“I had not dreamed of coming, tell her, please. Probably I shall not go out at all this evening. But it was kind of you to come. Good-night.”
He stood with a candle to light her down the stairs, but after she had gone he did not return to the office. Instead, he went slowly up to his own room, glancing first into Crailey's—the doors of neither were often locked—to behold a chaos of disorder and unfinished packing. In his own chamber it only remained for him to close the lids of a few big boxes, and to pack a small trunk which he meant to take with him to the camp of the State troops, and he would be ready for departure. He set about this task, and, concluding that there was no necessity to wear his uniform on the steamboat, decided to place it in the trunk, and went to the bed where he had folded and left it. It was not there. Nor did a thorough search reveal it anywhere in the room. Yet no one could have stolen it, for when he had gone down to the office Crailey had remained on this floor. Mamie had come within a few minutes after Crailey went out, and during his conversation with her the office-door had been open; no one could have passed without being seen. Also, a thief would have taken other things as well as the uniform; and surely Crailey must have heard; Crailey would—Crailey—!
Then Tom remembered the figure in the long cloak and the military cap, and, with a sick heart, began to understand. He had read the Journal, and he knew why Crailey might wish to masquerade in a major's uniform that night. If Miss Carewe read it too, and a strange wonder rose in her mind, this and a word would convince her. Tom considered it improbable that the wonder would rise, for circumstances had too well established her in a mistake, trivial and ordinary enough at first, merely the confusing of two names by a girl new to the town, but so strengthened by every confirmation Crailey's wit could compass that she would, no doubt, only set Cummings's paragraph aside as a newspaper error. Still, Crailey had wished to be on the safe side!
Tom sighed rather bitterly. He was convinced that the harlequin would come home soon, replace the uniform (which was probably extremely becoming to him, as they were of a height and figure much the same), and afterward, in his ordinary dress, would sally forth to spend his last evening with Fanchon. Tom wondered how Crailey would feel and what he would think about himself while he was changing his clothes, but he remembered his partner's extraordinary powers of mental adjustment—and for the first time in his life Vanrevel made no allowance for the other's temperament, and there came to him a moment when he felt that he could almost dislike Crailey Gray.
At all events, he would go out until Crailey had come and left again, for he had no desire to behold the masquerader's return. So he exchanged his dressing-gown for a coat, fastened his collar, and had begun to arrange his cravat at the mirror, when, suddenly, the voice of the old negress seemed to sound close beside him in the room.
“He's settin' dah—waitin'!”
The cravat was never tied; Tom's hands dropped to his sides as he started back from the staring face in the mirror. Robert Carewe was waiting—and Crailey—— All at once there was but one vital necessity in the world for Tom Vanrevel, that was to find Crailey; he must go to Crailey—even in Carewe's own house—he must go to Crailey!
He dashed down the stairs and into the street. The people were making a great uproar in front of the hotel, exploding bombs, firing muskets in the air, sending up rockets; and rapidly crossing the outskirts of the crowd, he passed into Carewe Street, unnoticed. Here the detonations were not so deafening, though the little steamboat at the wharf was contributing to the confusion with all in her power, screeching simultaneously approval of the celebration and her last signals of departure.
At the first corner Tom had no more than left the sidewalk when he came within a foot of being ridden down by two horsemen who rode at so desperate a gallop that (the sound of their hoof-beats being lost in the uproar from Main Street) they were upon him before he was aware of them.
He leaped back with an angry shout to know who they were that they rode so wildly. At the same time a sharp explosion at the foot of the street sent a red flare over the scene, a flash, gone with such incredible swiftness into renewed darkness that he saw the flying horsemen almost as equestrian statues illumined by a flicker of lightning, but he saw them with the same distinctness that lightning gives, and recognized the foremost as Robert Carewe. And in the instant of that recognition, Tom knew what had happened to Crailey Gray, for he saw the truth in the ghastly face of his enemy.