Читать книгу That Affair at Elizabeth - Burton Egbert Stevenson - Страница 6

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Two minutes later, I was speeding downward in the elevator, having paused only long enough to give a word of instruction to the head clerk. A glance at my watch showed me that if I would catch the 12.38, I had no time to lose; but luckily a cab was passing at the moment, and I jumped aboard the boat for Jersey City just as the gates were closing.

Not until I was safely aboard the train did I give myself time to conjecture what this imperative summons meant, but during the half-hour run to the little New Jersey city, I had ample time to try to puzzle it out.

One thing was quite certain—it was no ordinary emergency which had moved Mr. Royce to summon me from the office at a time when I was so badly needed there. I got out the telegram again, and read it, word by word. It affected me as a wild cry for help would have done, at midnight, in some lonely place—and it was just that—a wild cry for help! But why had he needed aid, when he himself was so clear-sighted, so ready-witted, so fertile of resource? What was this astounding occurrence which confronted him, this crisis so urgent and over-whelming that it had shaken and startled him out of his self-control? The message itself was proof of his deep excitement. Apparently he had wired for me instinctively, finding himself suddenly in the toils of some dilemma, which left him dazed and nerveless.

Ever since the time when I had succeeded, more by luck than anything else, in discovering the whereabouts of Frances Holladay, and solving the mystery of her father's death, our junior partner had conceived a tremendously exalted opinion of my abilities as an untangler of abstruse problems, and never lost an opportunity of referring to me such as came in his way. Every firm of practising lawyers knows how frequently a case hinges upon some puzzling point of evidence—how witnesses have a way of disappearing—and Graham & Royce had their full share of such perplexing tangles. It had come to be one of the unwritten rules of the office that such points should be referred to me, and while I was by no means uniformly successful in solving them, I always took a lively pleasure in the work. It was no doubt that habit which had caused our junior to turn to me in this emergency. I could guess how terrifying it must have been to overwhelm so completely a man so well-balanced and self-controlled—I could almost see the trembling hand with which he had penned the message.

So it was with a certain quickening of the pulse that I stepped from the train at the triangular Elizabeth station, and an instant later, Mr. Royce had me by the hand.

"I've a carriage over here, Lester," he said, drawing me toward it, and I noticed that he was fairly quivering with excitement. "I thought you could make this train," he added, as we took our seats and the driver whipped up smartly. "I knew you wouldn't lose any time, and I can't tell you how glad I am to have you here. Curtiss is all broken up—doesn't know which way to turn. Neither do I. I had just sense enough to send you that wire."

"I thought it was a mystery of some sort," I said, beginning to tingle in sympathy with him. "What has happened?"

"The bride-to-be has disappeared," answered Mr. Royce simply; "vanished—skipped out!"

For a moment, I scarcely understood. It seemed preposterous to suppose that I had heard aright.

"Disappeared!" I echoed helplessly. "Skipped out!"

"Yes, skipped out!" and Mr. Royce crushed his unlighted cigar savagely in his fingers and hurled it through the carriage window. "I haven't the slightest doubt that she deliberately ran away."

The sight of his emotion calmed me a little.

"At the last moment?" I questioned.

"Practically at the last moment—less than an hour before the time set for the ceremony. She was getting ready for it—was in her wedding-dress, in fact. I tell you, Lester——"

"Wait," I said, putting out a restraining hand. "Begin at the beginning. What's her name?"

"Marcia Lawrence."

"And she's the 'ideal' Curtiss imagined he'd found?"

"Yes," said Mr. Royce slowly, "and so far as I can judge from what I've seen and heard, she really was as nearly perfect as any woman can be."

"Yet she 'skipped out'!"

"That's why I'm so upset—she was the last woman in the world to do such a thing!"

"Tell me about her," I said.

"I don't know very much; but I do know that she wasn't a mere empty-headed chit. She was an accomplished and cultured woman. I've already told you how her beauty affected me."

I paused a moment to consider it—I was fairly nonplussed. It seemed incredible that such a woman should, under any conceivable circumstances, deliberately desert her lover at the altar!

"And in her wedding-gown!" I murmured, half to myself.

"Yes, in her wedding-gown!" repeated our junior, passing his hand feverishly across his eyes. "It's unbelievable! It's—I can't find any word to describe it. I can scarcely believe I'm awake."

"Perhaps she found she didn't love him," I suggested.

"At the last moment?"

"Stranger things have happened."

"I don't believe it!' A woman like Marcia Lawrence knows her own heart before she goes that far!"

"Suppose we say sudden insanity?"

"Well-balanced women don't go mad merely because they're going to get married."

"Then she didn't run away," I said.

Mr. Royce looked at me quickly.

"You mean——"

But the carriage stopped with a jolt and the driver jerked open the door.