Читать книгу The Mission of Poubalov - Frederick Burton - Страница 4

Clara had not fainted in her uncle's arms, but she nestled against him quivering and sobbing; and again it was fortunate for her that the excited, pent-up forces of her brain had broken through in a flood of tears.

"You see, Dexter!" cried Mr. Pembroke in broken accents, "how my poor girl suffers. There, there, Clara, better get back to your bed and try to sleep. I thought Louise was looking after you."

"She has been with me," replied Clara, "but I sent her away. I wanted to think. Has nothing been heard from Ivan?"

"Nothing yet, my dear. You shall know it as soon as we do even if it comes at three in the morning."

Attracted by her cousin's voice, Louise appeared at this moment and led Clara upstairs, scolding her gently for having left her room. Clara was greatly subdued, and urged no longer to be left alone. Through the rest of the evening she sat quietly listening to Louise, and feeling no return of that tensity of the nerves that had preceded and accompanied her waking dream.

In the morning she was better, stronger in every way. She met her uncle and cousin at breakfast, and although she was very quiet she seemed more like her natural self than they had expected. Every newspaper had something to say about the disappearance of Ivan Strobel, and the reporters, apparently, had interviewed everybody directly interested in him except the unhappy bride herself. The newspapers were in a pile by her uncle's plate when she surprised him by entering the room and taking her place at the table.

"I'd like to see the papers, uncle," she said after responding to his greetings.

Mr. Pembroke glanced nervously at his daughter, and laid his hand irresolutely on the pile.

"I am afraid you won't find anything of comfort in them, my dear," he said.

"No matter," she replied, "I don't expect to. Don't try to keep them from me. I shall get them later if I do not read them now."

Mr. Pembroke passed them all to her except one which he opened and pretended to read himself. He had already been through it, and he did not intend, if he could help it, that she should see it.

Clara intently read the account of the interrupted wedding in the first paper she took up, pausing only once to exclaim, "Then the reporters were here last evening!"

"Yes," said Mr. Pembroke, "they were coming and going until long after midnight."

"I almost wish I could have seen some of them," murmured Clara as she continued to read. The report told with fair accuracy about the break-down at Park and Tremont Streets and the explanation of it given by the stableman. Mrs. White was quoted, and as much as the reporter could imagine was made of the visit to Strobel by the mysterious stranger. Then there were interviews with the missing man's employers, State Street bankers, and the highly gratifying intelligence was set forth that there was no reason to suppose that Strobel had tampered with the funds or in any way betrayed his trust. Clara blushed with indignation as she read that the books would be examined in the morning, with a view to discovering whether Strobel had been guilty of any irregularities.

"The idea that Ivan should be suspected of dishonesty!" exclaimed Clara, laying the paper down and taking up another.

"People will think anything and everything," said her uncle, "and you must be prepared for the worst insinuations and speculations."

Clara read the next account in silence. It was much longer than the first, and a great deal of attention and imagination had been devoted to the romantic aspect of the situation. Clara was described as utterly prostrated by the blow, dangerously ill, refusing to see her most intimate friends; and the intended union of the beautiful orphan with the Russian exile was dwelt upon with appropriate grace and picturesqueness. She blushed for herself this time and laid the paper down impatiently.

"I shall show them," she said, "if they pay any further attention to the affair, that I am not prostrated by the blow, hard as it is."

"What do you mean, Clara?" asked Mr. Pembroke and Louise together.

"Just what I said last evening, uncle. I am going to find Ivan."

"Why! dear, what can you do?" cried Louise, pityingly.

"Do? I don't know yet what the details will be, but I can search for him. What better, what else could I do? If we had been married, and Ivan had disappeared, would it not be my duty as well as my inclination to turn the world upside down to find him? Should it make any difference just because the formal word had not been spoken that was to make us husband and wife?"

Her voice trembled a little at the end of this brief speech, and her eyes were moist, but she took up a third paper resolutely and began to read. She had debated her situation thoroughly in the long hours of the previous day and evening, and her determination to devote herself to the search for her lover was not the effect of a temporary hallucination. Her uncle and cousin said nothing for the present either to dissuade or encourage her, Louise, at least, feeling that in due time Clara would see the futility of attempting anything on her own account as long as experienced detectives were in the field. Mr. Pembroke left the room for a moment, and when he returned the paper he had been reading was folded and hidden in his pocket. There was still another before Clara, and when she had read it she pushed them all away, saying:

"They're as much alike as if the same man had written them all."

Mr. Pembroke was relieved that she did not notice that one of the morning papers was not included in the lot she had read.

Hardly had they finished breakfast when the bell rang, and a reporter for an evening paper inquired for news of Mr. Strobel and Miss Hilman's health. Mr. Pembroke frowned with annoyance, but Clara was for seeing the young man.

"I don't want to be pictured as a useless, waiting, tear-drenched weakling!" she cried when uncle and cousin remonstrated. "Publicity? notoriety? what could be worse than the notoriety I have already acquired? Let me see him, please, so that he may have no excuse for describing me as a broken-down, useless incumbrance."

"I will speak to him first," said Mr. Pembroke, hastily. "Wait here a minute. I'll send for you when I have heard what it is he wants."

So Clara and Louise remained at the breakfast table, and a few minutes later Mr. Pembroke opened the door and said with an assumption of cheerfulness:

"There! you see, sir, the young lady is bearing her trouble more bravely than the morning papers announced. This is Miss Hilman, Mr. Shaughnessy, and my daughter, Louise."

Mr. Shaughnessy, thus introduced, entered the room bowing with old-fashioned extravagance. His head was bald as an egg, and his face was three-fourths concealed by a grizzly beard. The "young man" could no longer look forward to his sixtieth birthday. He wore gold-bowed eyeglasses, and in one hand he held hat and note-book and in the other a stub of a pencil.

"Char-r-med, ladies," he said, "to see you looking so fine upon this gr-rievous occasion. May I ask, Miss Hilman, how you passed the night?"

What with surprise at her uncle's maneuver in bringing the reporter to the breakfast room, and amusement at the courtly yet business-like manners of the "young man," Clara could not have repressed a smile if she had tried; and before she could reply, Mr. Shaughnessy had whipped his note-book to the top of his hat and written the significant mnemonic, "smile."

"I slept quite as usual, thank you," replied Clara.

"I am delighted to hear it," said Shaughnessy; "health, Miss Hilman, is the greatest pr-rop in time of trouble. Have you any obser-rvation to make upon Mr. Strobel's absence? Any theor-ry to account for it?"

"No theory, Mr. Shaughnessy, though I hope to have one some time later in the day. I should like to have you tell your readers that I have absolute faith in Mr. Strobel, and that I expect any theory as to his disappearance to accord with honorable conduct on his part."

"Yes, yes," said the reporter, scribbling away for dear life, that he might not lose a word of this important utterance. "Do I understand you to say that you expect to have news of your – Mr. Strobel before the day is over?"

"I shall devote all my time to searching for him."

"Clara!" exclaimed Louise, while Mr. Pembroke turned away with a despairing shrug.

Shaughnessy looked doubtingly at Mr. Pembroke, and then said:

"May I have the honor of calling on you later, then?"

"I shall be glad at any time," replied Clara, "to give you any information in my power."

Shaughnessy made a note.

"I hope you will pardon me seeming imper-rtinence, Miss Hilman," he continued, "but me city editor commanded me to obtain photographs of yourself and Mr. Strobel."

Louise sighed and looked genuinely alarmed; but Clara thought a moment, and answered that she would loan the reporter pictures if he would be sure to return them uninjured.

"I shall be sure to do so," he answered, "and I commend your decision. It saves me a lot of trouble, for, of course, I must obey me city editor; he's a tyrant, Miss Hilman, and if you did not give me the pictures, I should have to get them elsewhere."

Clara smiled as she left the room to get the photographs, and when she had given them to Shaughnessy he took his departure, promising to call again.

"How could you give him the pictures, Clara?" asked Louise reproachfully.

"Mine will do no harm," answered Clara, quietly; "didn't you hear him say he was bound to get it anyway? Moreover, it may help in discovering Ivan, if only they will print a good likeness of him."

Clara was right in one respect at least. Nearly every evening paper published pictures of herself and Ivan, and nobody at the Pembroke house could have told where the originals were obtained.

"Now I must keep my word and begin the search," said Clara after the reporter had gone.

"You're not going to leave the house, I hope?" exclaimed her uncle.

"Certainly, uncle," she replied; "I feel quite well, and I will not overtax myself. I can stand anything better than staying idle here."

"I am strongly disposed to forbid you," said Mr. Pembroke, anxiously; "you are sure to have a most disagreeable and painful experience."

"Please don't go!" cried Louise, who had read the paper that Mr. Pembroke had concealed.

"I am sorry to displease you both," returned Clara, "but if I am forbidden to go I shall have to disobey."

"Then Louise must go with you," said her uncle.

"I should like to have her. Will you, Lou, dear?"

Louise was only too anxious to accompany her cousin, and accordingly they left the house together just in time to escape a squad of reporters representing the other evening papers. Clara had arranged her programme the night before, and left word at the house for Ralph and Paul, should they come in her absence, to go to Ivan's room. Mrs. White had seen Clara on the few occasions when Mr. Strobel had served afternoon tea to his intended and other friends, and she fell into a great flurry of agitation when she recognized her at the door.

"Come in," she stammered as she led the way; "of course I am glad to see you, for I am certain you cannot believe it."

Louise tried to check the landlady from making the inevitable revelation, but Clara laid one hand on her cousin's arm and asked:

"Believe what, Mrs. White?"'

"Why, what's in the paper," replied the landlady; "you've read the papers, I suppose? I presumed that was why you came."

"I read the papers," said Clara, "and I came to inquire about Ivan. Do you refer to the suggested irregularities in his accounts? Of course I do not believe anything of that kind."

"Dear, no! I didn't suppose you did. I meant about my daughter Lizzie."

"Your daughter!" exclaimed Clara in a low voice, while Louise hid her face in her hands. "What do you mean? Let me see the paper."

More agitated than ever, Mrs. White produced a copy of the paper that Mr. Pembroke had withheld from his niece.

"I must have overlooked this," said Clara, wonderingly, as she saw that the account differed in style from those she had read. The reporter of this paper, sharper than his rivals, had somehow discovered that Lizzie White had left her home, and he set forth the circumstances with every delicate turn that language would allow to suggest a connection between her flight and Ivan's disappearance.

"It is shrewdly suspected by the friends of Strobel," so the story ran, "that as the time of his marriage approached, he found his fancy for Miss White stronger than his love for Miss Hilman, and that he chose elopement with the former as less dishonorable than marriage with the latter."

The writer then proceeded to an elaborate explanation of how Strobel might himself have arranged the wheel of his coupé so that it would fall off, and how he might then, by previous understanding with the second cabman, who was also conveniently missing, have been driven to the Park Square railroad station, where he waited for Miss White. It was entirely possible that they might have taken the one o'clock train for New York, if not the noon train.

Clara was very pale when she laid the paper down, but her faith in Ivan was not so much as touched by doubt.

"It's an outrage," she said quietly.

"I knew you wouldn't believe it!" exclaimed Mrs. White.

"Believe it! of course it isn't true! It's not possible!"

There was a ring at the door just then, and Mrs. White excused herself to answer it.

She opened upon Ivan's mysterious visitor, Alexander Poubalov.