The Rest Hollow Mystery Part 14

"The man we've been talking about--my Missing Link."

Together they leaned over the balcony and scrutinized, with the intent gaze of a pair of detectives, the couple in the fourth row right. It may have been coincidence, or it may have been that species of visual hypnotism known to us all, which suddenly impelled Madame Rosalie's escort to turn in his seat. His eyes swept the house with a casual glance, then lifted to the balcony. Slowly they surveyed the arc of faces above the lights. The two men leaning toward him did not move. In another instant he had found them, and for a full minute he and Roger Kenwick held each other. And then the theater went black as the curtain rose on the last act.

Just before it was over Kenwick bade his companion a hurried farewell.

"I'm going down and introduce myself to that fellow. I know I've seen him before somewhere, and he may be able to give me my clue. You don't mind if I break away? I want to catch him before he is lost in the crowd."

But this hope was thwarted. For hurrying down the aisle in that moment before the rush of exit, while the audience was finding its wraps, he found two seats in the fourth row empty. Slowly he walked back to the St. Germaine, his thoughts in a tumult. Why should they have wanted to leave before the end of as good a performance as that? Something must have happened. Could it be that they had wanted to escape him? At such long range it hadn't been possible for him to determine whether or not there was a flash of recognition in the other man's eyes, but his mysterious disappearance was haunting. On the following morning, before going to the "Clarion" office he took a car out to Fillmore Street.

At Madame Rosalie's shabby home a man in s.h.i.+rt sleeves opened the door.

"Oh, she don't live here any more," he explained to the caller. "She moved a week ago. I'm gettin' the place ready for a new tenant."

"Do you know where she went?"

The man grinned. "Them mediums don't generally leave no forwardin'

address. Their motto is 'Keep Movin'.' I will say, though, that the Rosalie woman was a perfect lady and paid her rent regular in advance."

Kenwick walked away, turning this latest development slowly in his mind, looking at it from every angle. At his office he worked mechanically, scarcely conscious of what he wrote. He was in two minds now about the Eastern trip. Perhaps it would be better to take Jarvis's advice and let things have their head a bit longer. And he was certain of some of his facts now. The face of the man in the fourth row had been like the flash of a torch at midnight. For most of the night he had been awake, going back over the painful trail of the past, fitting some of its previously incomprehensible details into their places. What a curious mosaic his life had been! What contrasts of light and shade! But as for going back to Mont-Mer----The idea made him shudder. No, that was one thing he would not do. It would be like courting the return of a nightmare.

At four o'clock he left the office and went to keep an appointment with Dr. Gregson Bennet in the Physicians' Building. Dr. Bennet belonged to that cla.s.s of specialists who designate their business quarters in plural terms. His offices comprised a suite of four rooms. The sign on the door of the first one invited the caller to enter, unheralded.

Complying with this injunction, Kenwick found himself in a well-lighted chamber containing a ma.s.sive collection of light-green upholstery and an a.s.sortment of foreign-looking pictures artfully selected to convey the impression that their owner was on chummy terms with the capitals of Europe.

As the door closed automatically behind him, a white-uniformed figure appeared, like a perfectly trained cuckoo, from the adjoining room and announced in level tones, "The-doctor-will-see-you-in-just-a-minute."

Kenwick accepted this a.s.surance with the grave credulity that one fiction-maker accords another. He glanced at the five other patients already awaiting their turns and picked up a magazine.

By four-thirty he had read the jokes in the back of "Anybody's Magazine"

for the preceding six months. No physician in reputable standing ever removes old numbers of periodicals from his files. For what better testimony can he offer in support of his claim upon a long-established practice? As Kenwick read, he was aware that his companions were being summoned one by one to embark upon that mysterious journey from whose bourne no traveler returns, departure having been arranged for around some obscure corner, to prevent exchange between arriving and retreating patient of a "Look! Stop! Listen!" signal.

By five o'clock only one other patient besides himself remained; a little woman in s.h.i.+ny serge suit and pa.s.see summer hat. Kenwick put down his magazine with a long-drawn sigh, and she smiled in patient sympathy.

"Gets pretty tiresome waitin', doesn't it?" she ventured.

His quick eyes took in her shabby suit and the knotted ungloved hands.

She was probably the mother of a growing family, he reflected, and would not get home in time now to prepare dinner. His easy sympathy flared into words.

"It's an outrage to keep people waiting like this when they have an appointment for a definite hour. They tell me Bennet's a nerve specialist, and I believe it."

She smiled wanly, but there was an eager champions.h.i.+p in her response.

"Oh, but he's wonderful! When he once begins to talk to you, you forget all about bein' mad at him. Seems like he sees right through your head to tell what's the matter with you."

The white uniform appeared and p.r.o.nounced a name: "Mr. Kenwick." He rose and followed her through the door. The second room was like the first, minus reading-matter and plus wall-charts. Here he sat, gazing at the fire-escapes on the opposite building, while the white uniform made a not completely satisfying attempt to collect family statistics. And then, at last, the door of the third room opened and Dr. Bennet himself emerged. He was enveloped in a heavy white ap.r.o.n that recalled to Kenwick's mind the pictures he had seen in the agricultural magazines featuring model dairying.

But if the specialist had been slow to admit him, he was equally reluctant to let him go. When he had finished his examination, Kenwick stood beside the couch in the fourth and last room pulling on his coat.

"Then you think I'm in pretty good condition, doctor?" Through the half-open door he could see the white uniform hovering, like an emblem of peace, above a steaming basin of warlike instruments.

"I should say," the physician told him slowly, "that you are absolutely sound. Your nerves are a bit too highly charged, but I imagine that is more a matter of temperament than overstrain."

"Is that all?"

"No, that isn't all. The history of your case, as you have given it to me, is a most interesting one. And you were right to let me make the examination and form my own conclusions before telling me anything about your history. I wish it were possible for you to recall the name of the physician who handled your case in France. I'd like to get the scientific beginning of the story. Without it I can only make a guess, and guessing is not satisfactory. But I think that in his place I should have taken the chance and operated. However, you can't judge; he may not have had the proper equipment. I wish you would come around next Sat.u.r.day when the office is closed, and let me make some X-ray plates.

I'd like to display them at the medical convention in April."

"And what do you advise me to do for my--my mental health?"

"Forget your mental health. Take some regular out-of-door exercise and mix with your friends. I can't give you any better prescription than that. If it were something done up in pink paper you'd be more apt to take it, I know."

Kenwick walked back through the darkening streets with a feeling of exultation. The pendulum of his despair was swinging backward to a height only attained by those who can plumb the depths of wretchedness.

For the first time in six weeks he felt his old defiance of life. And recalling the pale ghost of a former prayer, he was ashamed of its cowardice. "_That_ never happens to the desperate and the lonely," he reminded himself grimly. "The best security on earth for a prolonged life is to express a sincere desire to die. After that, you lead a charmed existence. Houses burn to the ground and not one inmate escapes; s.h.i.+ps go down with everybody aboard; pedestrians are run over by cars and shot by thugs, but none of these things come near the man who courts them. They overtake those whom others find it hard to spare, those whose lives are vivid with purpose."

As he walked back to the hotel he found himself thinking of Marcreta again. Had he ever really made a place for himself in her life? Whether he had or not, he knew that he had never, even in his blackest moments, given her up. All the plans for his future centered still about her.

Well, he had a fight before him now, and not until he won it would he make himself known at the house on Pine Street.

On the corner a newsboy thrust a paper under his face. He waved it aside. "I can read all that bunk for nothing, sonny," he told him cheerfully. The huge head-lines filled him with a spiritual nausea. The chronicle of the day's tragedies for the public to batten upon! Was there never to be an end to America's greed for the sensational?

At the St. Germaine the clerk handed him a telephone call. It was from Jarvis and urged him to call him up immediately. In his own room Kenwick complied with this request. The voice of the Southerner came to him, sharply commanding, over the wire. "Can you come around right away? I want to talk it over with you."

"Talk what over?" Kenwick's voice was almost defiant.

"Why, haven't you seen it? Well, come around anyway. I'll be here for the next hour."

When Kenwick arrived at the Harts.h.i.+re he found the photographer sorting over a pile of films. But as his guest entered, he swept these into a pasteboard box, and cleared off a chair for him. "Where have you been?"

he demanded. "I called you at the hotel and the 'Clarion' office twice."

Kenwick gave him a brief account of the last two hours. Jarvis grunted.

"Well, I don't blame you for wanting to get the seal of scientific approval but--I can't believe that you haven't read the 'Record' yet.

And you a newspaper man!"

He fished the paper out from under a stack of developing-trays and searched the columns of the second page. "Remember what I suggested to you last night, that you let things take their own course for a while?

Well, it seems that they've been taking them in rather a headlong fas.h.i.+on." He creased back the page and handed the paper to Kenwick.

"Read that and see if it doesn't give you something of a jolt."

He took the paper. The head-lines at the top of the third page riveted themselves upon his brain.

RELATIVE SEEKS MISSING MAN

Body of Roger Kenwick to Be Exhumed at Mont-Mer

The body of Roger Kenwick, son of the late Charles Kenwick, of New York, who died at Rest Hollow last November, is to be exhumed for examination on the demand of Mrs. Hilda Fanwell, of Reno, Nevada.

Mrs. Fanwell, a widow, arrived from her home last week in search of her brother, Ralph Regan, who has been a resident of Mont-Mer for the last two years. A letter received from him in the early part of November indicated, according to the sister's statement, that he was in failing health. Being unable to come to him then, owing to the illness of her husband, Mrs. Fanwell wrote several letters, none of which were answered. The description of her brother, which she furnished the police, has resulted in a demand to the authorities to have the body of Roger Kenwick exhumed.

Kenwick let the paper slide to the table. "My Lord!" he murmured.

"Jarvis, what would you do about it?"

"Why should _you_ do anything about it? This Fanwell woman is apparently the oldest Gold Dust twin. Let her do your work."

But Kenwick's eyes were still fixed upon the paper. Over it a drop of acid from the developing-tray was eating a slow pa.s.sage. "But to see my name tied up to a gruesome thing like that----Why, you can't imagine how it----It gives me the feeling that--that I've just begun on this thing. And I thought when I came in here that I had all the cards in my hands."

He got up from the table slowly, like a hospital patient testing his strength on the first day out of bed. And Jarvis, after one glance at his pale face, rose too. "You've got nothing to worry about----," he began. But Kenwick waved the soothing aside with a fierce impatience.

"Nothing to worry about?" he cried hotly. "Don't offer me that stuff, Jarvis. How do I know--how _can_ I ever know what I may have done during those ghastly ten months?"