CHAPTER XVII.
SUNLIGHT THROUGH THE CLOUDS.
Richard could hardly dress quickly enough after he finished Tolman Bike’s letter. The indolent young man had never been seen in such frantic haste. The elevator seemed to him to creep. Rushing out to the street, he jumped into the first cab, telling the driver to make the best possible speed to Fifth Avenue.
With a sad, penitent face, Penelope Howard was impatiently awaiting her handsome lover in her own little room, her abject apologies all cut and dried for use. But he gave her no time.
“Penelope, the mystery is solved!” he yelled, and catching her in his strong arms, he held her so close to his heart that she gasped for breath.
“I’ve the story right here, sweetheart,” and in the fewest possible words, punctuated with Penelope’s exclamations of surprise and sorrow, Richard related all that had happened since the night before she went to Washington.
“My dear—Oh, Richard. Good morning,” said Penelope’s aunt, as she entered the room with bonnet on and a carriage-wrap thrown hastily over a house dress. “Mrs. Chamberlain has sent for me. They have just received news that Clara’s fiancée, Mr. Bike, was found dead in his bathroom, shot through the head. They think it was accidental, and poor Clara, who was to have been a bride this evening, is prostrated. I’ll be back presently, dear. Richard stay with the child.”
They let her go without a word of the information they possessed, and, oblivious to all else, they read Tolman Bike’s confession. Woman-like, Penelope was in tears, and had as much pity for the unhappy man as for the luckless girl.
“I knew he was the man,” Richard said. “When the messenger boy pointed out the man in the Hoffman House as looking like the man who got the gown, the resemblance struck me, though this man was fair and Tolman Bike was dark. The moment the resemblance struck me, the whole thing flashed before my mind. My ridiculous remark that probably the man was bleached, suggested to me the possibility of Maggie’s sister having bleached after she left home. Still, it was all so wild and improbable that I tried not to think of it.”
They decided only to tell the secret of the crime to those most concerned. That done, they effectually saved the name of Tolman Bike from deeper disgrace, little as he deserved it.
When Mrs. Van Brunt returned from the house where the preparations for wedding festivities had been turned into arrangements for a funeral, Penelope, with her eyes red from weeping, drew her aunt into her own little den where Richard was. Together they told the astonished woman the story of the crime, and she was more determined even than they were that the confession should be held sacred, since making it public could benefit no one, and would only serve to hurt the family who had expected to welcome him into their home as the husband of the daughter of the house.
They had intended to visit Maggie Williams that day and tell her the story of her sister, but Mrs. Van Brunt, more thoughtful, told them to delay the sad information until the girl was married, as Richard had told them of her intended marriage Sunday.
Tolman Bike was privately buried Sunday from the Chamberlain mansion, while the girl who was to have been his bride, lay unconscious in a darkened room upstairs. Mrs. Van Brunt, as an old and intimate friend of Mrs. Chamberlain, went to the funeral. Penelope went with her aunt, her heart divided in sympathy for the dead man, the dead girl, and the stricken daughter of the Chamberlain household. If Tolman Bike had lived, Penelope would have hated him for his crime, but because he had strength to die, and when she pictured his lonely end, she felt sorry for his wretched fate.
Sunday evening they visited Maggie Williams, now Mrs. Martin Shanks, and Penelope gently told them the story of the Mystery of Central Park, omitting as much as possible that would pain the sister. Rough, but kindly Martin Shanks comforted his bride. Dido Morgan mingled her tears with Maggie’s, but she was shy and awkward, having little to say in the presence of Penelope Howard, though Penelope did her utmost to be cordial and considerate.
The warm, frank feeling that had heretofore existed between Dido and Dick was gone. Dick endeavored to be friendly and pleasant, but Dido maintained a stiff silence that made him have a sense of relief when he and Penelope finally took their departure.
“Ah, Penelope, it’s true, as Tolman Bike said, happiness is not so plentiful in life that we can afford to let it slip by when near our grasp,” Richard said, sadly, as he and Penelope drove homeward. Penelope merely sighed in response.
“I did not solve the mystery as you expected and wished,” he continued, taking her hand in his, “still I object to being cheated of my happiness. When are you going to marry me?”
“Oh!” Penelope tried to say in playful surprise, but her hand trembled.
“This is the tenth. I will give you until the twenty-first to make what little preparations you need for the wedding,” Richard said, masterfully, yet tenderly.
“Oh! If you talk that way I suppose I must meekly obey,” Penelope said, as, with a sigh of content, she allowed Dick to take her in his arms.
THE END.