CHAPTER VII
STILL MERE MYSTERY
Meiklejohn pushed his chair back so quickly that it caught the fender and brought down some fire-irons with a crash.
"More nerves!" croaked his grim-visaged relative, but the revolver disappeared.
"Tell me," said the tortured Meiklejohn; "why have you returned to New York? Above all, why did you straightway commit a crime that cannot fail to stir the whole country?"
"That"s better. You are showing some sort of brotherly interest. I came back because I was sick of mining camps and boundless sierras. I had a hankering after the old life--the theaters, dinners, race-meetings, wine and women. As to "the crime," I thought that fool was you. He called for the cops."
"For the police! Why?"
"Because my line of talk was a trifle too rough, I suppose."
"Did he know you were there to meet me?"
"Can"t say. The whole thing was over like a flash. I am quick on the trigger."
"But if you had killed me what other goose would lay golden eggs?"
"You forget that the goose was unwilling to lay any more eggs. I only meant scaring you. To haul you neck and crop into the river was a good scheme. You see, we haven"t met for some years."
"Then why--why murder Ronald Tower?"
"There you go again. Murder! How you chew on the word. I never touched the man, only to haul him into the boat and go through his pockets. I guess he had a weak heart, due to over-eating, and the cold water upset him."
"But you left him in the river?"
"Wrong every time. I chucked him into a barge and covered him tenderly with a tarpaulin."
Meiklejohn sprang upright. "Good G.o.d," he cried, "he may be alive!"
"Sit down, William, sit down," was the cool response. "If he"s alive, he"ll turn up. In any case, he"ll be found sooner or later. Shout the glad news now and you go straight to the Tombs."
This was obviously so true that the Senator collapsed into his chair again, and in so doing disturbed the fire-irons a second time.
The incident amused the unbidden guest. "I see you won"t be happy till I leave you," he laughed, "so let"s go on with the knitting. That girl--she is becoming a woman--what is to be done with her?"
"Rachel takes every care--"
"Rachel is excellent in her way. But she is growing old. She may die.
The girl is the living image of her mother. It"s a queer world, and a small one at times. For instance, who would have expected your double to walk onto the terrace at the landing-stage at nine o"clock precisely last night? Well, some one may recognize the likeness. Inquiries might be inst.i.tuted. That would be very awkward for you."
"Far more awkward for you."
"Not a bit of it. I"ve lived with my neck in the loop for eighteen years. I"m getting used to it. But you, William, with your Senatorship and high record in Wall Street--really the downfall would be terrible!"
"What can we do with her? Murder her, as you--"
"The devil take you and your parrotlike repet.i.tion of one word!" roared brother Ralph, bringing his clenched fist down on the table with a bang.
"I never laid violent hands on a woman yet, whatever I may have done to men. Who has reaped the reward of my misdeeds, I"d like to know--I, an outcast and a wanderer, or you, living here like Lord Tomnoddy? None of your preaching to me, you smug Pharisee! We"re six of one and half a dozen of the other."
When this self-proclaimed adventurer was really aroused he dropped the rough argot of the plains. His diction showed even some measure of culture.
Meiklejohn walked unsteadily to the door. He opened it. There was no one in the pa.s.sage without.
"I"m sorry," he said in a strangely subdued voice. "What do you want?
What do you suggest?"
"This," came the instant reply. "It was a piece of folly on Rachel"s part to educate the girl the way she did. You stopped the process too late. In a year or two Miss Winifred will begin to think and ask questions, if she hasn"t done so already. She must leave the East--better quit America altogether."
"Very well. When this affair of Tower"s blows over I"ll arrange it."
The other man seemed to be somewhat mollified. He lighted a cigarette.
"That rope play was sure a mad trick," he conceded sullenly, "but I thought you were putting the cops on my trail."
A bell rang and the Senator started. Many callers, mostly reporters, had been turned away by Phillips already that day, but brother Ralph"s untimely visit had made the position peculiarly dangerous. Moreover, the valet"s protests had proved unavailing this time. The two heard his approaching footsteps.
Meiklejohn"s care-worn face turned almost green with fright, and even his hardier companion yielded to a sense of peril. He leaped up, moving catlike on his toes.
"Where does that door lead to?" he hissed, pointing.
"A bedroom. But I"ve given orders--"
"You dough-faced dub, don"t you see you create suspicion by refusing to meet people? And, listen! If this is a cop, bluff hard! I"ll shoot up the whole Bureau before they get me!"
He vanished, moving with a silence and celerity that were almost uncanny in so huge a man. Phillips knocked and thrust his head in. He looked scared yet profoundly relieved.
"Mr. Tower to see you, sir," he said breathlessly.
"What?" shrieked the Senator in a shrill falsetto.
"Yes, sir. It"s Mr. Tower himself, sir."
"H"lo, Bill!" came a familiar voice. "Here I am! No spook yet, thank goodness!"
Meiklejohn literally staggered to the door and nearly fell into Ronald Tower"s arms. Of the two men, the Senator seemed nearer death at that moment. He blubbered something incoherent, and had to be a.s.sisted to a chair. Even Tower was astonished at the evident depth of his friend"s emotion.
"Cheer up, old sport!" he cried affectionately. "I had no notion you felt so badly about my untimely end, as the newspapers call it. I tried to get you on the phone, but you were closed down, the exchange said, so Helen packed me off here when she was able to sit up and take nourishment. Gad! Even my wife seems to have missed me!"
Many minutes elapsed before Senator Meiklejohn"s benumbed brain could a.s.similate the facts of a truly extraordinary story. Tower, after being whisked so unceremoniously into the Hudson, remembered nothing further until he opened his eyes in numb semi-consciousness in the cubbyhole of a tug plodding through the long Atlantic rollers off the New Jersey coast.
When able to talk he learned that the captain of the tug _Cygnet_, having received orders to tow three loaded barges from a Weehawken pier to Barnegat City, picked up his "job" at nine-thirty the previous night, and dropped down the river with the tide. In the early morning he was amazed by the sight of a man crawling from under the heavy tarpaulin that sheeted one of the barges--a man so dazed and weak that he nearly fell into the sea.