There came a growing rumble, a shrieking of brakes. A moment more and we were off.
I glanced at my watch. It was nearly twelve o'clock. I should be at the office in, say, forty-five minutes. I would wire Curtiss at once, and the rest would be in his hands. My connection with the case would end. And yet, it was not without a certain regret that I would relinquish it—for I had not solved the mystery; that was, if anything, more impenetrable than when I had first approached it. Godfrey's specious theory—which I had myself at first believed—I put aside, for, even from the broken sentences which had fallen from Mrs. Lawrence's lips, I could see that it was not the right one. If Marcia Lawrence had fled in order to protect the memory of the dead, there could be no question of a living husband. But though I rejected that explanation, it was evident that, with the data at hand, I could form no adequate one to replace it.
I went over in my mind every phase of the affair from first to last; I endeavoured to sift out the significant incidents, and to reject the immaterial; I tried to weld them into a compact mass, but they would not be welded. There was nothing to connect them, no common thread upon which they could be strung; all that I had in my possession was a bundle of facts which seemed to be flatly self-contradictory.
I remembered Mrs. Lawrence's astonishment when I had mentioned the existence of the letter. What had she said? "I thought it was that woman!" Which woman? Evidently the elder Kingdon, since she had at once sent for her. That had been my suspicion—that it was she or her sister who had betrayed the secret. Yet the letter would seem to prove that it was some one else. And it struck me as significant that at no time had Mrs. Lawrence appeared to suspect the maid.
Was there really any connection, I wondered, between that old tragedy in Mrs. Lawrence's life and this in the life of her daughter? I reviewed again the story Dr. Schuyler had told me. How the lives of the Endicotts and the Kingdons and the Lawrences had intertwined! I got out my notebook and sketched a rough table showing their relationship, which looked somewhat as here shown.
As I gazed down at this, two names seemed to stand out more vividly than all the rest. I closed my eyes and called before me the faces of two beautiful women. I had never seen either of them in the life—of one, I had only a photograph; of the other I had seen only a crude portrait in the parlour of the Kingdon cottage—but they had somehow assumed for me personalities distinct and vivid. Marcia Lawrence and Ruth Endicott—the tragedy of fate linked them together. Beautiful, young, accomplished, reared amid gentle surroundings, both had tasted the bitterness of life. From the very house whence Marcia Lawrence fled, Ruth Endicott had started on her hopeless search for health.
The train slowed up for Jersey City, and in a moment was rolling under the great shed. Twenty minutes later, I opened our office door. Mr. Royce had gone out for lunch—which reminded me that I had missed mine again—but he came in almost immediately.