“Eric, old man, I have wondered where you have been. Everything has gone wrong. She is still here, and yet the hour is long past—that villain must have backed out.”
“No, he carried out his plans to the letter; he had his carriage waiting, ran off with a lady at ten o’clock, at eleven was married to her in a cottage beyond the Harlem, and is now a Benedict as well as yourself, Joe—but it was not your wife he was after.”
“Not my wife?” slowly, as though the wonderful news almost paralyzed his brain—“not Lillian he sought?”
“Joe, it was all a terrible, a cruel mistake which fortune put upon you.”
“Good heavens! do you mean it?”
“Lillian, your sweet wife, is as innocent as you ever believed her in your most charitable moods. That I will swear to—you will learn all before this night is over, and I believe the mystery of the locked trunk will be revealed. Just now I am famished for a bite to eat and a cup of the coffee I get a scent of. Suppose you invite me in—I am not in evening dress, but a few minutes in your room will arrange my toilet and make me presentable. I want to see this thing out—to rejoice with you, old boy, over the wife you thought you had lost but who is found again. Besides, you know, I want to meet Marian, and I know she is here.”
What could Joe do?
He dragged his friend upstairs and himself assisted to brush him into presentable shape.
Ten minutes were consumed thus, and then Eric was ready to go down.
All this while Joe had plied him with questions and the detective told a good deal of what had happened to him.