A Daughter of the Forest by Evelyn Raymond (best classic novels txt) 📖

remember—he went—— The facts were all against him. There was no hope for him from the beginning. If I had died, he would have hanged, that boy—that little handsome shaver who saved my life. But I didn’t die, and he only tried to kill me. They found him at the safe—we two, only, knew the lock—and the iron bar in his hand. He protested, of course. They always do. His wife came—— Oh! Adrian, I shall never forget her face. She was a beautiful woman, with such curious, wonderful hair, and she had a little baby in her arms, while she pleaded that I would not prosecute. The baby laughed, but what could I do? The law must take its course. The money was gone and my life almost. There was no hope for him from the beginning, though he never owned his guilt. But I didn’t die, and—Adrian, why have you asked me all this to-night? I am so tired. I often am so tired.”

The lad rose and stood beside his father’s chair, laying his arm affectionately around the trembling shoulders, as any daughter might have done, as none of this stern father’s daughters dared to do.

“I have asked you, father, and pained you because it was right. I had to ask. To-day I have seen this ‘little shaver,’ a convict in his prison. I have looked into a face that is still noble and undaunted, even after all these years of suffering and shame. I have heard of a life that is as helpful behind prison bars as the most devoted minister’s outside them. And I know that he is innocent. He never harmed you or meant to. I am as sure of this as that I stand here, and it is my life’s task to undo this wrong that has been done. You would be glad to see him righted, would you not, father? After all this weary time?”

“I—I—don’t—I am ill, Adrian, I—— Take care! The money, the bonds! My head, Adrian, my head!”

CHAPTER XXIV A HIDDEN SAFE DEPOSIT

Upon reaching the New York railway station, Adrian had stopped long enough to send his mother an explanatory telegram, so that she might not worry over his sudden disappearance. He had also urged her in it, to “make a good visit, since he would be at home to look after his father.”

In this new consideration for the feelings of others he was now thankful that Mrs. Wadislaw was away. “She gets so anxious and frightened over father’s ‘spells,’ though he always comes out of them well,” he reflected; then did what he remembered to have seen her do on similar occasions. He helped his father to the lounge, loosened his collar, bathed his head, and administered a few drops of a restorative kept near at hand.

In a few moments the banker sat up again and remarked:

“It is queer that no doctor can stop these attacks. I never quite lose consciousness, or rather I seem to be somebody else. I have an impulse to do things I would not do at other times—yet what these things are I do not clearly remember when the attack passes. But I always feel better for some days after them. For that reason I do not dread them as I would, otherwise. Strange, that a man has to lose his senses in order to regain them! A paradox, but a fact.”

“Do you have them as often as formerly?”

“Oftener, I think. They are irregular. I may feel one coming on again within a few hours or it may not be for weeks. The trouble is that I may be stricken some time more severely and fall senseless in some unsafe place.”

“Don’t fear about that, father. I am at home again, you know, and shall keep you well in sight. If you would only give up business and go away to Europe, or somewhere. Take a long rest. You might recover entirely then and enjoy a ripe old age.”

“I can’t afford it, lad. If those stolen bonds—but what’s the use of recalling them? Your talk has brought my loss so freshly before me. I wish you hadn’t asked me about it. However, it’s done, and it’s late. Let’s get to bed. I must be early at the bank, to-morrow. The builders are coming to look things over and estimate on the cost of safe deposit vaults in the basement. Ours is one of the oldest buildings in the city and every inch of space has increased in value since it was put up. The waste room of that basement should bring us in a princely income, if the inspector will give the permit to construct the vaults. My head must be clear in the morning, if ever, and I must rest now. Good-night.”

Adrian saw his father to his room and sought his own, resolving to be present at the next day’s interview with the builders, and to give the banker his own most watchful care. But his thoughts soon returned to the startling knowledge he had gained concerning Margot’s history, and when he fell asleep, at last, it was to dream of a prison on an island, of his mother in a cell, and other most distressing scenes. So that he awoke unrefreshed, and in greater perplexity than ever as to how he could find Margot or be of any help to Number 526.

But Mr. Wadislaw seemed brighter than usual, and was almost jovial in his discussion of the proposed alterations of his property.

“You will be a rich man, Adrian, a very rich man, as I figure it. Money is the main thing. Get money and—and—keep it;” he added with a cautious glance around the breakfast room.

But there was nobody except the old butler to hear this worldly advice and he had always been hearing it. Adrian, to whom it was given, heard it not at all. He was thinking of his island friends and wondering how he should find them. However, when they reached the bank, he rallied his wandering thoughts and gave strict attention to the talk between the banker and the builders, trying to impress upon his mind the dry facts and figures which meant so much to them.

“You say that this wall will have to be torn down. To reach bottom rock. Why, sir, that wall has stood—Adrian, what is that racket in the outer office? Stop it. The porter should not allow—— But, sir, that wall is as thick as the safe built into it. I mean——”

Mr. Wadislaw passed his hand across his forehead and Adrian, seeing this familiar sign of impending trouble, felt that his place was at his father’s side rather than in quelling that slight disturbance in the adjoining room. He took his stand behind the banker’s chair and rested his hand upon it.

Mr. Wadislaw cast a hurried, appealing glance upward, and the son smiled and nodded. The contractor moved about the place, tapping the walls, the floor, and the great chimney beside the safe; pausing at this spot and listening, tapping afresh, listening again, with a marked interest growing in his face.

But nobody noticed this, for, suddenly, the door slid open and there stood in the aperture a girl with wonderful, flowing hair and a face strangely stern and defiant.

“Margot!”

But it was not at Adrian she looked. At last she was in the presence of the man who had ruined her father. And—he knew her! Aye, knew her, though they two had never met before and, as yet, she had spoken no accusing word. For he had sunk back in his seat, his face white, his eyes staring, his jaw dropped. To him she was an apparition, one risen from the dead to confront him with the darkest hour of all his past, when a broken-hearted wife had kneeled to him, begging her husband’s life. Yet it was broad daylight and he wide awake.

“Are you Malachi Wadislaw?”

“I—I—thought you were dead!”

“No, not dead. Alive and come at last to make you right the wrong you did my father. To make you open his prison doors and set him free.”

“Are you Philip Romeyn’s wife? Her hair—his eyes—I—I—am confused—Adrian!”

“Yes, father. I am here. Margot!”

Her glance passed from the father to the son but there was no relenting kindness in it. When the young suffer it is profoundly, and the inmost depths of Margot’s nature were stirred by this first sight of her father’s enemy.

“Philip Romeyn’s wife lies in the grave, whither your persecution sent her. I am her daughter and his, come to make you do a tardy justice. To make you lead me to the place where you have hidden the bonds, the gold, you said he stole! For if stealing was done it was by your own hands, not his.”

“Margot—Margot! This is my father!” cried Adrian, aghast.

“Yes, Adrian, and my father—my father—wears a convict’s garb this day because of yours!”

“No, no! No, no. I tried to save him, but he would not save himself! I begged him, almost on my knees I begged him, the little shaver, to confess and get the benefit of that. But he would not. There was no hope for him from the beginning. None. They found me all but dead. The money gone. He by me, the steel rod in his hand with which we used to fasten the—that very safe. I—— Why, I can see it all as if it were to-day, even though they lifted me for dead, and found him standing, dazed and speechless. When they questioned him about the money he said: ‘Ask Malachi Wadislaw. I never touched it.’ That was all. But they proved it against him. I was dead—almost—and I was beggared. Beggared!” his voice rose to a scream, “by that brave little shaver who had once—once saved my life. Robbed and murdered—his benefactor, who had made him rich and prosperous. Should he not suffer? Aye, forever!”

The silence that followed this speech was intense. The builder ceased his inquisitive tapping and listened spellbound. Old Joe stood rigidly behind the girl whom he had followed. Adrian scarcely breathed. Accused and accuser faced one another, motionless.

Then: “Where—was—it?” demanded Margot. “Show me—the place.”

“Here. Here, in this very sanctum to which nobody had the entrance but us two. There—is the monster safe that was robbed. With such another rod of steel”—he pointed to a bar resting above the safe—“was I struck—here.” His hand touched for an instant a deep scar on his temple and an involuntary shudder passed over the girl’s frame.

But her face did not change nor the defiance of her eyes grow less. She moved a step forward, and, as if to make way for her, the builder, also, stepped aside. As he did so his hammer caught upon the little ledge of the chimney projection which he had been testing and whose hollow sound had aroused his curiosity. The small slab of marble slipped and fell, though it had seemingly been securely plastered in the wall. It left an aperture of a few inches, and the contractor ejaculated:

“Pshaw! That’s queer. Must have been loose, I never saw just such a hole in such a place. I’m sorry, sir, yet——” He turned to address the banker but paused, amazed. What had he done?

The effect of that trivial accident upon the owner of the building was marvelous. He sprang to his feet, clasped his head with his hands, and gazed upon that tiny opening with the fascination of horror. For a moment it seemed as if his staring eyes would start from their sockets and he gasped in his effort to breathe.

“Father! What is it? What ails you?”

But the distraught