A Husband by Proxy Part 19

"Only by poison."

"H'm! You saw the dead man's effects, of course. What did they comprise?"

Garrison detailed the dead man's possessions, as found at the coroner's office. He neglected nothing, mentioning the cigars as candidly as he did the few insignificant papers.

"In what possible manner could the man have been poisoned?" demanded Wicks, rising, with his watch in his hand. "Was there anything to eat at his apartments--or to drink?"

"Not that I can trace. The only clew that seems important, so far, is that Scott spent fifteen minutes in Hardy's room, alone, on the night of his death."

"That's something!" said Wicks, with the slightest possible show of approval. "Put on your hat and go uptown with me and tell me exactly all about it."

They left the office, proceeded to the Subway, boarded an uptown express that was jammed to the guards with struggling humanity, all deserting the small end of Gotham at once; and here, with Wicks crowded flat up against him, and hanging, first to a strap and then to his shoulder. Garrison related the few facts that he had already briefly summarized.

"Well--nothing to say to you but go ahead," said Wicks, as they neared the Grand Central Station, where he meant to take a train. "Stick to the case till you clean it up. That's all."

Garrison, presently alone on the crowded street, with no particular objective point in view, felt thoroughly depressed and lonely.

He wished he had never discovered the poisoned cigar at Branchville.

Mechanically, his hand sought his pocket, where the second charged weed had been placed.

Then he started and searched his waistcoat wildly.

The deadly cigar was gone!

CHAPTER XIII

A TRYST IN THE PARK

Unable for a moment to credit his senses, Garrison moved over against the wall of the building he was pa.s.sing, and stood there, slowly, almost mechanically, searching his pockets once again, while his mind revolved about the lost cigar, in an effort to understand its disappearance.

He was wholly at a loss for a tenable theory till he thought of the frequency with which men are robbed of scarf-pins or similar trifles--and then a sickening possibility possessed him.

One of the commonest devices that a woman employs in such a petty theft is to faint on the breast of her victim. In such a pose she may readily extract some coveted article from either his tie or his pocket, with almost absolute certainty of avoiding detection.

It did not seem possible--and yet the fact remained that Dorothy had fainted thus against him, and the poisoned cigar was gone. She had known of his visit to Branchville; his line of questions might have roused her suspicions; the cigar had been plainly in sight. He had seen her enact her role so perfectly, in the presence of her relatives, that he could not doubt her ability in any required direction.

For a moment a powerful revulsion of feeling toward the girl, who was undeniably involved in some exceptionally deep-laid plan, crept throughout his being. Not only does a man detest being used as a tool and played upon like any common dunce, but he also feels an utter chagrin at being baffled in his labors. Apparently he had played the fool, and also he had lost the vital evidence of Hardy's poisoning.

Mortified and angry, he remained there, while the crowds surged by, his gaze dully fixed on the pavement. For a time he saw nothing, and then at last he was conscious that a rose--a crushed and wilted rose, thrown down by some careless pedestrian--was lying almost at his feet.

Somehow, it brought him a sense of calm and sweetness; it seemed a symbol, vouchsafed him here in the hot, sordid thoroughfare, where crime and folly, virtue and despair, stalk arm in arm eternally.

He could not look upon the bit of trampled beauty, thus wasted on a heedless throng, and think of Dorothy as guilty. She had seemed just as crushed and wilted as the rose when he left her at her home--just as beautiful, also, and as far from her garden of peace and fragrances as this rejected handful of petals. She must be innocent. There must be some other explanation for the loss of that cigar--and some good reason for the things she had done and said.

He took up the rose, indifferent to anyone who might have observed the action with a smile or a sneer, and slowly proceeded down the street.

The cigar, he reflected, might easily have been stolen in the Subway.

A hundred men had crushed against him. Any one of them so inclined could have taken the weed at his pleasure. The thought was wholly disquieting, since if any man attempted to bite the cigar-end through, to smoke, he would pay a tragic penalty for his petty theft.

This aspect of the affair, indeed, grew terrible, the more he thought upon it. He almost felt he must run to the station, try to search out that particular train, and cry for all to hear that the stolen cigar would be fatal--but the thought was a wild, unreasoning vagary; he was absolutely helpless in the case.

He could not be certain that the weed had thus been extracted from his pocket. It might in some manner have been lost. He did not know--he could not know. He felt sure of one thing only--his hope, his demand, that Dorothy must be innocent and good.

Despite his arguments, he was greatly depressed. The outcome of all the business loomed dim and uncertain before him, a haze charged with mystery, involving crime as black as night.

He presently came to the intersection of fas.h.i.+onable Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street, and was halted by the flood of traffic. Hundreds of vehicles were pouring up and down, in endless streams, while two calm policemen halted the moving processions, from time to time, to permit the crosstown cars and teams to move in their several directions.

Across from Garrison's corner loomed the great marble library, still incomplete and gloomily fenced from the sidewalk. Beyond it, furnis.h.i.+ng its setting, rose the trees of Bryant Park, a green oasis in the tumult and unloveliness about it. Garrison knew the benches there were crowded; nevertheless, he made his way the length of the block and found a seat.

He sat there till the sun was gone and dusk closed in upon the city.

The first faint lights began to twinkle, like the palest stars, in the buildings that hedged the park about. He meant to hunt out a restaurant and dine presently, but what to do afterward he could not determine.

There was nothing to be done at Branchville or Hickwood at night, and but little, for the matter of that, to be done by day. Tomorrow would be ample time to return to that theater of uncertainty. He longed for one thing only--another sight of Dorothy--enshrined within his heart.

Reminded at last of the man who had followed on his trail, he purposely strolled from the park and circled two blocks, by streets now almost deserted, and was reasonably certain he had shaken off pursuit. As a matter of fact, his "shadow" had lost him in the Subway, and now, having notified the Robinsons by telephone, was watching the house where he roomed.

Garrison ate his dinner in a mood of ceaseless meditation concerning Dorothy. He was worried to know what might have happened since his departure from her home. Half inclined in one minute to go again to the house, in the next he was quite undecided.

The thought of the telephone came like an inspiration. Unless the Robinsons should interfere, he might readily learn of her condition.

At a drug-store, near the restaurant, he found a quiet booth, far better suited to his needs than the noisier, more public boxes at the eating place he had quitted. He closed himself inside the little cubby-hole, asked for the number, and waited.

It seemed an interminable time till a faint "h.e.l.lo!" came over the wire, and he fancied the voice was a man's.

"h.e.l.lo! Is that Mrs. Fairfax?" he asked. "I'd like to speak to Mrs.

Fairfax."

"Wait a minute, please. Who is it?" said a voice unmistakably masculine.

"Mr. Wallace," said Garrison, by way of precaution. "She'll understand."

"Hold the wire, please."

He held the receiver to his ear, and waited again. At length came a softer, more musical greeting. It was Dorothy. His heart was instantly leaping at the sound of her voice.

"h.e.l.lo! Is that someone to speak to me?" she said. "This is Mrs.

Fairfax."

"Yes," answered Garrison. "This is Jerold. I felt I must find out about you--how you are. I've been distressed at the way I was obliged to leave."

"Oh!" said the voice faintly. "I--I'm all right--thank you. I must see you--right away." Her voice had sunk to a tone he could barely distinguish. "Where are you now?"

"Downtown," said Garrison. "Where shall I meet you?"

"I--hardly know," came the barely audible reply. "Perhaps--at Central Park and Ninety-third Street."