The Golden Slipper Part 14

"And Roger? Not the little fellow, but the father?"

"We will not talk of him," said she, her eyes seeking the sea where the sun in its rising was battling with a troop of lowering clouds and slowly gaining the victory.

END OF PROBLEM IV

PROBLEM V. THE DREAMING LADY

"And this is all you mean to tell me?"

"I think you will find it quite enough, Miss Strange."

"Just the address--"

"And this advice: that your call be speedy. Distracted nerves cannot wait."

Violet, across whose wonted piquancy there lay an indefinable shadow, eyed her employer with a doubtful air before turning away toward the door. She had asked him for a case to investigate (something she had never done before), and she had even gone so far as to particularize the sort of case she desired: "It must be an interesting one," she had stipulated, "but different, quite different from the last one. It must not involve death or any kind of horror. If you have a case of subtlety without crime, one to engage my powers without depressing my spirits, I beg you to let me have it. I--I have not felt quite like myself since I came from Ma.s.sachusetts." Whereupon, without further comment, but with a smile she did not understand, he had handed her a small slip of paper on which he had scribbled an address. She should have felt satisfied, but for some reason she did not. She regarded him as capable of plunging her into an affair quite the reverse of what she felt herself in a condition to undertake.

"I should like to know a little more," she pursued, making a move to unfold the slip he had given her.

But he stopped her with a gesture.

"Read it in your limousine," said he. "If you are disappointed then, let me know. But I think you will find yourself quite ready for your task."

"And my father?"

"Would approve if he could be got to approve the business at all. You do not even need to take your brother with you."

"Oh, then, it's with women only I have to deal?"

"Read the address after you are headed up Fifth Avenue."

But when, with her doubts not yet entirely removed, she opened the small slip he had given her, the number inside suggested nothing but the fact that her destination lay somewhere near Eightieth Street. It was therefore with the keenest surprise she beheld her motor stop before the conspicuous house of the great financier whose late death had so affected the money-market. She had not had any acquaintance with this man herself, but she knew his house. Everyone knew that. It was one of the most princely in the whole city. C. Dudley Brooks had known how to spend his millions. Indeed, he had known how to do this so well that it was of him her father, also a financier of some note, had once said he was the only successful American he envied.

She was expected; that she saw the instant the door was opened. This made her entrance easy--an entrance further brightened by the delightful glimpse of a child's cherubic face looking at her from a distant doorway. It was an instantaneous vision, gone as soon as seen; but its effect was to rob the pillared s.p.a.ces of the wonderful hallway of some of their chill, and to modify in some slight degree the formality of a service which demanded three men to usher her into a small reception-room not twenty feet from the door of entrance.

Left in this secluded spot, she had time to ask herself what member of the household she would be called upon to meet, and was surprised to find that she did not even know of whom the household consisted. She was sure of the fact that Mr. Brooks had been a widower for many years before his death, but beyond that she knew nothing of his domestic life.

His son--but was there a son? She had never heard any mention made of a younger Mr. Brooks, yet there was certainly some one of his connection who enjoyed the rights of an heir. Him she must be prepared to meet with a due composure, whatever astonishment he might show at the sight of a slip of a girl instead of the experienced detective he had every right to expect.

But when the door opened to admit the person she was awaiting, the surprise was hers. It was a woman who stood before her, a woman and an oddity. Yet, in just what her oddity lay, Violet found it difficult to decide. Was it in the smoothness of her white locks drawn carefully down over her ears, or in the contrast afforded by her eager eyes and her weak and tremulous mouth? She was dressed in the heaviest of mourning and very expensively, but there was that in her bearing and expression which made it impossible to believe that she took any interest in her garments or even knew in which of her dresses she had been attired.

"I am the person you have come here to see," she said. "Your name is not unfamiliar to me, but you may not know mine. It is Quintard; Mrs.

Quintard. I am in difficulty. I need a.s.sistance--secret a.s.sistance.

I did not know where to go for it except to a detective agency; so I telephoned to the first one I saw advertised; and--and I was told to expect Miss Strange. But I didn't think it would be you though I suppose it's all right. You have come here for this purpose, haven't you, though it does seem a little queer?"

"Certainly, Mrs. Quintard; and if you will tell me--"

"My dear, it's just this--yes, I will sit down. Last week my brother died. You have heard of him no doubt, C. Dudley Brooks?"

"Oh, yes; my father knew him--we all knew him by reputation. Do not hurry, Mrs. Quintard. I have sent my car away. You can take all the time you wish."

"No, no, I cannot. I'm in desperate haste. He--but let me go on with my story. My brother was a widower, with no children to inherit. That everybody knows. But his wife left behind her a son by a former husband, and this son of hers my brother had in a measure adopted, and even made his sole heir in a will he drew up during the lifetime of his wife.

But when he found, as he very soon did, that this young man was not developing in a way to meet such great responsibilities, he made a new will--though unhappily without the knowledge of the family, or even of his most intimate friends--in which he gave the bulk of his great estate to his nephew Clement, who has bettered the promise of his youth and who besides has children of great beauty whom my brother had learned to love. And this will--this h.o.a.rded sc.r.a.p of paper which means so much to us all, is lost! lost! and I--" here her voice which had risen almost to a scream, sank to a horrified whisper, "am the one who lost it."

"But there's a copy of it somewhere--there is always a copy--"

"Oh, but you haven't heard all. My nephew is an invalid; has been an invalid for years--that's why so little is known about him. He's dying of consumption. The doctors hold out no hope for him, and now, with the fear preying upon him of leaving his wife and children penniless, he is wearing away so fast that any hour may see his end. And I have to meet his eyes--such pitiful eyes--and the look in them is killing me. Yet, I was not to blame. I could not help--Oh, Miss Strange," she suddenly broke in with the inconsequence of extreme feeling, "the will is in the house! I never carried it off the floor where I sleep. Find it; find it, I pray, or--"

The moment had come for Violet's soft touch, for Violet's encouraging word.

"I will try," she answered her.

Mrs. Quintard grew calmer.

"But, first," the young girl continued, "I must know more about the conditions. Where is this nephew of yours--the man who is ill?"

"In this house, where he has been for the last eight months."

"Was the child his of whom I caught a glimpse in the hall as I came in?"

"Yes, and--"

"I will fight for that child!" Violet cried out impulsively. "I am sure his father's cause is good. Where is the other claimant--the one you designate as Carlos?"

"Oh, there's where the trouble is! Carlos is on the Mauretania, and she is due here in a couple of days. He comes from the East where he has been touring with his wife. Miss Strange, the lost will must be found before then, or the other will be opened and read and Carlos made master of this house, which would mean our quick departure and Clement's certain death."

"Move a sick man?--a relative as low as you say he is? Oh no, Mrs.

Quintard; no one would do that, were the house a cabin and its owners paupers."

"You do not know Carlos; you do not know his wife. We should not be given a week in which to pack. They have no children and they envy Clement who has. Our only hope lies in discovering the paper which gives us the right to remain here in face of all opposition. That or penury.

Now you know my trouble."

"And it is trouble; one from which I shall make every effort to relieve you. But first let me ask if you are not worrying unnecessarily about this missing doc.u.ment? If it was drawn up by Mr. Brooks's lawyer--"

"But it was not," that lady impetuously interrupted. "His lawyer is Carlos's near relative, and has never been told of the change in my brother's intentions. Clement (I am speaking now of my brother and not of my nephew) was a great money-getter, but when it came to standing up for his rights in domestic matters, he was more timid than a child. He was subject to his wife while she lived, and when she was gone, to her relatives, who are all of a dominating character. When he finally made up his mind to do us justice and eliminate Carlos, he went out of town--I wish I could remember where--and had this will drawn up by a stranger, whose name I cannot recall."

Her shaking tones, her nervous manner betrayed a weakness equalling, if not surpa.s.sing, that of the brother who dared in secret what he had not strength to acknowledge openly, and it was with some hesitation Violet prepared to ask those definite questions which would elucidate the cause and manner of a loss seemingly so important. She dreaded to hear some commonplace tale of inexcusable carelessness. Something subtler than this--the presence of some unsuspected agency opposed to young Clement's interest; some partisan of Carlos; some secret undermining force in a house full of servants and dependants, seemed necessary for the development of so ordinary a situation into a drama justifying the exercise of her special powers.

"I think I understand now your exact position in the house, as well as the value of the paper which you say you have lost. The next thing for me to hear is how you came to have charge of this paper, and under what circ.u.mstances you were led to mislay it. Do you not feel quite ready to tell me?"

"Is--is that necessary?" Mrs. Quintard faltered.

"Very," replied Violet, watching her curiously.

"I didn't expect--that is, I hoped you would be able to point out, by some power we cannot of course explain, just the spot where the paper lies, without having to tell all that. Some people can, you know."