Blindfolded by Earle Ashley Walcott (best affordable ebook reader TXT) 📖

and a faint perfume put all my senses on the alert. It was the scent that had come to me with the letters of the Unknown. A slight movement made me certain that some one sat in the farther corner of the carriage.

Was it the Unknown or some agent? And if it proved to be the Unknown, was she the lady I had met in cold business greeting in the courtyard of the Palace Hotel? I waited impatiently for the first street-lamp to throw a gleam of light into the carriage. But when it came I was little the wiser. I could see faintly the outlines of a figure shrouded in black that leaned in the corner, motionless save for the swaying and pitching of the hack as it rolled swiftly down the street.

The situation became a little embarrassing. Was it my place to speak first? I wondered. At last I could endure the silence no longer.

"Quite an unpleasant evening," I remarked politely.

There was a rustle of movement, the sound of a short gasp, and a soft, mournful voice broke on my ear.

"Mr. Dudley--can you forgive me?"

The astonishment I felt to hear my own name once more--the name that seemed now to belong to a former state of existence--was swallowed up as the magnetic tones carried their revelation to my mind.

I was stricken dumb for a moment at the discovery they had brought. Then I gasped:

"Mrs. Knapp!"

"Yes, Mrs. Knapp," she said with a mournful laugh. "Did you never suspect?"

I was lost in wonder and confusion, and even yet could not understand.

"What brings you out in this storm?" I asked, completely mystified. "I thought I was to meet another person."

"Indeed?" said Mrs. Knapp with a spark of animation. "Well, I am the other person."

I was paralyzed in mind and nerve for a moment with the astonishment of the disclosure. Even yet I could not believe.

"You!" I exclaimed at last. "Are you the protector of the boy? The employer--" Then I stopped, the tangle in my mind beginning to straighten out.

"I am she," said Mrs. Knapp gently.

"Then," I cried, "who is he? what is he? what is the whole dreadful affair about? and what--"

Mrs. Knapp interrupted me.

"First tell me what has become of Henry Wilton?" she said with sorrow in her voice.

The dreadful scene in the alley flashed before my mind.

"He is dead."

"Dead! And how?"

"Murdered."

"I feared so--I was certain, or he would have let me know. You have much to tell me. But first, did he leave no papers in your hands?"

I brought out the slip that bore the blind diagram and the blinder description that accompanied it. Nothing could be made of it in the darkness, so I described it as well as I could.

"We are on the right track," said Mrs. Knapp. "Oh, why didn't I have that yesterday? But here--we are at the wharf."

The hack had stopped, and a hand was fumbling at the door.

The darkness, the dash of water, the wind whistling about the crazy wooden buildings and through the rigging of ships, made the water-front vocal with the shouting of the storm demons as we alighted.

My guide was before us, and we followed him down the pier, struggling against the gusts.

"Do we cross the bay?" I asked, as Mrs. Knapp clung to my arm. "It's not safe for you in a small boat."

"There's a tug waiting for us," Mrs. Knapp explained.

A moment later we saw its lights, and the fire of its engine-room shot a cheerful glow into the storm. The little vessel swung uneasily at its berth as we made our way aboard, and with shouts of men and clang of bells it was soon tossing on the dark waters of the bay. Out from the shelter of the wharves the wind buffeted us wildly, and the black waves were threshed into phosphorescent foam against the sides of the tug, while their crests, self-luminous, stretched away in changing lines of faint, ghostly fire.

The cabin of the tug was fitted with a shelf table, and over it swung a lamp of brass that gave a dim light to the little room. Mrs. Knapp seated herself here, as the boat pitched and tossed and trembled at the strokes of the waves and quivered to the throbbing of the screw, spread out the paper I had given her, and studied the diagram and the jumble of letters with anxious attention.

"It is the same," she said at last; "in part, at least."

"The same as what?" I asked.

"As the one I got word of to-night, you know," she replied.

"No--I didn't know."

"Of course not," said Mrs. Knapp. "But you might have guessed that I got my summons after you left, this evening. I should have spoken to you then if I had known. I was near coming to an explanation, as it was."

"There are a good many things I haven't guessed," I confessed.

"But," she continued, returning to the map, "this gives a different place. I was to go to the cross-road here,"--indicating the mark at the last branch.

"I'm glad to hear that," said I, taking out the diagram I had found in the citadel of the enemy. "This seems to point to a different place, too, and I really hope that the gentleman who drew this map is a good way off from the truth."

"Where did you get this?" exclaimed Mrs. Knapp.

I described the circumstances in as few words as I could command.

"They are ahead of us," she said in alarm.

"They have started first, I suppose," was my suggestion.

"And they have the right road."

"Then our only hope is that they may not know the right place."

"God grant it," said Mrs. Knapp.

She was silent for a few minutes, and I saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

I was moved by her signs of feeling. I thought they were for the boy and was about to ask what would happen to him in case he was found by the enemy, when she said:

"Now tell me about Henry Wilton--how he died and when."

Again the vision of my first dreadful night in San Francisco rose before me, the cries for help from my murdered friend rang in my ears, and the scene in the alley and the figure in the morgue burned before my eyes.

I told the tale as it had happened, and as I told it I read in the face before me the varying emotions of alarm, horror and grief that were stirred by its incidents.

But one thing I could not tell her. The wolf-face I had seen in the lantern flash in the alley I could not name nor describe to the wife of Doddridge Knapp. Yet at the thought the dark mystery grew darker, yet, and I began to doubt what my eyes had seen, and my ears had heard.

Mrs. Knapp bowed her head in deep, gloomy thought.

"I feared it, yet he would not listen to my warnings," she murmured. "He would work his own way." Then she looked me suddenly straight in the face.

"And why did you take his place, his name? Why did you try to do his work when you had seen the dreadful end to which it had brought him?"

I confessed that it was half through the insistence of Detective Coogan that I was Henry Wilton, half through the course of events that seemed to make it the easiest road to reach the vengeance that I had vowed to bring the murderer of my friend.

"You are bent on avenging him?" asked Mrs. Knapp thoughtfully.

"I have promised it."

"You shall have the chance. Strange thought!" she said gloomily, "that the dead hand of Henry Wilton may reach out from beyond the grave and strike at his slayer when he least expects it."

I was more than ever mystified at these words. I had not expected her to take so philosophically to the idea of hanging Doddridge Knapp, and I thought it best to hold my tongue.

"I have marveled at you," said Mrs. Knapp after a pause. "I marvel at you yet. You have carried off your part well."

"Not well enough, it seems, to deceive you," I said, a little bitterly.

"You should not have expected to deceive me," said Mrs. Knapp. "But you can imagine the shock I had when I saw that it was not Henry Wilton who had come among us that first night when I called you from Mr. Knapp's room."

"You certainly succeeded in concealing any surprise you may have felt," I said. "You are a better actor than I."

Mrs. Knapp smiled.

"It was more than surprise--it was consternation," she said. "I had been anxious at receiving no word from Henry. I suppose you got my notes. And when I saw you I was torn with doubts, wondering whether anything had happened to Henry, whether he had sent you in his stead as a practical joke, whether you knew much or little or nothing of our affairs--in short, I was overwhelmed."

"I didn't suppose I was quite so poor an impostor," I said apologetically, with a qualm at the word. "Though I did get some hint of it," I added, with a painful recollection of the candid statement of opinion I had received from the daughter of the house.

"Oh, you did very well," said Mrs. Knapp kindly, "but no one could have been successful in that house. Luella was quite outraged over it, but I managed to quiet her."

"I hope Miss Knapp has not retained the unfavorable impressions of--er--" I stammered in much confusion.

Mrs. Knapp gave me a keen glance.

"You know she has not," she said.

I felt the subconscious impression somehow that after all Mrs. Knapp would have been better pleased if Luella had kept nearer to her first impressions of me.

"Well," continued Mrs. Knapp, "when I saw you and guessed that something had happened to Henry Wilton, and found that you knew little of what was going on, I changed the plan of campaign. I did not know that you were one to be trusted, but I saw that you could be used to keep the others on a false scent, for you deceived everybody but us."

"There was one other," I said.

"Mother Borton?" inquired Mrs. Knapp. "Yes, I learned that she knew you. But to every one else in the city you were Henry Wilton. I feared, though, you would make some mistake that would betray you and spoil my plans. But you have succeeded marvelously."

Mrs. Knapp paused a moment and then continued slowly. "It was cruel of me. I knew that it was sending you to face death. But I was alarmed, angry at the imposition, and felt that you had brought it on yourself. Can you forgive me?"

"I have nothing to forgive," I said.

"I would have spoken when I found you for what you are," said Mrs. Knapp, "but I thought until the Livermore trip that you could serve me best as you were doing."

"It was blind work," I said.

"It was blind enough for you, not for me. I was deceived in one thing, however; I thought that you had no papers--nothing from Henry that