CHAPTER IX.
MARION WITNESSES A QUEER SIGHT.
“Big Belle, the Confidence Queen,” was a very versatile woman. At liberty, she was noted for the variety of her accomplishments, and in prison walls she was equally useful both in her cell and in the workroom.
But this strange woman’s greatest delight was in the care of the sick, and as she passed from cot to cot in the prison hospital both her hand and her voice were as gentle as a mother’s.
She was a large, fine-looking woman, with brilliant black eyes, but the coarse prison garb did not enhance the beauty of either face or figure.
Belle had “done time” at the “Isle de Blackwell” before, so she felt very much at home in her present occupation.
There was not a rule or regulation about the prison that she did not know, and if she ever longed to break one of them there was no indication of it in her manner.
Rather, it seemed to her associates that Belle was merely “biding her time,” and, according to all accounts, a goodly portion of her ill-gotten gains was steadily drawing interest in various banks in anticipation of her coming.
As Big Belle bent over one of her charges whose face was covered with bandages, she moistened them as skillfully as any trained nurse could have done, and as the prison physician entered the ward she went over to him promptly, standing with calmly folded hands and eyes cast down, the very embodiment of meekness and servitude.
“How is she this morning?” was the doctor’s first question, asked without even raising his eyes from the prescription he was writing.
“Worse, Dr. Brookes,” said “Big Belle” in a lady-like voice. “I should say that the vitriol was still burning deeper, and if I am not much mistaken there is a considerable fever.”
“I’ll have to get you a thermometer,” said Dr. Brookes, without thinking; “you can certainly take temperature, Belle, they tell me you are clever.”
A half-suppressed laugh from the woman startled him. He looked up and caught her eye, and then he, too, smiled slightly.
“I keep forgetting that you people aren’t to be trusted,” he said, pleasantly. “When will I ever learn that I am working in a prison!”
The woman did not answer, but she followed him with her eyes as he moved away. She was by far too clever not to understand his words, and by far too unhappy not to be secretly pleased by them.
“He’d trust me all right, if he dared,” she thought. “As if there was any danger of my killing myself, or any one else for that matter!”
“May I come in a minute?” asked a pleasant voice at the door.
Dr. Brookes looked around quickly, and a smile spread over his features. His visitor was Marion Marlowe, in her nurse’s dress and bare-headed, except for the light shawl, which she was just slipping to her shoulders.
“Come right in,” said the young man, as he went quickly forward, then stopped suddenly at the thought of his professional dignity.
“Oh, Miss Marlowe, what ward do you come from, please? I am almost afraid to make you welcome.”
“Don’t fear,” said Marion, smilingly, as she stepped into the ward. “Since I came back from the city, I have only been helping in the linen room. They have been kind enough to keep me off the wards until I grew a little stronger.”
“Big Belle” was just passing on her way to the vitriol patient and Marion watched her movements with a look of wonder.
“The cleverest ‘confidence woman’ in the world,” whispered the doctor. “She counts the victims she has fleeced by the score, yet see how gentle she is with my patients.”
“What is the matter with her?” asked Marion, nodding toward the patient with the bandaged face.
“Why, she was in some drunken fight with another woman. I believe it was over some man, and as they left Jefferson Market Court her rival fairly deluged her with vitriol. She only came up from the city yesterday—sent up as a ‘drunk and disorderly’ for ten days only, but she’ll never go back. She is slowly dying.”
“Poor thing!” sighed Marion, with tears in her eyes. “But her fate is the same as dozens that I have seen already. Oh, this awful island! This awful island!”
She was moving toward the patient when Dr. Brookes stopped her.
“No, Marion!” he said, firmly; “you must not go any nearer. Erysipelas has set in and you know you are still in a weak condition. If you should catch any infection in my wards, I would never forgive myself—so forgive me, please, for being inhospitable!”
“Big Belle” came back and stood quietly beside the doctor. She had something to say to him and was awaiting his permission to speak.
“She wishes me to send for her father,” she reported as Dr. Brookes turned to her. “She knows that she is dying, and is anxious to see him.”
“Get his name,” was the doctor’s answer, but “Big Belle” smiled sadly. “I tried to,” she said, quickly, “but she lapsed into unconsciousness that minute.”
“They may know his name in the office,” said the doctor. “I’ll go right down now and see if I can wire him.”
As Dr. Brookes and Marion reached the door of the building, a breath of salt, fresh air came over the water.
“What a mockery!” said Marion, with a heart-felt sigh. “Oh! this place is so beautiful with its wonderful, changing scenery, yet how sad are the hearts that dwell in these buildings. How weary are the eyes that gaze out on these waters!”
The tramp of many feet came as an echo to her words. Marion turned, and through the iron grating saw the convicts marching to their luncheon.
“Oh! do let me go in and see them!” she cried, impulsively. “It is the first time I have been in here, although I have been a month on the Island.”
Dr. Brookes spoke to the turnkey who at once opened the great guard doors.
As Marion stepped into the dim corridor, with its small high windows and bleak gray walls, she shuddered involuntarily as all do at their first visit to a prison.
Tier after tier of cells rose above her head and now that the convicts were on their way to the dining-room she stood still for a moment and gazed morbidly into the blackness.
Suddenly there was a cry from the doctor and a guard came running toward him.
Dr. Brookes pointed with one hand toward a closed cell just above them, and with the other tried desperately to push Marion behind him.
But he was a second too late, for Marion’s glance had followed his own, and for the next few minutes both stood speechless with horror.
A man whose face was so familiar to Marion that her heart almost stopped beating when she recognized it, was hanging by the neck to the door of his cell. In the momentary excitement of the meal hour he had seized his opportunity, and when the guard at last cut him loose he was too far gone to be resuscitated.
“Who is he?” asked Dr. Brookes, as they brought him down.
Almost automatically the guard muttered the dead man’s number, but with ashen lips Marion gave the information.
“His name is Lawson,” she said, in a whisper; “and he is the villain who boarded at my father’s home one summer. He was a hypnotist by profession, and he abducted my sister Dollie! He was sentenced to Sing Sing, so I had no idea that I would see him here.”
The guard explained that he had been transferred to the Island by special order, only a few days previously.
Reginald Brookes bit his lips in a burst of anger.
“Forgive me,” he said, humbly; “I had no idea you bore such sorrow. Thank Heaven he has paid the penalty and yes—I am glad that you saw it.”
“I am, too,” said Marion, who was deathly pale. “If it had to be—I am glad that I saw it.”
CHAPTER X.
A CONVICT’S CONFIDENCE.
That very afternoon Dr. Brookes got a letter from Dr. Greenaway. It was the first time he had heard from him since he loaned him the five thousand dollars.
“Poor chap! He little knows what a shock I had,” he thought, “when for a moment I thought I had discovered his sweetheart in that drunken woman!”
He tore open the letter and read it hastily. It was very brief and only took a minute.
“I am nicely settled,” wrote Greenaway, “and would be perfectly happy, but my sweetheart has thrown me over—jilted me—to be honest. Of course you will think that if I can talk of it I do not suffer, but at just this minute I must talk or die, and you, doc, are my friend, the only one I have in creation. Yes, May has left me and gone, I don’t know where, but to be honest again, I think it is to the devil! She was always gay, but I trusted her, doc, even while she was abroad for three months. I did not doubt her, but now there is no use denying it any longer, she is a bad, dissolute woman—and yet I love her!”
There was a little more to the doctor’s strange letter, but it was the postscript that Dr. Brookes remembered longest and wondered most over.
“I haven’t forgotten the name of your little nurse-friend, yet, doc,” it said, “for I have a curious presentiment, in some way, that some sorrow will come to me through Miss Marion Marlowe!”
“As queer as ever—queerer, perhaps,” muttered Dr. Brookes as he finished the letter.
Then as he went about his work in the meagerly furnished wards he found himself wondering if Greenaway was going crazy.
“What a fool to throw himself away on a woman like that!” he said aloud. The next instant he noticed with embarrassment that “Big Belle” had heard him.
“By Jove!” thought the doctor, suddenly, “I am going to talk to this woman. Prison rules be hanged! She is a human being, and if any one knows the world this woman knows it.”
He turned toward her instantly—there was no one within hearing.
“Belle,” he said, quietly, “tell me something of your life. I want to know your motive for being dishonest.”
The woman stared at him a moment, and then smiled broadly. There was a vestige of her old shrewdness in the way she answered him.
“I have never been proven dishonest,” she said, quietly. “I came up this time on the strength of my reputation, but, granted that I am dishonest, this is my only motive, I wish to hold my own in the struggle of life—I am what you might call a rabid believer in the ‘survival of the fittest.’”
“But how long do you expect to survive?” he asked quickly, “and do you call your present existence living?”
“I have some money,” said the woman quietly, “and this fortune is put away where no law can touch it. I have fifteen years yet before I shall be fifty-five; more of those years I expect to spend in prison, but after that——”
She stopped a moment and chuckled before she added:
“After that I presume I shall enter society.”
To save himself, the doctor could not help laughing. He was amused, to say the least, at this woman’s philosophy.
“You seem to have no fear of results,” he said after a minute. “What was your early training? Were your parents religious?”
For once “Big Belle’s” eyes snapped with a hidden fire. He had touched the chord that was most responsive.
“I was a country girl like that nurse who was in this morning,” she said, quickly; “I came to the city because my parents could not support me. I was only one of the thousands who are kicked out at an early age to battle with the world’s evils, and oh, how I was tossed and buffeted about! How readily my superiors made a football of me! How willingly women inveigled me into foolish ways, and how quickly and thoroughly they abused me for being inveigled! I was a fresh field daisy, innocent as a lamb, but oh, how gladly men sullied the whiteness of my soul, how eagerly they flattered me and led me astray, and then, when I was as they were, how brutally they served me! There were times when I thought I would gladly die, Dr. Brookes, but there was something in me that kept urging and urging, and at last I turned, as a worm will turn, and yes, I will tell you, my motive was to get even!”
The black eyes were scintillating with fury now, and Dr. Brookes almost regretted that he had stirred up such a passion.
“I don’t entirely blame you,” he said quietly, “and yet I know that you are wrong. It is better to suffer than to persecute—apart from all religious sentiment, I believe that thoroughly!”
“Well, I don’t!” said the woman in a cold, hard voice. “I prefer to take things as they come, Dr. Brookes, and you cannot say that I do not take my punishment philosophically.”
They were at one end of a long ward when this conversation took place; five minutes later they were both bending over a patient.
“You can take the bandages off now, Belle,” said the doctor, softly. “Poor soul, she is dying and perhaps she will be more comfortable.”
“Did you learn her name?” asked the female convict.
“No, she came as Mary Jones, which means absolutely nothing. We have wired to the police for further information.”
“Well, it will come too late, I’m afraid,” said the woman softly. The patient had breathed her last before she had fairly removed the dressings.
Marion Marlowe was standing by a window in Charity Hospital, watching the setting sun just as the “vitriol patient’s” remains were taken to the criminal “dead-house.”
Little did she dream what tragedy had been enacted, or how closely connected was her life with this poor creature’s.
She was thinking of Mr. Ray and his great grief as she stood there, and it was only the stroke of the bell that roused her from her reverie.
As she passed through the corridor on her way to the dining-room an office assistant came along with a handful of letters.
“Oh, have you one for me?” asked Marion, quickly. “I am Marion Marlowe, I’m in the linen-room at present.”
“You were at the ‘medical,’” said the young man as he handed her a letter. “There ain’t much danger of any of us losing track of you, Miss Marlowe.”
Marion looked at him quickly, and an admiring glance rewarded her.
“Prettiest girl in the building,” he said, blandly. “Every man on the Island is in love with you, Miss Peaches.”
“Convicts and all?” asked Marion, laughing.
“If they ain’t, then they are in the right place,” was the answer; “but I guess if they wasn’t they wouldn’t all of ’em be breaking rules to look at you! Don’t you remember that fellow that got shot, Miss Marlowe?”
Marion shuddered as she recalled the terrible scene, and as she walked slowly away her face paled a little.
It had happened during the first week of her stay on the Island, and ever since then she had been trying hard to forget it. Then a vision of the black-souled Lawson’s tragic end flitted across her brain and she put up both hands as if to ward off such pictures.
“That poor convict that jumped into the water and was shot is to be envied,” she whispered sadly. “He went down out of sight beneath the smiling waters, but Lawson, the abductor, goes to Potter’s Field. It is right! It is just! He richly deserves it!”
CHAPTER XI.
BERT JACKSON TO THE RESCUE.
The tragedy of the “vitriol patient’s” death was almost a tragedy of two cities—the great city of New York, where crime is conceived and fostered and the smaller city on Blackwell’s Island, where crime is punished and ended.
A few hours after that sad death in the Prison Hospital, the lawyer, Augustus Atherton, stood on the steps of his office waiting for his typewriter, Dollie Marlowe, to join him.
As he stood there waiting he twisted his gray mustache idly. His hands were neatly gloved and his attire stylish and spotless.
“Not a bad looking chap for fifty,” said a man who was passing, “and do you know, Dare, he is a great masher—a regular sport with the ladies.”
“I have heard that his wife left him years ago,” was the low answer, “and that his daughter, the one that married young Ray while he was in college, was quick in striking the old man’s pace and kept it up until she went plumb to the devil.”
“Where is she now?” asked the first speaker, glancing back to see if the lawyer was still waiting.
“The last I heard she was seen fighting on the street. I believe her husband or some friend of his happened to see her, and for the sake of the family kept the thing quiet.”
As the two men passed on, Dollie Marlowe came tripping down the steps. She was dressed in a natty blue cloth suit and looked more bewitching than ever.
“You are sure I will get home early?” she said to the lawyer, plaintively.
“Certainly, little one,” was the smiling answer as he helped her into a carriage.
“Marion Marlowe would be furious if she knew I was going out with you after all,” she said after they had started, “and, of course, my chaperon, Miss Allyn, will think she has to tell her. Oh, I must manage to get home early so they will not know anything about it.”
“Any one would think I was an ogre or a monster of some sort,” said the lawyer, smiling down at her, “when really all I am doing is just giving you a little pleasure. Certainly there is no harm in a supper in a private room together.”
“Can’t we go to a regular restaurant?” asked Dollie, shyly. “I think I would prefer it very much, if you please, Mr. Atherton.”
The wily old lawyer leaned over and smiled at her before he answered. As he gazed into her eyes, he took her hand and pressed it gently.
“My dear child, you are as safe with me as you would be with your own father,” he said, purringly. “Do, Dollie, raise those sweet eyes and tell me that you trust me.”
“Oh, I do trust you, of course,” said the girl, a little more bravely, “but I keep thinking of Ralph, and it makes me nervous.”
“Ralph is the young man whom you are engaged to, is he not?” he asked, suavely. “Well, can Ralph give you nice dinners and take you to theatres, and can he buy you pretty dresses and jewelry, Dollie?”
“No, he can’t—not now,” said Dolly, a little sadly. “Ralph is only a book-keeper on fifteen dollars a week. We mean to be married as soon as he gets twenty.”
“And I can give you twenty dollars a week for your own self,” said the lawyer, quickly, “and I will do it, too, Dollie, if you will give up this fellow.”
“Oh, I couldn’t give Ralph up. Why, I love him!” cried the girl, sharply. “And I don’t know why it is that I have come out with you, Mr. Atherton. I know Ralph would not like it. Oh, I am sure it is wicked!”
Poor, weak, little Dollie was growing hysterical now, and the next moment she found her head resting on her employer’s shoulder.
As the lawyer leaned over to pull down the carriage blind he became suddenly aware that some one was looking in at the window.
“The impudence of that fellow,” he muttered between his teeth. “It is a chap on horseback, and he was trying to peep,” he explained to Dollie. The next instant he bent boldly and pressed a kiss on her forehead.
“Oh, Mr. Atherton, you mustn’t,” cried Dollie in genuine alarm, but as she tried to draw herself away from him he only held her tighter.
“Let go of me this minute,” she gasped, stamping her foot in anger. Her cheeks were like roses now and her eyes like purple pansies. As her lips trembled with anger they seemed more tempting than ever, and Augustus Atherton, unable to resist her beauty, made another attempt to draw her head to his bosom.
With the frenzy of despair Dollie tore herself away and as quick as a flash uncovered the tiny window.
One glance through the pane made her almost shout for joy, for there, still riding his mount as close to the carriage as possible, was Bert Jackson, in all the glory of his lately acquired finery.
“Oh, Bert, save me!” shrieked Dollie, and that second the horses were stopped.
Bert Jackson sprang to the ground and threw the carriage door open.
“Come out here, you old sinner, and let me lick you!” he roared as he almost lifted Dollie to the roadway beside him.
“Go on, driver!” yelled the lawyer, shrinking back in his seat.
“Not by a darn sight!” bawled Bert, making a dive into the carriage.
“Quick, Bert! Let him go,” cried Dollie in dismay. “Oh, stop quick! There’s a lot of people staring at us already.”
Bert dropped back to the street with a groan of rage. As the carriage rolled away he shook his fist at it vigorously.
“I’ll take this car, Bert, and go right home,” said Dollie, penitently, as Bert was looking about wondering what to do with her.
“All right, if you will,” said Bert, very coolly, “my horse won’t lead very well in the street. I’ll be up this evening to see you, Dollie.”
“Oh, Bert, I am so ashamed,” said Dollie as he signaled a car. “You won’t tell Marion or Ralph or Miss Allyn, will you?”
“Not a word,” said Bert with a little grin. “But I’ll punch that old duffer yet—you see if I don’t! The idea of his making love to my future sister!”
CHAPTER XII.
MARION SAVES A VICTIM FROM POTTER’S FIELD.
Dr. Reginald Brookes had given his last order for the night, and as he left the Prison Hospital he bent his steps almost involuntarily toward the warden’s office. Some way or other the vitriol patient’s case had interested him greatly, and he was anxious to know if any word had been received from the New York police about her. A large envelope was handed to him in the office, and almost identical with his breaking the seal he asked the warden a question.
“Any further information about Mary Jones, Mr. Warner?”
The warden turned to his desk and began looking over his letters, and just then Dr. Brookes gave a stifled cry of astonishment. He had drawn a neatly folded paper from the envelope in his hand, and in an instant he saw that it was his friend Greenaway’s life insurance policy.
“What has happened?” He asked the question mentally, and just then the warden turned to him.
“Known for a time as May Osgood,” he said briefly. “Was an actress, but had no particular reputation.”
Dr. Brookes dropped the envelope and stared a minute.
“My God!” he said, sharply. “Can that be possible! Why, one of my dearest chums is in love with that woman!”
“Well, she couldn’t have been much,” said the warden, bluntly. “A ‘drunk and disorderly’ and not a friend to bury her!”
“I’ll bury her myself if this turns out to be true! I’ll wire Greenaway to-night,” said the doctor, promptly.
“Can’t identify her now, her face is a sight,” said the warden again. “That acid ate clear through to the bone; she must have been deluged with it.”
“Nevertheless, I shall send for him,” said the physician slowly, and in a very few minutes he had sent the message.
After he had left the building the warden received a communication. It was from the Chief of Police, giving some further information about the woman.
“Hem! Looks as if she did have friends after all,” he growled crossly, then he, too, wrote a message and had it wired to the city.
At ten o’clock the next morning two more deaths had been reported, and as sometimes happen, a blunder resulted.
At eleven o’clock there were two pine coffins lying out on the very edge of the upper dock, both bearing tags and stenciled numbers.
At that hour Marion Marlowe was standing with the Superintendent of Nurses, listening to some instructions of a private nature.
“I would go myself if I had time,” the superintendent was saying, “for I would like to see Dr. Miller and tell him about it, but you can be spared and I can’t, Miss Marlowe, and I’ll consider it a favor if you will do my errand.”
“I am only too glad to be of service to you, madam,” was Marion’s answer, “and I shall enjoy the sail up the river, too, as I have never been farther than Blackwell’s Island.”
“Well, Dr. Miller is at the Homeopathic Hospital on Ward’s Island,” was the reply, “and you have only to tell him exactly what I have told you.”
Marion Marlowe turned away with a respectful bow, then something occurred to her and she looked back anxiously.
“Oh, by the way, will there be a boat this morning, madam?”
The superintendent thought a moment—she had almost forgotten that.
“You will have to go up on the ‘dead boat,’ the Fidelity,” she said, decidedly. “Tell the captain I sent you and it will be all right. That is due at half-past eleven. You don’t mind, do you, Miss Marlowe?”
Marion did not even shiver at this ghastly suggestion. She was fast growing acclimated to these daily horrors.
“I guess it won’t hurt me,” she said with a smile. “I can stay on deck, where I will not see the coffins.”
When the Fidelity stopped, Marion hurried aboard. She had seen the two pine boxes and wished to avoid them.
“Bring on those silent passengers!” bawled the captain, jovially, and as the coffins were tossed aboard Marion gazed out over the water.
“Who’ve we got this time?” asked one of the convict sailors after they had started. “We’ve all got to make this trip some day, boys, and I’m cur’us to know what kind of comp’ny we’ll be keepin’ up yender!”
He made a motion of his head up the river as he spoke, and Marion sighed as she thought of these strong men looking forward to lying in the pauper graveyard.
“Number 1,197 is Sarah Jenks,” read another convict, “and 1,198 is Mrs. Mary Ray, both en route via the Fidelity for the trenches up yonder!”
As the convict stopped speaking he turned around quickly, for every man on the lower deck seemed to be staring at something.
Right behind him stood Marion Marlowe, her cheeks as white as death, while her beautiful eyes seemed glazed with horror.
“Quick! Let me see that tag!” she whispered sharply. “Oh, I am almost sure you must be mistaken!”
In less than a second there was a guard beside her, but his presence was unnecessary, for not one of the convicts would have harmed her.
“It is Mary Ray, all right,” said the guard, showing her the tag. “Do you know her, miss? Has somebody blundered?”
“Somebody has blundered, terribly!” said Marion, more calmly. “That coffin must not be taken to Hart’s Island, men. Why, I know her husband, and such a thing would kill him!”
“It’s a wonder she’s where she is if he thought so much of her,” muttered one of the convicts.
“You don’t understand,” said Marion, sadly. “It is just as the guard said—somebody has blundered.”
The captain was consulted, but he was an obstinate man.
“Can’t do it, nurse! I’ve got orders and I have to obey them! It’s government biz. You can’t monkey with the government.”
“It shall never be buried in Potter’s Field,” said Marion, pointing to the coffin, “for I will not leave the boat until I have your promise, captain! You must not refuse me! The thing would be too awful!”
“I’ll put back, then,” said the captain, after a moment’s thought. “It won’t take a half hour, and I guess it won’t matter.”
As they neared the dock they could see a group of people waiting for them, among them was Dr. Brookes, waving and shouting frantically.
“You see they want us to come back!” cried Marion, triumphantly. “I told you it was a blunder, and they have discovered it!”
Then the brave, beautiful girl turned suddenly paler than ever before, for there on the dock, with his head bent in grief, stood her friend, Archie Ray, this dead woman’s husband.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE END OF THE TRAGEDY.
Marion had kept her promise to watch for Mr. Ray’s wretched young wife, and it was her grim determination alone that secured for the poor creature a Christian burial.
Never to her dying day would the brave girl forget the scene on that little dock when the “dead boat” drew alongside with her dreadful cargo.
“Gently, men!” she cried as a couple of convicts lifted the pine coffin. “Remember that all are not so accustomed to these sights as we are, and this poor creature was once a beautiful woman!”
The men heard her silently, but they obeyed her commands. The box was deposited gently, and then the Fidelity steamed away again at an order from the official.
Marion’s glance swept hastily over the group on the dock. They were mostly attaches of the monstrous prison, but the next instant her gaze rested upon two manly forms, and the pathos of the scene brought tears that blinded her vision. Mr. Ray was standing like one stricken by some fearful blow, his arm resting heavily on Dr. Brooke’s broad shoulder.
“Bear up!” whispered the doctor. “You have saved her, Ray! She has come back to you at last, and you must forgive her—in her coffin.”
“Poor girl! Poor Mary!”
Mr. Ray’s words came brokenly. He had forgotten the great wrong that this woman had done him.
Dr. Brookes had to leave him to give an order about the coffin, and at that instant a young man wearing a press badge came running down from the prison.
One of the guards whom he met turned and pointed toward Mr. Ray, and the next moment the reporter was close beside him.
“Do you mind giving the details of this frightful mistake to the New York Daily?” he asked blandly. “Awfully sorry to distress you, sir, but, of course, we would like to have the story.”
“I will give them to you,” said Marion, stepping up at once. It seemed wicked that this man should intrude upon Mr. Ray at this moment.
The reporter turned to her respectfully, and Mr. Ray thanked her with a look. A moment later he was again leaning on the arm of Dr. Brookes, on his way to the Morgue to identify the body.
Marion told the story as briefly as she could, but as she mentioned the name of Augustus Atherton the stolid reporter gave a long, low whistle.
“He is here, Lawyer Atherton,” he said, quickly. “He came up in the boat with me, and he acted like a madman. Every one of us kept our eyes on him—we thought he was going to jump overboard.”
“Well, he is a very wicked man!” said Marion, impulsively, “so I don’t pity him as much as I do her poor husband!”
“Ray treated her all right for all I can learn,” said the reporter. “She was a ‘tough proposition,’ if you know what that means, but if the father is bad what can you expect from the children?”
As they were walking back to the Penitentiary, Marion remembered the errand that she had been sent on, but she felt sure that the superintendent would excuse her when she heard her story.
At the door of the warden’s office even the reporter halted. The scene in the office was almost appalling.
Archie Ray and his father-in-law stood face to face, both pale as death and both glaring at each other.
In an instant Marion knew that there had been hot words between them, and that they were each blaming the other for the day’s experience.
“Come, Mr. Ray,” she said quickly, darting into the room. “Come away before you break down altogether! That man’s words should not annoy you—he is beneath your notice!”
The lawyer glared at her, but did not recognize her for a moment, while Dr. Brookes and the warden looked on in intense amazement.
“How dare you speak like that, miss?” said Augustus Atherton, hotly.
Marion turned and faced him with a look of indignation.
“I dare, because I know I am right,” she said, distinctly. “With your own daughter an outcast, a disgrace to her mother and to her husband, you do not hesitate to flatter and mislead young girls, or to compromise and wrong them if occasion offers!”
The lawyer’s pale face flushed with shame at her words, and just then Dr. Brookes stepped forward and led her from the office.
“Well said, beautiful Marion!” he whispered, softly. “And said at a time that he will not forget in a hurry! I fancy he will hesitate before he smiles at another young innocent!”
“You must cheer poor Mr. Ray,” was the fair girl’s only answer, “for while, of course, if is impossible that he should still love his wife, yet there must be memories that make this scene most bitter!”
“I will do my best,” said Reginald Brookes, nobly. He had forgotten for the time that this man was his rival.
Marion hurried back to the hospital. She had done her duty. She went at once to the Superintendent of Nurses and told her the whole story.
“What a horrible thing!” was that lady’s answer. “Well, my errand will keep, and I can go myself to-morrow.”
The next day both Marion and Dr. Brookes got a twenty-four hours’ leave of absence. They took the “doctor’s boat” together and went over to the city.
“There has been one more tragedy in connection with that poor woman’s death,” he said, sadly, as he handed Marion an open letter.
“My friend, Dr. Greenaway, has killed himself. It seems he knew Mrs. Ray as ‘May Osgood,’ and was desperately in love with her.”
Marion sighed as she handed him back the letter, which was only a brief account of Greenaway’s death, written by his friend, Dr. Fielding.
“How did he hear of it?” she asked, with a little shudder.
Dr. Brookes looked more sorrowful and his face trembled as he answered:
“Why, I learned that she was ‘May Osgood’ before I knew she was Mrs. Ray, and, of course, I wired to Greenaway to come up and identify her. The fellow was already in a frightful state! I don’t blame him—it must be awful to love a wicked woman!”
He was looking at Marion so meaningly that her eyes fell before his glance.
“Or a wicked man,” she said, softly. “Oh, how I pity my dear friend, Miss Allyn!”
“It has been a strange ‘mix up,’” said Dr. Brookes, thoughtfully, “a tragedy, you might say, of New York and Blackwell’s Island.”
“There are many such, I fancy,” was the fair girl’s reply.
“More than any one dreams of,” answered the doctor, sadly.
When they reached the city they went directly to the flat, and as Dollie met them at the door Marion uttered an exclamation.
Her golden haired sister was looking radiantly happy, and even young Brookes could almost guess the secret.
“Oh, Dollie, is it settled at last?” asked Marion, as she kissed her.
“I’ll answer that question,” said Ralph Moore, coming forward.
“Mr. Saunders, my employer, has taken pity on me at last. He has raised my salary to twenty dollars a week, and now there is no reason why we shouldn’t be married.”
“And I want them to hurry up about it!” cried Bert Jackson’s voice, as he and Miss Allyn emerged suddenly from the kitchen.
“Hello! This looks suspicious!” cried Dr. Brookes, laughing. “Dollie and Ralph in the parlor and Miss Allyn and Bert Jackson in the kitchen!”
“Oh, it don’t mean anything serious,” said Bert, very coolly. “I’m not proposing to Miss Allyn, I’m waiting for Marion.”
CHAPTER XIV.
A WEDDING ANNOUNCEMENT.
“Well, of all the cool things that I ever heard!” cried Marion as soon as she could stop laughing.
“Oh, the doctor isn’t the only pebble on the beach,” went on Bert, gayly. “There are others—Mr. Ray and myself, for instance! Of course, I don’t claim to be ‘in it’ just now exactly, but wait till I get home from college and then, gee whiz! won’t I give you fellows a hustle!”
“But perhaps I won’t wait,” said Marion, mischievously.
Bert shrugged his shoulders with a comical grimace.
“You wouldn’t be so mean. I know you, Marion! You’d die an old maid before you’d bring such sorrow to this bosom!”
He clasped one hand over his heart and assumed a tragic attitude. It was plain to be seen that Bert was developing wonderfully.
“You ought to go on the stage, Bert!” cried Dollie, as she shook with laughter. “You’d make a splendid comedian. Oh, you are just too funny!”
“That’s what I call ‘up-to-date’ criticism,” said Bert, a little disdainfully. “Right in the middle of my best tragedy she calls me ‘funny!’”
“But you certainly would make a splendid actor, Bert,” repeated Miss Allyn. “Do let me help you to get an engagement.”
“The governor—I mean my newly acquired pop—wouldn’t hear of it,” said Bert. “He is going to take me on a trip through Canada in a day or two, then abroad for the summer, and goodness knows where else, and then in the fall I go to college to be fitted for the ministry, or something.”
There was another shout over Bert’s remarks. The idea of his even being a minister was the most amusing thing yet.
“Well, if you were only ordained I would give you a job at once,” said Ralph Moore, quickly, “for I am trying to get Dollie to marry me to-morrow.”
“Why not to-morrow?” asked Dr. Brookes, gayly. “Both Miss Marlowe and I are on leave of absence! Oh, Dollie, you must be married to-morrow!”
“Of course you can, sister, dear,” said Marion, going over to her. “There’s no reason in the world why you should wait any longer.”
“I’ll go straight out and find you a flat,” chimed in Miss Allyn, “and you can both stay right here until we get it furnished.”
“Then that is settled,” said Bert, who seemed to be especially anxious, “and there’ll be one big weight off my mind, I can tell you!”
He gave Dollie a glance that no one understood but herself, but the girl’s face flushed as she remembered that scene in the carriage.
Almost as if she had read her sister’s thoughts Marion Marlowe spoke after the laugh had subsided:
“I shall be glad to feel that you are safe, dearie; that you have a good husband like Ralph to protect you.”
“And you, Marion, I wish you did not have to work in hospital!” cried Dollie, impulsively. “I am sure I don’t see how you can endure it!”
Dr. Brookes gazed steadily at the fair girl whom he loved, but the look in her sweet face did not give him encouragement.
“If you knew how much I was needed in a hospital,” she said, softly; “how much everybody is needed who is willing to go and work for the unfortunates! Dr. Brookes can tell you what there is to do—what anguish there is to soothe, and what wrongs are to be righted! Suppose I had not been there yesterday,” she said with a shudder, “just think what a hideous thing would have happened!”
It was her first allusion to the awful tragedy, but Marion knew it must come, and she wished to have it over.
“Oh, sister, what happened?” asked Dollie, instantly.
Even Bert Jackson paled a little as he heard the answer.
“I saved Archie Ray’s wife from being buried in Potter’s Field! She was on the way there when I found it out; the result is, the poor creature will now have a Christian burial!”
“Great Heaven! How horrible!” cried Ralph Moore, excitedly.
“Oh, Marion, how dreadful!” gasped Dollie, almost crying.
“Thank God she is dead!” was Miss Allyn’s low murmur.
“I will tell you about it,” said Reginald Brookes, bravely. “Poor Miss Marlowe has borne enough without the pain of this recital.”
There was not a sound in the room as he described the fearful scenes, but when Lawyer Atherton’s name was mentioned Dollie shuddered visibly.
Ralph put his arm around her, and she leaned her head against his shoulder.
Bert looked surprised and then glad, for he felt sure that Dollie had told him everything.
And so she had, for Dollie was truthful at heart. Now that she had found shelter for her weakness she was almost blissfully happy.
It was Bert who spoke first when the story was ended, for the fine, manly youth was too strong willed to be entirely overcome by a tale of sorrow.
“Well, I am mighty glad that tragedy is ended,” he said, very soberly. “I’m glad for the poor woman that she is at rest at last, and I’m glad that Mr. Ray is free from such a creature; but, best of all, I am glad you roasted the old lawyer, Marion, for somehow, ever since I first saw him I’ve hated the old duffer!”
“Well, I pity him now,” said Marion, softly, “for his sin has come home to him at last. There will be nothing but remorse for him in the future.”
“I heard some news of him this morning that I forgot to tell you,” said the doctor, soberly. “A newspaper reporter who knows him told me that he has left the country. Took a late train last night without even notifying his office, he’ll probably remain away until the thing has blown over, for I see they have got it pretty straight in all the papers, especially where they say that he is largely responsible for his daughter’s doings.”
“Let us try and put all this out of our minds,” said Miss Allyn, suddenly. “To-morrow is Dollie’s wedding-day, and we must all be happy! I move that we have a song—something rousing and jolly!”
“I second the motion!” cried Bert Jackson, gayly, as with a great show of triumph he offered his arm to Marion.
“I score one,” he said joyfully, as he saw the doctor’s frown of disappointment. “Got ahead of you that time ‘Sawbones,’ but you can square it while I’m in Canada!”
“Oh, I never take advantage of an absent foe,” said the doctor, laughing, and just then, with a great flourish, Bert opened the piano.
Dr. Brookes had never heard Marion sing, so when the first tones of her magnificent voice fell upon his ear he almost held his breath in surprise and admiration.
Bert Jackson winked at him behind her back, but there was a look on his face that the doctor had never before seen there.
“By Jove!” he thought suddenly, “I believe the boy does love her! Well, why shouldn’t he? Who could help it? She is the sweetest, the noblest, the bravest girl in creation!”
Thus ended another tragedy in Marion Marlowe’s life—it was a happy termination in spite of some sadness.
Dollie, her darling sister, was married to Ralph the next day, and even Archie Ray and his sister were present at the wedding.
They left the next day for a trip through the South, but not until after they had followed Mary Ray’s remains to Greenwood.
There was just one bit of news that distressed them all, and that was that George Colebrook was free again and at liberty to commit such villainies as pleased his base nature.
Lawyer Atherton was never seen nor heard from again, and of course his offices were closed and his employees scattered.
Miss Allyn went on with her newspaper work, and was as loyal as ever to her friends, and with a grateful heart Marion went back to the Island, determined to face bravely any trials that might come to her. As for Dr. Reginald Brookes, he was patient and hopeful. Even the prison seemed a palace whenever Marion, the peerless, entered its portals.
THE END.
In No. 5 of My Queen, issued next week, Marion Marlowe appears as the central character in a new field of action. The story is entitled “Marion Marlowe Entrapped; or, The Victim of Professional Jealousy,” and is a story of the most thrilling interest.