The Bartlett Mystery Part 23

"Well, I never was so--amused!" Yet Mrs. Carshaw's wintry smile was not joyous. "Rex! I must laugh him out of it, if I meet him anywhere!"

"That you will not succeed in doing, I think."

"Well, then I'll frown him out of it. This is why--I see all now."

"There you are hardly wise, to think of either laughing or frowning him out of it," said Meiklejohn, offering her worldly wisdom. "No, in such cases there is a better way, take my word for it."

"And that is?"

"Approach the girl. Avoid carefully saying one word to the young man, but approach _the girl_. That does it, if the girl is at all decent, and has any sensibility. Lay the facts plainly before her. Take her into your confidence--this flatters her. Invoke her love for the young man whom she is hurting by her intimacy with him--this puts her on her honor. Urge her to fly from him--this makes her feel herself a martyr, and turns her on the heroic tack. That is certainly what I should do if I were you, and I should do it without delay."

"You're right. I'll do it," said Mrs. Carshaw. "Do you happen to know where this girl is to be found?"

"No. I think I can tell, though, from whom you might get the address--Helen Tower. I heard your son talking to her last night about the girl. He was wanting to know whether Helen could put him in the way of placing her on the stage."

"What! Is she one of those scheming chorus-girls?"

"It appears so."

"But has he had the effrontery to mention her in this way to other ladies? It is rather amusing! Why, it used to be said that Helen Tower was his _belle amie_."

"All the more reason, perhaps, why she may be willing to give you the address, if she knows it."

"I'll see her this very afternoon."

"Then I must leave you at leisure now," said Meiklejohn sympathetically.

An hour later Mrs. Carshaw was with Helen Tower, and the name of Winifred Bartlett arose between them.

"But he did not give me her address," said Mrs. Tower. "Do you want it pressingly?"

"Why, yes. Have you not heard that there is a question of marriage?"

"Good gracious! Marriage?"

The two women laid their heads nearer together, enjoying the awfulness of the thing, though one was a mother and the other was p.r.i.c.ked with jealousy in some secret part of her nature.

"Yes--marriage!" repeated the mother. Such an enormity was dreadful.

"It sounds too far-fetched! What will you do?"

"Senator Meiklejohn recommends me to approach the girl."

"Well, perhaps that is the best. But how to get her address? Perhaps if I asked Rex he would tell it, without suspecting anything. On the other hand, he might take alarm."

"Couldn't you say you had secured her a place on the stage, and make him send her to you, to test her voice, or something? And then you could send her on to me," said the elder woman.

"Yes, that might be done," answered Helen Tower. "I'd like to see her, too. She must be extraordinarily pretty to capture Rex. Some of those common girls are, you know. It is a caprice of Providence. Anyway, I shall find her out, or have her here somehow within the next few days, and will let you know. First of all, I'll write Rex and ask him to come for bridge to-night."

She did this, but without effect, for Carshaw was engaged elsewhere, having taken Winifred to a theater.

However, Meiklejohn was again at the bridge party, and when he asked whether Mrs. Carshaw had paid a visit that afternoon, and the address of the girl had been given, Helen Tower answered:

"I don't know it. I am now trying to find out."

The Senator seemed to take thought.

"I hate interfering," he said at last, "but I like young Carshaw, and have known his mother many a year. It's a pity he should throw himself away on some chit of a girl, merely because she has a fetching pair of eyes or a slim ankle, or Heaven alone knows what else it is that first turns a young man's mind to a young woman. I happen to have heard, however, that Winifred Bartlett lives in a boarding-house kept by Miss Goodman in East Twenty-seventh Street. Now, my name must not--"

Helen Tower laughed in that dry way which often annoyed him.

"Surely by this time you regard me as a trustworthy person," she said.

So Fowle had proven himself a capable tracker, and Winifred's persecutors were again closing in on her. But who would have imagined that the worst and most deadly of them might be the mother of her Rex?

That, surely, was something akin to steeping in poison the a.s.sa.s.sin's dagger.

CHAPTER XV

THE VISITOR

"Are you Miss Winifred Bartlett?" asked Mrs. Carshaw the next afternoon in that remote part of East Twenty-seventh Street which for the first time bore the rubber tires of her limousine.

"Yes, madam," said Winifred, who stood rather pale before that large and elegant presence. It was in the front room of the two which Winifred occupied.

"But--where have I seen you before?" asked Mrs. Carshaw suddenly, making play with a pair of mounted eye-gla.s.ses.

"I cannot say, madam. Will you be seated?"

"What a pretty girl you are!" exclaimed the visitor, wholly unconscious of the calm insolence which "society" uses to its inferiors. "I'm certain I have seen you somewhere, for your face is perfectly familiar, but for the life of me I cannot recall the occasion."

Mrs. Carshaw was not mistaken. Some dim cell of memory was stirred by the girl's likeness to her mother. For once Senator Meiklejohn's scheming had brought him to the edge of the precipice. But the dangerous moment pa.s.sed. Rex's mother was thinking of other and more immediate matters. Winifred stood silent, scared, with a foreboding of the meaning of this tremendous visit.

"Now, I am come to have a quiet chat with you," said Mrs. Carshaw, "and I only hope that you will look on me as a friend, and be perfectly at your ease. I am sorry the nature of my visit is not of a quite pleasant nature, but no doubt we shall be able to understand each other, for you look good and sweet. Where have I seen you before? You are a sweetly pretty girl, do you know? I can't altogether blame poor Rex, for men are not very rational creatures, are they? Come, now, and sit quite near beside me on this chair, and let me talk to you."

Winifred came and sat, with tremulous lip, not saying a word.

"First, I wish to know something about yourself," said Mrs. Carshaw, trying honestly to adopt a motherly tone. "Do you live here all alone?

Where are your parents?"

"I have none--as far as I know. Yes, I live here alone, for the present."

"But no relatives?"

"I have an aunt--a sort of aunt--but--"