Part 8 (1/2)

HETTY CASTLETON

At half-past six she went to the telephone and called for the morning newspapers. At the same time she asked that a couple of district messenger boys be sent to her room with the least possible delay.

The hushed, scared voice of the telephone girl downstairs convinced her that news of the tragedy was abroad; she could imagine the girl looking at the headlines with awed eyes even as she responded to the call from room 416, and her shudder as she realised that it was the wife of the dead man speaking.

One of the night clerks, pale and agitated, came up with the papers.

He inquired if there was anything he could do. He tried to tell her that it was a dreadful, sickening thing, but the words stuck in his throat. She stood before him, holding the door open; the light in the hall fell upon her white, haggard face. He began to tremble all over, as if with the ague.

”Will you be good enough to come in?” she inquired, quite steadily.

”The newspapers--have they printed the--the details?”

He entered and she closed the door.

”Just the--just the news that it was Mr. Wrandall,” he replied jerkily. ”Later on they'll have--”

She interrupted him. ”Let me have them, please.” Without so much as a glance at the headlines, she tossed the papers on the table.

”I have sent for two messenger boys. It is too early to accomplish much by telephone, I fear. Will you be so kind as to telephone at seven o'clock or a little after to my apartment?--You will find the number under Mr. Wrandall's name. Please inform the butler or his wife that they may expect me by ten o'clock, and that I shall bring a friend with me--a young lady. Kindly have my motor sent to Haffner's garage, and looked after. When the reporters come, as they will, please say to them that I will see them at my own home at eleven o'clock.”

”Can't I--we--I should say, don't you want us to send word to your--your friends, Mrs. Wrandall,--the family, I mean? No trouble to do it, and--”

”Thank you, no. The messengers will attend to all that is necessary.

When my lawyer arrives, please send him here to me. Mr. Carroll.

Thank you.”

The clerk, considerably relieved, took his departure in some haste, and she was left with the morning papers, each of which she scanned rapidly. The details, of course, were meagre. There was a double-leaded account of her visit to the inn and her extraordinary return to the city. Her chief interest, however, did not rest in these particulars, but in the speculations of the authorities as to the ident.i.ty of the mysterious woman--and her whereabouts. There was the likelihood that she was not the only one who had encountered the girl on the highway or in the neighbourhood of the inn. So far as she could glean from the reports, however, no one had seen the girl, nor was there the slightest hint offered as to her ident.i.ty.

The papers of the previous afternoon had published lurid accounts of the murder, with all of the known details, the name of the victim at that time still being a mystery. She remembered reading the story with no little interest. The only new feature in the case, therefore, was the identification of Challis Wrandall by his ”beautiful wife,” and the sensational manner in which it had been brought about. With considerable interest she noted the hour that these despatches had been received from ”special correspondents,”

and wondered where the shrewd, lynx-eyed reporters napped while she was at the inn. All of the despatches were timed three o'clock and each paper characterised its issue as an ”Extra,” with Challis Wrandall's name in huge type across as many columns as the dignity of the sheet permitted.

Not one word of the girl! Absolute mystery!

Mrs. Wrandall returned to her post beside the bed of the sleeper in the adjoining room. Deliberately she placed the newspapers on a chair near the girl's pillow, and then raised the window shades to let in the hard grey light of early morn.

It was not her present intention to arouse the wan stranger, who slept as one dead. So gentle was her breathing that the watcher stared in some fear at the fair, smooth breast that seemed scarcely to rise and fall. For a long time she stood beside the bed, looking down at the face of the sleeper, a troubled expression in her eyes.

”I wonder how many times you were seen with him, and where, and by whom,” were the questions that ran in a single strain through her mind. ”Where do you come from? Where did you meet him? Who is there that knows of your acquaintance with him?”

There was no kindly light in her eyes, nor was there the faintest sign of animosity. Merely the look of one who calculates in the interest of a well-shaped purpose. She was estimating the difficulties that were likely to attend the carrying out of a design as yet half-formed and quixotic. There were many things to be considered.

At present she was working in utter darkness. What would the light bring forth?

Her lawyer came in great haste and perturbation at eight o'clock, in response to the letter delivered by one of the messengers.

A second letter had gone by like means to her husband's brother, Leslie Wrandall, instructing him to break the news to his father and mother and to come to her apartment after he had attended to the removal of the body to the family home near Was.h.i.+ngton Square.

She made it quite plain that she did not want Challis Wrandall's body to lie under the roof that sheltered her.

His family had resented their marriage. Father, mother and sister had objected to her from the beginning, not because she was unworthy, but because her tradespeople ancestry was not so remote as his. She found a curious sense of pleasure in returning to them the thing they prized so highly and surrendered to her with such bitterness of heart. She had not been good enough for him: that was their att.i.tude. Now she was returning him to them, as one would return an article that had been tested and found to be worthless. She would have no more of him!

Leslie, three years younger than Challis, did not hold to the views that actuated the remaining members of the family in opposing her as an addition to the rather close corporation known far and wide as ”the Wrandalls.” He had stood out for her in a rather mild but none-the-less steadfast manner, blandly informing his mother on mere than one occasion that Sara was quite too good for Challis, any way you looked at it: an att.i.tude which provoked sundry caustic references to his own lamentable shortcomings in the matter of family pride and--intelligence.

He and Sara had been good friends after a fas.h.i.+on. He was a bit of a sn.o.b but not much of a prig. She had the feeling about him that if he could be weaned away from the family he might stand for something fine in the way of character. But he was an adept at straddling fences, so that he was never fully on one side or the other, no matter which way he leaned.