“When the party was to start back to England, Ellison said he was going to remain here. And he did so. He has never been back since.”
“How did he support himself here?” asked Nick.
“Oh, he has an income of his own,” replied Sanborn, indifferently. “I gave him a few tips occasionally, when I had them, and he did a little in the street. Not much, for he didn’t go in very heavy. He couldn’t. He didn’t have the money.”
“What was his life here?” asked Nick.
“All right,” said the young man, “so far as I can tell. He was a member of a club or two, went into society, was well entertained, and moved around with the young men of the day.”
“Anything fast in his life?” asked Nick.
“Oh, no. He didn’t plunge any in anything.”
“Was he attentive to Miss Sanborn during all this time?” asked Nick.
“From the first. He asked her to marry him within the first year he was here, and she referred him to her father. I have told you that Uncle Harmon didn’t fancy the match, but he had a talk with the young Englishman, and, as he told me afterward, Ellison came out of the talk in a straight, manly fashion. In fact, he made a better impression on uncle in that talk than he had made before. But uncle insisted that, while they might consider themselves engaged, the wedding should not take place for a year. And so Ellison settled down in New York for that year to pass.”
“There doesn’t seem to be much in your tale to give me a hint,” said Nick. “Now let me ask you a leading question. I beg you will not evade it through any friendship for Ellison, whom you evidently like, or feeling of loyalty to your cousin. Here is a mysterious thing in which a man does the very thing you would expect him not to do, and at the very time it would be supposed that the object of his life was accomplished, defeating that object. If I am to solve this mystery, I must find the reason for it in his life prior to his marriage. It is, therefore, not idle curiosity that prompts me to ask you.