The mystery of Central Park

“Why!” as if unpleasantly surprised at his visit, “how do you do?”

Such was Penelope Howard’s greeting to Richard Treadwell the morning following the meeting in the Eden Musée. He could not stay away from her, so he decided to try to explain all about Dido. He wished now he had not been so anxious to keep the affair a secret until Penelope’s return. It made things look all the blacker for him.

Penelope was a clever girl. She was bitterly hurt, but she had no intention of quarreling with Dick. If she experienced any jealous pangs he should not have the satisfaction of knowing it. She would merely maintain a cold indifference and make him feel that, do as he pleased, it was nothing to her. She would smile, but indifferently, and not with the smile of affection with which she had always greeted him. She would treat him in a manner that would show her displeasure and utter lack of affection for him, but she would not quarrel and so give him a chance to offer an apology or explanation.

“You don’t seem very glad to see me?” Dick ventured, with a forced smile.

Penelope looked with well assumed amazement and surprise at his audacity, and, raising her eyebrows, said with a slightly rising inflection, “No?”

Richard felt very ill at ease.

“You don’t understand,” he continued, helplessly. “I hope at least you will allow me to explain the scene which you witnessed last night.”

She said, with a cold smile: “Really, you must excuse me. I have no right or desire to know anything about your personal affairs.”

“Confound it, Penelope. Don’t be so infernally indifferent,” exclaimed the young man with exasperation.

She simply looked at him. Scorn and disdain was pictured on her expressive countenance now.

“I hope Mrs. Van Brunt is well?” he said awkwardly, hoping to bridge over Penelope’s anger.

“Quite well, thank you,” looking idly out the window.

“Is she at home?”

“No; she has just gone out with Mr. Schuyler,” Penelope replied, picking up a book and aimlessly turning the leaves.

“I hope I may be permitted to call and pay my respects to her?” he said, indifferently.

“Auntie will doubtless be pleased to see you,” was the reply, with a marked emphasis on the noun.

“How long are you going to keep up this nonsense, Penelope?”

She shrugged her shoulders impatiently and pouted her lips, but made no reply.

“Do you know you are a very foolish girl sometimes? You cheat yourself and me out of happiness. You know down in your heart you never doubt my faith to you. What pleasure you get from pretending that you do, I can’t imagine. Come, be reasonable. Don’t cultivate a bad temper.”

“Hum! I should not think you would care what I did if I am unreasonable, bad tempered, foolish, suspicious—is that all?” mockingly. “I am glad to know your honest opinion of me. Doubtless, that cheap looking girl you were with last night is more amiable.”

“I imagine she is, Penelope,” Dick said, dejectedly and out of patience. “I have loved you devotedly, and I have meekly endured all your caprices, and if you want my devotion to end in this way I can only obey. If you ever regret it, Penelope, remember it was your own doing. You sent me away and I shall not return.”

And Richard, a very wretched young man indeed, walked hastily from the room.

Penelope never moved until she heard the hall door close. She thought that he would come back; he always had, but when she realized that he had really gone she was surprised and a little frightened.

Richard was very good-natured, but she felt she had gone just a little too far, and that if she wanted him back it would be necessary to humble herself.

She could not recall a time before that she had so forgotten herself, and allowed her temper to take such a hold of her. She could hardly recall all she had said, but she felt very small and ungenerous.

Now that she had lost him she reviewed her own conduct, and felt that, although Richard had done wrong, she had been unnecessarily harsh. He deserved some punishment to teach him not to err again, but she had been too unforgiving.

Wasn’t Dick always gentle and kind to her, and did he not always manfully and tenderly overlook her little mistakes and pettishness? Besides, was she not sure he loved her better than any girl in the world? Then why should she be jealous if he amused himself with those other women who are always so ready to “draw men on.”

A woman in love always reproaches herself with being the cause of every lover’s jar.

A woman in love invariably blames other women for all the slips made by the man she loves.

And they will do it to the end of the world.

While Penelope was spending the day racked with unhappy thoughts, Richard was busy trying to see Tolman Bike and managing the messenger boys in their search for the man who paid for the dead girl’s gown.

Richard called at Mr. Bike’s office, only to be informed that Mr. Bike was still absent from town. But he knew to the contrary this time; so, obtaining the address, he called at Tolman Bike’s bachelor apartments in Washington Square.

Mr. Bike was in town, this servant said, but he did not expect him in until it was time to dress for a 7 o’clock dinner. He did not know where Mr. Bike was to be found, so Richard was forced to rest content with this meagre information until a later hour.

Richard first consulted a directory. He found quite a list of Smiths, but no Miss L. W. Smith, and he concluded if nothing more feasible offered he would select the Smiths who lived in the best neighborhoods, and personally visit every family until he found the right one, or knew positively no such Smith lived in New York. He had inserted a personal advertisement in all the morning and evening newspapers asking for information concerning the relatives of Miss L. W. Smith, and he expected by evening to have some definite clue to work on.

His disagreement with Penelope, instead of killing all desire to try further to solve the mystery of Central Park, infused him with new life and energy, and he was resolved to solve the mystery, and by doing so, make Penelope regret her unreasonableness.

Accompanied by the messenger boy, Richard Treadwell tried his original plan of walking about to meet people in the busy parts of the city.

“When you see a man that you think resembles the man who got the dress, I want you to tell me,” he instructed the boy, and so in hopes of knowing at least what the man looked like, Richard spent the day wearily travelling around.

“There goes a fellow that looks just like the other duffer,” the boy announced, as he and Dick stood watching the passers-by on Broadway.

Richard started to follow the man who, in company with a red-headed florid-faced man that carried about with him one hundred and fifty pounds of superfluous flesh, was going down Broadway.

The man pointed out by the boy had a light beard, a high nose and sharp eyes. Richard recognized him as an Albany assemblyman.

“That looks totally unlike the man I pictured from your description,” Richard said, crossly, as they followed the two men into the Hoffman House.

“Well, his face looks like the other fellow, only the other one had black whiskers, and this here one’s is red.”

“Bleached, doubtless,” Dick said ironically.

“Well, he looks the same, anyway,” the boy protested, as Dick seated himself in the bar-room and made a pretense of reading a letter.

The two men went to the bar and ordered drinks, and as the thinner one (they were neither on the lean order) raised a glass to his mouth, Richard started and looked more closely at him.

Surely his face looked familiar then!

“I am tired; you can go to your office now and come to me in the morning,” Dick said to the messenger, who gladly started off.

Richard sat there with serious face watching the man at the bar whom the boy had pointed out, until he and his heavy companion went out; then Dick fell into deep thought.

A wild, improbable suspicion had come to his mind, so improbable, so wild, that he felt ashamed to dwell on it. The likeness was familiar; so unlike, and yet so strangely like, that Dick hardly knew what to believe.

“Poor devil! Why should I allow a chance resemblance to make me accuse him of a thing so bad as that. He has enough to bear and answer for now, yet—yet—But it’s too wild, too improbable. I’ll forget it, I’ll dismiss the thought from my mind; the messenger was surely mistaken, and I’ll devote my evening to seeing about Maggie’s sister. Here’s to an evening free from all thoughts of that dead girl. And yet—it’s very strange—I half believe”—Then, shrugging his shoulders, Dick impatiently drained his glass and started for Washington Square.