute afterward.
"Of course, Mr. Crosby," she began when we were settled at our table, "this is another of my horrible and mysterious disappearances. I've actually come to the great city, in broad daylight, without a chaperon. Isn't it reckless of me?"
"Desperately," I answered. "And not a soul knows where you are? Won't they be shocked and surprised when they miss you?"
She shook out a little laugh. "Let them; it's their own fault. If I'm to be treated like an European school-girl, I shall at least have the pleasure of acting like one. They need imagination enough to conceive of my being able to take care of myself now and then. I'm not in my second childhood yet—only in my second girlhood."
"At least let me telephone them that you're with me. I won't say why or where, and we can make a mystery of that."
"Not a bit of it." Her voice sharpened just a trifle. "That would spoil the whole lesson. They needn't worry unless they choose. Then when I come home, if they make a fuss over me I shall say: 'Now see how silly you've been. I've been having luncheon with Mr. Crosby,' You wouldn't take the edge off of that disclosure?" She tilted her head on one side.
"But they ought to know merely that you're safe," I ventured.
"Safe? What should I be but safe? No—" She put out an emphatic little hand. "I'm free from the convent, and I'm not going to be taken to task by so young and good-looking a confessor. Besides, I'm ashamed of you. Where's your gallantry? You don't seem to appreciate the honor of our secret at all."
"Perhaps the trouble is," I said cautiously, "that I don't understand the secret myself. What did you mean when you said—"
"Oh, that!" she laughed. "Why, I meant the hardest thing in the world for a man to understand, and that is—just nothing at all. You had all of you been so stupid and serious and uncomfortable that night that I felt it would serve you right to make you jump. So I made a little mystery of my own, and it worked beautifully. It sounded every bit as sensible as yours, too."
And there he stood on the sidewalk
She was beyond me. Two or three times after that I worked around to the same subject, but she evaded me so deftly that I could not for the life of me be sure whether it was evasion or unconsciousness; and my attempts to communicate with the family met with no better fortune. At last I tried to leave her for a moment on the plea of calling a taxicab.
"You live on Table Mountain, and your name is Truthful James," was her comment. "Taxicabs are scarce in Stamford, Mr. Crosby, and it would take too long to get one here. Let the waiter call one of those outside."
At that, I gave up with a good grace. I should be free to report as soon as I had left her with her friends, and a few minutes more or less could not matter much by now. She gave the chauffeur an address in the sixties and we were presently there: one of these new American basement houses sandwiched in among the older brownstone fronts of the more conservative blocks. During the short drive, she had been silent and I thought a little disturbed; but her farewell was bright with reawakened gaiety.
"I shall measure your enjoyment by your secrecy, Mr. Confessor," she purred, with tilted head and raised forefinger. "You may tell my anxious warders just as much as you please, and the less you confide in them the more I shall flatter myself of your confidence in me. Now I leave you to your conscience."
She was standing in the doorway, her hand upon the bell, and I had turned back to the waiting taxicab, when a somber and respectable electric brougham turned the corner and drew slowly up to the curb. I recognized with an uncomfortable shock that the driver was no other than the Tabors' former chauffeur, the unworthy Thomas who had deserted Lady and myself at the crisis of our midnight adventure; and I thought that under his mask of the impassive servant he recognized me somewhat uncomfortably. I glanced back to see if Mrs. Tabor had seen him also. She was leaning against the door of the house, clutching at the handle as if for support, or in a desperate anxiety to enter; every line of her face and figure writhing and agonized with unmistakable terror. The bang of the brougham door behind me and the sound of a shrill precise voice that I remembered made me turn my eyes to the street—and as I did so the bang of the front door sounded behind me like an echo. Mrs. Tabor had disappeared into the house, the brougham was starting rapidly away, and there on the sidewalk stood the man whom Reid had twice brought secretly home.