In the swim

MINE AND COUNTERMINE.

The mistress of Lakemere was frozen into a forced calm as she keenly eyed Justine Duprez standing with open-eyed astonishment before the woman whose heart was still racked with the sharp battle with Garston. But Justine’s heart was tranquil. The nurse was far away over the seas now.

The one man living who knew the vital secret of her life had thrown off his mask in the bitter conflict of the afternoon.

“If you will not bring me into your life again, Margaret,” he cried, “I swear that I will fight my way to that child’s side, and she shall know how your cold pride is throttling a father’s honest love. It has been a hard life, the lonely one I’ve led.

“And to that child’s side, I will yet win my way.

“Remember, Alynton and his friends must listen to me. I can crush you.

“The walls of your flimsy social fortification will fall around you at my touch. Tell me, where have you hidden our child—your child, Margaret Cranstoun! My child!” And a new fear had entered into the mother’s soul, all bereft of a husband’s love.

The Senator’s appeal was the hoarse, pleading cry of a last despair, and in it were the echoes of the last agony of a desperate man. There before him, still defiant, stood the wife of his youth, glowing in her autumn beauty, and at the last, madly desired by the revenge of an outraged love.

“The past is sealed. You shall never hear her call you father. Mine she is forever, brought forth in tears, nurtured in sorrow and mine alone,” defiantly cried Elaine. “I have bought my freedom, with all these long and lonely years, and it is Nature’s revolt against the recreated passion of your youth.

“Tell me,” she sternly said, “had you found me poor, faded, broken, in obscurity, would you have then begged to atone?” She faced him like a tigress.

His quivering lips refused to lie, but he drew nearer to her menacingly. “Stand off!” she panted. “Your ownership is forfeit. The brute tyranny of marriage as made by man; you can not reforge the chain I wore once. Every fiber of my flesh revolts against your touch. And she—the pure, the innocent, you shall never see. I swear it!” He had thus raged at her side in brutal menaces.

“I go now to Alynton. They shall know whom they trust with secrets that would shake a nation,” the passion-blinded man growled, forgetting that he had dropped to the mere bully. But the victorious woman laughed him to scorn.

“I hold them, you and your masters, in the hollow of my hand,” the defiant woman said. “At bay, a true woman fears nothing. Your ruin and public shame await you. I will deal with them alone.” And so he had failed.

She had hardly felt the clasp of her daughter’s loving arms before fate sundered them. Fate and fear had parted them.

Her mind was working with lightning rapidity as she awaited the stubborn French maid’s answer. In an instant she revolved the whole circle of her friends and foes. Who was the thief? Justine’s calm voice recalled her to the troubles of the moment. “I have never seen it since I sewed it in for you at the Arlington Hotel. Madame does not doubt me, I hope. Have any of the jewels in my custody been stolen or your money? When did Madame discover the loss?”

Under the clairvoyance of suspicion, Elaine realized the unmistakable air of the déclassée, in the woman’s crafty face and the physical abandon of her tell-tale bearing. And yet, she felt that Justine was technically innocent.

“Here is a possible enemy, a spy, the willing tool of others,” mused Elaine Willoughby, as she rose and coldly said, “The matter is merely an annoyance, not a loss. I however wish to be always able to trust those around me.” In her own mind she quickly recalled the last time when she had verified the existence of the document which bound up a financial secret of national importance. It was on the day before the dinner at which James Garston had come back into her life as a living legacy of a dead past. The existence of the paper had been verified then, in view of possible “business.” “When had it been stolen?” Her long illness flashed upon her. There were a hundred chances since then.

“Madame may remember her long illness,” sullenly said the uneasy Frenchwoman, at last. “There were two strange women in charge of you, night and day. I was not responsible for them, the Doctor brought them here. One of those nurses robbed Dr. Alberg himself later, and then ran away. Mon Dieu!

“The story was in all the papers. And, pardonnez moi, Madame was out of her mind. The story of that woman’s theft was a talk of the town. Doctor Alberg supplied her place from the St. Vincent’s Hospital service. Did he not tell you? But I am sure that he never knew that Madame, too, had been robbed. And these women were in sole charge for a fortnight of all your effects. They were in the sick-room night and day. As for me, Madame, my character is my sole capital.”

The sly soubrette feared however that she had gone too far, as her mistress sternly gazed at her with eyes flashing with indignation. “Take up your keys, Justine, and go back at once to your room,” she quietly said. “Send the housekeeper to me.”

In ten minutes, Justine Duprez listened to the quick galloping of a horse, whirling a coupé away at a breakneck speed. There was help sent for. Was it to be the police? She raged in her heart, for there was no indication of her angry mistress’ intentions.

“Not a word can I send off to warn Vreeland. It is every one for himself now. And she dare not arrest me, for all her quiet suspicions. The other women were in charge. And Vreeland must protect me now.” Justine felt reasonably safe.

The woman dreamed uneasy dreams, however, that night, for she had realized in the past days, to her astonishment, that she had been skillfully kept chained to her mistress’ side. She knew nothing of the one darling hope of Elaine Willoughby’s heart, to hide Miss Romaine Garland forever from the gleam of the pitiless eyes of the passion-maddened husband of her youth. And the caution of the secret council of friends had held her as a hostage indoors.

Through the opened doors of the anteroom, Justine Duprez could see the flushed face of the greedy German doctor as he conversed in a low tone with the woman whose every faculty was now on the alert. It was an hour of drawn out agony to her before the doctor hastened away, and from her window, Justine could see him being rapidly driven back to the station. And still her mistress was sternly silent.

That evening the household at Lakemere was reinforced by a detective in plain clothes, who publicly assembled every inmate of the mansion house and questioned them all, for some hours, upon every movement of the two nurses who had been in charge of their mistress. A shadow of suspicion brooded over the whole ménage now. Justine Duprez was now conscious of a burning gnawing at her heart.

For, all day the pale-faced cripple, Mary Kelly, had been working with flying fingers at the side of Mrs. Willoughby, and the rattle of the key and the clang of the telephone bell was unceasing. The Frenchwoman’s nerves were shaken with the suspense.

The easy swing of Justine’s debonnair insolence would have moderated had she known that a detective promptly met Doctor Hugo Alberg at the Forty-second Street Station; that Mary Kelly’s schoolboy brother had orders not to lose sight of Vreeland in his daily wanderings, until relieved by the night detective; that the “Circassia,” too, was being watched night and day, and that even Senator James Garston was now provided with an invisible escort. For, Elaine Willoughby was fighting for life and love now, to the death.

While Justine was held an unwilling listener to the detective’s cross-examinations at Lakemere, Judge Hiram Endicott was closeted below in a grave conference with Mrs. Willoughby, whereat Roundsman Dan Daly, looking sheepish enough in mufti, watched the pale-faced Mary Kelly’s slender fingers recording in shorthand all the directions of the silver-haired lawyer.

It was midnight before the entire domestic force at Lakemere were allowed to separate, after volunteering an examination of all their rooms and luggage. They knew not what had been stolen, but a vague distrust of each other was now written on all their sullen faces.

“This forces me to volunteer to do the same, and so, cuts off my lawsuit for damages,” snarled Justine, as she descended to find the rooms of her wearied mistress in darkness.

The hastily summoned counselors had departed to New York, without the Frenchwoman even learning of their identity. And now, in her loneliness, Justine Duprez became the prey to a sudden fear.

It was one o’clock when she stole out into the silent gardens dreaming around the mansion. It was a desperate plan, but it would warn her lover and accomplice. If she could only reach the village!

But it was two miles to the railroad station. Once there however, a French restaurateur, who was her slave, could send a dispatch to the old hag in charge of her rooms on South Fifth Avenue. She could even send a messenger boy down to warn Vreeland. And the letter which explained the dangers now threatening them all was hidden in her bosom, ready for the mail, and inclosed under cover to the old woman. The little haunt at the station was open all night for the trainsmen and freight handlers—a sort of all-night caravansera.

And she knew she could trust Pierre Gervais. A throb of guilty pride stirred her bosom. He was her easily subjugated slave, and her countryman.

Young, alert and active, the two miles of country road was nothing to the hardy Parisienne, child of the trottoirs. Her hand was already upon the latch of the nearest gate, as a dark form glided to her side. She was trapped!

“Rather late for a walk, Mademoiselle,” quietly remarked the detective, who had stolen after her noiselessly. “You must beware of the night air. It is treacherous.” In a sullen silence, Justine Duprez returned to the house. “Here is where you went out; I guess that you know the way back,” the detective meaningly said, as he resumed his steady tramp around the house. And the baffled woman slunk upstairs in a silent wrath.

She laughed a defiant laugh and hummed a bar of a song from La Perichole. “O mon cher amant, je te jure, que je t’aime de tout mon coeur. He has to shield me—to support me now,” she cheerfully concluded, as the strong cognac cheered her, “for he is in my power, and Alberg, too; and that sly boots, August Helms also. They dare not abandon poor Justine. At the last I confess, and save myself, for my money is all safe in Paris. Perhaps the Madame would pay me well; who knows?”

With profound astonishment, Justine Duprez saw the next day glide by without reproach of any kind. Her mistress had resumed her normal calm, and beyond a formal search of the whole house, the matter of the robbery was left in statu quo.

The telegraph and telephone wires were voiceless and but one ominous cloud lingered over the woman whose personal belongings had passed a most triumphant inspection. She was not able to evade the sight of the keen-eyed cripple or of her mistress, for even ten minutes.

And the cat-like nature of the woman rightly warned her of a coming storm. It was impossible for her the next day, on their departure, to reach her faithful dupe, Pierre Gervais, for even a moment at the station.

“Remember, Justine, to watch over my jewels,” said her mistress, calmly. “Miss Kelly and yourself must not separate for a moment. I hold you both responsible for them.” And Justine knew the faith of Mary Kelly but too well.

“I wonder if I am to be arrested on our arrival in New York,” gloomily mused the woman, who now felt herself entrapped. But her spirits rose as she realized that once in the “Circassia” there would probably be a visit from Harold Vreeland himself, at once. “If I can only see him, warn him, then we are safe, for he will shield me,” she exulted.

And Dr. Alberg, with August Helms, too, would be under her control. Then it would be an easy matter to thoroughly forewarn the man to whom alone she looked now for safety.

“Yes,” she exulted, “I can snap my fingers at them, and say ‘Bon jour, M’sieur Loup! Comment ça va.’”

The only thing now was to comfortably reach Paris. For she knew that even across the sea she could draw upon Harold Vreeland’s golden hoard. “He may even come over there, to me, at Paris, and I can finish plucking him there.” With a demure sleekness, she plumed herself and closely watched the inscrutable face of her beautiful mistress. Justine well knew the awkwardness of a mistress daring to arrest her confidential maid. There was, however, a perfect serenity lingering upon the noble lines of the human mask which now baffled even the velvety-eyed Justine, even though her wits were sharpened by her fears.

In the period since the discovery of the abstraction of the vastly important document, Elaine Willoughby had been fortified with Judge Endicott’s calm counsels. She knew, too, that she was surrounded with friends, lynx-eyed and active, and that her emissaries were in the enemy’s camp.

Elaine Willoughby listened in a hushed relief, for, as fond woman often does, she had only told her aged Mentor half the truth. She had merely hinted at Garston’s growing infatuation. “There is Vreeland, whom I thoroughly detest, and think him at heart capable of any sneaking villainy. Moreover, Noel also thinks so. Your generous fancies have cost you dearly in the past, in your easily volunteered faith. Separately or together this dangerous document would benefit Garston and Vreeland.

“Now, mark me. Garston would use it, of course, only to bring you to his arms. You would hear of it from him only, for that purpose only.”

“And Vreeland?” tremblingly demanded his client.

“Would blackmail you for a fortune if you ever fell in his power. I hate his sleek ways, his insincere eyes, his cat-like moves.

“Minor enemies are Alberg and your French maid. This German doctor shall not have sole charge of your health again. His explanation about the nurse is a very lame one. Of course, you can not pin him down, for he refuges himself behind an ignorance of your loss, and points to her flight and the hubbub in the papers and the police records.

“Of course, you were too ill to be bothered, and so you may have been despoiled by either the maid or one or both of the nurses.

“Now go away, and leave them all to me. All depends upon your absolute unconcern, and leaving them to me. The rats will come together as soon as you are out of the way.”

When Hiram Endicott said adieu, it was with a last injunction to Elaine not to use either the telegraph or telephone in her absence. “The fact is, my dear child, if you had married some good man instead of dallying along with these discoveries, you would now be proof against all such attacks.”

The grumbling old Judge thought of a golden-hearted, manly lover whose secret he had unwittingly surprised, and sighed when he was on his homeward way. “Given to a woman for her choice, a sly knave, a handsome fool, and a man really worthy of her, she will try either of the first two before ever thinking of the noble heart under her feet. The experience of every other woman seems to be merely thrown away. It is the song of the Pied Piper of Hamelin over again.”

The old lawyer swore a deep oath in his rage. “If I can not protect her against the weaknesses of her own heart, I will at least punish some of these banded rascals. For they will soon fall into my trap.”

To the astonishment of the mystified Justine Duprez, there was a new butler on duty in the “Circassia,” a man whose cold and piercing eyes made her tremble. And also a deft-handed, middle-aged American woman, whose husband, an extra servant, was evidently cast for “responsible duties.” And she could not divine the meaning of all this, but she was tied down to her lonely rack.

The Parisienne felt the toils closing around her, as her mistress called her to her side before dinner. But the “Madame” was perfectly unmoved.

“I am leaving here for some weeks, Justine,” she carelessly said. “All your duties in my absence will be to continue to search this entire apartment with Miss Kelly for the paper, which I may have mislaid. Miss Kelly, who will remain here, will have entire charge in my name, and I expect you to remain here with her. You will thus have ample time to make a most careful search, and very likely you will find the paper, only a mere formal legal document.”

The Frenchwoman gasped: “Of course, I am free to go out as I wish?”

“Certainly, Justine,” was her mistress’ reply. “But always with Miss Kelly, as she may need you to help her at any moment. I leave her as my representative.”

The ashen pallor of fear tinged Justine Duprez’s cheeks, as she bowed in silence. “They know all, and I—I—must hold Vreeland now, between myself and the prison door.” Her mistress’ easy politeness gave no ground for mutiny or quarrel.

The frightened maid knew not whither her mistress had departed when the “Circassia” was deserted that evening by both the new body servants and the Lady of Lakemere. Their use as a bodyguard was all too evident.

“Tell him that I must see him at once on a matter of life and death, and that he must come to your rooms and wait there to meet me. It is the only way, and he must come without a moment’s delay, for all our sakes! Go!”

The stolid German janitor smiled over the ten-dollar bill, which he pocketed, and after an hour’s waiting at the Elmleaf, learned from the parchment-faced Bagley that Mr. Harold Vreeland was dining at the Savoy with Senator Garston and Miss Norreys. A grand, private “swell function,” and so, likely to be a late one.

“I’ll give him your message,” obligingly said Mr. Vreeland’s man. “I ’ave always to wait up for him, you know. He has to be undressed by me. So, I am sure to see him.”

Helms was anxious to get away and sample the good “Münchner Leist-brau” in his brother-in-law’s saloon near by, and so he yielded up his story with a sly wink. “Fine girl, that Justine. They are all the same—these pretty French maids.”

When he lumbered away, he did not realize that Judge Hiram Endicott had received the message before the triumphant Harold Vreeland had returned, flushed with both love and wine. The blundering janitor had played into the enemy’s hands, and Bagley had easily earned a heavy reward.

“Your lonely life has made you an easy prey heretofore to both schemer and fortune-hunter. You will have now Romaine to guard, and you need help. You can not go on and brave society’s natural curiosity.

“And, no half explanations will do. When we have recovered your missing document, you must abandon forever all your operations in the Street, and go away to some safe European land, either Sweden, Switzerland or Germany, and, moreover, under a good guard.

“If you stay here, you need a resolute man at your side, one who knows all your enemies, and one who can protect you. It is the revenge of Nature’s laws. You can not be father and mother both to your beautiful Cinderella—God bless her!”

“And do you think that my friends are in any danger over the loss of the stolen document?” tremblingly said Elaine, fixing her eyes fondly upon his earnest face.

“If it’s Vreeland, it will be merely money. If it’s Garston, and far the more dangerous of the two—a man not foolish enough for criminal blackmailing threats—then he wants to control both you and Romaine.

“Of course, he has no claim whatever on Romaine. He would only use her as the pivot to turn your heart toward him.”

Elaine Willoughby’s eyes were filled with sudden tears. “If I only dared to tell you all!” she murmured.

But as their hands met, Hugh Conyers brokenly said: “I am yours to the death; I can wait for your words, Elaine. Romaine is safe under a watchful guardian. Roper was an old Wells-Fargo shotgun messenger; a trusted Pinkerton man later, and as Romaine is Sara’s roommate, and as Roper never leaves them by day, you and I can wait here without fear till the demand is made on you.

“And then, you may find the two men whom I fear turn up together. But the very moment they take any steps that indicate the possession of the document, the tables are turned.

“They are then in our power. And Bagley may further trap Vreeland.”

“He may have sold his secret to Senator Garston,” faltered Elaine Willoughby. “The only man on earth whom I fear.”

The winsome woman at his side was gazing at him with a new and tender light in her eyes. “How noble he is! How true!” she sighed; for Hugh Conyers’ friendship was a rock in the desert of her life.

It was after four that afternoon when Harold Vreeland, plainly dressed, sauntered into the rear entrance of the “Circassia,” and sought the rooms of August Helms, the janitor. He was only waiting for the final sale of a soul and to hear the full story of Justine. The cold relegation to his routine duties at the office, and Mrs. Willoughby’s message, had now cut off all hopes of a nearer social approach.

“I must be very careful,” he mused. “These fellows down here are all on the watch; and if Elaine abandons me, I am half stranded with my winter’s extravagance and, my poor fifteen thousand dollars will not go very far. But, Garston counsels me to keep cool, to play my old game, and to post him. He must now give me his open aid, and Elaine may not then dare to thrust me out.

“And if I married Katharine Norreys, that would be the fairest reason for a transference into Senator Garston’s camp.

“He must give me his entire business in stocks.”

He had quietly dropped into his old business routine, and the waxen mask of his face was unruffled even before Wyman and Noel Endicott, his foes in ambush. He had in some dim way realized that Elaine Willoughby had only used him as a lever to crush the dead favorite, Hathorn. And he began now to fear her variable nature.

When Justine glided into the dark back room of the janitor, her excited lover cut short all tenderness.

“Tell me, for God’s sake, all you know! We can make an appointment for South Fifth Avenue afterwards.”

He had brought a roll of crisp bills to stimulate Justine’s memory, and when he slipped away half an hour later, his heart was throbbing wildly. He was armed at all points now.

In his mean egoism, he saw the storm lowering only over Justine’s head. “Bah! they will merely chase her over to Paris; a few thousand will close her mouth there.

“And I can surely afford it, when I marry Katharine Norreys, a millionairess in posse!”

He went directly to the Savoy Hotel, after sending up a beautiful corbeille of flowers. His mind was made up at last. “Justine is all right. She dare not talk. And they will seal her lips and send her out of America.” He laughed lightly. “My capricious employer! You are only playing my game for me. For I should not care to have Justine Duprez as a bridesmaid. It will be well to have her out of the way. Garston might use his sly arts on her.”

Lulled by his mean selfishness he forgot all his own risks, in believing the now half-desperate maid to be the single object of suspicion.

A minute mark on every letter and a special time list enabled Miss Mary Kelly, self-possessed and untiring, to compare daily her list with the chief clerk of Station Z.

An average detention of two hours on every letter, and the use of prepared decoys, told of the unfaithfulness of the janitor and the collusion of the unfortunate Mulholland, who had succumbed to the demands of a thirst beyond his salary. For the other letter-carrier had vindicated himself, and aided to trap his fellow.

Harold Vreeland was now ready for his final bargain with the stony-faced Senator James Garston. He had withdrawn himself from general society, and, as envious swains said, was “making the running” now on Miss Katharine VanDyke Norreys.

The tall, blonde beauty’s exquisite grace, her superb dress, her Western free-lance wit, and all the brilliant glow of her youthful freshness, accentuated the charms of golden hair and the almost pleading violet eyes à l’Imperatrice Eugenie.

Once or twice Vreeland fancied that he had discerned a tenderness beyond their relations in her manner to Senator Garston, but his whole faculties were now devoted to the arrangement of his dual future relations.

“I can easily get my price from Mrs. Willoughby—the price of her peace—and I might find a way to discover and return the dangerous paper.

“I am king over Justine while I have it,” he mused, “and to convey it about me is a fearful risk. If I leave it in hiding, a house may burn, and there is always the unexpected to fear. If I should fall ill—” He began to grow morbidly cowardly.

He was lulled by Elaine Willoughby’s silence as to her loss. “Of course,” he reflected, “Doctor Alberg, the two nurses and Justine were the only ones who had access to her during the illness following Garston’s sudden appearance. I am a ‘rank outsider’ in all that.”

It was clear to him that the Lady of Lakemere had accepted Doctor Alberg’s ingeniously contrived explanation as to Martha Wilmot’s robbery. But the paper—the paper! What to do with it now?

In fact, Judge Hiram Endicott, after a long examination of the newspapers and police records, had finally dismissed the frightened German physician with the remark: “I suppose that this sly adventuress of a nurse thought her patient had concealed some bank bills or stocks in that womanly hiding place, the corset, and has undoubtedly destroyed the private papers, which were of no value to any one but the owner.” The able old lawyer calmed the frightened doctor’s all too evident fear of losing his “star” patient.

Those same private papers, the original and the copy, had been already shifted by Harold Vreeland, from time to time, through a dozen different hiding places.

He never knew that Hugh Conyers wrote the long and even unusually friendly letter from Asheville, in which his patroness announced her intention of a long voyage “for a complete rest and change of air.”

A tour, perhaps, around the world via Japan, but he did know that he was to assist Noel Endicott and his cool partner, Wyman, in the routine business.

“Stocks appear to be standing on a dead level,” she wrote, “and so, I will lose nothing in my absence.”

The clear intimation that he would receive fifteen thousand dollars a year for his services, and that the “Elmleaf” apartment would be kept up as an extra account, satisfied him.

“It will be unnecessary for you to write to me for orders. I may go on from here,” the letter concluded; “and you will receive all my final wishes later, through Judge Endicott, by the hands of Noel. Miss Kelly, in charge at the ‘Circassia,’ will liquidate all the ‘Elmleaf’ bills as usual, through Bagley. I shall close up both my rooms at the ‘Circassia’ and Lakemere. Please acknowledge the receipt of this to my Asheville address.”