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Title: Some honeymoon!
Author: Charles Everett Hall
Illustrator: Robert Gaston Herbert
Release date: March 30, 2025 [eBook #75754]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: George Sully & Company, 1918
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME HONEYMOON! ***
[Frontispiece: The first quarter of the Honeymoon!]
SOME
HONEYMOON!
BY
CHARLES EVERETT HALL
ILLUSTRATED BY
ROBERT GASTON HERBERT
New York
GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY
Copyright, 1918, by
GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY
_All Rights Reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I The Man of Business
II "Needles and Pins"
III "When a Man Marries--"
IV "His Trouble Begins!"
V The Arrow of Suspicion
VI Business Methods
VII Shock Upon Shock
VIII The Bridal Night
IX With the World Shut Out
X The Beginning of a Nightmare
XI The Nightmare Continues
XII Some Experiences of a Bridegroom
XIII The Eagle Eye of the House Detective
XIV Some Sleuth
XV The Cat Shows Her Claws
XVI The Duty Again Devolves
XVII The Private Buccanneer
XVIII It Is No Longer Farce
XIX An Outlaw in Fact
XX The Name On the Billboard
XXI In the Part of the Injured Husband
XXII "Who Is My Wife?"
XXIII In the Maze
XXIV Nemesis
XXV John Ryder Forgives Fate
ILLUSTRATIONS
The first quarter of the Honeymoon! _Frontispiece_
"No manager can dispossess me. I refuse to get out."
Flung herself with abandon into John Ryder's arms. (_See page 129._)
"I am another woman. I am not the person you married." (_See page
243._)
SOME HONEYMOON!
CHAPTER I
THE MAN OF BUSINESS
When John Ryder put his foot upon the plank of the _Minnequago_ on
his return journey from Europe he was a bachelor of thirty-five
summers--and had never counted his winters at all. He believed, with
many another upholder of single blessedness, that a man did not begin
to count his wintry years until he was married.
Just the same, as he walked up the incline of the runway he was
walking to his fate. Indeed, he came face to face with it as he trod
upon the deck of the ship and, almost bumping into it, politely
lifted his hat and said:
"Pardon me!"
The lady bowed silently and turned upon him a careless shoulder.
John Ryder allowed himself a second glance--and then let the steward
take his hand luggage below while he did something he had not done
since his early crossings. He hung about on deck to see the hawsers
cast off--a mark of curiosity that usually stamps the traveler as
quite new to the game.
Even then he did not know why he did this.
Business. Business with a big B. Business first, last, and all the
time. That was John Ryder, and so plain was it to most people who
met him that a tag on his back stating that he was a hustling
American business man would have been quite unnecessary.
Ryder had been in the chase after the nimble dollar since he was
breeched. He was a self-made man, and although he was proud of that
fact he did not go around blowing about the quality of the product.
People could take him for what he was--or what they thought he was.
He was not personally assertive, although he fully knew his own
opinion upon any subject to which he had given thought. He did not
consider it necessary to tell every person who interviewed him, or
show them by his manner, that he was really too busy with weighty
affairs to give their own little matter its proper attention. He
seldom cared what people thought of him as long as he impressed them
with his honesty of purpose, and that he was in earnest.
That is, he had seldom cared until now. But he confessed to himself,
in the secrecy of his inner thoughts and the privacy of his
stateroom, that he was desirous of having at least one person aboard
the _Minnequago_ think of him as being every whit as good as he
really was, if not a little better.
When a man's hard hit, that is about his first thought. He wants the
woman to think of him as the finest and best who has ever crossed her
path. And before bumping into Miss Mont as he boarded the ship, he
had actually never looked twice at a woman.
She was a good sailor, and he had crossed back and forth so many
times that he was only seasick when the Old Salt in the story was
ill--on the occasion "that the ship went down and all hands were
lost."
Ryder accepted his fate manfully on that very first time that they
paced the deck together. It was not easy for Ryder to admit that he
had met and fallen in love with a woman at first sight. It was
opposed to all his well-established theories. At his age he
considered himself case-proof.
Yet never had a woman impressed him as did Miss Mont. When they
became so quickly such very good friends and she showed plainly that
she enjoyed his society, and even took him into her confidence with
little urging on his part, Ryder began to see that he would be
tempting Providence if he went ashore at New York without letting her
know just how he felt toward her.
He had nobody to consider in this matter but himself; he had no
family. Miss Mont, she said, was in a similar situation.
She had been adopted by people in Manchester when she was a small
child and had lived with them as their daughter until these foster
parents died.
Other children had come into the family after her adoption, and they
did not look kindly upon the alien. So Miss Mont had come away.
"I do not know much about my own people," she told Ryder. "Only that
my mother and father are both dead. There were several of us
children. We were parceled out like a brood of puppies. I know
nothing now about my brothers and sisters."
So she had nobody to consider; there was no living soul to say her
nay, no matter what course she took in life. To John Ryder's
disappointment he found that she was on the verge of choosing a
profession for which he had a strongly rooted, if narrow, dislike.
Miss Mont had met some theatrical people in London. There was,
indeed, a certain agent, or manager, aboard the _Minnequago_ to whom
she had been introduced.
This man had told her that he could put her on the stage. She had
the presence for it, and if her ability proved anywhere equal--well,
his talk had inspired her with the fever for a stage career. She had
done a little in a semi-professional way in London as an entertainer,
and this man, Sam Marks, had chanced to see her work.
"And you know I need to work," she told John Ryder. "My bit of money
won't last forever. I should dislike teaching, and I couldn't work
in a shop, I know. I have a retentive memory, and I believe I should
'make good' as you Americans say, as an imitator. I really have some
talent."
"You do not know what you contemplate," cried Ryder, and he was a
little angry. "The theater is no place for a domestic, home-loving
woman like you."
"But it will bring me more money than other work."
"It brings you a lot besides the money. It spoils a woman. It
spoils a man, too, for that matter. And it is the hardest work a
woman can tackle."
"Some actresses draw large salaries."
"And what do they pay for the pedestals they gain? You don't know
the mire they have to drag their skirts through. And some of it
always sticks."
"I think you are prejudiced," she said softly.
"Oh, I know there are exceptions. But there are no exceptions when
it comes to the hard work. When an actress achieves a lasting place
in her profession, it means that she has worked harder for years than
any governess, or seamstress--yes, or washwoman!"
"I know it is kind of you to advise me," she said.
"No, it isn't. It's selfish on my part. I'll tell you why. I love
you!" blurted out this man of business, who was noted for his silky
and diplomatic tongue when it came to a business proposition. This
situation was, however, almost too much for John Ryder.
She gazed at him in utter astonishment.
"Mr. Ryder!" she gasped.
"Don't be surprised," said he, mopping his brow and glad the words
were out at last. "I'm no kid. I've been bucking the world for a
good many years, if my head isn't bald! I'm not likely to say a
thing I don't mean, or to try to fool a woman like you. I love you,
and I'll marry you the first minute we can after getting ashore, if
you'll agree.
"And I'm not doing it through any foolish desire to keep you out of a
business that you'll be sorry you ever got into. I want you for a
strictly selfish reason. I want you because I love you--have loved
you ever since I first laid eyes on you on this boat."
"But--but we know so little of each other!" she faltered.
"What more have you got to tell me? It won't take you long," said
Ryder with a chuckle. He knew his drawing powers as an interviewer,
and could figure on Miss Mont's having told him about everything of
importance in her life.
"As for me, I'm plain John Ryder. I'm just what I appear to be,
nothing more and nothing less." The sly villain, however, was hoping
she would think him a deal better than he was. "I've got some money.
I can make more. I'll keep you in comfort, and when I die leave you
enough to live on.
"That may not sound very sentimental, but don't let it cloud your
eyes to the fact that I love you just as hard as any Romeo of the
lot. I'm not much on playing the lute under a lady's window; but
I'll be great on hustling out and, as we Americans say, 'bringing
home the bacon.'"
"Oh, dear, Mr. Ryder! You make me laugh in spite of myself." But
she was actually wiping tears from her eyes.
"That's right. I'd rather you'd take it laughing than crying. And
as far as in me lies," he added, solemnly, "I'll never bring tears to
your eyes, but always laughter to your heart," which was a
wonderfully pretty observation for John Ryder to make.
Nor was he at first disturbed in the least when Miss Mont told him
she dared not answer on such short notice. She must think it over.
"I like you," she admitted. "I am fond of you, I might say. But to
be bound to a man _for life_ upon so short an acquaintance seems
an--an awful thing."
"Well, it is rather sudden, I suppose," admitted the American.
"Though I have often noticed that the most successful deals I have
ever put through are settled in short order--on the spur of the
moment, as you might say. Ahem! This, of course, is different," he
added, seeing her smile. "But take your time. Take until we land.
That's day after tomorrow. One can do a lot of thinking in that
time."
And, from that moment, he religiously refrained from recurring to the
theme in conversation with her, which showed plainly that John Ryder
was a novice at the game of winning a woman's love.
But before the _Minnequago_ steamed safely through the Narrows into
New York Bay, Ryder saw Marks, the theatrical agent, walking with
Miss Mont on the upper deck. They were in close talk for more than
an hour.
He had never particularly noticed Marks before. Now he found him a
most objectionable looking person--squatty, with bulbous arms and
legs, and his eyes half hidden behind heavily creased lids. Ryder
was stabbed by jealousy, and did not know what the strange emotion
meant. He went to his stateroom and wrote a note to Miss Mont.
It was a kind note, a just note. It pointed out the fact that he was
still waiting for his answer, that he could prove to her an hour
after they landed just who and what he was, and that he could do all
for her that he had said. He added that he desired her answer by the
time the _Minnequago_ docked.
Strictly business, you see. If he had been pulling off a deal with
another man and somebody like this Sam Marks had put in an oar, this
was about how John Ryder would have handled the situation. She must
choose at once between Marks and him--between the position she would
gain by wedding him, and possible success upon the vaudeville stage.
Had the ideas expressed in the note not been clothed in the kindest
terms and had not a strong current of downright love permeated it,
any woman might have taken umbrage.
Ryder knew he had said nothing that could offend. Therefore, he was
the more surprised that no response to his letter was brought to him.
He remained away from the general table at dinner that last night
purposely. He did not wish to meet Miss Mont again until he knew
exactly what her answer was to be.
The evening passed without his receiving any reply. In the morning
as they swung into the dock at an early hour he asked the steward if
there was any message for him and received a negative answer.
He had made his declaration and waited with his repacked bag until
most of the passengers, he was certain, had gone ashore. Until the
last moment, when he came to the gangway, he hoped to get some reply
from her. Or was she waiting for him to tell him verbally her answer?
She was! There she stood upon the dock as he went down the
gangplank. She was looking eagerly toward the ship. Ryder felt a
sudden tingling warmth at his heart. His love for this girl, so
strangely born, made his pulse go at a gallop and brought a flush
into his sea-tanned face.
She saw him, and the faint flicker of a dawning smile overspread her
sweet countenance. He approached with outstretched hand, his heart
in his eyes--an expression that no woman could mistake. It told
her--that look--as plainly as though he cried it aloud: "I love you!"
The girl put out her hand--both her hands indeed--impulsively and met
his grasp with one quite as warm. Her eyes searched his face,
perhaps with a puzzled expression at first when he approached; but
afterward with decided approval.
"What have you to say to me, my dear?" asked John Ryder, strong in
his belief that she could have only waited for him with good news.
A blush suffused her face. Her lips parted--parted in such a shy and
lovely smile--as she said in a low voice: "I--I will marry you."
"Good!" he almost shouted, and immediately added: "When?"
"Whenever you like," she whispered, and no woman since the world
began ever gave herself so completely into her lover's keeping, John
Ryder was sure, as did this woman whom he loved.
"Then as soon as we can get the license and I can arrange certain
matters," he said quite composedly, despite the accelerated beat of
his pulse. "We will drive first to the City Clerk's office. There
is some red tape about the matter, I believe. Then I will take you
to a hotel where you may lunch. I shall need several hours for
business before the banks close. Then we can go at once to a
minister of whom I know."
"Oh! can it be done so quickly?" and she caught her breath, though
with a little laugh.
"Don't be frightened," he said tenderly. "It will be all right.
Where are your trunks?"
"On their way to the Pennsylvania Railway station, I believe."
"So soon? Were you getting ready to run away from me?" he asked in
some little surprise.
"No-o." Then she laughed and tossed her head with that gesture that
had become familiar to him--which he had noticed so many times aboard
ship. "I was getting ready to run away with you," she whispered.
He laughed, tucked her hand under his arm, and they walked up the
dock. Near the gate he saw Marks standing. Miss Mont did not chance
to look his way, but Ryder saw that the theatrical man observed him
and smiled sardonically as they passed.
"Confound his impudence!" muttered Ryder.
Then he glanced at the woman at his side. She was certainly
beautiful, with plenty of warm, rich color in her cheeks, the
blackest of level brows, the very whitest of skin.
"By heaven! she's a treasure," thought Ryder, as he hailed a taxicab.
"And I'm a lucky fellow to get her. To think that, in a few short
hours, she will be Mrs. John Ryder!"
A foolish little mist obscured his vision, and he stumbled on the
step as he followed her into the cab. She laughed.
"You won't get married this year if you stumble upstairs," she said.
CHAPTER II
"NEEDLES AND PINS"
None of his business associates, not even his head clerk, knew just
when John Ryder would return to New York. He had gone across for a
rest--a pleasure trip; but he had struck some splendid
contracts--"the woods were full of them," he said--and he cabled
orders until his agents in America fairly begged him to stop. Prices
for raw material had not yet risen to top-notch, and they were
skimming the cream of the manufacturing situation.
He arrived on the _Minnequago_ with none aware of his coming. Nor
did he propose to tell anybody of the change he now contemplated to
make in his private life.
Had he done so, he knew that certain "good fellows" of his
acquaintance would undertake to make existence an agony for him and
for this beautiful girl whom he was to marry. It seems to be the
delight of a certain order of mankind to make the sweetest, most
intimate hours of a newly-married couple a Saturnalia upon which they
can only look back with horror.
Ryder was practically free to do as he pleased, and what he pleased
to do was to take time to get acquainted with the charming woman at
his side. They must go somewhere for their honeymoon where he would
not be likely to run into people he knew, and where he and his wife
could be quiet and undisturbed.
Getting the license was neither a long nor troublesome matter, for
they were the first at the clerk's office. He signed his name "John
Ryder," knowing that there were probably a dozen of the same name in
the directory and the publication of it would scarcely warn his
friends of what he was doing. The girl signed after him, and surely
nobody--unless it was that detestable Sam Marks--would realize who
she was.
"Who will marry us?" she asked, leaving all the details to him very
prettily.
"We could be married right here in the chapel," he told her. "But if
you would rather, I know of an old dominie on Bank Street."
"How funny!"
"Why?"
"That you should know anybody in that part of New York. That is
Greenwich Village, isn't it?"
"Yes. You seem to have studied your map of the town."
"Oh, I have learned a little something about New York," she
responded, smiling slightly.
Aside from this brief interchange of remarks, there was very little
said as the taxicab rolled uptown to a quiet hotel. Both were doing
some very serious thinking. It was not a situation to provoke
trifling conversation.
Ryder arranged for a parlor where Miss Mont could remain quietly
during his absence. He did not delay for luncheon himself, but did
not forget to send up a dainty repast for his bride-to-be. He walked
into the offices of John Ryder & Company about noon and cast the
whole force into first a state of confusion, and then of wonder.
He was usually the most methodical of persons and went through with
any business--even the routine work of the day--in a most exemplary
manner. There was seldom any friction in John Ryder's offices when
he was there. From his chief clerk and his personal stenographer
down through the strata of employees to the very porter, system was
inculcated into their daily lives both by precept and the example of
the "boss."
Today he literally tore what little system there was left in his
force to shreds. He started several people on the same errand; he
dictated the same letter three times and in as many different ways.
His stenographer, a very severe young woman, came closer to him than
she ever had before in her life and sniffed his breath. Drink was
the only explanation she could think of.
He gave Brumby, his chief clerk, orders which absolutely antagonized
each other, and when the man tremblingly pointed out this fact to
Ryder the latter actually lost his temper.
"Well, confound it!" ejaculated John Ryder, "you know what I mean,
don't you? There's only one sensible way to do that thing. Do it,
and don't bother me!"
Inexplicable! Nobody had ever seen Ryder in such a state of mind
before. He was one minute as snappy as a mud turtle; the next he ran
his hand through the curly red mop of hair on the errand boy's head,
gave him a dollar, and told him to take in the next ball game at the
Polo Grounds without troubling himself to tell Brumby that his
grandmother had died.
But to capsheaf his entire performance on this occasion, Ryder sat
down again to dictate a few notes on personal matters and began the
first one by saying:
"Ahem! Are you ready, Miss Nelson? Here goes: 'My dear Rose'--Good
Lord! that isn't it. Er--er--Write Hallett and Mayes about the
renewal of the lease of my apartment. Tell them--er---- Well, write
it yourself, Miss Nelson," he concluded in much confusion and
beginning to perspire. "I shall not renew it. It runs out the first
of November and I shall make--er--ahem!--a change."
She stared at him in amazement. John Ryder had occupied the same
chambers on the north side of Gramercy Park for ten years and was
considered as permanent a fixture in that neighborhood as the fenced
and locked garden in the middle of the square.
"Well, hang it!" he demanded, catching her wondering eye and losing
patience again. "Can't I make a change? I hope I'm not _married_ to
those rooms?"
And then he reddened furiously. Miss Nelson gazed upon him with
dawning understanding. She was not a young woman whose thoughts
lingered much upon the tender passion; but she was by no means a
fool. She knew now that her employer was not intoxicated.
Brumby might think Mr. Ryder suddenly bereft of his senses; the
bookkeeper could say that "the old man" was about to "bust"; and the
red-headed office boy could declare that the boss had felt the change
before death when he gave up the dollar, but Miss Nelson knew now
what the matter was. _Mr. Ryder was in love!_
When she went out for her lunch she--the frigid Miss
Nelson--sentimentally bought a flower from a street vender and
brought it back to the office. But by that time John Ryder had
cleared up all the matters he considered really vital, had given
Brumby a nervous shock by telling him to expect no word from him,
Ryder, for at least a fortnight, and had left the offices.
All these petty details of business were the "needles and pins" of
life. For the first time in his business career Ryder found that he
hated business. He fairly walked on air as he hurried to the subway,
crowded himself into an already crowded train, and was transported
uptown.
A few steps to the hotel--then the elevator--then the carpeted
corridor to the door of the parlor where he had left his bride. A
knock, a swift patter of feet in answer, the turning of the key,
and----
She was there--a vision of delight to him! Her coat and hat were
already on. His heart glowed. She had been as eager for his return
as he had been to get back to her.
"Are--are you ready?" was all he could say.
"Yes," she murmured, quite as embarrassed.
Ryder remembered the old parsonage on Bank Street very well. He had
been wont to go to the church hard by when he was a boy. The same
minister was not there now, but the present incumbent had a peaceful,
old-world face, was silver-haired and kindly spoken, and might have
been the same whom Ryder remembered.
The clergyman welcomed them as though he were well used to such calls.
Miss Mont was shy and kept her veil down until the clergyman's wife
and a servant were brought in to witness the ceremony. Then she
plucked up courage, raised her veil, and if her cheeks were
tear-stained nobody remarked it. The old man stood before them and
pronounced the simply worded ritual with grace and kindliness.
Ryder himself felt confused. It was really the first time he had
ever been present at such a ceremony.
"With a ring?" the minister asked him softly before he began, and
Ryder knew just enough to nod and then fumble in his inner pocket for
a tiny leather case which he always carried.
Out of this he brought forth, happily at the right moment, a plain
gold band, worn rather thin, and with letters engraved on the inner
side that were almost indecipherable. It had been his mother's
wedding ring--the one keepsake that had come into his possession as a
boy from the parent he scarcely remembered.
The girl evidently understood when he produced the ring. She smiled
at him tremulously and, before the band was slipped on her finger,
she touched her lips to it.
Then: "You, John, do take this woman, Ruth--" and so on to the end.
Ryder responded as though in a dream. It all seemed unreal. Serious
as was the moment, the undercurrent of his thought was: "'Ruth?'
That is a pretty name. But I got the idea somehow that her name was
Rose."
They were married. Ryder feed the minister with a liberality that
made his withered cheeks flush with pleasure. The clergyman's wife
kissed Ruth heartily, and the servant, who was sentimentally
inclined, wiped her eyes furtively on the corner of her kitchen
apron, which she had forgotten to take off when she came into the
study.
They went out to the taxicab again, the chauffeur of which was
grinning knowingly.
"Now, dear, where shall we drive?" asked John Ryder.
"My trunks are at the Pennsylvania station by this time I am sure.
May I choose where we shall go?"
"Of course," he answered, though he felt some surprise.
"Then let it be Pinewood."
"Why--why," Ryder cried, "you must have studied this business all
out. Ah, you sly girl! What put Pinewood in your head?"
"They say it is very nice there--and quiet--at this time of year. It
will remind us of old times," she added dreamily.
Afterward when he was attending to the checking of her baggage and
arranging for his own to be sent on from the steamship dock, it
suddenly smote Ryder that her remark about Pinewood reminding them
"of old times" was peculiar.
This was Ruth's first visit to America and surely he had never been
at Pinewood in all his life! Later he forgot to speak about it.
Indeed, he was too busy and too happy to be curious.
He telephoned ahead for a suite of rooms at the only hotel which, he
understood, was open at this time of year at Pinewood. This was the
Pinewood Inn, one of the oldest and best-known hotels on the coast.
Somehow there is a "newness" sticking to bridal couples that no
amount of deception can hide--from the eagle eye of the railroad
porter least of all! The colored functionary on their car hovered
about them as though they had been especially placed in his care, and
his attentions were so marked that they might as well have come
aboard showered with rice and old shoes. Everybody in the coach very
soon knew that they were newly wed.
To tell the truth, John Ryder was inordinately proud of it. He was
as delighted as a boy. It was an effort for him to retain his usual
dignified bearing. A smile was continually breaking through the calm
of his features. He wanted to shout or sing--and he sang like a crow!
From a heretofore modest and retiring man socially he suddenly became
bold and daring. He secretly wished to strut about and brag of
himself, and show off his wife. He would have liked to distribute
"largess" (whatever that might be) to the people at the stations
where the train stopped; and he tipped the porter three separate
times before the train was ten miles on its way.
He had reason, good reason, for being proud. When Ruth removed her
veil and hat she was startlingly beautiful. Somehow there had come a
new expression into her face that increased her attractiveness. She
had never seemed so sweet, so gentle and modest, so altogether
adorable before.
They reached their railroad destination just as dusk was falling.
Pinewood Inn was exclusive--so exclusive, indeed, that it was back
among the pines quite twelve miles from the station. A motor bus met
all trains and transferred the arriving guests to the hotel.
"Just a pleasant half hour's run," Ryder told his bride, helping her
into the vehicle and getting in himself with several other arrivals.
"We shall have an appetite for dinner I fancy."
He was just then reminded that he had eaten nothing since a modest
breakfast in his stateroom on the _Minnequago_--not even on the
train. The bus rumbled away from the hamlet that surrounded the
railroad station. They swept into the brown shadows of the pines and
rolled almost silently over the velvet carpet of the needles.
"Needles and pins, needles and pins! When a man marries----" The
old rhyme came into his mind again. But he had thrown off all petty
details. The needles and pins of business, or of anything else,
should not rankle in his mind. This was the beginning of his
honeymoon.
And just then the motor bus slid down a slight slope to a long bridge
that crossed the salt creek dividing the island, which the railroad
crossed, from the higher ground where the hotel was located. Ryder,
glancing ahead, thought he saw the flash of a red light.
Then a woman screamed and the forward truck of the motor bus crashed
through the loosened planking of the bridge. The passengers were
tumbled together, but nobody was hurt. Ryder found himself holding
Ruth in his arms--and somehow he did not care to let her go.
Men and women began to scramble out of the bus, having hastily
gathered together what hand baggage they had taken inside with them.
It was a time of confusion. A handbag was dropped, calling forth a
grunt of protest from someone whose toes had been hurt. An umbrella,
caught crosswise in the door, caused delay and more confusion.
"I--I fancy we shall have to get out with the rest of them," Ruth
whispered.
"Oh, I suppose so," Ryder admitted.
They were the last to leave the stalled bus. The driver was
explaining:
"I didn't suppose these country fools would begin to repair the
bridge flooring tonight. I didn't see the light. 'Twas all right
when I came down from the hotel. Guess you'll hafter walk. It'll
take half the night to jack this old car up out of the hole. And
see! they've left only a footpath the length of the bridge. I bet
they'll leave it that way till over Sunday. Just like 'em."
The guests, already in sight of the hotel lights, went on with
laughter or grumbling, as their dispositions dictated. The incident
seemed quite unimportant to John Ryder, bemused as he was in the very
first quarter of his honeymoon.
CHAPTER III
"WHEN A MAN MARRIES----"
Ryder and his bride climbed the winding road to the wide and pillared
veranda of the hotel behind the other shipwrecked passengers from the
motor bus. In the rear of the hotel was a considerable village; they
could see the twinkling lights in the small frame dwellings and the
glare of acetylene lamps in the big general store.
"I--I really think," Ruth observed, "that the bridge is not safe.
Didn't it tremble as we came over it?"
"Seemed rather a rickety affair, that's a fact," Ryder agreed. "But
we're all right now. We've reached the hotel. It looks friendly and
comfortable--and old-fashioned. Nothing much untoward can happen to
us here, dear."
He said it tenderly, and looked at her lovingly. Nothing more was
needed as they entered the wide foyer to advertise the fact that they
were newly wed. The clerk--and even the bellboys--welcomed them with
broad smiles. But Ryder was getting hardened to the notoriety of
their situation now.
He went to the desk to register and get the key of the rooms he had
ordered before leaving New York, while Ruth went toward a quiet spot
which overlooked the entire foyer to wait for him.
His business finished, Ryder turned to look for his bride. He saw
men standing or sitting about, talking, smoking, and reading. He saw
women, knitting or crocheting for the most part, in the foyer and in
the parlors, into which he hastily looked. But where was Ruth?
Where could she have gone--and why? The bellboy waited at the
elevator, while Ryder stood helplessly, not knowing what to do.
In a moment Ruth came from around a corner in the hall, eyes shining
and a smile on her face. When she caught sight of Ryder, she went
directly to him, unheedful of all others, and a deeper expression
sprang into her happy eyes.
The man felt moved to the depth. Could this look be for him?
"I have been exploring a little," she said, as she came up to him,
"and this is a lovely place to stay. I am glad we came here." Then,
dropping her voice so that no chance passerby might hear, she added:
"Oh, I am happy--so happy--too happy, almost!"
Ryder had the whimsical thought as he crossed the foyer with his wife
that he would like to shout aloud his own happiness and exultation.
He hung back just a moment before entering the elevator with Ruth, to
give a bellboy some money and certain instructions. Then the couple
were shown to their rooms.
"Oh, they are fine! Lovely!" cried Ruth delightedly, as soon as they
were alone. "You dear boy! I believe you engaged the best suite in
the house!"
"The best I could get," admitted Ryder modestly.
"But you mustn't be extravagant," and she came close to him, smiling
directly into his eyes with a look in her own that almost dazzled him.
"Folks can afford to be extravagant at this time if at no other," he
declared stoutly, wondering if she knew the Pinewood Inn people were
charging him thirty dollars a day for the suite.
"You--you are a dear!" she said, and, putting her hands suddenly on
his shoulders, she pressed closer, offering him her lips.
The gracefulness of this little gesture was delightful. Ryder felt
the flush rise in his cheeks as though he really were a youth. In
that instant, when he first kissed his wife, he felt keen
satisfaction that he had lived a clean, decent life and could meet
her innocent caress without shame.
"I believe you are going to be a disgracefully indulgent husband,"
she said, laughing and gliding quickly out of his arms. "I must stop
that. You will make a wreck of your ship of fortune on the rock of
an expensive wife."
"Oh, there are a few shots left in the locker yet," said Ryder grimly.
They could not dress for dinner as Ruth's trunks had not yet arrived
and his own luggage would not be along until the next day. Ruth had
toilet articles and brushes in her bag and she brought out of this,
too, a wonderful little dressing sack, all ruffles and ribbons and
lace, to wear while she dressed her hair.
"May I smoke?" Ryder asked, sitting down to wait for her.
"Of course. I like to see you. It--it seems so homey," and she
showed him a blushing face and sparkling eyes for an instant at the
curtained doorway of the inner room.
She reappeared in the dressing sack, which was cut to reveal most
charmingly her throat and forearms. Ryder watched her lazily through
the smoke of his cigar while she performed the graceful rites of the
hairdresser. He never remembered having seen a woman brush and
arrange her hair before, and this intimate and innocent art of the
toilet thrilled him.
She had finished and turned to him with a smile for his approval when
there came a rap on the door. She tripped across the room and opened
it.
"For Mrs. Ryder," mumbled the boy.
"Oh! I thought they were for me!" Ruth exclaimed disappointedly.
"You have come to the wrong suite, boy," and she closed the door
lingeringly.
Ryder sprang up, laughing. "What was it?" he asked.
"Oh, such lovely flowers! A great heap of them."
Ryder strode to the door, still chuckling.
"She hasn't had it long enough to know her new name," he thought, and
opened the door to call after the boy:
"All right! Those flowers come here, sonny. Let me have 'em."
He came back, bearing the heap of blossoms in his arms. "They're for
you, girlie," he said.
She uttered a little scream of delight and came at him like a small
whirlwind. But she could not encircle both him and the roses in her
embrace, so she satisfied herself for the moment with the flowers,
sitting down in a low chair, with her face buried in the fragrant
blossoms, and rocking herself to and fro in delight.
"You will spoil me!" she said, looking up at him, as he stood above
her with that broad, quiet smile of his stealing over his big face.
John Ryder was by no means a handsome man, but he was good to look
upon because of his manliness. "These are so beautiful! Let us fill
every vase in the suite."
This they did together. And every time their hands met (and, oh! how
many times this happened as they divided or arranged the flowers)
they both thrilled at the contact, looking at each other and smiling
and coloring like two children caught in some innocent escapade.
It was a happy hour--an hour quite unmarred by a thought or a
suspicion of any possible disaster. On his part Ryder had forgotten
what trouble was like.
The patronage of the hotel was large all the year around, and at
dinner they held the good-natured attention of the entire
dining-room. There was a good orchestra, attentive waiters, soft
lights, the murmur of conversation, fine women in fine
gowns--everything to make the place attractive. Mrs. John Ryder in
her plain traveling dress, however, was eclipsed by none of the other
women.
Ryder, watching her, saw many approving glances from other diners,
too, and smiled. He was thinking how she would shine--this jewel of
a woman he had married!--when she had time to find some real "bridey"
finery. She looked like a little brown thrush now; she would look
like a bird of paradise when he had given her _carte blanche_ at a
Fifth Avenue modiste's.
He allowed her to go upstairs alone after dinner while he strolled
into the office for some cigars. Several of the men he had seen at
the tables were grouped there talking earnestly, and as Ryder stood
at the cigar counter he overheard loud voices from the private office
of the manager at the rear of the stand.
A man near by was saying: "I tell you the bridge has sunk in the
middle--it's impassable. All that held the wabbly old thing together
were the flooring planks. This town is as far behind the times as
any yap hamlet I ever saw. Why, we're actually stuck here till they
build a new bridge! Can't get a machine over it, or through the
tide-water; and the railroad bridges are nothing but skeletons, you
very well know."
"What about going over to Bearsburg----"
"Nothing doing! The roads behind this hotel are the worst in the
world. The main road is impassable for autos because of the work
being done on it. It will be a good road some time next spring. As
for the other highways, they are merely lanes and farm paths."
"Guess you are marooned here, then, Carey," chuckled another. "Might
as well make up your mind to it. Come on! let's see if we can't get
up a game and murder a little time."
At that moment the door of the manager's office opened and the clerk
come out. He had a worried expression of countenance. Now, hotel
clerks are supposed to be urbane at all times. Flood or fire should
not alarm the well-trained hotel clerk.
Ryder looked quickly into the inner room. He saw the rather fleshy,
white-waistcoated manager--a man of evident choleric temper. He was
talking loudly with a plainly dressed man who had a paper in his
hand, which he was evidently insisting that the manager accept.
"You must accept this service, Mr. Bangs," the smaller man
interrupted, the manager stopping his sputtering long enough to catch
his breath. "It is not my fault, and personalities make no
difference. I am merely a court officer. This is returnable next
Monday. Shall I read you the original paper?"
Bangs seized the paper offered him and swore largely. "You get out
of here!" he roared. "I'll fix Giddings for this trick. Dispossess
me, will he? I'll show him! I'll--I'll ruin his old hotel for him!"
Ryder walked away with his cigars. Other people's trouble did not
stick in his mind now. Broken bridges and impassable roads did not
disturb him in the least; nor was he worried by the manager's
difficulties. He had come here for at least two peaceful, delightful
weeks--and he was going to get them.
When he entered his own rooms there had been a transformation scene
enacted. Ruth's trunks had arrived, and she had removed her
traveling dress, had slipped on the dressing sack again, and, to the
eyes of a mere man, she seemed burrowing in the several trunks like a
squirrel in a heap of fallen leaves.
"Those poor porters," she explained, "had such hard work getting
these boxes over here. The wagon could only come to the bridge, you
know, and they told me they had to pole the luggage over in a
punt---and that leaks and isn't safe. Then they brought the boxes on
barrows to the hotel. Re'lly! They worked so hard that I gave them
a dime each."
"Oh!" Ryder clapped a hand over his mouth, and then sneezed to hide
his laughter. "Had--hadn't I better stay out until this is all
over?" he asked. He thought some of hunting up the porters and
seeing that they had larger tips.
"No. You can remain if you will be good. And you can see my
dresses, too. I think I did very well in getting them--especially
when I wasn't _sure_, you know."
"Sure of what?" he asked, comfortably, establishing himself in a
reserved seat--that is, one that was not already hidden under billows
of feminine wear.
"Why, sure I should marry you," she said, turning to give him a
roguish look.
"Oh--ah--yes," murmured Ryder. Then he started. "By the way, what
chance did you have to get ready----"
His question was interrupted by a heavy summons at the door. He went
himself this time. One of the bellboys was there.
"Sorry, sir," said the boy in a low voice, "but the manager, Mr.
Bangs, has to tell you that the hotel is to be vacated at once. He
had no notice himself, so he can give you none."
"What in thunder do you mean?" demanded Ryder, in amazement.
"Yes, sir. You can't stay here, sir."
"Why not? Does the manager want his money in advance?"
"No, sir. 'Tain't you alone. Everybody's got to get out, sir.
We're all losing our jobs, sir. I--I don't know what to do myself,
sir----"
"Why, it's ridiculous!"
"I don't know nothin' about it, sir. I was just told to tell
everybody in this corridor. And you've all got to get right out. He
wouldn't let the clerk telephone to the rooms 'cause it would take so
much time. Mr. Bangs says he will turn off the lights at half past
eight and lock the door--that's in half an hour, sir. There's to be
no service after that time."
The boy hurried to the door of the next suite. Ryder was too amazed
at first to feel proper anger. To be told that, in half an hour, one
must get out of a hotel in which one has just established oneself----
"It is preposterous!" determined John Ryder, turning back into his
rooms. He saw Ruth, all unconscious of the unpleasant announcement,
still busy over the trunks. The uselessness of her task suddenly
smote his mind. "Why," he muttered, "she's wasting her time. She
might as well stop that if we can't stay here. And, by thunder!
where will we go if this hotel closes--and at such an hour?
"There's not another hotel open in Pinewood, I understand. The
bridge is down. That fellow says traffic to the west is barred by
the condition of the roads. The dickens!"
Ruth had paid no attention to his mutterings. She was quite
unconscious of his perplexity, or of its cause. He came to a quick
decision.
"I'm going downstairs a moment, dear," he said.
"All right."
"All right, what? Haven't you a name for me?" he inquired, drawing
her to him.
"All right--hubby," she replied, blushing slightly, and he kissed her
and then shot out of the room and dashed down the single flight of
stairs to join the excited crowd already milling about the hotel desk.
CHAPTER IV
"HIS TROUBLE BEGINS!"
Bangs, the red-faced manager of Pinewood Inn, was facing the group of
clamoring masculine guests like a rat at bay before a pack of
terriers. Every individual man in the crowd was demanding what it
meant.
Then, before he could make any audible explanation, they burst out
again in a staccato of such observations as:
"It's an outrage! The man should be hung!"
"I never heard the like! Why, my wife says----"
"It's a most abominable imposition! Lights out at half past eight!"
"And the help discharged!"
"And no other hotel open anywhere along this part of the coast!
Disgraceful!"
"Not even a cottage open. We can't go and live on these muckers who
stay here all winter."
Then a general roar, as they faced Bangs again:
"What do you mean by it?"
"If you'll give me a chance to tell you!" shouted Bangs, shaking both
clenched fists in the air. "And if you'll listen to reason perhaps I
can make you understand."
Then, as a grumbling silence was accorded him, he added: "At last I
can make myself heard! Lemme tell you about it. Giddings, the
trustee of the Barnaby estate, the owners of this hotel, and I have
had some difficulty over the rental. And because I won't agree to be
robbed by him, he has taken this tack----"
"What tack?" asked John Ryder, thrusting in a question which struck
at the heart of the business. "You haven't said what he has done."
"He's served me with dispossess papers," said the heated Bangs.
"Then you haven't paid your rent," Ryder observed. "Why don't you
pay it and not put your guests to this trouble? Settle with Giddings
in the courts."
"He'd beat me--the scoundrel!" cried Bangs. "And the rent is
exorbitant. I served him notice three months ago that I could not
run this hotel and pay such a price for it. It's an imposition."
"It is a greater imposition on your part to give your guests half an
hour's notice to get out. Why, Bangs, it really can't be done, you
know," said one man.
But John Ryder, with his clear insight into anything of this kind,
again drove right at the heart of the business.
"You have had three months to prepare for this very emergency," he
said. "You admit that."
"I don't!" yelled Bangs. "I admit nothing of the kind. They just
served me----"
"Then you have several days in which to arrange the matter," Ryder
went on. "What about this turning off the lights in half an hour?
It is ridiculous."
"That's exactly what it is," chimed in another aggrieved voice. "You
can't put your guests out in any such way, Mr. Bangs--and guests who,
some of them, have been here long before you were ever manager. My
wife and I have been staying here for eight years. I can't be turned
out of my home on half an hour's notice."
"Well, you'd have to get out if there was a fire," snarled Bangs.
"A fire would be 'an act of God,' according to the coroner's
finding," grimly laughed somebody. "This isn't."
"Quite the contrary. It's a deucedly mean trick."
"It isn't my fault, I tell you," Bangs mendaciously declared. "You
can blame that hound, Giddings. I can't be bled any more of all my
profits, and I am going to close my connection with this hotel
tonight--and in a very few minutes."
"Great heavens, Bangs!" exclaimed one man. "Get out if you want to.
We'll none of us weep over your departure. Leave George, here, to
run the desk and Al, the steward, to see to the kitchen and the help,
and we'll get along all right."
"And who is going to assure the help's wages?" demanded Bangs.
"_I'm_ not, you bet! And who'll pay for the lighting and heating? I
can tell you gentlemen right now there isn't coal enough in the bins
to run the dynamos and boilers till midnight."
At that a howl went up which boded ill for the manager of the
Pinewood Inn and he dodged behind the desk before which he had been
standing. Several of his guests looked suddenly dangerous to Bangs.
There came, however, an interruption. Somebody said: "Here comes
Colonel Brack," and the group parted willingly enough to let in a
tall, military figure of a man with drooping gray mustache and
goatee, fiery eyes under penthouse brows--a man who walked with the
"step-clump, step-clump" of a cripple with an artificial limb.
Nevertheless, Colonel Brack bore himself very erect and stepped with
a firmness that betrayed more than ordinary hardihood of character.
The other guests who knew him looked upon the old man with evident
respect.
"What is this I hear, Bangs?" the ex-military officer demanded in a
deep voice. "You sent one of your cubs to my room with a saucy
message and I boxed his ears for him. What do you mean by telling me
to get out of this hotel, suh?"
"I can't help it, Colonel Brack," declared the manager, backing out
of any possible reach of the colonel's long arm. "The hotel's got to
close."
"Then close it. But do it decently and in order," the colonel said.
"Still, I doubt if the Barnaby estate will allow the house to be
shut. They can find somebody else to run it quite as well as you,
suh."
"Well, they won't find that other man tonight!" cried Bangs, in a
tone that showed he felt impish delight in making all this trouble.
"And I am going to close the house now. I've said my last word,
gentlemen. If you want to pack your trunks, I'll keep the dynamos
running till nine o'clock. There is a combination train leaves
here--over the spur track, you understand, at that hour----"
"Confound you! Yes!" cried somebody. "But it only goes as far as
the Junction and there is no connection there for New York until five
o'clock in the morning. A nice train for ladies to take!"
"And how about those of us who have our autos here?" chimed in
another. "The bridge is down. Your own motor bus is out of
commission. The other roads are impassable for cars. You ought to
be beaten to death, Bangs!"
"Ye-es--" drawled a sleek, dapper little man, whom, so Ryder told
himself, one would naturally expect to speak in a crisp, quick tone,
quite contrary to the one he used. "Ye-es, suppose we do tha-at same
thing. It would not do the gu-uests of this hotel much good just
now, perhaps; but it would rid the wo-orld of one rascal. Tha-at
would be to the good."
Colonel Brack leaned over the counter and shook a long finger at the
manager.
"I have lived in this hotel fourteen years, sub!" he exclaimed. "No
manager can dispossess me. I refuse to get out, suh--I refuse to get
out!"
[Illustration: "No manager can dispossess me. I refuse to get out"]
"That's right! We all refuse to get out!" was the vociferous chorus.
"Then you'll stay in the dark and without heat and without service,"
growled Bangs doggedly. "I'm doing my best for you. I'll be liable
for no further expense in a house of which I am dispossessed--that's
flat!"
Bangs here erased himself from the scene by dodging into the private
office and banging the door. The clerk oh duty was instantly
besieged by a part of the crowd. He could do absolutely nothing to
assist in untangling the difficulty. Like the other hotel employees,
he was as much disturbed over his abrupt discharge as the guests were
over their dismissal by the manager.
"I shall remain here, even if that rascal shuts off the heat and
lights," Colonel Brack loudly declared, in the midst of the group of
which John Ryder was one. "It is a preposterous--an impossible
situation, suh! Whoever heard the like? A hotel cannot close its
doors and turn its guests out upon the streets on half an hour's
notice."
"But Bangs will do as he says. I know the dog. When he's ugly,
he'll do anything," returned one man gloomily.
"He may turn off the heat and light; but here I stay!" reiterated the
colonel, with all the determination of Horatius on the Bridge.
"Not a pleasant prospect," said a drummer. "I reckon I'll go and
pack up and take that nine o'clock switchback."
"We cannot all do that," Ryder finally said, with calmness. "It is
ridiculous to think of the ladies leaving on such short
notice--especially those who have lived here for any length of time."
"And there's one car on that train, a combination day coach and
smoker. It wouldn't hold a third of the guests in this house
to-night," was the positive declaration of another man.
"Besides," Ryder pursued, "how would we get our baggage away at this
hour? If we left it, thieves would ransack every trunk in the house.
This Bangs is evidently a slippery customer. He could not be found,
it is likely, when it came time to apportion damages."
"You are right, suh," said Colonel Brack. "You are Mr. John Ryder,
of New York?"
Ryder acknowledged it. "My wife and I have just arrived, intending
to remain a fortnight or so. I don't fancy having our visit spoiled
in this way."
"Then, Mr. Ryder," said the colonel pompously, "I wish you would come
into the café with a number of us older guests, suh, where we will
hold a council of war." The colonel could scarcely conceive of any
discussion being official out of sight of a bar. "We cannot be
driven out of this hotel in this way. We must plan some means of
thwarting Bangs, suh."
"We'd better chip in and pay his rent for him," suggested one
compromising individual, bent on cutting the Gordian knot with one
simple stroke.
"I understand," said the colonel hastily, "that he is at least three
months behind in his rent. That would never do. And it is not
because he is unable to pay. The house is well patronized and he
collects his money promptly. It is merely a personal fight between
him and Giddings, who, I judge, desires to break this fellow's
connection with Pinewood Inn. I never did like the dog."
"Giddings should come down here and attend to the matter himself,
then," said another of the angry guests.
"I do not presume for a moment," said the colonel, starting for the
barroom, "that Giddings dreamed Bangs would do this. No, suh! No
gentleman could imagine such a dastardly thing."
"But it seems to have been in the manager's mind for some time,"
Ryder interposed. "He has allowed his coal to run so low that there
is not enough, he now says, to last the night through."
"Maybe he is lying," Jimson suggested.
"No," asserted some one. "He's not lying now, for once in his life.
He's telling the truth this time--but only because the truth is
meaner than any lie he could possibly concoct."
"He has planned to get back at Giddings and the estate by injuring
the reputation of the hotel. Why, gentlemen," pursued the wrathful
colonel, all bristling like an enraged turkeycock, "this house has
been my home for fourteen years. I am the oldest inhabitant. Mr.
Jimson, here, has an invalid wife. She cannot be taken out at this
hour of the night. And the house has been her home for eight years.
It is brutal--positively brutal!"
"All right! All right!" said Ryder. "But this isn't getting us
anywhere. We all know our wrongs. Let's see what can be done to
stop the fellow's deviltry."
"By Jove!" exclaimed a man at his elbow. "Here Bangs is turning us
out and along come other guests. What do you know about that?"
"How could anyone get here at this hour with that bridge in that
condition?" queried Jimson. "Couldn't get an auto over it."
"Oh, anyone that was eager enough to come could get punted over the
inlet. Must have come down on that train that does not stop at Barr,
though, and motored back from the first stop below--unless a big
enough party was on to make a special stop possible."
But it was a single guest only who entered the foyer and office of
the hotel. This man had no luggage and he stood for a moment
nervously drawing off his gloves as his glance swept swiftly the
faces of those in sight.
George, the clerk, stepped to the turntable on which the register
rested. It was not a grateful task to inform the man who had just
come what the situation of affairs was.
Ryder noticed the stranger only casually at first. The group of
excited men, whom he was tailing toward the café, were slow in
leaving the vicinity of the hotel desk.
When the clerk had explained the situation as well as he was able the
disappointed guest stood back, nervously rolling his gloves and with
an expression of indetermination upon his face. Finally he asked
George a question in a low voice.
"No, sir. Nobody by that name in the house, sir," the clerk said.
One of the boys came through the foyer intoning the name of a guest:
"Mr. White's wanted. Mr. White! Mr. White!"
Nobody gave the boy any attention at first, and he approached the
desk still singsonging the name of the man wanted.
"Who's wanted?" asked George, the clerk, briskly.
"Message for Mr. White. His wife wants him upstairs--Suite Three."
"White?" repeated the clerk. "What White's that? I didn't know----"
Just then Ryder, looking back over his shoulder, chanced to see again
the face of the last comer to the hotel. He was as pale as death;
Ryder could see the drops of perspiration standing on his broad, high
brow. He was staring at the bellboy as though in the latter he
beheld a ghost.
Suddenly, while the puzzled clerk bent over the register evidently in
search of the name "White" among those of the new arrivals at
Pinewood Inn, the stranger darted at the bellboy. "Who--who is
asking for Mr. White?" Ryder heard the man gasp.
"Mrs. White. She wants him. Suite Three," repeated the boy. "Mr.
John B. White."
The emotions displayed in succession upon the stranger's countenance
ran the gamut of human expression. Amazement, incredulity, rage,
determination--a dozen different feelings evidently gripped the man's
mind and soul. Ryder had his own attention recalled with difficulty
by Colonel Brack, who stuck his head out of the swinging door of the
café, crying:
"We're waiting for you, suh! Mr. Ryder, what'll you take, suh? And
I'd like your opinion on this important matter. It will cost us,
severally and collectively, some money to keep this house open. I,
for one, will assume my share of the obligation and trust to getting
back at Bangs afterward. What do you say, Mr. Ryder?"
The discussion of ways and means claimed the attention of John Ryder.
Yet he glanced back at the stranger again as he entered the café.
The latter was moving toward the stairway clutching the bellboy
firmly by the shoulder. Back in the mind of Ryder was this comment:
"Odd about that fellow. Acts strange. White? Don't know anyone of
the name--that I remember. Suite Three? Why--what's the number of
our suite? I thought that was Number Three. Must be Number Two.
Odd----"
CHAPTER V
THE ARROW OF SUSPICION
The first excitement having worn away, the Council of War was now
organized. Colonel Brack had gathered together those men best fitted
to form a working committee--and likewise best able to finance any
scheme decided upon for the keeping open of Pinewood Inn.
The situation was already thoroughly canvassed. No other hotel in
the vicinity was open. To escape from the place by either motor or
train--at least for some hours, if not days--was impossible. Local
residents could not take in the hotel guests had they so desired.
Here were women and children used to every luxury who were threatened
with dismissal from the hotel at once. As the colonel loudly said,
it was brutal.
The track to Pinewood was for the accommodation of freight for the
most part. For the very reason that the owners of the Barnaby
property wished to keep the hotel exclusive, they had fought any
improvement in railroad accommodations.
At this time of night even the station telegraph office was closed;
and George had already informed the guests that there had been a
break in the long-distance telephone service since dark.
Any such thing as a special train to transport the guests to New York
could not be arranged for until the following day.
"And we'd have to put up with vile accommodations from here to the
Junction," explained the excitable Jimson. "Do you realize that this
spur-track roadbed is scarcely fit to pull coal cars over? My wife
couldn't stand it, I am sure."
"How about getting across to the island and to the regular railroad
station at Barr?" John Ryder asked.
"That bridge is practically a wreck. Do you know the bus slumped
clear through it, and will have to be raised by a derrick? And the
road to any other station is impossible for autos. No, we can't get
away and that's all there is to it."
This was the consensus of opinion. The disorganization of the hotel
employees which would follow the closing of the doors of the house
and its abandonment by the guests would make it unsafe to leave
personal property in the hotel. There were half a hundred reasons,
and all very good ones, that proved the guests must remain.
"And in union there is strength," quoted Mr. Jimson.
"We must hang together," declared another.
"Speaking of hanging," observed one, "how would it do to begin with
Bangs? I'd like to see him dangling at the end of a rope."
"Better starve him," murmured another.
But these futile remarks were cut off when John Ryder began to speak
seriously. He suggested that a committee be appointed to confer in a
quiet way with Bangs and try to pacify him if possible--even if it
cost some money. Some arrangement should be made, too, for the
retention of the servants.
Ryder was at once elected by acclamation to head this committee. The
colonel refused to be a member.
"You want cool men--calm men, suh," said the bristling old fellow.
"I am a fire-eater. I'd rather wring that skunk's neck than take a
drink!"
"Oh, Colonel!" exclaimed Jimson, "that is a very strong statement."
"I know it. But it's a fact. I know my weaknesses," said the
colonel modestly.
First the committee were to make sure of the truth of the manager's
statement regarding the coal supply. Then they were to sound the
help through the steward, Al, to find out how many would remain. To
learn what the prospect was for feeding the people in the house,
including the help, was likewise important.
"If the coal gives out," Ryder said, "there is surely coal in the
village here that may be bought. Perhaps not tonight, but early in
the morning. We should be able to find oil lamps and heaters in that
big store which I see is still open for business. The town has no
gas plant, I understand. We are dependent upon the hotel's lighting
plant."
The committee divided to attend to several of these matters before
going to see Bangs, agreeing to meet at the desk in ten minutes.
"I must not leave Ruth alone any longer," thought John Ryder, pulling
himself up short. "By thunder! there must be something more
important for a bridegroom to do on his wedding night than running
about as I am, shouldering other people's troubles. I must go and
take a peep at the dear girl and cheer her up a bit. She'll be
frightened by my remaining so long away, perhaps. No doubt she has
heard by this time of the manager's threat."
As his suite was on the second floor he did not use the elevator, but
ran up the broad, main stairway which led out of the office. Here
the hotel seemed to be running in its usual quiet way.
A white-capped and aproned maid passed him; a bellboy bustled by with
a tray of pitchers in which the ice tinkled; he heard the dull whir
of the elevators. He walked along the broad, central corridor and
turned off at his own proper "alley."
He saw that the door of his suite was open. There were voices which
reached his quickened ear--a man's deep tones and then (and this
startled him) a woman's sharp cry.
He was not yet sufficiently familiar with Ruth's voice to recognize
its tone under stress of emotion. But he felt, somehow, that it was
her cry.
He quickened his step. There was a man standing in the doorway of
the suite. Instantly, from the side view Ryder obtained of his face,
he knew him to be the stranger who had come last to the hotel on this
fateful evening.
"The bungling fool!" thought John Ryder. "Is he going from room to
room in this hotel looking for his friends? Maybe he is not honest.
The disturbed state of the hotel guests would open very easily the
way to business for an industrious burglar."
"I--I don't know you," Ruth said just as Ryder reached the spot.
She stood within the room, clinging with both hands to the edge of
the door and staring at the stranger with such a wild look in her
eyes that her husband was frightened. He turned on the man furiously.
"What do you want? What are you disturbing this lady for?"
"I--I beg your pardon," stammered the stranger, backing away from
both John Ryder and the open door of his suite, his face now
displaying nothing but pain and anxiety. "I have made a mistake--a
terrible mistake."
"Oh, I am so glad you have come," Ruth said quickly to Ryder. "I--I
thought you were lost--or something had happened. And then this man
came----"
She was still staring at the stranger with eyes in which lurked
actual terror. Ryder's fierce aspect seemed to trouble the strange
man.
"I--I beg your pardon--and the lady's," he murmured. "I thought I
was acquainted with her. It--it is a mistake."
"I never saw him in my life!" gasped Ruth.
"It's all right. Mistakes will happen," said Ryder, and entered the
room, shutting the door abruptly in the man's face. He caught Ruth
quickly in his arms with a sort of fierceness this time that was his
man-way of claiming possession, as well as a desire to defend her
from annoyance. "Were you frightened, dearie?" he asked.
"Yes. He--he startled me so. He is a strange looking man. Do you
think him quite--quite right?"
"Not right to come bungling up here and disturbing you," Ryder
responded, tenderly.
She blushed, slipping out of his arms suddenly. "Here, dear," she
said softly. "I have a visitor."
Ryder looked down the room and saw for the first time a large,
smiling woman sitting in a chair beyond the line of half-unpacked
trunks. She was a person whom he knew he had never seen before, and
he was not particularly happy to see her now.
She was a richly dressed--indeed a gaudily dressed--person wearing
many jewels and lacking that quiet demeanor and appearance that Ryder
admired most in womankind. Nevertheless, he walked in with as good a
grace as he could summon while Ruth introduced him.
"This is my husband, Mrs. Judson," she said, and there was a thrill
of pride in her sweet voice that delighted the man. "Mrs. Judson has
been telling me how dreadfully this Mr. Bangs, the hotel manager, is
behaving. Are they actually going to close the hotel? Mrs. Judson
is all upset about it. Being alone here with only a maid, she
doesn't know what to do."
"A committee of the older guests is trying to arrange now to keep the
house open in spite of Bangs," said John Ryder. "But Bangs is a
sharper. He may have fixed things so that we shall be without light
or heat for a part of the night. But to-morrow----"
"Oh, dear!" broke in the large lady in horror. "I'll never dare stay
in my rooms in the dark. And all stark alone. What _shall_ I do?
You know how very helpless we widows feel, Mister--er----" She did
not speak the name, which evidently had escaped her, but her smirk
caused Ryder a feeling of sudden nausea.
"You don't look helpless," he thought, with much disapproval of the
visitor. Mrs. Judson gave one the impression of being a woman amply
able to take care of herself in any emergency. Aloud he said:
"There are men now seeing about obtaining candles and lamps. Perhaps
heat may be furnished some of the rooms with the aid of oil stoves.
Of course, the furnace fires are not out yet."
"It is not cold in here," Ruth said brightly.
"But it will be if what Bangs says is true. He hasn't coal enough to
last until midnight. Oh, he was ready weeks ago for this trick,
without any doubt."
"And we can't get away!" wailed the heavy woman in the armchair.
"When poor, dear Horace was alive nothing like this ever happened to
me. And an oil stove! Horrid, smelly things! Oh, I never could
sleep with one in my room! I am delicate, you know, quite delicate!
Dear Horace always took the greatest care of me!"
Ryder looked at the huge, over-fed woman before him, and had some
difficulty to keep from snorting aloud at her claim of delicate
health.
"And candles!" she wailed on. "You surely can't expect a woman to
dress and undress by the aid of candle light! Oh, it's all
horrid--perfectly horrid!"
She seemed on the verge of tears, and from her size Ryder expected
nothing less than a deluge. He made for the door.
"I'll see what can be done about it," he whispered to Ruth, who
followed him swiftly, to squeeze his hand in both her own. "Don't
you be troubled, dearie. I will not remain away long."
"I was troubled," she confessed in the same tone. "Then I sent a
bellboy to page you and he couldn't find you anywhere."
"The stupid! I was right down there in the foyer. We'll be all
right when this tangle is straightened out. But, for the beginning
of a honeymoon----"
"Yes," she suddenly giggled. "Isn't it just too _funny_? Shall we
really stay?"
"To be sure. Dispossessing a manager who won't pay his rent is all
right; but to try to dispossess a guest who is ready and willing to
pay is quite another matter. It can't be done."
"Then shall I continue to unpack my trunks?"
Ryder smiled at her, then glanced back at the boxes. They were more
than half empty already and the open wardrobe doors gave him a view
of a number of pretty gowns which Ruth had shaken out and hung away.
"Go ahead," he said, easily. "You'll want the furbelows out of the
boxes, anyway. They look as though they'd muss pretty easily."
She glanced at him sidewise with a little blush, and squeezed his
hand again. "Don't you think they're _sweet_?" she whispered. "I
made them almost all myself."
"Is that so?" responded Ryder, with another curious glance at the
gowns in display. Then he went out and she closed the door after
him. When he had walked half the length of the corridor he halted
and came near going back to the suite again. Two startling facts had
finally made an impression on his busy mind.
One was the nature of Ruth's wardrobe. Ryder was not much versed in
women's apparel, and all those pretty, dainty, gray and cream colored
dresses could mean but one thing. To his mind, they were bride's
gowns.
He had met his wife first aboard the _Minnequago_ and had known her
just seven days before they were married. He had seen her wear no
dress on shipboard like these she had brought out of her trunks.
Indeed, Miss Mont had been gowned with severity and with no more
style than the average English woman displays.
"Why," muttered Ryder, "she has a complete bridal outfit--or, it
seems so to me. How could she have got those dresses? And she says
she made them herself!"
He turned back, but bethought him of Mrs. Judson. He could have no
private word with Ruth now. So he walked slowly on toward the main
stairway, and his mind reverted to the second puzzling circumstance
he had noted. There were few if any labels on his wife's trunks.
No trunk can cross the ocean without being plastered over with the
various marks and stamps of the European agencies, and of the
steamship companies. It was a small matter, perhaps--this lack of
the usual labels--but it continued to puzzle John Ryder until he had
descended to the office once more and found himself again in the
thick of the circumstances connected with the attempt of the hotel
manager to turn his guests out of house and home.
CHAPTER VI
BUSINESS METHODS
The members of the committee had regathered and were awaiting their
chairman. Matters had been found to be in a much worse condition
than the guests had really believed.
From the steward they had learned that the whole kitchen was
disorganized, and had been so for some days. He had had the greatest
difficulty in preventing an eruption there.
"Why?" demanded Ryder, having been told this.
"They are afraid they will lose their pay. These French and Italians
are easily excited anyway," explained Jimson, who was not a little
excited himself. "The waiters and the upstairs help are in a blue
funk for the same reason."
"How about the coal?" Ryder asked another man.
"It's every whit as bad as Bangs said. There is only a little
furnace coal. If they use the coal intended for the kitchen fires
there would not be enough to keep the boilers warm until daylight."
"Hang that Bangs!"
"With all my heart," agreed Ryder, grimly. "But that will not get us
any coal tonight--nor keep the hotel warmed and lighted."
"The scoundrel certainly deserves to figure in a necktie party,"
growled one man. "My wife's in hysterics upstairs right now."
"Let us interview this Bangs before he gets away," Ryder said. "I
understand he has really given orders to shut everything down at nine
o'clock, and it only lacks ten minutes of that time now."
The committee moved in a body on the private office. The door was
closed, but Ryder did not give the manager a chance to refuse them
admittance. He entered without knocking and the other determined men
filed in. Bangs sat at his desk scratching off a letter at a furious
pace. But he dropped his pen and turned toward them with a snarl.
"Well, what is it now?"
"We want your attention for a few moments, Mr. Bangs," John Ryder
said quietly.
"Who the deuce are you?" demanded the hotel manager. "You're not
like Brack and Jimson and these other old stagers, who have been here
so long they think they own the house. I never remember of seeing
you before."
Ryder handed him his card. "That is my name," he said, "and I came
into this house for the first time tonight. That, however, is quite
aside from the matter we have come to discuss.
"We, the guests of this hotel, cannot be treated in this cavalier
manner, Mr. Bangs. We will not stand for it. There will be damage
suits after this night's work if you dare follow out your
program--damage suits against the Barnaby estate of course. But I,
for one, shall not be satisfied until I see you properly punished
unless you immediately change your attitude."
He spoke so firmly, and the threatening attitude of his co-workers
was so impressive, that the manager began to cower.
"I tell you I can't do a thing!" he began; but John Ryder stopped him
with raised hand.
"We demand your co-operation in keeping the hotel force together
until the owners can be communicated with and until they send
somebody to take charge here in your place."
"I'll be hanged if I will!" cried Bangs, jumping up.
"And you may be hanged if you don't," declared another of the
committee, putting a rather broad back against the office door.
Again Bangs cowered. These five men might do him bodily injury if
they wished to.
"I can't do a thing, I tell you," he whined. "There's no coal----"
"We know all about that," Ryder interrupted sternly. "And we know
why there is none. You knew this dispossessory proceeding was
pending, and you made your plans to checkmate Giddings by shutting up
the hotel in this way. Without regard for the comfort of your guests
or the rights of your employees, you have tried to whip your enemy,
Giddings, over our shoulders.
"Now we, the guests, have taken the affair into our hands inasmuch as
we propose to keep the hotel open and make the ladies and children,
at least, as comfortable as may be. And we shall not let you leave,
Mr. Bangs, until you have done all in your power to repair the damage
you have already done."
"What can I do?" snarled the manager. "I'm not going to pay for heat
and light and for service in a hotel which I no longer manage."
"You are legally in charge here until the Court puts you out."
"I'll not run this hotel for that Giddings after he's served me in
dispossess proceedings," Bangs said, turned sullen.
"You will help us make the house as comfortable as possible until we
can communicate with this Giddings and inform him of what has
occurred," said Ryder quietly but severely. "You have given orders
for everything to shut down at nine o'clock. You must rescind that
command."
"You can none of you get away after that hour," Bangs said.
"Nor at that time," said Ryder promptly. "If any of your guests are
going on that jerkwater train they are already over there at the
station. But the stampede of the help must be stopped."
"What do you want me to do?" growled Bangs, rather afraid of this
determined John Ryder.
"To tell the engineers to keep the dynamos and boilers running as
long as they have a shovelful of coal. Likewise to send word
throughout the building for all employees who wish to retain their
situations under the new management----"
"What new management?" cried Bangs, leaping up again.
"The management which will follow your régime," Ryder told him
coolly. "You do not suppose for a moment, do you, that the owners of
this property will allow the hotel to close?"
Bangs grinned like an angry dog. "I don't care a hang what they do,"
he said. "I only know I'm out of it."
"You're not out of it yet, Mr. Bangs," Ryder grimly said. "Telephone
to the engine room at once."
The manager picked up the receiver with bad grace. "You are
intimidating me," he complained.
"You bet we are!" exclaimed the man with his back to the door. "And
thank your lucky stars we don't manhandle you in the bargain."
Ryder raised his hand for silence and the manager gave the order to
the engineer. "Now," said Ryder, "call the head chef and have him
inform the kitchen help that the hotel will not be closed and that
their wages will be paid."
"Who's going to pay 'em?" demanded Bangs.
"You do as you are told. The courts will decide that."
Bangs began to bluster; then he caught the look in the eye of the man
with his back against the door and he once more subsided. Together,
Ryder and the burly committeeman were too much for Bangs' courage.
The steward was called in; likewise George, the clerk on duty. The
two were told, Bangs agreeing doggedly, that the employees of the
hotel were to be pacified and the guests to be made as comfortable as
possible until Giddings could be communicated with.
Then the committee of five went back to the crowd in the foyer and
reported progress. Colonel Brack led in acclaiming them public
benefactors. But their work was not yet finished.
Those who knew, declared there was no possibility of finding even a
small supply of coal without considerable delay. The hotel manager
had had an arrangement with the railroad company to furnish coal by
the carload, and the local dealers would not put themselves out to
accommodate the hotel now. Indeed, Bangs had made himself locally
disliked.
"The best we can do is to send our committee over to Cal Crabtree's
store and buy up all the lamps and oil stoves he's got in stock,"
Colonel Brack said. "I'd head such a foraging party if it wasn't for
my artificial limb. I'm afraid I'll get rheumatism in that if I go
out at night," and the jovial colonel chuckled.
But when it was vociferously agreed that the already elected
committee, of which John Ryder was chairman, should do this
purchasing and it had started out to do what Colonel Brack suggested,
one of them observed:
"Now, isn't that the colonel all over? That bum peg of his keeps him
out of a lot of trouble. He's off this committee because some of us
will have to put up money and then run the risk of getting it back
from the estate, or from that slippery Bangs. The colonel gets cold
in that artificial foot plaguey easy if the cards go against him at
poker."
And indeed, before they got to the general store, the committee was
in a wrangle over this very thing. Who was going to put up the money
for the lamps and stoves? Nobody seemed to care to step info the
breech. John Ryder listened and said nothing at first. Finally he
suggested:
"Let's divide it among us. Think of the ladies----"
"Let those who have got 'em, think of 'em," snapped one bachelor.
"That's nothing in my young sweet life."
"Oh, I say, Long, you wouldn't mind putting up a share for Mrs.
Judson, would you?" chuckled another.
"By jove! that's what I am afraid of," declared the bachelor. "If
the widow ever heard I put up money to buy her an oil heater, she'd
have me in court in breach of promise proceedings."
It was evident the large lady was a standing joke among the men at
the hotel. Ryder frowned. He was sorry that she had forced her
society on Ruth.
Meanwhile, the four other members of the committee agreed that they
would not put their hands in their pockets. On the very steps of the
store they halted and vociferously stated this decision.
"Let's go back and take up a collection," said the bachelor member.
"I know those ginks back there. There are more hard boiled eggs in
that bunch at Pinewood Inn than you could find anywhere else along
the coast. I'm not going to be nicked for more than my share."
With this his brother-committeemen seemed to agree. All but Ryder.
The latter looked at his watch. It was already half after nine.
There was every sign as they came along the street that the villagers
were retiring for the night; and as they stood discussing the matter
the proprietor of the store began to put out his lights.
"You can go back and ask for further instructions if you wish to,
gentlemen," said Ryder in disgust. "But I will go in and see what I
can do. There is no time to waste."
"At your peril, Mr. Ryder," said one. "Don't drag us into it."
"I never forced a man into a deal yet--especially if he was a bad
loser," declared John Ryder, and turned his back on the others to
enter the store alone.
He found the proprietor, a shrewd, long-headed countryman, ready to
be affable, or businesslike, as the case might be. Ryder knew well
how to tackle such a character. He had been doing business with all
kinds of men all his life. He went directly to the point of the
matter.
"I want every oil lamp you've got in the shop, and all your candles,
and those oil heaters yonder. If you have oil, I want a barrel. And
I want you to find me a truckman right now to cart 'em over to the
hotel. I'll give you cash, or my check, in full for the whole
amount. What say?"
"It's a bargain," laconically said the storekeeper, and there was
little haggling either, over the price of the articles bought. Ryder
did not believe that Crabtree was over-reaching him on that point,
for he seemed to sympathize with the situation of the people in the
hotel.
"That bridge breaking down is a bad business. Foolish, too,"
Crabtree agreed. "The Highway Department of this town is about as
useful as a left-handed boot to a man who's only got a wooden leg on
that side of him. And let me tell you, Mr. Ryder, the bridge won't
be repaired again in a hurry. Nothing ever is done in a hurry by our
road menders and bridge builders."
Ryder was more intimately interested in the supplies he could buy.
There were two full boxes of so-called "waxlights" and a box of
tallow candles of the double-six size. There were over a hundred
lamps of all kinds and sizes, and the oil stoves numbered
twenty-three. The check Ryder made out was a substantial one.
In half an hour he was back at the hotel where the guests were
wrangling in the foyer over how the bill for supplies should be
apportioned. The other members of the committee were finally
instructed to pay for the goods out of a collection of about two
hundred dollars that had been grudgingly made.
"Here's Ryder!" exclaimed Colonel Brack, red-faced and excited. "He
should head this committee again. He is a chap who _does_ things.
Ryder forever!"
The colonel's evening potations began to show upon him. Ryder tried
to brush by on his way to the desk.
"You're just the man we want on this committee," reiterated the
colonel, following him.
"What committee?" the business man asked.
"The committee on buying supplies."
"It discharged itself half an hour ago," said Ryder, bruskly. "And
now there is nothing for it to do."
"Why not?" gasped several, including the colonel, who asked the
question truculently.
John Ryder bit off the end of his cigar and lit it calmly.
"As far as I know, gentlemen, I've bought up every lamp, every oil
stove, every candle, and all the surplus supply of oil in this
village tonight. I bought them on to my own private account. If I
decide to resell them I'll let you know later."
CHAPTER VII
SHOCK UPON SHOCK
The clamor of those who heard John Ryder's statement drew most of the
crowd surging toward the desk, before which the business man stood.
Colonel Brack, reddening and with glittering eyes, advanced upon
Ryder with his "step-clump" stride, demanding:
"Suh! do you call this a gentlemanly thing to do? Why, suh, the
women and children in this hotel are at your mercy. It's an outrage,
suh!"
"The rest of the committee backed out on the steps of the store,"
said Ryder coolly. "Time was passing."
"Why, the money is already put up for the supplies," cried somebody
with much bombast.
"Not for these supplies that I have obtained," said Ryder decisively.
"In the first place two hundred dollars will not go far toward the
purchase of the goods."
"You mean to profit upon our necessities, do you, Mr. Ryder?" cried
Jimson shrilly.
"Shylock!" exclaimed another of the angry men.
Ryder turned his back upon them and approached George.
"I've bought the stuff," he said shortly. "It was a perfectly
legitimate transaction."
"By gad, suh!" reiterated the wrathful colonel, "you have taken an
unfair advantage of a party of gentlemen who trusted you. You're
a----"
Ryder failed to hear the remainder of the colonel's sputterings. But
a voice nearer to his ear could not be drowned. This said:
"By George! that Ryder's a cleaner. He was never known to let a good
chance slip in the Street, they say, and I can believe it. He's got
us where the hair's short--and it's our own fault."
John Ryder was angry. The manner in which the other members of the
committee had dodged financial responsibility and were now declaiming
against his "grasping" methods, exasperated him. He would not give
them the satisfaction of an explanation. He took nobody but the
steward and the clerk into his confidence.
It was while he was discussing matters with these two employees of
the hotel that the engineer sent up word that he had been forced to
bank the fires under the boilers, but that the dynamos would be kept
running until midnight.
"That man seems faithful," Ryder observed. "Has word been sent
around for the help to come together for a talk with us? We want to
know how many will remain here."
The steward turned red and blurted out: "I don't believe--that is, it
will be difficult to get many of them together, sir."
"Why?"
"It is believed that Mr. Bangs will not pay wages beyond today, and
the men and girls are deserting. Some went on that nine o'clock
train, and others have found means of getting away from the hotel."
"By thunder!" ejaculated Ryder. "Where's Bangs? We'll get what's
left of the help together and make him assure them----"
"I--I don't think Mr. Bangs is here," hesitated George.
"What's that?"
"I couldn't help his going, sir. I could not hold him by force, you
know. You gentlemen should have had him watched."
"What has he done?" asked Ryder, recovering his calmness.
"Right after you gentlemen left I heard him telephoning to the
railroad station. The operator and agent were not there, but the
conductor of that combination was. He's a friend of Bangs'. The
train was held ten minutes. It did not get away until ten minutes
past nine. And I think Mr. Bangs went on it."
"And his going has disorganized the whole household," the steward
added, sadly. "The chef has the kitchen fairly under control now.
He's an Italian--Vitalli is his name--not a bad fellow at all and
attached to the house rather than to Bangs--as I am and George, here,
is."
"You believe the estate will do the right thing by you?" Ryder asked
curiously.
"Yes," said the steward. "The heirs will not wish the house closed.
In such a way, too! They would consider it a disgrace. Pinewood Inn
is one of the oldest hotels on the coast. This Mr. Giddings, the
lawyer, doesn't know much about the hotel business, I fancy, or he
would not have acted so precipitately and given Mr. Bangs a chance to
put the guests out. If all the help would work together we'd come
out all right. But most of them care nothing about the hotel or the
welfare of its guests," and the steward wagged his head.
"Where are the other clerks?" Ryder asked of George.
"Mr. Manger, the head clerk, went to town day before yesterday.
Somehow, I feel that he had some wind of what was coming. But heaven
knows _I_ didn't, Mr. Ryder."
"Or you would have gone, likewise?" asked the man of business, with a
grim smile, but watching the ruddy young fellow with his plastered
yellow hair in some curiosity.
"Well--no," hesitated George. "I think I should have hung on in any
case. You see," he added, "I'm rather fond of a scrap. And Jim
Howe--he relieves me at midnight--_he'll_ see it through, no fear!"
"Well, gentlemen," Ryder finally said with a sigh, "there doesn't
seem to be much now that we can do save to sit tight. You two
influence all the employees you can to stick by the ship. These
lights and stoves and oil are already at the door, I have no doubt.
You take charge of them all," he said to the steward, "and get
somebody to fix up the lamps and fill them. But give none of them
out until George, here, has listed them. He knows more about the
guests and their needs than any of us, I presume."
Ryder had no time to go upstairs just then; but fearing Ruth would be
again disturbed by his continued absence, he scratched off a little
note and handed it to one of the boys.
"Now, give that to nobody but Mrs. Ryder," he told the boy,
remembering Mrs. Judson, who he feared might still be hovering about
the suite.
Ryder observed that the male guests who had heretofore been so
friendly with him now eyed him askance and that Colonel Brack had
gathered around him a group that he was haranguing vigorously. By
the fiery glances cast in his direction by the old campaigner Ryder
was quite sure Brack spoke of him.
"I am certainly getting _persona non grata_ in this hotel," murmured
Ryder, with grim humor.
Then, of a sudden, he saw that one of those listening to Colonel
Brack was the man who had disturbed Ruth at the door of their suite.
Ryder turned back to speak once more with the clerk:
"Who is that fellow?" he asked, calling George's attention to the
stranger.
"That man? Let's see--he came tonight. Refused to be turned away
although at that time, being under Mr. Bangs' instructions, I told
him we could not accommodate him. And I have not yet assigned him a
room. But his name's White."
George whirled the register about and pointed to the last name on the
page. Ryder murmured it over to himself: "'John B. White, Rome.'
"Rome, what? New York, Georgia, or the original home of the Cæsar
family?" Ryder asked carelessly.
"I don't know, sir. He just wrote that down. I don't really know
what do to with him. I think from something he dropped that he came
here expecting to find friends."
"And didn't find them?" Ryder's curiosity prompted him to demand.
"He hasn't seemed to."
"Who are his friends? Don't you know their names?"
"I--I---- Well, I declare, sir, he did mention one name. That of a
Miss--Miss---- Well, it escapes me," said George, in confusion. "It
was just at the outburst of this trouble, and I was all mixed up. I
am sure it was a lady he asked me about. Perhaps it is a runaway
match and the lady has backed out," and George chuckled at his own
joke.
"He doesn't act much like a bridegroom," observed Ryder, still
watching White.
"I might say that about you, Mr. Ryder," ventured the clerk slyly.
"By thunder! that's so," admitted Ryder. "Nor do I feel like one.
This is a nice mess for a fellow to get into at such a time. I can't
say that I am glad I came to Pinewood Inn for my honeymoon, George."
But as he strolled away from the hotel desk his mind was still fixed
on the man, White. He remembered the bellboy coming through the
foyer paging "John B. White" and saying that Mrs. White wanted him
upstairs. Now, hang it! if Mrs. White was here, didn't the hotel
clerk know her?
"Odd--deucedly odd," thought John Ryder. "And how startled that
fellow was when he heard the boy. Or was he? Not a bad looking
fellow; but he's queer. Ruth says he is touched in the upper story,
and I believe myself that some of his buttons are loose.
"Or, if he is a crook--and that would not be so strange," added
Ryder, letting his mind run upon this train of thought. "A crook
with a woman accomplice in this hotel might easily make a good haul
tonight, considering the state affairs are in. I wonder if there
isn't a detective attached to Pinewood Inn."
Before he could turn back to ask George about this, his attention was
attracted from the man, White, to an old gentleman who had just left
the elevator leaning on the arm of a colored man. The old fellow was
in some excitement, and he hobbled quickly to the desk, his gray hair
bristling from under the rim of the round black cap he wore, his feet
shuffling in gay carpet slippers.
It was evident that he had retired to his room for the night, and had
made himself comfortable there. Something had routed him out and he
had merely shrugged himself into a coat before coming down to the
office.
"Look here, sir! Look here, sir!" the old man cried, shaking his
cane at George in a hand that quivered with palsy. "What does this
mean? How dare that Bangs turn us out of the hotel in such a way?
I'll write Mr. Giddings about it. Mr. Giddings is my friend. He
will not see me so insulted and annoyed."
Ryder heard an amused bystander say:
"Here's old Pop Cudger; he's on the warpath, too. Now there'll be
something doing."
"Get him and the colonel together and there will be fireworks, sure
enough," agreed another man, with a chuckle.
George was trying to pacify the angry old man, but the latter would
not accord the clerk's explanation much attention.
"It is nonsense! It is preposterous!" cried Mr. Cudger. "Mr.
Giddings is my friend----"
"And if Giddings hadn't been so anxious to put Bangs out we wouldn't
all be in this pickle," somebody remarked loud enough for Mr. Cudger
to hear.
"Ha!" exclaimed the latter, turning a withering glance upon the
speaker, and then immediately turning back to George. "Is it true
that the lights are to be put out?"
"The dynamos can't run later than midnight. Then the lights will
naturally have to be shut off all over the hotel, Mr. Cudger. I'm
sorry, sir----"
"Lights turned out--and half the help running away?" cried Cudger.
"Next thing, I suppose, James, here, will be leaving me in the
lurch," and he glared at the colored man.
"Oh, no, suh! I'se gwine to stay right heah by yo'," declared James.
"And what's going to become of my picture?" demanded the old
gentleman, beginning on another tack. "What provision has been made
to guard my picture, sir---- Van Scamp's famous 'Cheesemonger'?
That was hung in the parlor by special permission of Mr. Giddings,
sir."
"I don't think anybody will touch your picture, Mr. Cudger," said the
clerk, soothingly.
"Ha! How do you know that? In the state of confusion the house is
now in, some vandal might easily cut the canvas out of its frame. It
cost me many thousands of dollars, sir--and it's the finest example
of Van Scamp's art in existence today. I will not trust it unguarded
in that parlor under present circumstances."
"But I can't furnish a watchman to guard your picture," George urged.
"Well, where's the house detective?" demanded the old gentleman. "I
must have protection for my picture."
"You certainly can't expect Miss Solomons to stand guard over it!"
the clerk exclaimed. "You'd better have it removed to your room."
"You clown!" exclaimed the crotchety old man. "It wouldn't go
through the door of my room. That is why it has to be hung in your
miserable parlor." And as the clerk restrained both his temper and
his tongue, he added: "If you will not furnish a watchman--and Mr.
Giddings shall hear of your refusal, sir!--then James will have to
guard the picture."
"Oh, no suh!" murmured the colored man. "Dat ain't no place fo' me
all night. No, suh! Yo' might need me----"
"You will have to do it, James," repeated the old man. "If the
lights go out what is going to prevent that canvas being cut out of
the frame?"
"Das jest it, suh!" rejoined the colored man. "I don't want to stay
dere in de dark--no, suh!"
"You are a coward, James--a pusillanimous coward!"
"Yes, suh! Dat may be, suh. But yo' might need me in de night."
"Of course I shall need you. I'll likely have one of my choking
spells--or something. But I can't risk losing my Van Scamp. We
shall both have to watch it, James. We will camp in the parlor all
night.
"Young man," turning to George, "have a bed brought into the parlor
for me. I will sleep there, and James shall keep watch."
"But, Mr. Cudger, that is the main parlor of the hotel. We cannot
very easily let you sleep there," cried the distracted George.
At this point Ryder lost interest in the entire affair. The boy he
had sent upstairs with the note to Ruth tugged at his sleeve.
"I can't find the lady, sir," he said, returning the letter to Ryder.
"Can't find who?"
"Mrs. Ryder, sir."
The man was amazed, and for an instant he was a little frightened.
"Where did you go, boy?" he demanded.
"To Suite Three--where you told me. She wasn't there."
"How do you know she wasn't there?"
"The lady told me so. The lady who was there. She told me I'd made
a mistake."
Ryder started for the staircase, his mind in a whirl. Where could
Ruth have gone? Possibly to Mrs. Judson's apartment. Yet if so, who
had met the boy and sent him away from Suite Three with such a
message?
CHAPTER VIII
THE BRIDAL NIGHT
The excitement among the guests had now spread to the floors above.
Too, there was a noticeable dearth of serving people. In the parlor
on this second floor into which Ryder glanced curiously on his way to
his own rooms, was a crowd of women with a sprinkling of husbands,
discussing the situation in varying degrees of anxiety.
The corridors and parlor were ablaze with electric lights, and Ryder
saw the great picture, covering half the further end-wall of the
room, about which Mr. Cudger was making such a row at the clerk's
desk.
An especially arranged string of lights over the picture cast the
proper glow upon it. It really was the work of a master of color,
but that its owner should consider it in danger of suffering the fate
of some of the great paintings that have been stolen, rather amused
John Ryder.
While he stood for a moment looking at the picture he realized that a
sudden hush had fallen upon the several groups in the parlor, and he
saw that the majority of the guests there assembled were staring at
him. Whether their interest was aroused because he was a bridegroom
or because he had cornered the lighting and heating supplies of the
village, the man of business did not know--nor did he care. He
shrugged his shoulders and passed on.
A bridegroom! Well, this did not seem a very fortunate beginning for
one's honeymoon. Another man might have easily slipped from under
the duties that had settled on John Ryder's shoulders. But it was
his way, when he saw things going wrong, to step in and right them.
He had given his mind to this business of trying to bring some order
out of the chaotic condition of affairs in the hotel with as much
zest as he ever gave to business matters. Now, as he approached the
apartment in which he and Ruth had expected to be so happy in each
other's society for the next few weeks, he tried to throw off all the
anxieties that had recently accumulated in his mind.
This was his bridal night. He had fallen in love with the most
beautiful and charming woman he had ever met, and had married her
offhand. Were it not for this troublesome matter of the hotel
closing, he would be the happiest man alive.
Indeed, he was the happiest man alive in any case. Had he not just
been married to the loveliest and sweetest girl in the world? Was
not _his wife_ (John Ryder almost strutted) waiting for him in their
rooms at this very moment?
Then a feeling of humility, unusual humility in this successful
business man who was accustomed to getting what he wanted, overcame
him. What was he to have won this jewel of a woman in so short a
time? Seven days, and she had consented to become his wife! Men
sometimes strove and worked for the love of a woman for months--for
years! But no--that could not be real love! When two people loved
as he and Ruth loved, there was no waiting in uncertainty. They knew
it--they must know it--at once.
In spite of his thirty-five years and his somewhat ruthless business
career, John Ryder was undoubtedly still very much of a boy. And
indeed, in love matters, he was but a boy, inasmuch as never before
had he even imagined himself in love.
"Confound this old ranch, anyway!" John Ryder muttered. "Why should
I bother my head about it--or about these silly folks in it? I
declare! we'll find some way of getting out of the pickle ourselves
tomorrow morning and go to some place where we can enjoy our
honeymoon undisturbed."
Then he remembered that Ruth had chosen Pinewood particularly. It
might be only a whim on her part; but he was in a mind just then to
satisfy even her whims, if it could be done.
"This man, Giddings, will show up, and things will probably be
running all right before tomorrow night. And Ruth--God bless that
sweet name!--has taken all the trouble to unpack. By thunder!" he
added, "it's funny about those dresses of hers. I must ask her----"
He had come to the door and opened it softly--so softly indeed that
the occupant of the room did not hear him. His heart throbbed and
his eyes actually smarted with unshed drops as he looked down the
long apartment and saw his wife sitting reading in the radiance of
the drop-light at the table.
She was alone. The other lights had been extinguished, and she sat
awaiting his return, evidently with her mind not wholly upon the book
in her lap, for she turned no leaves while Ryder watched her.
In her attitude and in the loosely flowing gown she had donned since
dinner, she made a delightful picture. Ryder drank in the details as
he stood, shrinking from breaking the spell of her reverie.
It was by no means a sad mood which held her, for her lips slowly
parted in a most ravishing smile. He could see this, though it was
her profile only he watched from his station at the door.
He was about to close the latter softly when she dropped her book and
her fingers fluttered about her throat for a moment. She loosened
her gown there, thrust one hand within the laces, and drew forth a
tiny object attached to a thin gold chain which he had already
noticed about her throat. The ornament she held for a moment in her
palm was a locket.
When she snapped it open and gazed upon what it contained she turned
a little so that he saw her expression of countenance more clearly.
It startled him.
He was a sane and level-headed man. He was thirty-five, and the
foolish emotions of adolescence should not have ruffled his calm.
Yet aboard the steamship he had felt an unrecognized pang of jealousy
whenever he saw Miss Mont talking with Marks, the theatrical man. A
similar pang smote him now.
No human being ever looked as Ruth looked unless the object of such
gaze was a dearly loved one, or the memento of a loved one! While
Ryder watched, his wife raised the locket reverently and pressed her
lips to the object it contained.
He must have uttered some sound, or moved, or the door latch clicked
as he closed it. She started, saw him, and hastily concealed the
locket in her bosom, rising in some confusion to greet him.
The arrow of suspicion first driven into his mind when he had seen
that stranger at their door and Ruth had seemed so frightened, was
barbed. Now that he sought to cast it out of his thought, it rankled.
What! was he of a low, suspicious, jealous nature? Was he the kind
of cur to make himself and his wife miserable by a jealousy that was
insulting to them both?
This woman and he had known each other but a short time before their
hasty marriage, but Ryder flattered himself that he had drawn from
her a rather full and connected story of her life up to the day she
had stepped aboard the _Minnequago_.
There had been nothing in her story, he was positive, of which she
needed to be ashamed. There had been no man but him. She had told
him that frankly.
She might possess some keepsake; but only such as an honorable wife
might have. He knew it--he would stake his life upon it!
Perhaps it was some dear reminder of the mother she had scarcely
known. He had carried his mother's wedding ring all these years
until he had given it to the clergyman to slip on Ruth's finger. He
saw the glint of that ring now as she advanced to meet him with hands
outstretched and the same light in her eyes that he had seen just now
while she bent above the locket.
"I am a fool!" bethought. "A wicked fool."
He hurried down the room and clasped her yielding body within the
circle of his arms. There was a passion in his embrace which he had
scarcely expressed before, and she seemed to feel it.
"Dearest!" she whispered. "I am glad you have come back, I was
getting lonesome again," and she gave him her lips of her own accord.
The heart of John Ryder beat higher. He remembered what he had told
her aboard ship:
"I'll never bring tears to your eyes, but always laughter to your
heart!"
"And a villain I'd be to break my word. Now is not the time to ask
an explanation of such a simple act. It might show her how mean and
vile a thought I had," was his thought.
"I sent a message up to you a while ago, but the boy seemed unable to
find you," he said.
"Why, I never saw such stupid boys as they have at this hotel!
Another knocked on our door while Mrs. Judson was here and asked for
somebody else."
"Oh, the guests are all around, visiting in each other's rooms, I
presume," he observed. "The whole household is upset. And you never
saw such a lot of cranks as there are here in your life. A circus
sideshow has no more freaks, I guess, than a hotel like this Pinewood
Inn."
Ryder, laughing, told of old Mr. Cudger and his picture, and sketched
the character of Colonel Aurelius Brack. Incidentally he told her
something of what had been done, though in an impersonal way, to make
the guests comfortable and to keep the employees of the hotel on
their jobs.
"Dear me, John!" she cried, leading him to a couch where they could
sit side by side, "I thought this was to be a vacation for both of
us," looking at him roguishly. "A honeymoon! It should begin pretty
soon, don't you think?"
"Do you want to pack those trunks again and leave in the morning?"
"No-o. I want to stay here if we can. But can't some of the other
men attend to all these things?"
"They are attending to them. They are discussing them to beat the
band! But nobody seemed to have any really practical ideas--not when
it touched their pocketbooks," and Ryder laughed grimly.
"I'm going down once more to see about something particular. The
dining-room is still open. It will be late before we get to bed, and
you only pecked at your dinner, I noticed. Don't you want to come
down for a bite--or will it be too much trouble?"
"Ah-ha!" she said shaking a finger at him, "you have the late-supper
habit. I believe you are a gay boy. I certainly shall not let my
hubby go out alone to suppers. And--whisper it!--I am hungry. I was
so excited when we arrived. And people stared so at us down
there----"
"They'll stare now," he said smiling.
"Especially if I should go down in this robe?" and she blushed as she
sprang up from the couch. "I will put on one of my nicest and,"
looking at him from across the room with sparkling eyes, "bridiest
gowns!"
She disappeared within the curtains of the bedchamber. Ryder started
up.
"Oh, by the way, about those gowns--" he began awkwardly, when a
summons at the door terminated his proposed speech abruptly. The
steward had sent up for him to come down in haste. The supplies from
the store had arrived, and the guests were clamoring at the storeroom
door for a distribution of the lamps and candles.
Ryder stepped back to the door of the inner room.
"I've got to run down again, Ruth," he said.
She uttered a little scream when he appeared in the doorway; but then
she came to kiss him without affectation. Her white shoulders and
arms, bared for the moment, almost dazzled him. Ryder smiled down
into her eyes and saw in their depths what he wished to see.
"Come below when you are ready. There is a little waiting room at
the foot of the main stairway and you can see all over the office
from there. I'll probably see you come down; but if I'm not in
sight, go to the dining-room, if you like, and select a table."
He said this, kissed her again, and hastened after the steward's
messenger. Descending in the elevator he found a crowd about the
little office in which the steward made up his accounts, just back of
the café.
Colonel Brack was foremost in the disturbance, and when Ryder
appeared the old campaigner turned upon him wrathfully.
"See here, Ryder!" he exclaimed, "you can't do this. You must have
some of the instincts of a gentleman about you, and you should
remember the women----"
"I can excuse a man who has been drinking," interposed Ryder sharply;
"and I cannot strike a cripple. But I advise you to have a care how
you address me."
Brack threw himself forward at him; but two of his friends held back
the unsteady old fire-eater. "By gad, suh, I'd call you out for that
if you were not such a dog, suh!"
"I am not dog enough to run at every fool's call," responded Ryder.
And then he ignored the sputtering Brack, turning to the remainder of
the party: "Gentlemen, I shall see that you make no raid on these
supplies I have secured. They are my private property and I shall do
with them as I see fit."
"My goodness, man! you don't intend to freeze us out completely, do
you?" gasped Jimson, whose wife was an invalid.
"I shall distribute them as I choose and under such terms as I see
fit," Ryder repeated calmly. "The steward is to have direct control
of them. Within the next hour, and before the electric lights are
put out, the matter will all be arranged.
"None of you at first wished to take any financial responsibility for
the good of the general herd. I took that responsibility. Why
should I not reap my proper reward?" and he smiled at them grimly.
Then he shut the door of the office in their faces and consulted with
the steward again.
"How many of the help will stay?" he asked.
"Perhaps half, sir. Some of the guests' private servants--the maids
and valets--have gone already with the others on that train. There
are drafts being made on George and me for some of the maids and
waiters----"
"Cut that off. Refuse everybody," advised Ryder. "These people will
have to get along without such personal service for the present.
They should know that without explanation. You need every man and
woman you've got on your roster, don't you?"
"Why, sir, I don't see how we shall get along at all with so few in
the morning."
"So I thought. Now, follow out my instructions to the letter in the
matter of the placing of the oil lamps. Send the porters around
through the corridors to screw up the brackets for the bracket lamps.
There are more than four dozen of those. We'll decide about the
stoves later. It is not getting very cold out of doors, and nobody
will suffer much before bedtime."
He left the steward's room and went back to the office, ignoring the
men who stood about and looked at him as though he were a dog in a
strange town. As he walked down the long corridor and came in sight
of the stairway he observed Ruth standing at the foot of the flight.
Half the men in the foyer had turned to look at her, and Ryder saw
her color and shrink toward the curtained entrance of the dining-room.
Ryder did not wonder that the other guests stared at her. This did
not fan any foolish jealousy into flame. It was because she was so
very, very beautiful that she attracted attention.
If she had been attractive in the traveling dress she had worn at
dinner, this gray and pink costume enhanced her beauty marvelously.
The wonder of it smote Ryder again. How came his wife by such gowns?
When did she get them? What did it mean?
And then something occurred to draw his mind from this thought. He
saw Ruth whisper to a passing bellboy and then she disappeared into
the dining-room.
Ryder walked slowly forward expecting the boy would come directly to
him. But to his amazement the messenger did not glance in his
direction. Instead the boy approached a group in one corner and
Ryder saw that the man calling himself "John B. White" was a member
of that group.
The bellboy said something. Ryder was watching White's face. He saw
the man pale, then color, and with quick steps he crossed the foyer
and entered the dining-room as though directly in answer to the
summons from Mrs. Ryder!
The half-stunned bridegroom caught at the sleeve of the bellboy as he
came back.
"See here!" he whispered, fiercely, in the ear of the startled
messenger, "who did the lady send for?"
"Mr. White," was the answer of the boy, and looked at Ryder in wonder.
CHAPTER IX
WITH THE WORLD SHUT OUT
Ryder stopped dead in his tracks and let the boy pass on. His
usually well ordered mind was a chaos.
To see Ruth deliberately send for that man whom she had declared she
did not know, and seemingly make an engagement to meet him in the
hotel dining-room! Well! it was enough to make any husband
suspicious.
John Ryder's impulse was to follow swiftly after White. Had he done
so, there would have been an ugly scene in the dining-room of
Pinewood Inn. But the blaze of anger that immediately leaped up
within him, and would have choked his utterance and perhaps made him
disgrace himself, warned Ryder that it would be the part of wisdom
for him to cool down before presenting himself in the dining-room.
He swung on his heel and returned along the corridor. The café door
was right before him. He was not a drinking man--that is, one who
made a practice of patronizing a bar, or drinking other than at his
meals; but the swinging door of the hotel café invited him, and he
felt that if ever in his life he wanted a drink it was now.
The bar had been well patronized all the evening, the trade keeping
the two white jacketed men behind it on the jump. Here was the storm
center of the indignant outburst against the hotel management, and
Colonel Brack's frequent visits to the bar had increased his fluency
and fanned the fires of his rage against what he loudly termed "this
beastly imposition, suh!"
He was calling it this and harder things when Ryder entered. The
latter slipped quietly up to the bar, told the man what he wanted,
and waited to sip the appetizer without giving the least attention to
the other patrons. But his appearance did not pass unmarked. There
were plenty of trouble breeders ready to call the colonel's attention
to Ryder's presence.
Suddenly there was a roar at the end of the bar and the colonel,
crying, "Lemme at him! Lemme see him!" charged down the line,
brushing the men along the rail away like flies.
The crowd cleared the way instantly, leaving the space open between
the wrathful old campaigner and the man quietly sipping his sherry
and bitters. Perhaps the suspicion that the colonel was in the habit
of "going heeled" made the shrinkage of the men hanging on the
bar-rail so unanimous.
Colonel Brack, afflicted with an artificial limb, was not possessed
of that grace of movement necessary to make a man a personable figure
in leading a cotillion; but he was getting over the floor with mighty
strides until he suddenly awoke to the fact that none of his friends
was restraining him.
Not a single man in the group of his adherents laid hold on his
coat-tails or tried to soothe and pacify the doughty warrior, while
Ryder stood coolly sipping his drink.
It was an embarrassing moment. The colonel halted midway in his
flight and glanced hastily about; but nobody came tardily to his aid.
They all plainly considered that John Ryder deserved all that was
coming to him--and they were willing in this case to let the colonel
go ahead.
Ryder meanwhile watched the colonel curiously, but made no move to
guard himself from the threatened attack. For fourteen years Colonel
Brack had been a picturesque figure in the café of Pinewood Inn. It
was whispered among those whom the colonel had taken into his
confidence at odd and various times, that he had in the West a
reputation for being "a bad man to stir up, suh!"
Usually he played his cards so well that he was "saved by his
friends" when upon the verge of doing something rash. In this case
everybody was willing to see John Ryder get all that the colonel
threatened him with. And it suddenly smote the old fire-eater, and
smote him hard, that he had "overplayed his hand."
The crowd had rapidly got out of his way, and he had all the room he
needed for either fisticuffs or guns. Ryder finished his sherry, and
placed the glass softly on the bar. His movements were as deliberate
as the colonel's had been impetuous. The latter finally found his
voice.
"Suh! my contempt for you, and the interference of my friends here,
are all that save you from the punishment you deserve, suh! Crippled
as I am, honorably and in my country's cause" (it was not generally
known that Colonel Brack had lost his leg in a premature explosion in
the Leading Sinner Mine, from which still-paying proposition he drew
his small income), "and old as I am, nothing less would keep me from
laying violent hands upon you, suh!"
Ryder turned away from the bar and, as he did so, he snapped his
fingers under the colonel's glowing nose.
"Cut it short, Colonel, I'm busy," he said. "Haven't you anything
else to say to me? No? Then--good-night!" and he walked out of the
café.
It was a cruel blow to the colonel's popularity. The crowd began to
snicker, and the snicker grew to a loud and general laugh. Colonel
Brack's prestige as a "bad man" melted, and was gone at the Pinewood
Inn bar forever.
Ryder, perhaps somewhat relieved of his ill temper, it having found a
vent in this incident, walked directly to the dining-room. He
glanced about for White but did not see him. Was the man still with
Mrs. Ryder?
The moment had perhaps arrived for the mystery to be explained. The
thought made him secretly tremble. It is facing the unknown that
makes cowards of us all.
But John Ryder's countenance did not betray his inward feelings. He
walked into the dining-room in his usual, dignified manner.
Everything was rose-tinted from the shaded lamps on each table. He
almost instantly saw his wife sitting at a cozy table, and with her
was Mrs. Judson.
White was not in sight. There were perhaps two dozen little parties
sprinkled about; but with none of them was the individual who had
earned so much of John Ryder's attention.
Ryder, appearing much calmer than he really was, approached his wife
and her companion. Ruth seemed undisturbed save that her face was a
trifle paler than it had been. But it lit up with pleasure and her
eyes shone when she saw Ryder coming.
And this look staggered the man. There was nothing furtive--nothing
secretive--in Ruth's manner. It was disgraceful to think of her
having some secret from him when her beautiful face beamed such love
and happiness at his approach.
"I'm a fool--a cad--a scoundrel!" he told himself savagely. "I ought
to tell her what is troubling me right now and have the matter
explained. Confound this old busybody, anyway!"
But he managed to hide his dislike for the widow as he sat down.
"Really, your wife looked so lonely, that I had to come over and talk
with her," cried the vivacious Mrs. Judson, shaking her lorgnette at
Ryder. "You shameful men--going off by yourselves--herding together
socially--and in that vulgar café, I'll be bound! I declare! the
ordinary man wouldn't give up his nightcap even on his wedding night.
Fie! For shame!"
Ruth blushed faintly, and looked at Ryder apologetically. The latter
checked his real feelings and displayed an emotionless face. The
widow rambled on:
"I got into the habit of taking a late bite with poor dear Horace.
He always liked it. And to-night when we were all so upset I knew I
couldn't sleep without it. I really get so lonely--living alone and
eating alone----"
What could Ryder do? He looked at Ruth. She made a little _moue_
with her pretty lips and shrugged her shoulders slightly.
"We shall be glad to have you take supper with us, Mrs. Judson,"
Ryder said, telling the lie with an expressionless face.
"Now, isn't that too, too sweet of you?" gushed the widow. "And when
I know you must be just longing to be tête-à-tête--both of you. Now,
don't deny it!"
Their faces did not, if their murmurs belied their expression of
countenance. But Mrs. Judson ran on untiringly--she was a "fluid"
speaker--and settled herself more comfortably in her chair.
Evidently Ryder had her on his hands, and he beckoned the waiter so
as to have it over with as soon as possible.
Ruth had said she was hungry, and Mrs. Judson looked like a woman
with a hearty appetite. Her order did not belie her appearance.
Ryder was too much disturbed in his mind to know whether he could eat
or not; but he ordered something, and tried to be social while a
dozen different threads of thought were entangled in his brain.
"I think it's so romantic, don't you know, for you two to get married
and come right here when the hotel is so disrupted," gushed the widow.
"Very romantic," acquiesced Ryder grimly.
"You two poor babes in the woods. No! I'm going to call you Romeo
and Juliet," she declared. "I'm sure the opportunity for your
husband to be a romantic knight," looking at Ruth, "is just as good
in this hotel under present conditions as he would have found in the
days of the Montagues and Capulets.
"He has surely rescued one lone dame in distress--that's me!" and she
laughed with a heartiness that shook her ponderous figure. "There
are dragons to kill now, too. I understand that one man here in the
hotel has bought up all the lamps and candles in town and refuses to
let us have any save at an exorbitant price."
"How mean!" murmured Ruth, trying to be polite while Ryder smiled
behind his napkin.
"Isn't it? I mean to get back to my rooms so that Marie can undress
me before the lights are put out. I don't know what I would do in
the dark."
"I think it is horrid of anybody to take advantage of our necessities
in such a way as this," Ruth said thoughtfully. "Fancy being at the
mercy of a man who would be mean enough to corner the lighting of the
world--and if he'd corner the lighting of a single hotel I suppose he
would a deal rather found a Universal Lighting Trust."
The little joke which he was having all to himself put Ryder in a
better humor. Mrs. Judson grew more animated, and Ruth did her best
to make the impromptu occasion pleasant.
"Just think! this is a bridal supper," simpered Mrs. Judson. "We
ought to celebrate--just a little. It's wicked, I know, to think of
champagne at such a time. But we must have something more sparkling
than water to drink this pretty lady's health in. If you will allow
me, Mr.--er--Romeo----"
"I could not think of your ordering anything at my table," said Ryder
with an involuntary frown. "But if you ladies would enjoy a glass of
wine we will have some, of course."
"Now, that is gallant of you," cried the widow, forseeing a luxury
that she loved, but seldom paid for. "When poor dear Horace was
alive we had it often for dinner. He was inordinately fond of the
good things of life."
"But his taste in wives was not very select," thought John Ryder, his
disgust growing.
Ruth had crimsoned, but her signal to Ryder to order no wine was
unheeded. To tell the truth he was a little piqued. It was Ruth's
fault that they were in this situation. She had made friends first
with Mrs. Judson.
But when the waiter brought the bucket of ice in which nestled a
quart bottle, the very atmosphere about their table seemed to be
enlivened. The widow's dusky cheek soon glowed, her eyes sparkled,
and her vivacity seemed to increase with the good things placed
before her.
Ryder noted, too, that Ruth's eyes held in their depths a sparkle--a
point of fire--that had not been there before. And those eyes,
brilliant at one moment and the next swimming as though in unshed
tears, rested upon his countenance most of the time. Her smile was
for him. She played the hostess prettily; but her attention, after
all, was for her husband, and the color came and went in her cheeks
in a manner most charming.
She was a woman in love--in love with the man she had married--with
every thought of her soul and every fibre of her being.
A realization of this fact swept from the chambers of her husband's
mind every atom of suspicion. No woman could look at a man as Ruth
looked at him and withhold in her secret heart any mystery that might
bring shame upon him or disaster to herself.
"Romeo, you are a lucky man," whispered the widow, tapping him on the
arm with the expressive lorgnette and leaning forward to put her
full, red lips close to his ear, but with her laughing eyes on Ruth's
face to see how the bride took another woman's familiarity with her
husband. "She loves you as one woman in a thousand ever loves her
husband."
"I am a lucky man," repeated Ryder, though more to himself than to
the cynical widow.
The latter shook a playful--and diamond bedewed--finger at Ruth.
"You are giving him a great advantage, Juliet. Let a man once
realize that you love him so devotedly, and he'll ride rough shod
over your heart. It's always the way," and she sighed
heavily--"though," thought John Ryder, "the sigh may be caused more
by the supper she has eaten than by any sentimental emotion."
"Yes, Juliet," rambled on the wined, and consequently quite happy,
Mrs. Judson, "take the advice of a woman of experience, and do not
give your heart too completely into any man's keeping. I am not
old--oh, no! for we women who live and love do not grow old--but I
have lived more years than have you, sweet girl, and I have
loved--and been loved," she simpered, "and I tell you it is always
better to keep the driving hand."
Ruth shivered in disgust. Ryder kept a stony face and began to eat
the meal before him, which before he had scarcely touched.
"Do you see that woman over there?" suddenly questioned Mrs. Judson.
"They say she is the most abominable----"
"Oh, Mrs. Judson," and this time Ruth spoke with decision, "in time
we shall learn to know our fellow guests perhaps. Tonight let us
talk about things--not people;" and with a power rare in so young and
inexperienced a person, she kept the talk from again wandering to
personalities or to sentimentalities.
Ryder ignored the suggestion of any more wine, and the widow finally
bethought her of the fact that the lights might go out soon and leave
her in the dark. So the little supper party broke up.
Almost everybody else had left the room save a young woman whom Ryder
had noticed before--a plainly dressed, freckled, sharp-featured girl,
who ate alone at a table near the door. That is, she was supposed to
eat; but in reality she read most diligently a rather dingy paper
covered pamphlet that was folded into small compass beside her plate.
As Ryder and his party passed out he saw the girl devouring the story
she was reading with a mouthful from her plate poised on her fork.
So eager was she over the book, and so excited, that she gestured
with this mouthful, jabbing the fork to and fro as though duelling
with an imaginary enemy and feeling within herself, without doubt,
all the emotions of the characters in the fiction she was perusing.
Mrs. Judson, now in a very happy state, indented Ryder's ribs with an
irritating thumb, and whispered shrilly: "Do you know who she is?"
"I haven't the pleasure of the young lady's acquaintance."
"She's the house detective," giggled the heavy lady. "Isn't she
funny? She's reading a five-cent detective thriller. She gave me a
pile of them to read once. She says--he, he!--they feed the
imagination."
Ryder looked back at the plain-featured girl. She was still waving
the mouthful on her fork, wrapped in her novel, as he and the two
women of his party went on to the elevator. He left Ruth and Mrs.
Judson to go up in that while he went for a final conference with
George and the steward before retiring himself. The porters had
fixed the bracket lamps in the main corridors of the hotel (and there
were none too many) while one was at the clerk's desk and was already
lighted.
"Back to the days of our grandfathers," said George, grinning. "'The
light of other days.' Say! some of these fellows, Mr. Ryder, are
frothing at the mouth about you."
"I thought Colonel Brack----"
"Not him. The old boy's been taken off to his own room by his wife.
That lady is of the salt of the earth, and she knows just how to
handle Aurelius. She's been handling him for a good many years.
He's nowhere near such a 'howling wolf' in his own coral as he
appears outside.
"But some of the others----"
He halted, for Jimson, the man with the invalid wife, suddenly
appeared in a glow of indignation, and George let him speak for
himself.
"See here, Mr. Ryder," he sputtered, "I am not challenging your right
to make money out of our necessity--that seems to be your business,"
and he sneered so that it must have hurt him. "But at least you
should have some humanity--some bowels of compassion. My wife is ill
and almost helpless; the last time I was up there the rooms were
already becoming chilled because of the decreased steam pressure.
"You positively must let me have one of those stoves Al has there in
the storeroom. I don't care what you want for it. I'll pay. I
_must_ have one."
"They are not for sale, Mr. Jimson," Ryder responded coldly.
"Mr. Ryder, this is outrageous! I will give you ten dollars for one
of those stoves."
"That would be only about fifty per cent. profit on the large stoves,
Mr. Jimson. Do you think you would care to do that if you were in my
place?"
"I--I'll give you twenty--fifty dollars, then," Jimson blurted out.
Here George interfered. The clerk seemed really put out with little
Jimson.
"You should take a walk around and cool off, Mr. Jimson--and Colonel
Brack, too. Some of you have been insulting Mr. Ryder for two hours,
and jawing your heads off about what he's done. And you don't _know_
what he's done."
"Eh?" bristled Jimson, yet puzzled.
"He has done what none of the rest of you had public spirit enough to
do," went on the hotel clerk. "If anybody pays him for what he has
laid out for the comfort of the guests of this hotel it will be the
Barnaby estate, when this trouble is finally straightened out. Five
minutes ago, Mr. Jimson, Mr. Ryder had one of the largest oil heaters
he bought and a nice reading lamp sent up to your wife."
"Oh, by Jove! I--I thought---- I didn't understand----"
Mr. Jimson's words rambled off into a stammering monologue. Ryder
had handed George back the list he had been looking over. "That will
be about all, I guess," he said. "I'm going to turn in.
Good-night!" and ignoring the apologizing Jimson he made for the
stairway.
The dining-room was closed. The last elevator boy came out of his
cage and locked the door. The hands of the clock in the foyer lacked
but a few minutes of midnight.
"Gentlemen," said the clerk from his station at the desk. "The
dynamos will run but ten minutes longer. The café is closed for the
night. I advise you to go to your rooms."
The sharp-faced girl whom Ryder had noticed in the dining-room had
taken up her station near the foot of the stairs. She had the folded
paper novel in her hand. She looked particularly wideawake, and the
literary pabulem she so enjoyed might indeed spur her imagination.
She was evidently on duty for the night.
"Gad!" exclaimed one man. "We might as well be stopping at a Mills'
Hotel. They send you to bed with the chickens," and with laughter
and jest the company slowly broke up.
The telephone buzzed at the clerk's elbow. He took down the
receiver, listened a moment, and then spoke to the house detective:
"Miss Solomons, you're wanted in Parlor A."
Ryder, in serious mood, was already climbing the stairs. The young
woman passed him like a shot, and still he was not aroused from his
reverie. He was tired. His work for the comfort of the hotel guests
was done, and he uttered a sigh of satisfaction at the thought.
There was positively nothing else that could happen to balk his
desire to be alone with his wife.
CHAPTER X
THE BEGINNING OF A NIGHTMARE
Coming to Parlor A on his way to his apartment, Ryder saw lights and
heard a buzz of excited voices. He saw the house detective, and
stopped a moment to see what had brought her here in such haste.
Drawn into a corner at the end of the room near the huge picture of
"The Cheesemonger" was an invalid's chair, which the colored man,
James, had evidently just made up as a bed for his crotchety master.
And there was old Cudger, in a blanket robe, nightcap, and carpet
slippers, wrathfully facing three women who, so Ryder thought, should
have long since been in bed.
Eying both parties stood the sharp-featured Miss Solomons, her novel
in one hand, the other on her hip and her head on one side. The
chatter of the women, the grumbling of Cudger, and the chuckling of
James, who seemed to find much amusement in the situation, made
little impression upon the phenomenal calm of the house detective.
"Now, then!" the latter said at last, "let's get this thing straight.
Mr. Cudger has permission to sleep here to watch his oil painting
tonight. What are you ladies doin' here? Lights'll go out in two
minutes anyway."
"It is disgraceful!" ejaculated one woman, a hard-featured person
with glasses and a "transformation" that did not match her back hair
in color. "This man coming into the ladies' parlor in his
nightclothes----"
"Ha! Don't expect me to sleep in my day clothes, do you?" snapped
Mr. Cudger.
"What are you ladies here for?" reiterated the sharp voice of Miss
Solomons. "I ask you."
"We were holding a committee meeting--a very important meeting," said
the hard-featured one. "You know very well, young woman, that the
Society for the Betterment of the Condition of Delinquent Girls will
hold their convention here next week. We are the advance committee
of the S.B.C.D.G.
"All right," interrupted Miss Solomons. "But you had better advance
right to bed, ladies. Lights out in one minute. Talk it over in the
morning. Mr. Cudger has the call on this parlor tonight."
"But I tell you, young woman, we have a right to hold our meeting
here, no matter what the time is," cried the militant lady.
"In the dark?" exclaimed the house detective. "No, ma'am!" and she
advanced upon the three much as she might have upon a flock of
chickens, literally shooing them out of the parlor.
But once in the hall the women stopped to parley some more.
"Miss Solomons, this is a perfect outrage--an outrage not to be
permitted in a well-ordered house, such as the Pinewood Inn is
supposed to be," stormed the hard-featured woman, and there was the
ring of war in her voice.
"Now, Mrs. Dent," put in the oily voice of a large brawny woman,
another of the three ejected committee women, "Miss Solomons is not
to blame. Miss Solomons, no doubt, is deeply interested in our
work"--Miss Solomons sniffed and the woman with the "transformation"
glared angrily at the house detective--"but this awful Bangs----"
"Miss Solomons is to blame!" interrupted Mrs. Dent, in a hard,
decisive tone. "If she had the judgment of a kitten----"
"Now, see here, ladies!" flared out the house detective, "we're not
a-goin' to have any meanderings around the hallways in the dark this
night. There go the lights now. You go, and go now!"
The women scuttled away without further words, and Miss Solomons
disappeared in the darkness.
John Ryder, vastly amused, changed his opinion then and there
regarding the appointment of a woman for such a position as Miss
Solomons held. No man could have handled this situation with such
vigor and promptness.
A smile wreathed his lips as he went on to his own door. Along the
corridor before him, now illumined only by an occasional bracket
lamp, he saw flitting the lighted candles of the other late guests
seeking their beds.
Ryder opened the door of his suite expecting to see a picture similar
to the one he had observed when he had come to the room before
supper. But, although the lamp he had sent up was burning on the
reading table, Ruth was not present. The room was empty and the
atmosphere of it seemed chill as he stepped in.
Nor was there a light in the inner room. He did not hear a sound.
Where had his wife gone? Was she with Mrs. Judson in that lady's
rooms? And where were they?
Ryder was suddenly disgusted again. For heaven's sake! couldn't Ruth
break away from that woman? And after the experience they had had
with her at the supper table, too!
He had heard certain of his married acquaintances occasionally curse
the interference of some "woman friend" in the otherwise quiet pool
of their domesticity. Was he going to butt up against something like
that at the very start? It could not be possible that Ruth was
enamored of the society of such a woman as the vulgar Mrs. Judson!
He turned up the wick of the lamp and strode with it to the door of
the bedroom, flinging back the hangings. Instantly the light flooded
the chamber, and a prettily disheveled figure started up out of a
nest of pillows.
"Oh! I was napping!" she cried with a tremulous little laugh. "What
a bad girl I am! You were so long, Johnny, and I was so sleepy. It
must be very late."
She had made ready for the night. Her beautiful hair was in two
thick plaits over her shoulders--those shoulders so white and soft
and beautifully curved betrayed by the cut of her nightgown and the
lacy negligee she had thrown over it.
As she slipped out of bed he saw her slim bare ankles, her feet
thrust into swansdown slippers. They were like a child's. She
seemed more childish and appealing to him than she had before. Ryder
felt momentary shame again that he should have been impatient.
"It is late," he admitted. "I am afraid, Ruth, you have had a very
tiresome evening. This hasn't been just the sort of a beginning to
our married life that we might wish."
She laughed merrily. "I guess neither of us imagined a honeymoon
like this, dear. I used to try to think what you would be like after
all these years--and you were so far away, too, John. It--it was
like a dream----"
Ryder had stepped back to replace the lamp upon the table. He almost
dropped it. What was she saying? But before he could find his voice
or move from the spot where surprise had frozen him, the door which
he had failed to lock burst in and Mrs. Judson, in a state of
mind--and of dishabille--that completely shocked John Ryder, entered.
A large woman in bedroom wrapper and tears is not a fetching sight.
And when she came down the room like a cyclone and flung herself with
abandon into his arms, he--well, John Ryder swore!
[Illustration: Flung herself with abandon into John Ryder's arms]
Not loud, but deep and with a fervency that could not be mistaken.
She came within an ace of toppling him over, and he dragged her to
the couch and dropped her there--the springs creaking a pained
objection to her sudden weight.
"Great heavens above!" grumbled the exasperated Ryder. "What's the
matter with the creature now?"
"Oh, what is it?" asked Ruth from the chamber, and he heard the
patter of her slippered feet as she ran to the door.
"It's your friend, Mrs. Judson," said the harassed bridegroom with
disgust. "She's come in here to have a fit--or something." Then to
himself he added: "Why in hades didn't I lock that door? But she'd
have busted it in and come right through. Talk about a honeymoon!
Ye gods! was ever a man----"
Here he was startled by Mrs. Judson's hysterical acrobatics. She was
gasping and crying and laughing, all at once. Her state was plainly
volcanic.
"What the deuce is to be done with her?" he demanded of his wife.
Ruth brushed him aside and took charge of the patient, whom he had
been trying to hold down upon the cushions by main force.
"The ammonia bottle--on the bureau in there--quick!" Ruth commanded,
and Ryder ran to obey like a lamb.
Ruth thrust the unstoppered bottle under Mrs. Judson's nose. The
ammonia almost choked Ryder when he got a whiff of it; and it brought
the widow up standing and trying to catch her breath. She had been
by no means unconscious, and it flashed through John Ryder's brain
that she might have heard what he said about her.
Mrs. Judson choked for a moment, sputtered, uttered a stifled shriek
or two, and then fell to crying more quietly, but rocking herself to
and fro on the couch and wringing her bejeweled hands.
"Well, I'm hanged!" muttered Ryder. "This is pretty near the limit!"
Ruth turned to look at him for a moment. Her eyes suddenly sparkled
with merriment and she shook a playful finger at him.
"You're like other men, I see," she whispered. "I guess I'm glad. I
began to think you were almost an angel, hubby."
Mrs. Judson monopolized her attention then. She began to pour out a
tale of woe that Ryder could scarcely understand; but it seemed Marie
had left her--had run away while she was at supper--and had gone with
some of the hotel help in a wagon back into the country where there
was a station on another railroad--a long and toilsome journey, but
anything to get away from a hotel that had no heat or electric lights!
"And she's robbed me--I know she has! Of course she has! Don't you
say she hasn't!" chattered the large lady, her bosom heaving,
threatening to go into another convulsion. "Send for Miss Solomons.
She must find my brooches--my rings--my necklace----"
"Who is Miss Solomons?" asked Ruth wonderingly.
"The house detective," said Ryder, and was very glad thereafter that
he said no more, for a cold voice at the open door of the suite said
clearly:
"What's going on here? Who wants Miss Solomons?"
Mrs. Judson had gone waveringly on to another phase of her trouble.
"And I tried to undress myself; but I didn't dare go to bed. And
then the lights went out and--and----"
She trailed off again into spasmodic cries. Miss Solomons marched
down the room to where the bridegroom and his bride were endeavoring
to pacify the large lady.
"Huh!" sniffed the house detective, high disgust expressed upon her
keen face. "It's that Judson woman. What's the matter with her now?"
The question, Ryder thought, was to the point. At that moment Mrs.
Judson's gyrations reminded him of those of an eel upon a hot frying
pan. Personally he was becoming frightened.
"Shouldn't she have a doctor?" he demanded.
"A barrel stave would do her more good," declared Miss Solomons
harshly.
"If I had a little aromatic spirits I'd fix her!" exclaimed Ruth,
biting her lower lip either to stifle a desire to laugh or to cry,
Ryder could not tell which.
"Doctor!" sniffed the house detective, glaring at the hysterical
woman.
But Ryder rushed to the telephone and called the office. George
answered at once.
"Mrs. Judson is ill--here in our rooms," Ryder said. "Isn't there a
doctor in the neighborhood?"
"There's one in the house. I'll send Dr. Hoyle right up, Mr. Ryder,"
said the clerk.
"Hoyle won't thank you for troubling him," Miss Solomons sneered.
But as Mrs. Judson began on another spasm she did not leave Ruth all
the work of holding the large lady upon the couch.
"My soul! this is awful!" groaned Ryder, coming back just as Mrs.
Judson began another series of convulsions, for which indulgence in
public she was not dressed exactly right.
"Say!" exclaimed the house detective to Ryder. "This is no place for
a man. You had better go."
"Hang it!" groaned Ryder, realizing that Miss Solomons was right, and
starting for the door again. "Why couldn't she have gone somewhere
else to have her fit?"
Just then the doctor's welcome knock sounded. Ryder let him in. The
medical man appeared, candle in one hand and his black case in the
other. The ridiculousness of walking about this big hotel carrying a
candle stuck into the neck of a whisky bottle did not appear to
strike any of them at the moment as humorous.
Dr. Hoyle was a young but very businesslike practitioner. He handed
his candle to Ryder, strode down the room, and sat down beside the
widow, one end of whom each of the other women was trying to hold to
the couch.
"Half a glass of water, please," he said to Ruth. "Let her go, Miss
Solomons. She isn't going to kick any more now."
"Gee!" gasped the house detective, getting up from her knees and
striking her usual attitude, one hand on her hip and the other
clutching the paper novel.
The doctor selected a vial from his case, dropped a little of its
contents into the water, which instantly turned the water cloudy and
white; then held the glass to the patient's lips.
"Drink this," he commanded.
Mrs. Judson's jaws seemed to be locked and her eyes were tightly
closed. She breathed stertorously. Ryder, looking on from afar, was
actually frightened. If that woman dared to die in this room----
"Drink this, Mrs. Judson!" said the doctor again.
No result. Then the professional man leaned forward, with the glass
still at her lips, and, seizing the large lady's nose, deliberately
wrung it! The seemingly fixed jaws unlocked instantly and Mrs.
Judson uttered an entirely different cry from her former painful
sounds.
"Gee!" sighed Miss Solomons again, but with satisfaction. "This is
no place for us, Mister. Come on! Dr. Hoyle can manage her without
our help," and she started for the door.
CHAPTER XI
THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES
"Drink this!" the doctor said again to the large lady, and, choking
and sputtering, Mrs. Judson did as she was told. Ryder looked on in
amazement. Ruth, seeing his face, and Miss Solomon's back being
turned, broke into a giggle and cast herself helplessly into Ryder's
arms.
"Oh! you funny, funny man!" she murmured. "I like to see a doctor
work over a woman with hysterics--they know 'em so well!"
The house detective stalked out, leaving the door of the suite open.
Ryder did not know whether to follow her or remain. Mrs. Judson was
evidently determined not to give up the role of patient too easily.
She caught the hand that had so cruelly wrung her nose and begged the
doctor not to leave her.
He said he would not--in that sympathetically disgusted tone that
medical men use on such occasions. He felt himself in a foolish
position, and another man was looking on.
"Your husband, Madam?" he asked Ruth shortly, nodding toward Ryder.
"Yes," she said with a blush.
"Better ask him to retire while we get Mrs. Judson to bed. She has
had these attacks before. She will not be over this one in a hurry."
Then he added in a lower tone: "What's the matter now? Is her lapdog
sick?"
"Her maid has left her," Ruth said, having hard work, as Ryder saw,
to keep from laughing. But he felt no desire to laugh himself.
Undress that woman and put her to bed _here_? John Ryder was getting
desperate. This nightmare of untoward incidents was altogether too
much for his self-control.
"That's a serious matter," grunted the doctor. "Neither of us will
get much rest tonight if Mrs. Judson follows her usual course.
Perhaps you can get somebody to help you, Madam----"
"I am used to nursing sick people," Ruth told him demurely. "I can
follow your instructions exactly, Doctor. In fact, I have had
considerable experience in nursing. In the present state of the
hotel's affairs it might be difficult to get a maid."
"I suppose that is so," the medical man admitted. "Well, the first
thing to do is to get her into bed."
Ryder, who felt that he never, on short acquaintance, had so disliked
a man as he did this physician, had edged off to the further end of
the room. Ruth came to him, still with laughter expressed in her
quivering face and voice.
"You are only a 'mere man'--you cannot stay here, hubby," she
whispered, putting her lips up to his. "You will have to go out
until we get Mrs. Judson into my bed. Then--if she gets quiet--you
may come back. I will sit up to tend to her and you can nap on the
couch. But don't go too far away."
"Why, hang it, Ruth!" he complained, not at all the business man now,
"can't she be lugged back to her own room?"
"But that would be cruel. She was frightened there, because she was
alone and the lights went out. _I_ should have to go with her, you
know. Come now! be knightly, Mr. Romeo," she added, her voice
trailing off into a laugh as she pushed him gently out of the room.
John Ryder walked away about ten steps. Then he stopped, and smote
one clenched fist into his other open palm.
"Well, I am hanged!" he ejaculated, and with fervor, "Some honeymoon!
What?
"For a man to be turned out of his rooms at this hour of the night,
and for a confounded, silly, hysterical old woman! Bah!"
John Ryder drew out a cigar, bit off the end savagely and lit it in
direct contradiction to hotel rules, and puffed away like a donkey
engine while he paced the carpeted corridor.
He was no longer the man with the welfare of his fellow guests at
heart--particularly of the women and children in Pinewood Inn. He
was tired, he was sleepy, and he had had enough excitement to last
him for some time to come.
The procession of incidents which had enlivened his existence since
the _Minnequago_ had docked were flung upon the screen of his memory
again, and he reviewed them like a spectator at a moving picture show.
He remembered in what a nervous state he awaited the steamship's
docking, expecting some word from the beautiful girl whom he had
learned to love during the passage across the Atlantic.
Having not seen her to speak to for some hours, he had half feared to
have her accept his proposal, now that he had made it. But the
instant he saw her on the wharf awaiting his coming, he had flung all
such hesitation and uncertainty to the winds. She seemed in her
appearance all that was good and beautiful.
Then followed in swift succession the obtaining of the license, his
own jumbled business at his offices, the drive to the minister's, the
marriage ceremony, their hurried departure by train, their arrival at
the Pinewood Inn in safety despite the accident at the bridge, their
cozy little dinner, and then----
In more somber colors followed the chain of circumstances which had
finally culminated in his present plight. Was ever a bridegroom up
against such confounded luck?
Some honeymoon, indeed!
He tried to laugh; but his position was too serious, and his laugh
was choked off by the time it was started. He swore softly again and
paced on down the hallway. Coming to the door of the parlor, he
looked in.
Old Cudger was asleep in the invalid's chair with a rug thrown over
him. Candles, in saucers for sconces, burned before the picture, all
other lights in the room being extinguished. Marching up and down
the rug like a sentinel with his master's gold-headed cane upon his
shoulder, was James, the colored factotum of the owner of Van Scamp's
"Cheesemonger."
"It does look as though the hotel were in a state of siege," muttered
Ryder. "It's an experience that none of us will forget for many a
long day. Heigh ho! I wish I'd never come into the ranch," and he
stretched his arms above his head and yawned. "This isn't my idea of
a nice, quiet honeymoon."
At this end of the parlor the shadows were heavy. But Ryder saw the
outlines of several comfortable looking chairs. Plowing up and down
the corridor waiting for Ruth to call him back, began to pall upon
his mind. He ventured into the big room.
His feet made no sound upon the rugs. James marched back and forth
in perfect unconsciousness of his presence. Ryder made his way to a
big, sleepy-hollow chair, fumbled for the arms, found them, and sank
back restfully into--some other person's lap!
It would be hard telling whether John Ryder or the person in the easy
chair, was the most startled. The former leaped up with a surprised
grunt. The other darted out of the chair and, before the man could
get more than a yard away, he felt the end of a revolver thrust right
against his waistline!
"Hold on!" hissed an excited voice. "What you doing here? Trying to
get fresh with me, or are you just a ninny?"
John Ryder, had he not been for the moment speechless, would
certainly have owned to the final accusation. "Ninny" it was! If he
were not one, he certainly would not be wandering about this hotel
instead of peaceably occupying the suite for which he was paying
thirty dollars a day.
"March out there under the lamp till I get a look at you! Quick
now!" jerked out the person with the weapon.
Ryder began to do as he was told--backward. He could see the lighted
end of the room. James, his face graying with fear, was squatting
down behind the invalid chair in which his sleeping master reclined.
Evidently the row at the upper end of the room had startled the negro
more than it had the two who were taking part in it.
Ryder's brusk antagonist jerked him swiftly around into the corridor,
under the nearest bracket lamp.
"Hugh!" exclaimed Miss Solomons. "So it's you? I've had my eye on
you for some time. What you doing here, anyway? And what you doin'
back there in those rooms where that Judson had a fit? You one of
her friends? What's your name?"
"I am Mr. Ryder," he told the house detective mildly, noting that the
paper novel was still clutched fast in her left hand.
She grunted, tucking the revolver out of sight. Evidently, whatever
she suspected John Ryder of, she did not consider him dangerous.
"Ryder, heh?" jerked out the house detective. "Same one that beat
'em all to the lamps and candles? Not a crook, then. Anyway, not a
_little_ crook. What you doin' in those rooms just now?" she
repeated. "Mrs. Judson still there?"
"Yes," Ryder said with vast disgust. "They are putting her to bed.
Turned me out."
"And why not?" snapped Miss Solomons. "You didn't expect to stay
there all night, did you?"
"Why not?" Ryder demanded with sudden vexation. "I'm paying for
them."
"That may be. I don't doubt it," the house detective said sharply.
"But we don't allow anything like that here."
She gave Ryder a little shove toward the stairs, and turned abruptly
back into the parlor.
"All right, Je-eames!" he heard her drawl to the colored man. "No
gun-play this time. Come out and do your goose-step up and down the
rug. And if anybody else blunders in here while I'm napping, keep
'em out of my lap, will you?"
To tell the truth John Ryder was so utterly amazed that he could not
reply to the house detective. He scarcely knew what she meant by her
innuendo; yet he felt rising anger. She seemed to have doubted the
status of Ruth and himself as a properly wedded pair!
Nightmare? It was a saturnalia of misunderstanding and vexing
incidents! John Ryder would have been glad right then and there to
take Ruth and escape from the Pinewood Inn, even if they had to walk
through the night to some other shelter. Later he wished with all
his heart that he had done just that.
CHAPTER XII
SOME EXPERIENCES OF A BRIDEGROOM
John Ryder, just here, hearing voices and laughter--even the clink of
glasses--from the floor below, felt a desire for human society--for
speech with sane people. His mind was in such a chaotic condition
that he was not sure whether these recent remarkable incidents had
really happened to him, or he had dreamed them.
He arrived at the top of the broad flight leading down to the foyer.
There were candles glimmering at the clerk's desk beside the bracket
lamp, and several of the guests were keeping George company. Jimson
was one; there were three men whom Ryder had not before particularly
noticed; and there was White, the man of mystery. The latter was
sitting rather sullenly with the others, sipping some concoction in a
tall glass--which, indeed, they were all doing.
If for no other reason than to get a closer look at John B. White,
Ryder joined the party. He was welcomed vociferously by the clerk.
Jimson considered it was up to him to pacify the man he had so
foolishly and impulsively insulted.
"Hope you'll let me mix you one, Mr. Ryder," Jimson said. "Just to
show there's no hard feelings, you know."
"Go ahead," Ryder said, conscious that White was watching him with
clouded eyes. Indeed, the man seemed unable to keep his gaze off
John Ryder.
"How's Mrs. Judson?" asked George, with a knowing grin.
"Confound her!" ejaculated the bridegroom. "She's turned me out of
house and home."
"Ho, ho! And you a newly married man!" cackled one of the crowd.
"On his honeymoon," said Jimson. Then he blew a sigh. "Well, it
might be worse, Mr. Ryder. You don't know what it is to have an
invalid wife."
"Or a heavyweight, like the Lady Judson," chuckled another.
Ryder showed he was not deeply interested in these witticisms.
George said rather lamely:
"Well, a man's got to make way for the ladies."
"Especially when they are hysterical," Jimson added. "I remember
when my wife----"
He started on a story that did not interest Ryder in the least. He
was the host--it was his private bottle they were sampling--so the
clerk and all but White and Ryder gave the narrator some attention.
White rose up suddenly and tapped John Ryder on the shoulder. "I beg
your pardon, Mr.--er--did I catch your name?"
"Ryder."
"Ah! Mr. Ryder!" The man spoke rather gaspingly, as though
something interfered with his breathing. He gazed at Ryder with eyes
that burned strangely. Altogether he did not seem in good health,
and again Ryder wondered if he was quite right in his mind. Perhaps
ill health might explain his odd actions, after all.
"I feel I owe you an apology--an explanation," said White, still in a
low voice. "Will--will you come over here a moment--to this bench?
Give me your attention briefly?"
"Guess I can," said Ryder. "There seems nothing much pressing on my
time just now," he added grimly, and followed White to the gloomier
side of the office where the two men seated themselves on one of the
leather-covered divans just under the stairway.
"You see," said White, still in that stifled tone. "I--I came down
here expecting to intercept--that is, to meet--er--friends. I
followed her down here---- Ahem! Them, I mean; and I couldn't
find----"
His voice trailed off into silence, while Ryder watched him in the
dusk with reviving interest. There was surely something wrong with
this man's brain. If ever John Ryder had seen a man with beclouded
mind, John B. White was that man.
"And I saw--saw your--er--wife," went on White. "She looked so
like--well, like what I thought my friend--one of my friends--would
look----"
"My wife looks like somebody you know?" Ryder asked in that loud and
cheerful tone which the average person uses in addressing one who he
thinks is not mentally balanced.
"Ye-es. As I thought she'd look. And her name----"
"What name?" demanded Ryder.
White ignored the question. "You see, I've been away so long," he
murmured. "I didn't know just how she would look. We had never
exchanged photographs in all that time."
Ryder glanced at him curiously. "You come from Rome, the clerk tells
me?"
"Yes," admitted the man, looking startled again. "I--I only recently
arrived in the country."
"Recently arrived from an insane asylum, more like," thought John
Ryder.
"And, then, your wife," reiterated White. "You--you haven't been
married to her long?"
"I should say not!" groaned Ryder. "Not long enough to get used to
being a married man. We were only married yesterday."
"Not married _here_?" gasped White.
"No. In New York. Just before coming here," replied Ryder,
wonderingly. "And I wish heartily we hadn't come here. We're in a
nice mess."
"Yes--unfortunate," said White. "Your case is indeed unhappy. A
bridegroom and bride. Dear, dear!"
Ryder still gazed at him wonderingly. "If ever I have seen a man who
has slipped his trolley, this White is that man!" he thought.
"I--I suppose you and Mrs. Ryder had looked forward to a very
different sort of a honeymoon?" said White, bending forward to devour
his companion's face in the dusk, his own eyes glowing in the wild
way which had already attracted Ryder's notice.
"Indeed yes," Ryder admitted, with a chuckle, the drink Jimson had
mixed for him having had a soothing effect. "But we were neither of
us thinking of honeymoons when we embarked on the _Minnequago_."
The man started. "You--you mean when you embarked on the ship? You
only landed from her yesterday morning?"
"That is when she docked," the puzzled Ryder replied. "We were
married not long after. My wife, you see, is an English girl----"
"An English girl! Yes?" A faint tone of disappointment colored the
remark. White subsided for a moment into deep thought. Suddenly, as
Ryder was about to rise, the other clutched his arm feverishly. "I
beg your pardon! One other question--if you will bear with me, Mr.
Ryder. Will--will you tell me your wife's name?
"Why, Ryder!" ejaculated the other.
"I--I mean before she was married?"
"Mont--Ruth Mont," and Ryder broke away from the man and walked to
the desk to set his empty glass upon the counter. George was telling
a story--one of those interminably long yarns which begin, "There was
an Irishman, and." He was the only person who was facing the divan
on which White was sitting.
Suddenly the clerk's face turned puttylike, and he stopped, his jaw
hanging. He glared over the shoulders of his audience.
"What's the matter with you?" demanded the nervous Jimson, jumping up.
"Look there!" exclaimed George. "What's the matter with that man?"
They all wheeled at his question to look. But while the others were
moved first by White's appearance, as George had been, Ryder saw the
face of Miss Solomons, the house detective, hanging over the
balustrade of the stairs, just above the place where he had been
sitting with White. She dodged back out of sight; and then Ryder saw
what had startled the hotel clerk.
White had slid down in his seat, with only the small of his back
resting on its edge, the back of his head rigidly against the settee
back and his legs stretched stiffly before him. His face was purple
in color and he was gasping for breath.
"The man's in a fit!" cried Jimson.
There was a concerted rush toward White, all but Ryder joining in the
stampede. He remained by the desk, staring up the stairway and
wondering what was the matter with Miss Solomons, who he supposed had
gone back to her broken sleep in the parlor chair.
"What the deuce does the girl want?" he thought. "Was she spying on
me or on White? And what is the matter with White, all of a sudden?
What threw him into such a state? What did he ask me last? Why!
Ruth's maiden name----"
George came charging back to the desk.
"I say, Mr. Ryder! isn't Doctor Hoyle up in your rooms?"
"I left him there," grumbled Ryder. "He and my wife are putting that
Judson woman to bed."
George tore around the desk to the telephone. He stuck the proper
plug into the board and began to pump the annunciator in Ryder's
apartment. The other men picked the stiffened White up and laid him
on the couch.
CHAPTER XIII
THE EAGLE EYE OF THE HOUSE DETECTIVE
George began at once to shout "Hullo!" into the instrument. Finally
he got a reply from Suite Three. It was the doctor himself who
answered the insistent call from the hotel desk.
"Yes, this is George!" ejaculated the clerk. "Come down here to the
office at once, Doc. Something's happened to Mr. White----
"What is it? I dunno. He's fallen in a fit--looks awful--face as
black as your hat!"
The clerk was excited and he spread it on rather thick. Still, White
did look bad.
George came away from the telephone. "He'll be right down," he said
aloud. "I guess your wife's scared, Mr. Ryder. I heard her scream."
Ryder was immediately troubled. His own nerves were jumping. No
wonder if Ruth should become frightened. There was nothing he could
do for White, and he started for the stairway. Half way up the
flight he passed the doctor, bag in hand, charging down. This was
certainly a busy night for the hotel physician.
And then, as Ryder reached the top of the stairway, he saw another
figure coming along the corridor--a white-faced, gasping woman, with
eyes like coals, rushing like a whirlwind into his arms--a whirlwind
of laces and ruffles and ribbons, with a boudoir cap over one ear and
her tiny bare feet twinkling in and out under her trailing robes.
It was Ruth, and she was the picture of fright.
"My heavens!" gasped Ryder, "what's the matter, girlie? What's
frightened you so?"
"Oh!" She saw him then and clutched him tightly about the neck.
"I--I thought something had happened to you. They said so--I heard
the clerk speaking through the 'phone to the doctor----"
"Oh, no," said Ryder soothingly. "It was another man. He was taken
ill down there in the office." He could not tell her, now that she
was so disturbed, that it was the stranger who had already annoyed
her. "Why, sweetheart, don't sob so! I'm all right. Don't you see
I am? Never was sick a day that I remember in my whole life. You
couldn't----"
He looked over her head, and there was the sharp face of Miss
Solomons at the parlor door. The sharp eye of the house detective
seemed devouring them both. Ryder felt a shocking desire to consign
both the house detective and Mrs. Judson to the same place--and that
a spot not often mentioned in polite company.
But to Ruth he murmured: "Brace up, girlie! It's all right--it's all
right, I tell you. You've been overdoing. This confounded Mrs.
Judson has been too much for you."
She still clung tightly to him, sobbing, her head buried on his
shoulder. He gathered her up in his arms, holding her yielding body
close against his breast, and carried her swiftly along the corridor.
As he passed the parlor he glared at Miss Solomons.
Once he halted to pick up one of the slippers Ruth had lost in her
flight down the hall. The other was in the doorway of their suite.
He strode in with her, kicked shut the door, and placed Ruth tenderly
upon the couch. The heavy lady was not in sight.
"Poor Mrs. Judson!" Ruth gasped. "The doctor left me to take care of
her."
"Hang Mrs. Judson!" exclaimed Ryder. "Is she to be tied about our
necks like a millstone? Is she our Old Man of the Sea?"
"Sh!" She put her own lips to his. "Don't be offensive, dear boy!"
she gasped after a long breathless kiss which shook both of them.
"She--she can't help being--well!--being just what she is."
"Humph!" grunted John Ryder with much doubt. "Where is she?"
"In there," Ruth replied nodding toward the inner room. "Oh! I am
so glad you are all right, I could forgive Mrs. Judson everything
now!" she whispered, snuggling her face down against his breast again.
"I'm hanged if I forgive her for spoiling this night for us," growled
he.
"But there are other nights--hundreds of them--thousands----"
"How do you know?" demanded he. "And we never saw her in our lives
before last evening! By thunder! this is the unluckiest old hole of
a hotel. I'm almost tempted to ask you to pack up again. Some
honeymoon!"
"But how would we get away from here?" she asked, wonderingly. "They
say there are no passenger trains on this short line to Pinewood.
And until the bridge is repaired, how can we get to the station at
Barr, on the main line?"
"There is a combination that runs down to the Junction at eight and
another at one o'clock, besides the evening train," John Ryder said.
"Of course, it is not very luxurious. But you say the word, and I'll
get the telegraph to working in the morning and we'll have a special
sent up here."
"A special what?" she asked in wonderment.
"Special train."
"Oh! You foolish boy! How extravagant! Why, you talk as though you
were a millionaire!" cried Ruth, laughing up into his face.
"Why, I----"
Ryder halted. Did she not know he was very wealthy? He had not
boasted of his money, but surely, on the _Minnequago_, he had told
her enough about his circumstances for her to realize that she had
married a very wealthy man.
She was speaking again now, and rather seriously. "I don't really
think I want to go, dear. Not right away. I want time to look about
the old place. We must walk through the pines--and down to the inlet
where the crabbing used to be so good. You know the places we want
to see, John."
"Oh! Do I?" asked John Ryder in growing surprise.
"Of course. Now, don't make believe you are not sentimental. I know
you are," and she squeezed him tightly about the throat until there
was grave danger of his choking.
Ryder had moved over into a big armchair and had taken Ruth with him.
"So I am sentimental, am I?" he said. "You seem to know a deal about
me for a man you've seen so short a time."
"Oh, but," she responded, "remember how often I have thought of you
since--well, since I was a tiny girl. I've often imagined just how
you'd look and just the sort of man you'd be."
"The deuce you did!" muttered Ryder. Then: "Do all girls dream about
their future husbands and wonder what they will look like?"
"I suppose so. Only, all of them are not so sure of the kind of man
he will be as I was."
John Ryder was vastly puzzled again. He gazed down at her as she lay
there in his arms and asked: "Do--do you think I fill the bill?"
"Oh, not altogether as to looks, perhaps. You know, hubby, you are
not a bit romantic looking." and she smiled at him roguishly.
"No. I suppose I am not--thank fortune!" and he grinned in return.
"If I wore my hair long, and sported a velvet jacket and broad
collar, for instance---- Well! what do you suppose they would do
with me in business?"
"I know. You are awfully practical. That really is surprising," she
murmured. "But the minute you took my hands and I looked into your
eyes----"
"On the dock, you mean?" he asked.
"Yes, on the dock where I waited for you."
"And _then_?"
"Why, then I knew I loved you. I wasn't sure before. If you hadn't
been--well--just you, I'd have run away and you'd never have seen me
again, hubby. I made up my mind to that."
"To run away from me if I didn't suit?"
"Yes."
"And yet you sent your trunks to the station just the same?" and he
laughed into her blushing face.
"Oh, but that was only so as to be ready to go with you if you proved
to be as nice as you did. Otherwise--well, there are other places on
the Pennsylvania Road to go to, besides Pinewood."
"So I measured up, when you had considered everything, to your idea
of what a husband should be?"
"Oh, yes, dear! You were all that was to be desired," and she patted
his cheek tenderly.
"Say!" exclaimed Ryder, "I'm not sure I'll be able to wear my hat
tomorrow. I can feel my head increasing in size momently. You'll
make me conceited."
"No. Only proud."
"Ah, I'm the proudest man alive to get you!"
"Now, you mustn't say that. I am just a poor girl. I would have to
work hard for my living all my life if you hadn't come for me."
"Nobody else, of course, would have taken pity on you?" he laughed.
"Ah, but there could have been nobody else. You were meant for me.
You were the only one."
"I'm glad you saw it that way," he laughed, "and realized what a
stage career meant before it was too late."
She turned squarely to look at him then, a puzzled little frown
marring her brow. "What--what did you say?" she asked.
They were both startled the next moment by a shriek from the inner
room.
"Help! I'm--I'm robbed! My rings--my brooches--my necklace! I know
I am robbed!"
It was the hysterical voice of Mrs. Judson. They heard her bound out
of bed. The whole house seemed to rock when she landed on the
bedroom floor.
"Huh!" ejaculated a sharp voice behind the bride and bridegroom,
"about what I expected."
It was Miss Solomons. How she had got into the suite Ryder did not
ask. His wife had started for the inner room, crying:
"Oh, poor Mrs. Judson! I really forgot her."
"Heaven forgive me!" groaned the bridegroom, shaking both fists in
the air, as he sat in the armchair from which his wife had leaped.
"I wish that woman would either be gathered peacefully to her
ancestors, or--or get married again!"
Then he turned to find the eye of the house detective upon him.
"Huh!" said that individual, "if you dared maybe you'd add murder to
larceny! How about it?"
CHAPTER XIV
SOME SLEUTH
"Now, stop right where you are," said Miss Solomons, as John Ryder
started to rise. "I'll search you later--and that woman. I knew
there was somethin' fishy about all this. I was a chump not to see
into it right at the start. Of course Mrs. Judson is just the sort
of a party a pair of crooks would get their hooks into."
"Say, are you crazy, or am I?"
"Sit down!"
At Ryder's second attempt to rise the house detective unlimbered her
artillery. For the life of him Ryder could not guess where she could
hide the big revolver about her person, she was so thin. Holding the
weapon recklessly aimed in his direction, Miss Solomons began to
search the sitting-room scientifically.
In the bed chamber Ruth could be heard soothing the refractory
patient. Mrs. Judson was still bewailing the loss of her jewelry.
"My rings! My brooches! My necklace!" she kept repeating, her voice
rising in crescendo until John Ryder thought the whole hotel would be
roused and come crowding into his suite.
"But, Mrs. Judson," Ruth said, when the heavy lady stopped for
breath, "you know you did not wear your necklace or a brooch here.
Only your rings----"
"My rings! Where are my rings, then?" demanded the invalid, and the
bed-spring creaked as she dropped upon it again. "I know I have been
robbed!"
"Sure thing!" muttered Miss Solomons, still holding John Ryder under
the point of her weapon while she poked into the umbrella stand near
the door with his walking stick.
Then Ruth, in a very small voice: "Why, I--I took them off, Mrs.
Judson."
"Ha!" was Miss Solomon's comment, leaving the umbrella stand.
"What for? My rings!" cried Mrs. Judson.
"The doctor told me to. We wanted to chafe your hands. I----"
"What did you do with them?" snapped Miss Solomons, and tore aside
the curtain so as to get a view of the bed chamber.
This time Ryder rose up, pistol or not.
"Come away from there!" he commanded.
"Anybody but an idiot would see that my wife knows nothing about the
woman's rings."
"Your wife? You mean your accomplice," sneered the house detective.
"By heaven! If you were only a man!" gasped Ryder, and took a stride
toward Miss Solomons.
"This here's loaded," said that woman firmly, and stuck the barrel of
her revolver against his waistband again. "No foolin' with me. Sit
down. Come on out here, you!" she added over her shoulder to Ruth.
"Why--why, what is the matter?" the latter gasped, coming to the
doorway. "Oh!"
"What did you do with the rings?" demanded the house detective.
She was still shoving against the pistol, and naturally John Ryder
fell back before such pressure. When he dropped into the chair again
Ruth screamed.
"Huh!" exclaimed Miss Solomons, seeing the direction of Ruth's
frightened gaze. "That lamp, eh? Opened the oil tank and dropped
'em in, did you? Likely place! But 'tain't new. All you crooks
have the old stuff. Not an original one among you."
She started for the table, still keeping Ryder covered.
"What do you want?" gasped Ruth.
"Mrs. Judson's rings," declared Miss Solomons decisively.
"I dropped them into the doctor's medicine case. He took them with
him when he was called downstairs," Ruth said and then, blessed with
a sense of the ridiculous, she began to giggle.
The house sleuth halted and looked from Ryder to his bride.
Suspicion seemed fairly to sharpen her nose as she sniffed. "That's
a likely story," she said.
Ryder took a hand, now having gained his self-control. "Do give us
credit for some originality, Miss Solomons," he said. "If we have
stolen Mrs. Judson's gems we naturally would have an accomplice on
whom to plant them. Who more likely than the doctor?"
"Huh!" snorted Miss Solomons.
The doctor himself appeared at the moment The house detective sprang
forward and seized his black case.
"What have you in this?" she demanded, having slipped her weapon out
of sight.
"Enough poison to even satisfy you, My Lady Sleuth," remarked Dr.
Hoyle, evidently having his own private opinion of the house
detective. "What mare's nest have you uncovered now?"
"Mrs. Judson's rings have been nicked," observed Miss Solomons, quite
unabashed.
"I--I dropped them into your case," said Ruth apologetically.
"So you did. Here they are," said the doctor, flashing the gems in
question. "Satisfied, Miss Solomons? Then, if so, you and
this--this gentleman, here, would better go away. You are likely to
disturb my patient with your noise."
Miss Solomons pulled the folded novel from the bosom of her blouse.
"All right," she said shortly.
"You'd better go and help James watch Van Scamp's 'Cheesemonger,'"
Ryder observed. "That's about your limit as a sleuth."
Miss Solomons, without changing countenance in the least, stalked
away. Before the doctor could escape to the bedroom Ryder said:
"I don't fancy my wife staying here all night to attend this woman.
She has had an exciting day and evening. You'll have another patient
on your hands if you don't have a care."
Hoyle glanced at Ruth's laughing face and shook his head.
"Not as long as she sees the funny side of the situation," he
observed.
"It is an imposition!" declared Ryder, with more heat.
"Undoubtedly," observed the doctor, with a shrug of his shoulders;
but Ruth placed her little pink palm, light as a rose leaf, upon his
lips.
"Don't speak so, Johnny," she whispered. "She needs some woman about
her at this time."
"She's not sick."
"But she thinks she is--which is worse," laughed Ruth. Then to the
doctor: "Don't mind him. He is the most indulgent of husbands after
all. I will remain. I told you that I have been trained to the work
of nursing."
"I see you have, Madam," said the doctor cheerfully, and he went into
the other room where Mrs. Judson lay groaning and sobbing on the bed.
John Ryder, much vexed but in control of himself now, said decidedly:
"Even the most indulgent husband must put down his foot some time,
Ruth. If that woman is not well enough to be removed to her own
rooms by morning we will let her have this apartment and take another
suite. You can play the Good Samaritan until then if you so desire.
But remember! after this, and for the remainder of our honeymoon, if
we see any despoiled victim lying by the roadside we will emulate the
Jews and pass by on the other side."
He did not even kiss her as he passed out, and Ruth stood looking
after him with quivering lips. Everything that had gone before was
by chance, and unlucky. But this was actually the first jarring note
in the honeymoon!
CHAPTER XV
THE CAT SHOWS HER CLAWS
Ryder had got all over the desire for human company. He did not even
care to ask how White was getting along, and the doctor had said not
a word about the man. Ryder was just about worn out. What he wanted
was rest and sleep.
He sought the parlor, determined to find a comfortable chair there,
in spite of Miss Solomons. But the house detective did not appear to
be present. James had fallen into a chair himself, and was snoring
with his head upon the back of the seat. Mr. Cudger was sleeping as
peacefully as a child. "The Cheesemonger" could have been stolen by
anybody who desired a new sail for a catboat, for instance, and had a
sharp knife to cut away the canvas from its frame.
Ryder settled into a chair with a groan, first being sure that it was
unoccupied. He closed his eyes. He was almost asleep when this
disturbing thought partially aroused him:
"_Ruth a trained nurse_? She spoke of it before. But she never told
me aboard the _Minnequago_. I remember distinctly that she said she
had learned nothing she could turn to good account, now that she was
left to her own resources, save her talent for stage entertainment.
"Humph! perhaps nursing isn't a well paid profession in England. In
America, I believe, when a trained nurse enters one's home, one might
as well hand her the bankbook.
"Don't understand it," said this new-made cynic. "Huh! There's a
lot of things I don't understand. One is, _Why is a honeymoon?_
"I've heard it said a man gets his eyes opened after he's married. I
swear my vision is fast becoming clouded. There are a lot of things
I want explained. Goodness! am I developing suspicious qualities
that I never knew I possessed before? It does seem as though a dozen
things poor Ruth has said puzzle me mightily.
"It must be because we have known each other so short a time, and our
whole affair was so hurried. Goodness! I haven't found time yet to
learn whether I am a benedict or still a bachelor. But how easily
she assumes the little airs and graces of a bride!
"I suppose most womenly women are so. Their whole young lives are
lived in preparation for this event--the event of giving themselves
into the keeping of the man they love." Ryder lacked expert
knowledge on this point, it will be noted. "And what an imaginary
little thing she is! Miss Solomons has nothing on Ruth when it comes
to imagination," and Ryder made a face in the dark at thought of the
house detective.
"To think of a girl's dreaming about what her husband, whom she does
not know and never has heard of, will be like; fairly conjuring up a
vision of the man which the real husband, when he appears, has to
stack up against.
"Bless her heart! If she believes me half as fine and noble as the
picture she imagined of the man she some day expected to marry----
By thunder! I wonder what is in that locket she wears and gazes at
so fondly?"
The thought pretty well awoke him. He cursed himself roundly, and
aloud, and James stirred in his sleep and groaned.
"Great heavens! That thought is unworthy of me--and of her!" Ryder
muttered. "Bless her sweet face! No woman could hold sacred the
memento of another man and show so clearly--as does Ruth--that she
loves her husband.
"Can I ever forget how she looked just now running through that hall?
She was wild to think that some harm had befallen me--befallen her
husband. No mistake there, John Ryder! You are it. You are the man
she loves."
He sighed ecstatically. He closed his eyes. He fell asleep almost
at once. James was snoring gently. Old Cudger added his nasal
murmur to James' snores. And from a distant corner that John Ryder
had overlooked, the eagle eye of the house detective still watched
him.
When John Ryder awoke he was stiff and lame and chilled to his
marrow. The candles had burned down to puddles of grease in the
saucers. A cold gray light stole into the parlor through a high
window and lay in a comfortless mantle over Mr. Cudger, James and
"The Cheesemonger."
The heart in John Ryder lay like lead. Never had he risen with such
a sickening premonition of ill as upon this gloomy Saturday morning.
Indeed, John Ryder was not in the habit of having premonitions at all.
He was a healthy, sane and perfectly level-headed individual. Never
before in his busy life had he found time for romance; and certainly
the brand of romance that Fate had handed out to him since the
_Minnequago_ had docked did not encourage Ryder to wish for more.
"It was Friday!" he suddenly muttered. "No wonder everything went
wrong. Friday!"
He was hungry for a sight of Ruth's face and for a word with her. In
spite of the feeling within him that everything had gone wrong during
the past several hours, he turned to the thought of his beautiful
girl-wife as a child turns to its mother when it wishes comfort.
Circumstances may have handed John Ryder some awful jolts during the
past night; but his thought of Ruth was one of joy and the delight of
possession. He started, rubbing his eyes and yawning, for Suite
Three.
Just as he reached the door a maid came out. She evidently
recognized Ryder when he asked:
"What's going on in there this morning?"
"Oh, she's sleeping, sir. Just as swate as a baby. I've been
filling the heater again and I left it burning, sir, so it would be
warm when she gets up. Yes, sir.
"Who? Mrs. Judson?" Ryder asked gloomily.
"Bless you! No, sir. _She_ went back to her own room hours ago.
Doctor says she's all right. Gittin' scare't about her jool'ry cured
her quicker than his medicines."
"She's gone!" cried Ryder in delight.
"Yes, sir. Oh, thank you, sir! 'Tis your own little lady I was
spakin' of. Shall--shall I open the door for ye, sir, with me pass
key?"
"No, no!" said John Ryder, blushing a little but feeling extremely
relieved. "I won't disturb her if she's sleeping," and he
immediately turned toward the breakfast room.
Going down the main stairway, he saw Colonel Aurelius Brack and his
wife before him, the doughty colonel having difficulty in making the
trip because of his artificial limb. He had gone up to his room the
night before while the elevators were still running, and now depended
upon the balustrade and his wife's arm to get safely to the bottom of
the flight of steps.
Mrs. Brack was a delightfully motherly looking woman with a face as
peaceful as the colonel's was stormy. He scowled savagely at John
Ryder. The latter wished for no words with the old fire-eater,
especially in the presence of his wife; but as he would have passed
them the woman placed a detaining hand on his arm.
"You are Mr. Ryder?" she asked sweetly.
Ryder felt his face flush, and he was as confused as a boy caught in
some peccadillo. He was sorry now that, in his ill temper, he had
treated the colonel so cavalierly in the café. The colonel looked
away from the younger man, but the latter could not avoid Mrs.
Brack's searching gaze.
"I am sure you are the gentleman who put himself out to make me
comfortable," she said softly. "I thank you very much for the stove
and light. It was very good of you to remember an old woman--and a
stranger. But I hope we will not be strangers now. I want to meet
your charming wife, whom I saw at dinner last evening."
"Thank you, Madam!" exclaimed Ryder, his coldness melted instantly by
her courtesy. "But you should thank the clerk and the steward.
Without their advice and assistance I should not have known those
guests who were clearly entitled to consideration."
He bowed and passed down ahead of the old couple. There was a
strange face at the desk in place of George's so he went on to the
breakfast room where Al himself stood directing the guests to their
tables. There was plainly a dearth of waiters. Several of the oil
heaters had been brought in here, and with screens about the tables
to fend off any possible draught, the guests were being made
comfortable.
As Ryder stopped to speak to Al, Mrs. Judson and the hard-featured
committee woman of the S.B.C.D.G. swept in. The widow did not look
like a person who had spent a hard night. Ryder felt his gorge rise
at her fresh and rejuvenated appearance.
Ruth had been utterly worn out and he had spent a most woful time
from midnight till dawn, all because of this hysterical woman. And
here she was as fresh as a daisy! That the widow bowed very
distantly to him, Ryder did not remark--nor would he have cared in
the least had he noticed her haughtiness.
"Let me find a table for you, Mr. Ryder," Al said. "Your lady will
not be down?"
"Not yet. She is still asleep."
"I'll speak to the chef," promised the steward. "She shall have
something nice for breakfast sent up to her when she rings. We have
warned most of the other guests that it will be impossible to serve
breakfasts upstairs until we get more help."
He led Ryder to a small table next to that occupied by Mrs. Judson
and the other woman, but there was a screen between the two tables
and the women did not know of Ryder's presence.
"Wasn't that the Mr. Ryder who bought the lamps for us?" the
hard-featured woman asked, quite loud enough for the man in question
to hear. "That man who stood in the doorway?"
"Oh!" ejaculated the widow, "_is_ that his name? Are you sure?"
"So I am told. He was pointed out to me last evening by a gentleman
who knows him. John Ryder. One of the shrewdest speculators in Wall
Street they say. Quite remarkable that he should have played the
Good Angel to us all after cornering the heating and lighting
supplies of the town," and she laughed unpleasantly.
"Oh, my!" drawled Mrs. Judson. "Are you _sure, quite sure_, that is
his name?"
"Certainly."
"Well--I--declare!" gasped the widow, breathlessly. Ryder might have
risen and sought another table, but her next words held him
motionless in his chair. "Do you know, I _thought_ there was
something very odd about them. I never heard the like in all my
life! And I should have _known_, too, after what Miss Solomons said.
_She_ declares they tried to rob me----"
"Who tried to rob you?" exclaimed the other woman, evidently puzzled.
"This Ryder, as he calls himself, and that woman with him."
"Why, Ryder is his name I tell you," declared her vis-à-vis at table.
"Then," said the widow in an impressive tone, "that woman with him is
not his wife."
"_What!_"
Ryder might have uttered that exclamation himself, there was so much
emphasis in it. The dull red of rage rose in his cheek. He was
tempted to leap up and kick aside the screen and----
"It--it is awful!" wailed Mrs. Judson. "And people have seen me with
them. I--I was over-urged by them to take supper at their table last
night. And it was in their rooms I had my bad spell later. You
know, dear, I am not at all myself when I get hysterical. I am not
accountable for what I do. The doctor says so himself. But when
Miss Solomons interfered and kept them from robbing me----"
"Robbing you!" gasped the other woman. "How terrible!"
"Wasn't it? That girl really is sharp. Of course, it seems strange
to have a girl for a house detective, and she is dreadfully slangy
and bookish----"
"Yes, yes!" murmured the other. "But tell me about this Ryder and
the woman? Of course, he would not have robbed you. It must have
been the woman--some awful creature he has brought here, of course.
Men are such beasts!"
"Aren't they?" agreed the widow. "And she gave me quite another name
from Ryder. The bold thing!"
"Are they here under an alias?" gasped the other gossip. "I was told
they had only just been married."
"They can't be married at all. She doesn't go by his name. I never
heard of anything so disgraceful--and right here at the Pinewood Inn
which is supposed to be so select."
Ryder rose up so suddenly that he kicked over his chair. He wanted
to kick away the screen, too, and fall tooth and nail upon "that old
cat who dared say such vile things about Ruth."
Not daring to trust himself even to look at the two women, he hurried
out of the room, completely forgetting his breakfast.
"There!" he muttered, striding in the direction of the café. "That
serves us right for associating with strangers. Ruth shouldn't have
taken up with her in the first place.
"Hang it! I should not have allowed the woman's familiarity myself.
I could have nipped it in the bud last night at supper. I shouldn't
expect an unsophisticated girl like Ruth to see through such an old
stager as that Judson. And Miss Solomons! Gad!
"How can human beings be so cruel to each other? Women in
particular! It is a mystery to me!
"What did the old cat mean about Ruth giving her another name? I
swear I must have a talk with Ruth. Not my wife? Heavens on earth!
when I've got the certificate of our marriage right here in my
pocket?" and he struck himself on the breast with emphasis.
"If that old fool keeps up her clatter I may have to have the
certificate photographed and a copy handed to every guest of the
Pinewood Inn!"
CHAPTER XVI
THE DUTY AGAIN DEVOLVES
Ryder feed a waiter to bring him some breakfast into the café and did
something he had never done before in his life--drank a "life saver"
before the morning meal.
"If this goes on," muttered John Ryder, "I shall become a sot. I
have drunk more between-meal drinks within the last twenty-four hours
than I ever did before in my life. They say getting married sobers
most men; it seems as though it may utterly wreck _me_--morally!"
When he wandered back into the office George had returned and
beckoned him to the desk.
"I've had a couple of hours' sleep, Mr. Ryder, and that's all," the
clerk said. "And it's all I guess I'll get. Mr. Manger hasn't come
back and isn't likely to; and although Jim Howe is willing, he's only
good for detail work. He's got to come to me to ask about every
little thing. And now, by Jove! _I've_ got to come to you, sir."
"Come to me?" growled Ryder. "What for? I'm through. You can't
expect me to shoulder the responsibilities of running this hotel."
"I just want your advice, Mr. Ryder," said George, the foxy. "Look
around at these other men. They are all useless to me now. Aside
from Al--who has his own work--you are the only man with a head on
him."
"I'm not sure whether I have a head or not," grumbled Ryder. "But
fire up! What's happened?"
"Why, I filed a telegram to Mr. Giddings last night, and here's what
I get in reply," the clerk hastened to say, handing the crumpled
sheet to Ryder. It read:
"Giddings out of town. Return Monday. Should advise keeping house
open at any cost.--BLACKMAN."
"Now, I don't know who the dickens Blackman is, unless he's Mr.
Giddings' chief clerk," the worried George said. "But this wire
doesn't give me proper authority to go ahead and contract bills,
promise to pay help, and all that. I don't know how to reach any of
the Barnaby heirs. They may read something about our trouble in the
papers this afternoon, for our local correspondent is on the job.
"But the heirs will expect Giddings to attend to it. The help are
troublesome--those that have remained. Al has his hands full,
believe me! And the guests are kicking like steers about the
heating. We've got to have coal."
"Can't you buy a little in the town?"
"It would be mighty little. These dealers here--and there are only
two of them--buy from hand to mouth, as you might say. And then, Mr.
Ryder, I'm a poor man. My salary isn't big. This looks like a
diamond in my tie," and George grinned; "but it is pure glass. I
wear it because it seems a man can't be a sure-enough hotel clerk
without wearing what looks like a 'chunk of ice.'
"You know," the clerk added more seriously, "Bangs bought his coal
from the railroad company."
"Can't you get some from them?"
"Well, I tried to bluff them on it," said George. "I managed to get
them on the telephone at the Junction--Divisional Supervisions
office. There is still something wrong with the long distance
service. They can get us a car by next Tuesday; not a minute before."
"These folks'll freeze to death here," said Ryder. "It's already
colder this morning. And there's nothing being done to that bridge,
I suppose?"
"You couldn't get the farmers to work on Saturday if you offered them
double wages," declared the clerk. "The reputation of the Pinewood
Inn will be ruined. And I'd hate to see the doors closed and all
these people put out."
"And nowhere to go," Ryder said thoughtfully.
"You've said a mouthful," groaned George, but watching the other
sharply.
"By thunder!" exclaimed Ryder, suddenly smiting the counter with a
clenched fist. He scented the battle like a warhorse and forgot his
personal troubles for the moment. This emergency appealed to him.
"I can't see you beat this way, boy," he declared.
"But what'll I do?"
"Wait till I take a look around the village. Sit tight and say
nothing."
"If the steam isn't knocking in those pipes pretty soon I am going to
have a mob at this desk ready to tar and feather me, Mr. Ryder."
"If they do it, you tell me," chuckled the business man with an
answering grin, and, having his hat and coat with him, he started for
the door without further loss of time.
It looked to Ryder as though it was up to him to take hold of the
wheel of affairs again and give it a whirl. Ruth had expressed a
desire to remain at the hotel; and certainly she could not stay
without heat and light.
Besides, Ryder had an additional reason for remaining. If Mrs.
Judson circulated her rumors and lies among the guests, certainly
John Ryder and the woman to whom he had given his name and to whom he
had entrusted his honor, could not afford, even seemingly, to run
away.
In his present mood he would have made an offer to buy the hotel and
run it as he saw fit, providing he could get the owners of the
Pinewood Inn to agree on a price. Under no consideration or
circumstances could he allow the guests to believe there was anything
queer about Ruth. They must remain.
And "that impudent and half-baked house detective," which was the way
he thought of Miss Solomons, was likely to make as much trouble for
them as Mrs. Judson. He did not mind what people said of him; but he
grew furious when he thought of what might be said about Ruth.
Therefore, he took hold of this coal situation with zest. As he
passed the local coal dealers on the way to the shack that served
Pinewood as a station, he saw that George had been correct. The two
dealers together did not have enough coal to furnish the hotel with a
proper supply for more than a day or two. The hotel needed a carload
at least. And there should be two or three carloads in the cellar to
protect the guests if the house was to remain open any length of time.
When he reached the station he saw upon a spur track four gondolas
heaped high with fuel. A man in cap and jumper, wheeling an empty
truck, he rightly identified as the station master and general
factotum of the company at this rather unimportant station.
He halted the man. "I want to buy some of that coal," he said.
"Huh?"
Ryder repeated his observation, and the man began to grin. "Think
I'm dealing in coal? You've struck the wrong man, boss."
"I represent the hotel," said Ryder. "I understand the railroad
furnishes Pinewood Inn with fuel."
"But not that coal," said the station master. "That was shunted off
here yesterday because the old scrapheap they called an engine
hitched to Number Three couldn't pull her load over the rise to
Blandins. That coal is billed to a factory up there. I couldn't
touch that coal if I wanted to."
"Then put me in communication with the supervisor of this division
and I'll tell him the hotel must have coal. We're all out. The
manager has lit out over night and left the bins empty and the guests
will freeze if we don't get coal. I'll pay for it right here, and
you'll find that my check is good."
"Oh, I ain't doubting that," said the agent. "I guess you're Mr.
Ryder. I've heard tell of you. You near bought out Cal Crabtree's
store last night, they say. But if you was the Angel Gabriel I
couldn't sell you a hodful of that coal--nossir! Neither could the
Super. It's not the road's coal, I tell you."
"The road, then, is merely acting as carrier?"
"That's right, Mister. The Lossing Soap Factory is going to get that
coal."
"I want that coal," said John Ryder persuasively.
"Can't help it. If I should sell you a pound of it, I'd be li'ble to
arrest for larceny, or burglary, or somethin'. Yes, sir!"
"If you can't sell it, I shall have to take it."
The station agent laughed. He laughed loudly. In fact he was still
holding his sides and hee-hawing when Ryder walked away. The latter
went directly to Crabtree's store.
"Old man," he said to the storekeeper, and accepting without a qualm
one of Crabtree's "two-fors" and lighting it, "what do teamsters ask
here for carting a load of coal?"
"They git fifty cents a ton."
"I want you to get me every man who owns a horse and wagon, and will
work, to cart coal from the spur track yonder to the hotel. Let 'em
weigh out and in on your scales. I'll give a dollar a ton providing
they get to work quickly and stick to it."
"My soul and body! Where'll you git the coal?" gasped the
storekeeper.
"I haven't _got_ it. But I am going to _take_ it. It's there on the
spur, and the hotel needs it. Can't let the women and children
suffer. Do you notice that the thermometer is going down?"
"But what'll the railroad folks do?"
"You find me enough men and they won't do anything. We'll have what
coal we need before they can send a gang up here from the
Junction--even if they wish to. This is a case of necessity and
Necessity, as our school-books used to tell us, knows no law!"
"By jinks!" exclaimed Crabtree. "They'll call on the constable."
"Where is he? Who is he?"
"Why, he--he kinder thought to go fishin' today. The sun didn't jes'
rise to suit him. But he can git out now if he steps right smart,
before anybody can tell him he's likely to be called on."
"My soul, man! Are you the constable?" gasped John Ryder.
"Sh! I'm storekeeper to you. Don't speak loud enough for the
constable in me to hear," chuckled the old fellow.
He went to the door and blew a horn. "That'll call my son, Sam.
He'll 'tend to things--and weigh the coal. I sha'n't be back 'fore
supper time. Sam'll gather the clans, Mr. Ryder, and see that they
work right. You ought to put a tidy lot of coal into them hotel bins
before the constable gits back," and the storekeeper promptly
disappeared.
CHAPTER XVII
THE PRIVATE BUCCANEER
The offer of double pay brought even some of the neighboring farmers
to life. Within an hour a string of carts of all descriptions wound
its way along the village street to the spur railroad track. Ryder
was there, chewing on a cigar, watching the first loads taken from
the cars. The station master came running, mad as a hatter.
"You can't do that, you derned fool!" he shouted, shaking his fist in
John Ryder's face.
"You watch and see if I can't."
"But you'll get into trouble. You'll be arrested. These fellers
will be arrested. Why, hang it! it's high-handed piracy, that's what
it is."
"If anybody is arrested I stand ready to pay the bill," Ryder coolly
told him. "I tell you this is a case of necessity."
Naturally the agent did not see it that way, and he rushed to wire
his headquarters. Of course he got orders to stop the robbery and
came back and bawled commands that nobody paid any attention to.
"You'll get neck deep into trouble over this," the agent sputtered to
Ryder. "There is a sheriff on the way here to arrest you."
"All right. He'll find me at the hotel," and having seen the first
car cleaned out he strolled back to Pinewood Inn. He knew there
would be enough coal in the bins to last over Sunday at least. Two
carloads was enough anyway, and he ordered the work to cease when the
second gondola was clean. He left two cars for the Lossing Soap
Factory.
Sam Crabtree furnished the cash needed and he paid his teamsters; and
when John Ryder entered the hotel office again it was past eleven
o'clock. Steam was already knocking in the pipes, and the hotel
guests were beginning to smile once more.
Few had tried to leave. A couple of unattached men had gone on the
eight o'clock combination that jounced down to the Junction over the
worst ballasted road in seven states. One man had cranked up his
automobile and tried to get away by the back roads; but had come
limping in again, having been drawn out of the mire by a farmer with
a team of horses.
The hotel motorbus was still across the inlet; and it was broken down
anyway. It would take several days to repair it. A few of the
guests, with light baggage only, had arranged to be punted across the
inlet and would walk to Barr, the station on the main line.
The most of them, however, had made no plans to get away. Heat being
supplied again, the promise of lights as usual, and a reorganization
of the working force of the house, satisfied most of them that
matters would soon take their usual course.
John Ryder hoped that this was to be the fact. He had done all--and
more--than he desired to do for the welfare and comfort of the
company. And he certainly would not have assumed this last
responsibility regarding the coal supply had not Ruth expressed a
desire to remain here for the rest of their honeymoon.
Jim Howe, the clerk's assistant, was at the desk, and he spoke to
Ryder as soon as the latter came near.
"I say, sir, you're Mr. Ryder, aren't you? Well, there are two
ladies been after you this morning, they want to see you."
"Two ladies?"
"Yes," and Howe had hard work to suppress a grin. "One's our house
detective, Miss Solomons. You had a run-in with her last night?"
"Something like that," returned Ryder.
"The lady with the craze for five-cent detective fiction. She's
carrying one of those novels around now--'The Great Limburger Cheese
Mystery, or Dick Squawker on a Strong Scent'; you know the kind. I
used to read 'em when I was a kid. But she is after you."
"Humph!" observed Ryder not at all pleased.
"And the lady in Suite Three," added Jim Howe, now flashing the guest
a sharp look. "She's asking for you. Al sent up her breakfast and
then she telephoned down here to ask if her--ahem!--her husband was
about."
"Well?"
"I did not know just who she meant at first," acknowledged Howe,
still eying Ryder curiously. "She--she did not get your name right."
The business man felt himself flushing. But he braved it out.
"Asked for her husband, didn't she?"
"Er--yes."
"Well, that's me," and he moved away from the desk.
But he was suddenly impressed by the fact that Ruth must have said or
done something to stir up suspicion at the hotel desk. With Mrs.
Judson peddling her misinformation through the house, he and his
bride were likely to be misunderstood. What could it be? Did Ruth
mispronounce his name?
The puzzle of it enfolded him in a blanket of doubt. He went
upstairs muttering to himself and with clouded brow.
As he approached Parlor A he saw a familiar figure standing at the
door. It was White--the man who had been so suddenly and strangely
taken ill in the office during the night. The man was speaking to
one of the boys, and Ryder saw him give the messenger a card and a
coin.
"Yes; Suite Three. Give it to the lady and tell her I am waiting for
her here."
White went quickly into the parlor and the boy darted away. Ryder
was dumbfounded. He was fixed to his place in the corridor for some
moments before he could move.
White, the man of mystery, had sent his card to his, Ryder's, wife!
He expected Ruth to come to the parlor at his summons!
There could be no mistake about it. Ryder was sure enough now that
Suite Three was the one he had taken for himself and his bride.
White's questions the night before, Ruth's fear of the man when he
had come to the door, her attempt at supper time to have private
conversation with White (Mrs. Judson's interference Ryder now saw had
broken up that) and various other suspicious circumstances rose in
Ryder's mind in horrid procession.
He staggered forward a step until he was where he could see into the
parlor. He was aware that Miss Solomon's sharp face suddenly came
within range of his vision; but he did not give the steely eyed house
detective a second glance. His eyes were fixed on White.
Besides that individual, there seemed but two other guests of the
hotel in Parlor A. Cudger and James had disappeared. Two women
stood talking beside one of the other doors. They were the vivacious
Mrs. Judson and Mrs. Dent, the hard-featured member of the advance
committee of the S.B.C.D.G.
Ryder hung back. John B. White was pacing a length of rug nervously.
Suddenly Ruth appeared at the door beside which the widow and her
companion stood.
Ryder's heart leaped at the sight of his bride. She looked as fresh
and sweet as a rose. She wore a delightfully pretty house dress.
She carried what was evidently White's card in her hand, and she cast
a puzzled glance about the parlor. She first saw Mrs. Judson.
"Good morning, Mrs. Judson," she said brightly. "I hope you are
better?"
Up went the widow's lorgnette. She stared Mrs. Ryder up and down
without replying. Then she deliberately turned her back without
speaking, much to Ruth's pain and surprise.
Ryder's gorge rose. He was about to step forward to protect Ruth
when the latter saw White and uttered a little cry. The man wheeled
and came toward her. Did Ruth shrink from him and did she cry out in
fear?
"Madam, I must speak to you," White said, as Mrs. Judson and her
companion left the room. "At least you owe me some reparation--some
explanation. I demand that of you!"
CHAPTER XVIII
IT IS NO LONGER FARCE
Ruth halted. Her husband, from the other end of the room, saw fear
in her face--right down terror!--as she confronted the man who
addressed her.
Nor was this surprising. White's eyes glowed unnaturally, his long
black hair was disheveled and his appearance altogether wild and
uncanny. Ruth fell back from him, and Ryder heard her breath come
gaspingly. Yet for the moment Ryder was spellbound and unable to go
to her protection.
"What--what do you want of me?" she asked faintly.
"I sent for you. I must talk with you," White returned.
"Sent for me?" she said in a dully puzzled tone. "Oh, no! My
husband sent for me." She glanced at the card in her hand. "He--he
sent me this card---- So strange----"
She flashed White a suddenly indignant glance. "You have tricked
me!" she cried with more force. "You have obtained one of my
husband's cards----"
"That is my card, Ruth Mont!" White exclaimed harshly. "It is the
card of the man whom you should call 'husband'--who _is_ your husband
by right. _And I am that man!_"
A porter suddenly entered the door at John Ryder's back.
"Are you Mr. Ryder, sir?" he said. "I was sent after you. Your
trunks have been brought across the inlet and we have them at the
door of your suite. Shall we take them inside and carry the empty
boxes downstairs, sir?"
How did he do it? How does a man's brain sometimes continue to work
and his limbs to move when he is sleep-walking? The subconscious
self of John Ryder moved out of the parlor where two human beings
were in the throes of a gripping tragedy--a tragedy that might scar
his whole future life--and led the porter back to Suite Three.
He opened the door with the key he had obtained at the desk and saw
the porters bring in the trunks. He made them understand that they
were to let the empty boxes belonging to Ruth remain. Then he tipped
them and was left alone.
He sat down in the very chair he had sat in before and held Ruth in
his arms, and awaited his wife's return. His wife! God in heaven!
Was she his wife? White had claimed her as rightfully belonging to
him, and all those suspicious circumstances that had heretofore
rankled in John Ryder's mind swam to the surface and offered proof
that White's statement was true.
What was this awful riddle that seared John Ryder's soul as though
with a branding iron?
He was convinced now that White was not a madman. Wild he might
appear; but that he was insane, that his strange speeches were the
vaporings of an unbalanced mind, Ryder did not now believe.
Why was he so sure that White was sane? Because Ruth had shown by
her manner and by the expression of her countenance that something in
White's statement impressed her. Ryder had seen her display this
fear twice. He was convinced that White actually was closely
associated with her, or had been so in the past.
Yet Ruth was bound to him--Ryder. She was his wife. He had been
wedded to her less than twenty-four hours before. Twenty-four hours!
It seemed a lifetime of storm and stress.
Ryder had promised to love, to cherish, to support and defend from
all harm, to----
"My God!" he exclaimed, leaping up. "Am I a pusillanimous coward--a
dastard? I have left her to face that man--whatever or whoever he
is--alone."
He started for the door, madly intending to go back to the parlor and
face them both. The door of the suite opened and closed swiftly.
Ruth came in--the vision of a panting, wild-eyed, pallid-faced woman.
She clung to the door knob for a moment, striving to regain her
breath, and staring strangely into John Ryder's face. When she
spoke, what she said shocked him as nothing else could have done.
"Who are you?" she demanded. "What--what manner of man are you?
What did you do this to me for? _Why did you do it?_"
"Do what?" asked Ryder.
"Why did you marry me? Oh!" she cried in despair, wringing her
hands, "why did you do this awful thing?"
"Why did I marry you?" repeated the man, dumbfounded. "Because I
loved you. I told you I loved you when we were aboard ship, Ruth----"
"Aboard ship! Aboard what ship?"
"The _Minnequago_. Surely you have not forgotten our long talks?
You have not forgotten----"
"Am I mad?" cried the woman, throwing her arms wildly above her head.
"Oh! I must be mad!" Then she gained sudden control over herself.
She thrust her face forward, her eyes blazing into his. "If you are
my husband," she whispered, "what is your name?"
"I _am_ your husband," Ryder said sternly. "You were legally married
to me yesterday. Here is the certificate which the minister gave
you, and which you placed in my hands for safe keeping."
He had dragged out his wallet and handed her the folded document.
Her shaking fingers clutched at it and finally got the stiff paper
unfolded. She read the names aloud in crescendo:
"'Ruth A. Mont': 'John Ryder'. "The paper slipped from her fingers
and fluttered to the floor. "'John Ryder'?" she repeated staring at
him. "_I never heard of you before!_"
She burst into tears, a passion of weeping that shook her whole body.
For a moment she stood before him, so near that he might have touched
her, her face in her trembling hands. The man stood still, dumb and
helpless.
Then turning swiftly she ran into the inner room. Ryder, at last
awakened, started up. He was frightened by her vehemence, as well as
amazed by her words.
He started to follow her. She had shut the door sharply, but the key
was not turned in the lock. He put his hand upon the door and
hesitated. And so surely is the man lost who hesitates, John Ryder
was lost then! There were two courses open to him, and he chose the
wrong one.
His hand left the knob, and with the sound of the woman's wild
sobbing in his ears he went slowly down the room and out into the
corridor. As he came in sight of the parlor door he saw White wildly
break from the room and run for the stairway. John Ryder's senses
were so dulled that he scarcely saw the man. But behind the
departing White appeared in the parlor doorway the figure of Miss
Solomons. The expression upon the house detective's face might have
alarmed Ryder at another time. She fairly glared at him as he moved
past her.
"No, you ain't no crook, Mr. Ryder," he heard the strange girl
mutter. "You're just a particular blamed fool! That's what you are."
He managed to get out of the hotel in some way and stumbled along the
sandy road to the shore of the inlet where he might be alone. He
tramped the edge of the inlet for miles.
His mind was back in the room at the hotel where he had left Ruth.
The incident was as clearly etched on his brain as it had been when
he stood and heard her amazing declaration.
What she meant he did not know. What he should have done he did not
know. That he had done the wrong thing he was not sure. But he had.
_Wrong_? Indeed, his act had been the deadliest wrong possible to
the woman. He was stunned, he did not understand; but there was one
thing of which in his sane moments he was already convinced: Ruth
loved him.
Nothing should have superseded that in his mind. Whatever the riddle
was, whatever the skein of mystery in which they two were entangled,
he should have remembered that. Instead he had allowed jealousy to
step in and becloud the issue. John Ryder had turned his back upon a
woman who had shown she loved him deeply. He had deserted her at a
time when she needed him as she never had before and probably never
would again.
All the pain and passion which followed this event John Ryder could
lay to his own act. He brought all that followed upon himself by his
own unwisdom. He was thinking only of himself. He was like a hurt
animal, desiring to seek some lair wherein to lick its wounds.
He walked on and on. The in-running tide lapped along the strand at
his feet, the burden of its murmur being:
"_I never heard of you before!_"
What had Ruth meant by that statement? Was it possible that she was
insane? What had that fellow, White, said to her that had thrown her
mind into such confusion?
White! At the remembrance of the man of mystery Ryder suddenly spat
out an oath. He could explain this thing; and Ryder suddenly
registered a vow that White should explain, or he would have his life!
He was a man now enraged to the point of desperation. He started for
the hotel with this single idea milling in his brain. More than an
hour had elapsed since he had left the Pinewood Inn, but he had taken
little note of the lapse of time.
He betrayed his disturbed state of mind when he reached the desk
where George presided.
"For mercy's sake, Mr. Ryder! what's happened to you?" demanded the
clerk.
"I--I am looking for a man," stammered Ryder. "You know--the fellow
who threw a fit here last night. White--John B. White."
"What about him?"
"I want to see him."
"But he's gone, sir."
"Gone? Left the hotel?"
"Yes, sir. He had no heavy baggage, and he got somebody to row him
across the inlet. There are several fellows down there taking folks
back and forth because of the broken bridge. I guess he intended
catching the two o'clock train on the main line. Had your lunch,
sir?"
Ryder was not thinking of eating. He walked away from the desk
without replying. White was gone. Then who would explain to him----?
Ruth! He started up the stairway. Instinctively he sought Suite
Three. Yet when he arrived there he hesitated. Should he go in?
Could he face Ruth? What was he to say to her?
At last he turned the knob. The door was unlocked. He stepped into
the room. Its condition instantly shocked his mind into activity.
The wardrobe was wide open and was empty. All Ruth's pretty dresses
had disappeared and there was evidence of hasty packing. He hurried
down the room to her trunks. They were repacked, strapped, and ready
for shipment. He stooped to peer at the tags.
The trunks had come to the hotel, of course, marked with Ruth's
maiden name and Pinewood. The man's eyes bulged--he uttered a hoarse
cry. These lines were crossed out and in their stead and in a
woman's upright handwriting he saw: "Mrs. John B. White, New York."
Ruth had repacked the boxes ready for their return by the express
company.
Ryder turned swiftly to the bed chamber, his heart thumping so that
he well nigh choked. The door of the inner room was open. He crept
to it and looked in. It was empty.
"She's gone! She's run away!" muttered the horrified man.
"What--why----" His words ceased and he dashed for the corridor. He
understood at last. She had gone away with White! This was his firm
belief.
Right here it would have been well if John Ryder had recalled the
observation of Miss Solomons: "You're just a particular blamed fool!"
He did not stop to question the reasonableness of this idea that had
shot across his brain and seared it. Ruth had gone. Her trunks were
tagged with that man's name--_with her own name_. He saw it all now
in a flash. She had married him while yet she was another man's
wife. That man was John B. White, and he had followed them to
Pinewood Inn and demanded that she return to him.
As Ryder rushed out into the corridor he came upon the chambermaid he
had tipped so liberally that morning. His trembling lips formed the
instant words:
"Have you seen my wife?"
"Why, Mr. Ryder! I saw her some time ago--going out."
"You mean she was leaving the hotel?"
"She was dressed for traveling--yes, sir. Just as she was dressed
when she came last evening. Yes, sir."
Ryder brushed by and started for the stairs. Ruth was attempting to
get away with White on that two o'clock train. There might still be
time for him to catch it. If ever hell was brewed in a man's heart
it was in the heart of John Ryder at this moment.
Somebody spoke his name behind him. A swift glance showed him the
motherly face of Mrs. Brack. She seemed desirous of speaking to him,
but Ryder could stop for nothing now. He hurried on without a word
of reply.
He reached the head of the flight and started down. There were
several men at the desk, but Ryder brushed through them and leaned
forward to speak confidentially to George.
"Does that train leave Barr, on the main line, at just two o'clock?"
he asked the clerk.
"Two-thirteen, Mr. Ryder," answered George.
"Thanks!" Ryder turned to make his way to the door. He was
confronted by a stranger who put an authoritative hand upon his
breast and pushed him back.
"This is the gentleman, is it?" the stranger said to the clerk.
"This is John Ryder?"
"That's my name--yes," snapped Ryder. "I'm in a hurry. I can't talk
to you now."
"I'm afraid you'll have to wait till your hurry's over, Mr. Ryder,"
said the man. "I'm the sheriff's deputy. I understand you are the
man who stole two cars of coal from the Lossing Soap Company. I've
got to detain you, sir."
CHAPTER XIX
AN OUTLAW IN FACT
Now at this particular moment John Ryder wished to be detained less
than ever before in his life. He had but half an hour in the clear
to reach the Barr railroad station in any case. White and Ruth had
already got a good start of him. As far as he knew there might not
be another train to New York over the main line until night; and
surely not on the branch from Pinewood until nine o'clock.
Sheriff or no sheriff, he made a break for the door of the hotel.
The officer ran with him and there was a squabble right in the foyer.
"You can't do this, Mr. Ryder!" exclaimed the deputy sheriff.
"You're arrested!"
"I'll show you what I can do!" declared John Ryder with emphasis, and
swung for the officer's jaw. The blow landed and it did him good.
Not the sheriff, but Ryder himself.
This quarrel took his mind for the moment off the thoughts that had
nearly crazed him. He burst through the door, banged it in the
sheriff's face, and ran for the inlet.
Before he reached the waterside he heard the hue and cry behind him.
But there was at least one boatman alert.
"Dodging a board bill, Mister?" exclaimed this individual. "Well! I
wouldn't wonder if they'll all be doing that. They tell me they shut
off the heat and lights on you all last night. Gimme two dollars and
I'll put you across."
Here was a fellow just as crooked as John Ryder needed at that
moment, and the latter leaped into the boat which was thrust out into
the tide. Down to the shore plowed the deputy sheriff bawling for
them to come back.
"I'm deafer than an adder," said the boatman, grinning up into John
Ryder's face. "What does he say?"
"He seems anxious about the weather," said John Ryder grimly. "He's
got another boat. Two men in it. They'll beat you."
"Huh! Tom Crane and Andy Meyers. That old punt of theirs is like
punk. If we should run into it, Mister, my prow would cut her right
down to the water-line."
"An extra five dollars for you if you do it," the passenger snapped,
his jaw set and ugly. "But don't pick 'em up. The tide isn't
dangerous here, is it?"
"They kin near wade ashore," agreed the boatman and began to hold
back that the pursuing boat would be sure to overtake them.
"Sit tight and keep your mouth shut," said the boatman. "The less
said the better, as the old woman remarked when she married the deaf
and dumb husban'."
The deputy sheriff, holding a handkerchief to his jaw, was shouting
commands that Ryder's boatman did not in the least heed. But the
latter let the other boat come right up on them.
"I'll get ye!" shouted the angry officer. "I'll jail you for this!
Hi! look out, you numbskull!"
Ryder's man swerved his heavy boat around suddenly. It was aimed
directly for the leaky punt. Crash! The collision half drove the
officer's craft under water and she began to settle at once.
"Hi! You'll drown us!" yelled one of the other boatmen.
"Sho, you ain't nowheres near to the channel," said Ryder's man. "It
ain't neck deep to shore--from where you came. You fellers kin both
swim, and if the sheriff can't, let him sink. I ain't got no use for
him, anyway."
Later he explained that this officer had come the week before and
searched his house for liquor.
"Thought I kept a blind pig, he said," chuckled the boatman. "But I
don't. Jest the same, if he'd looked down our well---- Well! if you
ever come back here and want a good drink of licker, look me up. I
always have enough for my friends."
Ryder took the extra pair of oars at this point and aided in rowing
the boat to the other side of the inlet. He paid his helper and
started for the station in a rattling old car. There was no other
vehicle to be obtained. Just before they sighted the railroad he
heard the train whistle.
Although he knew he could not make the train, he went on down into
the town and to the station.
The two-thirteen had pulled out some time before he stepped upon the
platform. John Ryder went directly to the ticket window and asked
the clerk:
"You sold tickets for this last train to New York?"
"Yes, sir."
Coolly and carefully Ryder described White's appearance and that of
his own wife. "I want to catch up with these people," he explained,
"and I do not know whether they went on this train, or on one in the
other direction."
In secret his heart was lacerated by the very words he used in
describing Ruth. Yet he must learn if she had actually gone with
White.
The clerk seemed to remember White clearly. The man had paced the
platform constantly until the train arrived.
"Watching to see if I was following them," thought Ryder. Then
aloud: "And the woman?"
"She wore a veil--one o' those auto veils. I didn't see her face.
But she was the only woman who left by that train."
"Not with the man?"
"They did not appear to be together."
Ryder nodded. He had gained complete control of himself now. He
wrote a long telegram to the supervisor of this division of the
railroad, and the answer came so quickly that those about the
railroad office were startled. A special train was ordered started
from the Junction for Mr. John Ryder and would arrive about three
o'clock. It would have right of way going north.
Ryder paced the platform and chewed his cigar. John B. White had
paced this platform, too. Whatever White's thoughts had been, John
Ryder's were as black and as terrible as ever man had meditated upon.
He knew what he would do to White if he caught him. No matter what
the guilt of his wife--or the woman who had posed as his wife for a
few hours--Ryder was very sure that White was the more guilty. He
was as ruthless an outlaw at this moment as ever a twentieth century
business man could be.
The special backed in. It stopped about ten seconds, for Ryder was
the only person to board it. Then on toward the city for which the
two guilty creatures he was following had bought tickets. They might
have bought them for New York as a blind; but Ruth's trunks were
plainly marked for that city.
A baggage car and smoker and some official's private car made up the
special train. John Ryder's name was a power with the officials of
this road if he cared to use it. And it was of his name that he
thought, sitting shrugged down in the leather covered lounge and
watching the autumn landscape fly past.
He remembered what he had tried to make his name stand for during the
years he had been working up to his present business pinnacle. He
came of unblemished stock. His father had been an honest man. His
mother, the memory of whom had ever been an inspiration to him, had
been a beautiful woman both in person and character.
He had given her ring--her wedding ring, hallowed by being worn on
the finger of a pure and gentle wife--into the keeping of one who, he
now believed, did not value the sacred character of the emblem.
His wife---- Well! she _was_ his wife! He had married her legally!
He tried to push any other thought down.
Yet, suppose she had no right to marry him? That was the awful
thought that rankled like a barbed arrow in his heart.
"Mrs. John B. White," written under the erased "Ruth Mont" on the
trunk tags seemed to clinch Ryder's suspicions first aroused by
White's actions and words.
Was Ruth a bigamist without having intended the crime? Had she been
married in England and, for some reason, supposed her husband dead?
Was there something shameful connected with this White and her
association with him that had spurred her to try to hide her former
marriage from Ryder.
What manner of woman was she? Was her sweetness and innocence all
assumed? She had seemed to John Ryder until this terrible thing had
arisen, to be good and pure--in every way a desirable character.
Of course, she might be vain. Her consideration of the offer of Sam
Marks to put her on the stage might prove that frailty. An actress!
Was there an explanation in that thought? Had she been acting all
along? Had the story she told him on shipboard been a tissue of
falsehoods? Was her apparent fondness for him born of her ability to
simulate emotions and feelings that she did not really possess?
Good heavens! was it all a part of a plot, perhaps, to link his
name--the name of John Ryder--with the stage career of a vaudeville
actress? Was this the explanation of it all?
And what of John B. White? What of Ruth's apparent fear of him?
Could any woman so assume the attitude and look of terror? On the
other hand, could her appearance of loving Ryder be likewise assumed?
Suddenly there flashed into his mind the memory of how Ruth
looked--what she had said, indeed--when she thought he had been taken
ill in the hotel office late the previous night. He saw her again as
she came madly down the hotel corridor and flung herself into his
arms.
"She thought it was I who had been taken sick. That I know. My God!
What mystery is here? The girl loves me--deeply, sincerely, truly.
I cannot doubt it. Whether she has a right to do so or not, she
_does_ love me.
"Then, why has she gone away with that man? What dreadful hold does
he have upon her? Is she beside herself? Her words suggest an
aberrant mind. I should be with her now. That White is a villain.
And whatever his right, even if it is backed by law, shall I give up
the woman I love and who loves me to any other man on earth?"
And as though in answer to this question a repetition of Miss
Solomons' last observation to him flashed into John Ryder's mind:
"You're just a particular blamed fool. That's what _you_ are!"
CHAPTER XX
THE NAME ON THE BILLBOARD
Ryder arrived in New York after dark. He did not go to his rooms,
for he feared if he did so his presence would become known to some of
his friends and he would be obliged to make explanations.
When the taxicab deposited him, baggageless, at the hotel he
selected, he noted the variegated lights of a drugstore across the
street. He went into it before entering the hotel and shoved a
well-wrinkled prescription across the counter to the clerk. The
latter raised his brows.
"I've got to sleep tonight," John Ryder said quietly. "You will see
Dr. Harmstick's name clearly written on that prescription. He is my
family physician. Here is my card."
He got the drug, and, as soon as a room was assigned to him, took the
medicine and went to bed. He could not have slept without the dose,
and that took effect in a short time. But, superinduced by drugs as
it was, his sleep was not refreshing. However, his mind was clear
and his body alert and vigorous when he arose on Sunday morning.
He sent a boy to skirmish for clean linen and a fresh tie, and made
himself presentable before going down for a bit of breakfast. He had
eaten practically nothing the day before, and while he ate now he
tried to plan his future course of action.
Future! Why, the word held nothing for him but the promise of
continued pain and shame. John Ryder of spotless name had given that
name into the keeping of a woman who was unworthy of it--whether she
had intentionally flouted him or not, this fact seemed to be
established. The newspapers must soon learn the story of his
marriage fiasco. It would be blazoned forth for the whole world to
read.
He would be a marked man. John Ryder, the man who had married a
woman offhand, without knowing anything about her! At least, he had
known her but seven days. And she had run away from him with another
man!
It would be a nice bit for the scandal mongers. It would be
something he could never live down. Every man with whom he did
business hereafter would be saying to himself while in Ryder's
presence:
"There must be something the matter with this fellow. They say his
wife ran away from him the day after they were married."
Yet, even these thoughts were not the bitterest in his soul. Higher
than the shame of having his trouble publicly known and discussed,
rose the fact that he had lost the treasure to which his heart clung.
Ruth was the one woman in the world whom he had ever, or could ever,
love. He felt it--he knew it!
Short as their acquaintance had been, Ryder knew that he loved Ruth
as he should never be able to love another woman. He had thought he
loved her when he had first seen her on the deck of the _Minnequago_;
but since their marriage--since the old clergyman had pronounced them
man and wife--a deeper and more tender feeling for his girlish bride
had grown in his mind and heart.
On shipboard, coming over, she had merely been a beautiful
creature--a woman of heart and mind and of fine physique--who
attracted his admiration and fired his passion.
Once bound, as he supposed legally and holily to Ruth Mont, his love
for her had taken on a deeper meaning. He was not a man who
philosophized much, or who catechised his own motives or thoughts;
but he knew that a subtle change had taken place in his feelings
toward the woman even before the minister had joined their hands.
It had been half pique and half determination to obtain his own
desire that had made him write that peremptory note to Miss Mont
before the _Minnequago_ docked. It grated upon him to think of a man
like Marks bearing off such a prize, even in a sordid business
transaction.
But the instant he had seen Ruth waiting for him when he landed--the
moment she had put her hands into his--the instant she had whispered:
"I will marry you," a greater love had leaped into full and glowing
life in John Ryder's bosom.
It was no longer a matter of mutual attraction, or the charm of her
beautiful face and figure, or her mental attributes that held him
captive. From that moment of their meeting on the dock his heart
knew her heart; they had become one.
And this knowledge, which he could not scorn or overlook despite all
that had happened since, made the darker part of the puzzle. Had he
not been sure of his love and of her love, he could have understood
in part how she had come to leave him and go with this other man.
For he could not accept the suggestion that all her sweetness and
sheer happiness as a bride was merely a pose. That, as an actress,
she had simulated a part. No, the woman did not live, he believed,
who could so befool him.
He gazed out of the restaurant window at the church parade on the
broad Fifth Avenue walk, and with eyes that saw more than the passing
throng. Two or three couples went by whom he knew--men and their
wives going home after service.
They suggested domesticity, companionship, the best there is for
human beings in this old world of ours. He realized what he had
lost--aye, what he had merely grasped at only to have the treasure
snatched from him by this cruel turn of fate.
Later he went out and wandered about somewhat aimlessly. Not that he
expected to find either of the two people he was looking for. They
would not be in the Sunday street crowd. And yet he could not help
looking into the faces of those he met with keen scrutiny.
He could not easily set on foot any serious search for Ruth and White
on Sunday. Nor was he sure he wished to. The thought of bringing
the police or even private detectives into the case horrified him.
Yet, was he to lose Ruth without lifting a hand to win her back?
All day long John Ryder weltered in the waters of indecision. Should
he seek Ruth through the regular police channels? Should he let
matters run their own course? This was a new state of mind for the
determined, decisive business man.
Somewhere over on the West Side, about seven o'clock he dropped in at
a restaurant to dine. Afterward he wandered slowly down the broad
and busy avenue that lends itself the airs of Broadway after dark,
jostled by the crowds, without a person to speak to and desirous
indeed of no companionship.
He came to a theater before which was a huge billboard that
advertised mockingly "Sacred Concert," following which was a long
list of vaudeville turns. Many of the crowd turned in here. There
were speculators at the door hawking tickets, and a little eddy of
people held up John Ryder. His eye caught, altogether by accident it
would seem, in flaring red type, the following announcement:
SPECIAL ATTRACTION
First Appearance
of
ENGLAND'S MOST FAMOUS ENTERTAINER
MISS MONT
Imitator and Comédienne
Under the sole management of Mr. Sam Marks
Seeing that he was attracting attention, Ryder moved away. People
were looking into his face curiously. He felt his heart pounding as
though it would burst through the shell of his chest. Rage blinded
him. Despair shook him through every fibre of his being.
The half darkness of a narrower thoroughfare offered him shelter.
The horror and shame of his position well nigh leveled John Ryder's
pride with the ground.
He saw what it all meant now. There could be, he thought, no further
doubt or mistake. She had intended to do this from the first. Marks
had doubtless put her up to it. The scandal of her having married
Ryder and left him after twenty-four hours--on some trumped up charge
of course--would give her an amount of free advertising such as no
vaudeville actress could resist!
The story was already in the papers. John Ryder could not doubt it.
His friends were laughing at his predicament. And how coolly, and
with what utter heartlessness, had the game been played upon him.
Doubtless the woman had been under contract with Marks when the ship
left the other side. Ryder had foolishly showed her that he was in
love with her. Between them, Marks and the girl had hatched this
plot.
And who was White? The answer was easy.
He was some poor actor whom Marks had hired to impersonate a wronged
lover or husband, whichever might best fit the needs of the case.
His following them to the Pinewood Inn had been for the purpose of
creating a scene that would separate the newly wedded couple.
Mrs. Judson's illness had precluded the necessity for that scene.
Fate had played into the hands of the heartless jade; and when the
game had gone far enough for her purpose, she had run away and
returned to New York to fill this, her initial engagement before an
American public.
He even understood now about those pretty frocks she had worn. Of
course they were a part of a stage wardrobe Miss Mont already
possessed.
These thoughts all but turned John Ryder's brain. He found himself
after a time back at the entrance to the theater. But he could not
have told how he got there. One of the ticket speculators assailed
him.
"Best seat in the house, boss. Right down front on the side. Two
bucks. See the whole show."
"When does Miss--Miss Mont come on?"
"Nine-thirty."
"Is she----"
"She's a corker! She had her try-out before the manager and a crowd
of newspaper sharps this morning, and she's a scream. They'll put
out the S.R.O. signs on her for the rest of the week--you take it
from me."
Ryder bought the seat and passed in at the orchestra entrance of the
theater.
CHAPTER XXI
IN THE PART OF THE INJURED HUSBAND
The blaze of lights, the music, the rustle of the audience, all
affected Ryder but slightly. He walked to his seat as one might walk
in a dream. There seemed little tangible to him in his surroundings,
or in the people he brushed past.
When he had seated himself the usher leaned over and whispered to him
to remove his hat. He sat in his overcoat, staring straight before
him with glassy, unwinking eyes.
A painted curtain was dropped, and between it and the footlights two
men appeared who went through some sort of act. Ryder never knew
what it was; nor did he appreciate the several turns that followed
this act.
Ryder found a program in his hand, and he began to look through it
for his wife's name. Then he remembered that it could not be there,
for Marks must have arranged for her appearance here on Saturday.
She could not be a feature of the regular Sunday bill.
Ryder suddenly felt a great thankfulness for this fact. Undoubtedly
the only places where Miss Mont's name appeared were on the billboard
and in the newspaper advertisements.
It came into his troubled mind that he was in a position to put an
effectual stop to his wife's being advertised further as a public
entertainer. His brain began to work clearly along this line.
She was either legally his wife, or a bigamist. In either case, if
he kept his head, he would have the whip-hand.
If she acknowledged the legality of their marriage, then the law
would give him control over her movements--to an extent at least.
Until she instituted proceedings for a separation she must obey him.
If the marriage had been a farce because of a former marriage on her
part, then his hold upon her would be stronger still. If she refused
to retire from the stage and live in seclusion, he would prosecute
her and put her in jail.
This thought gave him untold satisfaction for the moment; then it
horrified him. His wife--Ruth--the woman he loved--in jail!
What an awful experience it would be for her. Her tender body to
recline on a hard cot and be subjected to the strict rules of a
prison, and to exist on jail fare!
Then he hardened his heart. She was no wife of his--only in name in
any case. She had cajoled him and fooled him and ruined him. She
should be made to suffer as he was suffering now.
He suddenly awoke to a stir in the audience. The orchestra burst
forth into a new melody and the crowd began to applaud. Who were
they welcoming?
Ryder raised his eyes from the program which was merely a blur of
names to him and looked straight into the face of the woman who had
come from the wings and was now bowing an acknowledgment to her
welcome. It was "Miss Mont, England's most famous entertainer."
For an instant he believed she was looking straight at him--that she
must see and give him some sign of greeting. He forgot the glare of
the footlights in the actor's eyes which makes the entire auditorium
a magnified blur of faces and forms, and seldom allows the person on
the stage to descry clearly a particular face in the audience.
His eyes devoured her as though he had never seen her before. She
was neither the woman she had seemed aboard the _Minnequago_, nor as
she had seemed in their suite at the Pinewood Inn.
Plainly dressed aboard ship, the beauty of her face and figure had
been suggested rather than displayed. It was her brightness of mind
that had most deeply impressed John Ryder during the voyage.
Afterward, during their short wedded intercourse, her sweetness of
disposition and lovely personality had charmed and held him in her
toils. How sweet she had looked in the dressing sack which revealed
her neck and arms, bustling about the room unpacking her trunks.
And now this was still another woman--a third personality. The
beauty of face and form was enhanced by her costume; but it was a
cold and formal beauty; not the living, breathing, loving creature
whom he had folded in his arms. Nor did she seem the same woman he
had talked and walked with on the steamship's deck.
This was Miss Mont in her public character--Miss Mont, the actress--a
woman living for the show and applause of the stage.
She swept to the center of the stage in a trailing robe which was cut
to display the line of her figure to perfection and which likewise
left bare her neck and shoulders and her graceful arms.
She wore no ornament. She needed none. Ryder noted, even, that she
no longer wore the fine gold chain and the locket which had so
stirred his doubts and jealousy two days before.
She made another graceful courtesy and began her act. That she was
troubled with diffidence--with actual stage fright--there could be
little doubt. But some entertainers never get over that feeling on
first appearance, so it did not disprove Ryder's belief that she was
well trained in her art.
Her methods were natural and did not smell of the stage; nevertheless
Ryder was unconvinced. No woman who had not had long training could
have acted the part Miss Mont had played at the Pinewood Inn. Why,
_this_ was an utterly different woman!
"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, and her voice thrilled John Ryder
where he sat with his burning gaze fixed on her face, "I am to
imitate certain well-known actors and actresses whose peculiarities
and oddities are more or less familiar to you, as they are to me.
"As this is my first visit to America, I cannot imitate your own
local celebrities--only such of the profession as may have come to
England and whom I have seen in London. For instance, I will try to
imitate"--here she named a musical comedy celebrity who had made a
hit on both sides of the Atlantic--"as she sings her most popular
song in 'The Bridal Bell.'"
Instantly the transformation that took place in Miss Mont's attitude
and facial expression carried the house by storm. Before she opened
her lips to sing a line of the ditty that had been so popular in "The
Bridal Bell," she looked the woman she imitated to the life.
Ryder was actually startled. He remembered that once, in a spirit of
fun, while aboard ship, Miss Mont had roguishly imitated the
peculiarities of a fellow-passenger for his private amusement. He
had not encouraged her, because he thought it savored too much of the
very thing he desired to shield her from--the stage. Ah, why had not
his eyes been opened then to what manner of woman she was?
Yet during the few hours she had been with him at the Pinewood Inn
she had attempted nothing of this kind. Nothing in her speech or
actions then had suggested the theater. What a consummate actress
this wretched woman was!
The applause of the crowd encouraged her. She did not undertake
anything very difficult; but she filled her seventeen minutes
acceptably; and with her beauty and personal charm there was little
doubt that her act would be a hit.
Her popularity with this audience did anything but please Ryder. The
more the crowd applauded the more bitter were his feelings, and the
deeper was the pain he suffered.
How could he ever drag this woman off the stage after such a
reception? Both she and her manager would fight to thwart his
attempt to close her career. Yet he had money--much money. Marks
could be bought out, he felt sure; but other managers would realize
that in Miss Mont there was a fortune.
It was while these bitter feelings rankled in his mind that she came
back to bow her acknowledgment for the applause that followed her
encore. Her gaze swept the side of the house where Ryder sat as she
went off again and once out of direct range of the footlights, she
saw his face.
He saw her start, pale, and then flush underneath the grease-paint
that stained her cheeks. She knew him.
Ryder rose from his seat and walked uncertainly up the aisle.
Several people departed after her act, and his doing so was not
conspicuous. At the door he stopped a man and asked him where the
stage exit of the theater was located. The man grinned at him and
said:
"Round on the other street." Then to his friend he added quite loud
enough for Ryder to hear: "A hard-hit Johnny I should say. The Mont
has certainly made good with him."
Ryder flushed. He could have turned and struck the man down. It was
his wife who the fellow had intimated would be an attraction for
"stage-door Jonnies."
He found the stage entrance and the usual Cerberus on guard. His
entrance was at first denied. For a moment the maddened man was
tempted to rush in past the doorkeeper and demand to see his wife of
the first person he met. Better judgment prevailed. It was dark
enough in the entry for the doorkeeper to miss his passion-distorted
face.
"Ain't nobody allowed inside, Mister," the man said.
"I've a friend, Miss Mont----"
"Let's have your card and I'll get it back to her," said the man
whose hand itched for a quarter.
"I haven't a card; but I wish to see Miss Mont. I want to surprise
her, you know." The crisp banknote dropped into the man's hand.
"She will be surprised to see me."
"Whew!" whistled the guard, seeing the figure on the bill. "I guess
you are all right. I ain't looking at you, anyhow, boss," and he
turned his back deliberately upon Ryder.
The latter darted past him and up the half-darkened passage to those
regions back of the scenes which so bewilder the ordinary visitor.
But Ryder well knew how to gain his goal.
He seized the first stagehand he met, crushed another banknote into
his hand and whispered:
"Show me Miss Mont's dressing-room. I am an old friend--from the
other side."
"Number Three. Here this way!" said the stagehand. He, too, was
moved by the size of the tip he received. He led Ryder to the door
of the dressing-room.
Without knocking, the injured husband opened the door and stepped
swiftly into the box-like little apartment. The woman was sitting
before the table and glass, removing the last traces of her makeup.
"Who's there?" she asked without turning her head. Evidently she
thought somebody had knocked, and Ryder stood at such an angle that
she could not easily see him in the mirror. She had removed her
stage costume and sat in her petticoat and with frankly-bared
shoulders and arms.
Ryder breathed heavily; the sight of her satin skin and beautifully
molded neck and arms almost staggered him. He remembered how Ruth
had looked for the single moment he had seen her in similar undress
in their bedroom at the Pinewood Inn.
"Is that you, Mr. Marks?" cried Miss Mont. "Wait a moment."
She rose swiftly, half turning, and Ryder found his voice.
"It is not Marks, Ruth; nor yet your Mr. White. It is I."
She uttered a little scream, but it was not a cry of recognition. As
she swung fully around to face him she exclaimed:
"How dare you come in here? Who are you?"
Then she really saw his strained and passion-wrung features and cried
in startled amazement:
"Mr. Ryder! I thought I saw you out front."
"Yes. And now I'm here," said Ryder bitterly. "Is there anything so
astonishing in that? Where else should I be? A man can scarcely be
said to intrude when he enters his wife's dressing-room."
"You--you---- What do you mean?" she gasped, shrinking away from his
vicinity. She quickly snatched up the nearest garment and flung it
about her shoulders. "This is cruel of you, Mr. Ryder. Do leave me
until I dress."
"Pah! Why so prudish? Am I not your husband?"
"Husband? What do you say? Is the man mad?" murmured the woman.
"I--I am not your wife, Mr. Ryder."
"And that may be true, too," he agreed, wetting his lips before he
could speak. The fires of an inward fever seemed burning him up.
"That may be true," he pursued. "So much the worse for you then,
Ruth. For by the living God! if you have tricked me in that, too,
you shall suffer for it as a bigamist."
"Tricked you?" cried she, with sudden heat, and standing more erect
before the angry man. "I did not trick you. If either of us
deserves the accusation of trickster it is you. But a woman is
helpless if a man makes a fool of her. Had you been the gentleman I
thought you, however, you would have told me you had changed your
mind and found that the affection you declared you had for me was
merely a passing fancy."
"What's that?" he shouted. "Don't taunt me that way, woman! I--who
loved you devotedly, who would do anything for you, who showed you my
heart laid bare! And you dare accuse me of fickleness?
"A dozen suspicious acts of yours I overlooked while we were at the
hotel together. I refused to believe my _wife_ guilty of any thought
or act that might suggest infidelity."
She gazed at him in amazement.
"What are you talking about? You are mad, man!"
"Mad? Perhaps I am. I know I shall be before long," groaned the
tortured man. "You took my name--whether you had a right to do so or
not, you know--and you cast it back in scorn, as though it were a
small thing for a man to give his name to a woman."
"You _are_ mad!" repeated the woman. "How dare you say I married
you?"
Ryder staggered back against the door. He glared at her.
"You--you---- Do you deny it? You may have another husband; but you
married me. Either you are my legal wife, or you have committed a
crime which the American laws shall punish. See!" He tore open his
coat, dragged out his wallet, and displayed the marriage certificate
before her startled eyes. "Deny that name--deny that signature--if
you can!"
She bent forward, devouring the paper with her gaze. Then suddenly
she caught her breath and, with one hand at her bosom as though to
stifle its throbbing, she arose to her full height and faced him.
"I do deny--both. That is not my handwriting. And my name is _Rose_
Mont," she said.
The shout of demoniacal laughter that burst from Ryder's lips and the
contortion of his face were terrible.
"Do you think _that_ will work, woman? Do you think you can dodge
the law on so slight a pretext as a false name and disguised
handwriting? You are my wife, and by heaven I'll take you from this
place by force if you will not go with me peaceably!"
CHAPTER XXII
"WHO IS MY WIFE?"
Miss Mont sank slowly into her chair, still staring at the writhing
features of the man who claimed to be her husband. Insanity had been
her first thought; but the agony and passion displayed by John Ryder
taught her that he was suffering as no maniac could suffer.
His words had the ring of truth that could not be ignored. He
claimed her as his bride, and so confident was his belief in her
identity as the woman he had married that her own counter knowledge
was almost shaken.
"Mr. Ryder," she said at last and in almost a whisper, "sit down on
that trunk yonder. Let me talk to you. Yes, sit down! You are
between me and the door; I cannot escape."
Her quiet speech helped to bring him to his senses. He had been
threatening her with the vehemence he might have used to a man. Red
shame dyed his cheek. His manner suddenly subsided. He obeyed her.
"Mr. Ryder, I am not your wife," she said slowly, looking at him with
her truthful eyes. She was the woman now she had seemed aboard the
_Minnequago_. "No! I do not mean that," as she saw a wicked
expression come into his face. "I have neither intentionally, nor
unintentionally wronged you.
"Had I been convinced that I could--could learn to love you as a wife
should and had married you, I would have done nothing which you in
any way could construe as an attempt to bring disgrace upon your name.
"Wait! You are in a maze yet. You believe I am splitting hairs. I
am not." She leaned forward and raised her voice for emphasis. "I
am not the woman whom you married."
"What do you mean?" he gasped starting up again. "Would you make me
doubt my own eyes? You sit there and coolly tell me I do not know
the woman I married--the woman whom I held in my arms night before
last--the woman who told me over and over again, by look and word,
that she loved me?"
She had blushed vividly and for a moment covered her face with her
hands. But she stopped him at that point.
"That is exactly what I do tell you. You do not know your wife, the
woman whose name is on that marriage paper. Look at me closely.
Come nearer. Is there not some feature different? Is she
truly--this other woman--so like me?"
She said it earnestly and eagerly. She bent toward him until her
breath fanned his face and until he could look with his troubled eyes
deep into her clear, shadowless orbs.
And then, strange as it may seem, although John Ryder saw nothing
unfamiliar in her countenance--nothing to warn him that this was not
the woman whom he had wedded--one thing he suddenly knew. It was a
startling discovery. It shook him to the very depths of his soul.
Whereas Ruth's very presence--his being near her and in physical
contact with her--had thrilled him each time it occurred, he felt no
such shock now. His anger had abated. He was shaken no more by the
terrible rage under which he had labored. But this woman held no
such influence over him, after all, as had Ruth. Still he was
confused.
"Ruth! Can such a thing be?" he whispered brokenly. "You surely
_do_ love me a little?"
The abjectness of his speech and the misery in the man's face were
awful. Miss Mont covered her face again and began to sob.
"You will not do this to me, Ruth? I know you must love me a little.
No woman could be to a man what you were to me without loving him.
Whatever this shadow is that has come between us----"
The passion and pleading in his voice had swept her on with him. She
was trembling violently and her sobs were more broken. He would have
gathered her into his arms by one sudden movement had she not sprung
to her feet and eluded his hands.
"Stop! Stop!" she cried hoarsely. "This is not for me to hear! You
do not mean this for _me_!
"I tell you, Mr. Ryder, I am another woman. I am not the person you
married. I am not Ruth Mont; I am Rose Mont--and always have been
and," she broke into passionate weeping, "and--and--always--shall
be--_now_!"
[Illustration: I am another woman. I am not the person you married.]
The vehemence of her emotion quelled Ryder as nothing else had done.
She flung herself upon her knees with her head and arms resting upon
the littered dressing table and abandoned herself to tears which
seemed to well from her very soul.
He leaned over her, not daring to touch her, anxious,
panting--altogether broken in spirit. A woman's tears flow easily
they say; but this woman was not by nature a crying woman. This
flood, however, cleared her heart and mind, and she saw and
understood more clearly when her passion was past.
"Listen to me, Mr. Ryder," she said at last, recovering her seat and
motioning him into his. "This is a wonderful thing--and a terrible
thing. Don't look at me like that! Please, _please_ don't! I tell
you I am not the woman you think me."
"Do you mean," he said with deliberation, "that you are not the woman
I met aboard the _Minnequago_?"
"No, no!"
"Or you are not the woman I asked to marry me before we landed?"
"No, no, Mr. Ryder! I am that woman."
"Then why did you say just now you were not?" he demanded with heat.
"I treated you fairly. Were you not satisfied? Was the glamor of
this," and he indicated the makeup box and her discarded costume in
his gesture, "too much for you? Could any man give you more that is
worth while in life than I? Are you of so changeable a mind that you
did not know what you really wanted?
"When I wrote you aboard ship to choose once for all between this
beastly Marks' offer of a stage career and a position as my wife----"
"What letter? What do you mean?" she cried, darting at him suddenly.
"You know what I mean. You answered the letter in person when you
met me on the dock."
"I received no letter from you, Mr. Ryder."
He looked puzzled and hesitated. "Well, what matters it? You met me
and said you were willing to marry me----"
"I tell you _No_!" she cried. "I did not meet you. I did not say I
would marry you. And I did not marry you."
"By heaven, woman!"
"No, I tell you!"
She bore him back into his seat upon the trunk with both hands upon
his shoulders. Her face was thrust close to his and she held him by
the power of her gaze. But again John Ryder realized that her
nearness lacked that thrilling influence upon him which contact with
his bride had evolved.
"Listen to me," she repeated impressively. "You have been
betrayed--fooled. Either you have deceived yourself, or have been
deliberately deceived by others who knew well your wealth and
power--the man you are. You millionaires are a mark for designing
persons, Mr. Ryder, as you should well know.
"I cannot understand it all. But this I do know: I did not see you
to speak to for all of that last day before the ship docked. I
thought you--you had seen the unwisdom of your course in offering
marriage to a woman like me."
She hesitated and the tears welled to her eyes again, but by sheer
force of will she drove them back. "I received no letter from you,
Mr. Ryder; none at all, you understand!"
"I--I gave it to a steward."
"It was not delivered. When we landed I did not see you. Stop! Let
me finish. I was one of the last to leave the ship. Mrs.
Gurthrie--the lady who sat by my side at the table--you remember?
Mrs. Gurthrie was taken ill as we came up the bay. I remained with
her after we docked. An ambulance had to be sent for to remove her
to her home. I went with her in the ambulance before going to the
hotel Mr. Marks selected for me----"
"What are you saying?" gasped Ryder, his face like death.
"I am telling you the truth. I can prove every word I say. A dozen
witnesses--officers of the ship, the doctor, the driver of the
ambulance, Mrs. Gurthrie herself and her husband, Mr. Marks--all
these can bear out what I say."
She thought he would faint and reaching for the glass standing at her
elbow placed the water to his lips. He drank it, still staring into
her countenance with fixed gaze.
"Do you understand?" she continued softly. "Don't you _see_ that I
am not the woman you married, Mr. Ryder? I am forced to earn my
living. This way of the stage was opened to me and my success
tonight proves that I was right in accepting the chance offered."
But, he was not listening. He did not hear her final words at all.
All that he really heard was this query, repeated over and over again
in his tortured brain:
"_Who is my wife?_"
CHAPTER XXIII
IN THE MAZE
Both the man and the woman were shocked into a sudden appreciation of
the world outside that box-like dressing-room by a knock on the door.
Miss Mont rose quickly, threw off the garment with which she had
lightly covered her shoulders and slipped into a negligee which had
been hanging in the corner.
"Who's there?" she asked quietly.
"Why, hullo!" and Sam Marks' broad face showed at the opening door.
"Ain't you a long time getting dressed, Miss Mont? I got a taxi at
the door---- Hullo!"
He saw Ryder but did not at first recognize him.
"Got a visitor? Scuse me----"
"You may come in," said Miss Mont sternly. "You will recognize this
gentleman."
"Gee! Well, I wouldn't, hardly. What's the matter with him?" asked
Marks, finally identifying Ryder.
The manager looked anxious, and he kept very close to the door. Miss
Mont watched him narrowly; but Ryder scarcely raised his eyes from
the floor.
"Mr. Marks," she said, "Mr. Ryder came here---- That is, he says
that before we landed from the _Minnequago_ he sent me a letter to my
stateroom. I did not receive it. You were hovering around me a good
deal just then. Did you happen to see the letter?"
"What--_me_? Why, I----"
"Your face tells the truth if your lips cannot," she interrupted him
sharply. "I see that you _did_ get my letter. Where is it?"
Marks looked foolish; yet his pig-like eyes twinkled. He found the
hardihood to say:
"Well, I had to get your name on that contract and I wasn't going to
risk this guy butting in. Guess you're glad now yourself. See the
hand you got tonight? You're going to be a knock-out."
"You scoundrel!" she said bitterly. "You do not know what you have
done. You would not understand if I told you--you clod! Can you
understand this much? Your stealing that letter----"
"Oh, I say! that's rather thick, you know. I didn't steal it and I
didn't destroy it. I just forgot to give it to you after taking it
from the steward," and he grinned, bringing forth the still unopened
letter from his pocket.
"You dog! Oh, that men like you are allowed to live! You do things
for a selfish reason, and then can never undo the harm you have done.
Had you killed one or both of us, your act could have been no more
brutal."
"God bless us!" gasped Marks looking fairly frightened now. "It
ain't as bad as that. I got you on a contract--that's all I wanted.
What's the matter with him? Won't he marry you just the same? But
you'll have to fulfil the terms of my contract." Then he laughed a
sudden sneering laugh.
"Or did somebody butt in on your game? I saw him walking off the
dock with another queen."
Miss Mont started. "You saw them together?"
"Sure."
"Saw the woman? What did she look like?"
"I didn't see her face," Sam Marks said, puzzled at her vehemence.
"I was only thinkin' just then of the contract in my pocket."
"Oh, you beast!" she exclaimed in disgust. "Go away. I want to talk
with Mr. Ryder."
"Oh, very well! You can call names----"
"Go!" she commanded. "Let the taxi wait."
He slunk out of the dressing-room. It is doubtful if Ryder had
realized his presence at all.
"Come," Miss Mont said with her hand on the shoulder of the stunned
man. "I want you to wait for me outside the door until I dress.
Then you shall ride to my hotel with me. Let me help you to
understand this--this thing."
He looked at her in a dazed way; but finally he obeyed and went out
of the room. He was in a maze and his intellect seemed beclouded.
In ten minutes she rejoined him and led the way to the stage entrance
where the car was in waiting. They entered it, she gave the
chauffeur the direction, and the jouncing of the taxicab over the
nearest car track aroused Ryder to the first audible speech he had
made since the truth had sunk into his mind.
"I--I cannot believe it, Miss Mont. Yet it must be so. How two
women could look so much alike--act so much alike! Great heavens!
She shall suffer for it----"
The woman beside him turned quickly and placed a palm lightly upon
his lips. So like was the gesture to Ruth's that Ryder caught his
breath and sank back in the seat, wordless again.
"Say nothing like that. Malign no person. Let us learn all the
truth before we judge. Tell me--tell me about this other woman--this
Ruth."
"She--she has left me," he said sullenly.
"Left you! How--when? No, no! Begin at the beginning. Tell me
all. I will not hear a word against her--I must not!--until I know
all the story."
This aroused John Ryder. He looked at her curiously. "You are a
strange woman," he said. "Do you realize that she impersonated you?
That I married her thinking she was you? That--that--God help me!
She stole from you my love, for I _do_ love her! I _do_ love her!"
Miss Mont had taken his hand in both of hers. She sat and held it
thus, looking straight ahead and saying no word for a long minute.
Finally she whispered:
"Tell me all about it--and about her. Keep nothing back, Mr. Ryder.
Think of me as though I were your sister. And let that be no empty
term, please. For, perhaps----" She did not finish the sentence but
added instead: "Tell me all!"
For a few moments Ryder was silent, trying to collect his thoughts in
order to tell his story with some clarity. He fully realized that
his thoughts were somewhat confused, that the emotions which had been
let loose within him had, for the time being, impaired his usual
judgment, a little confused his clear, keen mind, which ordinarily
decided matters so rapidly and so surely.
Moreover he felt, rather than reasoned out, that in some way Miss
Mont held the key to the situation, that if she knew the whole story
and knew it accurately, she could be of help. So he sat, pondering,
for a few moments, and again came the command:
"Tell me all!"
And Ryder told her. It was a long ride to the hotel uptown where
Miss Mont was housed and there was time for him to relate every
detail of his experience from the moment he had landed on the dock
and met the strange woman who bore Miss Mont's name and looked so
much like her.
When the story was finished the woman beside him turned to Ryder with
tears in her voice, but with them a note of joy, as well.
"Let me tell you something, Mr. Ryder," she said. "And, believe me,
I would stake my life upon it: This woman you have married loves you!"
"Do you believe so?" he whispered. Then, starting up angrily, he
began to say harshly: "Love me? How can she and treat me so? To run
away with that man, White----"
"Wait. Let us know all first. With the confidence that you should
have in your heart of her love for you, you must not say that."
"But they left the hotel; they took the same train."
"Perhaps."
"And what hold has he over her? What is he to her? Is she my wife,
or is she the wife of another? And where is she now?"
"Your last question is the most important," Miss Mont said quietly.
"That is the first problem we have to solve. 'We,' I say, for I
believe I am as much interested in finding Ruth Mont as you."
He looked at her curiously and in surprise. But she made no
explanation, saying only:
"As for your first queries, we can only guess at the proper answers
for them. And guessing is poor business. Who the man White is I
cannot be sure, of course. But I should not be surprised if he were
the man she was really waiting for that morning on the dock when the
_Minnequago_ got in."
"What?" he gasped.
"Yes. I remember well that there was a passenger named White aboard.
He was ill most of the time coming over. His stateroom was near
mine. He was being helped ashore by one of the stewards at the time
we got Mrs. Gurthrie into the ambulance. You say he signed 'John B.
White, Rome,' on the hotel register. It was Rome, Italy, of course.
He must have been out of America for years.
"If he was actually Ruth Mont's husband she would not have gone
through a marriage ceremony with you, for she believed you to be
White."
"What are you saying?" stammered the confused Ryder.
"Yes. That is the explanation, I feel sure. You say she picked out
Pinewood for your honeymoon, saying something about the place
reminding you both of old times. I should think that would have
awakened you to some suspicion of the facts. But a man in love, I
suppose, is accountable neither for his deeds nor his words.
"It is plain, Mr. Ryder, that your wife and this White knew each
other years ago. Perhaps they had not met since childhood. They
have probably corresponded; but she could not have known much about
his mature appearance.
"She was waiting for him when you landed from the _Minnequago_. You
thought she was I. How much we must look alike!"
"Alike?" he murmured. "You are twins."
"No; we are not twins," she corrected him with confidence. "But
there is a reason why we should look and seem so much alike.
"Now, see: You came to her on the dock, and your first question
convinced her you were White. From what you tell me it seems that
she was not sure of her own mind until she had seen you in the flesh.
"What woman could be sure, when she had not met her lover for years?
And," the woman's voice broke, but she went on bravely, "for your
comfort, Mr. Ryder, let me tell you that I believe she must have
fallen in love with you on that instant of meeting."
John Ryder was silent. He was suddenly confronted with a second
riddle, but he had no words in which to answer it. Had this woman,
now talking to him so gently and impressively, been drawn toward him,
too? What had his impetuosity done to her, as well as to himself?
He could no longer selfishly feel that he was the only person injured
by this tragedy of errors.
"Then," Miss Mont continued, "the knowledge of what she had
done--what a great mistake she had made--came to her with a
suddenness that was enough to turn the woman's brain. She had
thought herself in love all these years with one man, and had married
another!
"Put yourself in her place. Think what an opinion she holds of
_you_. If your heart and brain have been seared by your trouble,
think how she must feel. She cannot understand why you impersonated
White. She is as much in the dark as you were. She must think you
deliberately befooled her. She fled--not with White, I stake my life
upon it!--but because she was so mentally disturbed that flight
seemed the only course left her."
"But the name--'Mrs. John B. White'--written in her own hand upon the
trunk labels?" questioned the man.
It was dark in the taxicab. The vehicle had stopped at the side door
of Miss Mont's hotel and the chauffeur was impatiently waiting
further orders or the alighting of his passengers. Ryder could not
see Miss Mont's face.
He could not see her burning blush; he could not know of the tears
flooding her eyes; he could only hear the tremor of her voice as she
whispered:
"My heart tells me, Mr. Ryder, that Ruth wrote those lines as soon as
her trunks arrived at the hotel. It was her new name. She wished to
see how it looked when she wrote it on the tags!"
"Do you suppose that--all this you have told me--is the right
explanation of this awful mystery?"
"I believe so. If she has come to this city and is hiding from you,
it is because she cannot imagine what manner of man would usurp
another's name and place as you seem to have done."
The tone that suddenly sounded in Ryder's voice could not be
mistaken. "I'll have the whole police force hunting for her in the
morning. I'll turn up the whole town to find her. Think of it! The
poor child running away from _me_. When I love her so and am so sure
she loves me----"
Miss Mont stopped him. "I--I must leave you now," she said in a
muffled voice. "No! don't get down. I do not need you. Let me know
how you succeed." She was out of the taxicab instantly and without a
backward glance ran hastily into the hotel. He did not see her face
again; but Ryder knew she was struggling to keep back another tempest
of weeping.
He told the chauffeur where to drive him, and rode back downtown.
After the storm of emotion of the last two hours his soul was
strangely peaceful and he was even light-hearted.
The contrast between the awful uncertainty of the riddle of his
wife's actions and the confidence he now felt that Miss Mont's
explanation was the only sane and reasonable explanation, was so
great that Ruth's disappearance seemed at this moment a small matter
indeed.
Money and patience would find her, of course. Of the first he had
plenty, thank heaven! The last he must cultivate as need be.
A steeple clock boomed the hour of midnight. The third day of John
Ryder's honeymoon was ended.
CHAPTER XXIV
NEMESIS
With this better understanding of the exciting and brain-wracking
incidents of these three days, John Ryder became again his sane and
businesslike self. Before he reached his hotel he had evolved a plan
for his future course relating to the woman he had married by
mistake. Of course, this plan began with the discovery of her
whereabouts.
He must have some theory to work on. He could go to the police and
ask them to send out a description of his wife and trust to luck that
some sharp-eyed detective would see her. That, however, was a method
which he abhorred.
If Ruth had come to New York, or if she had gone elsewhere, John
Ryder could think of just one way in which she might be traced.
He was convinced now that she was not with White. Ryder had cast
that unfortunate individual into the discard entirely. Miss Mont's
explanation of the mystery that had involved them all was so clear
that Ryder could no longer feel jealous of John B. White.
Indeed the man might have better reason to feel that Ryder had
defrauded him. Unintentionally Ryder had substituted himself for
White, and had borne off the girl the latter expected to marry, and
had made her his wife.
The thing to do now was for Ryder to find her, to explain his own
course in the matter, and to convince Ruth that she had, after all,
married the right man.
To start on this quest aright, he felt that he must begin at the
Pinewood Inn. There was something at Pinewood that he felt sure
would aid him in his search for his bride. She must send for the
trunks and then he would obtain her address.
Therefore he went back to his hotel with the intention of leaving a
call for the early morning train that would take him back to the
resort. When he entered the hostelry and approached the desk he was
surprised to be told that a lady was waiting for him in one of the
hotel parlors.
"Been here for some time, sir. Said she would wait till you came in,
no matter how late you were. It must be something important, Mr.
Ryder," the clerk told him.
Ryder's heart leaped for joy. His first thought was that it was
Ruth. How she could have found his hotel--what had brought her
here--he did not stop to question. He followed the bellboy with
eager steps to the parlor where, under a dim light, the woman sat
waiting for his return.
When John Ryder strode into the room he felt a distinct drop in the
temperature of his feelings. This might be a woman that had waited
for him, but she was dressed more like a man. A long raincoat
wrapped her about, and a felt hat pulled down over her ears disguised
her femininity most effectually.
"Miss Solomons!" exclaimed Ryder, as the person rose and turned
toward him.
"That's who 'tis," jerked out the house detective of the Pinewood
Inn. "I've been waiting for you, Mr. Ryder."
Could it be possible that she had come with some message from Ruth,
or information about her? Ryder could not find voice enough in which
to ask her. His silence seemed to give Miss Solomons immense
satisfaction. Her eyes snapped, and she waved in a commanding way
the folded copy of the novel she always carried.
"I've got you! I told 'em I'd find you, all right. Can't fool _me_.
You'd better come with me, Mr. Ryder. Don't try any capers."
"What the---- What do you want of me?" demanded the rapidly
disillusioned Ryder. He realized that Miss Solomons could have come
on no sentimental mission.
"They want you back to Pinewood. You know. You aren't silly enough
to refuse to go without extradition papers, are you?"
"What--under--the--sun----"
"Back up!" exclaimed Miss Solomons. "That don't go. You know well
enough what they want you for. That deputy sheriff is a dunce. You
got away from _him_; but not from me."
"But what have you got to do with the deputy's trouble?"
"Say! Don't fool yourself. I'm a properly appointed officer of the
State. That deputy fell down on the job, but I told 'em I'd get you.
Come!"
"But what _for_?" demanded John Ryder, suddenly becoming quiet.
"Stealin' that coal. Thought you could get away with two carloads of
coal and nobody do nothin' about it?"
"But," pointed out Ryder, "the coal was for the use of the hotel, and
you are an employee of the hotel. Where do you come into this?"
"I'm officer of the State first," said Miss Solomons promptly. "It
was a dead open and shut robbery. Then you attacked that poor
deputy. That's serious. I'm a brother officer----"
"Don't you mean a _sister_ officer?" suggested John Ryder gently.
"Huh! Don't get gay," advised Miss Solomons. "I'm asking if you are
going to come peaceably, or must I make trouble for you in this
ranch?"
"Where will you take me?"
"If you agree to go back quiet-like to Pinewood, I'll take you right
to the station."
"And sit there in a draughty station for five hours or more, waiting
for the first train?" he asked indignantly.
"Well----"
"You wouldn't treat a fellow that way, would you, Miss Solomons?" he
went on wheedlingly.
"Don't try no soft stuff on _me_," advised the house detective
gloomily. "I don't fall for it."
"But can't I go to bed and be called at a proper time to make the
train?"
"What's going to happen to me?" she demanded. "Expect me to sleep on
the mat outside your door?"
"But can't you go to bed, too? Let us behave humanlike," John Ryder
urged. "Just because you are an officer and I am a--er--criminal,
shall we say?--we need not both be miserable. _I_ want to sleep."
"I should worry whether you sleep or not," snapped the house
detective. "I haven't had much myself lately."
"Well, then?"
"Where do I bunk?" asked Miss Solomons.
"I will telephone down and secure a room for you. Near my own. You
may lock me in if you like and keep the key."
"Inside room?" she asked.
"Yes. I can't get out by the window very easily."
"So be it!" she exclaimed. "You're a particular blame fool, Mr.
Ryder; but not fool enough to try to escape _me_, I guess. Besides,"
she added, "here's a note was sent to you. Maybe it'll put you wise
to somethin'."
She handed him a sealed envelope. Ryder's heart leaped once and then
stopped. It was not addressed in Ruth's handwriting, although his
name was written in a feminine hand.
He tore it open, unfolded the paper it contained, and read:
"If you are a man and love R. return immediately.
"ALICE J. BRACK."
Ryder stood holding the note for a full minute while he regained his
poise. Who was "Alice J. Brack?" Not Ruth herself. Surely there
could not be another mixup in names!
Then, of a sudden, he remembered the white-haired, motherly-looking
wife of the fire-eating colonel. It flashed into Ryder's mind that
while he was hurrying out of the hotel at Pinewood, Saturday noon,
Mrs. Brack had sought to speak to him.
What did she know about his wife and the mystery that had entangled
him in its snare? Why, if he loved Ruth, must he return to the Pine
wood Inn? He looked up and caught Miss Solomons eying him with so
soft a gaze that he was actually startled.
"Oh!" gasped John Ryder, "is she _there_?"
The detective "came to attention" swiftly. Her face hardened to its
usual bored expression. She said:
"I don't know anything about the note. It was given to me by the old
lady. I'm here to take you back for stealing coal."
"Oh! All right," said John Ryder. "I'll go."
But the detective seemed suddenly more moderate in her demands.
"Tell you what," she said. "I'll bunk here."
"Here in the parlor?"
"Yep. 'Twon't hurt _me_."
"In one of these chairs?"
"Good's I us'ally get at night," she declared.
"But, my dear young woman," protested Ryder, "the management of the
hotel won't permit anyone to lie around in their parlors all night."
"They'll let me, I guess! I'm a State officer. I've got rights that
don't pertain to any old person that just happens to drop into a
hotel. Now, you can beat it to your room. I won't let you
oversleep. We'll make that six-fifteen train."
But John Ryder needed nobody to awaken him at the proper hour. He
was up in good season, and had heard nothing of Miss Solomons when he
came out of his bedchamber at half after five in the morning.
He went to the parlor to look for her. There was but a single light
burning, and that dimly. The house detective of the Pine wood Inn
was sound asleep in her chair. She had evidently succumbed to nature
while keeping what she considered proper vigil.
The long-barreled pistol she carried had slipped to the rug at her
feet. When Ryder stooped to pick it up before awakening Miss
Solomons, he saw that she had dropped her "five-cent thriller" as
well.
He picked this up and unfolded the pamphlet curiously. He expected
to find a detective story with quite as sensational a title as Jim
Howe had suggested. Instead, the title of the story the house
detective had been last perusing was:
"Little Laurel's Lovers; Or, Sweethearts' Paths Made Smooth."
CHAPTER XXV
JOHN RYDER FORGIVES FATE
They might have arrived at the Pinewood Inn earlier had not the
officer and her captive been met before they crossed the inlet to the
hotel by a man with a bandage swathing his jaw. Ryder had
considerable trouble in identifying the deputy sheriff, whom he had
last seen struggling in the tide.
"Got him," said Miss Solomons briefly to the deputy. "He came back
without making any trouble."
She seemed, Ryder thought, a little sorry that she was forced to hand
him over to the mercy of the other officer. For that deputy did seem
vindictive.
"Got a warrant, have you?" asked Miss Solomons, as an afterthought.
"Oh, I know my business. I'll get the warrant, all right," growled
the man with the bruised jaw.
"You can't arrest without a warrant on such a charge," declared the
house detective, suddenly taking up cudgels for John Ryder.
"Oh, I'll hold him all right. He's been stealing----"
"Who makes the complaint?" asked the culprit mildly. "Of course, old
fellow, I'm sorry you obliged me to hit you. If anything I can do
will salve your lacerated feelings----?" He drew out his wallet.
"You stole that coal," growled the man, his eyes glittering, however,
when he saw the money Ryder carried.
"Oh, all right! If you insist," said John Ryder. "But who is the
complainant in the case?"
"Why, the railroad, I s'pose."
"That is what you _suppose_," said the culprit. "Now, let me tell
you what I know. The railroad was merely the carrier. It did not
own the coal. The railroad was neither consignor nor consignee."
"Then the coal company will prosecute."
"No, they won't. They ship at consignee's risk. If anybody moves in
the matter it will be the actual, legal owner of the coal. In other
words, the Lossing Soap Company."
"What does it matter?" demanded the deputy with some heat. "Somebody
will prosecute. You can't get out of that."
"Maybe. Just wait a moment, Mr. Sheriff. I happen to have a letter
here from the Lossing Soap Company. It's on a private matter; but
I'll show you the letter-head. Here, just read that aloud," and he
tore off the printed heading of the letter and handed it to the
officer.
"'Lossing Soap Company, Capitalization----'"
"Never mind that," interposed Ryder.
"'Rated----'"
"Skip that. Who's the president?"
"Why--er---- My goodness gracious!" gasped the deputy. "The--the
president of the company is--is Mr. John Ryder."
"That's right," said Ryder quietly. "John Ryder. There is only one
of us, and that's me. I may be a fool--as Miss Solomons here says I
am--but I'm not fool enough to prosecute myself for stealing my own
coal. You can go back and report, Mr. Deputy, to your superior; and
when you find out how much you think that sore jaw is worth, let me
know. We'll be able to settle it out of court."
He walked on to enter a boat that had come to transfer him across the
inlet. Miss Solomons looked after him, and then at the deputy.
Scorn made her voice fairly tremble as she viewed the abashed officer
up and down his length.
"Huh!" he emitted, and stopped unable to go on, and even, seemingly,
to close his mouth.
"Good-_night!_" muttered the house detective, and followed John Ryder
into the boat.
She kept a discreet silence all the way across the inlet and as they
walked up the path to the Pinewood Inn. There Ryder went immediately
to the desk, to be hailed joyfully by George.
"Well, if we aren't all glad to see you again, Mr. Ryder!" exclaimed
the clerk. "The guests are going to give you a testimonial banquet
soon's it can be arranged."
"Good heavens, George! can't you get me out of that? Why--why! it's
preposterous! Man alive! you've got to nip that!"
"Don't know how I can, Mr. Ryder. When Colonel Brack gets set on
something he's hard to change. And then there's Pop Cudger--he's in
this, too, and he never stops to hear what any other fellow has to
say once he begins on a thing."
Ryder groaned dismally.
"Mr. Giddings has arrived and is anxious to see you," went on the
clerk. "Say! I'm going to be manager here in place of Bangs. And
if I make good I'll owe it all to you," declared the grateful young
man.
"And say, your wife will be tickled to see you----"
"What!" Ryder for a moment lost control of himself, but George was
too full of news to notice his emotion.
"Naturally she'd be lonely. She's been sticking as close to Mrs.
Brack as though the old lady was her mother. And the colonel is
evidently dead stuck on Mrs. Ryder. I think he'll even forgive you,
sir," and George chuckled.
Ryder swallowed hard, and finally was able to speak without a
noticeable tremor in his voice:
"Guess it is too early to go upstairs. Nobody will be up yet."
"No. Mrs. Ryder has not telephoned down for her breakfast. And I
believe Mrs. Brack is with her, anyway."
"Tell 'em I'm here if they 'phone down," said Ryder, and went into
the breakfast room.
Before he completed his leisurely meal Mrs. Judson swept into the
room in a wonderful morning gown. She caught sight of Ryder, looked
her astonishment for an instant, and then advanced down the room with
the evident intention of speaking to him.
It was rude, but Ryder would have knocked her down had she been a
man. As he could not do this, he deliberately turned his eyes away
and ignored her. The cut direct could not be mistaken, and several
noticed the widow's discomfiture.
A moment later one of the bellboys brought Ryder a note. He tried to
seem undisturbed as he opened and read it:
"DEAR SIR:--
"Come to me in the parlor before seeing your wife. She does not know
yet that you have returned.
"Sincerely,
"ALICE J. BRACK."
He arose finally and made his way to the parlor, with an apparent
ease of manner he did not at all feel. It was the same room that had
been the scene of so many events on that night when Pop Cudger and
his colored retainer had guarded Van Scamp's famous painting of "The
Cheesemonger."
The tranquil countenance of the colonel's lady seemed to John Ryder
one of the most beautiful he had ever seen. Her smile encouraged
him. Her first words filled him with delight:
"Yes; she is well."
He could have hugged her! But Mrs. Brack added gravely:
"Before I let you go up to the poor child, you must tell me your side
of the story. All of it. She has trusted everything to me. I
understand her mistakes and her misery fully. And I tell you now
that no shadow of wrong rests upon her conduct. Can you say as much,
Mr. Ryder?
"I have promised that you shall not see her unless you can explain
satisfactorily what you have done. Tell me, why did you, a perfect
stranger as she declares, represent yourself to her as the man she
expected to marry and for whom she was waiting on that dock?"
"Then Miss Mont was right!" exclaimed John Ryder.
"Miss Mont? Do you mean your wife?"
Ryder eagerly told Mrs. Brack in detail of the mystery of the two
girls named Mont and of all Rose Mont had surmised. He knew now who
Ruth must be. His listener sat enthralled until he had completed his
story. Then she suddenly took him by both shoulders and gave him a
little shake.
"John Ryder," she said, repeating (though in a more refined phrase)
Miss Solomons' stated opinion of his character, "John Ryder, you are
a particularly foolish man. There is one principle of married life
which you have overlooked--it is the foundation, indeed, of wedded
happiness.
"_Mutual confidence_. If two people possess that, happiness may come
or go; that is a craft that sails with variable winds. But trust
must remain if wedded comradeship is to last.
"The very first thing that started suspicion in your mind should have
made you go to your wife for an explanation. Because you did not do
this you both have got into much sorrow and anxiety.
"Tell me," the woman added suddenly: "Which of these two women do you
love? You fell in love with that other Miss Mont on the steamship,
and asked her to be your wife. You must have thought you loved her.
But you met this poor child you have married and seem to have felt no
difference in the two. And yet there must be a difference--a vast
difference.
"Which of them do you really love?"
"There is no doubt in my mind, Mrs. Brack," he told her with
earnestness. "I was attracted by Rose Mont's face and by her
qualities of mind. I thought I loved her. Possibly, had I married
her, I never should have known that I had mistaken admiration for
love.
"But Ruth I have married. And from the moment I knew she was
mine--yes, from the moment we clasped hands upon the wharf--my
feeling for her was far different from that I had held for Rose.
"Rose has no power over me, Mrs. Brack. I cannot explain it very
clearly; but it is true. There is no response in me when I touch her
hand or when she is near me. But Ruth--I tell you I love my wife,
Mrs. Brack, and I'll fight for the possession of her if any man tries
to take her from me!"
"That is enough! I believe you!" the woman said, her eyes shining.
"You need comfort as well as Ruth, for you, too, have suffered. And
I am going to tell you something, that which will bring to your heart
the assurance it needs.
"Your wife has been a poor girl all her life. Of late she has been a
nurse, supporting herself entirely. She was tacitly adopted into the
family of this John B. White when she was very small.
"Afterward the family suffered reverses and came to America, bringing
Ruth with them. When the elder White died, this son was taken by an
uncle and aunt to Europe to finish his education there. But Ruth was
old enough when they separated for them to have felt some attachment.
"They corresponded. For two years now his letters have been
loverlike. He had studied to be an artist and had gained some
celebrity in Italy. The less the girl encouraged him the more eager
he was to come to America and prove to her that she still loved
him--as he claimed to love her. It was born of the man's romantic
nature, I presume; yet he, poor fellow, has lost everything in this
affair. Ruth agreed finally to marry him if, upon his appearance,
she should be assured he was a man she could learn to love.
"Yes, you may well blush, Mr. Ryder," pursued Mrs. Brack, smiling.
"She discovered instantly--in the flash of an eye--that she could
love you. She did love you. She does love you. She declares
vehemently if White had met her she would have run away from him.
"After their terrible scene the other day--did you know about that?"
Ryder nodded. "She came to you for an explanation--for help. You
are still a young man, John Ryder. You do not understand women. You
left her alone--when she needed you--and without a word to comfort
her.
"White might have been foolish enough to linger about and cause more
trouble, but Miss Solomons, who overheard his talk with your wife,
tells me she 'chased him.' That girl is dreadfully slangy and
appears to be hard and unfeminine; but she has a soft heart under it
all, Mr. Ryder."
"I can well believe it," agreed Ryder, thinking of "Little Laurel's
Lovers."
"I met your wife in the corridor ready dressed to leave the hotel,"
pursued Mrs. Brack. "She had packed her trunks and would have been
foolish enough to run away.
"It was by chance--no, it was providential--that I spoke to her. And
because I am an old woman and have lived my life and have both
suffered and been happy, she told me all. I saw that Mrs. Judson
would succeed in making her scandalous story (that I had already
heard and then understood) sound true if we were not careful. She
has even been saying that you ran away from your bride----"
"Confound her!" ejaculated John Ryder. "And after all Ruth's
kindness to her!"
"She is confounded--and by her own evil tongue. All gossips are in
the end," said Mrs. Brack. "My husband and I have been in this hotel
fourteen years. If _I_ approve of a person the guests at large are
not very likely to believe the scandalous stories of such
flutterbudgets as Mrs. Judson.
"I have made Ruth appear with us in the dining-room. That put a stop
to all the gossip. And so--she is waiting for you in her rooms now,
Mr. Ryder. She is a girl that any man--I do not care how high he may
be--should be proud to secure for a wife, and----"
"I am going to her!" cried John Ryder, and darted away.
About a week later, one evening, as John Ryder and his wife were
going up from dinner, the clerk handed him a letter. The envelope
was creamy and very thick, and the writing, angular and firm,
betrayed the feminine hand.
"This is from Miss Mont," he said to his wife, and when they reached
their suite she sat eagerly upon the arm of the big chair while he
opened the envelope.
Together they looked over the letter that threw light on important
facts which correspondence on both sides had brought to view. In one
place Rose Mont wrote:
"From what your wife writes me about her remembrance of her early
years and from my own memory, I am confident that she is the sister
Ruth whom I so dearly loved when our parents died and we children
were scattered. I remember I almost cried my eyes out for her,
although for the boys and for our older sister, Gertrude, I did not
greatly care.
"And that we should grow up to look so much alike!"
Again she wrote:
"Your invitation, seconded by dear Ruth, is appreciated; but I must
refuse it now. I could not come to disturb your new-made happiness.
Besides, Mr. Marks has contracted for a seven-week engagement in
Chicago and we start for the West to-morrow. When I return to New
York in the spring or early summer we will have recovered our
equilibrium, I fancy, and we all, as brother and sisters, may meet
with more freedom. Until we meet, God bless you!
"Your sister,
"ROSE MONT."
"Well, I'm sorry she's taken up that stage business," Ryder said with
a sigh. "And yet she has talent for it and she's a good woman.
We'll give her the time of her life when she does come East. We'll
be in our own home then, honey."
Ruth was looking at him very closely, but he was quite unconscious of
the meaning of this scrutiny. Suddenly she seized him around the
neck and hugged him tightly.
"Well," she murmured, "I won't be jealous of my own sister."
Ryder did not hear. But he held her away from him for a moment and
looked into her eyes. "Where's that chain and locket you used to
wear?" he suddenly demanded.
A vivid blush flooded into her throat and cheeks. "That--that's put
away. Johnny White gave it to me when I was a little girl. It--it
had a lock of his hair in it I thought it was _your_ hair, dearest.
How silly of me!"
Ryder smiled grimly. "And you used to kiss it, I'll be bound,
thinking it was mine?"
"How did you know?" she demanded, starting up rather petulantly.
"Humph! I know a lot of things now--since I've been married. By
thunder! Marriage _does_ open a man's eyes."
And then he laughed and drew her down against his breast again, and
they were silent for a long while.
THE END
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