The sinister mark
Peter entered the lobby and anxiously enquired for the New York
_Evening Earth_ of yesterday's date. One was found for him, much to his
satisfaction. He gave the porter, who brought it to him, a generous
tip, and dashed out to the poor old waiting "Lizzie," which looked more
weary and woebegone than ever.
Josh was nowhere in sight, and while Peter waited he ran a quick and
practised eye over the paper.
"No wonder Donald Morris was in the devil of a stew," he thought, as
he absorbed the principal article on the front page, with its blatant
headlines and its large half-tone picture of Mary Blake. "Wonder if he
could think our office would be guilty of letting his name appear! Gee!
that would be a rotten thing for a client. 'Absence first discovered by
Donald Morris, son of Steven Morris, and heir to the Morris millions',"
he read, disgustedly. "Dammit all! It's a beastly shame. I'll bet his
house was besieged by reporters before the story had been on the street
ten minutes. Nobody could have leaked but Jones, confound him! Bound to
get some publicity for his leading lady, whether she liked it or not,
and a lot for himself into the bargain. 'Frederick Jones, Miss Blake's
manager, interviewed,' and in pretty good-sized type, too. Oh, damn!"
At that moment Josh returned. Wiping his mouth with a soiled red
handkerchief, he took his place at the wheel. "Some hooch!" he
remarked, with a wise, sidelong wink, and the car started laboriously
up the road.
Peter, still looking at the offending paper, rapidly formulated his
defence as they crawled up the steep mountain side. The roadbed here
was of red shale, smooth and well tended, a strong contrast to the back
roads they had been traversing. Soon they came to a great rough stone
gateway and a lodge. They were held up here, while the lodge keeper
telephoned the Atterbury cottage, where, he said, Mr. Donald Morris was
stopping.
"It's all right. You can go right up, sir," he said, returning after a
moment. "Do you know where it is? Well, you take the first turn to the
right after you pass the inn, and it's the last house before you come
to the church. You can't miss it. Thank you, sir."
"Some style," grumbled Josh, as the car moved away. "Would ye think
this was once a free country?" He addressed the world at large, and
Peter did not trouble to answer. He had too much to think about even to
notice the exquisite woodland park through which they were passing; the
great old mossy trees, the broad red road, the ferns and wild flowers,
the primitive forest, broken here and there by wide velvet lawns and
low, broad, picturesque cottages. He was the first, however, to realize
that they had reached their journey's end.
"There's the church, Josh," he said, "and this will be the house. Drive
in and wait a minute till I make sure."
He sprang up the two low steps almost before the old car had stopped,
and in a second returned and slipped a bill and some jingling coins
into Josh's outstretched hand. "More hooch," he explained the coins
with a wink, and Josh trundled away with a large admiration of his
"fare" in his leathery old heart.
The servant, from whom Peter had made his inquiries, again met him at
the door as he crossed the porch.
"Mrs. Atterbury would like to see you before you go up to Mr. Morris,
if you please, sir," he said in a soft, tired voice, and led the way
through a living room which seemed endless to Peter, and out on to
another wide veranda. "Mr. Clancy, 'm," he announced, in a tone which
disclaimed all responsibility for so plebeian a name, and softly
vanished, leaving Peter face to face with Mrs. Francis Atterbury.
It was an ill moment for poor Peter, judging by the lady's expression.
"Mr. Clancy," she said, motioning slightly to a chair near the one in
which she was seated. "This is a most unfortunate circumstance. My
brother is quite overcome. He's really ill, yet I had to drag him up
here, almost by force, last night. The reporters were simply besieging
the house, and my brother was so nervously unstrung that I had to call
in a doctor. I've seen it coming for a long time, and that terrible
article in the paper yesterday was the last straw. You've seen it, I
suppose?" Her eyes narrowed as she keenly regarded Peter, and there was
a drawing together of her handsome eyebrows which boded ill for him if
he could not assure her of his innocence in the matter.
"I had a wire from my partner early this morning," Peter replied, with
the calm of conscious rectitude, "and I was able to get the paper at
Tollenville on my way over. That was absolutely the first I knew that
the story had leaked out. You must see, Mrs. Atterbury, from the tone
of the entire article, that my office could not possibly have given
it to the papers. A firm of detectives couldn't last long, if it was
as leaky as that. I will admit," he added, candidly, "that I advised
Mr. Morris some time ago that our best bet was to give out the story
so as to get the help of the general public in tracing Miss Blake--and
her sister. You sometimes get information that way that you can't
get by private inquiry. We would have been able, through personal
connection with the papers, to keep Mr. Morris's name entirely out of
it. I urged it on him several times, but he couldn't see it that way,
and I was forced to give it up. We are acting entirely in Mr. Morris's
interests"--he said this gravely, and with a dignity which was very
convincing--"and my office would not go contrary to his wishes in any
particular. I must ask you and Mr. Morris to believe this."
"Well," conceded Helena Atterbury, unbending slightly, "I suppose I
must take your word for it, Mr. Clancy. My brother seems to have a
great deal of confidence in you. But I can't think--I can't see how
Mr. Jones could have done such a thing. I believe your partner told
Mr. Morris that the story could only have come from him. Why, I've
entertained him at my house. He accepted my hospitality, and----"
"Mrs. Atterbury," Peter interrupted, with a shake of his head, "I'm
afraid you don't understand what lengths people will go to for the
sake of advertising. They seem to lose all sense of decency sometimes.
I knew it was a risk to let Frederick Jones in on the game, but there
were certain things we had to know and he was bound, being her manager,
to find out sooner or later, probably sooner than later, that she'd
disappeared. I hope you can see that we had no choice."
Helena Atterbury, in spite of her annoyance at the contretemps, could
not fail to be impressed by the ingenuous sincerity of the young
detective's speech and manner. Her voice had lost much of its icy
hauteur when she spoke again.
"Well, I won't detain you any longer, Mr. Clancy," she said, rising.
"Mr. Morris is anxious to see you. He is in a very bad nervous
condition, and I know you will be careful." Her natural, woman's
anxiety spoke in her voice and eyes, and her natural, woman's curiosity
prompted her to question: "Did you find out anything new yesterday? Can
you give my brother any hope that----"
"I don't know, any more than I did before, where Miss Blake is, Mrs.
Atterbury," he said, frankly. "But I did find out some things--some
things that I hope may prove of value. It was only last night and
this morning that I got hold of the information, and I haven't had
time really to think it out. But I will say this much to you, Mrs.
Atterbury: for almost the first time since I took the case I have hope.
I really feel that I have definite hope."
His clear, bright blue Irish eyes looked straight into hers, and Helena
Atterbury's distaste and distrust melted slowly away.
"I pray, for my brother's sake, that your hopes are well founded, Mr.
Clancy," she said. "Come. I'll take you up to him."
CHAPTER XXI
--AND ASKS A QUESTION
Peter found his client comfortably ensconced in a long, swinging couch
on a wide porch on the second floor. He looked pale and worn and
appeared nervously exhausted, but his tired eyes lighted a little as
Peter came through the bedroom door.
Helena Atterbury tactfully left them alone at once, and Peter was glad
to find that there was little difficulty in convincing Donald Morris
that he and his staff were in no way responsible for the newspaper
article which had caused so much pain and annoyance.
"I wouldn't have had it leak out for the world," said Donald,
anxiously. "Mrs. Atterbury was furious about the reporters coming to
the house, but I wouldn't have minded that so much. What knocked me up
completely was the thought of how it would affect Mary. Somehow, that
just bowled me over, Clancy. I'm ashamed to say I went all to pieces.
You see, her letter to me--well, I'm sure, no matter what happened, she
wanted me to wait--to wait till I heard from her."
"By the way," said Peter, leaning suddenly forward in his low wicker
chair, "that letter--have you got it with you? or anywhere handy? I'd
like to look at it again. There's something I want to make sure of----"
A quality in Peter's voice caused Morris to look up at him quickly.
"What!" he exclaimed. "Have you found out something new? Did you get
hold of anything at Hobart Falls yesterday? It seems the most unlikely
place in the world, and I haven't the least idea why you went there."
"I did--and I didn't," answered Peter, non-committally. "As I just told
your sister, I don't know, any more than I did before, where Miss Blake
has gone. But I did come across something--something that may help.
_Have_ you got the letter?"
Morris, regarding him with serious, puzzled eyes, put his hand into
an inner pocket and drew out a leather case. Silently he opened it,
extracted a letter and handed it to Peter, intently watching the face
of the young detective.
Peter looked at the letter long and earnestly. He read it through
carefully, from the folded page at the beginning to the end. Neither
of them spoke. In the silence, a low murmur of voices came up to them
from the porch beneath, a question in a servant's controlled tone, and
a slightly louder answer from Mrs. Atterbury, but neither of the men
heard or heeded.
Peter folded the letter and handed it back to Donald.
"You'd better keep it," he said, slowly. "I'll ask you for it again,
later."
"Very well," said Donald, carefully replacing the letter. "And now,
tell me, Clancy, for God's sake, what it was you discovered at Hobart
Falls?"
"Well," said Peter, deliberately, "it wasn't so much, you may say. But
there's one thing I know you will be interested to learn: I have found
out positively what Miss Blake's own name really is."
"Her own name?" repeated Morris. "And in such an unlikely place?"
"Yes," answered Peter. "It does seem strange, but I can assure you that
I'm correct. Her name is Curwood."
"Curwood," Donald echoed. "Curwood."
"Yes," said Peter. "That's the name. I verified it carefully, and you
may be sure----" Suddenly he started violently, and his hand shot up in
a warning gesture. He leaned close to Morris, and whispered in his ear:
"What----Who is that?"
A voice had come up to them from the porch below. What it said was
commonplace to a degree. Donald could see no possible reason for the
detective's evident excitement.
"Good morning, Helena, dear," the voice said. "I'm so glad you're here
once more. I only just heard----"
There was the sound of a chair scraping on the tiled floor, and Mrs.
Atterbury said something in a cordial tone.
"Who is it?" Peter repeated, insistently. "Who is that down there?"
"Why," said Morris, looking at Peter in astonishment, "why, that must
be Aunt Kate. Nobody else has a voice like that," and he shook his head
with a whimsical half smile. "What in the world----"