Out of the Ashes Part 9

"Oh, no, don't say that. Have a highball; you will find everything on the table. What can I give you? This Scotch is excellent."

"No," said Gard sternly. "Excuse me; I am here for one purpose."

Mahr was chagrined, but switched on the electric lights above the canvas occupying the place of honor on the crowded wall. The portrait stood revealed, a jewel of color, rich as a ruby, mysterious as an autumn night, vivid in its humanity, divine in its art, palpitating with life, yet remote as death itself. The marvelous canvas glowed before them--a thing to quell anger, to stifle love, to still hate itself in an impulse of admiration.

Suddenly Marcus Gard began to laugh, as he had laughed that day long ago, at his own discomfiture.

"What is it?" stuttered Mahr, amazed. "Don't you think it genuine?"

There was panic in his tone.

Gard laughed again, then broke off as suddenly as he had begun; and pa.s.sion thrilled in his voice as he turned fierce eyes upon his enemy.

"I am laughing at the singular role this painting has played in my life.

We have met before--the Heim Vand.y.k.e and I. If Fate chooses to turn painter, we must grind his colors, I suppose. But what I intend to grind first, is you, Victor Mahr! You--you cowardly hound! No--stand where you are; don't go near that bell. It's hard enough for me to keep my hands off you as it is!"

The attack had been so unexpected that Mahr was honestly at a loss to account for it. He looked anxiously toward the door, remembered the absence of his secretary and gasped in fear. He was at the mercy of the madman. With an effort he mastered his terror.

"Don't be angry," he stammered. "Don't be annoyed with me; it's all a mistake, you know. Are you--are you feeling quite well? Do let me give you something--a--a gla.s.s of champagne, perhaps. I'll call a servant."

Gard's smile was so cruel that Mahr's worst fears were confirmed. But the torrent of accusation that burst from Gard's lips bore him down with the consciousness of the other's knowledge.

"You scoundrel!" roared the enraged man. "You squirming, poisonous snake! You would strike at a woman through her daughter, would you! You would send anonymous letters to a child about her mother! You would hire sneaks for your sneaking vileness!--coward, brute that you are! Well, I know it all--_all_, I say. And as true as I live, if ever you make one move in that direction again, I shall find it out, and I will kill you!

But first I'll go to your boy, Victor Mahr, and I shall tell him: 'Your father is a criminal--a bigamist. Your mother never was his wife. Sneak and beast from first to last, he found it easier to desert and deceive.

You are the nameless child of an outcast father, the whelp of a cur.'

I'll say in your own words, Victor Mahr: 'Obscurity is best, perhaps, even exile.' Do you remember those words? Well, never forget them again as long as you live, or, by G.o.d, you'll have no time on earth to make your peace!"

Mahr's face was gray; his hands trembled. He looked at that moment as if the death the other threatened was already come upon him. There was a moment of silence, intense, charged with the electricity of emotions--a silence more sinister than the noise of battles. Twice Mahr attempted to speak, but no sound came from his contracted throat. Slowly he pulled himself together. A look awful, inhuman, flashed over his convulsed features. Words came at last, high, cackling and cracked, like the voice of senility.

"It's you--it's _you_!" he quavered. "So she told you everything, did she? So you and she--"

The sentence ended in a hoa.r.s.e gasp, as Mahr launched himself at Gard with the spring of an animal goaded beyond endurance.

Gard was the larger man, and his wrath had been long demanding expression. They closed with a jar that rocked the electric lamp on the desk. There was a second of straining and uncertainty. Then with a jerk Gard lifted his adversary clear off his feet, and shook him, shook him with the fury of a bulldog, and as relentlessly. Then, as if the temptation to murder was more than he could longer resist, he flung him from him.

Mahr fell full length upon the heavy rug, limp and inert, yet conscious.

Gard stooped, picked up his hat and gloves from where they had fallen and turned upon his heel.

At that moment the outside door of the secretary's office opened and closed, and footsteps sounded in the room beyond.

"Get up," said Gard quietly, "unless you care to have them see you there."

The sound had acted like magic upon the prostrate man. He did not need the admonition. He had already dragged his shaking body to an upright position, ere he slowly sank down into the embrace of one of the huge armchairs.

A quick knock was followed by the appearance of Teddy Mahr. The room was in darkness save for the light on the table and the cl.u.s.tered radiance concentrated upon the glowing portrait, that had smiled down remote and serene upon the scene just enacted, as it had doubtless gazed upon many another as strange.

"Father!" exclaimed the boy, and as he came within the ring of light, his face showed pale and anxious.

Gard did not give him time for a reply. "Good evening," he said. "I have been admiring the Vand.y.k.e. A wonderful canvas, and one thing that your father may well be proud of."

At the sound of the voice the young man turned and advanced with an exclamation of welcome. "Mr. Gard, the very one I most wanted to see.

Tell me--what is the matter? Where has Dorothy gone? I've been to the house, and either they don't know or they won't tell me. She didn't let me know. I can't understand it. For heaven's sake, tell me! Nothing is wrong, is there?"

"Why, of course, you should know, Teddy." For the first time he used the familiar term. "I quite forgot about you young people. You see, Dorothy received threatening letters from some crank, and as we weren't sure what might occur I sent her off. _Mahr, shall I tell your son?_"

He turned to where the limp figure showed huddled in the depths of red upholstery. There was a question and a threat in the measured words.

"Of course, tell him Miss Marteen's address," and in that answer there was a prayer.

"Then here." Gard wrote a few words on his card and gave it into the boy's eager hand. "Run up and see her. She's with her aunt. I can bring her home any time now, however. We've located the trouble and got the man under restraint. Good-night."

IX

Though the heat in the Pullman was intense the tall woman in the first seat was heavily veiled. She had come out from the drawing room to allow more freedom to her maid, who was packing a dressing-case and rolling up steamer rugs. Her fellow travelers eyed her with curiosity. She was doubtless some great and exclusive personage, for she had not appeared in public, not even in the diner. She sank into the vacant seat with an air of hopeless weariness, yet her restless hands never ceased their groping, her slim fingers slipped in and out, in and out of the loop of her long neck chain, or nervously twined one with another in endless intertouch.

The long journey north was over at last. The weary days and nights of hurried travel. Only a moment more and the familiar sights and sounds of the great city would greet her once again. She was going home--to what?

Mrs. Marteen did not dare to picture the future. Pursued, as if by the Furies themselves, she had been driven, madly, blind with suffering, back to the scene of disaster--to know--to know--the worst, perhaps--but to know!

Day and night, night and day, her iron will had fought the fever that burned in her veins. Silent, self-controlled, she had given no sign of her suffering and her terror, though her eyes were ringed with sleeplessness and her mouth had grown stiff with its effort to command.

The tension was torture. Her heart strings were drawn to the snapping point; her mind was a bowstring never relaxed, till every fiber of her resistant body ached for relief.

At last they had arrived. At last the hollow rumble of the train in the vast echoing station warned her of her journey's end. Instinctively she gave her orders, thrusting her baggage checks into the hands of her maid.

"I'm going on at once," she said. "Attend to everything. Give me my little necessaire. I don't feel quite well, and I want to get home as quickly as possible."

She hurried away before the servant could ask a question, and was directed to the open cab stand. As she stepped in, she reeled.

Trepidation took hold upon her, but with enforced calm, she seated herself, and gave the address to the starter. As the motor drew away from the great buildings, she threw back her veil for the first time, and opened a window. The rush of cool air revived her somewhat, but her heart beat spasmodically, her blood seemed a thin, unliving stream.

Street after street slipped by like a panorama on a screen, familiar, yet unreal. The world, her world, had changed in its essence, in its every manifestation.

At last the taxi drew up before the door of her home--was it home still?

she wondered. Her hand trembled so she could not unfasten the latch, and the chauffeur, descending from his seat, came to her a.s.sistance.

"Wait," she said in a strangled voice. "Wait; I may want you."

At the door of her apartment she had to pause, before she rang, to gather courage, to obtain control of her whirling brain. At last the ornate door swung inward and her butler faced her with welcoming eye.

"Mrs. Marteen! Pray pardon the undress livery! No word had been received."

She took note of the darkened rooms. Only one switch, whose glow she had seen turned on as the servant came to the door, gave light. The place was hollow and unlived in as an outworn sh.e.l.l.

"Miss Dorothy?" she said, striving to give her voice a natural tone.

The butler h'mmed. "Miss Dorothy has gone, Madam, with Madam's sister--since yesterday. They left no address, and said nothing about when they might be expected. Mr. Gard had been with Miss Dorothy in the afternoon."