The Fifth Ace Part 32

Was this evidence of fury directed against her because she had been the unwitting cause of Kearn Thode's defection in the matter of the two dances, or was something deeper and more significant in the wind?

Willa was not left in doubt for long. She had scarcely finished her preparations for the night and was braiding her long black hair into a ma.s.sive rope, when a light, brittle tapping came upon her door.

Almost before the wondering a.s.sent had left her lips, Angie slipped in and stood before her. She was still in her spangled dance frock and her round blue eyes were snapping fire.

"I suppose I have come on a thankless mission, Willa," she began.

"Every time I have tried to help you or teach you anything, you have looked on it, in your spiteful way, as mere jealousy on my part, although why I should be jealous of you, heaven only knows!"

"Please, Angelica! We have had all this out before and I am very tired. Would you mind if I asked you to wait until morning?" Willa gave her hair a final twist and turned from the mirror. "I am honestly sorry Kearn Thode missed those dances with you to-night, but it really wasn't my fault--"

"Do you suppose I wanted to dance with him?" Angie interrupted in immense scorn. "I only permitted him to put his name down on my card in ordinary courtesy because of his sister; she has such a caustic tongue that one must keep on the right side of her. If he chose to ignore his dances with me it was because he was playing a game which you, you conceited little simpleton, couldn't see through. Oh, I heard what he said to you in the conservatory--!"

"You listened!" Willa turned on her at last. "Lord, what a miserable specimen of a girl you are, anyhow! I knew you were spying about and listening at my heels here at home to learn what you could and run with it to the man who's making a tool of you and a fool besides, but I didn't think you were so low down as to skulk about and pry into affairs which are no concern of yours! Is nothing sacred to you?"

"I was only doing my duty!" Angie returned loftily. Then her consuming rage got the better of her once more. "You dare to speak of anyone making a tool of me! It is you who are waiting for anyone's hand!

Starr Wiley made a fool of you, and you simpered and purred and thought you were taking him from me, when he was only amusing himself for the moment because he was jealous of me with Art. Judson! Now, in your bursting conceit you think this impecunious fortune-hunter, Thode, is in love with you. I listened because it was my duty to keep any member of the family from throwing herself away and I wanted to see how far he would dare to go. I'm here now to tell you the truth."

"I do not want to hear another word!" Willa cried hotly. "It is no affair of yours and you shall not speak of Kearn Thode as a--a fortune-hunter! He is the only real man in this whole spindling, self-seeking, artificial crowd! If you listened, you know how proud and independent he is!"

"I heard, but that was only his cleverness; he knew how eager you were and he simply led you on to almost propose to him yourself! That was good stuff about not knowing he cared for you down in Mexico until you were leaving. What would you say if I were to tell you that he made a deliberate play for you from the moment he reached that town? Oh, he's serious enough! He'll marry you if he can; that's what he meant to do from the first."

"I think you must be mad!" Willa stared at her cousin in sheer wonder.

"Why should he have wanted to marry me? There were lots of other girls in town----"

"Because he knew who you really were all the time! He knew before Mason North ever found you, and he knew, too, what a fortune you were coming into. You needn't look at me like that, I know what I am talking about!"

"I don't think you do," Willa remarked simply. "You must have taken leave of your senses or else Starr Wiley has been making you believe the silliest sort of lies. How could Kearn Thode have known who I was?

No one did but--but the man who had made me his own daughter, and he would not tell me because he did not want to hurt me by letting me know what mean, contemptible sn.o.bs my people were and how they had served my own father for marrying my brave mother! Kearn Thode knew nothing!"

"What if I were to show you proof? Here is a letter in his own hand, telling all about you and what he meant to do." Angie pulled a crumpled wad of paper from her bodice and held it out, her whole body quivering in triumph. "Read it and then you'll know whether he cares for you or not! Read it, I say!"

"And I say to you that if you don't leave this room at once I will ring and have you put out! Don't you imagine that I can see through a scurvy trick of Starr Wiley's to get back at the man who beat him twice to a mere pulp? I do not want to see the letter, I will not read it.

It is all a lie!"

"Then listen!" Angie smoothed the sheet of paper and fairly danced in her excitement. "You shall listen! You shall know what that man is scheming to marry you for! There is only a part of it here, but it ought to be enough to open your eyes, blinded with conceit as you are!"

"I will not----!" Willa began indignantly, but Angie's voice silenced her.

"----'Except for him, of course, no one here knows her real name'," she read, "'and it wouldn't mean anything to them if they did, but I spotted her at once and later events have only proved the truth of my suspicions. She is the undoubted owner of almost boundless wealth and when I have gone after her and won her consent----'"

"Stop!" Willa clapped her hands to her ears. "I will not listen to one more word! It is a lie, I tell you! A lie!"

"There isn't any more," Angie announced with a sly grimace. "That is the bottom of the page, but it ought to be enough for you."

"Kearn Thode never wrote a word of it!" exclaimed Willa pa.s.sionately.

"I would not believe you if you swore it from now till you die! Go, before I make you!"

"Oh, I'm going." Angie shrugged, and the letter fluttered from her fingers to the floor. "I've no desire for a disgraceful brawl, I a.s.sure you! Of course, I am not familiar with Kearn Thode's handwriting, but I have proof enough to satisfy me that the letter is his. If you marry him now, you will have bought him with your eyes open and have no one but yourself to blame if you're not pleased with your bargain! I have done my duty anyway, my dear cousin. Good-night."

Her footsteps died away down the hall, and Willa dropped into a low chair before the hearth, covering her face with her hands. It was Just a trick of Wiley's, of course! She would not let her gaze stray to that tell-tale sheet of white paper upon the floor, and yet something seemed to draw her eyes to it with an almost physical strength.

Wiley must have written it himself and put it in Angie's hands to work what mischief she might with it. There could be no harm in one glance at it; a glance which would prove instantly its falseness, just as she knew it in her heart to be at best a forgery.

Slowly Willa rose and step by step made her way to where the letter lay. She made no effort to touch it at first, but it had fallen with the written side uppermost and gradually as she stared down at it the scorn in her face gave way to wonder and then despair.

The brief note she had received from Kearn Thode, after he had thrashed Wiley at the club, was engraved deep in her thoughts with every line distinct and the characters on the paper before her eyes were so similar in every detail that it seemed impossible for them not to have been fas.h.i.+oned by the same hand.

With grief and horror surging in her heart, Willa rushed to the little drawer of her dressing-table where the first note had been treasured, and drew it forth. Then, seizing the other paper from the floor, she held them beneath the glow of the lamp with shaking hands and compared them.

The next minute she had crumpled them both fiercely and cast them from her, flinging herself across her bed in a paroxysm of bitter grief and disillusionment.

Kearn Thode had written both letters; there could be no longer doubt.

He was like all the rest! Truth and chivalry departed from the world and her shattered dream, and once more Willa found herself alone, but in a depth of solitude she had never known before. Love had gone.

CHAPTER XVIII

MIDNIGHT FOR CINDERELLA

When the late lowering dawn seeped in at the windows, Willa raised herself wearily and crept to her desk. Her face with the tears dried upon it was ghastly in the morning light, but her eyes held a look of grim determination. Seating herself, she took up her pen and wrote without hesitation:

"My Dear Mr. Thode:

"I beg that you will not call this evening, that I may be spared the painful necessity of having you shown the door. In the light of my present full comprehension of your motives, I no longer wonder that even you hesitated at the moment of your odious proposal. The only possible reparation you can make for the humiliation you have brought upon me in my inmost thoughts is to so arrange that I need never look upon your face again.

"In all sincerity,

"WILLA MURDAUGH."

The letter finished, she sealed and stamped it; then her worn-out body slumped in the chair and her head bowed upon her folded arms on the desk.

The collapse lasted but a moment, however. The same dogged determination which had forced her weary spirit to the p.r.o.nouncement of the verdict upon her love, drove her yet indomitably on. As she lifted her head her gaze mechanically fell upon the calendar before her and a slow, infinitely sad smile curled her lips. It was the beginning of the third day since Starr Wiley had issued his ultimatum. He must carry his threat into execution or admit it to have been sheer bluff.

Curiously, she looked upon the impending crisis with the impa.s.sivity of a bystander. What did it matter now?

Then realization came back in a full tide and she sprang to her feet.

The weary plodding search which had taken her half over the city in the past few agonizing days had been fruitless, yet must it still continue until definite news of Tia Juana could be learned. Dan Morrissey had been faithful, but his ardent spirit outran his detective skill and his initiative advanced no farther afield than a daily round of the hospitals and temporary shelters of the city's driftwood, and a hopeless concentration on the neighborhood from which the aged woman had so mysteriously vanished.

Willa herself had no more comprehensive plan; she had advertised discreetly in Spanish in the "personal" column of a morning newspaper and followed every tentative line of investigation which presented itself to her, but messages to each stage of the journey back to Limasito and exhaustive questioning of the few individuals with whom Tia Juana had come in contact in New York were alike unproductive of result.

Hopelessness was stealthily enveloping her spirit, but she resolutely fought it down. She must not give up, she would not until Tia Juana was safe. She had been instrumental in bringing the aged woman to an alien land, and she was responsible for whatever misfortune might have come upon her. Then, too, there was her purpose still to be achieved; that at least remained to her.

At breakfast Angie addressed her in honeyed tones, scrutinizing her hungrily meanwhile for evidence of the result of her maneuver, but Willa was stonily noncommittal. The meal progressed in a constrained silence which was broken only by the shrill summons of the telephone.

Senora Rodriguez's staccato voice came over the wire in such an outpouring of hysteria that at first Willa could make nothing of it, but at length one phrase smote her ears: