The Last Stroke Part 29

"Whom you saw at the p.a.w.nshop?"

"Yes. And----"

"And at Glenville?"

"Yes, at the hotel."

"And he was tall, you say, and broad-shouldered?"

"Yes."

"Strong looking, in fact. As if----" He checked himself at sight of the intent look upon Ruth Glidden's face, and she took the word from his lips.

"As if," she repeated, icily, "he could shoot straight, or strike a man down in the dark." She arose and took the picture. "It is a bad face,"

she said, with decision.

"It is a disguised face," replied Ferrars. "Nevertheless, I think I shall know it, even without the beard and thick, bushy wig. Let me see?"

He took a piece of paper, and a pencil, and placing the photograph before him, began to sketch in the head, working from the nose, mouth, eyes and facial outlines outward, and drawing, instead of the thick, pointed beard, a thin-lipped mouth and smooth chin. Then, when the young ladies had studied this, he copied in the moustache of the photograph.

"It belongs to the face," he observed, as he worked; "and probably grew there."

Late that night, as the detective sat alone in his room with a pile of just completed letters before him, he again drew the photograph from its envelope and studied it with wrinkling brow.

"If you are the man," he said, with slow moving lips that grew into hard, stern lines as he spoke--"If you are the man I will find you! If you have struck the first blow--and it's very possible--you also struck the second. But the work is not yet finished, and, unless my patience and skill desert me, the last stroke shall be mine."

CHAPTER XX.

A WOMAN'S HEART.

The blow dealt Robert Brierly by the sham policeman had been a severe one, and at first it had been feared that he would recover, if at all, with his fine intellect dulled if not altogether shattered. But the best medical skill, aided by a fine const.i.tution, and above all, the new impulse given his lately despondent spirits by the appearance at his bedside of Ruth Glidden, her eyes filled with love, and pity and resolve, all had combined to bring about good results, and so, one evening, not quite two months after that blow in the dark, he found himself sitting in an easy chair, very pale and much emaciated but, save for this, and his exceeding bodily weakness, quite himself again. Indeed a more buoyant and hopeful self than he had been for many a day, and with good reason.

At first, and for one week, his mind had been a blank, then delirium had claimed and swayed him, until one day the crisis came, and with it a sudden clearing of mind and brain.

Through it all Ruth had been beside him, and now she called the doctor aside and spoke with the grave frankness of a woman whose all is at stake, and who knows there is no time for formalities.

"Doctor, tell me the truth. He will know me now, and he must not see me unless--unless I tell him I have come to stay. Will a shock, such a shock, render his chances more critical? The surprise and----" She turned away her face. "Doctor, you know!"

Then the good physician, who had nursed her through her childish ills, and closed her father's eyes in death, put a fatherly hand upon her shoulder. "There must be absolutely no emotion," he said. "But a happy surprise, just now, if it comes with gentleness, and firmness--that tender firmness to which the weak so instinctively turns--will do him good, not harm. Only, it must be for just a moment, and he must not speak. My dear, I believe I can trust you."

He called away the nurse and beckoned Ruth to follow him. Then he went straight to the bedside, where the sick man lay, so pale and deathlike, beneath his linen bandages.

"Robert," he said, slowly. "Listen, and do not speak. I bring you a friend who will not be denied; you know who it is. You must not attempt to speak, Rob, for your own sake. If I thought you would not obey me I would shut her out even now." And with the last word upon his lips he was gone and Ruth stood in his place.

Involuntarily the wounded man opened his lips, but she put a soft finger upon them, and shook her head. She was very pale, but the voice, which was the merest murmur, yet how distinct to his ears, was quite controlled.

"Robert, you are not to speak. I have promised that for us both. I have been near you since the first, and I am going to stay until--until I can trust you to others. And, Rob, you must get well for my sake. You must, dear, or you'll make me wear mourning all my days for the only lover I have ever had. Don't fail me, my dear." She bent above him, placed her soft, cool hand upon his own, pressed a kiss upon his brow, and the next moment the doctor stood in her place, and was saying, "Don't be uneasy, Rob, old man; that was a real live dream, which will come back daily, so long as you are good, and remember, sir, you have two tyrants now."

And so it proved.

When Brierly was at last fit to be removed to that safe and comfortable haven--not too far from the doctor's watchful care--which they fict.i.tiously named the South, Ruth bade him good-bye one day, with a tear in her eye, and a smile upon her lip.

"You will soon be a well man now," she said to him. "And when that time comes, and the tyrant Ferrars permits it, you will come to me, of course." And with the rare meaning smile he knew and loved so well, and so well understood, she left him, to bestow her cheering presence upon Hilda Grant and Glenville.

And now, on a fine midsummer night, thinner than of old, and paler, with a scar across his left temple, and a languor of body which he was beginning to find irksome because of the revived activity of the lately clouded and heavy brain, Brierly sat in a pleasant upper room of a certain hospitable suburban villa, the only south he had known since they bore him away from the Myers' home, and whirled him away from the city on a suburban train, to stop, within the same hour, and leave him, safely guarded, in this snug retreat.

"You see," the detective was saying, "I had found this series of tiny clues, and thought all was plain sailing, until that mysterious boy paid his visit to your brother's room and left almost as much as he took away. That forced me to reconstruct my theory somewhat, and set me to wondering just what status Miss Grant held in the game our unknown a.s.sa.s.sin was playing. For I will do the young lady, and myself, the justice to say that I never for a moment doubted her. That fling at her gave me, however, a key to the character of the unknown." He was silent a moment, then, "After all," he said, "it was you who gave me my first suggestion of the truth."

"How? when I had no conception of it?"

"By telling of that attack upon your brother the winter before his coming here."

"I do not recall it."

"I suppose not; but in telling me of your brother's career, before his going to Glenville, you spoke of an accident which occurred to him, an accident which was eventually the cause of his going to Glenville. I made a note of this, and, later, questioned Mr. Myers. He told me of the attack at the mouth of an alley. How two men a.s.sailed your brother, and only his presence of mind in shouting as he struck, and striking hard and with skilled fists, saved him from death at their hands; how he warded off, and held, the fellow with the bludgeon, but was cut by the other's knife. I might not have been so much impressed by these details, perhaps, had I not learned that your brother was returning from a visit of charity to the sick, a visit which he had paid regularly for some time. Then I thought I saw light upon the subject."

"Yes." Brierly bent toward the detective, a keen light in his eyes. "I have been very dull, Ferrars, but I have had time for much thinking of late. I think that, at last, I begin to understand."

"And what do you understand?" A slow smile was overspreading the detective's face.

"That my brother and I have had a common enemy. That nothing short of both our lives will satisfy him; that the attack upon Charley, nearly a year ago, was the beginning--that, having taken his life, they are now upon a still hunt for mine--and that, but for you, they would have completed their work that evening when, chafing, like the fool I was, under restraint, I set out alone, and met----"

"A policeman." Ferrars' lips were grave, but his eyes smiled. "It was a close squeak, Brierly. The fellow very nearly brained you. And now"--and he drew his chair closer, and his face at once became grave almost to sternness--"we want to end this game; there is too much risk in it for you."

"You need not fear for me, Ferrars. From this moment I go forward, or follow, as you will, blindly; you have only to command. What must I do?"

"Prepare to go aboard the _Lucania_ five days from date in the disguise of what do you imagine?"

"A navvy possibly."

"No. I know the boat's captain, luckily, and I know that a party of Salvation Army officers are to sail that day for England. We will go aboard, all of us, in the salvation uniform and doff it later, if we choose."

"You say all of us?"

"I mean Mrs. Myers, who goes to join her husband and see London and Paris; Miss Glidden, who goes because she wills to go and because she believes that Miss Grant can be best diverted from her sorrow, and strengthened for her future life, by such a journey, Miss Grant, _ergo_, and our two selves." He leaned back and watched his _vis-a-vis_ narrowly from underneath drooping lashes. He was giving his client's docility a severe test, and he knew it.

As for Robert, he remained so long silent that the detective, relaxing his gaze, resumed--

"I won't ask you to take too much upon trust, Brierly. Our present position, briefly told, is this. We are nearing the climax, but we cannot force it. One point of the game remains still in the enemy's hands. And the scene is s.h.i.+fted to England--to London, to be literal.

The next move must be made by the other side. It will be made over there, and we must be at hand when the card is played. If all ends as I hope and antic.i.p.ate, your presence in London will be imperative, almost.

As for the ladies, Miss Grant's presence may be needed, as a witness perhaps, and certainly nothing could be better for her than the companions.h.i.+p of her friend, Miss Ruth, and the motherly kindness of Mrs. Myers, just now."

Robert Brierly turned his face away, and clinched his hands in desperation. He was thinking of Ruth, and an inward battle was raging between strong love and stubborn pride.

"And now," went on the other, as if all unheeding, "concerning the disguises. I have told you of the person seen by our spies at the Glenville House, for a brief time?"