The Black Eagle Mystery Part 34

"From the first I had suspicions that something was wrong. I could not believe he would have done what they said he had. Even after I read in the papers of his carefully planned get-away I was not convinced. After that scene in the Whitney office, when I saw you were all watching me, eager to trip me into any admission, my suspicions grew stronger. There was more than showed on the surface. I sensed it, an instinct warned me.

"As days pa.s.sed and I heard nothing more from him, the conviction grew that something had happened to him. If it was accident I was certain it would have been known; if, as many thought, he'd lost his memory and strayed away, I was equally certain he'd have been seen and recognized.

What else could it be? Can you picture me, shut up with my poor distracted mother, ravaged by fear and anxiety? Those waiting days-how terrible they were-with that sense of dread always growing, growing.

Finally it came to a climax. If my father was dead as I thought, there was only one explanation-foul play. On Friday, when you came to see me, I was at the breaking point, afraid to speak, desperate for help and unable to ask for it.

"Now I come to the day when I learned everything, when all these broken forebodings of disaster fell together like the bits of gla.s.s in a kaleidoscope and took a definite shape. It was Sunday, can it be only two days ago? My mother had moved to the cottage and I was alone in the apartment packing up to follow her. About the middle of the afternoon while I was hard at work the telephone rang. I answered it and was told by the operator Long Distance was calling me, Quebec. At that my heart gave a great jump of joy and relief-my father was alive and sending for me again. It was like the wireless answer of help to a foundering vessel.

"You know how often the Long Distance connection varies-one day you can recognize a voice a thousand miles off that on the next you can't make out at a hundred? The voice that had spoken to me from Toronto was no more than a vibration of the wire, thin and toneless. The one that spoke from Quebec was distinct and colored with a personality.

"The first words were that it was J. W. B. and at these words, as if the receiver had shot an electric current into me, I started and grew tense, for it did not sound like the voice of J. W. B. It went on, explaining why he had not communicated with me, and how he now again wanted me to come to him. I, listening, became more and more sure that the person speaking was not my father, but that, whoever he was, his voice stirred a faint memory, was dimly suggestive of a voice I _did_ know.

"I was confused and agitated, standing there with the receiver at my ear, while those sentences ran over the wire, every syllable clear and distinct. Then, suddenly, I thought of a way I could find out. My father was the only man in the world who knew of our secret, of the plan for our reunion. A simple question would test the knowledge of the person talking to me. When he had finished I said:

"'I've been longing to hear from you, not only for myself but for my mother-she's been in despair.'

"There was a slight pause before the voice answered:

"'Why should Mrs. Whitehall be so disturbed?'

"Then I _knew_ it wasn't Johnston Barker. The reason for Mrs.

Whitehall's disturbance was as well known to him as it was to me.

Besides in our talks together he had never alluded to her as 'Mrs.

Whitehall' but always as 'your mother' or by her Christian name, Serena.

"I said the mystery of his disappearance had upset her, she was afraid something had happened to him. A faint laugh-with again that curiously familiar echo in it-came along the wire:

"'You can set her mind at rest after you've seen me.'

"There was something ghastly about it-talking to this unknown being, listening to that whispering voice that called me to come and wasn't the voice I knew. It was like an evil spirit, close to me but invisible, and that I had no power to lay hold of.

"While I was thinking this he was telling me that he had a safe hiding place and that I must join him at once, the plans were now perfected for the new enterprise in which he was to launch me. I demurred and to gain time told him how I'd tried to go before and been followed. That caught his attention at once, his questions came quick and eager. Perhaps before that he had tried to disguise his voice, anyway now the familiar note in it grew stronger. I began to catch at something-inflexions, accent-till suddenly, like a runner who rounds a corner and sees his goal unexpectedly before him, my memory saw a name-Harland!

"I was so amazed, so staggered that for a moment I couldn't speak. The voice brought me back, saying sharply, 'Are you there?' I stammered a reply and said I couldn't make up my mind to come. He urged, but I wouldn't promise, till at length, feeling I might betray myself, I said I'd think it over and let him know later. He had to be satisfied with that and gave me his telephone number telling me to call him up as soon as I decided.

"What did I feel as I sat alone in that dismantled place? Can you realize the state of my thoughts? What did it mean-what was going on?

The man was not Johnston Barker, but how could he be Harland, who was dead and buried? Ah, if you had come _then_ instead of Friday I'd have told you for I was in waters too deep for me. All that I could grasp was that I was in the midst of something incomprehensible and terrible, from the darkness of which one thought stood out-my father had never sent for me, I had never heard from him-it had been this other man all along! I was then as certain as if his spirit had appeared before me that Johnston Barker was dead.

"And now I come to one of the strangest and finest things that ever happened to me in my life. Late on Sunday night a girl-unknown to me and refusing to give her name-came and told me of the murder, the whole of it, the evidence against me, and that I stood in danger of immediate arrest."

I jumped to my feet-I couldn't believe it:

"A girl-what kind of a girl?"

"Young and pretty, with dark brown eyes and brown curly hair. Oh, I can place her for you. She said she had been employed to help get the information against me and my father, and was the only woman acting in that capacity."

"Molly!" I gasped, falling back into my chair. "Molly Babbitts! What in Heaven's name-"

"You're right to invoke Heaven's name, for it was Heaven that sent her.

She wouldn't tell me who she was or why she came, but I could see. What reason could there have been except that she believed me innocent and wanted to help me escape?"

For a moment I couldn't speak. I dropped my head and a silent oath went up from me to hold Molly sacred forever more. I could see it all-she'd found her heart, realized the cruelty of what was to be done, discovered in some way she'd given me wrong information, and done the thing herself. The gallant, n.o.ble little soul! G.o.d bless her! G.o.d bless her!

Carol went on:

"I wonder now what she thought of me. I must have appeared utterly extraordinary to her. She thought she was telling me what I already knew, or at least knew something of. But as I sat there listening to her I was piecing together in my mind what she was saying with what I myself had found out. I was building up a complete story, fitting new and old together, and it held me dumb, motionless, as if I didn't care. It would take too long to tell you how I got at the main facts-the smaller points I didn't think of. It was as if what she said and what I knew jumped toward each other like the flame and the igniting gas, connecting the broken bits into a continuous line of fire. I knew that murder had been committed. I knew that the body was unrecognizable. I knew that had my father been living I would have heard from him. I knew that the voice on the phone was Harland's. Without all the details she gave me it would have been enough. Before she had finished my mind had grasped the truth.

It was Johnston Barker who had been murdered and Harland-trying now to draw me to him-was the murderer.

"Do you guess what a flame of rage burst up in me-what a pa.s.sion to trap and bring to justice the man who could conceive and execute such a devilish thing? I could hardly wait to go. I was too wrought up to think out a reasonable course. Looking back on it today it seems like an act of madness, but I suppose a person in that state is half mad. I never thought of getting anybody to go with me, of applying to the police. I only saw myself finding Harland and accusing him. It's inconceivable-the irrational action of a woman beside herself with grief and fury.

"I called up the number he'd given me and told him I was coming on the first train I could catch. He told me at what hour that morning it would leave New York and when it would reach Quebec. He said he would send his servant, a French woman, to meet me at the depot as he didn't like to risk going himself. Then I left the house and went to the Grand Central Station, where I sat in the women's waiting room for the rest of the night.

"I did not get to Quebec till after midnight. The servant met me, put me in a sleigh that was waiting for us, and together we drove here.

"The house was lit up, every lower window bright. As we walked up the path from the gate I saw a man moving behind the shrubbery and called her attention to him. While she was opening the door with her key I noticed another loitering along the footpath by the gate, obviously watching us. This time I asked her why there should be men about at such an hour and on such a freezing night. She seemed bewildered and frightened, muttering something in French about having noticed them when she went out. In the hallway she directed me to a room on the upper floor, telling me, when I was ready, to go down to the dining-room where supper was waiting.

"I went upstairs and she followed, showing me where I was to go and then walking down the pa.s.sage to another room. As I took off my wraps and hat I could hear her voice, loud and excited, telling someone of the two men we had seen. Another voice answered it-a man's-but pitched too low for me to make out the words.

"When I was ready I went downstairs and into the room. No one was about, there was not a sound. The fire was burning as it is now, the curtains drawn, and the table, set out with a supper, was brightly lit with candles and decorated with flowers. I stood here by the fire waiting, white, I suppose, as the tablecloth, for I was at the highest climax of excitement a human being can reach and keep her senses.

"Suddenly I heard steps on the stairs. I turned and made ready, moistening my lips which were stiff and felt like leather. The steps came down the pa.s.sage-the door opened. There he was!

"That first second, when he entered as the lover and conqueror, he looked splendid. The worn and hara.s.sed air he had the last time I'd seen him was gone. He was at the highest pinnacle of his life, 'the very b.u.t.t and sea mark of his sail,' and it was as if his spirit recognized it and flashed up in a last illuminating glow of fire and force.

"He was prepared for amazement, horror, probably fear from me. The first shock he received was my face, showing none of these, quiet, and, I suppose, fierce with the hatred I felt. He stopped dead in the doorway, the confidence stricken out of him-just staring. Then he stammered:

"'Carol-you-you-'

"He was too astounded to say any more. I finished for him, my voice low and hoa.r.s.e:

"'You think I didn't expect to see you. I did. I knew you were here-I came to find you. I came to tell you that I know how you killed Johnston Barker.'

"I don't think anyone has ever said he lacked courage. He was one of those bold and ruthless beings that came to their fullest flower during the Italian Renaissance-terrible and tremendous too. I've thought of him since as like one of the Borgias or Iago transplanted to our country and modern times. When he saw that I knew he went white, but he stood with the light of the candles bright on his ghastly face, straight and steady as a soldier before the cannon.

"'Johnston Barker,' he said very quietly-'killed him? You bring me interesting news. I didn't know he was dead!'

"As I've told you I had come without plans, with no line of action decided upon. Now the futility, the blind rashness of what I had done was borne in upon me. His stoney calm, his measured voice, showed me I was pitted against an antagonist whose strength was to mine as a lion's to a mouse. The thought maddened me, I was ready to say anything to break him, to conquer and crush him and in my desperation-guided by some flash of intuition-I said the right thing:

"'Oh, don't waste time denying it. It's too late for that now. It's not I alone who knows-they know in New York-everything. How you did it, how you stole away, and where you are now. The net is around you-they've got you. There's no use any more in lies and tricks, for you can't escape them.'

"He had listened without a movement or a sign of agitation. But when I finished he straightened his shoulders and throwing up his head sent a glance of piercing question over the curtained windows. His whole being suggested something arrested and fiercely alert, not fear, but a wild concentration of energy, as if all his forces were aroused to meet a desperate call.

"Then suddenly he made a step forward, leaned across the table and spoke. I can't tell you all he said. It was so horrible and his face-it was like a demon's in its death throes! But it was about his love for me-that he'd done it all for me-that he could give me more than any woman ever had before-lay the world at my feet. And to come with him-now-we could get away-we had time yet. Oh!" she closed her eyes and shuddered at the memory-"I can't go on. He knew it was hopeless, he must have known then what the men outside meant. It was the last defiance-the last mad hope.

"And _then_ I conquered him, not as I'd meant to do, not with any intention. All the horror and loathing I felt came out in what I said.

Terrible words-how I hated him-all that had been locked up in me since I'd known the truth. His face grew so dreadful that I shrank back in this corner, and finally to hide it, hid my own in my hands.

"People do such strange things in life, not at all like what they do in books and plays. When I stopped speaking he said nothing, and dropping my hands I looked at him, not knowing what I'd see. He was standing very quiet, gazing straight in front of him, like a man thinking-deeply thinking, lost in thought.