"I say that she was here and that she left suddenly when I came, so suddenly that she hadn"t even time to take her hat!" said Boller"s charming wife. "Where she is now I don"t know; not in this apartment because I"ve searched it; probably somewhere else in the house, because she would be unlikely to leave without a hat. But she was here, and if you doubt it, _ask those men_!"
Slowly, Dalton turned back to Anthony Fry. One glance he sent down at the automatic and his finger settled over the trigger.
And still the calm held Anthony.
It was one of the most curious things he had ever experienced, that calm, and more curious than the calm itself was the astounding capacity for thought that had come to his tired brain. Except for this last inexplicable accusation, which he discarded, he was thinking lucidly, and swiftly and, by the way, along a single line. Mary was all that mattered just now.
And to some extent, if Fate remained kind, he saw his way to saving Mary, should the girl have sense enough to remain quiet in his room. He smiled, did Anthony, and looked so confidently, so directly at Dalton that the latter scowled in bewilderment.
"I know nothing whatever about your son, Dalton," said he. "I did not even know that you had a son. Are you sure he is not at home?"
"He has not been at home for weeks," Hitchin put in. "That"s what puzzles us; how did you get him to the city?"
"From what point?"
"Hillcombe, in the Adirondacks," Dalton said. "He----"
"Is it possible to get Hillcombe on the long distance?"
The unfathomable self-possession made its own impression on Dalton.
"Very likely," he muttered.
"Then if you will give my man the number or the name of the hotel, or whatever it may be, he will put in the call," said Anthony Fry. "Let us hope that you"ll be able to talk to your son shortly. If he doesn"t answer, wire him," Anthony pursued, impatiently. "That is the very best I can suggest."
Theodore Dalton"s hand pa.s.sed through his hair, pausing to clutch it for a moment; Wilkins, waiting attentively, met his eye and Dalton, having cleared his dry throat, mumbled the name of a camp and turned back to Anthony.
That remarkable figure was quite erect and merely waiting for a chance to speak again. So far as the general theme was concerned, his mind was fairly well settled; it meant certain ruin for him, if Dalton was kind enough to believe; it was likely enough to mean even criminal prosecution, but it bade fair to save Mary. Anthony even smiled composedly as he tacked on new details; thus does suffering refine us!
Apparently, several of them were about to speak at once. Anthony held up his lean, commanding hand for silence.
"One moment, please!" said the amazing Anthony. "There is no cause for any further excitement, any further speculation. The thing has gone too far now; it has pa.s.sed beyond me and--I have failed."
"What?" Robert rasped.
Anthony drew a deep breath.
"Will you all be seated?" he asked. "I--I wish to confess the truth!"
"You mean that you----" Dalton exploded.
"I mean that n.o.body has been injured, to the best of my knowledge, and that your daughter Mary is perfectly safe," Anthony smiled sadly. "Put the gun away, Dalton, and hear me through at least. Later on, if you feel inclined to use it, I don"t know that I shall object greatly. I quite understand what is likely to happen to me when you have heard what I have to tell and--in spite of that the whole affair seems to have tangled itself so terribly that there is nothing to do but tell it!"
He himself was sitting behind the table now, and he certainly claimed their attention. Dalton perched on the edge of a chair; Robert took one of its arms. Beatrice seemed at first unwilling to leave the center of the stage, but presently she, too, was seated--and Johnson Boller shuffled to a chair and went into it quite limply, gazing at Anthony and breathing hard.
Unless Anthony was lying, he meant to tell the truth; and while some of those present might believe the truth, Beatrice Boller was not among the number.
"I don"t know, Dalton," Anthony began evenly, "that I have anything to say in extenuation of what I have done. Evidently I lost my head, even to the point of downright insanity; some of us do that occasionally, you know. Brooding over the business was responsible, I suppose. Your Celestial Oil has been cutting pretty heavily into Imperial Liniment this last year."
"Humph!" said Dalton.
"Cutting in so heavily that whatever efforts I have been able to put forth have been of no avail whatever," Anthony pursued. "Last week--all day last Sat.u.r.day, in fact--I went over the year"s business and it fairly maddened me to see the falling off. I spent Sunday thinking and I am frank to say, Dalton, that by Sunday night I was all but ready to murder you. Toward midnight I conceived what seemed to be a means of forcing you into some sort of mutual contract, by which each of us could do business with the a.s.surance that the other wasn"t coming over to take away what didn"t belong to him."
"_You_ get away with a thing like that?" Dalton demanded.
"It was a wild notion," Anthony sighed. "I knew that talking was useless, I knew that fighting you openly was equally useless, because once I became too conspicuous I knew that you"d sail in and wreck me. At the same time something had to be done and that in mighty short order, or Fry"s Imperial was likely to die a natural death. Therefore, Dalton, I perfected the scheme of kidnaping your daughter and holding her until you"d come to terms."
"Great----"
"Rest easy!" Mr. Fry smiled. "Part of it succeeded, but she hasn"t been injured and I ask you to believe, at least, that I never had any idea of injuring her. What I did mean to do was to threaten you, through a third person I met most unfortunately and who is, not to put too fine a point upon it, one of the slimiest crooked lawyers in the world--what I meant to do was to make you understand that, unless you came to terms, the girl would be killed!
"If the details interest you I"ll confess that I had a note sent to the girl last evening, by a messenger who succeeded in telephoning her and having her meet him just outside your home. The note informed Miss Dalton that Vining here--oh, sit still, Vining, you may settle with me when I"ve finished--that Vining here was engaged, if not actually married, to another girl. It was a very convincing note indeed, and the messenger was instructed to tell Miss Dalton, should the note make its impression, that he would take her to a place where she would be able to observe with her own eyes the faithlessness of one she was on the point of trusting with her whole life!"
"Well, by the holy----" Robert began.
"Every little twist and turn of this story I had perfected beforehand; I could not see the possibility of a slip and there was no slip. It was made plain to Miss Dalton that, if she wished to see Robert under the unpleasant conditions, she would have to attire herself as a man, for she was likely to spend some time at least in the back room of a saloon.
My messenger even took her a wig I had provided for the purpose, and she was informed that, if she wished to take along her own proper clothing, it would be quite possible to return in that."
Utter admiration possessed Johnson Boller; yet Beatrice, as he knew, was watching him narrowly.
"You--you contemptible scoundrel!" Johnson Boller said pleasantly.
Him, too, Anthony ignored.
"She took the bait, Dalton, just as I had planned. The man brought her to me at a point--er--outside this hotel, and she was dressed in her brother"s clothing, as it appears now. It was agreed between us that she should take the name of David Prentiss for the evening, and under that name she was introduced to Hitchin here. After that she was brought to this apartment."
Anthony paused and sighed heavily and impressively, an erring man borne down by his guilt.
"Miss Dalton, even as a boy, did not look very much like a boy," he pursued. "It seemed better to me that she change to her own clothes, and I requested her to do so, on some pretext which, I am frank to say, slips my mind at the moment. She came into this room afterward and, as I had planned, a little luncheon was waiting for us. She drank a cup of coffee and--it had been drugged."
"Where was Johnson Boller all this time?" Beatrice asked.
Although Johnson Boller held his breath, Anthony Fry batted never an eyelash. Dignified, austere exponent of the rock-ribbed truth that he had once been, all his sails were set now and the rudder lashed in place for the sinful course. It would have been a downright effort just then for Anthony to have told the truth about anything whatever.
"Johnson never came until an hour after it was over," he said. "He went to a prize fight, Mrs. Boller, and after that met some out-of-town people in the woolen trade and worked until nearly two this morning winding up a contract."
"D"ye see?" said Johnson Boller, when his breath came back. "D"ye see?
You had me down for everything that was worst in the world, kid, and now you hear the truth."
All unaware was Anthony Fry of the sharp start of Hobart Hitchin. All unaware was he that the crime-student, rousing from his partially scared state, had smiled suddenly. All unaware, in fact, was Anthony, of the terrible slip he had just made.
"That is almost all of the story," he said, with a miserable little smile at Dalton. "The young lady was taken, in an automobile, half-stupefied, to--a certain town in New Jersey, Dalton. She is unharmed and has been unharmed; that at least I am able to guarantee you."
"And she"s there now?" Dalton cried.
"She is there now and----"
"What town?"