The Fifth Ace Part 41

"I know. I was wondering if you knew her story; if she left any papers with you?"

"Who are you?" the woman asked suddenly, bending forward. "If I knew Vi's story, would I repay her for all her kindness by telling it to a stranger? Why should I show you her papers if she did leave any with me, when that lawyer could get nothing out of me two years ago, for all his bl.u.s.tering?"

"Would you do it if you could help her baby to claim what is her own?"

Willa asked earnestly. "My name is Abercrombie, but I happen to know that the girl your friend left behind her is trying to prove her ident.i.ty. I thought that you would want to help."

"Oh, if I could!" Klondike Kate clasped her toil-worn hands. "Vi told me about the rich father-in-law who hadn't ever forgiven her. Where is Billie, Miss Abercrombie? Is she well and happy? She was such a pretty thing!"

"She is well," Willa responded slowly. "She never knew that it was you who saved her from the fire."

The scarred face flushed.

"I forgot her first, that was the awful part. She'd been ailing and her mother couldn't leave her home, so while she did her turn I sat in her dressing-room, mending my skirt and talking to the kid. When I heard the shots and the lamp exploded and the blaze flared up, I just made a jump for the door. Then I remembered Billie and went back, and the flames caught us both."

"But--but she isn't scarred!" Willa cried.

"No. I--I tore off my skirt and wrapped her in it. Only her little bare feet stuck out and one of them got burned real bad."

"One--of--her--feet!" repeated Willa breathlessly. "Did it leave a scar? Oh, think--think!"

"Why, I guess it must have, Miss Abercrombie." The woman stared at her. "The right foot it was, and there was a bad burn on the inside of the ankle right up from the heel, like a tongue of flame had licked it.

It wasn't hardly well when Gentleman Geoff took her away."

For a moment Willa sat as if stunned, then she bent swiftly, and, whipping off her shoe and stocking, thrust out a slender pink foot.

The inner side was seared with a tiny forked red line, slight but unmistakable.

"You!" Klondike Kate rose slowly. "You are Billie!"

With a little sob Willa went to meet her, and in an instant the two were crying in each other's arms.

The older woman was the first to recover herself.

"Oh, my dear, to think that I didn't know you! I ought to have seen from the first--your mother's hair and eyes----"

"But you know me now!" Willa smiled through her tears. "You could swear to me by that scar, couldn't you? You see, there is someone trying to claim I'm not the girl you knew as Billie, and I have no other proof. I never fancied that little scar meant anything; I haven't thought of it in years. You saved my life once, at the risk of your own--will you help me now?"

"Will I?" Klondike Kate wiped her eyes. "I'll go to the last ditch for you! I've lived right for fifteen years, and I guess my word is as good as the next one's. You just take me to whoever says you're not little Billie and I'll prove their lie before any court on earth.--That reminds me; I have something for you. It won't help make good your claim, for they might say an impostor got it from me, but it's yours and you ought to have it."

She mounted the rickety stairs to the loft, and in her absence Willa slowly put on her stocking and shoe once more. Her own inner conviction had been justified and an elation almost solemn in its intensity filled her heart. She was Willa Murdaugh! She could prove her right to the name which had been wrested from her!

When Klondike Kate descended she bore in her hands a folded paper, yellowed and worn, and a tarnished locket on a bit of faded, scorched blue ribbon.

"I was sick when Gentleman Geoff left town with you or I'd have tied the locket on you myself," she said. "It's got both their pictures in it, mother and father. See!"

She opened the case, and Willa gazed through renewed tears at the two young faces vibrant with life which smiled back at her: the man's thin and intellectual with the eyes of a dreamer and the chiseled lips of a poet; the woman's stronger and more practical, her gaze sweet and level, her dark hair in a soft cloud about her low, broad forehead.

Willa pressed the locket convulsively to her breast in the first overwhelming tide of possession which had ever swept over her. These were her own people, flesh of her fles.h.!.+ They had dared to love against insuperable odds, and, succ.u.mbing at last, had left her as the pledge of that love! She would prove worthy of them!

"It was taken from her neck when they found her after the fire,"

Klondike Kate said softly. "Jake gave it to me to keep for you.--Here's what she prized most of anything she had; she put it in my hands herself to keep for her."

The yellowed paper, unfolded, proved to be the certificate of marriage of Violet Ashton and Ralph Murdaugh, dated January 2, 1896.

The two talked long within the little shack, and when Willa emerged at last the sun had disappeared behind a bank of level, leaden cloud and the still cold which precedes a snowfall had settled down upon the valley.

Since her arrival the night before Willa had fought resolutely against the vague memories which seemed to a.s.sail her at every turn, fearing the snare of mental suggestion, but now she strove wistfully to foster a sense of nearness and familiarity with the dreary scene.

The reaction from her triumphant hour had come, and with it a forlorn hopelessness of spirit. What did it matter, after all? Outcast or reinstated in the empty pomp and circ.u.mstance of society, no one had really cared save Winnie, and he had not counted.

The tragedy of utter isolation from all human ties descended upon her and in the depths of her desolation she was oblivious to the sound of footsteps approaching on the frosty, hard-packed road. It was only when they halted that she glanced up--and found herself looking into the eyes of Kearn Thode.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SLIPPER OF CINDERELLA

Forgetting for a moment all else but the joy of his presence, she held out both hands with a glad little cry.

"Kearn!"

He took her hands in his, but released them after the merest touch, and in the hungry wistfulness of his gaze there was no answering gladness.

"Miss Murdaugh, I have an explanation to make for my disobedience of your injunction," he said stiffly. "I have deliberately followed you here, but it is only that I may put you in possession of certain facts which are of moment to you. Will you forgive me if I intrude upon you for an hour?"

The brightness faded, and she bowed her head in silence. She had forgotten his duplicity and the cold-blooded mercenary game he had played, but the memory of it returned with his first words.

Pa.s.sionately she wished that she might never have learned the truth!

He would have played the game to the last round, he would have been kind at least, and she might have lived on in her fool's paradise.

Then a wave of contempt swept over her for her own cowardice and she straightened.

"I am very glad to see you." Her tones were gravely conventional. "If you have followed me out here, as you say, to render me a service it must be one for which I shall be deeply grateful, Mr. Thode. I am staying at the Palace Hotel and if you will walk there with me we can talk, secure from intrusion. How did you know I was here?"

"Winthrop North told me of the sudden change in your plans for the future, and that he knew where you had gone when you left the Halsteads. I made a hurried trip West and there discovered what I have now to tell you." He spoke slowly as if weighing each word. "I went back to New York to see you, but could only learn that you had disappeared. However, since you had not gone to Limasito, it occurred to me that you must be here, in an attempt possibly to prove your ident.i.ty."

"And what you have to tell me bears on that?" Willa asked.

"It does, most conclusively. Starr Wiley must have had a very vital motive in getting you out of the way, for his story was a lie from start to finish; his papers a deliberate forgery!"

"If you have proof of that, Mr. Thode, you have indeed rendered me a service I can never repay!" she cried. "Once more I am in your debt!"

"My news does not surprise you?" he asked, with a quick glance at her face.

"No. I have suspected it from the moment Starr Wiley announced his discovery, for he had threatened me with it in advance; had tried to bargain with me, in fact." Willa paused. "I had intended to go on from here to the Flathead Lake country in Montana and then to Arizona in an effort to establish what you have discovered. I am anxious to know how you stumbled upon the truth."

It was only when they had reached the little hotel sitting-room and established themselves before the replenished stove that Kearn Thode enlightened her.

"You may remember, Miss Murdaugh, that I knew Starr Wiley before I met him again in Limasito, and that knowledge alone would have impelled me to distrust at sight any claims which he might produce, no matter what their nature," he began. "When Winthrop North told me that our friend had been the means of proving you were not the granddaughter of Giles Murdaugh, I doubted, and when I learned the name which Gentleman Geoff was supposed to have signed to the adoption papers with the trapper, I knew the whole thing was a frame-up. Gentleman Geoff's name was not Abercrombie."