She drew him toward the door, and he followed her down the gaslit stairs in silence.
At the mention of her dead husband’s name, a new thought came to his mind. Was some other man enriching her? And though she detected for an instant a gleam of jealousy in his eyes, he questioned her no further. He brightened up over the good dinner. After all, he told himself, he had enough to be grateful for without pinning her down to facts.
Nine days later the Seamaid cleared, bound for Bermuda. Never had the yacht been more luxuriously provisioned. True to her promise, Gladys Rice, Billy Bowles, and Johnny Richards were with them.
“Out of sight out of mind” is an old adage, that proved itself to Lamont before they were many hours at sea. The woman who had threatened him seemed only an annoying memory now. He lapsed into the lazy, genial life aboard as easily as a cat takes to the fireside. With Rose’s money and his yacht, life seemed perfect. Not once did he question her as to its source.
There was something in fat Billy Bowles’s inside pocket, however, which would have enlightened him—possibly have destroyed some of his peace of mind—the stubs in his check-book.
CHAPTER XX
Matilda had knocked at Enoch’s door this crisp September morning and, getting no response, felt for his key under the mat, found it, and entered. To her surprise, not a chair or a book in the sitting-room was out of place. The fire she had built the day before was precisely as her black hands had left it.
“Fo’ God!” she exclaimed, as she entered the small bedroom and saw the untouched counterpane and pillow. “He ain’t been to bed.”
Never had Enoch, upon the rare occasions when some public dinner had called him out of town for the night, gone without letting either she or Moses know. Indeed, he was most punctilious about this—invariably leaving with them his telegraphic address. For a brief instant, Matilda stood by the bed—her bosom heaving. Then she turned anxiously to the closet where he kept his clothes, got down on her knees, groped in its depths, and, seizing a valise which he always took with him, drew it out with a trembling hand.
“Ain’t done—even took—his gripsack!” she faltered, her anxiety growing as she noted its emptiness.