Part 38 (1/2)

”Why not a minister?”

”Mr. Fairfax preferred the justice.”

Garrison remained by the window stubbornly.

”You said the man is crazy. What did you mean?”

”Didn't you see?” she answered. ”That light in his eyes is insanity.

I thought it a soul-light s.h.i.+ning through, though it worried me often, I admit. We were married at two in the afternoon and went at once to the station to wait there for the train. He bought the tickets and talked in his brilliant way until the train arrived. It only stopped for a moment.

”He put me on, then a spell came over him suddenly, I don't know what, and he pushed me off the steps, just as the train was moving out--and said the very thing you heard him say in here--and rode away and left me there, deserted.”

She told it all in a dry-voiced way that cost her an effort, as Garrison felt and comprehended. He had turned about, in sheer sympathy for her predicament.

”What happened then?”

”I saw in a paper, two days later, he had been detained in a town in Ohio as being mentally unbalanced. In the meantime I had written to my Uncle John, while we were waiting at the station, telling him briefly I was married and to whom. The note was posted not five minutes before a postman came along and took up the letters in the box. I couldn't have stopped it had I wished to, and it never occurred to my mind to stop it, anyway.”

”What did your uncle reply?”

”He wrote at once that he was thoroughly pleased. He had long hoped I might marry someone other than Theodore. He confessed that his will contained a clause to the effect that I should inherit no more than five thousand dollars, should I not have been married at least one month prior to his death, to a healthy, respectable man who was not my cousin.

”I dared not write that I had been deserted, or that Mr. Fairfax might be insane. I couldn't tell what to do. I hardly knew what to expect, or what I was, or anything. I could only pretend I was off on my honeymoon--and wait. Then came uncle's sudden death, and my lawyer sent me word about the will, asking when he should file it for probate.

Then--then I knew I had to have a _sane_ husband.”

”And the will is not yet filed?”

”Not yet. And fortunately Mr. Trowbridge has had to be away.”

Garrison pursued the topic of the will for purposes made necessary by his recent discoveries concerning a new one.

”Mr. Trowbridge had your uncle's testament in his keeping?”

Dorothy shook her head. ”No. I believe he conferred with uncle's lawyer, just after his death, and read it there.”

”Where did your uncle's lawyer live?”

”In Albany.”

”Do you know his name?”

”I think it is Spikeman. Why?”

Garrison was looking at her again with professional coldness, despite the fact that his heart was fairly burning in his breast.

”Because,” he said, ”I learned from your stepbrother, Paul Durgin, near Rockdale, that your uncle made a later will, and we've got to get trace of the doc.u.ment before you can know where you stand.”

Dorothy looked at him with her great brown eyes as startled as a deer's.