The Fate of Felix Brand Part 9

"What's the use?" he muttered disappointedly. "He probably knows this combination, d.a.m.n him, as well as I do!"

Anger rose in a quick flood and with a wrathful oath he flung the key on the floor. His face was grimmer and more resolute than before as he whirled about and rushed from the room. Already pale and drawn, it went a shade whiter with the effort of will that kept him on his feet and still moving. At the door of the drawing room his hands flew upward to the height of his shoulders and doubled into fists. His eyes were fixed in a blank stare and his face was working in a mortal agony.

"Ah-h-h!" he gasped.

And then: "There!" he cried in a triumphant tone, as with one foot he sent spinning across the room the chair beside which he had halted.

His breast was heaving and his breath coming hard as he looked this way and that with wild eyes. Throwing open a window he put out his head and caught the cold air upon his streaming face. The sky was brightening with the promise of dawn.

"Good G.o.d!" he groaned as he turned back into the room. "Why did I try to stick this out alone? Why didn't I do something, go somewhere, have some of the fellows come here to an all-night game? Oh, I was afraid--that's the truth, I was afraid--and you knew it, d.a.m.n you, you knew it!" he ended in angry tones.

In the library he looked wistfully toward his favorite easy chair, for his knees trembled with weariness. "No, no, I must not stop. If I sat down I'd go to sleep, and then----"

He wheeled about and started back. But he held his head higher and walked with a more confident air. "I'm winning," he exclaimed, and there was glad surety in his voice. "It was a close call, but I'm winning! Get back to where you belong, you dog! Go back to where you came from, d.a.m.n you, and stay there! I've won, I tell you!" And he stamped his foot and cried again, "I've won!"

But confident though he was of having won this victory, whatever it might be, over the invisible enemy whom he seemed both to hate and to fear, he did not yet dare to cease from his tramp. Back and forth he still went; and presently, pausing beside the open window, he saw that the sky was flushed with sunrise and heard the roar and rattle of another day rising from the streets.

"A bath soon, and breakfast," he thought, "and then out for the day, and I'll be fairly safe once more. And if things get hard, I'll motor over to Staten Island and take Miss Marne's sister out again. That experiment helped a lot yesterday."

He went through the rooms, putting up shades and pus.h.i.+ng back curtains and switching off electric lights. His face was white and haggard and in his eyes still lingered the look of wild anxiety which had filled them for so many hours. With hands that trembled he poured another gla.s.s of brandy and soda. As he pa.s.sed the door of his chamber his step lagged, he turned and looked in.

"No! No!" he cried harshly, and tried to walk on. But his feet were like lead and held him there. Once more his body stiffened for battle, his teeth ground together and his lips shut in a straight, hard line.

He staggered a little way toward the bed, trying to hold himself back, as if he were wrestling, with all his remnant of strength and will, against some immaterial, compelling force. Striking out with one fist, as at some foe beside him, he shouted thickly, "Go! Go back, I say!"

And with a supreme effort he wheeled about and with uncertain, heavy steps moved back toward the door.

"I will not! I will not!" he muttered, his voice unsteady and anguished. From his face had faded the determined look and his eyes, gla.s.sy and staring, were turned upward in terrified appeal.

Even as he spoke his feet once more refused to move. They seemed rooted to the floor, but his body, though he tried his best still to face toward the entrance, turned again toward the bed. He caught at the door and braced himself against it for a moment. Then his grasp weakened and his arms fell down.

The clutching will that was battling with his moved him one step, and then another, toward the end that he feared, though he strove so fiercely against it that the sinews of his neck seemed about to burst through their restraining skin. Stiffening his body, catching at chairs and tables and putting all his strength into the effort to hold his feet firm upon the floor, he fought with the intangible force that gripped him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE SANK FACE DOWNWARD UPON THE BED]

"I will not! I will not!" he gasped; and with a mighty effort tore himself from his bonds and rushed toward the door. But again viewless hands seized him and turned him suddenly about. His haggard face flushed to a dull red and beaded with sweat as he fought with the unseen power that impelled him, step by step, across the room.

With breath coming in gasps, he struggled on desperately, sometimes gaining a little s.p.a.ce and again losing more; and seeing himself, despite his utmost efforts, forced nearer and nearer to the goal that he knew meant his vanquishment. Inch by inch he fought the way with his invisible enemy to the very bedside. Even there, with his last ounce of strength, he made a final, futile effort to break away from his intangible captor. Then he flung up his arms and covered his face and with a long "oh-h-h," that was half a rageful, hysterical cry and half a moan of despair, he sank face downward upon the bed.

He had lost the battle in what he had thought to be the very hour of victory.

CHAPTER X

HUGH GORDON WINS HENRIETTA'S CONFIDENCE

Henrietta reached the office early that morning, lest her employer, in his eagerness to push his work, now that he could devote himself to it with undivided energies, should get there first. She looked forward to the day with pleasant antic.i.p.ations, for she had a.s.sisted him in this way before and she liked it the best of all her duties. The books were ready upon his desk, but he had not yet arrived. She waited for him all the forenoon, employing herself as best she could, and still he did not come.

In the afternoon she tried to get his apartment on the telephone, but there was no answer. Surely, he would not have left the city, after such preparations for a busy day, without sending her some message.

She called up Dr. Annister and asked if he had seen Mr. Brand that day, or knew whether or not he had unexpectedly gone out of the city.

No, the doctor replied, he had not seen Mr. Brand since the evening before, when he and Mildred and Mrs. Annister had gone to the theatre together. As Mildred had been looking quite happy all day he did not think Felix could have said anything about going out of town. And he had promised to dine with them tomorrow night. Doubtless if he had gone anywhere it was only for the day and Dr. Annister was cheerfully confident Henrietta might expect to see him again on the morrow.

She lingered at the office an hour later than usual, hoping for some word from the architect. But none came. The next morning she hurried back, eagerly antic.i.p.ating a letter or a telegram, but found neither.

All day she waited, her nerves on edge with expectation and anxiety, but Brand did not come nor did he send her any message.

"This is worse than it was before," thought Henrietta, "for then he told me beforehand that he might have to go. And he said so positively, only a little while ago, that he did not intend to take that trip south again. Perhaps he found he had to go after all.

Anyway, I guess it's what I'd better tell people."

Remembering his dinner engagement at Dr. Annister's, she made that explanation over the telephone. Both to Dr. Annister and afterward to Mildred she said that she did not know positively that he had gone to West Virginia, but that he had told her, when he returned from his former absence, that that was where he had been and that he might have to go again, although he had not told her the exact place because, for business reasons, he did not want it to be known.

Yes, Mildred a.s.sented, he had said the same thing to her and she understood just how it was. But all the same, it was cruel of Felix, and not at all like him, for he was always so sweetly considerate, to go off in this sudden, secret way and leave them all in such suspense.

"When we're married," and a happy little laugh came rippling over the telephone to Henrietta's ear, "it shan't be like this, for then he'll have to take me with him on all such jaunts and I'll see to it that you know where we are."

As the days went by, Henrietta, pondering with ever increasing anxiety the mystery of this second disappearance, began to doubt the explanation she gave to others. This time there came up no reason for public interest and so even the knowledge that he was away was confined to a few of his friends and to those who wished to see him upon business. With all inquirers his secretary treated his absence as an ordinary matter, saying merely that she thought he was somewhere in the mountains of West Virginia, she did not know exactly where, nor could she say positively when he would be back.

Nevertheless, looking back over what he said to her on his return after his previous long absence, Henrietta recognized in it a touch of insincerity. At the time she had accepted it as a matter of course, but now, scrutinizing her memory of his words and his manner, in the light of all that had happened since, she finally said to herself, "I don't believe he was telling me the truth."

But if that southern business trip was a deliberate fabrication, what, then, could be the reason for a prolonged absence, so injurious to all his interests, whose real nature and purpose he had been at such pains to conceal? She had heard of men who sometimes slipped out of sight that they might plunge unhampered into debauchery, and she began to wonder if such were the case with him, or if, perhaps, he had fallen a victim to some secret vice. But against either of these suppositions both her feminine instincts and her personal liking for her employer rebelled.

"I don't see how that could be," she thought, "for he is always so nice and refined. There is no suggestion about him of anything gross or so--unclean. No, it can't be anything of that sort. And yet, he seemed so nervous, and just as if he were fighting against something with all his might--and I suppose it would be like that if he were fighting the desire to drink or take some kind of dope. But I can't believe it. I wonder if that Hugh Gordon could have anything to do with it. Well, whatever the explanation, it's evident he doesn't want people to know about his being away, and he doesn't like it to be talked about, so the thing for me to do is to keep as still as a mouse and not to let anybody else do any more talking than I can help."

Even at home, in her loyalty to her sense of duty, Henrietta said no more than to make a mere mention of her employer's absence and to reply, when her mother or sister made occasional inquiry, that he had not yet returned.

Brand had been away almost a week when the office boy brought her a card one morning and said the gentleman was particularly anxious to see her. As she looked at it and read "Hugh Gordon" her heart began to beat faster and her face flushed a sudden red.

Had he come, she wondered, to bring her news of Brand's whereabouts, or, perhaps, tidings of some serious misfortune? The apprehensive thought flashed through her mind that perhaps he would try, under threat of evil to herself or her employer, to force from her some personal or business information that he could afterward use as a lever against the architect, and she told herself that she must be very careful what she said to him.

She felt a.s.sured that he was there for no good purpose, and during the moment that she waited for the boy to bring him into her room her mind formed a swift picture of an elderly fellow, slouching and shabby, red-nosed and unshaven, bearing all the marks of a parasitic and dissipated life.

When she saw instead a well-groomed young man, wearing an English looking gray suit, advancing toward her with a quick, firm step and a self-confident air, the reversal of her preconceived ideas was so complete that for an instant she thought it must be some one else. The suggestion of a smile crossed his serious face as he met her disconcerted look and, halting beside her desk, he repeated his name.

"I have come to see you, Miss Marne, to relieve your mind of any apprehension you may feel concerning Mr. Felix Brand."

"Oh," she exclaimed, the rea.s.surance his words gave her evident at once in her voice. "Then you have seen him? You know that he is quite well?"

His keen, dark eyes swept the room with an alert glance. On her desk glowed a vase of suns.h.i.+ne-colored daffodils. She remembered afterward that, while his one swift glance had seemed to take in everything in the room, it had pa.s.sed over the flowers as coolly as it had over the chairs and the typewriter, and she compared it with the way Felix Brand's eyes would have lingered and feasted upon them.

"I have not seen him for several days," he replied, his gaze again straight into her eyes. He spoke rapidly, in a direct, almost blunt manner. "But I can a.s.sure you that you need to feel no anxiety about him. He is quite safe and will be back here as soon as circ.u.mstances permit."

Henrietta hesitated for an instant, in quick debate with herself as to the most prudent course to pursue. Should she try to find out all that this man knew, or, refusing to admit how much she was in the dark herself, thank him for his kindness in such a way as to make him believe she did not need his information? She was aware that already she was not so suspicious of him as she had been a few moments before.

The friendly sincerity of his look and the blunt frankness of his manner compelled her into a less wary, less hostile feeling. Reminding herself again that she must be on her guard she motioned him to a chair beside her desk.

"You must know, Mr. Gordon," she said, looking at him with a gaze as direct as his own, "that your att.i.tude toward Mr. Brand some weeks ago was not such as to make me feel, now, much confidence in your good intentions. Frankly, I find it difficult to believe that you have come here with his good in view."

Gordon's serious countenance relaxed a little and Henrietta felt herself impelled to a responsive smile, which she quickly checked.

"No," he agreed, "I can't expect you, not knowing all the circ.u.mstances, to understand that what I did then was intended for Felix Brand's good. I believed, or at least I hoped, that it would have a salutary effect upon him and induce him to turn back from a course of conduct that I foresaw would be disastrous."