Chapter 2

“Oh!” she pleaded. “Give it
to me. You will give it to me?”

A sudden passion flamed in Caruth’s veins--a passion that gripped and
shook him. “By God!” he cried hoarsely. “You--you----”

The girl started back and dropped her hand. Then her lips curled. Men
were all alike, after all. American men were no better than their
European brothers. She had seen so many; so very many. Caruth would
yield, and she would despise him for it. Yet she went on. “Give it to
me,” she breathed.

“No!” Caruth’s voice rang out. “No! No! Oh, you women! You beautiful
women! How easily you beguile men! How dare you do it? How dare you use
beauty such as yours for such a purpose? How dare you use such tools to
gain your selfish ends?”

“How dare I?” The girl’s form straightened till to Caruth’s gaze
she seemed to tower above him. “How dare I?” Her voice was low and
thrilling, but it did not quiver. “How dare I? I dare because my
country calls me to do it. All that I am and have belongs to it. My
future, my liberty, my life, are all at its service. I am entitled to
that letter--I swear it. If you ask it, I will tell you everything, and
in so doing put my life in your hands. Shall I do it?”

Caruth drew his hand across his eyes. “No!” he said hoarsely. “I
believe you. Take the letter.”

Eagerly the woman reached out her hand, but before her fingers
could close upon the envelope, the portières that hung between the
apartment and an inner room clashed gently on their rings and Caruth’s
valet pushed his way through them. “I beg pardon, sir!” he murmured
deferentially.

Annoyed, Caruth faced him, the hand holding the letter dropping to his
side. “Well, Wilkins?” he questioned coldly.

“I beg pardon, sir,” repeated the man. “But I think that letter belongs
to me, sir. Will you kindly look inside and see if it doesn’t begin ‘My
dear Jim’ and end ‘Yours, Bill,’ sir? If it does, it is certainly mine,
sir. I think it’s from my brother Bill, sir.”

CHAPTER THREE

Slowly Caruth regained his balance. The valet’s deferential plea
came like a tonic to his overstrung nerves. Nothing was more natural
than that Wilkins should have had a letter addressed in his care;
he wondered that the possibility of this had not occurred to him at
once. And with the advent of the valet, the whole situation had become
ridiculous; he felt as if he had been playing a part in some melodrama
and had suddenly stepped back into the realm of common sense. With a
laugh on his lips, he turned to Miss Fitzhugh.

His lips straightened and his smile froze. Never had he seen such
disappointment on the face of a woman. Her eyes glared roundly and her
breath whistled through her parted lips. Blindly she caught at the
table, like one about to collapse. Her trembling fingers touched a
wine-glass, and mechanically she lifted it to her lips.

As she drank, the color came back to her cheeks and her eyes
brightened. Caruth, watching, noticed that she was listening to some
one. An instant later he realized that it was Wilkins, and, with an
effort, he wrenched his eyes away from hers and turned them on the
valet.

The man’s attitude was deferential in the extreme. His eyes were
discreetly dropped, and he seemed unaware of the confusion his
appearance had caused. “I had a brother that was a sea-faring man,
sir,” he was saying. “Sailed out of Lunnon in the steamship _Orkney_
for St. Petersburg, hard on two years ago, sir. She was never heard
from again. Lost at sea somewheres, sir. The letter may be from him,
sir. I told him to write me in your care, sir.”

Miss Fitzhugh did not speak, and Caruth hesitated, but only for a
moment. Slowly he opened the letter and glanced at the top and bottom
of the scrawl; mechanically he refolded it and slipped it back into its
envelope. “You’ve hit it, Wilkins,” he declared. “The letter does begin
‘Dear Jim’ and does end ‘Your brother, Bill.’ Your claim seems to be
clear.” He handed the letter to the man.

As the latter took it, the woman came out of her trance. “Wilkins!” she
called sharply.

“Yes, madam.” The valet turned toward her, subservient as ever.

Without taking her eyes from him, Miss Fitzhugh sank into her chair.
“So, Wilkins,” she said slowly, “you have been listening?”

“Yes, madam.” There was no defiance nor disrespect in the valet’s
tones, nor was there any apology. He simply admitted the undeniable
fact, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“It is a vice of servants the world over. When one subordinates himself
to the will of another, he seems to lose many of the manly virtues.
If you have been listening, Wilkins, you know that I put a high value
on that letter. It seems that it is yours. Well, I will buy it from
you--unread. What is your price?”

Slowly the man shook his head. “I would rather not sell it, madam,” he
answered.

“Nonsense! Of course you will sell it.” The woman spoke imperiously,
but the valet did not change his submissive yet dogged bearing. “I have
not much money with me, but I will give you five hundred dollars cash
for it.”

Again Wilkins shook his head. “I can’t consider it, madam,” he repeated.

Miss Fitzhugh opened the bag that swung from her belt and threw a roll
of bills on the table. “Count that for me, please, Mr. Caruth,” she
ordered. “I am not quick at American money.”

Caruth obeyed in silence. Though Wilkins was clearly within his rights,
he found himself regarding the man with rising anger, and would
have intervened if it had seemed possible for him to do so. But the
situation for the time being, at least, was dearly beyond his control.
“Eleven hundred and fifty-one dollars,” he announced.

“It is all I have. Take it and give me the letter.” Miss Fitzhugh was
again addressing the valet.

For the third time Wilkins shook his head. “No!” he repeated doggedly.

Undisturbed, the woman turned to Caruth. “Lend me a thousand dollars,”
she requested.

Caruth started. Then, with a smile, he took out his pocket-book and
added its contents to the pile. “There’s only about seven hundred here,
Wilkins,” he remarked, half humorously, “but I’ll give you my check for
the balance--if you’ll accept it.”

The letter rustled in Wilkins’s fingers as he twisted and turned it.
Obviously he was tempted. Yet, after a quick questioning glance at the
woman’s face, he again shook his head. “No, madam,” he replied coolly.
“Bill took a good deal of trouble to get this to me, and I fancy it’s
valuable. Any way, I think I’ll chance it, madam.”

“Valuable!” The woman stared at the valet in seeming surprise.
“Nonsense!” she scoffed. “What could your Bill tell you that could be
worth eighteen hundred dollars. If you suppose that the information I
hope it contains will be worth anything to you in a money way, you are
mistaken. It would cost you your life to try to use it. Be wise: take
the money and give me the letter. The value of the letter to us lies
chiefly in preventing other people from getting it.”

“Very well, madam. I’ll destroy it, then, madam.” He stepped to the
fire and made a motion to throw it upon the flames.

Like a cat, the woman sprang forward and caught his arm, her silken
skirts hissing as she moved. “No, no!” she cried.

A triumphant smile curled the valet’s lips. “Very well, madam,” he
acceded meekly. “As you wish, madam.”

The woman fell back a step, and stood staring at the valet. For the
first time, she seemed to try to take his measure as a man, and to
bend her faculties to reading the lines of his features. “Humph!” she
murmured, at last, in a singular tone. “I am beginning to see. How long
have you been with Mr. Caruth, Wilkins?”

“Two years, madam.”

“You brought recommendations, of course! Mr. Caruth, I should advise
you to look up the writers of those recommendations at once. You may
learn something that will surprise you. Now, Wilkins, listen to me.” A
subtle change came into Miss Fitzhugh’s voice; she might almost have
been addressing an equal. “You have played your part well and have
served your master well. But you had better not push matters too far.
It is dangerous.”

A glint of fear crept into the valet’s eyes, and his look wandered up
and down the girl’s person, as if expecting to see a weapon; almost he
seemed to fear an attack of some kind. “Dangerous in what way, madam?”
he asked, still respectfully.

“Dangerous by violence. Do you think those who sent me here--four
thousand miles--to get that letter, will let you escape with it? Once
you have read it, there will be no more safety for you on the face
of the earth. Death will dog your footsteps and sit by your side.
Sleeping and waking, he will be upon you. You cannot beg for mercy, for
there will be no one from whom to beg. When I go out of that door, I
disappear, and even if you could find me, it would not save you, for I
am only an agent, powerless to change the will of my superiors. I give
you my word that in asking for that letter I am trying to save your
life, as well as to gain my own ends. I give you my word that I know of
no way in which you can evade your fate, once you have read it. For the
last time, I beg you, take the money and give me the letter.”

There was silence in the room as the valet turned the letter over and
over, staring at it, hesitating. His fingers trembled and his eyes grew
wider.

With a shock, Caruth realized that murder had been threatened in his
very presence--and that he was not horrified, as he knew he ought to
have been. Rather, he sympathized with the woman, who towered above the
man in angry beauty.

At last the valet broke the silence. “My God!” he whispered. “My God!”
Slowly and unsteadily, he made his way to the table and laid the letter
upon it. Slowly, he picked up the bills one by one. Then he raised his
heavy eyes and for an instant looked into the face of the woman. The
next moment he was at the door, hurrying away with the swift, silent
footsteps of the well-trained servant. The portières fell together
behind him.

With a long sigh of relief, the girl picked up the letter. The strain
of the past moments showed itself in her face.

“I will return your money as soon as I can see my friends,” she
declared weariedly. “Meanwhile, perhaps you will retain this.” She
stripped a ring from her fingers. “It is worth more than the money,”
she added.

Caruth drew back, deeply hurt. “Thank you,” he returned angrily, “but
I am not a pawnbroker--even if I am accessory to a threat to commit
murder. Return the money when you like.”

He spoke bitterly, for he was furious that he should have allowed his
man to be forced into the surrender of his rights. Man-like, he felt
the necessity of blaming his own derelictions on some one else.

Miss Fitzhugh seemed to understand, for she stepped forward and laid
her hand on his arm. “Believe me, Mr. Caruth,” she declared earnestly,
“believe me, you have done right. Whatever value this letter possessed
belongs to us of right. The man who wrote it betrayed a secret that was
not his; and, whether his or no, your valet could not have profited by
it. You have done a good deed, and you have been as kind and true and
staunch to me as my own brother could have been. My mother was right
when she told me a woman could always appeal safely to an American
gentleman. Now, good-night and good-by.”

Alarm drove away Caruth’s misgivings. “You--you will let me see you
again,” he begged.

Slowly the woman shook her head. “I fear not,” she answered. “I shall
sail for home on the next steamer--this very day if I can find one
leaving. This is good-by.”

“But--but--where are you going? It is not easy for a woman to find
accommodations at this time of the night. See, it is after twelve
o’clock. Won’t you stay here? I can easily go to a hotel.”

Again the woman shook her head. “I have friends waiting for me,” she
averred. “Good-night.”

The blackness of despair settled on Caruth. “But--but--I can’t let you
go like this. I must see you again. Tell me where your home is. Let me
hope to see you there some day. I’ve known you only an hour or two, but
I can’t--I can’t let you go out of my life this way, without a word or
a sign. I must see--good God! What’s the matter?”

On the woman’s face a look of frozen horror had dawned. Her eyes
dropped from his to the letter she had unconsciously withdrawn from its
envelope; and following them, Caruth saw in her hand a sheet of paper,
stiff and white, very different from the soft, sea-stained sheet he had
handled a few moments before. It scarcely needed her terrified words to
give the explanation.

“He has substituted another letter!” she cried. “He was acting all the
time! And I did not guess! I did not guess! He has gone with the hope
of Russia in his hands!”

CHAPTER FOUR

Recklessly Caruth plunged down the half-lighted steps. The elevator
had stopped running, and, in any event, he had no time to wait for
elevators. Down he sped, past tight-shut doors, whose occupants slept
calmly despite his noisy rush; over marble steps, through tessellated
halls, round slippery corners. Twice he nearly fell, but he saved
himself and went on, bursting at last like a meteor on the scandalized
watchman, whom the clatter of his coming had roused from a blameless
nap.

“Now, now, now!” clamored that individual. “What in hell’s bells you
think you’re doing, gallopin’ like this? Why, it’s Mr. Caruth!”

“Yes, it’s I.” The young man’s breath came in gasps. One does not race
down eight flights of steps without showing the effects. “Yes, it’s I!
Has my man, Wilkins, gone out in the last five minutes?”

“Wilkins? Naw! Say, Mr. Caruth, you’d better go to bed and sleep it
off, or it’ll be you for the psychopathic ward the first thing you
know.”

“Bosh! Wilkins has run away from my rooms with a valuable letter and
eighteen hundred dollars in money. Are you sure he hasn’t passed you?”

“Eighteen hundred! Gee! ’Course I’m sure. Ain’t I been here right
along?”

Caruth drew a long breath and glanced up the stairway down which he
had just raced. So sure had he been that Wilkins had fled that he had
not stopped to search in his own apartments. A suspicion that he had
made himself ridiculous began to penetrate to his brain, and he glanced
shamefacedly at the watchman.

That individual was regarding him suspiciously. He caught the look,
interpreted it correctly, and smiled encouragingly. “It’s all right,
Mr. Caruth,” he extenuated. “It’s all to the regular for a gent to have
the nightmare when he goes to sleep in his chair. Just you go back to
your rooms and take a dose of bromide and say your lay-me-downs, and
neither of us’ll remember anything about this to-morrow. I’d start the
elevator for you if I could, but I can’t, so it’s you for the glue-foot
climb.”

Caruth scarcely heard the man. His first spasm of distrust in his own
action had quickly passed, and by the time the other had finished he
had gone back to his first idea.

“Nonsense, Jackson!” he burst out impatiently. “I haven’t been asleep.
Wilkins has fled within five minutes. If he hasn’t passed you, he must
have gone some other way. How else could he go? Quick, man! He must be
caught.”

But the watchman refused to be hurried. “There ain’t no way out but
this,” he declared, “unless he done a high dive from the fire-escape.”

Caruth started. He had forgotten the dangerous combination of open
platforms and loose-hung ladders plastered across the hall windows on
each floor. If Wilkins had taken that means of escape, as was entirely
probable, he must be well out of reach, and no way to find him would
remain except the slow appeal to the police. He would call up the
headquarters and----

Suddenly he recalled his visitor. Would she care to have the affair
made public? Certainly he could not act without consulting her.

The watchman’s voice broke on him. That individual had switched on the
lights in the hall, and had gone back to where a closed door gave on
an alley. “We’ll take a look at that Jacob’s ladder just to satisfy
you, Mr. Caruth,” he called. “See here!” He threw open the door and let
Caruth step out into the night.

At first the alley seemed dark, but soon objects began to stand out in
the faint light. First the skyline showed, clear against the towering
sides of the chasm, then the iron of the fire-escape disentangled
itself from the darkness and began to show in rectangular tracery.

Before Caruth could distinguish more, the watchman uttered an
exclamation. “By George!” he cried. “Somebody _has_ been on that
escape. It’s been let down.”

Caruth looked where the other pointed. Plainly discernible now to his
distended pupils, the lowest stretch of the iron ladder trailed across
his field of vision. Some one had cut loose the fastenings that held
it high in the air, out of reach of casual sneak thieves, and had
lowered it to the ground.

Wilkins’s selection of a route was obvious. But it was also obvious
that he was gone.

Caruth turned disconsolately away. He was beginning to wonder what had
become of Miss Fitzhugh. When he had started down the stairs, she had
been close behind him, and he had expected her to follow, but though
more than time enough for her to reach the bottom had elapsed, she had
not appeared. His first thought was that she had remained above out of
some belated care for her reputation. Then, quickly following, came the
possibility of a more sinister explanation.

The incidents of the night to his mind admitted but one explanation.
Despite her American name (which might well have been assumed) the girl
was a Russian, and he who says Russia nowadays connotes revolution,
plots, arrests, and all the rest of the melodrama. The girl might be a
nihilist or she might be a police spy, but he was sure that she must be
one or the other. And Wilkins was her enemy. She had recognized him as
such--not at first, but toward the end, when he had tricked her by his
feint of throwing the letter in the fire. Caruth remembered her every
word. And he had left her alone! How did he know that Wilkins had gone?
How did he know that he had not concealed himself and waited----

Slow and long-drawn-out when written down, the sequence of events with
all its possibilities flashed like lightning through his mind. His hair
rose upon his head, and the sweat stood out upon his forehead. His
heart thumped furiously! Scarcely could he comprehend the words of the
watchman.

Yet that individual was cursing roundly. “I’d like to know who in
h----’s setting leaky pots out on that escape,” he finished. “Dropping
stuff on a man’s clothes and spoilin’----”

The voice died away in an inarticulate murmur, and Caruth saw the man’s
face blanch as he held out his hand. “It’s blood,” he hissed. “Blood!
Blood! Somebody’s bleedin’ like a stuck pig up there. Somebody’s been
murdered.” He ran down the hall and pressed the button of a police
call. Then he came hurrying back.

“Here; you!” he shouted, his respectful manner falling from him like
a garment. “Chase up them steps to the third floor and meet me at the
window. On your way, now, Willie!”

Caruth came out of his trance and sped up the main stairway as the
watchman ran up the fire-escape. One flight--two flights--three
flights! Along the hall he rushed and threw open the window, just as
the watchman reached it from below.

The electric lights threw a white glare upon the grating and upon a
human form huddled across it in a strange, unnatural shape. The light
fell upon the livid face and staring eyes and upon the dark spot that
marred the whiteness of the open shirt bosom. Caruth drew his breath
sobbingly. For the body was not that which he had feared to see.

The watchman bent and peered into the white face. “It’s Wilkins, all
right,” he commented. “He didn’t get far with that eighteen hundred
of yours. Somebody must have been laying for him. They’ve turned his
pockets inside out, and I guess they got it, all right.” Deftly he ran
his hand over the body.

“Nothin’ doing,” he reported. “They’ve skinned him clean. Here, Mr.
Caruth! The cops’ll be here in a minute. I wish you’d chase down and
put ’em wise.”

Caruth obeyed as he would have obeyed any behest of the stronger will.
The situation had dazed him. An immense relief mingled with an immense
terror; relief that his worst fears had not been realized; terror lest
something even worse had happened in its stead. Wilkins was dead;
presumably the woman still lived. But whose hand had struck the blow?

A swish of silk sounded in his ears, and he looked up. She was there
before him, peering downward with curious, frightened eyes.

“Mr. Caruth,” she called, in hushed tones. “Mr. Caruth! Has anything
happened?”

“Yes!” Relief was in his voice. Her bearing was not that of a murderess.

“What is it?”

“I have no time to tell you. You must go. The police are coming, and
you must not be seen. Hurry!”

The unsolved mystery of the girl’s visit had grown blacker than ever,
but Caruth did not hesitate. He knew that it was his duty to detain her
till the fire-escape had given up its secret, but not for a moment did
he pause. He refused to think of what it all meant. He only knew that
he was on her side, heart and soul, and would do her bidding till he
died.

“Hurry,” he repeated. “There isn’t a moment to lose.”

But the girl held back. “The letter,” she pleaded. “I cannot go without
it.”

“You must. I didn’t want to tell you, but--Wilkins has been murdered,
and the police are coming. The letter is out of reach, for the moment
anyhow. You must go at once. The police will be here in a moment.” He
hurried her to the door and peered out. Bare and silent in the first
break of dawn, the street stretched interminably away. No human being
seemed to stir. But as he listened a far-away rumble grew on his ears.

“The patrol wagon!” he gasped. “This way! Quick! God help you!”

In an instant she was gone, hurrying swiftly down the street, with
steps that did not falter. Caruth watched till he saw a man’s figure
step from the shadows to join her, and the two vanish around a corner.
Then, sick at heart, as only the young can be when they find their
heart’s idol clay, he turned back to greet the police. They were at his
elbow--six of them--leaping from a wagon and hurrying forward. “What’s
doing?” demanded the foremost.

“Murder! On the third-floor fire-escape. The watchman is there.”

The officer spun round. “On your way, boys!” he ordered. “Front and
back!” He turned to Caruth. “Who did it?” he demanded.

If the young man hesitated, it was only for an instant. “I don’t know,”
he answered. “It’s my valet. He robbed me and fled. I discovered it a
moment later, and started after him. He had disappeared. The watchman
found his body. His pockets were empty. Some confederate must have been
waiting for him.”

The two men were alone in the hall. The other officers had all
vanished, some through the rear entrance; some up the stairs. The crowd
that was to come had not yet gathered, though the sound of running
footsteps outside showed that its first units were coming, attracted by
the clatter of the patrol.

The officer, used to scenes of excitement, and knowing the importance
of ideas expressed before those in touch with tragedy had time
consciously or unconsciously to mould their opinions, waited to ask one
more question before he too hurried to the rear.

“Suspect anybody?” he demanded. “Seen anybody suspicious?”

Caruth looked him straight in the face. “No,” he lied. “No, I’ve seen
nobody. As I said, the man robbed me, and I suppose some confederate
killed him for his booty.”

When the officer had gone, Caruth turned and with leaden feet climbed
the weary stairs that led to his room. He did not stop at the third
floor, nor go again to inspect the lump of pallid flesh that alone
remained of his servant. In fact, for the time he had altogether
forgotten Wilkins. The murder had driven the murdered man from his mind.

He had answered the officer on the spur of the moment, thinking
only to shield the girl, and not considering the possible--yes, the
inevitable--consequences. The words once said, he would have given
worlds to recall them, and yet he knew that he would only have
reiterated them, if given the chance.

He would have no such chance, however. The true tale of the night’s
events would have been preposterous enough at best. He could fancy how
a hard-headed American jury would have listened to it, and how even a
fourth-rate lawyer would have proved its impossibility. But, at all
events, in telling it, he would have been telling the truth, and would
have had the consciousness of rectitude to support him.

But his hasty answer had made the truth impossible, and he must go on
piling lie upon lie in sickening iteration. Liars need good memories;
would his prove equal to the task? Would no one catch him tripping?
His answer had made him a criminal in the eyes of the law--an accessory
after the fact. The thought sickened him; and yet mingled with his
dismay was a fierce joy that he was doing it for her sake--for the sake
of the woman who had walked into his life a few moments before; a woman
of whose status and probably of whose real name he was ignorant.

Why had he done it, he asked himself with dazed wonder. He owed her
nothing. She had forced herself on him, had cajoled him, and had
finally fled, leaving him to bear the brunt of her crime--hers or her
accomplices. He had done all she asked, had aided her meekly, and at
the end had placed himself in shameful jeopardy without even being
asked to do so. Harshly he laughed as he thought of it.

Then he threw out his hands. “There’s no use in thinking,” he muttered.
“I’m a fool--but it’s stronger than I am. I must go on to the end--and
lie and lie and lie.”

CHAPTER FIVE

After all, matters went off very quietly. The murder of James Wilkins
caused a surprisingly small sensation. Circumstances were against it. A
prominent statesman had just denounced another prominent statesman for
having accepted the tainted money of a wicked trust, and the accused
statesman was calling heaven and earth as witness to his innocence;
the champion heavyweight pugilist of the country had just given way
to a new champion; and the Black Hand had blown up a restaurant whose
proprietor had defied it. The papers had little space left for a plain
case of robbery and murder, such as that of Wilkins seemed to be.

Caruth had told a straight story, which had been accepted at its face
value. According to him, he had come home late and had sat down to
smoke before going to bed. He had laid some money--about eighteen
hundred dollars in bills--on the table beside him. Wilkins had been
moving about and had seen the money and after a moment had left
the room. When Caruth looked for the money an instant later it had
disappeared. He had hurried downstairs in hope of catching the man,
and with the aid of the night watchman had found his body. On looking
up the references Wilkins had brought him, he had found that they were
forged. He suspected, therefore, that the man had entered his service
with sinister intent, and had been murdered by a confederate who had
come to join him in the robbery.

The recital of this combination of fact and fancy gave Caruth no
compunctions so far as Wilkins was concerned; the man’s references
really were forged, and he had really stolen the money, by whatever
particular name the law might label his act.