"Yes, sir," said the old man, with pride and affection, "them books is my chief amusement. Sir Walter Scott's works; I've read 'em over again and again, every one of 'em, though I must confess there's two or three that's pretty rough travellin'. But the others!—well, I've tried a good many authors, but gimme Scott. Take his characters! There's stacks of novels comes out nowadays that call themselves historical; but the people in 'em seems like they was cut out o' pasteboard; a bit o' wind would blow 'em away. But look at the body to Scott's people! They're all the way round, and clear through, his characters are.—Of course, I'm no literary man, gentlemen. I only give my own small opinion." Mr. Bud's manner, on his suddenly considering his audience, had fallen from its bold enthusiasm.

"Your small opinion is quite right," said Davenport. "There's no doubt about the thoroughness and consistency of Scott's characters." He took one of the books, and turned over the leaves, while Mr. Bud looked on with brightened eyes. "Andrew Fairservice—there's a character. 'Gude e'en—gude e'en t' ye'—how patronizing his first salutation! 'She's a wild slip, that'—there you have Diana Vernon sketched by the old servant in a touch. And what a scene this is, where Diana rides with Frank to the hilltop, shows him Scotland, and advises him to fly across the border as fast as he can."

"Yes, and the scene in the Tolbooth where Rob Roy gives Bailie Nicol Jarvie them three sufficient reasons fur not betrayin' him." The old man grinned. He seemed to be at his happiest in praising, and finding another to praise, his favorite author.

"Interesting old illustrations these are," said Davenport, taking up another volume. "Dryburgh Abbey—that's how it looks on a gray day. I was lucky enough to see it in the sunshine; it's loveliest then."

"What?" exclaimed Mr. Bud. "You been to Dryburgh Abbey?—to Scott's grave?"

"Oh, yes," said Davenport, smiling at the old man's joyous wonder, which was about the same as he might have shown upon meeting somebody who had been to fairy-land, or heaven, or some other place equally far from New York.

"You don't say! Well, to think of it! I am happy to meet you. By George, I never expected to get so close to Sir Walter Scott! And maybe you've seen Abbotsford?"

"Oh, certainly. And Scott's Edinburgh house in Castle Street, and the house in George Square where he lived as a boy and met Burns."

Mr. Bud's excitement was great. "Maybe you've seen Holyrood Palace, and High Street—"

"Why, of course. And the Canongate, and the Parliament House, and the Castle, and the Grass-market, and all the rest. It's very easy; thousands of Americans go there every year. Why don't you run over next summer?"

The old man shook his head. "That's all too fur away from home fur me. The women are afraid o' the water, and they'd never let me go alone. I kind o' just drifted into this New York business, but if I undertook to go across the ocean, that would be the last straw. And I'm afraid I couldn't get on to the manners and customs over there. They say everything's different from here. To tell the truth, I'm timid where I don't know the ways. If I was like you—I shouldn't wonder if you'd been to some of the other places where things happen in his novels?"

With a smile, Davenport began to enumerate and describe. The old man sat enraptured. The whisky and seltzer came up, and the host saw that the glasses were filled and refilled, but he kept Davenport to the same subject. Larcher felt himself quite out of the talk, but found compensation in the whisky and in watching the old man's greedy enjoyment of Davenport's every word. The afternoon waned, and all opportunity of making the intended sketches passed for that day. Mr. Bud was for lighting up, or inviting the young men to dinner, but they found pretexts for tearing themselves away. They did not go, however, until Davenport had arranged to come the next day and perform his neglected task. Mr. Bud accompanied them out, and stood on the corner looking after them until they were out of sight.

"You've made a hit with the agriculturist," said Larcher, as they took their way through a narrow street of old warehouses toward the region of skyscrapers and lower Broadway.

"Scott is evidently his hobby," replied Davenport, with a careless smile, "and I liked to please him in it."

He lapsed into that reticence which, as it was his manner during most of the time, made his strange seasons of communicativeness the more remarkable. A few days passed before another such talkative mood came on in Larcher's presence.

It was a drizzling, cheerless night. Larcher had been to a dinner in Madison Avenue, and he thus found himself not far from Davenport's abode. Going thither upon an impulse, he beheld the artist seated at the table, leaning forward over a confusion of old books, some of them open. He looked pallid in the light of the reading lamp at his elbow, and his eyes seemed withdrawn deep into their hollows. He welcomed his visitor with conventional politeness.

"How's this?" began Larcher. "Do I find you pondering,

'... weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore?'"

"No; merely rambling over familiar fields." Davenport held out the topmost book.

"Oh, Shakespeare," laughed Larcher. "The Sonnets. Hello, you've marked part of this."

"Little need to mark anything so famous. But it comes closer to me than to most men, I fancy." And he recited slowly, without looking down at the page:

'When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate,'—

He stopped, whereupon Larcher, not to be behind, and also without having recourse to the page, went on:

'Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possest, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,'—

"But I think that hits all men," said Larcher, interrupting himself. "Everybody has wished himself in somebody else's shoes, now and again, don't you believe?"

"I have certainly wished myself out of my own shoes," replied Davenport, almost with vehemence. "I have hated myself and my failures, God knows! I have wished hard enough that I were not I. But I haven't wished I were any other person now existing. I wouldn't change selves with this particular man, or that particular man. It wouldn't be enough to throw off the burden of my memories, with their clogging effect upon my life and conduct, and take up the burden of some other man's—though I should be the gainer even by that, in a thousand cases I could name."

"Oh, I don't exactly mean changing with somebody else," said Larcher. "We all prefer to remain ourselves, with our own tastes, I suppose. But we often wish our lot was like somebody else's."

Davenport shook his head. "I don't prefer to remain myself, any more than to be some man whom I know or have heard of. I am tired of myself; weary and sick of Murray Davenport. To be a new man, of my own imagining—that would be something;—to begin afresh, with an unencumbered personality of my own choosing; to awake some morning and find that I was not Murray Davenport nor any man now living that I know of, but a different self, formed according to ideals of my own. There would be a liberation!"

"Well," said Larcher, "if a man can't change to another self, he can at least change his place and his way of life."

"But the old self is always there, casting its shadow on the new place. And even change of scene and habits is next to impossible without money."

"I must admit that New York, and my present way of life, are good enough for me just now," said Larcher.

Davenport's only reply was a short laugh.

"Suppose you had the money, and could live as you liked, where would you go?" demanded Larcher, slightly nettled.

"I would live a varied life. Probably it would have four phases, generally speaking, of unequal duration and no fixed order. For one phase, the chief scene would be a small secluded country-house in an old walled garden. There would be the home of my books, and the centre of my walks over moors and hills. From this, I would transport myself, when the mood came, to the intellectual society of some large city—that of London would be most to my choice. Mind you, I say the intellectual society; a far different thing from the Society that spells itself with a capital S."

"Why not of New York? There's intellectual society here."

"Yes; a trifle fussy and self-conscious, though. I should prefer a society more reposeful. From this, again, I would go to the life of the streets and byways of the city. And then, for the fourth phase, to the direct contemplation of art—music, architecture, sculpture, painting;—to haunting the great galleries, especially of Italy, studying and copying the old masters. I have no desire to originate. I should be satisfied, in the arts, rather to receive than to give; to be audience and spectator; to contemplate and admire."

"Well, I hope you may have your wish yet," was all that Larcher could say.

"I should like to have just one whack at life before I finish," replied Davenport, gazing thoughtfully into the shadow beyond the lamplight. "Just one taste of comparative happiness."

"Haven't you ever had even one?"

"I thought I had, for a brief season, but I was deceived." (Larcher remembered the talk of an inconstant woman.) "No, I have never been anything like happy. My father was a cold man who chilled all around him. He died when I was a boy, and left my mother and me to poverty. My mother loved me well enough; she taught me music, encouraged my studies, and persuaded a distant relation to send me to the College of Medicine and Surgery; but her life was darkened by grief, and the darkness fell over me, too. When she died, my relation dropped me, and I undertook to make a living in New York. There was first the struggle for existence, then the sickening affair of that play; afterward, misfortune enough to fill a dozen biographies, the fatal reputation of ill luck, the brief dream of consolation in the love of woman, the awakening,—and the rest of it."

He sighed wearily and turned, as if for relief from a bitter theme, to the book in his hand. He read aloud, from the sonnet out of which they had already been quoting:

'Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising— Haply I think on thee; and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate; For thy sweet love—'

He broke off, and closed the book. "'For thy sweet love,'" he repeated. "You see even this unhappy poet had his solace. I used to read those lines and flatter myself they expressed my situation. There was a silly song, too, that she pretended to like. You know it, of course,—a little poem of Frank L. Stanton's." He went to the piano, and sang softly, in a light baritone:

'Sometimes, dearest, the world goes wrong, For God gives grief with the gift of song, And poverty, too; but your love is more—'

Again he stopped short, and with a derisive laugh. "What an ass I was! As if any happiness that came to Murray Davenport could be real or lasting!"

"Oh, never be disheartened," said Larcher. "Your time is to come; you'll have your 'whack at life' yet."

"It would be acceptable, if only to feel that I had realized one or two of the dreams of youth—the dreams an unhappy lad consoled himself with."

"What were they?" inquired Larcher.

"What were they not, that is fine and pleasant? I had my share of diverse ambitions, or diverse hopes, at least. You know the old Lapland song, in Longfellow:

'For a boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'"



CHAPTER VI.

THE NAME OF ONE TURL COMES UP

A month passed. All the work in which Larcher had enlisted Davenport's cooperation was done. Larcher would have projected more, but the artist could not be pinned down to any definite engagement. He was non-committal, with the evasiveness of apathy. He seemed not to care any longer about anything. More than ever he appeared to go about in a dream. Larcher might have suspected some drug-taking habit, but for having observed the man so constantly, at such different hours, and often with so little warning, as to be convinced to the contrary.

One cold, clear November night, when the tingle of the air, and the beauty of the moonlight, should have aroused any healthy being to a sense of life's joy in the matchless late autumn of New York, Larcher met his friend on Broadway. Davenport was apparently as much absorbed in his inner contemplations, or as nearly void of any contemplation whatever, as a man could be under the most stupefying influences. He politely stopped, however, when Larcher did.

"Where are you going?" the latter asked.

"Home," was the reply; thus amended the next instant: "To my room, that is."

"I'll walk with you, if you don't mind. I feel like stretching my legs."

"Glad to have you," said Davenport, indifferently. They turned from Broadway eastward into a cross-town street, high above the end of which rose the moon, lending romance and serenity to the house-fronts. Larcher called the artist's attention to it. Davenport replied by quoting, mechanically:

"'With how slow steps, O moon, thou clim'st the sky, How silently, and with how wan a face!'"

"I'm glad to see you out on so fine a night," pursued Larcher.

"I came out on business," said the other. "I got a request by telegraph from the benevolent Bagley to meet him at his rooms. He received a 'hurry call' to Chicago, and must take the first train; so he sent for me, to look after a few matters in his absence."

"I trust you'll find them interesting," said Larcher, comparing his own failure with Bagley's success in obtaining Davenport's services.

"Not in the slightest," replied Davenport.

"Then remunerative, at least."

"Not sufficiently to attract me," said the other.

"Then, if you'll pardon the remark, I really can't understand—"

"Mere force of habit," replied Davenport, listlessly. "When he summons, I attend. When he entrusts, I accept. I've done it so long, and so often, I can't break myself of the habit. That is, of course, I could if I chose, but it would require an effort, and efforts aren't worth while at this stage."

With little more talk, they arrived at the artist's house.

"If you talk of moonlight," said Davenport, in a manner of some kindliness, "you should see its effect on the back yards, from my windows. You know how half-hearted the few trees look in the daytime; but I don't think you've seen that view on a moonlight night. The yards, taken as a whole, have some semblance to a real garden. Will you come up?"

Larcher assented readily. A minute later, while his host was seeking matches, he looked down from the dark chamber, and saw that the transformation wrought in the rectangular space of back yards had not been exaggerated. The shrubbery by the fences might have sheltered fairies. The boughs of the trees, now leafless, gently stirred. Even the plain house-backs were clad in beauty.

When Larcher turned from the window, Davenport lighted the gas, but not his lamp; then drew from an inside pocket, and tossed on the table, something which Larcher took to be a stenographer's note-book, narrow, thick, and with stiff brown covers. Its unbound end was confined by a thin rubber band. Davenport opened a drawer of the table, and essayed to sweep the book thereinto by a careless push. The book went too far, struck the arm of a chair, flew open at the breaking of the overstretched rubber, fell on its side by the chair leg, and disclosed a pile of bank-notes. These, tightly flattened, were the sole contents of the covers. As Larcher's startled eyes rested upon them, he saw that the topmost bill was for five hundred dollars.

Davenport exhibited a momentary vexation, then picked up the bills, and laid them on the table in full view.

"Bagley's money," said he, sitting down before the table. "I'm to place it for him to-morrow. This sudden call to Chicago prevents his carrying out personally some plans he had formed. So he entrusts the business to the reliable Davenport."

"When I walked home with you, I had no idea I was in the company of so much money," said Larcher, who had taken a chair near his friend.

"I don't suppose there's another man in New York to-night with so much ready money on his person," said Davenport, smiling. "These are large bills, you know. Ironical, isn't it? Think of Murray Davenport walking about with twenty thousand dollars in his pocket."

"Twenty thousand! Why, that's just the amount you were—" Larcher checked himself.

"Yes," said Davenport, unmoved. "Just the amount of Bagley's wealth that morally belongs to me, not considering interest. I could use it, too, to very good advantage. With my skill in the art of frugal living, I could make it go far—exceedingly far. I could realize that plan of a congenial life, which I told you of one night here. There it is; here am I; and if right prevailed, it would be mine. Yet if I ventured to treat it as mine, I should land in a cell. Isn't it a silly world?"

He languidly replaced the bills between the notebook covers, and put them in the drawer. As he did so, his glance fell on a sheet of paper lying there. With a curious, half-mirthful expression on his face, he took this up, and handed it to Larcher, saying:

"You told me once you could judge character by handwriting. What do you make of this man's character?"

Larcher read the following note, which was written in a small, precise, round hand:

"MY DEAR DAVENPORT:—I will meet you at the place and time you suggest. We can then, I trust, come to a final settlement, and go our different ways. Till then I have no desire to see you; and afterward, still less. Yours truly,

"FRANCIS TURL."

"Francis Turl," repeated Larcher. "I never heard the name before."

"No, I suppose you never have," replied Davenport, dryly. "But what character would you infer from his penmanship?"

"Well,—I don't know." Put to the test, Larcher was at a loss. "An educated person, I should think; even scholarly, perhaps. Fastidious, steady, exact, reserved,—that's about all."

"Not very much," said Davenport, taking back the sheet. "You merely describe the handwriting itself. Your characterization, as far as it goes, would fit men who write very differently from this. It fits me, for instance, and yet look at my angular scrawl." He held up a specimen of his own irregular hand, beside the elegant penmanship of the note, and Larcher had to admit himself a humbug as a graphologist.

"But," he demanded, "did my description happen to fit that particular man—Francis Turl?"

"Oh, more or less," said Davenport, evasively, as if not inclined to give any information about that person. This apparent disinclination increased Larcher's hidden curiosity as to who Francis Turl might be, and why Davenport had never mentioned him before, and what might be between the two for settlement.

Davenport put Turl's writing back into the drawer, but continued to regard his own. "'A vile cramped hand,'" he quoted. "I hate it, as I have grown to hate everything that partakes of me, or proceeds from me. Sometimes I fancy that my abominable handwriting had as much to do with alienating a certain fair inconstant as the news of my reputed unluckiness. Both coming to her at once, the combined effect was too much."

"Why?—Did you break that news to her by letter?"

"That seems strange to you, perhaps. But you see, at first it didn't occur to me that I should have to break it to her at all. We met abroad; we were tourists whose paths happened to cross. Over there I almost forgot about the bad luck. It wasn't till both of us were back in New York, that I felt I should have to tell her, lest she might hear it first from somebody else. But I shied a little at the prospect, just enough to make me put the revelation off from day to day. The more I put it off, the more difficult it seemed—you know how the smallest matter, even the writing of an overdue letter, grows into a huge task that way. So this little ordeal got magnified for me, and all that winter I couldn't brace myself to go through it. In the spring, Bagley had use for me in his affairs, and he kept me busy night and day for two weeks. When I got free, I was surprised to find she had left town. I hadn't the least idea where she'd gone; till one day I received a letter from her. She wrote as if she thought I had known where she was; she reproached me with negligence, but was friendly nevertheless. I replied at once, clearing myself of the charge; and in that same letter I unburdened my soul of the bad luck secret. It was easier to write it than speak it."

"And what then?"

"Nothing. I never heard from her again."

"But your letter may have miscarried,—something of that sort."

"I made allowance for that, and wrote another letter, which I registered. She got that all right, for the receipt came back, signed by her father. But no answer ever came from her, and I was a bit too proud to continue a one-sided correspondence. So ended that chapter in the harrowing history of Murray Davenport.—She was a fine young woman, as the world judges; she reminded me, in some ways, of Scott's heroines."

"Ah! that's why you took kindly to the old fellow by the river. You remember his library—made up entirely of Scott?"

"Oh, that wasn't the reason. He interested me; or at least his way of living did."

"I wonder if he wasn't fabricating a little. These old fellows from the country like to make themselves amusing. They're not so guileless."

"I know that, but Mr. Bud is genuine. Since that day, he's been home in the country for three weeks, and now he's back in town again for a 'short spell,' as he calls it."

"You still keep in touch with him?" asked Larcher, in surprise.

"Oh, yes. He's been very hospitable—allowing me the use of his room to sketch in."

"Even during his absence?"

"Yes; why not? I made some drawings for him, of the view from his window. He's proud of them."

Something in Davenport's manner seemed to betray a wish for reticence on the subject of Mr. Bud, even a regret that it had been broached. This stopped Larcher's inquisition, though not his curiosity. He was silent for a moment; then rose, with the words:

"Well, I'm keeping you up. Many thanks for the sight of your moonlit garden. When shall I see you again?"

"Oh, run in any time. It isn't so far out of your way, even if you don't find me here."

"I'd like you to glance over the proofs of my Harlem Lane article. I shall have them day after to-morrow. Let's see—I'm engaged for that day. How will the next day suit you?"

"All right. Come the next day if you like."

"That'll be Friday. Say one o'clock, and we can go out and lunch together."

"Just as you please."

"One o'clock on Friday then. Good night!"

"Good night!"

At the door, Larcher turned for a moment in passing out, and saw Davenport standing by the table, looking after him. What was the inscrutable expression—half amusement, half friendliness and self-accusing regret—which faintly relieved for a moment the indifference of the man's face?



CHAPTER VII.

MYSTERY BEGINS

The discerning reader will perhaps think Mr. Thomas Larcher a very dull person in not having yet put this and that together and associated the love-affair of Murray Davenport with the "romance" of Miss Florence Kenby. One might suppose that Edna Hill's friendship for Miss Kenby, and her inquisitiveness regarding Davenport, formed a sufficient pair of connecting links. But the still more discerning reader will probably judge otherwise. For Miss Hill had many friends whom she brought to Larcher's notice, and Miss Kenby did not stand alone in his observation, as she necessarily does in this narrative. Larcher, too, was not as fully in possession of the circumstances as the reader. Nor, to him, were the circumstances isolated from the thousands of others that made up his life, as they are to the reader. Edna's allusion to Miss Kenby's "romance" had been cursory; Larcher understood only that she had given up a lover to please her father. Davenport's inconstant had abandoned him because he was unlucky; Larcher had always conceived her as such a woman, and so of a different type from that embodied in Miss Kenby. To be sure, he knew now that Davenport's fickle one had a father; but so had most young women. In short, the small connecting facts had no such significance in his mind, where they were not grouped away from other facts, as they must have in these pages, where their very presence together implies inter-relation.

In his reports to Edna, a certain delicacy had made him touch lightly upon the traces of Davenport's love-affair. He may, indeed, have guessed that those traces were what she was most desirous to hear of. But a certain manly allegiance to his sex kept him reticent on that point in spite of all her questions. He did not even say to what motive Davenport ascribed the false one's fickleness; nor what was Davenport's present opinion of her. "He was thrown over by some woman whose name he never mentions; since then he has steered clear of the sex," was what Larcher replied to Edna a hundred times, in a hundred different sets of phrases; and it was all he replied on the subject.

So matters stood until two days after the interview related in the previous chapter. At the end of that interview, Larcher had said that for the second day thereafter he was engaged; Hence he had appointed the third day for his next meeting with Davenport. The engagement for the second day was, to spend the afternoon with Edna Hill at a riding-school. Upon arriving at the flat where Edna lived under the mild protection of her easy-going aunt, he found Miss Kenby included in the arrangement. To this he did not object; Miss Kenby was kind as well as beautiful; and Larcher was not unwilling to show the tyrannical Edna that he could play the cavalier to one pretty girl as well as to another. He did not, however, manage to disturb her serenity at all during the afternoon. The three returned, very merry, to the flat, in a state of the utmost readiness for afternoon tea, for the day was cold and blowy. To make things pleasanter, Aunt Clara had finished her tea and was taking a nap. The three young people had the drawing-room, with its bright coal fire, to themselves.

Everything was trim and elegant in this flat. The clear-skinned maid who placed the tea things, and brought the muffins and cake, might have been transported that instant from Mayfair, on a magic carpet, so neat was her black dress, so spotless her white apron, cap, and cuffs, so clean her slender hands.

"What a sweet place you have, Edna," remarked Florence Kenby, looking around.

"So you've often said before, dear. And whenever you choose to make it sweeter, for good, you've only got to move in."

Florence laughed, but with something very like a sigh.

"What, are you willing to take boarders?" said Larcher. "If that's the case, put me down as the first applicant."

"Our capacity for 'paying guests' is strictly limited to one person, and no gentlemen need apply. Two lumps, Flo dear?"

"Yes, please.—If only your restrictions didn't keep out poor father—"

"If only your poor father would consider your happiness instead of his own selfish plans."

"Edna, dear! You mustn't."

"Why mustn't I?" replied Edna, pouring tea. "Truth's truth. He's your father, but I'm your friend, and you know in your heart which of us would do more for you. You know, and he knows, that you'd be happier, and have better health, if you came to live with us. If he really loves you, why doesn't he let you come? He could see you often enough. But I know the reason; he's afraid you'd get out of his control; he has his own projects. You needn't mind my saying this before Tom Larcher; he read your father like a book the first time he ever met him."

Larcher, in the act of swallowing some buttered muffin, instantly looked very wise and penetrative.

"I should think your father himself would be happier," said he, "if he lived less privately and had more of men's society."

"He's often in poor health," replied Florence.

"In that case, there are plenty of places, half hotel, half sanatorium, where the life is as luxurious as can be."

"I couldn't think of deserting him. Even if he—weren't altogether unselfish about me, there would always be my promise."

"What does that matter—such a promise?" inquired Edna, between sips of tea.

"You would make one think you were perfectly unscrupulous, dear," said Florence, smiling. "But you know as well as I, that a promise is sacred."

"Not all promises. Are they, Tommy?"

"No, not all," replied Larcher. "It's like this: When you make a bad promise, you inaugurate a wrong. As long as you keep that promise, you perpetuate that wrong. The only way to end the wrong, is to break the promise."

"Bravo, Tommy! You can't get over logic like that, Florence, dear, and your promise did inaugurate a wrong—a wrong against yourself."

"Well, then, it's allowable to wrong oneself," said Florence.

"But not one's friends—one's true, disinterested friends. And as for that other promise of yours—that fearful promise!—you can't deny you wronged somebody by that; somebody you had no right to wrong."

"It was a choice between him and my father," replied Florence, in a low voice, and turning very red.

"Very well; which deserved to be sacrificed?" cried Edna, her eyes and tone showing that the subject was a heating one. "Which was likely to suffer more by the sacrifice? You know perfectly well fathers don't die in those cases, and consequently your father's hysterics must have been put on for effect. Oh, don't tell me!—it makes me wild to think of it! Your father would have been all right in a week; whereas the other man's whole life is darkened."

"Don't say that, dear," pleaded Florence, gently. "Men soon get over such things."

"Not so awfully soon;—not sincere men. Their views of life are changed, for all time. And this man seems to grow more and more melancholy, if what Tom says is true."

"What I say?" exclaimed Larcher.

The two girls looked at each other.

"Goodness! I have given it away!" cried Edna.

"More and more melancholy?" repeated Larcher. "Why, that must be Murray Davenport. Was he the—? Then you must be the—! But surely you wouldn't have given him up on account of the bad luck nonsense."

"Bad luck nonsense?" echoed Edna, while Miss Kenby looked bewildered.

"The silly idea of some foolish people, that he carried bad luck with him," Larcher explained, addressing Florence. "He sent you a letter about it."

"I never got any such letter from him," said Florence, in wonderment.

"Then you didn't know? And that had nothing to do with your giving him up?"

"Indeed it had not! Why, if I'd known about that—But the letter you speak of—when was it? I never had a letter from him after I left town. He didn't even answer when I told him we were going."

"Because he never heard you were going. He got a letter after you had gone, and then he wrote you about the bad luck nonsense. There must have been some strange defect in your mail arrangements."

"I always thought some letters must have gone astray and miscarried between us. I knew he couldn't be so negligent. I'd have taken pains to clear it up, if I hadn't promised my father just at that time—" She stopped, unable to control her voice longer. Her lips were quivering.

"Speaking of your father," said Larcher, "you must have got a subsequent letter from Davenport, because he sent it registered, and the receipt came back with your father's signature."

"No, I never got that, either," said Florence, before the inference struck her. When it did, she gazed from one to the other with a helpless, wounded look, and blushed as if the shame were her own.

Edna Hill's eyes blazed with indignation, then softened in pity for her friend. She turned to Larcher in a very calling-to-account manner.

"Why didn't you tell me all this before?"

"I didn't think it was necessary. And besides, he never told me about the letters till the night before last."

"And all this time that poor young man has thought Florence tossed him over because of some ridiculous notion about bad luck?"

"Well, more or less,—and the general fickleness of the sex."

"General fick—! And you, having seen Florence, let him go on thinking so?"

"But I didn't know Miss Kenby was the lady he meant. If you'd only told me it was for her you wanted news of him—"

"Stupid, you might have guessed! But I think it's about time he had some news of her. He ought to know she wasn't actuated by any such paltry, childish motive."

"By George, I agree with you!" cried Larcher, with a sudden energy. "If you could see the effect on the man, of that false impression, Miss Kenby! I don't mean to say that his state of mind is entirely due to that; he had causes enough before. But it needed only that to take away all consolation, to stagger his faith, to kill his interest in life."

"Has it made him so bitter?" asked Florence, sadly.

"I shouldn't call the effect bitterness. He has too lofty a mind for strong resentment. That false impression has only brought him to the last stage of indifference. I should say it was the finishing touch to making his life a wearisome drudgery, without motive or hope."

Florence sighed deeply.

"To think that he could believe such a thing of Florence," put in Edna. "I'm sure I couldn't. Could you, Tom?"

"When a man's in love, he doesn't see things in their true proportions," said Larcher, authoritatively. "He exaggerates both the favors and the rebuffs he gets, both the kindness and the coldness of the woman. If he thinks he's ill-treated, he measures the supposed cause by his sufferings. As they are so great, he thinks the woman's cruelty correspondingly great. Nobody will believe such good things of a woman as the man who loves her; but nobody will believe such bad things if matters go wrong."

"Dear, dear, Tommy! What a lot you know about it!"

But Miss Hill's momentary sarcasm went unheeded. "So I really think, Miss Kenby, if you'll pardon me," Larcher continued, "that Murray Davenport ought to know your true reason for giving him up. Even if matters never go any further, he ought to know that you still—h'm—feel an interest in him—still wish him well. I'm sure if he knew about your solicitude—how it was the cause of my looking him up—I can see through all that now—"

"I can never thank you enough—and Edna," said Florence, in a tremulous voice.

"No thanks are due me," replied Larcher, emphatically. "I value his acquaintance on its own account. But if he knew about this, knew your real motives then, and your real feelings now, even if he were never to see you again, the knowledge would have an immense effect on his life. I'm sure it would. It would restore his faith in you, in woman, in humanity. It would console him inexpressibly; would be infinitely sweet to him. It would change the color of his view of life; give him hope and strength; make a new man of him."

Florence's eyes glistened through her tears. "I should be so glad," she said, gently, "if—if only—you see, I promised not to hold any sort of communication with him."

"Oh, that promise!" cried Edna. "Just think how it was obtained. And think about those letters that were stopped. If that alone doesn't release you, I wonder what!"

Florence's face clouded with humiliation at the reminder.

"Moreover," said Larcher, "you won't be holding communication. The matter has come to my knowledge fairly enough, through Edna's lucky forgetfulness. I take it on myself to tell Davenport. I'm to meet him to-morrow, anyhow—it looks as though it had all been ordained. I really don't see how you can prevent me, Miss Kenby."

Florence's face threw off its cloud, and her conscience its scruples, and a look of gratitude and relief, almost of sudden happiness, appeared.

"You are so good, both of you. There's nothing in the world I'd rather have than to see him made happy."

"If you'd like to see it with your own eyes," said Larcher, "let me send him to you for the news."

"Oh, no! I don't mean that. He mustn't know where to find me. If he came to see me, I don't know what father would do. I've been so afraid of meeting him by chance; or of his finding out I was in New York."

Larcher understood now why Edna had prohibited his mentioning the Kenbys to anybody. "Well," said he, "in that case, Murray Davenport shall be made happy by me at about one o'clock to-morrow afternoon."

"And you shall come to tea afterward and tell us all about it," cried Edna. "Flo, you must be here for the news, if I have to go in a hansom and kidnap you." "I think I can come voluntarily," said Florence, smiling through her tears.

"And let's hope this is only the beginning of matters, in spite of any silly old promise obtained by false pretences! I say, we've let our tea get cold. I must have another cup." And Miss Hill rang for fresh hot water.

The rest of the afternoon in that drawing-room was all mirth and laughter; the innocent, sweet laughter of youth enlisted in the generous cause of love and truth against the old, old foes—mercenary design, false appearance, and mistaken duty.

Larcher had two reasons for not going to his friend before the time previously set for his call. In the first place he had already laid out his time up to that hour, and, secondly, he would not hazard the disappointment of arriving with his good news ready, and not finding his friend in. To be doubly sure, he telegraphed Davenport not to forget the appointment on any account, as he had an important disclosure to make. Full of his revelation, then, he rang the bell of his friend's lodging-house at precisely one o'clock the next day.

"I'll go right up to Mr. Davenport's room," he said to the negro boy at the door.

"All right, sir, but I don't think you'll find Mr. Davenport up there," replied the servant, glancing at a brown envelope on the hat-stand.

Larcher saw that it was addressed to Murray Davenport. "When did that telegram come?" he inquired.

"Last evening."

"It must be the one I sent. And he hasn't got it yet! Do you mean he hasn't been in?"

Heavy slippered footsteps in the rear of the hall announced the coming of somebody, who proved to be a rather fat woman in a soiled wrapper, with tousled light hair, flabby face, pale eyes, and a worried but kindly look. Larcher had seen her before; she was the landlady.

"Do you know anything about Mr. Davenport?" she asked, quickly.

"No, madam, except that I was to call on him here at one o'clock."

"Oh, then, he may be here to meet you. When did you make that engagement?"

"On Tuesday, when I was here last! Why?—What's the matter?"

"Tuesday? I was in hopes you might 'a' made it since. Mr. Davenport hasn't been home for two days!"

"Two days! Why, that's rather strange!"

"Yes, it is; because he never stayed away overnight without he either told me beforehand or sent me word. He was always so gentlemanly about saving me trouble or anxiety."

"And this time he said nothing about it?"

"Not a word. He went out day before yesterday at nine o'clock in the morning, and that's the last we've seen or heard of him. He didn't carry any grip, or have his trunk sent for; he took nothing but a parcel wrapped in brown paper."

"Well, I can't understand it. It's after one o'clock now—If he doesn't soon turn up—What do you think about it?"

"I don't know what to think about it. I'm afraid it's a case of mysterious disappearance—that's what I think!"



CHAPTER VIII.

MR. LARCHER INQUIRES

Larcher and the landlady stood gazing at each other in silence. Larcher spoke first.

"He's always prompt to the minute. He may be coming now."

The young man went out to the stoop and looked up and down the street. But no familiar figure was in sight. He turned back to the landlady.

"Perhaps he left a note for me on the table," said Larcher. "I have the freedom of his room, you know."

"Go up and see, then. I'll go with you."

The landlady, in climbing the stairs, used a haste very creditable in a person of her amplitude. Davenport's room appeared the same as ever. None of his belongings that were usually visible had been packed away or covered up. Books and manuscript lay on his table. But there was nothing addressed to Larcher or anybody else.

"It certainly looks as if he'd meant to come back soon," remarked the landlady.

"It certainly does." Larcher's puzzled eyes alighted on the table drawer. He gave an inward start, reminded of the money in Davenport's possession at their last meeting. Davenport had surely taken that money with him on leaving the house the next morning. Larcher opened his lips, but something checked him. He had come by the knowledge of that money in a way that seemed to warrant his ignoring it. Davenport had manifestly wished to keep it a secret. It was not yet time to tell everything.

"Of course," said Larcher, "he might have met with an accident."

"I've looked through the newspapers yesterday, and to-day, but there's nothing about him, or anybody like him. There was an unknown man knocked down by a street-car, but he was middle-aged, and had a black mustache."

"And you're positively sure Mr. Davenport would have let you know if he'd meant to stay away so long?"

"Yes, sir, I am. Especially that morning he'd have spoke of it, for he met me in the hall and paid me the next four weeks' room rent in advance."

"But that very fact looks as if he thought he mightn't see you for some time."

"No, because he's often done that. He'll come and say, 'I've got a little money ahead, Mrs. Haze, and I might as well make sure of a roof over me for another month.' He knew I gener'ly—had use for money whenever it happened along. He was a kind-hearted—I mean he is a kind-hearted man. Hear me speakin' of him as if—What's that?"

It was a man's step on the stairs. With a sudden gladness, Larcher turned to the door of the room. The two waited, with smiles ready. The step came almost to the threshold, receded along the passage, and mounted the flight above.

"It's Mr. Wigfall; he rooms higher up," said Mrs. Haze, in a dejected whisper.

The young man's heart sank; for some reason, at this disappointment, the hope of Davenport's return fled, the possibility of his disappearance became certainty. The dying footsteps left Larcher with a sense of chill and desertion; and he could see this feeling reflected in the face of the landlady.

"Do you think the matter had better be reported to the police?" said she, still in a lowered voice.

"I don't think so just yet. I can't say whether they'd send out a general alarm on my report. The request must come from a near relation, I believe. There have been hoaxes played, you know, and people frightened without sufficient cause."

"I never heard that Mr. Davenport had any relations. I guess they'd send out an alarm on my statement. A hard-workin' landlady ain't goin' to make a fuss and get her house into the papers just for fun."

"That's true. I'm sure they'd take your report seriously. But we'd better wait a little while yet. I'll stay here an hour or two, and then, if he hasn't appeared, I'll begin a quiet search myself. Use your own judgment, though; it's for you to see the police if you like. Only remember, if a fuss is made, and Mr. Davenport turns up all right with his own reasons for this, how we shall all feel."

"He'd be annoyed, I guess. Well, I'll wait till you say. You're the only friend that calls here regular to see him. Of course I know how a good many single men are,—that lives in rooms. They'll stay away for days at a time, and never notify anybody, and nobody thinks anything about it. But Mr. Davenport, as I told you, isn't like that. I'll wait, anyhow, till you think it's time. But you'll keep coming here, of course?"

"Yes, indeed, several times a day. He might turn up at any moment. I'll give him an hour and a half to keep this one o'clock engagement. Then, if he's still missing, I'll go to a place where there's a bare chance he might be. I've only just now thought of it."

The place he had thought of was the room of old Mr. Bud. Davenport had spoken of going there often to sketch. Such a queer, snug old place might have an attraction of its own for the man. There was, indeed, a chance—a bare chance—of his having, upon a whim, prolonged a stay in that place or its neighborhood. Or, at least, Mr. Bud might have later news of him than Mrs. Haze had.

That good woman went back to her work, and Larcher waited alone in the very chair where Davenport had sat at their last meeting. He recalled Davenport's odd look at parting, and wondered if it had meant anything in connection with this strange absence. And the money? The doubt and the solitude weighed heavily on Larcher's mind. And what should he say to the girls when he met them at tea?

At two o'clock his impatience got the better of him. He went down-stairs, and after a few words with Mrs. Haze, to whom he promised to return about four, he hastened away. He was no sooner seated in an elevated car, and out of sight of the lodging-house, than he began to imagine his friend had by that time arrived home. This feeling remained with him all the way down-town. When he left the train, he hurried to the house on the water-front. He dashed up the narrow stairs, and knocked at Mr. Bud's door. No answer coming, he knocked louder. It was so silent in the ill-lighted passage where he stood, that he fancied he could hear the thump of his heart. At last he tried the door; it was locked.

"Evidently nobody at home," said Larcher, and made his way down-stairs again. He went into the saloon, where he found the same barkeeper he had seen on his first visit to the place.

"I thought I might find a friend of mine here," he said, after ordering a drink. "Perhaps you remember—we were here together five or six weeks ago."

"I remember all right enough," said the bar-keeper. "He ain't here now."

"He's been here lately, though, hasn't he?"

"Depends on what yuh call lately. He was in here the other day with old man Bud."

"What day was that?"

"Let's see, I guess it was—naw, it was Monday, because it was the day before Mr. Bud went back to his chickens. He went home Toosdy, Bud did."

It was on Tuesday night that Larcher had last beheld Davenport. "And so you haven't seen my friend since Monday?" he asked, insistently.

"That's what I said."

"And you're sure Mr. Bud hasn't been here since Tuesday?"

"That's what I said."

"When is Mr. Bud coming back, do you know?"

"You can search me," was the barkeeper's subtle way of disavowing all knowledge of Mr. Bud's future intentions.

Back to the elevated railway, and so up-town, sped Larcher. The feeling that his friend must be now at home continued strong within him until he was again upon the steps of the lodging-house. Then it weakened somewhat. It died altogether at sight of the questioning eyes of the negro. The telegram was still on the hat-stand.

"Any news?" asked the landlady, appearing from the rear.

"No. I was hoping you might have some."

After saying he would return in the evening, he rushed off to keep his engagement for tea. He was late in arriving at the flat.

"Here he is!" cried Edna, eagerly. Her eyes sparkled; she was in high spirits. Florence, too, was smiling. The girls seemed to have been in great merriment, and in possession of some cause of felicitation as yet unknown to Larcher. He stood hesitating.

"Well? Well? Well?" said Edna. "How did he take it? Speak. Tell us your good news, and then we'll tell you ours." Florence only watched his face, but there was a more poignant inquiry in her silence than in her friend's noise.

"Well, the fact is," began Larcher, embarrassed, "I can't tell you any good news just yet. Davenport couldn't keep his engagement with me to-day, and I haven't been able to see him."

"Not able to see him?" Edna exclaimed, hotly. "Why didn't you go and find him? As if anything could be more important! That's the way with men—always afraid of intruding. Such a disappointment! Oh, what an unreliable, helpless, futile creature you are, Tom!"

Stung to self-defence, the helpless, futile creature replied:

"I wasn't at all afraid of intruding. I did go trying to find him; I've spent the afternoon doing that."

"A woman would have managed to find out where he was," retorted Edna.

"His landlady's a woman," rejoined Larcher, doggedly, "and she hasn't managed to find out."

"Has she been trying to?"

"Well—no," stammered Larcher, repenting.

"Yes, she has!" said Edna, with a changed manner. "But what for? Why is she concerned? There's something behind this, Tom—I can tell by your looks. Speak out, for heaven's sake! What's wrong?"

A glance at Florence Kenby's pale face did not make Larcher's task easier or pleasanter.

"I don't think there's anything seriously wrong. Davenport has been away from home for a day or two without saying anything about it to his landlady, as he usually does in such cases. That's all."

"And didn't he send you word about breaking the engagement with you?" persisted Edna.

"No. I suppose it slipped his mind."

"And neither you nor the landlady has any idea where he is?"

"Not when I saw her last—about half an hour ago."

"Well!" ejaculated Edna. "That is a mysterious disappearance!"

The landlady had used the same expression. Such was Larcher's mental observation in the moment's silence that followed,—a silence broken by a low cry from Florence Kenby.

"Oh, if anything has happened to him!"

The intensity of feeling in her voice and look was something for which Larcher had not been prepared. It struck him to the heart, and for a time he was without speech for a reassuring word. Edna, though manifestly awed by this first full revelation of her friend's concern for Davenport, undertook promptly the office of banishing the alarm she had helped to raise.

"Oh, don't be frightened, dear. There's nothing serious, after all. Men often go where business calls them, without accounting to anybody. He's quite able to take care of himself. I'm sure it isn't as bad as Tom says."

"As I say!" exclaimed Larcher. "I don't say it's bad at all. It's your own imagination, Edna,—your sudden and sensational imagination. There's no occasion for alarm, Miss Kenby. Men often, as Edna says—"

"But I must make sure," interrupted Florence. "If anything is wrong, we're losing time. He must be sought for—the police must be notified."

"His landlady—a very good woman, her name is Mrs. Haze—spoke of that, and she's the proper one to do it. But we decided, she and I, to wait awhile longer. You see, if the police took up the matter, and it got noised about, and Davenport reappeared in the natural order of things—as of course he will—why, how foolish we should all feel!"

"What do feelings of that sort matter, when deeper ones are concerned?"

"Nothing at all; but I'm thinking of Davenport's feelings. You know how he would hate that sort of publicity."

"That must be risked. It's a small thing compared with his safety. Oh, if you knew my anxiety!"

"I understand, Miss Kenby. I'll have Mrs. Haze go to police headquarters at once. I'll go with her. And then, if there's still no news, I'll go around to the—to other places where people inquire in such cases."

"And you'll let me know immediately—as soon as you find out anything?"

"Immediately. I'll telegraph. Where to? Your Fifth Avenue address?"

"Stay here to-night, Florence," put in Edna. "It will be all right, now."

"Very well. Thank you, dear. Then you can telegraph here, Mr. Larcher."

Her instant compliance with Edna's suggestion puzzled Larcher a little.

"She's had an understanding with her father," said Edna, having noted his look. "She's a bit more her own mistress to-day than she was yesterday."

"Yes," said Florence, "I—I had a talk with him—I spoke to him about those letters, and he finally—explained the matter. We settled many things. He released me from the promise we were talking about yesterday."

"Good! That's excellent news!"

"It's the news we had ready for you when you brought us such a disappointment," bemoaned Edna.

"It's news that will change the world for Davenport," replied Larcher. "I must find him now. If he only knew what was waiting for him, he wouldn't be long missing."

"It would be too cruel if any harm befell him"—Florence's voice quivered as she spoke—"at this time, of all times. It would be the crowning misfortune."

"I don't think destiny means to play any such vile trick, Miss Kenby."

"I don't see how Heaven could allow it," said Florence, earnestly.

"Well, he's simply got to be found. So I'm off to Mrs. Haze. I can go tea-less this time, thank you. Is there anything I can do for you on the way?"

"I'll have to send father a message about my staying here. If you would stop at a telegraph-office—"

"Oh, that's all right," broke in Edna. "There's a call-box down-stairs. I'll have the hall-boy attend to it. You mustn't lose a minute, Tom."

Miss Hill sped him on his way by going with him to the elevator. While they waited for that, she asked, cautiously:

"Is there anything about this affair that you were afraid to say before Florence?"

A thought of the twenty thousand dollars came into his head; but again he felt that the circumstance of the money was his friend's secret, and should be treated by him—for the present, at least—as non-existent.

"No," he replied. "I wouldn't call it a disappearance, if I were you. So far, it's just a non-appearance. We shall soon be laughing at ourselves, probably, for having been at all worked up over it.—She's a lovely girl, isn't she? I'm half in love with her myself."

"She's proof against your charms," said Edna, coolly.

"I know it. What a lot she must think of him! The possibility of harm brings out her feelings, I suppose. I wonder if you'd show such concern if I were missing?"

"I give it up. Here's the elevator. Good-by! And don't keep us in suspense. You're a dear boy! Au revoir!"

With the hope of Edna's approval to spur him, besides the more unselfish motives he already possessed, Larcher made haste upon the business. This time he tried to conquer the expectation of finding Davenport at home; yet it would struggle up as he approached the house of Mrs. Haze. The same deadening disappointment met him as before, however; and was mirrored in the landlady's face when she saw by his that he brought no news.

Mrs. Haze had come up from preparations for dinner. Hers was a house in which, the choice being "optional," sundry of the lodgers took their rooms "with board." Important as was her occupation, at the moment, of "helping out" the cook by inducing a mass of stale bread to fancy itself disguised as a pudding, she flung that occupation aside at once, and threw on her things to accompany Larcher to police headquarters. There she told all that was necessary, to an official at a desk,—a big, comfortable man with a plenitude of neck and mustache. This gentleman, after briefly questioning her and Larcher, and taking a few illegible notes, and setting a subordinate to looking through the latest entries in a large record, dismissed the subject by saying that whatever was proper to be done would be done. He had a blandly incredulous way with him, as if he doubted, not only that Murray Davenport was missing, but that any such person as Murray Davenport existed to be missing; as if he merely indulged his visitors in their delusion out of politeness; as if in any case the matter was of no earthly consequence. The subordinate reported that nothing in the record for the past two days showed any such man, or the body of any such man, to have come under the all-seeing eye of the police. Nevertheless, Mrs. Haze wanted the assurance that an investigation should be started forthwith. The big man reminded her that no dead body had been found, and repeated that all proper steps would be taken. With this grain of comfort as her sole satisfaction, she returned to her bread pudding, for which her boarders were by that time waiting.

When the big man had asked the question whether Davenport was accustomed to carry much money about with him, or was known to have had any considerable sum on his person when last seen, Larcher had silently allowed Mrs. Haze to answer. "Not as far as I know; I shouldn't think so," she had said. He felt that, as Davenport's absence was still so short, and might soon be ended and accounted for, the situation did not yet warrant the disclosure of a fact which Davenport himself had wished to keep private. He perceived the two opposite inferences which might be made from that fact, and he knew that the police would probably jump at the inference unfavorable to his friend. For the present, he would guard his friend from that.

Larcher's work on the case had just begun. For what was to come he required the fortification of dinner. Mrs. Haze had invited him to dine at her board, but he chose to lose that golden opportunity, and to eat at one of those clean little places which for cheapness and good cooking together are not to be matched, or half-matched, in any other city in the world. He soon blessed himself for having done so; he had scarcely given his order when in sauntered Barry Tompkins.

"Stop right here," cried Larcher, grasping the spectacled lawyer and pulling him into a seat. "You are commandeered."

"What for?" asked Tompkins, with his expansive smile.

"Dinner first, and then—"

"All right. Do you give me carte blanche with the bill of fare? May I roam over it at my own sweet will? Is there no limit?"

"None, except a time limit. I want you to steer me around the hospitals, station-houses, morgue, et cetera. There's a man missing. You've made those rounds before."

"Yes, twice. When poor Bill Southford jumped from the ferry-boat; and again when a country cousin of mine had knockout drops administered to him in a Bowery dance-hall. It's a dismal quest."

"I know it, but if you have nothing else on your hands this evening—"

"Oh, I'll pilot you. We never know when we're likely to have search-parties out after ourselves, in this abounding metropolis. Who's the latest victim of the strenuous life?"

"Murray Davenport!"

"What! is he occurring again?"

Larcher imparted what it was needful that Tompkins should know. The two made an expeditious dinner, and started on their long and fatiguing inquiry. It was, as Tompkins had said, a dismal quest. Those who have ever made this cheerless tour will not desire to be reminded of the experience, and those who have not would derive more pain than pleasure from a recital of it. The long distances from point to point, the rebuffs from petty officials, the difficulty in wringing harmless information from fools clad in a little brief authority, the mingled hope and dread of coming upon the object of the search at the next place, the recurring feeling that the whole fatiguing pursuit is a wild goose chase and that the missing person is now safe at home, are a few features of the disheartening business. The labors of Larcher and Tompkins elicited nothing; lightened though they were by the impecunious lawyer's tact, knowledge, and good humor, they left the young men dispirited and dead tired. Larcher had nothing to telegraph Miss Kenby. He thought of her passing a sleepless night, waiting for news, the dupe and victim of every sound that might herald a messenger. He slept ill himself, the short time he had left for sleep. In the morning he made a swift breakfast, and was off to Mrs. Haze's. Davenport's room was still untenanted, his bed untouched; the telegram still lay unclaimed in the hall below.

Florence and Edna were prepared, by the absence of news during the night, for Larcher's discouraged face when he appeared at the flat in the morning. Miss Kenby seemed already to have fortified her mind for an indefinite season of anxiety. She maintained an outward calm, but it was the forced calm of a resolution to bear torture heroically. She had her lapses, her moments of weakness and outcry, her periods of despair, during the ensuing days,—for days did ensue, and nothing was seen or heard of the missing one,—but of these Larcher was not often a witness. Edna Hill developed new resources as an encourager, a diverter, and an unfailing optimist in regard to the outcome. The girls divided their time between the flat and the Kenby lodgings down Fifth Avenue. Mr. Kenby was subdued and self-effacing when they were about. He wore a somewhat meek, cowed air nowadays, which was not without a touch of martyrdom. He volunteered none but the most casual remarks on the subject of Davenport's disappearance, and was not asked even for those. His diminution spoke volumes for the unexpected force of personality Florence must have shown in that unrelated interview about the letters, in which she had got back her promise.

The burden of action during those ensuing days fell on Larcher. Besides regular semi-diurnal calls on the young ladies and at Mrs. Haze's house, and regular consultations of police records, he made visits to every place he had ever known Davenport to frequent, and to every person he had ever known Davenport to be acquainted with. Only, for a time Mr. Bagley had to be excepted, he not having yet returned from Chicago.

It appeared that the big man at police headquarters had really caused the proper thing to be done. Detectives came to Mrs. Haze's house and searched the absent man's possessions, but found no clue; and most of the newspapers had a short paragraph to the effect that Murray Davenport, "a song-writer," was missing from his lodging-house. Larcher hoped that this, if it came to Davenport's eye, though it might annoy him, would certainly bring word from him. But the man remained as silent as unseen. Was there, indeed, what the newspapers call "foul play"? And was Larcher called upon yet to speak of the twenty thousand dollars? The knowledge of that would give the case an importance in the eyes of the police, but would it, even if the worst had happened, do any good to Davenport? Larcher thought not; and held his tongue.

One afternoon, in the week following the disappearance,—or, as Larcher preferred to call it, non-appearance,—that gentleman, having just sat down in a north-bound Sixth Avenue car, glanced over the first page of an evening paper—one of the yellow brand—which he had bought a minute before. All at once he was struck in the face, metaphorically speaking, by a particular set of headlines. He held his breath, and read the following opening paragraph:

"The return of George A. Bagley from Chicago last night puts a new phase on the disappearance of Murray Davenport, the song-writer, who has not been seen since Wednesday of last week at his lodging-house,—East ——th Street. Mr. Bagley would like to know what became of a large amount of cash which he left with the missing man for certain purposes the previous night on leaving suddenly for Chicago. He says that when he called this morning on brokers, bankers, and others to whom the money should have been handed over, he found that not a cent of it had been disposed of according to orders. Davenport had for some years frequently acted as a secretary or agent for Bagley, and had handled many thousands of dollars for the latter in such a manner as to gain the highest confidence."

There was a half-column of details, which Larcher read several times over on the way up-town. When he entered Edna's drawing-room the two girls were sitting before the fire. At the first sight of his face, Edna sprang to her feet, and Florence's lips parted.

"What is it?" cried Edna. "You've got news! What is it?"

"No. Not any news of his whereabouts."

"What of, then? It's in that paper."

She seized the yellow journal, and threw her glance from headline to headline. She found the story, and read it through, aloud, at a rate of utterance that would have staggered the swiftest shorthand writer.

"Well! What do you think of that?" she said, and stopped to take breath.

"Do you think it is true?" asked Florence.

"There is some reason to believe it is!" replied Larcher, awkwardly.

Florence rose, in great excitement. "Then this affair must be cleared up!" she cried. "For don't you see? He may have been robbed—waylaid for the money—made away with! God knows what else can have happened! The newspaper hints that he ran away with the money. I'll never believe that. It must be cleared up—I tell you it must!"

Edna tried to soothe the agitated girl, and looked sorrowfully at Larcher, who could only deplore in silence his inability to solve the mystery.



CHAPTER IX.

MR. BUD'S DARK HALLWAY

A month passed, and it was not cleared up. Larcher became hopeless of ever having sight or word of Murray Davenport again. For himself, he missed the man; for the man, assuming a tragic fate behind the mystery, he had pity; but his sorrow was keenest for Miss Kenby. No description, nothing but experience, can inform the reader what was her torment of mind: to be so impatient of suspense as to cry out as she had done, and yet perforce to wait hour after hour, day after day, week after week, in the same unrelieved anxiety,—this prolonged torture is not to be told in words. She schooled herself against further outcries, but the evidence of her suffering was no less in her settled look of baffled expectancy, her fits of mute abstraction, the start of her eyes at any sound of bell or knock. She clutched back hope as it was slipping away, and would not surrender uncertainty for its less harrowing follower, despair. She had resumed, as the probability of immediate news decreased, her former way of existence, living with her father at the house in lower Fifth Avenue, where Miss Hill saw her every day except when she went to see Miss Hill, who denied herself the Horse Show, the football games, and the opera for the sake of her friend. Larcher called on the Kenbys twice or thrice a week, sometimes with Edna, sometimes alone.

There was one possibility which Larcher never mentioned to Miss Kenby in discussing the case. He feared it might fit too well her own secret thought. That was the possibility of suicide. What could be more consistent with Davenport's outspoken distaste for life, as he found it, or with his listless endurance of it, than a voluntary departure from it? He had never talked suicide, but this, in his state of mind, was rather an argument in favor of his having acted it. No threatened men live longer, as a class, than those who have themselves as threateners. It was true, Larcher had seen in Davenport's copy of Keats, this passage marked:

"... for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death."

But an unhappy man might endorse that saying without a thought of possible self-destruction. So, for Davenport's very silence on that way of escape from his tasteless life, Larcher thought he might have taken it.

He confided this thought to no less a person than Bagley, some weeks after the return of that capitalist from Chicago. Two or three times, meeting by chance, they had briefly discussed the disappearance, each being more than willing to obtain whatever light the other might be able to throw on the case. Finally Bagley, to whom Larcher had given his address, had sent for him to call at the former's rooms on a certain evening. These rooms proved to be a luxurious set of bachelor apartments in one of the new tall buildings just off Broadway. Hard wood, stamped leather, costly rugs, carved furniture, the richest upholstery, the art of the old world and the inventiveness of the new, had made this a handsome abode at any time, and a particularly inviting one on a cold December night. Larcher, therefore, was not sorry he had responded to the summons. He found Bagley sharing cigars and brandy with another man, a squat, burly, middle-aged stranger, with a dyed mustache and the dress and general appearance of a retired hotel-porter, cheap restaurant proprietor, theatre doorkeeper, or some such useful but not interesting member of society. This person, for a time, fulfilled the promise of his looks, of being uninteresting. On being introduced to Larcher as Mr. Lafferty, he uttered a quick "Howdy," with a jerk of the head, and lapsed into a mute regard of tobacco smoke and brandy bottle, which he maintained while Bagley and Larcher went more fully into the Davenport case than they had before gone together. Larcher felt that he was being sounded, but he saw no reason to withhold anything except what related to Miss Kenby. It was now that he mentioned possible suicide.

"Suicide? Not much," said Bagley. "A man would be a chump to turn on the gas with all that money about him. No, sir; it wasn't suicide. We know that much."

"You know it?" exclaimed Larcher.

"Yes, we know it. A man don't make the preparations he did, when he's got suicide on his mind. I guess we might as well put Mr. Larcher on, Lafferty, do you think?"

"Jess' you say," replied Mr. Lafferty, briefly.

"You see," continued Bagley to Larcher, "I sent for you, so's I could pump you in front of Lafferty here. I'm satisfied you've told all you know, and though that's absolutely nothing at all—ain't that so, Lafferty?"

"Yep,—nothin' 'tall."

"Though it's nothing at all, a fair exchange is no robbery, and I'm willing for you to know as much as I do. The knowledge won't do you any good—it hasn't done me any good—but it'll give you an insight into your friend Davenport. Then you and his other friends, if he's got any, won't roast me because I claim that he flew the coop and not that somebody did him for the money. See?"

"Not exactly."

"All right; then we'll open your eyes. I guess you don't happen to know who Mr. Lafferty here is, do you?"

"Not yet."

"Well, he's a central office detective." (Mr. Lafferty bore Larcher's look of increased interest with becoming modesty.) "He's been on this case ever since I came back from Chicago, and by a piece of dumb luck, he got next to Davenport's trail for part of the day he was last seen. He'll tell you how far he traced him. It's up to you now, Lafferty. Speak out."

Mr. Lafferty, pretending to take as a good joke the attribution of his discoveries to "dumb luck," promptly discoursed in a somewhat thick but rapid voice.

"On the Wednesday morning he was las' seen, he left the house about nine o'clock, with a package wrapt in brown paper. I lose sight of'm f'r a couple 'f hours, but I pick'm up again a little before twelve. He's still got the same package. He goes into a certain department store, and buys a suit o' clothes in the clothin' department; shirts, socks, an' underclothes in the gents' furnishin' department; a pair o' shoes in the shoe department, an' s'mother things in other departments. These he has all done up in wrappin'-paper, pays fur 'em, and leaves 'em to be called fur later. He then goes an' has his lunch."

"Where does he have his lunch?" asked Bagley.

"Never mind where he has his lunch," said Mr. Lafferty, annoyed. "That's got no bearin' on the case. After he has his lunch, he goes to a certain big grocer's and provision dealer's, an' buys a lot o' canned meats and various provisions,—I can give you a complete list if you want it."

This last offer, accompanied by a movement of a hand to an inner pocket, was addressed to Bagley, who declined with the words, "That's all right. I've seen it before."

"He has these things all done up in heavy paper, so's to make a dozen'r so big packages. Then he pays fur 'em, an' leaves 'em to be called fur. It's late in the afternoon by this time, and comin' on dark. Understand, he's still got the 'riginal brown paper package with him. The next thing he does is, he hires a cab, and has himself druv around to the department store he was at before. He gets the things he bought there, an' puts 'em on the cab, an' has himself druv on to the grocer's an' provision dealer's, an' gets the packages he bought there, an' has them put in the cab. The cab's so full o' his parcels now, he's only got just room fur himself on the back seat. An' then he has the hackman drive to a place away down-town."

Mr. Lafferty paused for a moment to wet his throat with brandy and water. Larcher, who had admired the professional mysteriousness shown in withholding the names of the stores for the mere sake of reserving something to secrecy, was now wondering how the detective knew that the man he had traced was Murray Davenport. He gave voice to his wonder.

"By the description, of course," replied Mr. Lafferty, with disgust at Larcher's inferiority of intelligence. "D'yuh s'pose I'd foller a man's trail as fur as that, if everything didn't tally—face, eyes, nose, height, build, clo'es, hat, brown paper parcel, everything?"

"Then it's simply marvellous," said Larcher, with genuine astonishment, "how you managed to get on his track, and to follow it from place to place."

"Oh, it's my business to know how to do them things," replied Mr. Lafferty, deprecatingly.

"Your business!" said Bagley. "Dumb luck, I tell you. Can't you see how it was?" He had turned to Larcher. "The cabman read of Davenport's disappearance, and putting together the day, and the description in the papers, and the queer load of parcels, goes and tells the police. Lafferty is put on the case, pumps the cabman dry, then goes to the stores where the cab stopped to collect the goods, and finds out the rest. Only, when he comes to tell the story, he tells the facts not in their order as he found them out, but in their order as they occurred."

"You know all about it, Mr. Bagley," said Lafferty, taking refuge in jocular irony. "You'd ought 'a' worked up the case yourself."

"You left Davenport being driven down-town," Larcher reminded the detective.

"Yes, an' that about lets me out. The cabman druv 'im to somewhere on South Street, by the wharves. It was dark by that time, and the driver didn't notice the exact spot—he just druv along the street till the man told him to stop, that was his orders,—an' then the man got out, took out his parcels, an' carried them across the sidewalk into a dark hallway. Then he paid the cabman, an' the cabman druv off. The last the cabman seen of 'im, he was goin' into the hallway where his goods were, an' that's the last any one seen of 'im in New York, as fur as known. Prob'ly you've got enough imagination to give a guess what became of him after that."

"No, I haven't," said Larcher.

"Jes' think it over. You can put two and two together, can't you? A new outfit o' clo'es, first of all. Then a stock o' provisions. To make it easier, I'll tell yuh this much: they was the kind o' provisions people take on yachts, an' he even admitted to the salesman they was for that purpose. And then South Street—the wharves; does that mean ships? Does the whole business mean a voyage? But a man don't have to stock up extry food if he's goin' by any regular steamer line, does he? What fur, then? And what kind o' ships lays off South Street? Sailin' ships; them that goes to South America, an' Asia, and the South Seas, and God knows where all. Now do you think you can guess?"

"But why would he put his things in a hallway?" queried Larcher.

"To wait fur the boat that was to take 'em out to the vessel late at night. Why did he wait fur dark to be druv down there? You bet, he was makin' his flittin' as silent as possible. He'd prob'ly squared it with a skipper to take 'im aboard on the dead quiet. That's why there ain't much use our knowin' what vessels sailed about that time. I do know, but much good we'll get out o' that. What port he gets off at, who'll ever tell? It'll be sure to be in a country where we ain't got no extradition treaty. And when this particular captain shows up again at this port, innocent enough he'll be; he never took no passenger aboard in the night, an' put 'im off somewheres below the 'quator. I guess Mr. Bagley can about consider his twenty thousand to the bad, unless his young friend takes a notion to return to his native land before he's got it all spent."

"And that's your belief?" said Larcher to Bagley, "—that he went to some other country with the money?"

"Absconded," replied the ready-money man. "Yes; there's nothing else to believe. At first I thought you might have some notion where he was; that's what made me send for you. But I see he left you out of his confidence. So I thought you might as well know his real character. Lafferty's going to give the result of his investigation to the newspaper men, anyhow. The only satisfaction I can get is to show the fellow up."

When Larcher left the presence of Bagley, he carried away no definite conclusion except that Bagley was an even more detestable animal than he had before supposed. If the man whom Lafferty had traced was really Davenport, then indeed the theory of suicide was shaken. There remained the possibility of murder or flight. The purchases indeed seemed to indicate flight, especially when viewed in association with South Street. South Street? Why, that was Mr. Bud's street. And a hallway? Mr. Bud's room was approached through a hallway. Mr. Bud had left town the day before that Wednesday; but if Davenport had made frequent visits there for sketching, was it not certain that he had had access to the room in Mr. Bud's absence? Larcher had knocked at that room two days after the Wednesday, and had got no answer, but this was no evidence that Davenport might not have made some use of the room in the meanwhile. If he had made use of it, he might have left some trace, some possible clew to his subsequent movements. Larcher, thinking thus on his way from Bagley's apartment-house, resolved to pay another visit to Mr. Bud's quarters before saying anything about Bagley's theory to any one.

He was busy the next day until the afternoon was well advanced. As soon as he got free, he took himself to South Street; ascended the dark stairs from the hallway, and knocked loudly at Mr. Bud's door. There was no more answer than there had been six weeks before; nothing to do but repair to the saloon below. The same bartender was on duty.

"Is Mr. Bud in town, do you know?" inquired Larcher, having observed the usual preliminaries to interrogation.

"Not to my knowledge."

"When was he here last?"

"Not for a long time. 'Most two months, I guess."

"But I was here five or six weeks ago, and he'd been gone only three days then."

"Then you know more about it than I do; so don't ast me."

"He hasn't been here since I was?"

"He hasn't."

"And my friend who was here with me the first time—has he been here since?"

"Not while I've been."

"When is Mr. Bud likely to be here again?"

"Give it up. I ain't his private secretary."

Just as Larcher was turning away, the street door opened, and in walked a man with a large hand-bag, who proved to be none other than Mr. Bud himself.

"I was just looking for you," cried Larcher.

"That so?" replied Mr. Bud, cheerily, grasping Larcher's hand. "I just got into town. It's blame cold out." He set his hand-bag on the bar, saying to the bartender, "Keep my gripsack back there awhile, Mick, will yuh? I got to git somethin' into me 'fore I go up-stairs. Gimme a plate o' soup on that table, an' the whisky bottle. Will you join me, sir? Two plates o' soup, an' two glasses with the whisky bottle. Set down, set down, sir. Make yourself at home."

Larcher obeyed, and as soon as the old man's overcoat was off, and the old man ready for conversation, plunged into his subject.

"Do you know what's become of my friend Davenport?" he asked, in a low tone.

"No. Hope he's well and all right. What makes you ask like that?"

"Haven't you read of his disappearance?"

"Disappearance? The devil! Not a word! I been too busy to read the papers. When was it?"

"Several weeks ago." Larcher recited the main facts, and finished thus: "So if there isn't a mistake, he was last seen going into your hallway. Did he have a key to your room?"

"Yes, so's he could draw pictures while I was away. My hallway? Let's go and see."

In some excitement, without waiting for partiallars, the farmer rose and led the way out. It was already quite dark.

"Oh, I don't expect to find him in your room," said Larcher, at his heels. "But he may have left some trace there."

Mr. Bud turned into the hallway, of which the door was never locked till late at night. The hallway was not lighted, save as far as the rays of a street-lamp went across the threshold. Plunging into the darkness with haste, closely followed by Larcher, the old man suddenly brushed against some one coming from the stairs.

"Excuse me" said Mr. Bud. "I didn't see anybody. It's all-fired dark in here."

"It is dark," replied the stranger, and passed out to the street. Larcher, at the words of the other two, had stepped back into a corner to make way. Mr. Bud turned to look at the stranger; and the stranger, just outside the doorway, turned to look at Mr. Bud. Then both went their different directions, Mr. Bud's direction being up the stairs.

"Must be a new lodger," said Mr. Bud. "He was comin' from these stairs when I run agin 'im. I never seen 'im before."

"You can't truly say you saw him even then," replied Larcher, guiding himself by the stair wall.

"Oh, he turned around outside, an' I got the street-light on him. A good-lookin' young chap, to be roomin' on these premises."

"I didn't see his face," replied Larcher, stumbling.

"Look out fur yur feet. Here we are at the top."

Mr. Bud groped to his door, and fumblingly unlocked it. Once inside his room, he struck a match, and lighted one of the two gas-burners.

"Everything same as ever," said Mr. Bud, looking around from the centre of the room. "Books, table, chairs, stove, bed made up same's I left it—"

"Hello, what's this?" exclaimed Larcher, having backed against a hollow metallic object on the floor and knocked his head against a ropey, rubbery something in the air.

"That's a gas-heater—Mr. Davenport made me a present of it. It's convenienter than the old stove. He wanted to pay me fur the gas it burned when he was here sketchin', but I wouldn't stand fur that."