Part 3 (1/2)

”Can't!” I roared at him.

”No,” he said. ”Not yet. I have promised her. She has my word.”

”But think, man, what may be going on there!” I said.

”I have sworn not to pa.s.s the door,” he said obstinately. ”Heaven knows I am nearly crazy for light upon all this. But I must keep my word!”

As if to lend emphasis to his exclamation, a gust of wind roaring through the trees of the park brought the first deluge of rain--a cold, stinging downpour of the wild autumn night. Estabrook s.h.i.+vered. I could see that he was a man, badly tired, unnerved, and still dizzy from the blow I had given him.

”Follow me,” said I roughly. ”You need warmth--stimulant. And I want your story, Estabrook.”

He looked at me with an empty stare, but at last nodded his a.s.sent, and without another word between us, we came to this house and into this very room.

He sat there before the fire--burning then as it is now--and as the warmth penetrated his trembling body, he seemed to regain his self-composure.

I saw then that this young man, well under forty, did not lack distinction of appearance. His head was carried upon his strong neck in the masterful manner of those who have true poise and strength of personality. His hair had turned gray above his ears, and his well-shaven face carried those lines that the grim struggles of our modern civilization gouge into the fullness of youth and health.

”I must tell somebody,” he said, while I was observing his features upon which the firelight danced. ”I have never dreamed that I would come to such a pa.s.s. But you shall hear my love story. You may be able to throw some light upon it. Contrary to the notion of my friends, who consider me incapable of adventure, my experience in the affections is one that offers opportunity for speculation--it would appeal to a great detective!”

I leaned forward quickly. Such a statement from any man might awaken interest, but Estabrook was not any man. He represented the essence of conventional society. He belonged to a family of well-preserved traditions, a family whose reputation for conservative conduct and manners of cold self-restraint was well known in a dozen cities. They were that particular family, of a common enough name, which was known as the Estabrookses Arbutus. Jermyn had had a dozen grandfathers who, from one to another, had handed down the practice of law to him, as if for the Estabrooks it was an heirloom.

”Perhaps I had better tell you from the beginning,” said he, drawing the back of his fine hand across his forehead. ”For it is strange--strange!

And who can say what the ending will be?”

I counseled him to calm himself and asked that he eliminate as much as possible all unnecessary details of his story. I shall repeat, then, as accurately as possible, the story he told me. I will attempt to write it in his own words....

BOOK II

THE AUTOMATIC SHEIK

CHAPTER I

A WOMAN AT TWENTY-TWO

Some men do not fall in love. I had supposed from the beginning of my interest in such things that I was one of these men. I did not doubt that all of us have an inherent tendency, perhaps based upon our coa.r.s.er natures, to love this or that woman thrown in our way by a fortunate or unfortunate chance. But the traditions of our family were strong; I had been educated by all those who were near to me in earlier life to look upon marriage, not as a result of natural instinct so much as the result of a careful and diplomatic choice of an alliance. I had been taught--not in so many words, but by the acc.u.mulation of impressions received in my home and in my youthful training--that one first scrutinized a woman's inheritance of character, wealth, and position, and as a second step fell in love with her.

This cannot be called sn.o.bbishness. It is prudence. And I followed this course until I was nearly thirty years old. If the test of its success lies in the fact that I had never had more than a temporary affection, sometimes stimulated by the curve of a bare shoulder and sometimes by the angle of a bright mind, then it had successfully kept me from the altar.

And yet you shall see that at last I reversed the order of our traditions; you shall see, too, that it resulted in one of the strangest of courts.h.i.+ps and a tangle of mystery of which the rest of the world knows nothing, but which you have adequate proof threatens my happiness and the ghastly end of which may now be skulking within the walls of my house.

The wild weather of this night, with the howl of the wind and the rattle of dead leaves driven against the blinds, is in extraordinary contrast to the day of beautiful spring sunlight when I first set eyes upon her who was Julianna Colfax.

It is not necessary to tell you who her father was, because you have probably many times toasted your feet before the grate in the club with him.

He was a master of human interest, as grizzled as that old Scotch hound which became his constant companion after Mrs. Colfax died, and his contact with all those hosts of men and women, for whom he administered justice so faithfully for more than twenty years, had stamped on his shaven face sad but warm and sympathetic lines. All men liked him and those who knew him best loved him heartily. Under his gruffness there was a lot of sentiment and tenderness. After his reserved moments, when he was silent and cold, he would burst forth into indulgences of fine, dry humor, like an effervescent fluid which gains in sparkling vigor by remaining corked awhile. It was commonly said--and often said by Judge Graver, of the Supreme Court--that old Colfax remained in the comparative obscurity of a probate judges.h.i.+p simply from an innate modesty and a belief that he had found his work in life in which he might best serve humanity without hope of personal power and glory.

Gaunt, tall, stoop-shouldered, gray, walking the same path each day,--home, court-house, club, neighbors, home,--with a grapevine stick as thick as a fence-post in his hand--such was her father.