Part 27 (1/2)

CHAPTER VII

THE GRAY FRIAR

So confident was Elaine that Kennedy was still alive that she would not admit to herself what to the rest of us seemed obvious.

She even refused to accept Aunt Josephine's hints and decided to give a masquerade ball which she had planned as the last event of the season before she closed the Dodge town house and opened her country house on the sh.o.r.e of Connecticut.

It was shortly after the strange appearance of the fussy old gentleman that I dropped in one afternoon to find Elaine addressing invitations, while Aunt Josephine helped her. As we chatted, I picked up one from the pile and mechanically contemplated the address:

”M. Del Mar, Hotel La Coste, New York City.”

”I don't like that fellow,” I remarked, shaking my head dubiously.

”Oh, you're--jealous, Walter,” laughed Elaine, taking the envelope away from me and piling it again with the others.

Thus it was that in the morning's mail, Del Mar, along with the rest of us, received a neatly engraved little invitation:

Miss Elaine Dodge requests the pleasure of your presence at the masquerade ball to be given at her residence on Friday evening June 1st.

”Good!” he exclaimed, reaching for the telephone, ”I'll go.”

In a restaurant in the white light district two of those who had been engaged in the preliminary plot to steal Kennedy's wireless torpedo model, the young woman stenographer who had betrayed her trust and the man to whom she had pa.s.sed the model out of the window in Was.h.i.+ngton, were seated at a table.

So secret had been the relations of all those in the plot that one group did not know the other and the strangest methods of communication had been adopted.

The man removed a cover from a dish. Underneath, perhaps without even the waiter's knowledge, was a note.

”Here are the orders at last,” he whispered to the girl, unfolding and reading the note. ”Look. The model of the torpedo is somewhere in her house. Go to-night to the ball as a masquerader and search for it.”

”Oh, splendid!” exclaimed the girl. ”I'm crazy for a little society after this grind. Pay the check and let's get out and choose our costumes.”

The man paid the check and they left hurriedly. Half an hour later they were at a costumer's shop choosing their disguises, both careful to get the fullest masks that would not excite suspicion.

It was the night of the masquerade.

During the afternoon Elaine had been thinking more than ever of Kennedy. It all seemed unreal to her. More than once she stopped to look at his photograph. Several times she checked herself on the point of tears.

”No,” she said to herself with a sort of grim determination. ”No--he IS alive. He will come back to me--he WILL.”

And yet she had a feeling of terrific loneliness which even her most powerful efforts could not throw off. She was determined to go through with the ball, now that she had started it, but she was really glad when it came time to dress, for even that took her mind from her brooding.

As Marie finished helping her put on a very effective and conspicuous costume, Aunt Josephine entered her dressing-room.

”Are you ready, my dear?” she asked, adjusting the mask which she carried so that no one would recognize her as Martha Was.h.i.+ngton.

”In just a minute, Auntie,” answered Elaine, trying hard to put out of her mind how Craig would have liked her dress.

Somewhat earlier, in my own apartment, I had been arraying myself as Boum-Boum and modestly admiring the imitation I made of a circus clown as I did a couple of comedy steps before the mirror.