CHAPTER I
THE SCRATCHING SOUND
Estabrook listened to the story of Mortimer Cranch, sometimes staring into the wizened face of the speaker, sometimes gazing into the depths of the painted Gardens of Versailles. When at last, in a hollow voice which reverberated through the scene loft, Cranch had ended, the younger man jumped forward with his eyes blazing, his hands clenched, his nostrils distended.
“What is wrong with my wife now?” he roared. “You know. Tell me or I’ll tear you to pieces!”
There was a moment in which the place was as still as a tomb. I myself drew no breath, but watched the half-bald head of the criminal shake sadly.
Then suddenly he looked up. With one claw-like finger, he pointed at Estabrook. Hate and distrust were in his eyes.
“You know!” he piped in a thin but terrible voice. There was no doubting the sincerity of his accusation.
“I know?” cried Estabrook, falling back. “I know?”
“It began when you left the house!” cried Cranch. “I’ve always watched on and off since you married her. I’m her father. I’ve loved her as no one knows. It was my right to watch. I’ve been nearly mad with worry. What have you done to her? You have dug me out of the grave, I tell you. Now we’re face to face. What have you done with my girl?”
The lonely, ruined man had thrown his arms forward. He wore dignity. For a passing second he became a figure to inspire awe; for a moment he seemed the incarnation of a great self-sacrifice. And in that pause he saw that Estabrook’s expression had suddenly filled with sympathy, as if in a flash a warmer circulation of blood stirred in his veins; as if, suddenly, his sight had been cleared so that he could picture all the suffering which Cranch had been forced to keep locked up within himself, through dragging years. He reached for the extended, bare, and bony wrist of the older man and grasped its cords in his strong fingers.