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THE THOUSANDTH WOMAN
"I wonder who can have done it."]
THE THOUSANDTH WOMAN
_By_ERNEST W. HORNUNG
_Author of_THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN, RAFFLES, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BYFRANK SNAPP
INDIANAPOLISTHE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANYPUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1913THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRESS OFBRAUNWORTH & CO.BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERSBROOKLYN, N. Y.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A SMALL WORLD 1
II SECOND SIGHT 16
III IN THE TRAIN 29
IV DOWN THE RIVER 42
V AN UNTIMELY VISITOR 64
VI VOLUNTARY SERVICE 83
VII AFTER MICHELANGELO 98
VIII FINGER-PRINTS 117
IX FAIR WARNING 134
X THE WEEK OF THEIR LIVES 146
XI IN COUNTRY AND IN TOWN 156
XII THE THOUSANDTH MAN 169
XIII QUID PRO QUO 181
XIV FAITH UNFAITHFUL 205
XV THE PERSON UNKNOWN 214
THE THOUSANDTH WOMAN
I
A SMALL WORLD
Cazalet sat up so suddenly that his head hit the woodwork over the upperberth. His own voice still rang in his startled ears. He wondered howmuch he had said, and how far it could have carried above the throb ofthe liner's screws and the mighty pounding of the water against herplates. Then his assembling senses coupled the light in the cabin withhis own clear recollection of having switched it off before turningover. And then he remembered how he had been left behind at Naples, andrejoined the _Kaiser Fritz_ at Genoa, only to find that he no longer hada cabin to himself.
A sniff assured Cazalet that he was neither alone at the moment nor yetthe only one awake; he pulled back the swaying curtain, which he hadtaken to keeping drawn at night; and there on the settee, with thethinnest of cigarettes between his muscular fingers, sat a man with astrong blue chin and the quizzical solemnity of an animated sphinx.
It was his cabin companion, an American named Hilton Toye, and Cazaletaddressed him with nervous familiarity.
"I say! Have I been talking in my sleep?"
"Why, yes!" replied Hilton Toye, and broke into a smile that made ahuman being of him.
Cazalet forced a responsive grin, as he reached for his own cigarettes."What did I say?" he asked, with an amused curiosity at variance withhis shaking hand and shining forehead.
Toye took him in from crown to fingertips, with something deep behindhis kindly smile. "I judge," said he, "you were dreaming of some dramayou've been seeing ashore, Mr. Cazalet."
"Dreaming!" said Cazalet, wiping his face. "It was a nightmare! I musthave turned in too soon after dinner. But I should like to know what Isaid."
"I can tell you word for word. You said, 'Henry Craven--dead!' and thenyou said, 'Dead--dead--Henry Craven!' as if you'd got to have it bothways to make sure."
"It's true," said Cazalet, shuddering. "I saw him lying dead, in mydream."
Hilton Toye took a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket. "Thirteenminutes to one in the morning," he said, "and now it's Septembereighteenth. Take a note of that, Mr. Cazalet. It may be another case ofsecond sight for your psychical research society."
"I don't care if it is." Cazalet was smoking furiously.
"Meaning it was no great friend you dreamed was dead?"
"No friend at all, dead or alive!"
"I'm kind of wondering," said Toye, winding his watch up slowly, "ifhe's by way of being a friend of mine. I know a Henry Craven over inEngland. Lives along the river, down Kingston way, in a big house."
"Called Uplands?"
"Yes, sir! That's the man. Little world, isn't it?"
The man in the upper berth had to hold on as his curtains swung clear;the man tilted back on the settee, all attention all the time, was morethan ever an effective foil to him. Without the kindly smile that wentas quickly as it came, Hilton Toye was somber, subtle and demure.Cazalet, on the other hand, was of sanguine complexion and impetuouslooks. He was tanned a rich bronze about the middle of the face, but itbroke off across his forehead like the coloring of a meerschaum pipe.Both men were in their early prime, and each stood roughly for his raceand type: the traveled American who knows the world, and the elementalBritisher who has made some one loose end of it his own.
"I thought of my Henry Craven," continued Toye, "as soon as ever youcame out with yours. But it seemed a kind of ordinary name. I mighthave known it was the same if I'd recollected the name of his firm.Isn't it Craven & Cazalet, the stockbrokers, down in Tokenhouse Yard?"
"That's it," said Cazalet bitterly. "But there have been none of us init since my father died ten years ago."
"But you're Henry Craven's old partner's son?"
"I'm his only son."
"Then no wonder you dream about Henry Craven," cried Toye, "and nowonder it wouldn't break your heart if your dream came true."
"It wouldn't," said Cazalet through his teeth. "He wasn't a white man tome or mine--whatever you may have found him."
"Oh! I don't claim to like him a lot," said Toye.
"But you seem to know a good deal about him?"
"I had a little place near his one summer. I know only what I heard downthere."
"What did you hear?" asked Cazalet. "I've been away ten years, eversince the crash that ruined everybody but the man at the bottom of thewhole thing. It would be a kindness to tell me what you heard."
"Well, I guess you've said it yourself right now. That man seems to havebeggared everybody all around except himself; that's how I make it out,"said Hilton Toye.
"He did worse," said Cazalet through his teeth. "He killed my poorfather; he banished me to the wilds of Australia; and he sent a betterman than himself to prison for fourteen years!"
Toye opened his dark eyes for once. "Is that so? No. I never heardthat," said he.
"You hear it now. He did all that, indirectly, and I don't care whohears me say so. I didn't realize it at the time. I was too young, andthe whole thing laid me out too flat; but I know it now, and I've knownit long enough. It was worse than a crash. It was a scandal. That waswhat finished us off, all but Henry Craven! There'd been a giganticswindle--special investments recommended by the firm, bogus certificatesand all the rest of it. We were all to blame, of course. My poor fatherought never to have been a business man at all; he should have been apoet. Even I--I was only a youngster in the office, but I ought to haveknown what was going on. But Henry Craven _did_ know. He was in it up tothe neck, though a fellow called Scruton did the actual job. Scrutongot fourteen years--and Craven got our old house on the river!"
"And feathered it pretty well!" said Toye, nodding. "Yes, I did hearthat. And I can tell you they don't think any better of him, in theneighborhood, for going to live right there. But how did he stop theother man's mouth, and--how do you know?"
"Never mind how I know," said Cazalet. "Scruton was a friend of mine,though an older man; he was good to me, though he was a wrong 'unhimself. He paid for it--paid for two--that I _can_ say! But he wasengaged to Ethel Craven at the time, was going to be taken intopartnership on their marriage, and you can put two and two together foryourself."
"Did she wait for him?"
"About as long as you'd expect of the breed! She was her father'sdaughter
. I wonder you didn't come across her and her husband!"
"I didn't see so much of the Craven crowd," replied Hilton Toye. "Iwasn't stuck on them either. Say, Cazalet, I wouldn't be that old manwhen Scruton comes out, would you?"
But Cazalet showed that he could hold his tongue when he liked, and hisgrim look was not so legible as some that had come and gone before. Thisone stuck until Toye produced a big flask from his grip, and the talkshifted to less painful ground. It was the last night in the Bay ofBiscay, and Cazalet told how he had been in it a fortnight on his wayout by sailing-vessel. He even told it with considerable humor, and hitoff sundry passengers of ten years ago as though they had been aboardthe German boat that night; for he had gifts of anecdote and verbalportraiture, and in their unpremeditated cups Toye drew him out aboutthe bush until the shadows passed for minutes from the red-brick facewith the white-brick forehead.
"I remember thinking I would dig for gold," said Cazalet. "That's all Iknew about Australia; that and bushrangers and dust-storms andbush-fires! But you can have adventures of sorts if you go far enoughup-country for 'em; it still pays you to know how to use your fists outthere. I didn't, but I was picking it up before I'd been out threemonths, and in six I was as ready as anybody to take off my coat. Iremember once at a bush shanty they dished up such fruity chops that Isaid I'd fight the cook if they'd send _him_ up; and I'm blowed if itwasn't a fellow I'd been at school with and worshiped as no end of aswell at games! Potts his name was, old Venus Potts, the best lookingchap in the school among other things; and there he was, cooking carrionat twenty-five bob a week! Instead of fighting we joined forces, got aburr-cutting job on a good station, then a better one over shearing, andafter that I wormed my way in as bookkeeper, and my pal became one ofthe head overseers. Now we're our own bosses with a share in the show,and the owner comes up only once a year to see how things are looking."
"I hope he had a daughter," said Toye, "and that you're going to marryher, if you haven't yet?"
Cazalet laughed, but the shadow had returned. "No. I left that to mypal," he said. "_He_ did that all right!"
"Then I advise you to go and do likewise," rejoined his new friend witha geniality impossible to take amiss. "I shouldn't wonder, now, ifthere's some girl you left behind you."
Cazalet shook his head. "None who would look on herself in that light,"he interrupted. It was all he said, but once more Toye was regarding himas shrewdly as when the night was younger, and the littleness of theworld had not yet made them confidant and boon companion.
Eight bells actually struck before their great talk ended and Cazaletswore that he missed the "watches aft, sir!" of the sailing-vessel tenyears before; and recalled how they had never changed watch withoutputting the ship about, his last time in the bay.
"Say!" exclaimed Hilton Toye, knitting his brows over some nebulousrecollection of his own. "I seem to have heard of you and some of youryarns before. Didn't you spend nights in a log-hut miles and miles fromany other human being?"
It was as they were turning in at last, but the question spoiled a yawnfor Cazalet.
"Sometimes, at one of our out-stations," said he, looking puzzled.
"I've seen your photograph," said Toye, regarding him with a morecritical stare. "But it was with a beard."
"I had it off when I was ashore the other day," said Cazalet. "I alwaysmeant to, before the end of the voyage."
"I see. It was a Miss Macnair showed me that photograph--Miss BlancheMacnair lives in a little house down there near your old home. I judgehers is another old home that's been broken up since your day."
"They've all got married," said Cazalet.
"Except Miss Blanche. You write to her some, Mr. Cazalet?"
"Once a year--regularly. It was a promise. We were kids together," heexplained, as he climbed back into the upper berth.
"Guess you were a lucky kid," said the voice below. "She's one in athousand, Miss Blanche Macnair!"