The Avalanche: A Mystery Story Part 16

But, was it, after all? If he and Helene had been here together to-night, not married and harrowed, but engaged and quick with romance, would he have thought it absurd to conspire and maneuver to separate her from the crowd and s.n.a.t.c.h a few moments of heavenly solitude? Would he have despised himself for suffering torments if she flouted him or for wanting to murder any man who balked him?

Love, and all the pa.s.sions, creative and destructive, it engendered, all the sentiments and follies and crimes, to say nothing of ambition and greed and the l.u.s.t to kill in war--these were instincts and traits that appeared in mankind generation after generation, in every corner civilized and savage of the globe. The world changed somewhat in form during its progress, but never in substance.

And mystery and intrigue were equally a part of life, as indigenous to the Twentieth Century as to those days long entombed in history when the troops of Ferdinand and Isabella sat down on the plain before Grenada.

Plot and melodrama were in every life; in some so briefly as hardly to be recognized, in others--in that of certain men and women in the public eye, for instance--they were almost in the nature of a continuous performance.

In these days men took a bath morning and evening, ate daintily, had a refined vocabulary to use on demand, dressed in tweeds instead of velvet.

There were longer intervals between the old style of warfare when men were always plugging one another full of holes in the name of religion or disputed territory, merely to amuse themselves with a tryout of Right against Might, or to gratify the insane ambition of some upstart like Napoleon. To-day the business world was the battlefield, and it was his capital a man was always healing, his poor brain that collapsed nightly after the strain and nervous worry of the day.

It suddenly felt quite normal to be here flattened against a wall waiting for some impossible denouement.

Nevertheless, he was sick with apprehension.

Would it merely be the prelude to another drama? Was his life to be a series of unwritten plays, of which he was both the hero and the bewildered spectator? Or would it bring him calm, the terrible calm of stagnation, of an inner life finished, sealed, buried?

It was inevitable in these romantic surroundings and conditions that he should revert to his almost forgotten jealousy. Suppose Spaulding had stumbled upon something.... But he had been asked for no such evidence.... It would be a d.a.m.nable liberty.... It might be inextricably woven with the business in hand.... There were other men besides Doremus whom Helene saw constantly.... Spaulding may have seen his chance to nip the thing in the bud, and had taken the risk....

He felt the detective's lips at his ear: "Hear anything? Move a little so's you can look up."

Ruyler heard his wife's voice above him, then Aileen Lawton's. He parted the branches and saw the two girls lean over the low sill of the cas.e.m.e.nt. Both had removed their masks, but their faces were only dimly revealed. Their voices, however, were distinct enough, and his wife's was dull and flat.

"Oh, I can't," she said. "I can't."

"Well, you'll just jolly well have to. You've got it, haven't you?"

"Oh, yes, I've got it!"

"Well, he'll never suspect you."

"I shall tell him."

"Tell him? You little fool. And give us all away?"

"I'd mention no other names."

"As if he wouldn't probe until he found out. Don't you know Price Ruyler yet? My father said once he'd have made a great District Attorney. What's the use of telling him later, for that matter? Why not now?"

"I haven't the courage yet. I might have one day--at just the right moment. I never thought I was a coward."

"You're just a kid. That's what's the matter. We ought to have left you out. I told Polly that--"

"You couldn't! Oh, don't you see you couldn't. That's the terrible part of it! Left me out? I'd have found my way in."

"I'm not so sure. You were interested in heaps of things, and in love, and all that--"

"Oh, I'd like to excuse myself by blaming it on being bored, and tired of trying to amuse myself doing nothing worth while, but it's bad blood, that's what it is, bad blood, and you know it, if none of the others do."

"Oh, I'm not one of your heredity fiends. When did your mother tell you?"

"Only the other day."

"Well, she ought to have told you long ago. I believe you'd have kept out if you'd known."

"Wouldn't I? But of course she hated to tell the truth to me--"

"Well, if I'd known that you didn't know I'd have told you, all right. I wormed it out of Dad soon after you arrived, and at first I thought it was a good joke on Society, to say nothing of Price Ruyler, with his air of G.o.d having created heaven first, maybe, but New York just after. Then I got fond of you and I wouldn't have told for the world. But I would have put you on your guard if I'd known."

"Oh, it doesn't matter. Even if Price doesn't find out about this, if he learns the other--who my father was, and that awful men have recognized my mother--I suppose he'll hate me, and in time I'll go back to Rouen--"

"Now, you don't think as ill as that of him, do you? He makes me so mad sometimes I could spit in his face, but if he's one thing he's true blue.

He's the straight masculine type with a streak of old romance that would make him love a woman the more, the sorrier he was for her, and the weaker she was--I mean so long as she was young. After this, just get to work on your character, kid. When you're thirty maybe he won't feel that it's his whole duty to protect you. You'll never be hard and seasoned like me, nor able to take care of yourself. I like danger, and excitement, and uncertainty, and mystery, and intrigue, and lying, and wriggling out of tight places. I'd have gone mad in this hole long ago, if I hadn't, for I don't care for sport. But you were intended to develop into what is called a 'fine woman,' surrounded by the right sort of man meanwhile. And Price Ruyler is the right sort. I'll say that much for him. He'd have driven me to drink, but he's just your sort--"

"And what am I doing? I am the most degraded woman in the world."

"Oh, no, you're not. Not by a long sight. You don't know how much worse you could be. One woman who is here to-night I saw lying dead drunk in the road between San Mateo and Burlingame the other day when I was driving with Alice Thornd.y.k.e, and Alice is having her fourth or fifth lover, I forget which--"

"They are no worse than I."

"Listen. He's coming. Got it ready?"

"I can't."

"You must. He'll hound you in the _Merry Tattler_ until the whole town knows you're a welcher, and not a soul would speak to you. That is the one unpardonable sin--"

"I wish I'd told Price--"

"Oh, no, you don't. This is just a lovely way out. Glad he had the inspiration. h.e.l.lo, Nick."

A man had groped his way between the trees and stood just under the window.

"What are you doing here?" asked Doremus sourly.

"Witness, witness, my dear Nick. Besides, poor Helene never would have come alone, so there you are."

"To h.e.l.l with all this melodramatic business. It could have been done anywhere--"

"Not much. Dark corners for dark doings."

"Well, hand it over."

Ruyler had given his brain an icy shower bath as soon as he heard his wife's voice, and was now as cool and alert as even the detective could have wished. He did not wait for the promised impulse to his elbow; his hand shot up just ahead of Doremus's and closed over his wife's hand, which, he felt at once, held the ruby. At the same moment Spaulding caught Doremus by his medieval collar and shook him until the man's teeth chattered, then he slapped his face and kicked him.

"Now, you," he said standing over the panting man, who was mopping his bleeding nose, and holding the electric torch so that it would s.h.i.+ne on his own face. "You get out of California, d'you hear? You're a gambler and a blackmailer and a panderer to old women, and I've got some evidence that would drag you into court however it turned out, so's you'd find this town a live gridiron. So, git, while you can. Go while the going's good."

Doremus, too shaken to reply, slunk off, and Spaulding after a glance upward, left as silently.