Inside the latter she found what she was seeking, and drew out a piece of drawing paper. Mrs. Ogden was no mean artist, and on occasions had illustrated articles for a popular magazine, but her indolent spirit and inability to concentrate acted as an effectual check to her ambition, and the one talent she possessed went neglected.
Ethel inspected the drawing with interest. Mrs. Ogden had cleverly sketched the outside of a Pullman car and through the closed glass window stood out a hand, a large shapely hand, holding a paper about the size of those enclosing a powder, between the thumb and first and second finger. The outside of the hand was nearest the window, and on the little finger, distinct and clear, was the outline of a ring. As Ethel bent closer she caught her breath—slowly, reluctantly she raised her left hand and laid it alongside the sketch. In size, design, and color, the ring on her finger and the ring in the sketch were identical.
Ethel sat staring at the sketch and at her ring unmindful of the minutes, and gradually her chaotic thoughts took form. Dwight Tilghman had been murdered in Atlanta by a poisoned powder administered mysteriously; her mother had seen a hand holding a small paper, which might or might not have contained a poison powder, in the window of a Pullman car in the station at Atlanta; and the hand wore a jade ring with a unique carved gold setting on its little finger, which Julian Barclay had, until that noon, worn on his little finger.
Ethel bent over the sketch—Was it the left hand or the right which her mother had seen? She could not tell from the drawing; but it hardly mattered, Julian Barclay had said he had worn the ring first on one hand and then on the other, therefore the point was immaterial. That Julian Barclay was also a traveler on the train with Dwight Tilghman was only a coincidence, she assured herself; but was it also only a coincidence that Julian Barclay had that morning given her the ring? Good God! Could he have given her the ring because its possession to him meant “betrayal and death?”
The sketch fell unheeded to the floor as Ethel stared in horror at the jade ring with its encircling dragon.
CHAPTER IX
THE INTERVIEW
Julian Barclay’s luncheon at the club had been a polite fiction, invented under the spur of his desire to be by himself; he felt that he could not face Ethel just then; at least, not in the presence of Walter Ogden and his wife.
Once outside the Ogden house Barclay turned blindly toward the country. An instinctive desire to reason his troubles in the open guided his footsteps, and how long he tramped, and where, on the outskirts of Washington he never knew, but when he again reached the down town section of the city he had recovered his composure and decided on his future actions. Too long he had drifted with the tide; whatever the consequences to himself he must take his place in the affairs of men. As to Ethel—he winced and bit his lip; other and better men had had to renounce their heart’s desire. A past of shadows was an unstable foundation on which to build a dream of happiness, and deserved a rude awakening. There remained but one thing for him to do; to bid Ethel good-by and wish her Godspeed on the road to happiness.
Barclay stepped into a corner drug store, looked up a number in the city directory, and entering a taxicab repeated the number to the chauffeur. Within ten minutes he was standing in an office building interviewing a colored servant.
“Dr. McLane is in his office now, sir; step this way, sir,” and the office boy piloted him into a well lighted room. Barclay sighed impatiently on catching sight of the rows of people waiting to see the popular surgeon; then resigning himself to the inevitable, he took a chair near the window and awaited his turn.