"I hope so, if only for his sake. He'll go mad if he doesn't—and so will we, if we talk about it any more. I want you to look over those papers in the Consolidated suit. It comes up this afternoon, you know—and, by Jove! we'll have to hurry, or we'll be late for the hearing."

CHAPTER XIV

Recalled to the Front

Never were slippers and easy-chair more welcome to me than they were that night. I was thoroughly weary in mind as well as body, and as I dropped into the chair and donned the slippers, I determined to go early to bed, and to forget all about the Lawrence enigma. I was heartily glad that I was rid of it; it had proved so baffling, so discouraging that I rejoiced at the chance which had taken it out of my hands. Burr Curtiss must puzzle it out for himself.

I fancied I could see him, pacing up and down the deck of the Oceanic, staring ahead into the starlit night, bracing himself for that meeting which would mean so much to him. I wondered what Marcia Lawrence's thoughts were. Did she regret that she had fled? Did she already see the fatal error of that step? Ah, if her lover were only beside her, there on the deck, as he might have been but for that cruel irony of fate which had swept her from him! She could not know that he was pursuing her—that he would be the first to meet her as she stepped ashore at Liverpool. How would she bear the shock of that meeting?

I had bought a copy of the last edition of the Record as I came up from dinner, and I shook it out and glanced over it. Apparently Godfrey had discovered nothing new in the affair at Elizabeth, for the paper made absolutely no reference to it, so far as I could discover. No doubt he had returned to New York immediately after bidding me good-bye; by this time he was probably deep in the untangling of some other mystery for the benefit of the Record's readers. Sensations of to-day eclipsed those of yesterday, and I realised how quickly Burr Curtiss and his affairs would drop from the public mind.

But as I laid the paper aside, and filled my pipe for a final smoke before turning in, I told myself that I could scarcely hope that they would drop so easily from my mind, however much I might wish it; besides, I had left it unsolved and seemingly unsolvable, and a mystery of that sort is not easily forgotten. It is like an unfinished book, an unsettled case—it lives to oppress the mind and pique the imagination.

I knocked out my pipe impatiently. The place for me was in bed. I was becoming obsessed by this affair. If I did not shake it off, it would end by getting such a grip of me that I could not sleep at all, or I would fall asleep only to be startled awake again as I had been the night before. That was truly a terrifying prospect!

I started for my bedroom, when a tap at my door stopped me. I opened it to find Mrs. Fitch, my landlady, on the threshold.