Ashes to Ashes

by

Isabel Ostrander

Contents

Chapter I.
The Lie

“Well, that’s the situation.” Wendle Foulkes’ keen old eyes narrowed as they gazed into the turbulent ones of his client across the wide desk. “This last batch of securities is absolutely all that you have left of your inheritance from your father. Leave them alone where they are and you are sure of three thousand a year for yourself and for Leila after you.”

Norman Storm struck the desk impatiently, and his lean, aristocratic face darkened.

“Three thousand a year! It wouldn’t cover the running expenses of the car and our country club bills alone!” he exclaimed. “I tell you, Foulkes, this investment is a sure thing; it will pay over thirty per cent in dividends in less than four years. I have straight inside information on it—”

“So you had on all the other impulsive, ill-judged ventures that have wiped out your capital, Norman.” The attorney sighed wearily. “I don’t want to rub it in, but do you realize that you have squandered nearly four hundred thousand dollars in the past ten years on wildcat schemes and speculations? You’ve come to the end now; think it over. Your salary with the Mammoth Trust Company is fifteen thousand a year—on eighteen you and your wife ought to be living fairly comfortably. I grant you that three thousand income per annum isn’t much to leave Leila in the event of your death, but it is better than the risk of utter insolvency, and she’s been spending her own money pretty fast lately.”

“It is hers, to do with as she pleases!” Storm retorted sulkily and then flushed as the school-boyishness of his own attitude was borne in upon his consciousness. “You cannot make big money unless you take a chance. I’ve been unlucky, that’s all. My father made all his in Wall Street, and his father before him——”

“In solid investments, not speculations; and they were on the inside themselves. They had the capital to take a gambler’s chance and the acumen to play the game.” Foulkes rose and laid his hand paternally upon the younger man’s shoulder. “Forgive me, my boy, but you haven’t the temperament, the knowledge of when to stop and the strength to do it. Of course, this money is yours unreservedly; you may have it if you want to risk this last venture, but it will take some time for me to convert the securities into cash. Remember, you have reached the bottom of the basket; I only want you to stop and consider, and not to jeopardize the last few thousand you have in the world.”

Outside in the bright May sunshine once more, Storm shouldered his way through the noon-tide throng on the busy pavement with scant ceremony, his resentment hot against the man he had just left. Confound old Foulkes! Why didn’t he keep his smug counsels for those who came sniveling to him for them? As if he, an official of a huge and noted corporation, were a mere lad once more, to be lectured for over-spending his allowance!

The fact that the position he held with the trust company entailed no financial responsibility and was practically an honorary one, granted him solely because of his father’s former connection with that institution, was a point which did not present itself to his mind. He was occupied in closing his mental eyes to the truth of the lawyer’s arraignment, bolstering his defiance with excuses for the repeated fiascos of his past ventures, and the secret knowledge that Foulkes had read him aright only added fuel to the flames.

Still inwardly seething, he crossed Broadway and plunged into another narrow, crowded cross-street lined by towering office buildings whose walls rose like cliffs on either side. From the tallest of these, an imposing structure of white stone which reared a shaft high above its neighbors, a woman emerged and mingled with the hurrying host before him. She was not a toiler of the financial district; that was evident from the costly simplicity of the smart little toque upon her shining golden hair and the correct lines of her severely tailored costume. She was undeniably pretty with the delicate, tender irregularity of feature which just escapes actual beauty; yet it was not that which caused Norman Storm to halt and drove from him all thought of the late interview.

It was his wife. Leila! What possible errand could have brought her to the city and to this portion of it? Surely an unexpected one, for she had not told him of any such intention; indeed, to his knowledge she had never before invaded the precincts of finance, and he could conceive of no possible reason for her presence there.

As he paused, momentarily petrified with astonishment, a stout little man upon the opposite curb also caught sight of the young woman’s hurrying figure, and he, too, stopped in surprise, a smile lighting his plain, commonplace features. Then, as though drawn by a magnet, his pale, rather faded blue eyes traveled straight to where Norman Storm stood, the surprise deepened, and with a half-audible exclamation he started across the street toward him; but a long double line of drays and motor trucks barred his way.

Meanwhile Leila had vanished utterly in the crowd, and Storm realizing the futility of an attempt to overtake her, dismissed the matter from his thoughts with a shrug. She would tell him of her errand, of course, on his return home; and a conference of importance awaited his immediate presence at the office of the trust company.

The conference developed complications which delayed him until long after the closing hour, forcing him to forego an engagement with Millard for a round of golf at the country club. He likewise missed his accustomed train bearing the club car out to Greenlea and was compelled to herd in with commuters bound for the less exclusive suburban communities on the line.

Storm was not a snob, but the atmosphere of petty clerking and its attendant interests grated upon his tired, highly strung sensibilities; the unsatisfactory interview of the morning with Foulkes returned to exasperate him further and he was in no very genial frame of mind when he alighted at the station.

But Barker was on hand promptly with the smart little car which consumed such an incredible amount of gasolene, and the air of the soft spring twilight was infinitely grateful after the smoke and stuffiness of the train. As they drove swiftly past the rolling lawns of one spacious landscape garden after another, each burgeoning with its colorful promise of the blossoming year, his taut nerves relaxed, and he settled back in contented ease. What if he had been unlucky in past speculations, if old Foulkes did consider him an unstable weakling? Leila believed in him, and she was his, all his!

The glimmer of white upon the veranda half-hidden in the trees resolved itself into a slender, fairy-like figure, and as he alighted from the car and mounted the steps she caught his hands in the eager, childish way which was one of her chief charms.

“Oh, Norman, how late you are! Poor dear, did they keep him at that wretched old office and make him miss his golf?” She lifted her face for his evening kiss, and her soft, blue eyes glowed with a deep, warm light. “George is here; I mean, he ’phoned from the Millards’. He’s coming over for dinner.”

“That’s the reason for the début of the new white gown, eh?” Storm laughed. “By Jove, I believe I ought to be jealous of old George! When a man’s wife and his best friend——”

“Don’t!” There was a quick note almost of distress in Leila’s tones. “I don’t like to hear you joke that way about him, dear. He seems so lonely, standing just outside of life, somehow. He hasn’t anything of this!”

She waved her little hands in a comprehensive gesture as if to take in the whole atmosphere of the home, and her husband laughed carelessly once more.

“It’s his own fault, then. Don’t waste any sympathy on him on that score, Leila. George is a confirmed old bachelor; he would run a mile from a suggestion of domesticity.” At the door he turned. “Oh, I say dear——”

But Leila was already down the steps and had started across the lawn, at the farther side of which Storm discerned a short stout commonplace figure approaching; and turning once more he hastened to his room to change.

George Holworthy, two years his senior, had been a classmate of Storm’s at the university twenty years before, and the companionship—rather a habit of association than a friendship—which had grown up between the undisciplined, high-spirited boy and his duller, more phlegmatic comrade had proved a lasting one despite the wide dissimilarity in their natures. Storm was too fastidious, Holworthy too seriously inclined, for dissipation to have attracted either of them, but while the former had drifted, plunging recklessly from one speculation to another, the latter had plodded slowly, steadily ahead until at forty-two he had amassed a comfortable fortune and attained a position of established recognition among his business associates.

An hour later, as they sat drinking their after-dinner coffee on the veranda, Leila’s words returned to his mind, and Storm found himself eying his guest in half-disparaging appraisal. Good, stupid old George! How stodgy and middle-aged he was getting to be! His hair was noticeably thin on top and peppered with gray and he looked like anything but an assured, successful man of affairs as he lounged, round-shouldered, in his chair, his mild eyes blinking nearsightedly at Leila, who sat on the veranda steps cradling one chiffon clad knee between her clasped hands.

George looked every day of fifty. Now, if he would only patronize a smart tailor, join a gymnasium and work some of that adipose tissue off, he wouldn’t be half bad-looking. Unconsciously Norman Storm squared his shoulders and drew his slim, lithe form erect in his chair. Then his muscles tightened convulsively and he sat with every nerve tense, for a snatch of the disjointed conversation had penetrated his abstraction and its import stunned him.

“You weren’t in town to-day, then?” The question, seemingly a repetition of some statement of Leila’s, came stammeringly from Holworthy’s lips.

“Oh, dear, no!” Her laugh tinkled out upon the soft air. “I haven’t been in perfect ages! It doesn’t attract me now that spring is here.”

Not in town! But he had seen her himself! Sheer surprise held Storm silent for a moment.

When he spoke his voice sounded strange to his own ears.

“Where were you all day, Leila? What did you do with yourself?”

“I—I lunched out at the Ferndale Inn with Julie Brewster.” Her tone was low, and she did not turn her head toward him as she replied, adding hurriedly: “George, when are you going to give up those stuffy rooms of yours in town and take a bungalow out here? You can keep bachelor hall just as well; lots of nice men are doing it . . .”

Through the desultory talk which followed, Storm sat as if in a trance. If the blue tailored frock and hat with its saucy quill had not been familiar to him in every line, he could still not have mistaken that glimpse of her profile, the carriage of her head, the coil of shining, spun-gold hair. Ferndale Inn was twenty miles away, a good sixty from town, and inaccessible save by motor; she could not possibly have reached there in time for luncheon, for it was after twelve when she had passed him on that crowded, downtown street. She had told a deliberate falsehood; but why?

“I think if you don’t mind, George, I’ll say good night.” Leila rose at last, her white gown shimmering in the darkness. “I feel a bit tired and headachey——”

“Not faint, Leila?” Holworthy spoke in quick solicitude.

“One of my old attacks you mean?” She laughed lightly. “Indeed, no! I haven’t had one in ever so long. It is nothing that a good, early sleep won’t put right. I suppose it is no use to ask you to stay overnight, George?”

He shook his head.

“Must be at the office early to-morrow. I’ll catch the ten-forty train to town. Good night, Leila. Sleep well.”

“Good night.” She touched her husband’s cheek softly with her finger-tips as she passed him, and he felt that they were icy cold. “Put on your coat if you go to the station with George, dear; these early Spring nights are deceptive.”

Deceptive! And she, who had never lied to him before in the ten years of their married life, was going to her rest with a falsehood between them! Storm felt as if someone had struck him suddenly, unfairly between the eyes. The fact in itself was a staggering one, but a score of questions beat upon his brain. Why, if she wished to conceal her errand to town, had she not been content merely to deny her presence there? Why drag in the Ferndale Inn and Julie Brewster?

As if his thoughts had in some way communicated themselves to his companion, the latter asked suddenly:

“What sort of a place is this Ferndale Inn, Norman?”

“Oh, the usual thing. Imitation Arcadia at exorbitant prices. Why?”

“Oh, I’ve heard things.” The tip of Holworthy’s cigar described a glowing arc as he gestured vaguely. “I guess it is quiet enough; Leila wouldn’t see anything wrong there in a million years unless she happened to run into some of her own set in an indiscreet hour. I’m informed that it is quite a rendezvous for those who are misunderstood at their own firesides.”

“George, you’re getting to be a scandal-monger!” Storm laughed shortly, his thoughts still centered on his problem. “The Inn is under new management this season, and anyway you needn’t take a crack at our set out here. They’re up-to-date, a bit unconventional, perhaps, but never step out of bounds. The trouble with you, old man, is that you’re old-fashioned and narrow; you don’t get about enough——”

“I get about enough to hear things!” Holworthy retorted with unusual acerbity. “Your crowd here at Greenlea is no different from any other small community of normal people thrown together intimately under the abnormal conditions created by too much money and not enough to do. I don’t mean you two, but look around you. This Julie Brewster of whom Leila spoke just now; she is Dick Brewster’s wife, isn’t she? I don’t discuss women as a rule, but she’s going it rather strong with young Mattison. Dick’s not a fool; he’ll either blow up some day or find somebody’s else wife to listen to his tale of woe and hand out the sympathy. That is merely a case in point.”

“And just before your arrival, Leila was bemoaning the fact that you’d missed domestic happiness!”

“Was she? Well, there are different kinds of happiness in this world, you know; perhaps I’ve found mine in just looking on.” He rose, “I’ll get on down to the station now, old man. No, don’t rout out Barker; I’d rather walk.”

“I’ll stroll down with you, then.” Storm paused to light a cigarette, then followed his guest down the veranda steps. He shrank from facing Leila again that night; he would wait until the morning, and perhaps later she would explain. Perhaps the explanation of her prevarication lay in the fact of George’s presence; whatever her errand, she might not have cared to discuss it before him. As this solution presented itself to his mind Storm grasped at it eagerly. That was it, of course! What a fool he had been to worry, to doubt her! He could have laughed aloud in sheer relief.

“This is a great little place you have out here, Norman.” Holworthy halted at the gate to glance back at the house outlined in the moonlight. “I don’t wonder you’re proud of it. The grounds are perfect, too; that little corner there, where the hill dips down and the trout stream runs through, couldn’t have been laid out better if you had planned it.”

“It wouldn’t be a little corner if that old rascal Jaffray would sell me that stretch of land which cuts into mine, confound him!” Storm plunged with renewed zest into a topic ever rankling with him. “I’ve tried everything to force his hand, but the scoundrel hangs on to it through nothing in the world but blasted perversity! I tell you, George, it spoils the whole place for me sometimes, and I feel like selling out!”

“Leave all this after the years you and Leila have put in beautifying it because you can’t have an extra bit that belongs to someone else?” Holworthy shook his head. “Don’t be a fool, Norman! If you can only get another head gardener as good as MacWhirter was——”

“I’ll have MacWhirter himself back in a month,” Storm interrupted. “Didn’t Leila tell you? She saw him yesterday at the Base Hospital. He has lost a leg, but he’ll stump around as well as ever on an artificial one, and if he had to be wheeled about in a chair Leila wouldn’t hear of not having him back. She is the most loyal little soul in the world.”

“Of course she is!” Holworthy assented hastily. “You’re the luckiest man living, Norman, and she is the best of women!”

He paused abruptly, and when he spoke again there was an odd, constrained note in his usually placid tones.

“How about the South American investment? I wish you wouldn’t go into it——”

“So, evidently, does Foulkes!” Storm retorted. “I had it out with him to-day, and the old pettifogger talked as though I were the original Jonah; told me to my face that I had no head for business——”

“Well, he’s right on that,” remarked the other, with the candor of long association. “This South American thing isn’t sound; I’ve looked into it, and I know. The big fellows would have taken hold of it long ago if it had been worth while. You certainly cannot afford to take a chance where they won’t.”

The discussion which ensued lasted until the station was reached and Holworthy, with a final wave of his hand, disappeared into the smoker of the train which was just pulling out.

Storm had had rather the better of the argument, as usual, for the other’s slower mind was not sufficiently agile to grasp his brilliant but shallow points and turn them against him, and he started homeward in high good humor. How peaceful and still everything lay under the pale shimmering haze of moonlight! Leila would be fast asleep by now. What a child she was at heart, in spite of her twenty-eight years! How she had hesitated, even over that little white lie that she had been to Ferndale Inn with Julie Brewster, and how stupid he had been to force it by questioning her before George!

The house as he approached it lay cloaked in darkness amid the shadow of the trees save only the subdued ray of light which shone out from the hall door, which in the custom of Greenlea he had left ajar. His footsteps made no sound on the soft, springing turf of the lawn, but when he reached the veranda the sharp, insistent shrill of the telephone came to his ears.

As he started forward it ceased abruptly, and to his amazement he heard Leila’s voice in a murmur of hushed inquiry. The murmur was prolonged, and after a moment he slipped into the hall and stood motionless, unconscious of his act, listening with every nerve strained to the words which issued from the library.

“It is a frightful risk, dear! . . . I know, I’ve had to fib about it already to him . . . No, of course he doesn’t, but what if others . . . . Yes, but he has only gone to the station with George Holworthy; he’ll be back any minute, and then what can I say? . . . . Of course I will, I promised, but you must be mad! . . . Yes, in ten minutes.”

Storm heard the receiver click and had only time to shrink back into the embrasure of the window when Leila emerged from the library, still clad in her dinner gown, and passing him swiftly, seized a long, dark cloak from the rack and sped noiselessly out of the door.

Storm’s breath caught harshly in his throat, and he took an impetuous step or two after her, Then he halted, and with head erect and clenched hands he turned and mounted the stairs.

Chapter II.
The Trap

“Didn’t you sleep well, dear? You look dreadfully tired.” Leila’s eyes fluttered upward to meet her husband’s across the breakfast table and then lowered as she added hesitatingly: “I—I didn’t hear you come in last night.”

“No?” Storm gazed at her in studied deliberation as he responded. “I did not wish to disturb you.”

She looked as fresh and sparkling as the morning, and the sudden wild-rose color which flooded her cheeks beneath his scrutiny heightened the charm of the picture she made; yet it sent a surge of hot resentment to his heart. Her solicitude was not for him, but in fear lest he had discovered her absence on that nocturnal errand!

He wondered at himself, at his stoic outward calm as he accepted his cup of coffee from her hands. Every fiber of him cried out to seize her hand and wring the truth from her lips, but the pride which had held him back from following her on the previous night still dominated him after sleepless hours of nerve-racking doubt. He would make sure of the truth without whining for explanations or dogging her footsteps.

Leila glanced at him furtively more than once as he forced himself to eat, then left her own breakfast almost untasted and turned with a sigh to the little pile of letters beside her plate. As she scanned them Storm saw her expression change, and she thrust one of the envelopes hastily beneath the rest; but not before his eyes had caught two words of the superscription upon the upper left hand corner.

“Leicester Building.” That was the name of the skyscraper from which he had seen her emerge on the previous day! His hands clenched and he thrust back his chair with a harsh, grating noise as he rose.

“I must go. I am late,” he muttered thickly.

“But Norman, dear, Barker hasn’t brought the car around yet.” Leila, too, rose from her chair and with a quick movement thrust the tell-tale letter into her belt.

“No matter, I’ll walk.” He turned to the door with a blind instinct of flight before he betrayed himself. If his suspicions were after all capable of an explanation other than the one his jealous fury presented he would not play the fool. But he must know!

“Will you be home early this afternoon?” Leila bent to rearrange the daffodils in a low glass bowl as she spoke, and her face was averted from him. “Early enough for your golf, I mean?”

“No, I shan’t be out here until late. Don’t wait dinner for me.” A swift thought came to him, and he added deliberately: “There is to be a special meeting at the club in town; I’ll try to catch the midnight train, but in the event that I decide to stay over, I’ll ’phone, of course.”

She followed him out upon the veranda for his customary farewell kiss, but to his relief he spied a familiar runabout halting at the gate and escaped from her with a wave of his hand.

“There’s Millard! I’ll ride down with him. Good-bye.”

Millard was a golf enthusiast, and his detailed description of the previous day’s game lasted throughout the interval at the station, but it fell upon deaf ears.

Storm’s thoughts were in a turmoil. At one moment he felt that he could no longer endure the strain of the attitude he had assumed; that he must stop the train, rush back to his wife and demand from her the truth. At the next, his pride once more came uppermost; his pride, and the underlying doubt that his worst suspicions were actually founded on fact, which made him fear to render himself ridiculous in her eyes. It was true that she had lied about her presence in the city on the previous day, but she had gone openly to an office building at broad noon and left it alone. She had received a letter from someone in that building which she tried to keep from his observation, but her expression when she picked it up, although furtive, had not been guilty; rather, it had been full of pleased expectancy, as quickly masked. That visit, that letter might be simply explained, but the telephone call which he had overheard, the errand that had caused her, his wife, to steal from her house at midnight like a thief——!

There could be no other construction than the obvious one! He recalled her cool, unruffled assurance at the breakfast table, her charming air of solicitude at his own haggard appearance, and his blood boiled with rage. Did she think to deceive him, to keep him indefinitely in the state of fatuous complacency in which he had pitied other husbands? Was he to be spoken of, for instance, as George Holworthy had spoken of Dick Brewster the night before?

With the thought Storm glanced about him at his neighbors in the club car. If what he suspected were true, did any of them know already? Were any of them pitying him with that careless, half-contemptuous pity reserved for the deceived? He detected no sign of it, but the idea was like a knife turned in a wound, and he hurried from them as soon as the train drew in to the city station.

There he found himself mechanically making his way toward the Leicester Building, with no very clear impression of what he meant to do on arrival. Among its myriad offices, representing scores of varied financial and commercial activities, he could scarcely hope to obtain a clue to the purpose of his wife’s visit; and yet the place drew him like a magnet.

Within the entrance he halted before the huge directory board with its rows of names alphabetically arranged; halted, and then stood as though transfixed. Midway down the first column a single name had leaped out to him, and its staring letters of white upon the black background seemed to dance mockingly before his vision.

“Brewster, Richard E. Insurance Broker.”

Dick Brewster! The husband of that light-headed, irresponsible little Julie, the very man to whom his thoughts had turned in the train not a half-hour since! The man of whom George Holworthy had spoken—and what was it that George had said?

“She’s going it rather strong with young Mattison. Dick’s not a fool; he’ll either blow up some day or find somebody’s else wife to sympathize——” Was that the solution? Could old George, obtuse as he was, have divined the truth and been trying in his stupid, blundering fashion, to warn him? Could it actually be that the woman who bore his name, who belonged to him, his property, had dared to flout his possession of her, to supplant him with another, to make of him a byword, a thing of pitying contempt?

How long he stood there before the directory he never afterward knew. He came dimly to realize at last that in the passing crowd which brushed by him more than one turned to stare curiously at him; and, turning, he stumbled blindly toward the elevator. Alighting at Brewster’s floor, he made his way to the number which had been indicated opposite the name upon the board below, and, wrenching open the door, he strode into the office.

A languid stenographer looked up from behind her typewriter.

“Mr. Brewster won’t be in town to-day. Do you want to leave any message?”

“No. I’ll call again,” Storm muttered. “Not—not in town to-day, you say?”

“He ’phoned just now from his country place; he’ll be in to-morrow. Did you have an appointment with him?”

Storm shook his head, and, ignoring the card and pencil which the girl laid suggestively before him, he turned to the door.

“I’ll call up to-morrow.”

The elevator whirled him down to the street level once more, and as he made his way from the building his senses gradually cleared.

What an escape! That was his first thought. Had Brewster been there, in his uncontrollable rage he must have betrayed himself, given the other an opportunity to gloat over him! His fastidious soul writhed from the thought of a vulgar, sordid scene; yet the one thing in all his domineering life which he had been unable to master was his own temper, and he knew and secretly feared it. After all, suppose his wife had called at Brewster’s office, that it was Brewster who had telephoned to her, Brewster whom she had gone at midnight to meet? Suppose the worst were true, these were all the facts he held with which to confront them; they could explain them away with some shallow lie and laugh in his very face! He must master himself, must bide his time until they should have played into his hands.

He strode on abruptly, heedless of the direction, shouldering from his path those who crowded in against him, unconscious of aught save the struggle which was taking place within him.

That it should have been Dick Brewster, of all men! Brewster, with his dapper little mustache and weak, effeminate face! Yet he was goodlooking, damn him, and attractive to women; younger, too, almost as young as Leila herself. Was that what George had meant when he spoke of people being thrown together intimately with too much money and not enough to do? Had he been trying to excuse them on the score of propinquity? When Storm in his own easy, complacent sophistry had twitted the other with being old-fashioned, George had asserted, with what seemed now to have added significance, that he went about enough to “hear things”. So this was what he had been driving at!

And Leila herself? At thought of her Storm felt his rage rising again in an overwhelming wave. Her tenderness, the years of their happiness, their love, were blotted out in the swift fury which consumed him at this affront to his pride, his dominance. Her beauty, her charm in which he had reveled almost as a personal attribute to himself, seemed all at once hideous, baleful to him. As her smiling face rose up before his memory he could have struck it down with his bare hands. If this despicable thing were true——!

He fought back the thought, succeeded at last in forcing a measure of calmness and dragged himself to his own office, where the interminable hours wore to a close. Then he went to a club; not that which he usually frequented when in town where the small-talk of his friends would madden him, but to an older, more sedate affair, a remnant of an earlier aristocracy to a membership in which his birth had automatically elected him. There he ordered a solitary meal and afterward sat in the somber, silent library with his eyes fixed upon the solemn clock. He had said that he would take the midnight train . . . .

Leila, after an equally solitary dinner had ensconced herself in her own dainty library at home that she might be near the telephone, should he call as he had tentatively suggested doing. No summons came, however, and it was after ten o’clock when a step sounded upon the veranda, and she sprang up, thrusting between the leaves of her book the letter over which she had been exulting; a letter which bore the superscription of the Leicester Building.

It was not her husband who stood before her when she opened the door. She paused, and then from the gloom of the veranda a voice spoke reassuringly:

“It is I, Mrs. Storm; Dick Brewster. I hope you and Norman will pardon the lateness of this call, but I must see you, if you will grant me a few minutes.” His quiet, pleasantly modulated voice seemed oddly shaken, and a quick constraint fell also upon Leila’s manner, but she held the door wide.

“Come in, of course, Mr. Brewster. My husband is not at home yet, and I am waiting up for him, You—you wanted to see him?”

“No. That is, I wished especially to see you.”

He followed her into the library and took the chair she indicated, while she seated herself in her own once more and regarded him with an air of grave, troubled inquiry. His face was pale, and beneath the glow of the lamp she saw that it was working as though with some strong emotion, although he strove to remain calm.

“Mrs. Storm, I want to ask you a personal question, and I hope you will not be offended. I should not have intruded at this hour, I should not have come to you at all, if your reply had not been vital to me. Will you tell me where you were yesterday?”

Leila laughed lightly but with an unmistakable note of confusion.

“That is a very simple question, Mr. Brewster. I was with Julie. We motored out to the Ferndale Inn——”

“Alone, Mrs. Storm?”

“Alone, of course. We went with Julie’s new roadster.” She paused, and then the words came in a little rush. “We didn’t start out with any—any definite object, but it was such a beautiful day and it grew late, almost noon before we knew it, and we found ourselves further from home than we had realized, so we ’phoned back—at least, I did——”

“Where did you ’phone from?”

“From the Inn, when we decided to stop there for lunch. But really, Mr. Brewster, I cannot quite understand——”

“I will explain in a moment. Tell me, was anyone there at the Inn whom you knew?”

Leila hesitated, biting her lips.

“The—the Featherstones——”

“Did you see them, Mrs. Storm?”

“No, I—I had gone to the dressing-room to rearrange my hair, and when I rejoined Julie she told me they had just left.”

“I see.” Brewster nodded slowly. “Will you answer one more question, please? How did you reach home?”

“Why, the way we came, of course, in Julie’s car.” Leila’s voice trembled slightly and her eyes wavered.

“You did not, Mrs. Storm.” His tone was gently deferential, but there was a note of finality in it which she could not combat.

“Not all the way,” she amended hurriedly. “Julie dropped me at the house of some friends of mine over on Harper’s Ridge, and they brought me home later.”

He shook his head.

“You did not leave the Ferndale Inn with Julie.”

“Mr. Brewster!” Leila rose. “I have listened to you and I have answered your questions very patiently, but now I must ask you to excuse me. You have no right to question me, my conduct is no concern of yours——”

“Except where it touches upon my wife’s.” Her guest, too, had risen, and although he spoke quietly his voice quivered. “Your story is substantially the same as hers, but you both ignored one detail—that the Featherstones might have caught a glimpse of her companion and that others might have seen them both leave the Inn. Please believe, Mrs. Storm, that I am not attempting to censure you. Your loyalty to my wife, your effort to shield her is very praiseworthy from the standpoint of friendship, but there is something holier than that which has been violated.”

“Oh, not that!” Leila cried. “Julie hasn’t done anything really wrong! You must believe that, Mr. Brewster! Oh, I warned her not to go, that it was foolishly indiscreet!”

“Yet she went.” Brewster’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “I only came here to learn the truth beyond possibility of a mistake. I won’t detain you any longer.”

He bowed and turned to the door, but Leila sprang forward and caught his arm.

“Oh, what are you going to do?”

Brewster drew himself up, and his slight, dapper figure assumed a sudden dignity it had not borne before.

“I am going to turn her out of my house! To send her to this puppy, Mattison, whom she loves!”

“She doesn’t! Mr. Brewster, you must listen to me, you shall! You are on the point of making a terrible mistake, a mistake that will wreck both your lives!” Leila pleaded frantically. “Julie is not in love with Ted Mattison! It is only a flirtation; that luncheon yesterday was the merest escapade——”

“Like the other luncheons and motor trips and tétes-a-téte which have made her the talk of Greenlea for weeks past, while I was supposed to be blind and deaf and dumb?” Brewster shook off his hostess’ detaining hand. “I have reached the end now——”

“But she hasn’t. Will you drive her to it? She is young, only a girl, and irresponsible, but she is innocent now of any actual wrong. What if she is infatuated for the moment with Ted Mattison? It isn’t love, I know that, and you—oh, I have no right to say it, but you have come to me and I cannot let you go without opening your eyes to the truth! You have neglected her for your new business, left her alone and lonely, forced her to seek companionship elsewhere. You are at least equally to blame for the situation, and now, instead of driving her from you for a mere indiscretion, now when she needs you most, you owe it to her and to yourself to win her back; not take her back patronizingly, forgiving and magnifying her fault, but win her, regain the love you have almost lost!” Leila paused and added softly: “You love her, and she cares for you in her heart. She is only deeply hurt at your neglect, and I think she began this affair with Ted in a childish effort just to pay you back. She is only waiting a word to turn to you again. Will you speak that word? You have your great chance now, to-night, for happiness or misery, to save her or to drive her to despair. Will you let this chance pass you by forever?”

There was a pause, and then Brewster turned away, his head bowed.

“I love her, God knows!” he groaned. “You may be right about neglect; I never thought of that, I was only working for her! If I could only believe that there was still a chance——! But I have heard and seen too much, things have gone too far——”

“They haven’t. You must believe me!” Leila followed him a step or two and then halted. “Julie has been foolish, but no more. You admit that you still love her; then go home and tell her so. Tell her every day, over and over, until she believes you again, and realizes that her happiness lies with you.”

Brewster turned once more, his head held high, and the tears glistened unashamed in his eyes.

“I will, Mrs. Storm! You can never know what you have done for me, for us both! I came here to-night the most miserable of men, but you have shown me the way to happiness again.”

Leila gave him both her hands with a glad little cry.

“Oh, I knew that you would understand, that you would see! I have done nothing, it is you yourself——”

“You have made me the happiest man in the world! I shall always remember my hour here to-night with you, and if ever doubt comes to me again, if my faith wavers, I shall think of what you have given me!”

He bent reverently and kissed her hands, and she bowed her head, the happy tears glistening in her own eyes.

Neither of them were aware of the soft opening and closing of the front door, neither saw the figure which halted for a moment in the doorway behind them, in time to catch the last speech which fell from Brewster’s lips and witness the salutation which concluded it; neither of them heard the muffled, almost noiseless footsteps as the figure withdrew as silently as it had come and disappeared in the further recesses of the house.

Chapter III.
The Blow

In his little den at the rear of the house Storm closed the door softly before, with shaking fingers, he sought the chain of the low light upon his desk. Then, dropping into a chair beside it, he raised clenched fists to his head as though to beat out the hideous confirmation which drummed at his brain.

It was true! His wife had betrayed him, That soft, pliant, docile thing of pink and white flesh which in his fatuous idolatry he had believed imbued with the soul of loyalty had slipped airily from his grasp, given herself, her love to another!—Love! What did she know of love or loyalty? This creature whom he had honored had dragged, was dragging his name in the dust, setting him aside as an unimportant factor, a mere dispenser of bounty to be cajoled and tolerated for his generosity, his protection, while she indulged her desires for fresh admiration, new conquests!

Curiously enough, his enmity was not active against the man he believed to be his rival. Brewster, for the moment, was a secondary consideration in his eyes; had it not been he it would have been another. The woman was to blame!

How blind she must think him! How easily she had fallen into the first simple trap he had laid for her feet! How in her fancied security, she must be laughing at him! The little acts of wifely forethought and service, evidences of which surrounded him even there in his sanctum, were but as particles of sand thrown in his eyes! His humidor freshly filled, his golf sticks of last year cleaned and laid out across the table that he might choose which ones to take to the country club for the opening of the new season!—Faugh! Did she hope by such puerile trivialities as these to prolong his unquestioning faith in her.

Against his will, the past came thronging to his mind in ever-changing scenes which he strove in vain to shut out. That summer at Bar Harbor, the moonlit nights, the little, golden-haired maid just out of school. . . . How fast and furious his wooing had been! The dim, rustling, crowded church, the Easter lilies which banked the altar—God! he could smell their cloying fragrance now!—that radiant, fairy-like white figure moving slowly toward him down the aisle . . . .

Storm groaned, and involuntarily covered his eyes as other pictures formed before his mental vision. Their honeymoon at the Hot Springs, that brilliant first season in town, and then her sudden illness and the dark weeks during which he had feared that she would be taken from him and he had crouched in impotent supplication before the door he might not enter. Than that exultant moment when he learned that his prayers had been answered, that she would live; poor fool, what thanks he had given!

Her convalescence had seemed to draw them more closely, tenderly together even than before; and pitilessly, mockingly his thoughts ranged through the quiet, happy years which had followed in the planning and beautifying of their home; this home which she had desecrated!

Brewster’s words rang in his ears. “You have made me the happiest man in the world! I shall always remember my hour here to-night with you—” And then that adoring salutation, that impassioned kissing of her hands!

Checking the harsh laugh which rose to his lips and unable longer to contain himself, Storm sprang up and paced the floor. Brewster’s happiness would be of short duration; his hour was over! Softly, under his breath, Storm began to curse them both with horrible, meaningless curses; blood surged to his temples, pounded in his ears. A lurid red mist rose before his eyes, blinding him so that he staggered, stumbling against the furniture in his path. He, Norman Storm, had been flouted, betrayed; and by that smiling, lying, corrupt creature there beneath his roof whom he had trusted, idolized!

All at once through the roaring in his ears he heard his name called in wondering accents and turned. The door had opened, and Leila stood before him; a pale and trembling Leila, with wide, apprehensive eyes.

“Norman! When did you come in? Why do you look at me so strangely? What has happened?”

The mist cleared before him, the leaping blood was stilled as though a cold hand had tightened about his temples, and in a voice of dangerous calm he replied: “A great deal has happened. For one thing, I have found you out, my dear!”

“ ‘Found me out?’ ” she repeated advancing toward him in sheer wonderment. “Norman, what do you mean?”

“I returned home somewhat earlier than you expected, did I not?” He smiled, but the light in his eyes grew steely. “A trite, time-worn trick of the deceived husband, I admit, but it served! You thought yourself secure, didn’t you? Or perhaps you gave no thought whatever to my possible intrusion; you fancied you had sufficiently pulled the wool over my eyes to blind me indefinitely?”

“Deceived husband!” Her voice had sunk to a whisper of incredulous horror. “You cannot know what you are saying, Norman. You must be mad!”

“On the contrary, I have never known a saner moment. My madness lay in trusting you as I have all these years, loving you with an idolatry which could conceive of no wrong.”

“But I—I have done no wrong——”

“Don’t lie now!” he cried harshly. “Can’t you realize that it will avail you nothing, that it did not deceive me even yesterday? And to-night I come home and find your lover here beneath my roof thanking you for the happiest hour of his life!”

“My——!” Leila shuddered and drew herself up abruptly. “Norman, you go too far! The construction you have placed on Mr. Brewster’s visit here to-night would be ridiculous, ludicrous under the circumstances if it were not so hideous, so unspeakably vile! I will leave you until you come to your senses.”

She turned, but he sprang before her and locking the door dropped the key into his pocket.

“You will stay here! I’m through with evasions. We’re going to have this out between us here now. You went to the Ferndale Inn with Julie Brewster yesterday, didn’t you?”

Leila eyed him steadily for a moment, then her eyelids drooped and she moistened her lips nervously.

“I have told you——”

“A lie! You were not at the Ferndale Inn yesterday, you were in New York, in the Leicester Building, in that rat Brewster’s office!”

“Brewster’s office!” she repeated. Then comprehension dawned, and she smiled sadly with infinite reproach. “Norman, you will regret that accusation bitterly when you learn the truth.”

“I know it now.” His tones shook, but a strange, tense calm had settled upon his seething brain, and even as he voiced his accusations a monstrous resolve was forming within him. “You received a letter from there this morning which you tried to hide from me. Couldn’t your poor, pitiful, complacent mind conceive that a mere child would have seen through your evasions and shallow subterfuges?”

“Stop! Stop!” She retreated from him with her hands over her ears as if to shut out the sound of his voice. “I tell you, you are mad! I can explain——”

“It’s too late for that.” His tone had steadied, and a hint of his dawning, implacable purpose glinted in his eyes. “You called him ‘mad’ last night, too, over the telephone, yet you called him ‘dear’ also, and when he held you to your promise you stole out of my house to meet him in the darkness, like a thief. You did not know that I stood listening, close enough to have touched you as you passed!”

“This is infamous!” Leila turned upon the hearth rug and faced him, her head proudly erect to meet the menace in his eyes. “You were eavesdropping, spying upon me in your insane, unfounded jealousy and suspicion! Why did you not follow me as well? Then you would have learned the truth for yourself!”

“It was not necessary. It was sheer accident that I came upon you at the telephone, but I did not have to dog your footsteps to learn the truth. My judgment was better than yours; I knew that you would walk into the first trap I set for you, that you would give yourself into my hands. And you have!”

“You will unlock that door and permit me to go now, if you please.” The quiet dignity of her tone was filled with cold contempt. “You are beside yourself; I will not listen a moment longer to your wild accusations, your insults! I have offered to explain, but you said it was too late. Take care that you do not make it forever too late!”

Storm read disdain in the defiance of her eyes, mockery in the faint curl of her lips, and his swift resolve crystallized.

“It is you who have made it too late! Take that damnable smile from your lips, do you hear?” As he advanced toward her his outflung hand touched something smooth and hard, and closed upon it. “I tell you I’ve caught you, I’ve found you out! You’ve had your hour, you and the man for whom you deceived me! I’ll settle with him later, but now you’ll pay!—Damn you, stop smiling!”

Blindly in the sudden unleashing of his rage he struck, and the small, colorless face with its tantalizing, disdainful curl of the lips vanished as though the red swirling mist which rose again before him had closed over it and blotted it out.

No sound reached him at first but the drumming of the pulse in his ears and his hoarse, sobbing breath as he stood swaying, tearing with one free hand at the collar which seemed tightening about his throat. Then gradually for the second time the lurid haze lifted, and as the space before him cleared a great trembling seized him.

“Stop smiling! Stop smiling! Stop smiling!”

What queer, grating whisper was that which repeated the words endlessly over and over in unison with the throbbing in his brain? Dimly he became aware that it issued from his own lips and moved his hands up from his throat to still the sound.

His other hand still grasped the smooth, hard object upon which it had closed in that moment of vengeance, and now he gazed down stupidly upon it. It was a driver, one of that collection of golf clubs from the table, and upon its glittering, rounded, hardwood knob was a smudge of red . . . .

His wavering gaze traveled on and downward. Then it fastened upon something which lay at his feet, and slowly his face stiffened and grew leaden.

It was Leila, huddled and still, with one side of her forehead blotted out in a crushed, oozing mass of crimson.

The driver dropped with a soft thud from his relaxed hand, and he knelt, lifting the limp body which sagged so horribly, with such unexpected weight. Shaking as he was, he managed to raise it to a half sitting posture, the shoulders supported against his knee; but as, mechanically, he whispered her name, the head rolled back, its jaw hanging grotesquely; and from between the half-crossed lids her eyes stared dully back at him in a cold, fixed, basilisk gaze.

As confirmation came to him, the body slipped from his nerveless grasp and with a soft, silken rustle rolled over and fell face downward, settling into the hearth rug with the dishevelled golden head against the fender.

He had killed her! He meant to do it, of course; he had been conscious of that resolve before she defied him, while she had stood there vainly striving to maintain her attitude of injured innocence; but now he realized that it must have been his unacknowledged intention from the moment suspicion changed to conviction. The stupendous fact, however, and the consequences which it portended, held him suddenly at bay.

He had committed murder, and he would be called upon to pay the penalty! It was not death he feared———how easily it had been meted out, there in that little room!—but the dragging, infernal machinery of legalizing his punishment; the trial, the publicity, the hideous disgrace, the sordidness of the whole wretched proceeding!

No tinge of grief or remorse colored his thoughts. She had wronged him, had richly deserved what had come to her. That dead thing lying there had become simply a menace to his own life, and the immediate future in all its horrors ranged before his mental vision. The discovery, the arrest, the stark headlines in the papers——Wall Street, the Trust Company, the clubs, all his world ringing with it! Then the legal battle, long drawn out, the sentence, the weeks of tortured waiting in an ignominious cell and at last the end, hideous, inevitable!

How life-like she looked, lying there, lying there with no hint of the tell-tale wound visible! She might almost have fainted and slipped from that huge armchair behind her with her head against the fender . . . .

Why could she not have fallen so to-night? The thought seared across his brain like a flash of lightning, and Storm drew his breath in sharply. He was safe, so far! No one knew of what had taken place in that room; no one knew yet that he had even returned to the house. Brewster had not seen him, and Brewster was the only living person who could suspect a motive for the crime.

A motive? But what was he thinking? There would be no question of motive, for there would be no suggestion of crime. Since childhood Leila had been a victim of petit mal, that mild form of catalepsy which, while it baffles cure, yet is in itself not harmful; a moment of faintness, of unconsciousness followed by slight weakness, that was all. Everyone knew of these attacks of hers; George Holworthy had referred to that tendency only last night when she had complained of feeling not quite herself. The chance that she might injure herself in falling when the fainting spell came was the sole danger attached to her old malady. That danger was what must seem to have overtaken her to-night!

Storm rose weakly, his eyes averted from the thing lying there upon the floor, and strove with all his mental force to collect himself. She had come here to his den and seated herself in that chair to await his return. Faintness had overcome her, and she had fallen forward, striking her temple there on the heavy brass knob on the corner of the fender. That was the solution, that was what the world must think, must believe without question.

And he? What must be his part in this drama which he was staging? Not an active one; caution whispered to him to keep as much in the background as would be consistent. He must remember to eliminate this hour wholly from his calculations; this hour and the events which had led up to it. He knew nothing of her visit to the Leicester Building in town; of the telephone summons, her secret nocturnal meeting with Brewster, the letter she had tried to conceal or the fellow’s visit there that evening. Only by erasing from his future train of thought all such memories could he hope to succeed in conducting himself down to the smallest detail as though all had been as usual between them.

In the ordinary course of events, on returning as late as this and finding the house dark—for the single low light in the den far at the rear of the house would not be calculated to attract his attention—he would have concluded that Leila had long since gone to bed, and would himself retire without disturbing her. In the early morning the housemaid would discover what lay in the den and raise the alarm.

He would then have only to play the rôle of the dazed, grief-stricken husband, and none—not even Brewster—would suspect. There would be the formality of a medical examination, the funeral, the conventional condolences, and soon their little world would forget.

What was that! Was there a stir, a vibration from somewhere in the house above? A cold sweat broke out at every pore, and fear gripped him, but he flung it off and tiptoed to the door, turning the knob and striving to open it. Then he remembered, and taking the key from his pocket unlocked the door and pulled it toward him inch by inch. Except for the pin-point of light from the lamp on the newel post at the foot of the staircase, the house was in absolute darkness, and his straining ears detected no repetition of that sound, if sound there had been.

Closing the door at length, Storm set himself resolutely to the task which remained before him. At his feet lay the driver where he had dropped it when the full realization of his act swept over him. There had been a smudge upon it——God! had it marked the rug?

Before he touched it, however, he went to the window, assured himself that no aperture between its heavy curtains would permit a ray of stronger light to be visible from within, and then switched on the wall brackets, flooding the room with a dazzling radiance.

Next he examined the driver itself. The blow had been delivered with the rounded knob, and to the sinister clot of red upon it there adhered a single golden hair which glinted accusingly in the light. Storm plucked it off with trembling fingers and approaching the hearth coiled it over the knob on the corner of the fender, close to that shining, inert head.

Then with his handkerchief he wiped the driver carefully, polishing it until even to his super-critical eye it appeared immaculate once more, and replaced it among the others on the table.

Shudderingly, he glanced down at the square of linen crushed in his hand, and as his fingers slowly opened a hideous crimson stain appeared. It seemed to his horrified gaze to be growing, spreading, and he felt an almost irresistible impulse to cast it wildly from him. Her blood! Her life-blood, still warm and red and all but pulsing as it had come from her veins!

To his distorted imagination it seemed to be still a part of her, and alive, clinging to his hand in futile, mute appeal. It must be obliterated, must cease to be! That inert body could not accuse him; the driver lay in spotless seeming innocence among its fellows; even that single golden hair which might have proved his undoing had been made to serve as a link in the circumstantial chain he was forging; but this most damning evidence of all remained! He must rid himself of it at once, must destroy it utterly! But how?

The stout linen would not tear easily, and even though he ripped it apart the torn strips would still bear their revealing stains; if he took it to his room and washed it there would be no place where he could hang it to dry without Agnes finding it, and she would think such a proceeding strange. Moreover every instinct within him shrank from the thought of pocketing the gruesome thing and clamored for its destruction.

Dared he burn it? What if the betraying odor lingered in the room? To start a blaze in the fireplace which had been swept clean for the coming summer was not to be thought of, yet burning was the only means left to him.

His roving glance fell upon the desk. There lay the sealing wax, tray and spirit lamp with which it had been his pride to stamp the Storm coat of arms upon his letters. In an instant he had touched a match to the tiny wick, and a flame, narrow and curling like a bluish, tinseled ribbon, sprang into being.

He waited until it had steadied, and then at arm’s length he dipped a corner of the handkerchief into the flame and held it there. God, how it smoked! The linen charred slowly at the edges as the blue tongue of fire licked it hungrily, and a pungent odor permeated his nostrils, but no answering flame appeared. Would it never catch?

At last a tiny dart of red shot out and ran around the border, and Storm snuffed out the wick and held the handkerchief over the little bronze tray. Slowly, creepingly the tiny flame ate into the linen, and flakes of fine light ash drifted down into the receptacle beneath. The sinister stains still stood out glaringly in the curling smoke, and as though possessed of a very demon the flame eluded them, skirting about them in sheer mockery. Would even the elements defy him in his plan?

Then the crimson turned to brown, and a darker curl of smoke arose, while a strange, acrid odor mingled with the dry smell of burning linen. Her blood was being consumed there before him, just as her body would later be consumed by the earth in which it would lie! A thought of the ancient human sacrifice came to him, and he trembled anew. This blood-stained rag, this symbol of her living body, was being offered on the altar of his self-preservation!

The flakes were dropping now like sifting, gray-white down, and the handkerchief was a mere wisp. Slowly the brown stains crumbled and disappeared and the smoke lightened, but that dreadful, sinister odor still lingered. Thread by thread the linen was consumed, but Storm held the last shred until the diminished flame seared his fingers, then dropped it into the tray and stood watching it with somber eyes until the lingering flame died and only the little heap of ashes remained.

Gone! That hideous, accusing stain had been swept into nothingness, obliterated by the breath of clean fire. Only that unclean odor still prevailed, and the contents of the tray must be disposed of. If the room were subjected to a minute examination and the ashes analyzed, all that he had done would go for naught. If he could scatter them, sow them to the winds——

Storm listened. The night breeze was rising, blowing briskly, strongly about the house. Without, the flower garden and broad lawns with a border of hedge and clustering trees screened him from his neighbors. With a quick gesture he switched off the lights and tiptoed to the window, thrusting back the curtains and opening it wide. The fresh, sweet, blossom-laden air rushed in upon him, and he breathed it in great gulps before he turned and felt his way to the desk.

Picking up the little bronze tray he turned to the window and stood for a moment gazing out. Under the pale glow of the rising moon, Leila’s flowers which she had tended with such loving care lay sleeping tranquilly, their small myriad faces glistening beneath a spangled veil of dew. She had brought them into being, and now her ashes, these ashes which held a part of her, were to fertilize and give them renewed life!

He thrust the thought from him in a paroxysm of physical revulsion, and as a gust of wind swept about the house he cast the contents of the tray far into the air. It seemed to him that he could see the ashes, swirling like a faint, driven mist before him, settling lingeringly among the flowers, and he stared half-fearfully as though anticipating that a phantom would rise from them; but the sudden gust of wind died, and the garden slept on, unconcerned.

The tray, swept clean of the last flake, shimmered faintly in his hand, and he replaced it on the desk. Then, seizing the window curtains, he waved them about until even his overstimulated senses could detect no lingering whiff of smoke. Closing the windows at last, he drew the curtains as carefully as before and switched on the lights.

The first thing that met his blinking gaze was the burnt match with which he had lighted the spirit lamp, and he thrust it into his pocket as he bent to examine the desk top. No single flake of ash remained to bear witness against him, and with a sigh he turned to the work yet before him.

He had marked the exact spot upon the rug where the impromptu weapon had rested; but here, too, a prolonged scrutiny revealed no slightest trace, and he arose from his knees with a sigh of relief.

After all, he was not preparing for a rigid police inquiry; only the most casual inspection would be given the room, with the cause of death so self-evidently manifested, yet the slightest overlooked clue would bring crashing down upon him the whole circumstantial structure he was so painstakingly erecting.

Was that armchair in the exact position from which the body would have fallen?

He studied it, moved it an inch or two, and then turned his attention to the body itself. The wound was upon the right temple, and, shuddering, he raised the head and rested it upon the corner of the fender. It settled back upon the rug once more as he released it, but he saw to his satisfaction that the knob of brass was no longer bright; a smear of crimson marred its surface, and a loosened strand of her hair trailed over the fender into the hearth.

As Storm stepped backward to regard his handiwork something metallic grated against his heel. A gold hairpin! He picked it up meditatively. Had Leila really fallen forward that pin, jarred from her head by the force of the impact, would have shot across the fender; he reached over and dropped it upon the hearth.

No flaw remained now in the scene he had arranged, and with its consummation a traitorous wave of horror rose within him, an hysterical desire almost of panic to flee from that silent, sinister room. He switched off the wall brackets, and approached the desk. His hat and gloves were all that remained to indicate his presence, and he caught them up and reached out to extinguish the low reading lamp before remembrance stayed his hand.

The housemaid must find the lamp still burning brightly in the morning when she came to set the room to rights. Was his nerve failing him that he should have almost overlooked so vital a detail? The horror was mounting now, but he forced himself to a final, searching survey; his hideous task was accomplished!

A few hurried, cautious steps, a moment of hesitation, and he stood at last outside the door. He felt an overmastering impulse to close it, to seal that room and its gruesome contents away from the living world, but he reminded himself sternly that it would not be a logical move. Leila, awaiting his coming, would have left the door ajar that she might hear him. He reached behind him and drew it close to its casing until only a narrow line of light cleaved the darkness with dimmed radiance; then, repressing a mad desire to run, he tiptoed noiselessly down the hall.

At the foot of the stairs he paused and glanced back. Only the faintest lightening of the shadows betrayed what lay beyond, and extinguishing the lamp upon the newel post he crept up to his room.

From Leila’s empty dressing-room adjoining, the yawning blackness seemed to rush out menacingly to envelop him, but he shut it away with the closing door and, moving to his window, flung it wide.

Soft moonlight everywhere, silvering the treetops and shimmering upon the trout stream beyond. Moonlight and the whispering night winds and the peace and hush of a sleeping world.

It was over! He had done his utmost to forestall any possible doubt or suspicion, had nullified every clue, had set the scene for the farce which would start with the rising curtain of dawn and felt confident that he was prepared at all points to meet the issue.

But what of the hours that lay between, the long night before him?

Chapter IV.
The Long Night

Storm turned from the window with a sudden realization that his task, instead of having been finished, had only begun. If he were to keep up this farce it would not be enough to attempt to obliterate from his memory the hour which had just passed; he must live from this moment as though it had never been. He must remember that, tempted by the beauty of the spring night, he had not come directly home by way of the short cut, but had chosen the winding path which skirted the club grounds and the lake. That would account for the time that had elapsed since the arrival and departure of the train.

He had only just come in, and finding the house dark had proceeded at once up here to his room. He would suppose Leila to be asleep in there, behind that closed door, and he would therefore move about softly, so as not to waken her. Every nerve shrank in revolt from the thought of retiring, of courting sleep and the nightmares which might arise from his subconsciousness to haunt him, yet he must proceed in all things as though this were but a usual homecoming.

He must at least prepare for bed. He reached for the pendant chain of the reading lamp and then paused. The servants’ rooms were directly above; what if the bright square of light shining from his open window awoke one of them and she came downstairs? The next minute he was cursing himself beneath his breath. Was his light not often going as late as this, or later, and had he ever before paused to think or care whether it disturbed the servants or not? Tonight must be as all other nights! Why could he not bear that in mind?

Nevertheless, he crossed to the window once more and closed the shutters; that concession, at least, was not an unusual precaution, for an early night moth or two, lured by the prematurely warm weather, had already made its appearance. Then he turned on the light resolutely and started to undress. The suit he was wearing was of dark blue serge with a white pin-head stripe, and as he divested himself of it a new thought sprang up to his mind. Suppose it, too, bore traces——? That head with its shattered, gaping wound had rested against his knee. . . .

Seizing the garments he moved close to the bed-stand, and beneath the powerful rays of the lamp he examined every thread with straining eyes. No stain was visible; even his shirt cuffs by a miracle had escaped contact, and with a sigh of relief he plunged his hands in the various pockets to remove his keys and small change.

The first object his fingers touched was the burnt match with which he had ignited the spirit lamp, and impatiently he filliped it out of the window.

Everything was there in his pockets which he normally carried except his handkerchief. That was gone, reduced to ashes and flung to the winds of the night; but it would not have been had his homecoming been as he must pretend even to himself.

Storm frowned. He would in all likelihood never wear that suit again; even if it were not for the fact that mourning garb alone must be his for many months to come, he could still never look upon it again, remembering . . . .

He thrust that thought violently aside and continued with his reasoning. Agnes always went through the pockets of the clothes he had worn during the week for stray handkerchiefs when she was collecting the laundry. Would she note that he had used one less than usual?

It was not so much the fear of that, however, as the mental urge to play up to his part, to make all things seem as though that hour in the den had never been, that prompted Storm to go to his dresser and take a fresh handkerchief from the drawer. Without effeminacy, his fastidious taste inclined toward a dash of delicate scent, and several varieties stood before him.

Tentatively he lifted a bottle of rose toilet water, but the first whiff of fragrance made him replace it with a shudder. It brought back too vividly the remembrance of that garden below where the opening buds were even now scattered with filmy ashes. The lilac water he also thrust aside—Leila had met him at the gate only a week before with her arms filled with white lilac, and as she stood there, her head looming fair and golden above them, he had thought her very like a picture of the Annunciation . . . .

Finally he sprayed a few drops of eau de Cologne on the handkerchief and stuffed it in the pocket of his coat lying across the chair. Then, clad in his pajamas, he glanced at the clock on the mantel.

Half-past twelve! It would be half-past six in the ordinary course of events when Agnes would descend to dust the first floor and set the breakfast table. Six hours to wait! Three hundred and sixty slow, dragging minutes! How could he ever live through them? How did the condemned spend the last hours before the end? He had read, marveling, that some hardy criminals slept unconcernedly, some raved, some prayed . . . .

God, why did such hideous thoughts intrude themselves now? He would never stand in their shoes, no breath of suspicion would ever approach him; he had laid his plans too well, had fortified himself against any contingency which might arise. The scene had been perfectly staged with not a detail missing to break the continuity of the version of what had occurred which must impress itself upon those who would view it.

Crossing the room, he seated himself on the side of the bed and lighted a cigarette. He could keep the light going a little longer without occasioning remark should one of the maids wake up, for he had often read until past one. He must not overdo it, though; he must not overdo anything. That would be the one great danger; he must hold himself impervious against self-betrayal.

He smoked cigarette after cigarette until a single stroke tinkled from the little clock, and, rousing himself from his reverie, Storm reached over and extinguished the lamp. The darkness seemed sinister, overwhelming, but as his eyes gradually accustomed themselves to it he saw pale, silvery moonbeams creeping in between the slats of the shutters, lying in shimmering bars across the floor and lightening the gloom with a faint, almost spiritual effulgence. The stillness of the night, too, was all at once broken by a myriad sounds which had not penetrated his consciousness before: strange creaks and groans in the walls as though something invisible were abroad, sibilant whispers in the chimney and the liquid, monotonous tap of water dripping from the faucet in the bathroom. Outside, the wind blew gustily, and somewhere about the house a loose shutter banged with a dismal, hollow sound.

What a hideous thing night was! There was something about it which loosened a fellow’s thoughts, freed them from his stern control and let them wander where they would, unrestrained. Only one other such vigil had Storm kept: that of the crisis in Leila’s desperate illness after their marriage. Every hour of it was branded on his brain, every detail arose again to attack his senses: the pungent, penetrating odor of carbolic, that strange, high voice which babbled and was still, the white-clad nurse, gravely noncommittal, shutting the door behind which he might not pass, the taste of his own blood as he caught his lip between his teeth to keep back the groan of utter despair.

The night then had seemed interminable, but in the end had come the glorious promise that she would live! Now the dawn would bring only tidings of death, but he would not call her back again if he could; would not undo what he had done even if it lay in his power. His Leila had never existed; the pedestal was empty, that was all!

Gad, if only he could smoke! His nerves shrieked for the solace of nicotine, but he dared not light another cigarette. The smoke curling up from his opened window to that of one of the maids upstairs would tell her, should she also be awake, that her master was keeping vigil there in the darkness alone. She would think nothing of it now, perhaps, but later when the discovery was made she might wonder. He must manage, somehow, to get through the night without even the slight comfort that he craved!

With a whirring of soft wings, some tiny creature of the night came and beat upon the shutter, and Storm started violently. The bars of moonlight had traveled a barely perceptible inch or two across the floor, and from the distance there came the crowning note of desolation: the long-drawn, mournful howling of a dog.

Storm shivered. An old superstition which his Irish nurse had instilled into his mind in the nursery days swept over him. A dog’s howl was the sign of death! How could the beast know? In all that sleeping countryside, there was one who shared his vigil, one who raised his voice in warning and lament!

Storm rose and, tiptoeing to the window, opened the shutters wide and fastened them noiselessly back against the house wall while he strained his eyes in the direction from which the dismal baying of the dog rose once more. Was it nearer now? Could it be that the beast, led by some instinct more subtle and unerring than man could fathom, had picked up the scent—the scent of the drifting ashes? Bridget had told him that a dog could sense the presence of death though it were miles away and would come to cry the news of it. What if the creature were to appear suddenly there between the trees and leap across the lawn to crouch beneath the curtained window of the den downstairs and howl its dread message?

The next minute Storm’s tense attitude relaxed. What a fool he was to be stirred by the idle superstition of an old-wives’ tale! His nerves must be going back on him, what with that accursed howling and the shifting shadows of the moonlight which were worse than utter darkness could be. Would it never end?

As if in answer the mellow chime of the clock sounded upon his ears. It must be three o’clock at least, possibly four——! He waited breathlessly. A second note pealed forth softly to die away in a vibrating echo, and then silence. Only two o’clock! Nearly five hours more! God, could he endure it and keep his sanity? Doyle’s gruesome story of Lady Sannox came to his mind. Would he be found in the morning as the great physician had been after the night of horror, a gibbering idiot trying to thrust both feet into one leg of his trousers and babbling meaninglessly? Lady Sannox had been unfaithful, too, but it was the lover, not the husband, who paid!

He forced the hideous picture from his thoughts and turned for one final glance at the garden below. How still everything was! The howling of the dog had ceased, and the wind had died down to a mere rustling, whispering breeze. The moonlight, too, was paling, and beneath its waning radiance the garden still slumbered undisturbed as it had when he cast the ashes forth upon the air. From these ashes would spring the phoenix, not of love, but of murder; of hatred, vengeance and the lust to kill! What had he not loosed upon the world!

He covered his eyes as if to shut out the scene of false peace, of menacing, brooding calm before the crimson dawn; and staggering back to the bed, he sank down upon it once more. The touch of the smooth, cool linen beneath his fevered hand steadied him and brought a moment of tranquility to his reeling senses, but he could not stretch himself out upon it. The space beside him where Leila had so often lain was blank and empty, yet oddly her presence seemed near. He could almost hear her light tap upon the connecting door, almost see it open and her slender, white-clad form appear with the two heavy ropes of golden hair falling over her shoulders. She would come to him swiftly, tenderly, and he would take her in his arms and hold her close . . . .

But no tapping came upon the door, no form appeared, his arms were empty! Great God, why could he not forget!

The clock struck three, the moonlight faded and vanished, swallowed up in the darkest hour which comes before the dawn, and still Storm crouched there at the bed’s foot sunk in a reverie of retrospection.

In just such another springtime as this they had gone upon their honeymoon. The awe and ecstasy of those days like a half-forgotten fragrance stole again over his spirit and thrilled him anew. How wonderful she had been, how wondrously sweet her shy confidences, her little outbursts of tenderness, her bewitching, bewildering changes of mood! How he reveled in each new phase of her nature as it revealed itself to him; how he had worshipped her, gloried in the possession of her! In the golden years that followed, the first ecstasy had not faded; it had but stabilized, deepened into a steady glow of unquestioning devotion, and the honeymoon had never really ended until this hour!

Impotently he struck his forehead with his clenched fist. Why must he go on thinking, thinking! The past was dead, buried beyond hope of resurrection! Why must it come trooping back to rob him of his strength and lull him to forgetfulness of the immediate future and the crisis which impended? The night had been years long! Would it never come to an end? Would this hideous darkness envelop him forever?

Four o’clock! Thank God, he had missed an hour! Only two more now, or three at the most, and then the cry of alarm would come winging up from below and the curtain would rise!

A chill dampness as of the grave itself stole in at the window, and Storm shivered although he was bathed in sweat. His pulse slowed and weakness descended upon him, while a swift, unnerving fear laid its clammy hands upon his throat.

He fought it off desperately. This was the dreaded hour before the dawn, the hour of lowered vitality when life’s guard is down and death stalks in upon those awaiting it, those whose time has come and who slip out into the unknown quietly, peacefully. But for those who are hurled into it suddenly, hideously, by shot or stab or crashing blow——!

He dropped his wretched head upon his hands. This was madness! He must not succumb to it, he must marshal his resources, steady his brain, gather strength for the coming of day!

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the darkness was changing from black to gray. The eastern sky was unbroken, but a mist which could rather be felt than seen was rising from the darker shadows, and the wind had been succeeded by a dead calm. A hushed expectancy seemed to brood over the world, and Storm waited, too, dreading yet longing for the end of this prolonged suspense.

The clock ticked with maddening precision, and he tried to count the minutes, to keep his traitorous thoughts from wandering into dangerous, forbidden channels. His weakness had fallen from him, his pulse quickened and a mounting excitement drove from him all thought of fear. He would be ready when the time came to meet the issue. But would the time ever come?

There were faint gray streaks in the sky now, the shadows had sharpened and suddenly, piercingly, a cock crew. Storm welcomed the strident sound with uplifted head and squared shoulders. The dawn was coming at last!

He turned, crossed his arms on the foot of the bed and, resting his chin upon them, stared out through the open window at the lightening sky.

Five liquid, mellow notes sounded from the mantel, and he smiled grimly. One hour more and he could begin to listen for the maid’s step upon the stair! His nerves were tingling in anticipation, and without urging his thoughts leaped ahead. He must be ready when the cry came, but not too obviously prepared. Surprise must come before alarm, consternation before a show of grief. The maid herself must lead him to her discovery. His face and manner must reveal no slightest inkling of his knowledge of the truth.

Both of the servants were undeniably stupid. He had anathematized them many a time for their crass density and ignorance, but now he blessed it. They would suspect nothing, would seize upon any explanation of the tragedy which was subtly planted in their shallow brains and make it their own.

Of the outsiders, Carr must be called in first. He was a country practitioner of the old-fashioned sort who had been established there when Greenlea was known as Whigham’s Corners, and croup and gout with their intermediate ills had been the range of his experience. He, too, could be counted upon to see only what was placed before him, and the details of the aftermath could safely be left in his hands.

A score of vague, anticipatory visions passed through Storm’s brain. How shocked the crowd out here would be; and old George! He was probably fast asleep now, filling the air with contented snores. What would he say and do when the early edition of the evening papers brought the tidings to him? Storm thanked heaven that neither he nor Leila had relatives to come flocking with tears and questions and advice. He would be free at least from prying eyes beneath his own roof after the official medical inquiry had been concluded.

Gray turned to rose in the eastern sky, the mist lifted, and the world showed delicately green beneath it. The lone cock’s crowing had been augmented by a chorus, and the birds stirred and twittered in the trees. All life was waking to greet the new day, but Leila. . . .

What time was it? Storm rose weakly and tottered to the mantel. The clock’s face was plainly visible in the half-light, and he drew his breath sharply. Five minutes to six!

The pink glow deepened to crimson, and the sun in a blaze of glory peeped over the low-lying hills, but Storm did not see the spectacle for which he had waited through interminable tortured hours. He had caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror and stood gazing in incredulous dismay at the face which gazed back at him. Could it be his own with that sickly, bluish pallor, unshaven jaw, and haunted, sunken eyes which stared from dark-rimmed sockets?

Great heavens, if he appeared like that before even the servants his guilt would be patent to all the world!—But would it? The maids would surely be too agitated to note him in the shock of the discovery; and later, when the doctor came, horror and natural grief would account for the change in his appearance. His night of vigil had provided him with that which would perhaps be an asset rather than a danger.

What was that? He whirled about and stood listening. The floors and ceilings were thick, and no ordinary sound could penetrate from above; but had he not heard a step upon the stair? He waited in an intensity of strained attention, for several moments. The silence within the house remained unbroken.

With a sigh he glanced back at the clock. It must have struck the hour while he stood glaring at the apparition the mirror had revealed, for now the hands pointed to a quarter after six. Could it be that perverse fate would ordain that the maids should over-sleep this day of all days and prolong his agony?

Then his glance fell upon the bed. Its pillows were smooth and untouched, its covers creased but not tumbled about. The veriest child could see that it had not been slept in, the most casual glance would reveal the secret of his night-long vigil!

In three strides he had reached it and thrown back the covers, pommeling the pillows and crumpling the sheets. What a narrow escape! He paused, breathless, when his task was completed and gazed fearfully about him for other overlooked evidence.

His light had been burning until one o’clock. Hastily he picked up a book at random from those on the table and opening it laid it face downward upon the bed-stand. The stubs and ashes of the cigarettes he had smoked would occasion no remark; and the most painstakingly minute scrutiny failed to reveal any other incongruity in the room.

While he paused anew a sound came to his ears about which there could be no doubt; cautious but naturally heavy footsteps were descending the stairs from above. His heart leaped, and the blood raced in his veins, but he stood motionless as the steps passed his door and descended again.

It would come now, the cry for which he had waited! He held his breath until his ear-drums seemed bursting, and the minutes lengthened, but still the summons did not come. What could the girl be doing? Would she set all the other rooms to rights before approaching the den, or did she mean to shirk it altogether? Surely that streak of artificial light burning in the daytime must catch her eye as she passed along the hall! Was she gossiping with the milkman, idling on the porch? The suspense was unbearable!

He had borne with it through the long watches of the night, but now he could contain himself no longer. Every nerve was strained to the breaking point, and his nails bit into the flesh of his clenched hands. Was this agony to be stretched out interminably?

And then it came at last! A piercing, prolonged scream rang suddenly through the quiet house, to break and rise again, echoing back from the very walls.

Storm dropped his head in his hands, and an answering cry of unconscious blasphemy trembled on his lips.

“Thank God!”

Chapter V.
When Morning Dawned

While Storm hesitated, relaxed in that moment of utter abandon to relief, it came again; a wild shriek mounting from below in a high feminine voice and dying away in a quivering wail!

The long awaited discovery had come; now he must play his part. One false move!——But he put that resolutely from his thoughts as he flung his dressing gown about him and started for the door.

“What is it? What has happened?” He was leaning Over the stair-rail now, and his voice, although subdued, held just the proper note of sharp inquiry. Even as he spoke he heard a heavy foot along the hall above and was conscious of the cook’s head peering down affrightedly.

“Oh, Mr. Storm, sir! Mr. Storm!”

Agnes, the housemaid, sped along the lower hall and collapsed at the foot of the stairs.

“Well, what is it?” Storm demanded peremptorily, but still in that subdued tone. “Burglars here in the night? Don’t you know better than to scream like that? You’ll frighten Mrs. Storm——”

He paused, and the girl’s shocked wail arose once more.

“Mrs. Storm! She’s down here, sir, in the den. Oh, come quick!”

“Down——!”

The word died in Storm’s throat, and still conscious of the cook’s eyes he turned, dashed open the door of his wife’s empty room, uttered a loud ejaculation and then plunged down the stairs.

“I thought she was asleep in her room!” he exclaimed. “Where——?”

“In the den, sir!” Agnes scrambled to her feet and stood clinging to the newel post as Storm passed her and rushed down the hall. “Oh, may God have mercy——!”

He heard a startled cry from above and lumbering feet hastily descended the stairs as he burst into the den and then stopped short. Leila’s body was lying face upward now upon the rug, her waxen features clamped in the rigidity of marble, a hideous brown clot enmeshing the soft gold of her hair and smeared across her forehead.

The cry of horror which burst from Storm’s lips was not all simulation, for anticipated as it was, the sight brought a sickening qualm to him. He had conquered it the next moment, however, and crossing to the body knelt and forced himself to touch it, to raise it until it rested against his knee just as he had done the moment the blow was struck. It was cold and stiff, the neck rigid, the eyes half open and unwinking in their stare.

As the trembling servants appeared in the doorway he laid the body gently back upon the rug and, rising, dashed his hand across his eyes. He remembered that gesture; he had often seen a favorite tragedian use it upon the stage.

“She is dead!” Horror, grief unutterable rang in his tones, and the maids began to sob hysterically.

Without seeming to note their presence Storm staggered past them to the telephone in the library.

“Greenlea 42 . . . . Dr. Carr, please . . . . Doctor, this is Storm, Norman Storm. For God’s sake get over here as quickly as you can! . . . . No, I can’t go into details, but it’s a matter of life and death! . . . . All right, hurry, man!”

For a moment he sat there hunched over the silent instrument while the sweat poured in rivulets down his face. So far, so good. His shaking nerves were aiding him in the rôle he was playing, but he must not let them get the upper hand.

The early morning sun streamed in at the long French windows which opened on the veranda, and the twitter and chirp of birds came to him from the lawn outside, mingling with the muffled wail from the rear. He must go back. God! If only it were all over!

Agnes had collapsed again in a little heap in the den doorway, but Ellen, the cook, knelt by the body, crooning pitifully over it as Storm reentered. She made a grotesque figure clad only in the blanket which she had thrown over her voluminous nightgown, her iron-gray hair screwed back in a tight knob and tears streaming down her round, honest face.

“Oh, sir!” She looked up, her eyes tragic with horror. “Who in the world did it, sir?”

Storm started. A suspicion of murder already, and from the source which he had least anticipated! If stupid, unimaginative Ellen had leaped to such a conclusion could he hope after all that the truth would not reveal itself to Dr. Carr and the authorities? He moistened his lips with his tongue and stammered:

“She—she must have fallen—one of those fainting spells. It looks as though she had struck her head on the fender, there.” He added quickly, “When I came home late I supposed Mrs. Storm was asleep in her room and did not disturb her. How did she come to be here?”

“Must have been waiting up for you, sir.” Agnes lifted her head from her hands. “The mistress didn’t expect you home for dinner, and I served her on the little table out on the veranda. She was sitting out there still when Ellen and me went to bed, along about nine. I asked her should I wait to lock up or see if you wanted a bit of cold supper, sir, but she said no, that she would attend to it herself. If only I’d known one of those attacks was coming on I wouldn’t have left her for a minute! I’ll never forgive myself! But the mistress seemed all right, as ever she was in her life, and I was that tired——”

Storm eyed her steadily:

“You would have heard Mrs. Storm had she called for help?”

“I don’t know, sir.” The girl twisted her hands. “I’m a pretty heavy sleeper, and I never heard a thing during the night. I’ll never forget the turn it gave me when I came down this morning and found the light still on and her lying there on the floor——”

“God rest her soul!” Ellen ejaculated piously. “Sure we wouldn’t have heard, away up there on the top floor at the back, unless she’d screamed fit to wake the dead. I’d had a full day’s ironing, and I was asleep the minute my head touched the pillow. The first I knew was when Agnes here let that yell out of her awhile back. The best lady ever I worked for and the kindest! She must have been took sudden to fall over like that!”

Storm drew a breath of relief. It was evident that they were telling the truth and that neither of them was aware of Brewster’s visit on the previous night, nor had an inkling of its aftermath. He sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands, the better to think. He must get rid of them some way; their chatter and lamentations were driving him mad!

“ ’Tis God’s will, sir,” Ellen ventured, in a hesitating effort at consolation, though the tears still coursed unchecked down her cheeks. “Couldn’t we move her, sir? ’Tis terrible to leave her lying here, poor lady——”

“Not until the doctor comes.” Storm’s tones were hoarse and muffled. “Please go away, both of you. I want to be alone. Mind you say not a word of what has happened to the milkman or anyone else who may come to the door until the doctor has taken charge. We should have all the neighbors about our ears.”

“We won’t breathe a word.” Agnes scrambled to her feet. “You’ll ring, sir, if you want anything? A cup of coffee, now——?”

“Nothing!” Storm waved aside the suggestion with a shudder of disgust. “I only wish to be alone.”

When the maids had withdrawn and their sobs were cut off by the closing of the pantry door, Storm’s hands dropped to his knees. They had accepted his suggestion of the cause of death without question, but would it be safe for him to volunteer that theory as a foregone conclusion to the keener mind of the doctor? He knew the strength of first impressions; were the circumstantial proofs of accidental death obvious enough to preclude all suspicion of foul play? The evidence which had seemed so impregnable to him when he first conceived it crumbled before the wave of torturing doubt that assailed him. He did not find it as easy as he had planned to put behind him forever his secret knowledge of the truth. What would his thought processes have been had he indeed believed his wife to be sleeping safe in her room and come down to find her lying dead here?

The whirr of a light-running motor outside galvanized Storm into action, and he sprang up from his chair and hurried down the hall, flinging the front door wide just as the doctor mounted the veranda steps. A fine, grizzled stubble adorned the latter’s usually clean-shaven jaw, and his light ulster was buttoned close up about his neck as though to conceal deficiencies in his hastily donned attire.

“What is it, old man?” he began genially, and then at sight of the other’s face he paused abruptly.

“Come.”

Without another word Storm turned and led the way to the den, and the physician followed in silence. At the door the former, with a gesture, stepped aside, and Dr. Carr’s glance fell upon the body.

Stifling an exclamation he advanced and made a brief, deft examination. Then, shaken from his professional calm, he rose.

“There—is nothing I can do,” he announced jerkily. “She has been dead for several hours—seven or eight, at least. Good God, Storm, what does this mean?”

The gaze of the physician was filled with blank amazement and horror, but to the other man it seemed sternly accusing, and he stammered brokenly:

“I don’t know! She must have been here all night like this, while I thought her safe in bed and asleep! It is horrible! Horrible!”

He hid his face in his hands to shut out those keen eyes bent upon him, and Dr. Carr advanced and forced him gently down into a chair.

“Here, man, don’t give way now! Pull yourself together! Do you mean that you only just discovered——?”

“A minute before I telephoned to you. It was the housemaid who found Leila like this when she came down to dust around, and her screams awakened me.” Storm paused. A detailed explanation would look too much like an attempt at an alibi; he must wait for the other to drag the facts from him. “Oh, why didn’t I speak, why didn’t I look in her room when I came home last night! But I was afraid of disturbing her——”

He paused, and Dr. Carr asked quickly:

“You returned late and thought she had retired?”

“Yes. It was after eleven—I took the ten o’clock train from town—and when I got here the house was all dark and silent, and Leila’s bedroom and dressing-room doors were closed.” Storm’s hands dropped to the arms of his chair, and he stared straight ahead of him as he added deliberately: “I went to bed as quietly as I could so as not to waken her, for she hadn’t been well; she was threatened with one of these fainting attacks the night before last. I should never have left her! But you know how it has been, Doctor; you never could tell when they were coming on, and she had never done any real harm to herself before——”

“ ‘Fainting attacks?’ ” the doctor repeated sharply. He wheeled and approached the body once more and Storm watched him with bated breath. “The right temple bone has been crushed in, as if with some heavy, blunt instrument!”

“That knob on the corner of the fender——” Storm felt his way carefully. “It—it’s all covered with blood! She must have fallen——”

The doctor glanced at it and then turned swiftly to him.

“Look here, Storm, have you questioned the servants? What do they know of this?”

“Nothing. I’ve been too nearly crazed to question them coherently, but from what I gathered they went to bed early and left her sitting out on the veranda, and the housemaid said something about Leila having told her that she would wait up for me, Think of it, Doctor! She must have come in here——”

“Hold on a minute. Was the body lying just like this, face upturned, when you saw it first?”

Storm nodded.

“Yes. I rushed to her and started to lift her up, but when I saw that—that she was dead——”

He bowed his head on his breast as if unable to continue, but he saw the physician measure with a swift eye the distance from the chair to the body, and then stoop to examine the fender again. Storm’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the chair-arms in an agony of suspense. Would his implied suggestion bear fruit? Had he too palpably ignored the other’s intimation that a blow had been struck? Would it have been more natural for him to have presupposed violence, murder, as the physician obviously had done? It was too late now for him to question the wisdom of his course; he could brace himself for the next step in the ghastly farce.

“Has anyone touched the body?” Dr. Carr spoke with professional brusqueness.

“Yes; when I came back here after telephoning to you both the servants were in the room, and Ellen was bending over my poor wife—I can’t speak of it, Doctor; I can’t realize it! I feel as if I should go mad! Leila——”

“I know, old man, but we’ve got to get at the bottom of this thing. Try to collect yourself and think back. You said you were awakened by the housemaid’s screams when she discovered the body. Do you know if she touched it before you got down here?”

Storm shook his head.

“I never asked.” He kept his eyes lowered carefully to hide a glint of triumph. When Carr discovered that Agnes had found the body lying face down, the case he had manufactured would be complete. “I wish you—you’d talk to them, Doctor. I—I can’t, just now. I’m all in!”

“I will. Don’t think about them.” Dr. Carr glanced at the low light on the desk which still glowed brazenly in the gloom of the curtained room. “Who turned on that light instead of drawing aside the curtains?”

“It must have been on all night. Agnes said that was the first thing she noticed when she got to the door here; that the light was still going. Then she saw the body——” he halted again and added in studied ingenuousness: “I might have observed it when I came home last night, I suppose, but it is scarcely perceptible from the front hall, and finding it all dark there except for the lamp on the newel post which Leila always leaves lighted for me, I went straight upstairs. It never occurred to me that she would be waiting up for me, and in here, although she has done so occasionally. I was pretty tired. My God, Doctor, if I had seen the light and come in here, I might have been able to save her! There might have been something I could do—!”

“No, Storm, no one could have done anything for her. Death was instantaneous. You heard nothing after you went upstairs? No sound of a fall, or disturbance of any kind?”

“Nothing.” Storm started from his chair. “It couldn’t have happened after I retired! Surely, if Leila had been alive when I entered the house she would have heard me! The servants sleep like logs, but I waken at the slightest sound. I would have known——!”

“That’s so. Of course, you would, old man.” Dr. Carr’s tone was soothingly compassionate. “You’d better go upstairs now and put on some clothes; you haven’t even slippers on your feet. I’ll have a word with the servants while you’re gone——”

“But Leila!” Storm forced his shrinking eyes to turn yearningly toward the still form. “I can’t bear to leave her lying like that! Ellen wanted to lift her to the couch, but I thought we’d better wait until you came——”

“Why?” The doctor shot the question at him, and Storm, realizing his slip, swiftly countered:

“I didn’t know what to think! I tell you, Doctor, when I first came in and saw her it looked almost like murder! My brain isn’t clear yet from the shock of it, although when I saw the blood on the fender, of course, I knew she must have fallen, and then I remembered her condition—those fainting spells, and all that. There isn’t a soul in the world who would harm a hair of Leila’s head!” He threw up his hands with an impotent gesture. “I felt dazed, helpless! I had to depend on you, and I wanted you to see everything just as it was.”

“You can rely on me, old man!” The doctor patted his arm and led him to the door. “We must not move her yet, however. Under the circumstances we’ll have to notify the authorities, merely as a matter of form, and they may want to investigate for themselves. I’ll call them up and then come and give you something to steady your nerves. You’re bearing up splendidly, but we can’t have you going to pieces until the formalities have been concluded. Is there anyone you would like me to send for; any member of the family, or friend?”

“Yes!” Storm exclaimed in a sudden flash of inspiration. “Get old George for me, will you, Doctor? George Holworthy, you know; 0328 Stuyvesant. Tell him to come out here on the first train, that I need him. Don’t—don’t go into details, but make him understand that it’s serious, desperate! I’m not a weakling, I won’t break down, but I’d feel stronger if George were here. We’ve been friends for years.”

“I know; I’ll get him.” Dr. Carr drew out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “Get into some clothes now. I’ll be right with you.”

“I would rather stay here with Leila, alone with her——” Storm murmured mendaciously. “I won’t touch her, Doctor; let me stay!”

“No.” The physician transferred the key to the outside of the door and locked it decisively as he spoke. “It wouldn’t do you any good, Storm. You’ve got to brace up. You have put this affair in my hands now, and I order you to pull yourself together. Get upstairs and take a cold shower and then I’ll give you a sedative.”

With a last glance at the closed door, Storm stumbled to the stairs and mounted, lurching against the banisters as though overcome by weakness; but in reality his brain was seething with the thought of the danger yet ahead.

He closed the door of his room softly behind him, and then paused. What if Carr’s sympathetic, friendly manner had been assumed to cloak a suspicion of the truth? The physician had seemed to accept his theory, but he had not committed himself. Suppose he were following, tiptoeing up the stairs now to peer in at the keyhole——!

The thought was madness, yet Storm turned instinctively. The key of his door had been mislaid long ago and never replaced, but a heavy lounging robe hung from a peg on the center panel. Catching a fold of it he drew it back over the door-knob so that it trailed before the lock like a curtain, thick and impenetrable. His bathroom had no entrance leading to the hall, and the only other door—that opening on Leila’s dressing-room was protected by a cretonne portière.

He realized that he had no need for secrecy, there was nothing to be done now which all the world might not safely see—and yet an insane desire came to him to conceal himself from all eyes. He must have a moment of respite from the rôle he was playing, a moment of peace and calmness to gird himself anew for what the immediate future might hold.

Did Carr accept the situation at its face value? The man whom in the night he had half-scornfully dismissed from his mind as a simple country practitioner now appeared in a vastly different light. For the moment he held in his hands Storm’s immunity from suspicion, and the latter’s disquietude increased.

There was his step upon the stair! What would his face reveal?

With a quick revulsion of feeling, Storm sprang to the door and opened it.

The smile with which the benign physician greeted him removed all lingering doubt.

“Not taken your shower? Come, Storm, this won’t do! I’ve ’phoned, and the coroner’s assistant is on his way over from the county seat.” He held out a small glass, and the other took it mechanically. “Drink this and pull yourself together, for there are some trying hours ahead.”

Chapter VI.
The Verdict

“You were right, unquestionably, Storm,” Dr. Carr announced twenty minutes later as the other joined him in the library. “I don’t mind admitting that my thoughts—my sensations, rather—when first I saw the body were identical with what yours had been, but there’s only one possible conclusion. Mrs. Storm must have been seated in that big chair by the hearth when she felt suddenly faint; and in trying to rise, she must have fallen forward, striking her forehead with crushing force against that solid brass knob on the fender. Agnes tells me that she found her mistress lying face downward against it, and thinking she had merely fainted, turned the body over. It was only when she saw the wound that she screamed. Of one thing you may be sure; Mrs. Storm didn’t suffer. She never knew what struck her. Death came instantly.”

Storm sank into a chair, his twitching face turned from the light. If Carr only knew!

“I must try to think that!” he murmured. “Did you get George Holworthy on the ’phone, Doctor?”

“Yes. He is on his way out here by now. Agnes gave me some coffee, and I told her to bring a tray for you—No protests!” as Storm made a gesture of repugnance. “You are under my orders, remember, and you’ve got to keep going.”

Storm drank the coffee obediently enough when it came, conscious of a craving for its stimulus. The first and most hazardous milestone was passed; Dr. Carr had fallen for his game, had been completely hoodwinked by the circumstantial evidence he had arranged. He had won an unconscious yet powerful ally, and the way seemed clear before him, but the glow of elation was past.

While the physician droned on in a soothing monotone, seeking for words of consolation to assuage the grief of his patient and neighbor, the humming of a high-powered car reached their ears as it turned in at the gate and ploughed up the driveway, and Storm sank back.

“That is the coroner’s man now.” Dr. Carr strode to the window. “Oh, he has sent young Daly, and the chief medical examiner is with him. That will simplify matters tremendously. I know them both, and I’ll see that they don’t bother you any more than is absolutely necessary.”

Agnes ushered in a tall, lanky young man and his stouter, elderly companion who nodded in brisk, professional gravity.

“This is Mr. Daly and Dr. Bellowes, Mr. Storm.” Carr presented them smoothly. “Sorry to have brought you so far on a mere matter of form, gentlemen. I am prepared to issue a certificate of accidental death, but I should like to have you examine the body. This way, please; nothing has been touched.”

Storm rose as the physician turned to lead the others to the den, but the young man called Daly waved him back.

“Your presence won’t be necessary, Mr. Storm.” His tone was deferential, but there was a note of authority in it that brooked no opposition. “I will have to ask you a few questions later, but we won’t trouble you now.”

Storm bowed and waited until their footsteps diminished down the hall, and the door of the den closed definitely behind them, Then, with nervously clenching hands, he turned to the window. What a fool he was to harass himself with idle fears! Had not everything gone like clockwork, exactly as he had anticipated? He had been complete master of the situation so far, and he would be until the end. He must not, could not fail!

Old George would come soon, now. That had been a master stroke, that summoning of him! Besides being the natural, logical thing to have done under the circumstances, it provided a staunch, reliable buffer between himself and curious, sensation-seeking eyes. George’s dense stupidity and blind affection would be in itself a safeguard, and he anticipated no difficulty in dissembling before him. What if George had suspected or even known of Leila’s affair with Brewster? He would never dream that Storm himself had discovered it, much less that he had killed her.

What were the officials doing in there so long? Storm paced the floor restlessly. Surely the case was obvious enough; he couldn’t have overlooked anything, after all! Why didn’t they have done with it and get out of his house? He wanted time to think, a breathing space in which to prepare himself for the onslaught of neighbors and reporters when the truth came out.

As if timed to his thought, a familiar runabout which was passing halted at the gate just as it had on the previous day, and Millard, after gazing for a moment in blank amazement at the official car drawn up at the veranda steps, descended and came hurriedly up the path.

Storm saw him from the window and muttered in exasperation. To be annoyed now by that he-gossip was unthinkable! He’d soon send him about his business——!

He caught himself up suddenly. This was the moment for him to court sympathy, not brusquely repel it and awaken an antagonism which might beget dark rumor and suspicion. He hurried to the door, and when Millard puffed fussily up the steps of the veranda he found his host awaiting him with outstretched hands.

“Millard! It was good of you to stop. I hoped you would when I saw you passing.”

“What’s wrong, old chap? That’s the Chief Medical Examiner’s car, isn’t it? I was afraid——” He broke off as the other raised his eyes. “Heavens, Storm, what is it?”

“My wife!” Storm bowed his head, and added brokenly: “She’s dead, Millard! Died suddenly, sometime during the night.”

“Mrs. Storm!” Millard fell back a step, his apoplectic face paling. “What——? How? God, this is frightful! What caused it?”

“Dr. Carr says it was one of her fainting spells. She must have fallen and struck her head. I—we only found her this morning.”

“Terrible! I—I don’t know what to say, old chap!” Millard stammered. His small, beady eyes strayed eagerly past his host into the darkened hallway, and he advanced, but Storm’s figure barred the entrance. “I’m simply aghast! Poor, dear little woman! I can’t believe it! You have all my sympathy, dear fellow, but words can’t seem to express it just now. How—how did it happen——?”

“We don’t know yet.” Storm gripped the agitated little man’s arm for a moment as if for support. “I can’t talk of it! Carr will tell you all about it later, but I don’t think he wants the news to get about until the formalities have been concluded with the coroner’s men. I can depend on you——?”

“You know that, old chap!” Millard interrupted him warmly. “I say, isn’t there anything that I can do? The car’s right here, you know, and I’m glad to be of service——”

“Why, yes.” Storm eyed him gratefully. “I’ve sent for George Holworthy, but he hasn’t been told what has happened. He ought to be here on the next train, and it is due any minute. Would you mind running down to the station and bringing him back here, and—and break the news to him for me?”

“Certainly, dear fellow!” Millard clapped his hand to the other’s shoulder. “I’ll go at once, Storm. There doesn’t seem to be anything a chap can say at a time like this, but I’m right here if you want me! Remember that, and try to—to bear it, some way. I’ll be back in no time!”

He bustled off down the veranda steps and toward his waiting car, and Storm closed the door with a grim smile. He was well aware that Millard—who was known facetiously about the Country Club as the “town crier”—would spread the news of the tragic “accident” far and wide, and he had carefully planted in the other’s mind the impression that Dr. Carr was responsible for the theory of accident. He had always maintained a certain reserve with Millard, and realized that his confidence now had immeasurably flattered the little man, cementing a friendship which would prove valuable if by any chance ugly whispers arose.

Then, too, he had avoided the task of breaking the news to old George. Difficult as it had been to play his rôle before the tearful servants, the cautious physician and the county officials, he shrank far more from the ordeal of facing his friend with the story he had fabricated. It would be easy, of course; almost too easy. It was a battle of wits, a fair fight with others, but with slow-witted, loyal old George . . . He had turned back to the library when a voice speaking his name aroused him swiftly from his reverie.

“Mr. Storm, I’d like to see you for a moment.” It was Daly. “Don’t be alarmed, please. Dr. Bellowes is quite satisfied that Mrs. Storm’s death was accidental, but the circumstances are so unusual that as a mere matter of form I want a statement from you to file in my report. Will you tell me, please, what occurred from the time of your arrival home last evening until you summoned Dr. Carr at seven o’clock this morning?”

Haltingly, as if still dazed with the shock, but with every nerve tinglingly on guard, Storm repeated his story exactly as he had told it to Dr. Carr, and Daly listened attentively, punctuating it with quick nods of satisfaction, as though he were mentally checking off each detail.

At its conclusion he made no comment, but instead asked a question which brought a start of renewed apprehension to the other man.

“Do you know, Mr. Storm, if your wife had any enemies? Is there anyone who will profit by her death or who had any reason for wishing her out of the way?”

“Good heavens, no!” Storm could feel the blood ebbing from his face, and his voice had grown suddenly husky. “You don’t mean——?”

“I don’t mean anything,” Mr. Daly retorted calmly. “I told you this was a mere matter of form, Mr. Storm. Do you know of any enmity which your wife might have incurred?”

“None. Everyone who knew her loved her; she hadn’t an enemy in the world,” Storm stammered. “No one could profit by her death, and as to—to wishing her out of the way——”

“That is all right, sir. I don’t want to distress you, but these facts must be clearly established.” Mr. Daly paused. “How long have you been married, and what was Mrs. Storm’s maiden name?”

“Leila Talmage. We were married ten years ago.” Storm controlled his wildly leaping pulses and forced himself to reply calmly, weariedly, as though the subject caused him infinite pain. “She was an orphan, the ward of a friend of our family, and has no living relatives of whom I ever heard.”

“Did she have any money of her own?” the other pursued.

“Very little. Ten or twelve thousand, I believe.” Storm moistened his lips and drew himself up slightly. “My attorney, Wendle Foulkes, took charge of it for her at her request, but I have never made any inquiries concerning her expenditure of it. It was hers, to do with as she pleased.”

“Then you don’t know the value of her estate now?”

“No.”

“Nor whether she left a will?”

“I do not, Mr. Daly. My attorney can answer all such questions far better than I.” Storm drew his hand once more across his eyes. Why did the fellow stare so infernally at him? “I must refer you to him. He will have to be notified, of course; I hadn’t thought of that. My mind—I cannot collect myself! It is horrible that there should be even a thought of foul play in connection with my poor wife; it is almost a profanation! Her life was an open book, she was the soul of honor and goodness and charity——”

His voice broke realistically, and his inquisitor rose.

“I don’t doubt you, but you will understand that we have to take every possibility into consideration in a case of this sort. The Chief will want to see you when he’s through in there, but won’t detain you long.”

His searching gaze lowered at last, and he turned and left the room.

Storm listened to his retreating footsteps in a maze of conflicting emotion. Had that inquisition been merely the formality that the young official claimed, or had they stumbled on the truth? If Daly’s efforts had been directed toward establishing a possible motive, Storm congratulated himself that he had more than held his ground. He had succeeded in placing on record a statement of absolute faith and trust in his wife, and surely his bearing as a grief-stricken husband had been seemingly sincere beyond question! If they suspected, though; if they unearthed that damnable affair of hers with Brewster, discovered that he had been in that house on the previous night and could prove that Storm himself returned before the other’s departure . . . .

The impudent chug-chug of a runabout broke in upon his troubled thought, and he turned to the hall just as the housemaid appeared on the stairs.

“Agnes, I’m going to my room. Mr. Millard has just brought Mr. Holworthy up from the station, I think. Send Mr. Holworthy up to me, but tell Mr. Millard I’ll call him on the ’phone later. I can’t see him now.”

“Yes, sir.” Agnes sniffed and lowered her red-lidded eyes. “The other gentlemen——?”

“They’re still here. Let me know, please, when they want me.”

She stepped aside and he passed her, mounting to his room. It was in order, and with rare tact the girl had left the door leading to Leila’s apartments closed; yet as plainly as though it were open Storm could see before him every intimate detail: the little silver articles on the dressing table, the quaint old four-poster bed which had been his mother’s, the absurdly low chairs piled with cushions, Leila’s favorite books scattered about——

A sudden dizziness seized him; the same sickening qualm which had assailed him that morning when he entered the den swept over him in an overwhelming flood. He had been keyed up since with the need of self-preservation, but now a swift reaction came, and he flung himself into a chair, his head buried in his arms outflung across the table. He had killed her, and she deserved it; she had been faithless! It was done and over with, and yet——!

Her presence seemed nearer him, the years of their love and life together rose before him, and something very like a dry, harsh sob burst from his throat.

“Norman! God, it isn’t true! It can’t be!”

The broken cry from the doorway fell like a dash of icy water on his rising emotion, and instantly on guard once more, Storm raised his head.

George Holworthy stood there, his homely face working grotesquely, tears starting unashamed from his faded blue eyes.

“I never dreamed—I was afraid when I got Carr’s message that she was ill, but that a thing like this should have come——!”

“George!” Storm rose and their hands clasped. “I sent for you as soon as I could! I can’t talk about it, I can’t realize it! It is like some horrible nightmare! You won’t leave me? You’ll stay here and see me through?”

“I’m here, ain’t I?” George gulped fiercely. “I suppose you’ve been badgered enough, and I won’t add to it, but for God’s sake tell me a little! Remember, I loved her, too!”

“I know you did, and she had a very real affection for you.” Storm averted his head, for the sight of the other’s genuine sorrow was unnerving.

“All I could get out of Millard was that you found her dead this morning, and that Carr said it was her old trouble, that catalepsy—petit mal, they call it, don’t they? I never thought it could prove fatal!”

“It didn’t. But she fell, striking her head——!” Storm paused eloquently. “When you see her, George, you’ll understand. It’s too awful, I can’t——”

“But where is she? What have they done with her?” George glanced toward the closed door, and Storm shook his head.

“In the den. Agnes found her there and screamed——”

But Agnes herself appeared in the doorway, cutting his sentence short.

“If you please, Mr. Storm, the gentlemen downstairs would like to speak to you.”

“I’ll be down.” By a supreme effort he braced himself to meet the verdict. “You’ll come too, George?”

George nodded and blew his nose resoundingly.

“I’m with you,” he said simply, and together they descended the stairs.

Dr. Bellowes met them at the library door.

“We have concluded our examination,” he announced. “As my colleague, Doctor Carr, had already surmised, Mrs. Storm’s death was due to a fracture of the right temporal caused by a fall while suffering an attack of petit mal.”

Storm closed his eyes, and for an instant the earth seemed to rock beneath his feet.

It was over and he had won! He had fooled them all!

“I feared it, Doctor,” he remarked quietly, and congratulated himself at the calmness of his tone. “I should not have left her alone last night after the warning we had of a possible attack the day before—but I must try not to think of that now. Can’t I offer you something before you start on your ride back? A cup of coffee perhaps?”

Dr. Bellowes shook his head, but his eyes traveled to the humidor on the table, and Storm followed his glance.

“A cigar, then?” He opened the humidor and passed it around. “The matches are just in there——”

He lighted one, watching his hand curiously meanwhile. How steady it was! Not a tremor to reveal the excitement mounting within him. He had pulled off the greatest, grimmest scheme in the world, and yet not the flicker of an eyelash betrayed him!

Dr. Bellowes blew out a cloud of smoke.

“Yes, Mr. Storm,” he resumed, “it was unquestionably an accident; a most unusual and unfortunate one. Unofficially, I should like to tender to you my most sincere sympathy.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

Storm bowed and stood quite still as George showed them out.

If anyone had told him that such a plan could have been conceived and carried out successfully without a single hitch, he would have laughed him to scorn. He would not have believed anyone capable of such combined ingenuity and self-control, least of all himself!

The position of the body, the smear upon the brass knob of the fender, the blood-stained driver cleaned, the handkerchief and its ashes eliminated, the hair pin, the single golden hair, the light left burning—he mentally reviewed each clue in the case, recalled each step of the investigation, and realized that there had been no flaw.

It had been a supreme battle of wits, his against all the rest, and he had beaten them! He had won!

Chapter VII.
The Letter

Despite his sense of victory the day was a long-drawn-out period of torture for Storm.

Upon the departure of Dr. Carr and the officials, George Holworthy had to be told in detail the story of the night’s tragic event, and its reiteration drew heavily upon the store of self-control which was left to his companion after the ordeal through which he had passed; but Storm narrated it carefully, with a critical consciousness of every effect.

“I don’t know what is the matter with me!” he cried dramatically in conclusion. “I can’t break down, I can’t seem to feel, George! I saw her as she lay there, I tell myself that this ghastly, unbelievable thing is true, and yet it has no meaning for me! I catch myself listening for her step, waiting to hear her voice! Am I going mad?”

“It’s the shock,” George said quietly. “The stark horror of the thing has stunned you, Norman. You can’t feel it yet, you are numb, I suppose.”

He looked curiously shrunken and withered and years older as he sat hunched in his chair, his faded, red-rimmed eyes blinking fast. Storm felt a sense of impatience, almost of repugnance as he regarded him. His evident sorrow was a subtle reproach before which the other writhed. Could he endure his presence in the days which must decently elapse before the funeral? George would be useful, however, in the interim, and when it was all over he could shut himself away from everyone.

“That’s why I sent for you,” he observed. “I can’t seem to get a grip on things, and I thought you would take charge for me and keep off the mob of sympathizers——”

“I will. I’ll attend to everything, old man. There’s bound to be a certain amount of publicity, you know, but I’ll see the reporters myself, and fend off the neighbors. Carr will send in the undertaker, and I’ll ’phone Foulkes. Is there anyone else you want me to notify?”

George did indeed prove invaluable, for Millard had spread the tidings and soon the house was besieged by horror-stricken friends of the dead woman. They came from all walks of life, from the humblest country-folk about to the most arrogant of the aristocratic colony, in mute testimony to the breadth of her kindliness and the affection she had inspired. From earliest afternoon, too, reporters began filtering in on every train, but George held them off with surprising tact and diplomacy, and by nightfall a semblance of peace had fallen upon the bereft household.

The den was restored to its normal state, the door locked, and in the dainty drawing-room across the hall from the library Leila lay as if asleep, her golden hair falling low to hide the cruel wound and all about her the early spring flowers she had loved.

Now that they were alone together, George’s presence proved insufferable, and Storm, professing complete nervous exhaustion, suggested that they retire early.

George, worn out with his own emotions and the strain of the day, acquiesced in evident relief. He had dreaded a night-long vigil with his bereaved friend and rejoiced that the strange, seemingly dazed apathy which had held him in its grip was giving way to the demands of over-taxed nature.

Sleep, however, was furthest from Storm’s intentions. There was work still to be done, and in secret. Foulkes had signified his intention of coming out on the first train in the morning, and it was possible that he might suggest going over Leila’s papers. If that letter which she had tried to conceal the day before were found, or any other correspondence from Brewster, it might precipitate the rise of a suspicion which otherwise seemed now to be eliminated.

Leila’s desk was down in the library, and waiting only until he felt assured that the occupant of the guest chamber across the hall had fallen asleep, Storm put on soft felt slippers, drew his dressing gown about him, and descended.

How still the house was! Still, yet vibrant with something unseen but palpitating as though the spirit had not wholly departed from that immobile form lying amid the blossoms, whose fragrance stole out with cloying, sinister sweetness upon the air.

Storm closed the library door noiselessly behind him, switched on the light and crossing to the little rose-wood desk stood transfixed.

A book lay upon it, and from between its leaves protruded, as if carelessly or hastily thrust there, what appeared to be the very letter he sought. “Leicester Building”. The engraved letters stood out as he drew the envelope forth, but above them was a line which made him start.

“National Tool & Implement Company”.

But Brewster was an insurance broker! The name had an oddly familiar ring, too. What could it mean?

With shaking fingers he drew the enclosure from the envelope and read:

Mrs. Norman Storm:

Dear Madam:-

I have reconsidered my decision of this morning and am willing to sell to you the strip of land adjoining your property at the price you named, on condition that the deal be consummated with you personally. I will enter into no negotiations with your husband. If you will call at my office to-morrow, the ninth inst., with your check I will have the deed and bill of sale ready.

Your obedient servant,

Alpheus Jaffray

Storm crushed the letter in his hands. The trout stream! Leila had bearded their irascible neighbor in his town office and induced him to sell her the property which he himself had been unable to force or cajole the old scoundrel to relinquish! But why had she been so secretive about it? Why had she lied about her presence in town, sought to conceal the letter, striven to make a mystery where no cause for one existed?

The queries which hammered at his brain were swiftly swept aside by the one dominating fact. Her visit had not concerned Brewster, her lie had concealed no act of guilt or even indiscretion! What if—Great God! If he had made a hideous mistake——? But no! He had seen them together, she and her lover, in that very room not twenty-four hours before; had heard Brewster’s impassioned words, witnessed his act of devotion! Whatever motive had prompted her secret purchase of the trout stream, it was beside the point at issue. There must be proof in her desk, proof to augment and support the evidence of his own eyes.

He tore the drawers open one after another, scattering the neat piles of correspondence, social notes, cards of invitation, receipted bills, memoranda and household accounts—his feverish fingers sought in vain among them for a single line of an intimate or sentimental nature. But then, Leila would scarcely have kept secret love letters in an open desk. Somewhere in her apartments upstairs, perhaps, she had arranged a hiding place for them.

Then a swift remembrance came to him. The secret compartment! Back of the small drawer between the pigeon-holes on the desk top was a small space to which access could be had only by pressing a hidden knob. Leila had found it by accident one day and had been almost childishly delighted with her discovery.

Storm removed the drawer, pressed the spring, and the false back slid aside revealing two packets of letters. One was bound by a bit of white satin ribbon, yellowing now and slightly frayed; the other encircled with a rubber band.

The sight of them brought a grimace of triumph, to Storm’s lips, but it changed quickly as he tore the ribbon from the first packet. The letters were all postmarked prior to ten years ago and were in his handwriting—his own love letters, written during the period of their engagement and before. One end of the ribbon was knotted about a dried flower; an orange blossom! It must have been from her wedding bouquet.

A strange tightness constricted his throat, and he thrust the packet hastily aside. He did not want to be reminded at this hour of the happiness, the fool’s paradise in which he had lived before enlightenment came. No sentimentality about the past must be permitted to weaken his self-control now.

But the second packet, too, contained only his letters; those written since their marriage, mere notes of a most prosaic sort, some of them, sent to her during his infrequent absences from home and reminding her of trivial, every-day matters which required attention. The last, dated only a month before, concerned the reinstatement of MacWhirter, their ante-bellum gardener. Why had Leila kept every scrap of his handwriting as though she treasured it, as though it were precious to her?

For a long time he sat there staring at the scattered envelopes, the first vague, terrible stirring of doubt which had come when he read Jaffray’s letter returning again to torture his spirit. Then once more the scene of the previous night in that room arose in reassuring condemnation, and with a smothered oath he seized the letters and tore them viciously, the older packet with the rest, until nothing remained but a heap of infinitesimal scraps and the bit of yellowed ribbon.

He wanted them out of his sight, destroyed utterly, but where——? The fire in the kitchen range would have been banked for the night, but he could rake the coals aside. Sweeping the torn letters into a newspaper together with the ribbon, he made his way quietly to the kitchen. The range balked him at first. He strove vainly to coax a blaze from the livid coals, but with the aid of kindling wood and after much manipulation of the dampers he succeeded in producing a tiny flame. Upon this he thrust handfuls of the paper scraps, and when they caught and blazed up he thrust the ribbon deep among them.

How slowly they burned! The edges of the ribbon charred and it curled up, writhing like a living thing in agony. The flame was dying down, and Storm had turned frantically to the wood-box to pile on more fuel, when suddenly there came a grayish puff, a leaping tongue of fire, and the ribbon vanished, leaving only a heap of pale flakes against the darker, coarser ashes.

Storm scattered them and was placing an extra stick of wood upon the glowing coals to make sure that the evidences of his work would be wholly obliterated, when the utterance of his name in surprised accents made him wheel as though a blow had been dealt to him from behind.

“Norman! I thought you were in bed!” George, his short, obese figure, grotesque in an ugly striped bathrobe, stood blinking in the doorway. “What on earth are you doing down here? And what’s burning? There’s a funny odor——”

“Wretched green wood. No wonder the cook grumbles about this range; I thought I should never get it going!” Storm interrupted hastily. “I couldn’t sleep, and wanted a cup of coffee. There was no use in disturbing the servants.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” demanded the other. “I could have made it for you. You look all done up, Norman. Did you take that sleeping stuff Carr left for you?”

Storm shook his head.

“It would take more than that to bring sleep to me to-night,” he said.

“Well, anyway, I don’t know what you are poking about in here for!” objected George. “You’re a chump to try to get the range going at this hour when you’ve got that electric percolator in the dining-room. Here’s the coffee; come on in there and I’ll have it ready for you in no time!”

Storm followed him in silence, only too glad to get him away from the kitchen, and watched him as in deft bachelor fashion he manipulated the percolator.

Storm drank the coffee when it was made and then dragged George off to the library where the latter at length fell asleep upon the couch; but Storm sat huddled in his chair, dry-eyed and brooding, until the dawn.

Wendle Foulkes appeared at nine o’clock, his keen old face very solemn, and almost his first words, when his condolences were made, set at rest a question which Daly had raised on the previous day.

“You know, of course, that Leila left no will,” he began. “At least, none to my knowledge, and I am certain she would have consulted me had she entertained any thought of making one. Death was farthest from her imagining, poor child! What she left is yours, of course, but we will have to comply with the law and advertise for heirs.”

Storm made a gesture of wearied impatience, and the attorney went on:

“There is something I must tell you, Norman. You were not my first visitor on Monday morning. Leila had been before you; she left only a few minutes before your arrival, but she had requested me to say nothing to you of her coming.”

“But why?” Storm stared.

“She came to consult me about a piece of property which she wanted to buy: that strip of land next your place here, over which you and Alpheus Jaffray have haggled and fought for years. She had gotten in the old man’s good graces somehow, and she believed that she could persuade him to sell it to her even though he was so violently antagonistic to you. I don’t mind telling you frankly that I advised against it, Norman. It would have taken all that she had left of her original capital, and I knew how yours was dwindling, but she won me over.” He paused and wiped his eyeglasses, clearing his throat suspiciously meanwhile. “She ordered me to keep the proposed transaction a secret from you, and I promised, but now it is only right that you should know. She left to go to Jaffray’s office, over in the Leicester Building.”

George Holworthy, who was hovering in the background, drew in his breath sharply, but Storm repeated with dogged insistence:

“Why should my wife have wanted to keep such a secret from me? I cannot understand it! She told me everything——” He paused involuntarily, biting his lip. There was one other thing she had not told him, had not confessed even at the last!

“You would not have been kept in ignorance long.” The attorney’s tone was pitying. “Have you forgotten what day to-morrow is?”

“ ‘To-morrow?’ ” Storm repeated blankly.

“Your birthday.”

“God!” The exclamation came from George. “And the funeral!”

Storm sat as if turned to stone. It had been for him! Her secret trip to town, her innocent, pitiful subterfuges, her joy over the letter which had told her that the surprise she had planned was within her grasp! All for him!

Then a swift revulsion of feeling came. Bah! It may have been to throw more dust in his eyes, to render his confidence in her doubly assured; a sop to her own conscience, perhaps. The infinite reproach in her eyes when he had accused her there in the den, her air of conscious righteousness when she had said: “You will regret that accusation bitterly when you learn the truth——” What a consummate actress she had become!

Fate had played into his hands, though; he had witnessed her perfidy with his own eyes. Had it not been for his opportune return that night, how easily his suspicions would have been allayed! How contrite he would have been at his doubt of her, and how she and her lover would have gloated over the ease with which he had been deceived!

But the others were looking at him, amazed at his silence, and with an effort he pulled himself together.

“Her last thought was for me!” His voice shook with the irony of it, but to the two men it was an evidence of purely natural emotion. “The thought of it only makes what has come harder for me to bear! Her unselfishness, her devotion——!”

“I know, boy, I know.” Foulkes laid his hand for a moment on Storm’s shoulder. “You must try to remember that you have been far luckier than most men; you have had ten years of such perfect happiness as falls to the lot of few of us!”

“That is true.” Storm bowed his head to conceal the sneer of bitterness which rose unbidden to his lips. “I cannot realize that it has come so suddenly, so horribly to an end!”

A brief discussion of business affairs ensued, and then Wendle Foulkes took his departure. A silence had fallen between the other two which was broken at last by George.

“So that was it!” he murmured as if to himself. “That was why she invented that luncheon at the Ferndale Inn—”

“What?” demanded Storm, aghast. How much did George know? “Invented what luncheon?”

“Don’t you remember when I dined here with you——God! Was it only last Monday night?—and Leila told us she had lunched that day at the Ferndale Inn, when in reality she had been to the city? I repeated that remark, because I could scarcely believe my ears, but she stuck to her little fib. I did wonder at your surprise for I had seen you both in town at noon.”

“You had—seen us both?” Storm repeated.

“Yes. I was going through Cortlandt Street coming out of the Leicester Building and saw you standing there staring after her as though you had seen a ghost,” George explained innocently. “I started to hail you and tried to cross, but a line of traffic got in the way and when the street was clear you had disappeared. I meant to tell you that night but I didn’t.”

“Why, that’s so! It must have been Leila, after all, whom I saw.” Storm weighed each word carefully. “I wasn’t sure, you know, she passed me so quickly, and when she spoke that night of having been to the Ferndale Inn I naturally concluded that I must have been mistaken; it couldn’t have been she I saw. It did not occur to me for a moment that she was telling even a little white lie, for Leila has never kept anything from me in all her life, George.”

He spoke with a deliberate emphasis, striving desperately to eradicate from the other’s mind the thought that he had been aware of her deception. Confound the fellow! Why had he, out of all in the city, been the one to witness that unexpected meeting! His silence later was significant, too. Had he an inkling of Storm’s state of mind that night?

“I see. Couldn’t imagine why she should have kept her little expedition to herself, but it wasn’t any affair of mine, of course.” George spoke with an elaborate carelessness which did not seem wholly convincing to the critical ears of the other man. “Funny it should have deceived you, for she didn’t take me in for a minute, she fibbed so—so clumsily, bless her! I thought it probably some little joke she was planning, but your approaching birthday never occurred to me. It is odd, isn’t it, that we should have talked of old Jaffray and that trout stream when you walked to the station with me later?”

“Leila knew how I had set my heart upon it,” Storm returned. It would do no good to revert to the topic of the lie. Reiterated explanation of his attitude would only deepen any suspicion which George might still entertain. To ignore it, to pass it by as a thing of no moment, was the only course. “Do you remember that she complained of feeling ill that night?”

George nodded.

“That was the first thing I thought of when Millard broke the news to me, after I could begin to think at all,” he observed. “She must have had a warning that one of those attacks was coming on. I spoke of it to her, as you may recall, but she denied it; afraid of worrying you, I suppose. To think that it should have come the very next night when she was alone and helpless!”

Storm drew a deep breath. At least, George had no shadow of a suspicion as to the real cause of her death.

“Don’t talk about it!” he implored. “I’ve reproached myself a hundred times with not being at hand, but how could I know?”

“Forgive me! You couldn’t, of course. No one could have anticipated it. It was to be, that’s all one could say, though God only knows why! You were not to blame.”

He threw his arms across the other’s shoulders in an affectionate, consoling clasp, and in his mild, candid eyes Storm read only pity, sorrow and an abiding trustfulness.

Chapter VIII.
The Truth

“I am the resurrection and the life——” The white-frocked minister’s voice rose solemnly above the subdued rustlings and sighing whispers in the little vine-wreathed church, and the stirring ceased. A robin peered in curiously at one of the open windows from his perch on a maple bough and chirped inquiringly, and the scent of lilacs was wafted in from the rector’s garden to mingle with the heavier fragrance of lilies and white roses heaped about the casket at the altar steps.

It was such a small casket, almost like that of a child, and fairly buried beneath the weight of the floral offerings which banked it; a varied collection of offerings, for the costliest of hot-house set pieces mingled with sheaves of home-grown blossoms, and rare orchids nestled beside humble wild violets, but each had their place.

The congregation, too, was a heterogeneous one. Rich and poor, smart and shabby, the country club colony and the villagers met in a common democracy to do honor to their dead friend.

“The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away——” The minister went on to the end, and then the voices of a hidden choir chanted softly: “Lord, thou hast been our refuge: from one generation to another . . . .”

In the front pew Norman Storm rested his sleek head upon his black-gloved hand, and George Holworthy beside him cleared his throat huskily. In the moment of stillness which followed the Psalm, a woman’s sob rose from somewhere back in the church, the sound jangling in Storm’s ears like a touch upon naked nerves.

The last act of the farce, and then peace! Peace in which to plan for the future, to gain strength with which to shut out vain, maddening memories, to meet and cope with the change which his own act had wrought in his life. But would peace come?

Everything had gone smoothly; his scheme to evade justice and preserve himself from danger had been crowned with success; but in fortifying himself against suspicion and accusation from outside, he had not thought that a more subtle enemy might arise to be faced and vanquished or forever hold him in miserable thrall.

His love for Leila had not died with her. Despite her unfaithfulness, to the thought of which he clung doggedly, he could not exorcise her gentle influence. Everything in the house spoke mutely to him of her, everywhere he turned were evidences of her care and thoughtfulness and charm. In vain he reminded himself that it was over and done with, a closed chapter never to be recalled. He was beginning to fear himself, to dread the hours of solitude ahead as much as he looked forward to them. The voice of his conscience was whispering, threatening, and he must silence it or know no peace.

George glanced furtively at him now and then as the service went on, but he gave no sign. It drew to a close at last, and still he sat there immersed in his own thoughts until a touch upon his arm roused him to a consciousness of the present. Half-way down the aisle Richard and Julie Brewster with exalted faces and hands clasped like children stood aside to let him pass, but he did not even see them, and those who pressed forward and would have spoken paused at sight of his face. Pitying shocked murmurs followed him as he and George stepped into the car, but he did not heed them, and the long ride to the cemetery progressed in silence.

The brief, simple service of committal, the clods of earth falling dully, heavily into the grave and then came the interminable drive home. George’s glances were less furtive now, more openly charged with amazement. Storm had not shed a tear, had not vouchsafed an utterance of emotion throughout those solemn hours. His friends wondered how great the reaction would be from such long, pent-up grief, and as they swept into the driveway before the silent, empty house which awaited them he ventured a suggestion.

“Norman, don’t you want to pack up and come and stay in town with me for a few days? The change will do you good and give you time to—to get used to things.”

Storm stifled the exasperated rejoinder which rose to his lips and replied quietly:

“Thanks, old man, but I want to be here, alone. I’ve got to face facts sooner or later, to bring myself to a realization that she has gone, and I’m better off here.”

“Well, maybe that’s so,” George conceded. “Country air’s the best, and I’ll run out now and then to cheer you up. You’ll take to playing golf again after a bit——”

“Don’t!” The cry was wrung from Storm’s very soul. Never again would he hold a golf-stick in his hands! He could see now before him that driver with the dark stains spattered upon it, and he recoiled shuddering from the apparition, while George inwardly cursed his own tactlessness, the while wholly ignorant of how his clumsy, well-meant effort at consolation had pierced the armor of the other man’s self-control.

The fickle May sunshine vanished, and before the coming of twilight a bank of heavy gray clouds formed in the west, presaging a storm. They made a pretense of dining, while the rising wind swept gustily about the house and moaned in the chimneys like a thing in pain.

Storm still preserved his stoic calm, and George’s perturbation grew. It wasn’t natural, wasn’t like the Norman he had known from college days. The younger man had always been outwardly reserved, but such stern, almost deliberate self-repression was new to him and filled his friend with vague alarm.

“You didn’t close your eyes during the night before last, and you couldn’t have slept much last night, Norman, for I heard you walking the floor at all hours,” he remarked. “Don’t you think it would be well to call in Carr and have him look you over and give you something quieting? You’ll be ill if you keep this up.”

“I’m all right!” Storm responded with a touch of impatience. “Don’t worry about me, George. I’ll turn in early and by to-morrow I’ll get a fresh grip on myself——”

“I think you’ve got too tight a grip on yourself as it is,” George interrupted.

“What do you mean?” Storm shot the question at him almost fiercely. Was he under surveillance, his every mood and gesture subject to analysis? Why couldn’t the other let him alone?

“You’re not meeting this normally,” replied George in all seriousness. “Hang it all, I’d rather see you violent than like this! There’s something horrible about your calmness, the way you are clamping down your feelings! If you would just give way——”

“I can’t,” Storm protested in the first wholly honest speech which had passed his lips. “I’m all frozen up. For God’s sake, don’t nag me, George, because I’m about all in!”

The other subsided, but Storm could feel his eyes upon him, and their mute solicitude drove him to an inward frenzy. At all costs he must get away from that insistent scrutiny! He would lock himself in his room, feign sleep, illness, anything! George had served his turn, and Storm thanked fortune that business would of necessity demand the fussy, faithful little man’s presence in town the next day.

He was casting about for an excuse as they rose from the table when all at once the front door knocker sounded faintly, almost apologetically.

“I can’t see anyone! I won’t!” The haggard lines deepened about Storm’s mouth. “In Heaven’s name, can’t they respect my—my grief? I’m going upstairs. George, you get rid of them. Send them away, whoever they are!”

But George did not send them away. Listening from above, Storm heard the front door open and close, heard George’s low rumble, and a reply in higher but softly modulated feminine tones. Then came a masculine voice which made him grip the stair rail in sudden fury not unmixed with consternation.

Richard Brewster! It couldn’t be; the fellow would not dare intrude his presence here, even though he fancied his secret unshared by any living soul! But that was unmistakably Julie’s voice raised in almost tearful pleading, and then Brewster spoke again.

What had brought them here? Why didn’t George get rid of them as he had been told to do? Could it be that Julie had discovered the truth of her husband’s unfaithfulness, and with a woman’s hysterical notion of justice had brought Brewster here to force his confession to the man he had wronged? It was evident from the sounds that reached his ears that George was showing them into the library, was taking it upon himself to disregard Storm’s express commands. Damn them all! Why couldn’t they let him alone?

A brief colloquy ensued, and then George mounted the stairs.

“Look here!” he began in a sepulchral whisper. “It’s the Brewsters, Norman, and I think you ought to see them for a minute. There’s something they want to tell you——”

“I don’t want to hear it!” interrupted Storm fiercely. “Good God, man, can’t you see I’m in no condition to listen to a lot of vapid condolences? I told you to send them away!”

“I would have done so, but I think you ought to let them tell you,” George insisted with the meek, unyielding tenacity which the other man had always found exasperating. “Julie Brewster is terribly wrought up; she says that in justice to—to Leila’s memory you must hear what she has to say.”

In justice to Leila’s memory! Storm gave a sudden, involuntary start. There could be no ambiguity about that phrase. With a feeling as if the world were crashing down about his ears, he thrust George unceremoniously aside and descended the stairs.

They were standing side by side on the hearth rug awaiting him, Julie in tears but with her face bravely lifted to his, Brewster meeting his eyes without a tremor.

“It is good of you to see us, Mr. Storm.” Julie was making an obvious effort to control her emotion. “We wouldn’t have intruded, but I wanted you to know the truth; I couldn’t bear the thought that the shadow of even the slightest misunderstanding should rest between you and—and Leila’s memory now, especially when it was all my fault.”

“ ‘Your fault’?” Storm repeated. “Sit down, please. I don’t understand——”

“We won’t detain you long, old man.” It was Brewster who spoke, but his words failed to pierce the tumult in the other’s brain. “We felt it would comfort you as much as anything could to know that almost her last thought on earth had been for the happiness of others.”

Storm’s eyes had never left the woman’s face, and to their mute command she responded:

“I’m not going to try your patience with a long story of my own foolishness, but I did a wicked, selfish thing in dragging poor Leila into my troubles just to save myself. She was so generous, so self-sacrificing that she did not murmur at the risk to herself, and I never realized until she—she was dead that I might have been the cause of a misunderstanding between you at the very last. It has almost killed me to think of it, and I simply had to come and tell you the truth about the whole affair!”

Storm tried to collect his reeling senses, but only one clear thought came to his rescue. These people must never know, never suspect that any trouble had arisen between him and Leila.

He steadied his voice with an effort at composure.

“I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Brewster. If my poor wife was able to help you out of any difficulty—I am glad, but I know nothing of it. You speak of a risk——?”

“Yes. I have been very foolish—wilfully, blindly foolish—in the way I’ve acted for weeks past.” She paused and then hurried on shamefacedly. “You see, I thought Dick was neglecting me, and to pay him out I’ve been flirting outrageously with Ted Mattison. Leila tried to influence me, but I wouldn’t listen to her, and when Dick woke up to what was going on and ordered me not even to speak to Ted again I—I resented it and defied him.

“Last Monday I motored out to the Ferndale Inn for lunch alone with Ted, and some horrid, gossipy people were there who knew how I’d been trotting about. I didn’t think they had caught a glimpse of Ted then, but I was sure that if they had recognized me they would put two and two together and tell Dick, and I was afraid; terribly afraid, for Dick had threatened to leave me if I disobeyed him.

“As soon as I reached home that afternoon I rushed to Leila, told her the whole thing and made her promise to say that she had been to the Inn with me. It never occurred to me that that promise would make her tell you a lie; I’m afraid I didn’t think about anything except the trouble I was in and how I could manage to get out of it.”

So that was it! They had come to explain about that paltry lie! Brewster dared to stand there while his wife made her trivial confession, while all the time—! A turbulent flame of rage arose in Storm’s heart, but he quelled it rigorously. Caution, now! Brewster must not suspect!

“I knew that my wife had not been with you.” Could that be his own voice speaking with such quiet restraint? “In fact, I had seen her myself in town at noon, although she did not know it. Please don’t distress yourself further, Mrs. Brewster; I know what her errand was in town and why she wished to keep it from me.”

“Oh!” Julie started for a moment and then added miserably: “Leila was sure that you guessed she had fibbed to you. The very next day—the last day of her life!—she begged me to absolve her from her promise, for she said you had seemed so strange and cold to her that morning she was afraid you suspected, and it was the first time she had ever told you an untruth!”

“She must have imagined a change in my attitude,” Storm said hastily. “I was preoccupied and in a hurry to get to town, but that little white lie never gave me a moment’s uneasiness. I would have chaffed her about it only I did not want to spoil her surprise.”

“Surprise!” Julie echoed.

“Yes. When I had seen her in town the day before she was just coming out of Alpheus Jaffray’s office in the Leicester Building.” He felt a measure of grim satisfaction at Brewster’s uncontrollable start. “She had been there to arrange to purchase from him the trout stream which adjoins the property here and which he had refused to sell me; you know as well as the rest of the crowd what a veritable feud has existed between the old fellow and me. I learned the truth from my attorney, whom Leila had consulted previously about the transaction. My poor wife intended it as a birthday surprise for me. My birthday is to-day—to-day!”

He turned away to hide the rage which was fast getting beyond his control at the smug, hypocritical presence of that other man, but his emotion was misread by both his companions.

“To-day! How terrible for you, Storm!” began Brewster, but his wife sobbed:

“If Leila had only guessed! But that untruth made her positively wretched! Why, when I telephoned to her late that night and she came out to meet me——”

“You telephoned to her! She met you——!” The room whirled and grew black before Storm’s eyes, and the woman’s voice, although clear and distinct, seemed to come from far away.

“Yes. I’d had a terrible row with Dick when he came home that night, and I knew he had heard something more about Ted, though I didn’t know what. I was nearly crazy, Mr. Storm, and when he rushed out of the house in anger I ’phoned Leila and begged her to meet me and help me; tell me what to do! She had promised that afternoon to come to me if I needed her. You had gone to the station with Mr. Holworthy when I called up, and Leila did meet me, at the edge of the golf course.

“She urged me to tell Dick everything, but I wouldn’t. I might just as well have done so, though, for those horrid people had seen Ted with me at the Inn, after all, and they went straight to Dick the next day. If only I hadn’t persuaded Leila to lie for me! It wasn’t any use, and it made some of her last hours unhappy. I shall never forgive myself, never!—Oh, don’t look at me like that, Mr. Storm! I can’t bear it!”

Storm had slowly risen from his chair, one hand clutching the table edge as though for support, his eye fixed in an unwavering gaze of horror at the one thing visible in the whirling vortex about him: the white face of Julie. In his dazed brain a hideous fact was taking shape and form, and his soul cowered before it.

He essayed to speak, but no sound issued from his dry lips, and Brewster stepped forward.

“Try not to blame Julie too much, old man,” he begged. “You see, the poor little girl was desperate. I was as much at fault in the situation between us as she was; your dead wife showed me that and brought me to reason. The last act of her life was to save me from wrecking both mine and Julie’s, and we can never be grateful enough to her memory. That is why we had to come here to-night to tell you.”

Slowly Storm’s gaze shifted to the other man’s face, and the inexorable truth of Brewster’s sincerity was forced upon his wretched consciousness. Still he could find no words, and the other continued:

“When I confronted Julie and she stuck to her story, I came here to your wife to confirm the truth of what I had heard. She was loyal to Julie, she tried to make me believe that she had accompanied her to the Inn, but she was too inherently honest to brave it out, and I practically tricked her into admitting the truth. I was going to rush home then in my jealous rage and break with Julie forever, but your wife restrained me, Storm; she convinced me that Julie hadn’t done anything really wrong, anything that I could not forgive, and showed me where I, too, had been at fault in neglecting her for my business, even though it was for her that I wanted to succeed. She made me see that we could begin all over again on a firmer basis even than before, just when I thought everything was ended and the future held nothing but separation and despair.

“I can’t tell you what it meant to me, that quiet talk with your wife here in this very room! It was Tuesday night, you know, and death must have come to her shortly after. I can’t realize it even now, she seemed so radiant, so splendidly alive! I’ll never forget what she did for me, and if I thought that—that the excitement of our interview——! I’m afraid I made rather a scene! If it hurt her, brought on that stroke, or fainting spell——!”

“No. It was a form of catalepsy, you know.” A totally strange voice was speaking in a monotonous, dragging undertone. Storm did not recognize it as his own. Blind instinct alone braced him to a last effort to dissemble. “No one could predict when it was coming on or what caused it . . . . No one was to blame.”

The lie died in his throat, and all at once he began to tremble violently as if the chill of the grave itself were upon him. He caught at the table again, his whole body shaking, collapsing, and with a harsh, strangling cry the floodgates were opened at last. Sinking to his knees, he buried his face in his arms lest the guilt which consumed him be revealed, and sobbed out his anguish unrestrained. He did not feel Julie’s arms about him, her tears against his cheek, nor know when her husband led her gently away. He was face to face with the warped and blackened thing which was his soul, and with that vision he descended to the nethermost depths.

Chapter IX.
The Escape

When Storm came to himself he was lying on the library couch with the gray dawn seeping in at the curtained windows and George’s rotund figure in the hideous striped bathrobe looming up grotesquely from an improvised bed formed of two arm-chairs.

Storm felt a vague sense of irritation. What was he doing there, dressed save for his shoes and collar, instead of being in pajamas in his own bed, and why was George hanging around?

Then the mists of sleep cleared from his brain, and remembrance came. Leila was innocent, and he had killed her! True to him in every act and word and thought, yet he had flung a monstrous accusation at her, and struck her down. His Leila! He saw her again as she lay huddled at his feet, and could have cried aloud in his anguish.

If he could but take back that blow! If only it were given him to live over once more the time which had passed since he saw her on that crowded street and doubt first entered his mind! If he could only speak to her, tell her——!

Then a measure of sanity returned to him. She was dead. He had killed her. Nothing could alter that, nothing could bring her back. No reparation, no expiation would undo his mad act and restore the life that he had taken. If he himself were to live, to go on, he must put behind him all thought of the past; crush back this creeping menace of remorse which threatened to overwhelm him. Regret would avail him nothing now. He had loved the woman who had shared his life for ten years, but she was gone and the future was before him, long years in which, since he could not atone, he must school himself to forget.

At least no one would ever suspect the secret which he carried in his heart. The worst was over, he had fooled them all! But with the thought a new terror gripped him by the throat. What had he done, what had he said when the revelation of Leila’s innocence swept him from his moorings of self-control? The Brewsters had been there, both of them, staring at him as though the ghost of Leila herself had risen to accuse him! George must have been hovering about somewhere, too; must have taken care of him, helped him to the couch, watched over him throughout those hours of unconsciousness, and listened! Great God! Had he betrayed himself?

The light was growing brighter now, bringing out the familiar shapes of the furniture against the gloom and revealing in startling clarity the tired lines in the relaxed face of his self-appointed nurse. Storm sat up and scrutinized it half fearfully. Could George sleep like that, exhausted though he well might be, if he had gained an inkling of the truth? It seemed impossible, and yet Storm felt that he must know the worst. A direct accusation, even, would be better than this suspense. The first look would tell, the first glance that passed between them.

Storm coughed, and George’s eyes opened sleepily, wandered vaguely about and then as they came to bear on the upright figure on the couch, warmed with a sudden clear light of affectionate compassion.

“Norman, old boy! How do you feel? Can I get you anything?”

Storm sank back with a sigh of relief.

“No. I—a drink of water——” he mumbled and closed his eyes as George rose and padded off in his flapping slippers down the hall. There still remained the Brewsters, and his sudden collapse in their presence was enough of itself to arouse their suspicion aside from the wild words which might have issued unbidden from his lips. He must learn what had taken place!

When George returned with the glass Storm drained it and then asked weakly:

“Went to pieces, didn’t I?”

“You sure did, but it was coming to you,” George affirmed. “You’re all right now, though, so just rest and try not to think of anything. Carr fixed you up in good shape——”

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Storm. “Carr! I didn’t even know he was here! How did you get rid of the Brewsters?”

“Well, it wasn’t easy!” A faint smile lighted George’s tired face. “Dick’s got sense enough, but that little scatter-brained wife of his wanted to stay and take care of you! It was all I could do to persuade her to go home.”

“And all that while I was making an exhibition of myself before them!” Storm exclaimed bitterly.

“You were not,” retorted George. “You broke down, of course, just as I knew you must, sooner or later. I hadn’t been easy in my mind about you all day, and I didn’t like the look on your face when you went down to the library to see them, so I stuck around, not eavesdropping, old boy, but to be at hand in case you needed me. I could hear their voices, and then you gave a kind of a cry, and I butted in.

“I found Julie fussing over you, and I motioned to her husband to get her away into the drawing-room. He came back and we put you on the couch, and that’s all there is to it. I told them to stop in at Carr’s and send him here.”

“What did I say? I mean,” Storm hastily amended, “I don’t remember anything. Julie and Dick came to tell me how Leila had brought them together again when they were on the point of a separation. You remember when she told us that she had been out to the Ferndale Inn with Julie? That wasn’t only to keep her visit to old Jaffray’s office secret, but because she had promised Julie to lie for her. They thought I might have misunderstood, and that it would comfort me to know she had made peace between them, but instead it—it broke me up! The full realization came over me of all that I had lost, and I went off my head, I guess. Tell me what I said, George.”

“Why, nothing! You just—hang it all, man, you gave way to your feelings, that’s all! You didn’t say anything,” George replied uncomfortably. “When the doctor came he gave you a good stiff hypodermic, and you dropped off to sleep like a baby. You’re bound to feel rocky, you know, but you’re over the worst of it!”

“Poor old George!” With renewed confidence there came to Storm a twinge of compunction. “You look as though you needed the doctor yourself! You must have had a rotten night.”

“Never you mind about me!” returned George gruffly. “Here! Carr said you were to take this when you woke up and not to talk too much.”

Obediently Storm took the medicine and almost immediately drifted off into troubled sleep.

It was broad noon when he awakened once more with the fragrant odor of coffee in the air and George standing before him, dressed for departure.

“Sorry, old boy, but I’ve got to run up to town, you know. You’ll be all right for a few hours, and I’ll be back before night. Drink your coffee, take a cold bath and get out on the veranda in the sun. Nobody’ll bother you; I’ve seen to that.”

Storm tried faintly to protest against George’s return; he didn’t need any care, he would be better off alone, and the other mustn’t neglect his business affairs any longer. But George was not to be swerved from his purpose, and after a few hours of solitude Storm was in a mood to welcome his return. In his weakened state he did not find it easy to keep his truant thoughts from straying to the past, and a horror which he was unable to combat made him shun his own society.

For the next few days, while the flood of condolences still poured in, he clung to George as to an anchor; but when the last dismal conventions had been observed and the household had settled down to something like order, his old feeling of irritation against his friend returned. George’s eternal pussy-footing about the house as though death yet lingered there, his lugubrious face and labored attempts at cheer and consolation became insupportable, and his host breathed a sigh of relief when he ultimately departed.

Spring advanced, and with returning strength Storm’s nerves steadied; and, secure in the knowledge that his guilt was buried forever, he took up the daily round once more.

A week after the funeral, he returned to his sinecure at the offices of the Mammoth Trust Company. The neighbors, possibly because of George’s forewarning, had left him considerately alone in the interim, but now as he stood on the station platform awaiting his customary train for the city, the ubiquitous Millard advanced beaming.

“By Jove, this is good, old chap! Glad you are getting back into the harness again; best thing for you!” he exclaimed. “Fine weather we’re having now, and the course is in wonderful condition; never better! I’m in topping form, if I do say it myself; and I haven’t missed a day.”

Despite his volubility, there was an odd constraint in his manner, and Storm eyed him curiously. Could it be a latent suspicion?

“You’ll be going in for the tournament?” he enquired briefly.

“Surest thing you know! Too bad you——” Millard caught himself up. “I say, though, why don’t you get up early now and then and play a round or two with me before breakfast? Nobody else out then, it would do you no end of good. How about to-morrow?”

Storm shook his head, checking the shudder which came involuntarily at the suggestion.

“Thanks, but I’m not quite up to it. I think I’ll let golf alone for a while,” he replied, adding hastily as he saw signs of remonstrance in the other’s face, “I’ve got too much to do, reinvestments to make and that sort of thing.”

“Of course,” Millard nodded. “You’ll have your hands full, but you would find that an occasional round would set you up wonderfully. Nothing like it to straighten you out and take your mind off things. Just ’phone me if you feel like it any day, old chap, and I’ll join you.”

The appearance of several belated fellow-commuters saved Storm from the necessity of a reply, and as they came up to greet him he eyed each in turn furtively.

They were cordial enough, but none alluded directly to his bereavement, and the same constraint was evident in their bearing that Millard had manifested. He continued to study them on the train from behind the shelter of his newspaper. Unmistakable relief had registered itself on their faces when the train came, and now a few of them were ostentatiously buried in the market reports; but for the most part, in groups of two and three, they were discussing their business affairs, and to the listener their tones seemed unnecessarily raised. Not one had ventured to take the vacant seat beside him.

Had the Brewsters spread broadcast the story of his emotional outburst in their presence, and could it have occasioned remark, started vague rumor and conjecture which might yet lead to the discovery of the truth? In vain he told himself that he was over-analytical, that these old friends shrank not from him but from dilating upon his tragic loss. To his apprehensive imagination their manner held a deeper significance than that of mere masculine inability to voice their sympathy, and with gnawing persistency the menacing possibilities rankled in his brain.

At the office, after the formal condolences of his associates, Storm slipped mechanically into the old, well-ordered routine; but here, too, he fancied that he was being eyed askance. He could at least avoid running the gauntlet of his clubs for a time without occasioning remark, but the thought of Greenlea itself and all that it held for him had become obnoxious, hideous! The return to that empty house day after day; could he endure it without going mad?

He caught the club car in a mood of surly defiance, but he had scarcely taken his accustomed place when Richard Brewster appeared and without waiting for an invitation seated himself beside him.

“Awfully glad to see you on the job again.” He spoke heartily, and his beaming face corroborated his words. “We were worried about you, you know, the other night; Julie wanted to stay and take care of you, but Holworthy wouldn’t hear of it. I hope you’ve forgiven us for intruding.”

Storm eyed him watchfully, but the guileless friendliness of the younger man was patent, and the other sighed in relief.

“I understand your motive, and I thank you both for coming,” he said after a moment’s pause. “Sorry I lost control of myself, but I’d been keeping up for so long——”

“It was only natural,” Brewster interrupted. “You’ll be leaving us, I suppose, for a time anyway, as soon as you’ve got the estate settled. We’ll miss you——”

“Leaving?” Storm stared.

“You’ll go away for a—a rest, won’t you? New scenes and all that sort of thing? It will be hard for you to go on here——” The younger man broke off and added hastily: “Julie was saying only this morning at breakfast that if you decided to keep the house open you would need a housekeeper, and she knows of a splendid woman, an elderly widow in reduced circumstances——”

Storm halted him with an abrupt gesture of negation.

“I haven’t made any plans yet, Brewster. The maids I’ve got are used to my ways and capable of running things temporarily, although it will be necessary to make other arrangements, of course, if I decide to remain in Greenlea.” The reply was mechanical, for his thoughts were busied with the new vista which the other’s assumption had opened before his mental vision. “I am grateful to Mrs. Brewster for her interest, and if I need the woman of whom she spoke I will let her know. Just now I am drifting; I haven’t looked ahead.”

Barker met him as usual at the station, and during the short drive home he glanced about him at the smug, familiar scene with a buoyant sense of coming escape. To get away! To cut loose now, at once, from all these prying people, the petty social intercourse, the thousand and one things which reminded him of Leila and of what he had done! The revulsion of feeling from the contentment of past years which had swept over him that day culminated with a sudden rush of hatred for it all. The house loomed before him a veritable nightmare, and the coming days had appeared each a separate ordeal from the prospect of which he shrank with unutterable loathing.

He had felt chained to the old order of things by the fear of arousing suspicion if he ran away precipitately, but the one man of whose opinion he had been most apprehensive had himself suggested the way out as the most natural course in the world.

Storm could have laughed at his uneasiness of the morning; the other fellows had been merely embarrassed, that was all, reluctant to mention his tragic bereavement, and trying with awkward constraint to bridge over the chasm. If they took it for granted, as Brewster did, that he would seek a temporary change of scene, the main obstacle was removed from his path. It would be a simple matter to sell the house, and then the world would be before him.

On the hall table he found a letter from George Holworthy, and tore it open with an absent-minded smile. He would soon be free even from old George!

Dear Norman, (he read):

Tried to get out to see you to-night, but must meet Abbott. Had a talk with Jim Potter yesterday. The firm has ordered him to the Coast immediately and he is winding up his affairs here and wants to get rid of his apartment. Willing to rent furnished, just as it stands, cheap, until his lease is up in October. It is a bully little place up on the Drive and the stuff he has there is all a fellow would want to keep a bachelor hall. Why don’t you take it off his hands and close up the house out there? Jim will take his man with him, but you can get another, and New York is the best little old summer resort in the world. Take my advice and get out of that place for a while anyway. I told Jim I’d write you, but you’ve got to speak quick if you want to take him up on it. Think it over.

Yours,

George

Storm folded the letter slowly. He knew Potter, knew the comfortable, even luxurious sort of place his ease-loving soul would have demanded, yet he had wished to go farther afield. The first thought of escape had entailed a vague dream of other countries—South America, perhaps, or the Far East—but now he forced himself sternly back to the realities of the situation.

Such an adventure would mean money, more ready cash than he could command at the moment. It would mean waiting until the house was sold, and burning his bridges as far as the Trust Company was concerned. Moreover, the few thousands the house would bring would not last long, and unless he connected with new business wherever he went, he had nothing to fall back upon but the beggarly three thousand a year which was left from his share of his father’s estate. He must convert the capital into cash, and Foulkes had warned him that that would take time. Could he wait there, within those four walls which had witnessed what he had done?

He dined in a meditative silence, oblivious of the anxious ministrations of Agnes. The empty place opposite, the chair in its new, unaccustomed position against the wall, the silence and shadows all worked upon his mood. Potter’s quarters in town would at least bear no reminders to mock and accuse him at every turn, and drag his treacherous thoughts back to a past which must be buried. He would be free, too, from Brewster and Millard and the rest of them; but on the other hand George would be constantly thrusting his society upon him.

Undecided, he wandered out to the veranda, but the vines which Leila had tended peered at him over the rail and whispered together; in the library her books, her desk, the foolish, impractical reading lamp she had bought for him all mutely recalled her vanished presence. There remained only the drawing-room, where her body had lain, the den—!

With a shudder he turned and mounted the stairs. The blank, closed door of her room stared at him, and within his own were evidences on every hand of feminine thoughtfulness and care. Her influence vibrated like a living thing, all about him, clutching him by the throat, smothering him! Anything, anywhere would be preferable to this!

It was only half-past nine. He could not go to the country club, he shrank from the society of any of his neighbors; he could neither sleep, nor read, nor find a corner which did not cry aloud of Leila! There would be other nights like this, weeks of them . . . .

In swift rebellion he descended to the library and seized the telephone.

. . . . “Mr. Holworthy, please . . . . That you, George? . . . . Yes, Norman. I’ve got your letter and you’re right. I can’t stand it out here. I’ll take Potter’s rooms at his own price, and I want possession by Monday . . . . All right, fix it, will you? . . . . No, but it’s got on my nerves; I can’t go on. I—it’s hell!”

Chapter X.
A Chance Meeting

“Told you you’d like it here.” George Holworthy crossed one pudgy knee over the other and eyed his friend’s back at the window with immense satisfaction, “Old Jim certainly knows how to live, doesn’t he, from percolators to night-lights? You’ll be mighty comfortable here, Norman.”

Storm turned slowly from his contemplation of the shadowed park below, the broad sweep of the river and twinkle of the Palisades beyond.

“It’s great!” he declared briefly but with a ringing, buoyant note which had long been absent from his tones. “I tell you George, old boy, I feel like a new man already! I never knew until now how stagnant a backwater like Greenlea can make a fellow become! Same old trains, same old country-club, same old crowd of petty-minded busybodies! Lord, I don’t see how I stood it all these years!”

The outburst was spontaneous, and not until he saw the look of reproachful amazement which crossed George’s face did he realize that he had lowered his guard.

“You were happy,” ventured George.

“Of course,” Storm hastened to acquiesce. “That made all the difference. But alone——”

He shrugged and turned away lest the other read too clearly the change which had come with his escape from the scene of his crime. Significant of that change was the fact that he could think of his deed as a crime now without shrinking. After the first shock of horror and remorse had passed together with the fear of detection, a sense of triumph began to dominate him, a sort of pride in himself and his achievement. He had hoodwinked them all! He, who had fancied himself a weakling merely because luck had been against him in the past, had proved his strength, his invincibility now. Old George, sitting there so placidly, blinking at him with those good-natured, near-sighted eyes of his: how little he suspected, how little he could ever suspect of the truth! The rest of them, with their smug condolences and pity!

Gad, how easy it had been!

“What do you think of Homachi?” George’s question broke in upon his self-congratulation.

“The Jap you got for me? He’s an improvement on Agnes, I can tell you!” Storm opened the bronze humidor and offered it. “Smoke?—You’ve no idea how that girl’s sniffling got on my nerves! Of course I appreciated her feelings, but hang it all, a man can’t buck up and carry on with other people constantly thrusting his own sorrow at him! Homachi is a cheerful, grinning little cuss, and he certainly can make an omelette. Come up and have breakfast some Sunday morning and you’ll see.”

“Thanks.” George spoke a trifle drily. “Glad you like him. Have you made any plans yet about the disposition of the Greenlea house?”

The constraint in his tone warned Storm that for the second time he had shown his hand too plainly, and he forced a look of pained surprise.

“Disposition of the house?” he echoed. “Heavens, no! It’s closed up, of course, and I’ve left MacWhirter there as caretaker. It was one of Leila’s last wishes, you know, to give him employment when he came out of the Base Hospital. I hadn’t dreamed of disposing of it; I couldn’t bear to think of strangers in her garden, under her roof, in the home she loved! If I’m glad to be out of it, it’s not that I am callous, but that everything about it affects me too much, George. You ought to be able to understand. If I hug my grief I’ll just simply go under, and Leila herself wouldn’t want that.”

“I do understand, old man.” George’s voice trembled now with quick sympathy, and Storm hid a smile of relief. “You’re trying to be brave for her sake, and it is fine of you! Stay away from the place by all means while it makes you feel that way. You could do worse than take a lease here for yourself next year when Jim’s expires.”

Storm shook his head.

“I’ve been thinking that I’d like to take a trip somewhere, later on,” he said slowly, watching the other’s face through narrowed lids. “A long trip; China or South America or way up North. I could come back and start all over again——”

“But your position with the Trust Company?” George sputtered. “They couldn’t put a man in your place and then oust him for you when you came back.”

“I wouldn’t expect them to,” Storm responded. “To tell you the truth, I feel that I’ve been stagnating there, too. It’s a sinecure and I’ve been content to drift along sure of the income and not taking chances, but I’m responsible for no one else now and I can afford a risk.”

George rose.

“Don’t do anything rash,” he advised. “Fifteen thousand a year is a mighty safe little bet in these uncertain times, and you’ve never known what it is to get out for yourself, you know. You’ve got the habit of luxury——”

“And no business head? Thanks,” drawled his host pleasantly. “I’m not going to make a fool of myself and kill the goose until I find golden eggs elsewhere. That notion of a trip was just an impulse. I may get over this restless fit and settle down here permanently, after all. I like these rooms of Jim’s, and town looks good to me.”

Nevertheless, the next day found him in Wendle Foulkes’ office facing the keen old attorney with an air of quiet command which brooked no expostulation.

“How long will it take you to convert my securities into cash?” he demanded. “When we talked about it a fortnight ago I listened to you because of my wife, but now I’ve only myself to consider, and I have a right to take a risk with my own if I feel inclined.”

“Of course you have, my boy,” Foulkes returned slowly. “I have gone beyond my province, perhaps, in trying to influence you, but I promised your father—however, I’ve nothing more to say. I will have the cash for you in ten days. You have exactly fifty thousand dollars, on which you’ve been getting six per cent; I hope you’ll be able to better it.”

“Thanks.” Storm was conscious of an air of defeat in the old man’s manner and he resented it vaguely, then shrugged. What did it matter, anyway? He would be free from this pettifogging nuisance soon enough. “About the other matter——?”

“You mean Leila’s estate?” Foulkes’ tone softened. “I have the papers all here for you to look over. We must advertise for claims for six months, of course—a mere formality in this case—and then what she left can be turned over to you. She had just fourteen thousand when she married you and spent eleven of it. Here are the accounts. It was a matter of pride with her to buy your Christmas and birthday presents with her own money, Norman, and I couldn’t gainsay her. Two thousand went for that black pearl scarf-pin, three thousand——”

“Don’t!” Storm cried sharply. “I don’t want to hear all that! Send the papers up to my rooms. Can’t you see——?”

He stopped with a gesture of repugnance, and the attorney, ignorant of the source of the other’s emotion, nodded compassionately.

“I know, my boy, but I want you to see how matters stand. There are three thousand left, of the principal, which were to have been paid to Jaffray for that land adjoining yours, and accrued interest on the constantly depleted original capital which aggregates almost as much again. Her estate, roughly speaking, will amount to between five and six thousand dollars; I’ll send you the exact figures.”

“I don’t care about them! I’m not thinking of what she left; it isn’t that.” Storm rose, unable to meet the kindly gaze of the older man. “I only want to get the whole thing settled and done with. I can’t bear to discuss it; these details are horrible, impossible for me to contemplate sanely just yet!”

“I quite understand, Norman, but they must be attended to, you know.” Foulkes rose and held out his hand. “I’ll render you an accounting in six months, and then it will be over.—About your own affairs. You have never taken the advice I volunteered with very good grace, and I shall not offer any now. I am getting old, and you are no longer a boy; you know your own mind. However, if in the future you feel the need of disinterested counsel or help you know where to come for it.”

“Thank you, sir.” Storm felt an odd sense of contrition. “I’m not going into that South American scheme. I shall look around before deciding definitely on what I have in mind, and I’m sorry if I have seemed to resent your interest in the past. A man can’t be in leading-strings all his life, you know, and I have a good, conservative proposition now.”

He had. Storm chuckled grimly to himself as he departed. Fifty thousand would carry him far away, give him a year or two of utterly care-free existence, and leave a respectable sum to start in some fresh venture. The European countries were practically bankrupt; a little cash would bring monumental return and in some continental capital he could start a new life. Just as the thought of escape from Greenlea had made his surroundings there suddenly intolerable, so now the contemplation of utter freedom and a wider vista brought with it an impatience, a longing for instant action. The lease on Potter’s rooms, the trumpery five thousand from Leila’s estate—these details need not deter or delay him!

Another thought did, however. It was one thing, and a perfectly natural one, under the circumstances, for him to have closed the house and moved in town; it would be quite another question were he to throw up a fifteen-thousand-a-year job, seize all the cash he could lay his hands upon and rush out of the country. No man in his sane senses would take such a step unless some more urgent and sinister motive actuated him than a mere desire for forgetfulness of grief in strange scenes and a new environment.

Forcing himself to regard it from a detached point of view, he saw the madness of that course. His imagination conjured up the blank amazement which would ensue not only among the Greenlea people, but in his town clubs, in the Trust Company. There would be hints that grief had unsettled his reason, then darker whispers still; whispers which would grow in volume until the echo of them reached him wherever he might be, at the uttermost ends of the earth.

He must not spoil all now by a precipitate move; he must possess his soul in patience until a favorable opportunity presented itself. He had inserted an opening wedge in mentioning his tentative intention to George; in a few weeks he would refer to it again, speaking of it casually but frequently, as a trip with definitely planned limitations, and hinting at a sound business proposition which awaited his return. The idea must filter through the clubs and out to Greenlea, must have become an old story before he finally acted upon it, so that his going would occasion no remark.

Once away, it would be simple enough to cable his instructions regarding the sale of the house and postpone his return from time to time until the old crowd had practically forgotten him. George would remember, but old George wouldn’t suspect the truth if he vanished to-morrow!

With the onus of fear lifted from him, Storm still shrank from solitude. Decency and convention precluded an immediate return to his clubs, and he desired above all things to avoid the society of those who knew him and the details of the recent tragedy. He took to satisfying his gregarious need by seeking out-of-the-way hotels and restaurants frequented for the most part by the visiting foreigners who thronged the city, where, sitting long over his coffee, he could lose himself in the study of his neighbors.

On an evening a few days after his interview with Foulkes he was seated at a table in an old-fashioned French hostelry far downtown, listening to the snatches of staccato conversation which rose above the subdued cadences of the orchestra and watching the scene brilliant with the uniforms of half a dozen nations, when to his annoyance he heard his name uttered in accents of cheery surprise.

Turning swiftly he beheld Millard, flushed and evidently slightly exhilarated, rising from the corner table where he had been seated with a sallow-faced, distinguished looking stranger in mufti.

He bowed coldly and returned with ostentatious deliberation to his entrèe, hoping to discourage the other’s advance; but Millard was in no mood to comprehend a rebuff.

“By Jove, old chap, delighted to find you here!” He shook Storm’s reluctant hand and without invitation pulled out the opposite chair and seated himself. “That’s the boy! Get around a bit and work up an interest in life. No use moping. We miss you out home, but as I told Dick Brewster, change is the thing for you, change——”

“What are you doing here?” Storm interrupted him brusquely. “Thought you were wedded to the three-forty; it’s been a bully afternoon for golf.”

“Business!” Millard waved a pompous hand toward the table he had just quitted. “Golf’s not in it with high finance, and this is the greatest proposition you ever heard of! Hundred per cent profit in three months and safe as a church; good deal safer than the churches on the other side have been!”

He grinned expansively at his own witticism, then his face clouded dismally.

“Can’t go into it, though; wife won’t hear of it, and you know what it is, Storm, when a woman holds the purse strings. You know how I’m situated!”

Storm nodded. Everyone in Greenlea knew that Millard had married a rich woman and suffered the pangs of hope deferred ever since. Then he glanced up and frowned.

“Your friend is coming over,” he remarked in bored impatience. “When you gestured toward him he must have taken it for an invitation.”

“’S all right!” Millard responded easily. “Wonderful chap, Du Chainat. Wonderful proposition—Look here! You spoke of making some reinvestments; here’s chance of a lifetime! Never heard of anything like it! Gilt-edged—”

The stranger halted by the table and Millard made as if to rise and then thought better of it.

“Storm, let me present Monsieur Maurice du Chainat. My old pal and neighbor, Mr. Norman Storm.”

The Frenchman bowed with courtly suavity, and Storm could do no less than proffer him a chair at the table and beckon to a waiter.

“Mentioned your little proposition, old chap,” the irrepressible Millard continued, adding airily as a shade of protestation passed over Monsieur du Chainat’s mobile countenance: “Oh I know it’s confidential, but Storm’s all right. He wants to make some reinvestments, and now’s his golden opportunity!”

“Mr. Millard has told me nothing of the nature of your proposition, Monsieur,” Storm hastened to reassure the Frenchman. “He merely mentioned it in passing.”

For a long minute, Monsieur du Chainat regarded him in courteous but unmistakable appraisal. Then a genial smile lifted the ends of his small black mustache.

“It is a confidential matter, as Monsieur Millard says, but there is nothing—how do you say?—equivocal concerning it. We of France do not make our transactions ordinarily as you do in America; we discuss, we deliberate, we wait. And yet in this affair which I have undertaken haste is, alas, of the utmost need. Time is of value; such value that I will pay twice over for three hundred thousand francs.”

“You see, it’s a factory in one of the devastated towns,” Millard interjected eagerly. “Old feud, trying to get ahead of the other fellow. It means sixty thousand in our money, and the French government’s giving him a grant of a hundred and twenty thousand in three months, but it means ruin to wait. Other man’s got his capital now——”

“But, my friend, Monsieur Storm is perhaps not interested; we bore him,” Monsieur du Chainat interrupted. “The letter which our consul here has given me to your great banker, Monsieur Whitmarsh, has interested him to such an extent that the affair is all but closed.”

“Whitmarsh?” Storm pricked up his ears. The proposition must be good if that most astute of international financiers considered it.

“But, yes.” The Frenchman shrugged deprecatingly. “It is, of course, a trifling matter to engage his attention, but I am to have a second interview with him to-morrow at three. I shall be happy to conclude my mission, for there is attached to it the sentiment as well as what you call business.”

A second interview! Whitmarsh wasted no time, and this must mean a deal. Sixty thousand dollars, and doubled in three months! Storm leaned impulsively across the table.

“What is your proposition, Monsieur, if I may ask? It sounds a trifle—er, unusual.”

“It is.” The Frenchman smiled again. “You will understand, Monsieur Storm, that in France it is not the custom to develop a manufacturing concern until it grows too big for us and then sell out to a corporation. With us business descends from generation to generation, it becomes at once the idol and life of the family.

“My father-in-law, Henri Peronneau of Lille, has a soap factory established by his grandfather. Twenty years ago, a dishonest chemist in his employ stole the formula which rendered the Peronneau soap famous and set up a rival factory. Both, of course, were dismantled during the German occupation.

“Monsieur Peronneau has been granted a loan of six hundred thousand francs from the government, but it cannot be obtained for three months yet; meanwhile our rival has acquired more than that sum from an English house, and if his factory is the first in operation it will steal all our old trade, and Monsieur Peronneau, who is already ruined, will have no opportunity to recoup. He is in frail health from the slavery of the invasion, and his heart will be broken. Three hundred thousand francs now will enable him to compete with his rival, for his factory is in far better condition, and for that he is willing to pay the entire sum which the government will lend him.

“I admit that I have tried to obtain the amount at a sacrifice less great, but there is no time for lengthy investigation, and I have found that people even in your generous America are afraid to trust my credentials and the sponsorship of our consul. Only a man of Monsieur Whitmarsh’s experience and caliber could comprehend that the affair is bona fide, that he takes no risk. Voyez, here is the personal letter which I have received from him.”

Storm glanced over the single sheet of terse, typed sentences ending in the well-known, crabbed signature, and returned it to the Frenchman.

“I congratulate you, Monsieur. I know Whitmarsh’s methods and this looks as if he intended to take you up on it.”

Monsieur du Chainat flushed with pleasure.

“It is of great happiness to me,” he said simply. “Almost I have despaired of my mission. At the Hotel Belterre, where I am staying, there are so many of my compatriots here also to try to borrow that they may rehabilitate themselves, and with so little success that I, too, feared failure. But Monsieur Whitmarsh is shrewd; he knows—what you say?—‘a good thing,’ and he makes no mistakes.”

The conversation drifted into desultory topics and after a half hour Monsieur du Chainat took his leave, dragging the reluctant Millard with him. As for Storm, he sat long over his cooling coffee, and until far into the night he pondered the possibilities which this chance meeting opened before him. The difference between sixty thousand dollars and a hundred and twenty meant the difference between luxurious living and the petty economies which would try his soul; between independence for years of travel and care-free pleasure, and the necessity of knuckling down after a brief respite to uncongenial money-grubbing. It must be all right if Whitmarsh were going into it, and his letter left no room for doubt on that score.

If he, Storm, had only met the Frenchman first!

In the morning he tried to concentrate on the affairs of the Trust Company, but it was of no avail. The glittering opportunity aroused all his gambling instinct and seemed all the more alluring in that it was out of his reach. But was it? Perhaps Whitmarsh would fail, for some reason, to accept the proposition; not from lack of faith in its genuineness, for he must have looked into it with his usual caution before going so far in the negotiations; but he had been known to turn down deals of much greater magnitude at the last moment through sheer eccentricity.

If Du Chainat could offer bona fide securities and he himself could obtain a mortgage of ten thousand on the Greenlea house, he could add that to his capital and take the plunge.

At noon, Storm telephoned to the Belterre and asked for Monsieur du Chainat.

“This is Storm talking, Millard’s friend,” he answered. “I called up, Monsieur, to tell you that if by any chance the Whitmarsh deal falls through, I might consider your proposition myself . . . Yes, call me up at my rooms, 0519 Riverside, at six. Good-bye.”

He hung up the receiver slowly. Suppose, after all, the man should be an impostor? He would be risking all he had in the world in the event that Whitmarsh did not take the proposition; all that stood between him and the accursed treadmill of existence here within reach of the memories which thrust out their tentacles to crush him. If that Lille soap factory were a myth——!

He reached for the receiver once more and called the French consulate. Yes, Monsieur Henri Peronneau, of Lille, was well known to them. His son-in-law, Monsieur Maurice du Chainat, was now in this country negotiating a loan to reconstruct the Peronneau factory. If Mr. Storm were interested, a meeting could be arranged . . . .

Storm turned away from the booth with sparkling eyes. If Whitmarsh refused the loan he would take a chance! Luck must be with him still; that marvelous luck which had enabled him to elude the consequences of his crime was yet running strong, At six o’clock he would know!

Chapter XI.
Luck

Promptly at six that evening the telephone in Storm’s apartment shrilled, and it had scarcely ceased vibrating when he sprang to it and caught up the receiver.

He uttered a quick monosyllabic assent to some evident query, listened intently for a minute and then threw back his head in a smile of elation. The next instant he was speaking calmly, quietly.

“Too small a proposition for him to tackle, eh?” he observed. “Well, I’m not a magnate, Monsieur du Chainat, but I would like to talk it over with you. How about dining with me in an hour at the Rochefoucauld where we met last night? . . . . Bring along your papers, and we can come back here later and go into the details . . . . Very good, at seven.”

His luck was holding! Old Whitmarsh had turned the loan down as too petty a transaction to interest him. The chance was his now, make or break! But pshaw! he couldn’t lose; not if Du Chainat’s securities were all right. Past failures had made him skeptical, but now fortune had changed. A hundred and twenty thousand!

He whistled exultantly as he changed from one somber suit of mourning to another, and only paused when a casual glance in the mirror brought home to him with a shock the incongruity between his expression and his attire. He threw back his shoulders defiantly.

“The past is dead!” he muttered. “Three months, and I shall be free to forget!”

Monsieur du Chainat met him in the hotel lobby and greeted him with undiminished enthusiasm.

“I am delighted, Monsieur, that you find yourself interested,” he remarked, after their order had been given. “Since I telephoned to you an hour ago I have received yet another offer to take up the loan, this from an associate of Monsieur Whitmarsh, whom he must have consulted; a Monsieur Nicholas Langhorne. You perhaps have heard of him?”

Storm nodded.

“I know him,” he said briefly, forbearing to add that the gentleman in question was the president of the Trust Company which he ornamented with his presence. To get ahead of old Langhorne! That would be gratification enough were the profits cut to a minimum.

“I have replied to him that the affair is already under consideration”—Monsieur du Chainat poised a fragment of hors d’oeuvre gracefully upon his fork,—“but should you not, after examining the documents I have brought, desire to close, Monsieur, I will see him to-morrow.”

“ ‘To-morrow!’ ” Storm echoed in dismay. “I should like a little longer time than that in which to decide. It may take me some days to convert my capital into cash, and there are other contingencies——”

“But Monsieur forgets that to me time is of paramount importance.” The Frenchman’s face had clouded. “It is for that we pay one hundred per cent interest in three months! When I have acquired the loan I do not even wait for the ship which takes me back; I cable to my beau-père the money, that the work may start without an hour’s delay. You comprehend, Monsieur, how urgent is our need by the extent of our sacrifice. I shall have an inheritance from my uncle soon, and I shall aid Père Peronneau in paying off the government loan for which he is responsible when he repays it with the debt we incur here. There is the sentiment as well as the business, as I told you last night, Monsieur. If you could but see the beau-père——”

He drew a simple but graphic word picture of the old manufacturer, but his listener was distrait. Could he get the fifty thousand from Foulkes at such short order, to say nothing of arranging the mortgage on the Greenlea house? Monsieur du Chainat’s haste seemed plausible enough, and then there was Langhorne only too ready to snap up the prize!

By heavens, if the Frenchman’s security looked good to him, he would raise the money, come what might!

And the security did look more than good when later they repaired to his rooms, and Monsieur du Chainat produced his sheaf of multitudinous documents. There were the unassailable correspondence on the letter heads of the consulate, Henri Peronneau’s authorization of his son-in-law, Maurice Pierre du Chainat as his agent, duly signed and attested to by the notary of Lille, a deed formally making over to the lender of three hundred thousand francs—the space for whose name was left significantly blank—the government loan of six hundred thousand in its entirety, and lastly a formidable-appearing document of the French government itself announcing the grant of the loan.

“For further evidence of our good faith,”—Monsieur du Chainat drew a second packet of papers from his pocket,—“I have here a deed to the factory itself which can be held as security. As you can see from this photograph, Monsieur, the factory is a mere shell now, but a stout and solid shell, and the land upon which it stands is worth more than the sum we require. Our government has not asked this security of us but accepted instead some undeveloped coal properties to the south. Here are the documents attesting to that and also those which prove the factory to be the property of Monsieur Peronneau, free of lien or mortgage.”

They talked until far into the night, and when the Frenchman at length took his departure he bore with him Storm’s agreement to advance the loan.

The morning brought no breath of misgiving, save anxiety lest he should fail in his efforts to secure the cash in the space of twenty-four hours specified by Du Chainat. The Trust Company would assume the mortgage on the Greenlea house, he knew, and waive technicalities to give him the ten thousand at once, but there remained Foulkes to be managed, and if the old rascal knew that haste was imperative to the transaction he would balk it in sheer perversity.

On one point Storm was determined; he would not take Foulkes into his confidence, nor anyone.

He had a stormy session with the old attorney, adjourned at noon only to be renewed with more wordy violence an hour later; but in the end Storm emerged triumphant, with a certified check for fifty thousand dollars and Foulkes’ dismal prophecies ringing in his ears. The mortgage on the house was, as he had anticipated, a simple matter to arrange, and on the following morning he handed to Monsieur du Chainat the sixty thousand dollars which were to return to him twofold.

The momentous transaction concluded, he repaired to his desk at the Trust Company, gloating over the unconscious bald head of Nicholas Langhorne. He had put one over on him, beaten that conservative financier by a matter of hours! Du Chainat had shown him Langhorne’s letter, and he read between the lines the latter’s eagerness to grasp the coveted opportunity which he had himself placed within Storm’s reach by taking up the mortgage. How he would writhe if he knew who had forestalled him, just as he and the rest would writhe if they realized the enormity of that other affair which he had put over on all the world!

They would never learn the truth about Leila’s death; that was buried forever. But he would give much to tell Langhorne how he had outwitted him, and watch the old fox’s face! Perhaps he would tell him some day, the day on which his six hundred thousand francs came and he resigned from the Trust Company!

George Holworthy found him a strange companion for the rest of the week. The faithful friend could not understand his moods, for Storm, never easily comprehended by the other’s slow-moving brain, seemed all at once to develop a complexity which utterly baffled him.

Storm himself found it difficult to preserve a calm and resigned demeanor to mask his thoughts which seethed with plans for the future. When haunting memories came unbidden, he thrust them fiercely aside, smothered them beneath the exultation of having escaped the lax hands of justice.

“Upon my soul, Norman, I don’t know what to make of you!” George complained one evening as they strolled up the Drive. “If you were a woman, I’d swear you were hysterical!”

Storm halted, glad of the semi-obscurity of the trees which tempered the searching street lights.

“You’re crazy!” he retorted.

“No, I’m not,” insisted George in serious refutation. “You’re down in the dumps one minute and all excited the next. You haven’t been speculating again?”

“Good Lord, no!” Storm breathed more freely. He must be careful! If old George thought his manner odd, how would it impress others? “I’m through with all that sort of thing.”

“Well, I didn’t know,” the other said lamely. “There’s a streak of recklessness in you, and when you get in one of those don’t-give-a-hang moods of yours you are apt to pull off some fool stunt——”

“My dear George!” Storm’s tone was pained. “I’ve been through enough, God knows, in the last few weeks to sober me down——”

“But it hasn’t!” George persevered. “You seem hardened, defiant, just in the frame of mind to do something desperate! I tell you I’ve been worried about you these days.”

Storm shrugged ironically.

“Sorry I can’t set your mind at rest,” he replied. “I don’t seem to be taking what’s come to me according to your notions. First, you are disappointed because I don’t rant around and tear my hair, and now you accuse me of hysteria!”

“That’s it; that’s what I don’t like!” exclaimed George, “That callousness; it isn’t natural, it isn’t you! You’re putting it on because your trouble has made you defiant, bitter. I know you, Norman, you can’t fool me; I’m only trying to help you, to keep you from doing anything you will have cause to regret.”

“Don’t you worry,” Storm reassured him, the while his face twitched with mirth. George knew him, did he? He couldn’t fool him? He checked an impulse to laugh aloud and added quietly: “I’m not in such a desperate mood as you imagine, old man; I can’t seem to settle down to the new order of things just yet, that’s the trouble, but I’ve no intention of going to the dogs, financially or any other way. I’ll get a grip on myself soon.”

But as the days passed Storm did not find it so easy to control himself. He had gained complete ascendancy over the faint twinges of conscience which assailed him now with less and less frequency, but with the assurance of absolute safety came a dangerous, almost insane tendency to test that safety. Although he had no desire to revisit the scene of Leila’s death, and shrank from any reference to her, the subject of crime in general began to exert an inordinate fascination for him, and with it his pride in his own achievement increased.

He eagerly awaited the news of Du Chainat’s arrival in France, and his occasional glimpses of President Langhorne filled him with renewed complacency. He would most assuredly tell him about getting in ahead on that little deal one of these days!

The temptation became overwhelming one morning after a brief interview with his august superior during which the latter had called him to account, courteously but firmly, for a trifling dereliction. The sting rankled, and at the door he turned, the impulse to retaliate mastering him.

“Oh, Mr. Langhorne, you’ve heard of a man named Du Chainat, I believe?”

The president looked up in surprise at his subordinate’s presumption.

“Du Chainat? Can’t say I have,” he responded shortly.

Storm smiled and raised his eyebrows in polite incredulity.

“The agent in that little deal Whitmarsh was considering only last week; a loan for the reconstruction of a French factory——”

“I am not in Mr. Whitmarsh’s confidence, Mr. Storm.” President Langhorne darted a keen glance at the other and added: “May I ask why you assume that I know anything of this particular affair?”

“I understood that you were interested in it.” Storm paused expectantly, but the president shook his head.

“Never heard of it,” he asseverated. “You’ve been misinformed, Mr. Storm. The man you mention is absolutely unknown to me.”

He turned pointedly to his desk and Storm withdrew, still smiling covertly. The old fox wouldn’t admit that he had tried to get in on the game, of course, now that someone else had beaten him to it. Wait until he learned who that someone was! The joke was so good that it would keep a little longer, especially since Storm had given him something to puzzle over. He would have been a fool to give it away now; old Langhorne could make it infernally unpleasant for him around the office if he chose.

The three months stretched interminably before him, and George with dog-like fidelity seemed determined to stick close and make it as irksome as he could. God, if only he were free from them all!

Storm had left his own car locked in the garage at Greenlea, but on an impulse he hired another when his work was finished for the afternoon and had himself driven out to a shore resort for dinner. The season had not yet opened, and the place was semi-deserted, yet the isolation fitted in with his mood. George would in all probability put in an appearance at the apartment that evening, and to avoid him Storm lingered deliberately over his meal and ordered the chauffeur to take the longest way home.

He would not admit even to himself that the sudden aversion to the companionship of the man he had for so long regarded with amused, half-condescending tolerance had sprung from the fact that George unconsciously brought to his mind the aspects of his crime which he was most determined to put behind him. George was a constant reminder of the years which must be forgotten; his grief at the loss of the woman who had given him a valued friendship was a constant reproach.

How easy it had been to blind him to the truth! How easy it had been to blind everybody! Why, a man with sufficient intelligence could pull off almost anything in this world and get away with it if he had only enough nerve and self-control!

Storm was still smiling at the thought as he entered his apartment house long after ten o’clock and found George sitting patiently in the hall, his near-sighted eyes glued to a newspaper.

“I waited for you,” the latter explained, happily oblivious to the coolness of the reception. “Knew you wouldn’t be late, and I wanted a little talk with you.”

“Come on in,” Storm invited wearily, opening the door and switching on the lights. “I ran out of town for a breath of clean air.—The cigars are in the humidor; help yourself.”

George settled himself comfortably in a huge leather chair and smoked in silence for a space, while Storm moved restlessly about the room.

“I came,” remarked the visitor at length, “to ask you what you know about Millard’s nephew. He applied to us for a job, and the only thing open is a rather responsible position.”

“Don’t know anything about him,” snapped his host. “He held some sort of minor clerical position in Washington during the war. Weak chest and the only-son-of-his-mother stuff kept him from active service. He’s a likable enough chap, plays good golf——”

George shook his head.

“Hardly material to the point,” he observed. “I want to know whether he’s dependable or not; conscientious and steady, not given up to these quick-rich ideas that get so many young fellows. I tell you we can’t be too careful nowadays——”

Storm laughed shortly.

“My dear George, I wouldn’t give you an opinion on any man’s honesty. Given the incentive and the opportunity, how do we know where anyone gets off?”

“Oh, come, Norman!” George’s tone was scandalized. “That’s a pretty broad assertion. We’re not all potential criminals!”

“No?” Storm paused to light a cigar. “Well, if we’re not you must admit that the opportunities lie around thick enough. The wonder of it is that there isn’t more crookedness going on!”

“The example of what happens to the fellow who has tried it is a deterrent, I imagine,” George observed sententiously. “When he’s caught——”

“And when is he caught except through his own negligence and loss of nerve?” demanded Storm, the train of thought which had occupied his mind an hour before recurring to him. “Certainly it isn’t through the extraordinary ability of society at large to track him down. A man gives himself away; he is safe until he makes a mistake.”

“Then every crook in the world must be a bungler, for they’re all caught, sooner or later,” George retorted. “The cleverest ones over-reach themselves in time.—Take this fellow Jan Martens, or whatever his real name is. To be sure, he hasn’t been caught yet, but his game is up; he tried it once too often.”

“Martens?” Storm repeated absently, his mind fixed upon his own argument.

“Haven’t you looked at the evening papers?” asked George. “He’s been working an old con. game with a new twist and getting the suckers for anything from five to fifty thousand. Worked Boston and Philadelphia before he came here and got away with a tremendous haul. They only got the goods on him to-day, but he had skipped. It was a clever stunt, too; he played upon a combination of sympathy and cupidity in his victims that only failed when he tackled a wise one. His line was getting loans on forged securities for rebuilding demolished property in France and Belgium——”

“What?”

Storm was not conscious that he had spoken, that he had turned and was staring at his visitor with wild eyes. He only knew that George’s solid, compact figure was wavering oddly, and his voice seemed to come from far away.

“He rather upsets your theory, Norman,” George continued complacently, ignorant of the effect of his disclosure. “He wasn’t giving himself away, by a long shot, and his paraphernalia was certainly elaborate and imposing enough in all conscience! In Boston he posed as Jan Martens, a Belgian looking for a loan to rebuild the family chateau and giving forged Congo properties as security. It worked so well that when he came here he tried to improve on it, and over-reached himself, as I contended a few minutes ago.

“A lot of foreigners are over here now trying to negotiate perfectly legitimate loans on the same order, but with bona fide securities to offer, and he fell in with one of them who was vouched for at the French consulate here, a citizen of Lille named Du Chainat.”

Storm drew a long breath.

“But this—Du Chainat is all right, you say?” he stammered. “His proposition was legitimate?”

“Absolutely. He must have taken this Martens into his confidence, shown him his papers and left them where the crook could get at them, for Martens forged a duplicate set,—they found the stacks of counterfeit government deeds and grants, both Belgian and French, in his room to-day together with official letter-heads from the consulates,—and then when Du Chainat returned to France he impersonated him. Du Chainat had put through his loan all right with Whitmarsh.”

“When——” Storm moistened his dry lips. “When did this Du Chainat leave America?”

“Three weeks ago, according to the paper. The impostor was only exposed through a woman, too, a rich widow whom he approached yesterday with his proposition; but he didn’t take into consideration the fact that she had lived abroad. As it happened, she knew the Du Chainat family in Lille, but by the time she made up her mind to risk notoriety and inform the police of the attempted swindle the bird had flown.”

He paused, but Storm had heard only the first three words of his utterance. “Three weeks ago”! And only a week had passed since he handed to the bogus Du Chainat every cent he had in the world! It couldn’t be true! There must be some hideous mistake!

“Here, it’s all in the paper. I was reading about it while I waited for you. Want to see it?”

George picked up the newspaper from the table where he had dropped it on entering, and Storm seized it, hoping blindly, doggedly against all hope. His luck could not have deserted him! Fate would not play him such a ghastly trick now!

But the headlines stared at him in uncompromising type, and the article itself left no room for doubt. He had been despoiled of his only means of freedom! Penniless, he was chained forever to the environs of the past, to the friends who had been Leila’s, the life of which she had been a part. The curse was upon him, and he might not even flee from the memories which dogged him! He was bound hand and foot, held fast!

Chapter XII.
Mirage

Storm realized later when the dawn brought coherency of thought that it was blind instinct alone, not conscious will, which had enabled him to shield the death blow that had been given him from George Holworthy’s peering eyes. The crumbling of his air castles had left him stunned, and he remembered nothing of the rest of the interview save that George had moralized interminably and in leaving at last had harked back to the Millard boy. Surely he would not have droned on of trivialities had he gleaned an inkling of the tumult in his host’s brain!

Until the morning light stole in at the windows Storm paced the floor in a frenzy of consternation. He had one slender hope: that the false Du Chainat would be apprehended. If he appeared against the scoundrel or entered a complaint the resultant revelation of how easily he had been fleeced would be a bitter pill to swallow. Old Langhorne would recall that conversation of the previous day, and it would be his turn to smile, while Foulkes and George would descend upon him with galling criticism and reproach.

He could endure it all, however, if only it would mean the recovery of his money or even a portion of it! As his hope of getting away vanished, the absolute need of such escape grew in his thoughts until it assumed the proportions of an obsession. He felt as if something he could not name were tightening about him slowly but inexorably and he struggled wildly to free himself from the invisible fetters.

If he had to stay on at the trust company, suffer George’s continual presence, run the daily gauntlet of mingled sympathy and curiosity of his friends, he should go mad! Other men lived down tragedies, went on in the same old rut until the end of time, but he could not.

And then all at once the truth burst upon him! If Leila had died a natural death as the world supposed; if she had been taken from him in the high tide of their love and happiness, he might have gone on with existence again in time with no thought of cutting himself adrift from the past. It was the secret knowledge of his guilt which was driving him forth, which rendered unendurable all the familiar things of his every-day life!

Yet he must endure them! Unless the bogus Du Chainat were caught there was no way out for him.

Unconscious of irony, his breast swelled with virtuous indignation at thought of the swindler and dire were the anathemas he heaped upon the departed one. He searched the papers feverishly, made what inquiries he dared without drawing undue attention to himself and haunted the Belterre grill for news, but all to no avail; and as day succeeded day he developed a savage moroseness which rebuffed even George’s overtures. He would take no one into his confidence; there would be time enough for admitting that he had played the fool when the miscreant was caught. If he were not, Storm determined to accept the inevitable in silence; but day by day the obsession of flight increased. Somehow, at any price, he must get away!

The papers still played up the pseudo Du Chainat as further exploits of that wily adventurer were brought to light, and the press gleefully baited the police for their inability to discover whither he had flown. The flickering hope that he would be apprehended died slowly in Storm’s breast, and the blankness of despair settled upon him.

One morning Nicholas Langhorne sent for him, and before the president spoke Storm sensed a subtle difference in his manner. The pompous official attitude seemed to have been laid aside, for once a warmly personal note crept into his voice.

“Sit down, Storm; I want to have a little talk with you.” The other seated himself and waited, but Langhorne seemed in no hurry to begin. He took off his glasses, wiped them, replaced them and then sat meditatively fingering a pen. At last he threw it aside and turned abruptly to face his subordinate.

“Storm, I knew your father well. We both started here away down on the lowest rung of the ladder, and although he soon branched out into a wider, less conservative field we never allowed our friendship to flag. It was on his account that we took you, and because of his memory you were given preference over more experienced men.”

He paused and Storm stiffened, but he replied warily:

“I am aware of that, Mr. Langhorne. I hope that I have executed my duties——”

Langhorne waved him to silence.

“I have no complaint to make. I sent for you because my personal interest in you as the son of my old friend has caused me a certain amount of disquietude. When you came to me a fortnight ago and requested that I arrange an immediate mortgage on your suburban property I waived the usual procedure and complied at once. It was not my province to question your need or use of the money, although I knew of your previous unfortunate ventures, and I hoped that you had not again been ill-advised.

“A week later—ten days ago, to be exact—you came to me and mentioned a person named Du Chainat, whom you said had been in negotiation with Mr. Whitmarsh. This Du Chainat, or rather the man impersonating him, has been exposed as a swindler on a rather large scale. I trust that you yourself did not fall a victim to him?”

Storm’s eyes flashed, but he held himself rigidly in control. Bleat to this fathead and give him an opportunity to gloat? He would see him damned first!

“Hardly, Mr. Langhorne.” He allowed the ghost of a smile to lift the corners of his mouth. “The investment I had in mind was quite another sort.”

Langhorne frowned doubtfully.

“You appeared to take it for granted that I knew this Du Chainat. May I ask what your motive was in mentioning him to me?”

Storm hesitated and then replied with seeming candor:

“Well, if you want the truth, Mr. Langhorne, I—er, I believed that you yourself were one of his intended victims.”

“I, sir?” The president stared.

“Yes. I met this man in the Rochefoucauld grill one night, and he worked his usual game; told me of the loan he was attempting to negotiate and said Whitmarsh had turned it down because it wasn’t a big enough proposition for him. Du Chainat, as he called himself, showed me your letter, and as I had reason to distrust him I ventured to mention the matter to you, thinking that I might be of service in warning you of the whispers I had heard against him.”

“My letter?” Langhorne gripped the arms of his chair. “I never wrote a letter to the man in my life!”

“When you denied having heard of him,” Storm continued, unmoved by the other’s expostulation, “I naturally concluded that you resented my intrusion into your private affairs, and said nothing more. The man was exposed in the evening papers that very night, as I remember.”

“You saw a letter purporting to have been written by me?” the president demanded.

“I would have been willing to swear to your signature, Mr. Langhorne,” replied Storm.

“Forgery!” The clenched hand came down upon his desk. “That signature was forged! I’ll look into this when the fellow is caught. His effrontery is astounding! What was the gist of this letter, Storm?”

“An intimation that you would advance the loan,” he responded dully. There was no mistaking now the sincerity of the other’s indignation. “The letter was a forgery, of course, as you say, but it was a remarkably clever one. The signature was almost identical in every detail with yours.”

“I wish you had told me of this before!” The president fumed. “This may cause a vast amount of trouble. However, I am glad to be assured that you were not victimized by this person. By the way, this is not my custom—in fact it is emphatically against my rule, especially where officers of the company are concerned—but I shall be glad to make an exception in your case, Storm. I may be able to give you a little advance information, strictly confidential, you understand, on a certain investment later, if you are looking for one.”

“Thank you, Mr. Langhorne. I’m not thinking of making any just now.” He smiled again, reading the other’s motive, and added pointedly: “I have mentioned the Du Chainat letter to no one else, of course, nor shall I do so.”

The president flushed but dismissed him with forced cordiality, and Storm returned to his own sanctum in a bitter mood. Even the small satisfaction of believing that Langhorne, too, had fallen for the alluring proposition was denied him!

At noon, as he left the trust company building to go to the luncheon club of which he was a member, he collided with Millard.

“Hello, there! Just coming in to see you.” The little man’s usually apoplectic face was pale, and his small, beady eyes shifted nervously beneath Storm’s gaze. “Where are you off to?”

“Lunch,” replied the other briefly. Confound the little golf hound! It was he who got him into the Du Chainat affair!

“Then have it with me, do!” Millard urged. “I want to talk to you. Let’s run in to Peppini’s where we can be quiet.”

Storm was on the point of refusal, but something in the other’s manner made him change his mind.

“If you like.” He turned, and Millard fell into step beside him. “How’s the golf coming along?”

“Hang golf!” Millard exploded. “I’ve had other things on my mind, Storm, old chap! I’ve been in the very devil of a hole, and Mrs. M.—well, you know what she is when she has got anything on me! I haven’t had a minute’s peace.”

“What’s the trouble?” Storm asked perfunctorily as they entered the little restaurant and made for a corner table. Millard did not reply until the waiter had taken their order and departed. Then he leaned confidentially across the table.

“It’s all about the scoundrel, Du Chainat,” he began. “You remember him; chap I introduced to you in the Rochefoucauld. By Jove, I owe you an apology for that!”

“Not at all.” A hidden thought made Storm’s lips curl in grim humor. “We are all of us apt to be mistaken in the people we think we know.”

“That’s what I say!” corroborated Millard eagerly. “How’re you going to tell a crook nowadays? The fellow took me in absolutely! And now, to hear Mrs. M. talk you would think I had been in league with him!”

“You tried to get her to go into one of his schemes, didn’t you?” Storm asked. The other nodded gloomily.

“I did, and I shall never be permitted to hear the last of it!” he observed. “That isn’t what is worrying me, though. You see, I introduced him around pretty generally, and if any of my friends fell for his graft I should feel personally responsible. There you are, for instance; that’s what I wanted to see you about, Storm; I hope to the Lord that you didn’t——”

“Not by a damn sight!” Storm retorted savagely. Was he to go through a repetition of the scene with Langhorne? “What do you take me for? I’m not looking to line the pockets of every adventurer that comes along.”

Millard winced.

“All right, old chap, only I was anxious. You seemed interested that night.”

“I was, in the man himself; he was a new type to me, but I don’t mind telling you now that I didn’t trust him.” Storm smiled patronizingly. “I don’t wonder his little proposition looked good to you. It did to me; too good. Money isn’t so scarce for a legitimate deal that a man has to offer one hundred per cent profit in three months. You would have realized that yourself if you had stopped to think. The trouble with you was that the man’s personality blinded you, Millard. I’ll admit that he was a plausible rascal, but if anyone had been fool enough to fall for his game they deserved what was coming to them.”

“I suppose so,” Millard mumbled shamefacedly. “Anyhow, they’ve got him now.”

“What!” Storm sat back in his chair.

“Fact. I’ve just come from Police Headquarters.” Millard nodded, visibly cheered by the impression his announcement had made. “It has been established beyond a doubt that he is on board the Alsace en route for France. He’ll be arrested the moment they reach Havre.”

Storm’s brain whirled, yet he strove mightily to command himself. Millard must not know, must not guess! Could it be after all that luck had not deserted him? Hope had died so utterly that he found it difficult to believe this sudden turn of fortune.

“How can they be sure?” he stammered. “There may be some mistake.”

“Not a chance!” Millard, his equanimity restored, chattered on. “His movements have been traced from the moment he left the hotel until he walked up the gangplank, and they’ve got him dead to rights. Nervy of him to go back to France when he knew the Government was out after him, wasn’t it? I suppose he banked on that; that they would never dream he would dare to return. He’s under a different name, of course, and all that, but the detectives have been in wireless communication with the captain of the Alsace and there isn’t a loophole of escape for him. He is cornered like a rat in a trap and a good job, too!”

The garrulity of his companion had given Storm time to collect himself. He must learn all that he could and yet not seem too eager. He shrugged.

“His cleverness didn’t get him far, did it?” he remarked with elaborate carelessness. “Let’s see; the Alsace sailed three days ago, if I am not mistaken.”

“Four,” the other corrected him. “She won’t reach port for another three days, however; traveling slow, for there has been a report of some floating mines having been sighted in her path. It is just a wild rumor, of course; the sweepers gathered them in pretty thoroughly after the war. Don’t know what they’ll do about extraditing him, for both countries want him badly. The main thing his victims want, I imagine, is to get their money back.”

In this Storm concurred heartily but in silence. After a pause he observed, still in that detached, bored tone:

“I fancy that won’t be difficult, if he has it with him.”

“He has,” Millard affirmed. “He must have cleared more than half a million, they tell me at Headquarters, and they’ve proved that he didn’t dispose of any of it here. Think of it! Half a million in cash! I wonder how he planned to explain it to the custom’s officials on the other side?”

“He could stow it about him, I suppose,” Storm responded absently. “If he had laid his plans carefully and believed himself immune from suspicion he would have no reason to anticipate a personal search. What on earth were you doing at Headquarters?”

Millard squirmed uneasily.

“We-ell, when all this racket came out about Du Chainat I felt that it was my duty to go down and tell all I knew about the fellow. In the course of justice, you know, old chap——”

“Precisely,” Storm grinned. “You had rather identified yourself with him, hadn’t you? I don’t blame you for clearing your own skirts. It would be deucedly awkward for you if some of these people you presented him to——”

“Don’t!” protested Millard. “How was I to know? He came to me with a forged letter purporting to be from Harry Wheeler, of Boston. I haven’t seen Harry in years; wouldn’t know his handwriting from Adam, but it looked all right. When I explained, they understood the situation immediately at Headquarters, I assure you.”

“Don’t ‘assure’ me, Millard; I know you!” Storm laughed; then his face sobered. “How is everyone out at the Country Club?”

“Fine!” Millard waxed enthusiastic at the welcome change of topic. “We’ve taken on some more members; a new family or two from out Summit View way, and a most attractive widow. We talk of you a lot, Storm. You can’t think what a gap your poor wife’s death and your leaving us has made in the community! She was a wonderful little woman! You’ve no idea how she is missed.”

“I think I have,” Storm responded quietly.

“Oh, forgive me, old chap!” Millard flushed with honest contrition. “You more than anyone else in the world must feel—but I’m glad to see that you are not taking it too hard.”

Storm shot a quick glance at him. Was there a suggestion of criticism in the other’s tone?

“One cannot always see,” he said stiffly. “Sometimes a thing cuts too deep to show on the surface. But I can’t talk about it even yet, Millard. I can’t find words.”

He couldn’t. One thought alone was racing through his brain. His sixty thousand was safe, after all! It would be given into his hands again, and he would be free! Free from these hypocritical mouthings about a dead past, these constant reminders of the old life!

What a fool he had been to disclaim so emphatically to both Langhorne and Millard the fact that he had been victimized! How they would laugh at him when the truth came out! Well, let them! Unconsciously he squared his shoulders. He would have the last laugh, sixty thousand of them! God, what a reprieve!

The afternoon passed in a glamor of renewed hope and revived plans. No more trifling with investments for him! When once the money was safely in his possession again he would throw up his position without a day’s delay and catch the first steamer that sailed, no matter for what port she cleared. Anywhere! Any war-riddled, God-forsaken corner of the globe would be heaven after this caged existence, surrounded by potential spies—and judges!

He was dimly aware that those with whom he came in contact that afternoon gazed at him curiously, but for once he was heedless of their possible criticism. The exalted mood lasted throughout his solitary dinner, and on returning to his apartments he ignored a painfully spelled message which Homachi had left requesting him to call up ‘Mr. Holworti’ and paced the floor in utter abandonment to the joy which consumed him.

His days of slavery and imprisonment were over! Just at the moment when life had looked blackest to him and all hope was gone, the shackles were struck from him and the way lay open to a new existence. Never again would he decry his luck! His capital, which had shrunk to insignificance before the wild idea of doubling it, now loomed large before him. It meant freedom, life!

He would go to the Far East. Many changes were bound to come there, many opportunities would arise in the general upheaval of worldwide readjustment to the new order of things, and the colorful atmosphere there had always held a fascination for him. Europe would do later, but at first he would lose himself in the glamor of a new world.

He halted, drawn from his reverie by the sound of confused, raucous shouting in the street, and realized vaguely that it had been going on for some time. His apartment was on the ground floor, and he opened a window of the living-room and leaned out. The Drive seemed deserted, but on the block below he descried two retreating figures with flat white bundles beneath their arms.

Their shrill call came again to his ears.

“Wuxtry! Turr’ble disaster! . . . All on board!”

A train wreck, perhaps. Storm was withdrawing his head when from the second newsboy came the cry which struck terror to his heart.

“French steamer wrecked at sea! Awful loss of life!”

The Alsace! For a moment Storm stood as though petrified; then, turning, he dashed hatless from the apartment and out into the street. The newsboy raced toward him and he tore a paper from the grasp of the foremost, thrust some silver into his hand and made for the apartment once more. He dared not halt beneath a street lamp to read the staring headlines; he must be secure from observation behind closed doors when he learned the truth.

It might be some other ship. It must be! Fate would not hold out this promise of a reprieve to him only to snatch it away just as his fingers closed upon it!

Again in his apartment, he approached the lamp and spread the paper out with shaking fingers. There in bold black letters which seemed to dance mockingly before him he read:—

“S. S. Alsace Lost at Sea. No survivors.”

He tried to read on, but the letters ran together before his eyes, and he dashed the paper to the floor. The walls of his prison closed in upon him again, stiflingly, relentlessly! The cup had once more been dashed from his lips, and a groan of utter despair surged up from his heart while the bitterness of death settled upon him.

Chapter XIII.
The Black Bag

Morning found Storm with a desperate, hunted look in his eyes still pacing the floor, his heart sick within him. Why had that blundering ass, Millard, told him yesterday? Why had he been plunged in the madness of a fool’s paradise for a few short hours, only to be drawn back into an existence that had become all the more unbearable by contrast?

He had contrived a sufficient measure of calmness in the late hours to read the amplification of the damning headlines. The Alsace was supposed to have struck one of the floating mines of which she had been warned, and to have gone down with all on board. No calls for help had been received by wireless, no survivors picked up. Another liner, westward bound, had run into a mass of wreckage on the course of the unfortunate ship; wreckage which denoted a fearful explosion and fragments of which bore the name “Alsace”. That was all; but it was conclusive, damning to Storm’s last hope.

The morning’s news had little to add save a verification of the ocean tragedy in a message radioed from a second ship which had encountered the flotsam of the wreck. It was evident beyond peradventure of a doubt that the ill-fated Alsace had been blown to atoms, and all on board must have perished instantly with her.

The article was followed by a copy of the passenger list together with brief obituaries of the more prominent of the wreck’s victims, and beneath it was a terse paragraph which verified Millard’s disclosures of the previous day. The notorious swindler, Jan Martens, alias Maurice du Chainat, was known to have been on board, and arrangements had been made to take him in custody upon the arrival of the ship at her destination; in fact he had been placed nominally under arrest by the captain of the Alsace, as the last wireless message known to have been sent out from the unfortunate ship announced. It was feared that the bulk of the money netted by his gigantic swindle had gone down with him.

Storm left his breakfast untasted, deaf to the polite concern of Homachi, and took his miserable way to the trust company. God, how he loathed it all! The very sight of his desk, familiar through long years of usage, awoke anew the spirit of senseless, futile revolt; doubly futile now since the mirage of a different future had risen again only to be blotted out.

In the bitterness of soul which surpassed anything he had known in his blackest hours, Storm forced himself to go through with the dreary round; but the close of day found him desperate, at bay. He could not go on! What was the use, anyway? What did the future hold for him now? Only memories which rose up in the silent hours to take him by the throat, from which there could be no escape while life lasted!

With the waning afternoon the sky had become overcast, and twilight brought a gentle summer rain through which Storm plodded doggedly. Food was distasteful, the thought of a restaurant was abhorrent to him in his morose mood, and yet he shrank from hours of solitude in his apartment. He was afraid of himself, afraid to think, and he longed desperately for the companionship of a fellow being; not George nor anyone connected with his life of the past ten years, but someone unconcerned in his affairs, someone with whom he could talk and forget.

He had seized upon the trivial excuse of a call at his cigarette importer’s as an expedient to while away a half hour. The tobacconist’s shop was just across the street from the Grand Central Station, and as Storm passed among the arrivals who swarmed out of the edifice one face in the crowd caught his eye. Little of it was visible, the collar of his light summer ulster turned up to meet it, and he tramped along beneath his umbrella without glancing to right or left.

Storm caught him impulsively by the arm.

“Jack!” he cried. “Where on earth did you drop from?”

The stranger shook him off unceremoniously.

“Your mistake, I’m afraid———” he mumbled.

“I beg your pardon.” Storm stepped aside. “Sorry to have accosted you, sir. I thought that you were—yes, by Jove! You are Jack Horton! Don’t you know me, old man?”

The stranger hesitated and then with a hearty ring in his voice which he checked instantly as he glanced cautiously about him.

“You’ve got me!” he exclaimed with subdued joviality. “I’m Jack, all right, and of course I know you, Norman, you old scout! I meant to pass you up, though; fact is, I’ve got no business to stop in town now. For the love of Pete, if you’ve got nothing to do, take me somewhere where we can get a bite and have a good old chin without a lot of folks giving us the once-over!”

Storm was mystified. This pal of his freshman year at college whom Providence had thrust in his path this night of all nights when he needed human companionship seemed to be in some strange predicament, but he did not stop to question. He was only too glad of the promised relief from solitude.

“Come along! I’ve got just the place. Lord, but it’s good to see you! We’ll go straight up to my own rooms. My man will have gone, but I can rustle up some grub and anything else you feel like having.”

He gestured toward the line of waiting taxicabs, but Horton drew back.

“Where are you living?” he asked, with a trace of nervousness.

“Riverside Drive,” Storm replied impatiently. “Come on, old man, your umbrella’s leaking.”

“Is there a subway station near you?”

“Yes, of course, only a block or two away. But what in the——”

“Never mind now. Let’s go up that way,” his friend proposed. “I’m not stuck on these taxis under the present circumstances. A lot of the fellows that drive them are crooks, and you never can tell——. Me for the subway, and don’t talk too much on the way up, Norman. This is serious business.”

“All right,” Storm acquiesced shortly. “But let me carry that bag, won’t you? You’ve got enough with that umbrella and brief case.”

“Not on your life!” responded Horton with emphasis. “I’ll carry it myself. You lead the way, Norman.”

Storm obeyed. He had known little of Horton in the past and nothing of how or where the years since their college days had been passed. Without having much in common, they had traveled in the same crowd during the first term at the university, and many had been the scrapes, engendered by Horton’s reckless love of fun and Storm’s rebellion against discipline, which they had shared.

Horton had been compelled to leave college at the end of the freshman year by his father’s failure and gradually had dropped from sight of his old classmates. In the first few years he had been heard of now and then in widely different parts of the country, employed in positions of minor responsibility, but of late no news had come and Storm had forgotten him completely until this passing glimpse of his face recalled old associations.

In the subway he studied his companion furtively. Horton’s figure had grown heavier with the years, his face more full but healthily tanned, while the prominent jaw and clear, steady eyes betokened added strength of character. Storm speculated on his possible circumstances; his clothes were of good quality but obviously ready-made, and the bluff heartiness of his manner suggested an association with men of a rougher caliber than Storm himself counted among his friends. Here was a man who had mastered circumstances, not permitted himself to be enslaved by them! Storm wondered what the other would do in his place. At least he would not allow penury to hold him chained to an existence which had become unendurable! Then he dismissed the idea with a shrug. Horton could never stand in his place; he would not have the cleverness to cloak murder in the guise of accident, or the quick wit and self-control to see it through. No one could have done it save Storm himself!

When they reached his station he touched Horton lightly on the arm to appraise him of the fact and was amazed at the latter’s quick, defensive start. What did the man fear? His secretiveness, his evident intention at first to deny his identity: what could they portend? Could it be that Horton was a fugitive from justice? Storm smiled at the thought. Why, he himself, if the world only knew——!

But Horton’s ebullient spirits bubbled over when they emerged on the street level, and a hasty glance about assured him that no other pedestrians were near.

“Lord, but it’s good to be in New York again, Norman!” he exclaimed. “The old burg is the greatest little spot on God’s green earth, let me tell you! The sight and sound and smell of it get into a fellow’s blood. Talk about the East a-calling! It’s deaf and dumb compared to the urge of little old Manhattan!”

“Feel that way about it?” Storm’s lips curled as he remembered his own glowing, futile dreams of the Far East.

“You bet I do!” Horton shifted his umbrella to grasp more firmly the small black bag which he was carrying. “Do you know, Norman, there have been nights down in Mexico and up in Alaska and out on the plains when I would have given five years of my life for an hour here! Mind you, it isn’t so much the bright lights—I can’t afford, for more reasons than one, to cut loose as I used to—but it’s what these literary cusses call ‘atmosphere’, I guess; there’s something in life here, any phase of it, that gets under a guy’s skin and makes him itch to get back!”

“Mexico? Alaska?” repeated Storm with unconscious envy. “You’ve been about a bit, Jack, haven’t you?”

“Surest thing you know!” The other laughed, adding, as Storm halted: “This where you hang out? Oh, boy! Some class to you!”

“I took these rooms off the hands of a friend only lately,” Storm replied, wincing in spite of himself at Horton’s uncouth appreciation. “I have lived out of town for years.”

He opened the apartment door and switched on the lights, and his companion gave a low whistle.

“Some class!” he repeated admiringly. “You must have made good, Norman.”

There was an element of surprise in his tone that nettled his host.

“I’m an official of the Mammoth Trust Company, you know,” he said loftily. “Let me take your coat, Jack, and just put your bag down anywhere.”

Horton allowed himself to be divested of his coat and hat, but when he followed Storm into the living-room he was still carrying the black bag, which he deposited on a corner of the couch, seating himself beside it.

“Mammoth Trust, eh?” he repeated. “Your old man was a big bug there at one time, wasn’t he? I remember you used to talk about it in the old days; said he was going to get you an easy berth there when you graduated. By Gad, you did fall in soft!”

Storm flushed at the imputation, although he found no words with which to deny it. What a rough boor Jack had become! He almost regretted that he had brought him home. Still, even he was better than no one.

“Cocktail?” he asked suggestively.

Horton shook his head.

“I’m off the fancy stuff,” he replied. “The fact is, I’m not supposed to be touching anything at all, but I may as well take the lid off since we’re going to make a night of it. Got any Scotch?”

Storm produced the bottle, siphon and two tall glasses, and went into the kitchen to crack some ice. His guest followed him to the door after a quick backward glance at his bag.

“Great little place you’ve got here.” He glanced about him and back at his host. Then for the first time he noted the latter’s mourning garb, and his eyes widened. “Look here, Norman, you—you’ve lost someone. Not your wife——?” Storm nodded.

“You don’t say! I’m confoundedly sorry, old scout!” Horton exclaimed with real feeling. “I knew you were married, of course; saw your wife’s picture in the society papers more than once a few years ago. When you brought me here and I lamped it was a typical bachelor’s diggings, I didn’t like to ask questions; divorces here are thicker than fleas below the border, and you never can tell. When did it happen, Norman?”

“A little over a month ago.” Storm turned to the ice chest as if to cut off further questions or attempt at sympathy, but Horton was as impervious to snubs as a good-natured puppy.

“Isn’t it hell?” he soliloquized. “When a fellow’s happy, something rotten always happens. Beautiful woman, wasn’t she? Any kids?”

“No,” replied his host shortly. “Come on, let’s have our drink and then we’ll see what we can dig up for dinner. Homachi usually stuffs the pantry shelves pretty well.”

The glasses were filled and Horton raised his, somewhat uncomfortably oppressed with the lack of fitting words. Storm forestalled him hastily.

“I don’t talk much about my trouble, Jack. Let’s try to forget it for to-night. This is a reunion, and I’m damn glad to have you here! Happy days!”

Horton nodded and drank deeply, drawing a long breath of satisfaction.

“That’s the stuff!” he approved. “Some kick to it, all right! Do you ever see anything of the old crowd?”

“I run into one or another of them at the club now and then.” Storm put down his glass. “I’ll go and investigate the pantry; you must be starved.”

“I could do with a little nourishment,” Horton acquiesced. “Let me help you rustle the grub. You don’t look as if you were much of a hand at it.”

“Are you?”

Horton laughed boisterously.

“Just watch me!” he cried. “I’ve been roughing it for years, in one way and another; mining camps, oil leases, cattle ranches and even a tramp steamer.”

“Really? You haven’t told me a thing about yourself yet, Jack. The last I heard of you, you were working in a bank out in Chicago.”

“Yeah!” Horton snorted disgustedly. “Nice kid-glove-and-silk-hat job; thirty bucks a week and a bum lung.—Say, where can I put this bag of mine?”

“Why, leave it here.” Storm stared. “Nobody is going to walk off with it.”

“Not if I know it, they’re not!” returned his guest with emphasis. “I’ve got some mighty important stuff in here. Got any place where I can lock it up? I’d feel easier in my mind——”

“Why, of course!” Storm threw open a closet door. “Here, keep the key yourself if it will give you any satisfaction. Now come on; I’m hungry, myself.”

They found the pantry well stocked and made a hearty meal. Storm, usually an abstemious drinker, poured out a second Scotch and under its influence grew expansive. He regaled his guest with tales of high finance, adroitly registering his own importance in the trust company and his intimacy with men of large affairs. It was only later when they returned again to the living-room that he became conscious of a seeming reticence on the part of his friend.

“But tell me about yourself,” he demanded. “Will you smoke? Try one of these.”

He offered the humidor, and Horton selected a cigar and eyed it almost reverently.

“A fifty-center!” he exclaimed. “Gee, you’re hitting the high spots, all right, and I don’t wonder after what you’ve been telling me! As to myself—well, I’m no great shakes, but I’m not kicking. I’ve had a pretty good time of it, by and large.”