Читать книгу Dangerous Ground: or, The Rival Detectives - Lynch Lawrence L. - Страница 13

Pretty, piquant Winnifred French was the staunch friend of Leslie Warburton.

When Winnie was the petted only daughter of “French, the rich merchant,” she and Leslie Uliman had been firm friends. When Leslie Uliman, the adopted daughter of the aristocratic Uliman’s, gave her hand in marriage to Archibald Warburton, a wealthy invalid and a widower with one child, Winnie was her first bridesmaid.

Time had swept away the fortune of French, the merchant, and death had robbed Leslie of her adopted parents, and then Winnifred French gladly accepted the position of salaried companion to her dearest friend.

Not long after, Alan Warburton had returned from abroad, and then had begun a queer complication.

For some reason known only to himself, Alan Warburton had chosen to dislike his beautiful sister-in-law, and he had conceived a violent admiration for Winnie, – an admiration which might have been returned, perhaps, had Winnie been less loyal in her friendship for Leslie. But, perceiving Alan’s dislike for her dearest friend, Winnie lost no opportunity for annoying him, and lavishing upon him her stinging sarcasms.

On her part, Leslie Warburton loved her companion with a strong sisterly affection. As for her feelings toward Alan Warburton, it would have been impossible to guess, from her manner, whether he was to her an object of love, hatred, or simple indifference.

When Winnie and Alan turned their backs upon the scene in the anteroom, and entered the dancing hall, the girl was in a particularly perverse mood.

“I shall not dance,” she said petulantly. “It’s too early and too warm,” and she entered a flowery alcove, and seated herself upon a couch overhung with vines.

“May I sit down, Winnie?”

“No.”

“Just for a moment’s chat.” And he seated himself as calmly as if he had received a gracious permission.

“You are angry with me again, Winnie. Is my sister-in-law always to come between us?”

She turned and her blue eyes flashed upon him.

“Once and for all,” she said sharply, “tell me why you hate Leslie so?”

“Tell me why she has poisoned your mind against me?” he retorted.

“She! Leslie Warburton! This goes beyond a joke, sir. Leslie Warburton is what Leslie Uliman was, a lady, in thought, word, and deed. Oh, I can read you, sir! Her crime, in your eyes, is that she has married your brother. Is she not a good and faithful wife; a tender, loving mother to little Daisy? You have hinted that she does not love her husband – by what right do you make the assertion? You believe that she has married for money, – at least these are fashionable sins! Humph! In all probability I shall marry for money myself.”

“Winnifred!”

“I shall; I am sure of it. It’s an admirable feature of our best society. If we are heiresses, we are surrounded with lovers who are fascinated by our bank account. If we are poor, we are all in search of a bank account; and many of us have to do some sharp angling.”

“My sister-in-law angled very successfully.”

“So she did, if you will put it so. And she did not land her last chance; she might have married as wealthy a man as Mr. Warburton, or as handsome a man as his brother. But then,” with a provoking little gesture of disdain, “Leslie and I never did admire handsome men.”

There was just a shade of annoyance in the voice that answered her:

“Pray go on, Miss French; doubtless yourself and Mrs. Warburton have other tastes in common.”

“So we have,” retorted the girl, rising and standing directly before him, “but I won’t favor you with a list of them. You don’t like Leslie, and I do; but let me tell you, Mr. Alan Warburton, if the day ever comes when you know Leslie Warburton as I know her, you will go down into the dust, ashamed that you have so misjudged, so wronged, so slandered one who is as high as the stars above you. And now I am going to join the dancers; you can come – or stay.”

The last words were flung at him over her shoulder, and before he could rise to follow, she had vanished in the throng that was surging to and fro without the alcove.

He starts forward as if about to pursue her, and then sinks back upon the couch.

“I won’t be a greater fool than nature made me,” he mutters in scornful self-contempt. “If I go, she’ll flirt outrageously under my very nose; if I stay – she’ll flirt all the same, of course. Ah! if a man would have a foretaste of purgatory let him live under the same roof with the woman he loves and the woman he hates!”

A shadow comes between his vision and the gleam of light from without, and, lifting his eyes, he encounters two steady orbs gazing out from behind a yellow mask.

“Ah!” He half rises again, then sinks back and motions the mask to the seat beside him.

“I recognize your costume,” he says, as the British officer seats himself. “How long since you came?”

“Only a few moments. I have been waiting for your interview with the lady to end.”

“Ah!” with an air of abstraction; then, recalling himself: “Do you know the nature of the work required of you?”

Under his mask, Van Vernet’s face flamed and he bit his lip with vexation. This man in black and scarlet, this aristocrat, addressed him, not as one man to another, but loftily as a king to a subject. But there was no sign of annoyance in his voice as he replied:

“Um – I suppose so. Delicate bit of a shadowing, I was told; no particulars given.”

“There need be no particulars. I will point you out the person to be shadowed. I want you to see her, and be yourself unseen. You are simply to discover, – find out where she goes, who she sees, what she does. Don’t disturb yourself about motives; I only want the facts.”

“Ah!” thought Van Vernet; “it’s a she, then.” Aloud, he said: “You have not given the lady’s name?”

“You would find it out, of course?”

“Of course; necessarily.”

“The lady is my – is Mrs. Warburton, the mistress of the house.”

“Ah!” thought the detective; “the old Turk wants me to shadow his wife!”

By a very natural blunder he had fancied himself in communication with Archibald, instead of Alan, Warburton.

“Have you any suspicions? Can you give me any hint upon which to act?” he asked.

“I might say this much,” ventured Alan, after a moment’s hesitation: “The lady has made, I believe, a mercenary marriage and she is hiding something from her husband and friends.”

“I see,” said Vernet. And then, laughing inwardly, he thought: “A case of jealousy!”

In a few words Alan Warburton described to Vernet the “Sunlight,” costume worn by Leslie, and then they separated, Vernet going, not in search of “Sunlight,” but of the Goddess of Liberty.

What he found was this:

In the almost deserted music room stood the Goddess of Liberty, gazing down into the face of a woman in the robes of Sunlight, and both of them engaged in earnest conversation.

He watched them until he saw the Goddess lift the hand of Sunlight with a gesture of graceful reverence, bow over it, and turn away. Then he went back to the place where he had left his patron. He found the object of his quest still seated in the alcove, alone and absorbed in thought.

“I beg your pardon for intruding upon your solitude,” began the detective hastily, at the same time seating himself close beside Alan; “but there is a lady here whose conduct is, to say the least, mysterious. As a detective, it becomes my duty to look after her a little, to see that she does not leave this house until I can follow her.”

“Well?” with marked indifference in his tone.

“If she could be detained,” went on Vernet, “by – say, by keeping some one constantly beside her, so that she cannot leave the house without being observed – ”

Alan Warburton threw back his head.

“Pardon me,” he said, “but I object to thus persecuting a lady, and a guest.”

“But if I tell you that this lady is a man in silken petticoats?”

“What!”

“And that he seems on very free and friendly terms with your wife.”

“With my wi – ”

Alan Warburton stopped short and looked sharply at the eyes gazing out from behind the yellow mask.

Did this detective think himself conversing with Archibald? If so – well, what then? He shrank from anything like familiarity with this man before him. Why not leave the mistake as it stood? There could be no harm in it, and he, Alan, would thus be free from future annoyance.

“I will not remove my mask,” thought Alan. “He is not likely to see Archibald, and no harm can come of it. In fact it will be better so. It would seem more natural for him to be investigating his wife’s secrets than for me.”

So the mistake was not corrected – the mistake that was almost providential for Alan Warburton, but that proved a very false move in the game that Van Vernet was about to play.

There was but one flaw in the plan of the proposed incognito.

Alan’s voice was a peculiarly mellow tenor, and Van Vernet never forgot a voice once heard.

“Did you say that this disguised person knows – Mrs. Warburton?”

“I did.”

“Who is the fellow, and what disguise does he wear?”

“I am unable to give his name. He is costumed as the Goddess of Liberty.”

“Oh!”

Van Vernet had his own reasons for withholding Richard Stanhope’s name.

“So!” he thought, while he waited for Alan’s next words. “I’ll spoil your plans for this night, Dick Stanhope! I wonder how our Chief will like to hear that ‘Stanhope the reliable,’ neglects his duty to go masquerading in petticoats, the better to make love to another man’s wife.”

For Van Vernet, judging Stanhope as a man of the world judges men, had leaped to the hasty, but natural, conclusion, that his masquerade in the garb of the mother of his country, was in the character of a lover.

“Vernet,” said Alan at last, “you are a clever fellow! Let me see; there are half a dozen young men here who are ripe for novelty – set the whisper afloat that behind that blue and white mask is concealed a beautiful and mysterious intruder, and they will hang like leeches about her, hoping to discover her identity, or see her unmask.”

“It’s a capital plan!” cried Vernet, “and it can’t be put into execution too soon.”