"Two cablegrams for you, sir," said the waiter, when I had bidden him come in.
CHAPTER XVIII
A Desperate Remedy
I took the envelopes from the man and told him he might go. Now for it! I thought. Now to see whether the edifice I had builded had but a foundation of sand, or whether Wildred had merely been clever enough to pull wool over the eyes of the police.
My heart was thumping with excitement as I opened the first envelope.
"St. Paul in to-night. First-class passenger on board named Harvey Farnham."
I laid the bit of paper down dazedly and took up the other. It was from the manager of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, in New York. "Mr. Farnham telegraphed to keep room for him. Is spending day or two with friends."
I did not know what to think. It all sounded straightforward enough, and it was not credible that either the official in the office of the American liners, or the manager of an hotel, could be in collusion with Carson Wildred. Still, I was far from being satisfied.
For the moment I had done all that I could do. If Farnham was stopping with a friend, whose address was unknown to me, I could not at present expect to receive an answer either to my New York or Denver cable. In a day or two the police would hear something from the other side, and meanwhile I must possess my soul in patience.
This was a thing easier said than done, especially as, when aimlessly glancing at a weekly paper in the club next day, I came across a paragraph which gushed in the conventionally nauseous manner over the forthcoming marriage of the beautiful young heiress, Miss Karine Cunningham, and Mr. Carson Wildred, the "well-known millionaire and popular man of Society."