XXXV.
A RUSE.
It was a new thing for me to enter into any scheme blindfold. But thepast few weeks had taught me many lessons and among them to trust alittle in the judgment of others.
Accordingly I was on hand with my patient at the hour designated, and,as I supported her trembling steps down the stairs, I endeavored not tobetray the intense interest agitating me, or to awaken by my curiosityany further dread in her mind than that involved by her departure fromthis home of bounty and good feeling, and her entrance upon an unknownand possibly much to be apprehended future.
Mr. Gryce was awaiting us in the lower hall, and as he caught sight ofher slender figure and anxious face his whole attitude became at once soprotecting and so sympathetic, I did not wonder at her failure toassociate him with the police.
As she stepped down to his side he gave her a genial nod.
"I am glad to see you so far on the road to recovery," he remarked. "Itshows me that my prophecy is correct and that in a few days you will bequite yourself again."
She looked at him wistfully.
"You seem to know so much about me, doctor, perhaps you can tell mewhere they are going to take me."
He lifted a tassel from a curtain near by, looked at it, shook his headat it, and inquired quite irrelevantly:
"Have you bidden good-bye to Miss Althorpe?"
Her eyes stole towards the parlors and she whispered as if half in aweof the splendor everywhere surrounding her:
"I have not had the opportunity. But I should be sorry to go without aword of thanks for her goodness. Is she at home?"
The tassel slipped from his hand.
"You will find her in a carriage at the door. She has an engagement outthis afternoon, but wishes to say good-bye to you before leaving."
"Oh, how kind she is!" burst from the girl's white lips; and with ahurried gesture she was making for the door when Mr. Gryce steppedbefore her and opened it.
Two carriages were drawn up in front, neither of which seemed to possessthe elegance of so rich a woman's equipage. But Mr. Gryce appearedsatisfied, and pointing to the nearest one, observed quietly:
"You are expected. If she does not open the carriage door for you, donot hesitate to do it yourself. She has something of importance to sayto you."
Miss Oliver looked surprised, but prepared to obey him. Steadyingherself by the stone balustrade, she slowly descended the steps andadvanced towards the carriage. I watched her from the doorway and Mr.Gryce from the vestibule. It seemed an ordinary situation, butsomething in the latter's face convinced me that interests of no smallmoment depended upon the interview about to take place.
But before I could decide upon their nature or satisfy myself as to thefull meaning of Mr. Gryce's manner, she had started back from thecarriage door and was saying to him in a tone of modest embarrassment:
"There is a gentleman in the carriage; you must have made some mistake."
Mr. Gryce, who had evidently expected a different result from hisstratagem, hesitated for a moment, during which I felt that he read herthrough and through; then he responded lightly:
"I made a mistake, eh? Oh, possibly. Look in the other carriage, mychild."
With an unaffected air of confidence she turned to do so, and I turnedto watch her, for I began to understand the "scheme" at which I wasassisting, and foresaw that the emotion she had failed to betray at thedoor of the first carriage might not necessarily be lacking on theopening of the second.
I was all the more assured of this from the fact that Miss Althorpe'sstately figure was very plainly to be seen at that moment, not in thecoach Miss Oliver was approaching, but in an elegant victoria justturning the corner.
My expectations were realized; for no sooner had the poor girl swungopen the door of the second hack, than her whole body succumbed to ashock so great that I expected to see her fall in a heap on thepavement. But she steadied herself up with a determined effort, and witha sudden movement full of subdued fury, jumped into the carriage andviolently shut the door just as the first carriage drove off to giveplace to Miss Althorpe's turn-out.
"Humph!" sprang from Mr. Gryce's lips in a tone so full of variedemotions that it was with difficulty I refrained from rushing down thestoop to see for myself who was the occupant of the coach into which mylate patient had so passionately precipitated herself. But the sight ofMiss Althorpe being helped to the ground by her attendant lover,recalled me so suddenly to my own anomalous position on her stoop, thatI let my first impulse pass and concerned myself instead with theformation of those apologies I thought necessary to the occasion. Butthose apologies were never uttered. Mr. Gryce, with the infinite tact hedisplays in all serious emergencies, came to my rescue, and sodistracted Miss Althorpe's attention that she failed to observe that shehad interrupted a situation of no small moment.
Meanwhile the coach containing Miss Oliver had, at a signal from thewary detective, drawn off in the wake of the first one, and I had thedoubtful satisfaction of seeing them both roll down the street withoutmy having penetrated the secret of either.
A glance from Mr. Stone, who had followed Miss Althorpe up the stoop,interrupted Mr. Gryce's flow of eloquence, and a few minutes later Ifound myself making those adieux which I had hoped to avoid by departingin Miss Althorpe's absence. Another instant and I was hastening down thestreet in the direction taken by the two carriages, one of which hadpaused at the corner a few rods off.
But, spry as I am for one of my settled habits and sedate character, Ifound myself passed by Mr. Gryce; and when I would have accelerated mysteps, he darted forward quite like a boy and, without a word ofexplanation or any acknowledgment of the mutual understanding whichcertainly existed between us, leaped into the carriage I was endeavoringto reach, and was driven away. But not before I caught a glimpse of MissOliver's gray dress inside.
Determined not to be baffled by this man, I turned about and followedthe other carriage. It was approaching a crowded part of the avenue, andin a few minutes I had the gratification of seeing it come to astandstill only a few feet from the curb-stone. The opportunity thusafforded me of satisfying my curiosity was not to be slighted. Withoutpausing to consider consequences or to question the propriety of myconduct, I stepped boldly up in front of its half-lowered window andlooked in. There was but one person inside, and that person was FranklinVan Burnam.
What was I to conclude from this? That the occupant of the othercarriage was Howard, and that Mr. Gryce now knew with which of the twobrothers Miss Oliver's memories were associated.
_BOOK IV._
THE END OF A GREAT MYSTERY.