A Poor Wise Man by Mary Roberts Rinehart (popular books of all time TXT) 📖

talk over with you.”

But he knew she was avoiding him.

And he knew that he ought to see her. Through Mr. Hendricks he had learned something more about Jim Doyle, the real Doyle and not the poseur, and he felt she should know the nature of the accusations against him. Lily mixed up with a band of traitors, Lily of the white flame of patriotism, was unthinkable. She must not go to the house on Cardew Way. A man’s loyalty was like a woman’s virtue; it could not be questionable. There was no middle ground.

He heard voices as he entered the house, and to his amazement found Ellen in the parlor. She was sitting very stiff on the edge of her chair, her hat slightly crooked and a suitcase and brown paper bundle at her feet.

Mrs. Boyd was busily entertaining her.

“I make it a point to hold my head high,” she was saying. “I guess there was a lot of talk when I took a boarder, but - Is that you, Willy?”

“Why, Miss Ellen!” he said. “And looking as though headed for a journey!”

Ellen’s face did not relax. She had been sitting there for an hour, letting Mrs. Boyd’s prattle pour over her like a rain, and thinking meanwhile her own bitter thoughts.

“I am, Willy. Only I didn’t wait for my money and the bank’s closed, and I came to borrow ten dollars, if you have it.”

That told him she was in trouble, but Mrs. Boyd, amiably hospitable and reveling in a fresh audience, showed no sign of departing.

“She says she’s been living at the Cardews,” she put in, rocking valiantly. “I guess most any place would seem tame after that. I do hear, Miss Hart, that Mrs. Howard Cardew only wears her clothes once and then gives them away.”

She hitched the chair away from the fireplace, where it showed every indication of going up the chimney.

“I call that downright wasteful,” she offered.

Willy glanced at his watch, which had been his father’s, and bore the inscription: “James Duncan Cameron, 1876” inside the case.

“Eleven o’clock,” he said sternly. “And me promising the doctor I’d have you in bed at ten sharp every night! Now off with you.”

“But, Willy - “

” - or I shall have to carry you,” he threatened. It was an old joke between them, and she rose, smiling, her thin face illuminated with the sense of being looked after.

“He’s that domineering,” she said to Ellen, “that I can’t call my soul my own.”

“Good-night,” Ellen said briefly.

Willy stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her going up. He knew she liked him to do that, that she would expect to find him there when she reached the top and looked down, panting slightly.

“Good-night,” he called. “Both windows open. I shall go outside to see.”

Then he went back to Ellen, still standing primly over her Lares and Penates.

“Now tell me about it,” he said.

“I’ve left them. There has been a terrible fuss, and when Miss Lily left to-night, I did too.”

“She left her home?”

She nodded.

“It’s awful, Willy. I don’t know all of it, but they’ve been having her followed, or her grandfather did. I think there’s a man in it. Followed! And her a good girl! Her grandfather’s been treating her like a dog for weeks. We all noticed it. And to-night there was a quarrel, with all of them at her like a pack of dogs, and her governess crying in the hall. I just went up and packed my things.”

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. I got her a taxicab, and she only took one bag. I went right off to the housekeeper and told her I wouldn’t stay, and they could send my money after me.”

“Did you notice the number of the taxicab?”

“I never thought of it.”

He saw it all with terrible distinctness, The man was Akers, of course. Then, if she had left her home rather than give him up, she was really in love with him. He had too much common sense to believe for a moment that she had fled to Louis Akers’ protection, however. That was the last thing she would do. She would have gone to a hotel, or to the Doyle house.

“She shouldn’t have left home, Ellen.”

“They drove her out, I tell you,” Ellen cried, irritably. “At least that’s what it amounted to. There are things no high-minded girl will stand. Can you lend me some money, Willy?”

He felt in his pocket, producing a handful of loose money.

“Of course you can have all I’ve got,” he said. “But you must not go to-night, Miss Ellen. It’s too late. I’ll give you my room and go in with Dan Boyd.”

And he prevailed over her protests, in the end. It was not until he saw her settled there, hiding her sense of strangeness under an impassive mask, that he went downstairs again and took his hat from its hook.

Lily must go back home, he knew. It was unthinkable that she should break with her family, and go to the Doyles. He had too little self-consciousness to question the propriety of his own interference, too much love for her to care whether she resented that interference. And he was filled with a vast anger at Jim Doyle. He saw in all this, somehow, Doyle’s work; how it would play into Doyle’s plans to have Anthony Cardew’s granddaughter a member of his household. He would take her away from there if he had to carry her.

He was a long time in getting to the mill district, and a longer time still in finding Cardew Way. At an all-night pharmacy he learned which was the house, and his determined movements took on a sort of uncertainty. It was very late. Ellen had waited for him for some time. If Lily were in that sinister darkened house across the street, the family had probably retired. And for the first time, too, he began to doubt if Doyle would let him see her. Lily herself might even refuse to see him.

Nevertheless, the urgency to get her away from there, if she were there, prevailed at last, and a strip of light in an upper window, as from an imperfectly fitting blind, assured him that some one was still awake in the house.

He went across the street and opening the gate, strode up the walk. Almost immediately he was confronted by the figure of a man who had been concealed by the trunk of one of the trees. He lounged forward, huge, menacing, yet not entirely hostile.

“Who is it?” demanded the figure blocking his way.

“I want to see Mr. Doyle.”

“What about?”

“I’ll tell him that,” said Willy Cameron.

“What’s your name?”

“That’s my business, too,” said Mr. Cameron, with disarming pleasantness.

“Damn private about your business, aren’t you?” jeered the sentry, still in cautious tones. “Well, you can write it down on a piece of paper and mail it to him. He’s busy now.”

“All I want to do,” persisted Mr. William Wallace Cameron, growing slightly giddy with repressed fury, “is to ring that doorbell and ask him a question. I’m going to do it, too.”

There was rather an interesting moment then, because the figure lunged at Mr. Cameron, and Mr. Cameron, stooping low and swiftly, as well as to one side, and at the same instant becoming a fighting Scot, which means a cool-eyed madman, got in one or two rather neat effects with his fists. The first took the shadow just below his breast-bone, and the left caught him at that angle of the jaw where a small cause sometimes produces a large effect. The figure sat down on the brick walk and grunted, and Mr. Cameron, judging that he had about ten seconds’ leeway, felt in the dazed person’s right hand pocket for the revolver he knew would be there, and secured it. The sitting figure made puffing, feeble attempts to prevent him, but there was no real struggle.

Mr. Cameron himself was feeling extremely triumphant and as strong as a lion. He was rather sorry no one had seen the affair, but that of course was subconscious. And he was more cheerful than he had been for some days. He had been up against so many purely intangible obstacles lately that it was a relief to find one he could use his fists on.

“Now I’ll have a few words with you, my desperate friend,” he said. “I’ve got your gun, and I am hell with a revolver, because I’ve never fired one, and there’s a sort of homicidal beginner’s luck about the thing. If you move or speak, I’ll shoot it into you first and when it’s empty I’ll choke it down your throat and strangle you to death.”

After which ferocious speech he strolled up the path, revolver in hand, and rang the doorbell. He put the weapon in his pocket then, but he kept his hand upon it. He had read somewhere that a revolver was quite useable from a pocket. There was no immediate answer to the bell, and he turned and surveyed the man under the tree, faintly distinguishable in the blackness. It had occurred to him that the number of guns a man may carry is only limited to his pockets, which are about fifteen.

There were heavy, deliberate footsteps inside, and the door was flung open. No glare of light followed it, however. There was a man there, alarmingly tall, who seemed to stare at him, and then beyond him into the yard.

“Well?”

“Are you Mr. Doyle?”

“I am.”

“My name is Cameron, Mr. Doyle. T have had a small difference with your watch-dog, but he finally let me by.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand. I have no dog.”

“The sentry you keep posted, then.” Mr. Cameron disliked fencing.

“Ah!” said Mr. Doyle, urbanely. “You have happened on one of my good friends, I see. I have many enemies, Mr. Cameron - was that the name? And my friends sometimes like to keep an eye on me. It is rather touching.”

He was smiling, Mr. Cameron knew, and his anger rose afresh.

“Very touching,” said Mr. Cameron, “but if he bothers me going out you may be short one friend. Mr. Doyle, Miss Lily Cardew left her home to-night. I want to know if she is here.”

“Are you sent by her family?”

“I have asked you if she is here.”

Jim Doyle apparently deliberated.

“My niece is here, although just why you should interest yourself - “

“May I see her?”

“I regret to say she has retired.”

“I think she would see me.”

A door opened into the hall, throwing a shaft of light on the wall across and letting out the sounds of voices.

“Shut that door,” said Doyle, wheeling sharply. It was closed at once. “Now,” he said, turning to his visitor, “I’ll tell you this. My niece is here.” He emphasized the “my.” “She has come to me for refuge, and I intend to give it to her. You won’t see her to-night, and if you come from her people you can tell them she came here of her own free will, and that if she stays it will be because she wants to. Joe!” he called into the darkness.

“Yes,” came a sullen voice, after a moment’s hesitation.

“Show this gentleman out.”

All at once Willy Cameron was staring at a dosed door, on the inner side of which a bolt was being slipped. He felt absurd and futile, and not at all like a lion. With the revolver in his hand, he went down the steps.

“Don’t bother about the gate, Joe,” he said. “I like to open my own gates. And - don’t try