Chapter VIII: The Axton Letters (1)

The sounds in her dressing-room had waked her just before five. Ethel Waldron could still see, when she closed her eyes, every single, sharp detail of her room as it was that instant she sprang up in bed, with the cry that had given the alarm, and switched on the electric light. Instantly the man had shut the door; but as she sat, strained, staring at it to reopen, the hands and dial of her clock standing on the mantel beside the door, had fixed themselves upon her retina like the painted dial of a jeweler’s dummy. It could have been barely five, therefore, when Howard Axton, after his first swift rush in her defense had found the window which had been forced open; had picked up the queer Turkish dagger which he found broken on the sill, and, crying to the girl not to call the police, as it was surely “the same man”—the same man, he meant, who had so inexplicably followed him around the world—had rushed to his room for extra cartridges for his revolver and run out into the cold sleet of the March morning.

So it was now an hour or more since Howard had run after the man, revolver in hand; and he had not reappeared or telephoned or sent any word at all of his safety. And however much Howard’s life in wild lands had accustomed him to seek redress outside the law, hers still held the city-bred impulse to appeal to the police. She turned from her nervous pacing at the window and seized the telephone from its hook; but at the sound of the operator’s voice she remembered again Howard’s injunction that the man, whenever he appeared, was to be left solely to him, and dropped the receiver without answering. But she resented fiercely the advantage he held over her which must oblige her, she knew, to obey him. He had told her frankly—threatened her, indeed—that if there was the slightest publicity given to his homecoming to marry her, or any further notoriety made of the attending circumstances, he would surely leave her.

At the rehearsal of this threat she straightened and threw the superfluous dressing gown from her shoulders with a proud, defiant gesture. She was a straight, almost tall girl, with the figure of a more youthful Diana and with features as fair and flawless as any younger Hera, and in addition a great depth of blue in very direct eyes and a crowning glory of thick, golden hair. She was barely twenty-two. And she was not used to having any man show a sense of advantage over her, much less threaten her, as Howard had done. So, in that impulse of defiance, she was reaching again for the telephone she had just dropped, when she saw through the fog outside the window the man she was waiting for—a tall, alert figure hastening toward the house.

She ran downstairs rapidly and herself opened the door to him, a fresh flush of defiance flooding over her. Whether she resented it because this man, whom she did not love but must marry, could appear more the assured and perfect gentleman without collar, or scarf, and with his clothes and boots spattered with mud and rain, than any of her other friends could ever appear; or whether it was merely the confident, insolent smile of his full lips behind his small, close-clipped mustache, she could not tell. At any rate she motioned him into the library without speaking; but when they were alone and she had closed the door, she burst upon him.

“Well, Howard? Well? Well, Howard?” breathlessly.

“Then you have not sent any word to the police, Ethel?”

“I was about to—the moment you came. But—I have not—yet,” she had to confess.

“Or to that—” he checked the epithet that was on his lips—“your friend Caryl?”

She flushed, and shook her head.

He drew his revolver, “broke” it, ejecting the cartridges carelessly upon the table, and threw himself wearily into a chair. “I’m glad to see you understand that this has not been the sort of affair for anyone else to interfere in!”

“Has been, you mean;” the girl’s face went white; “you—you caught him this time and—and killed him, Howard?”

“Killed him, Ethel?” the man laughed, but observed her more carefully. “Of course I haven’t killed him—or even caught him. But I’ve made myself sure, at last, that he’s the same fellow that’s been trying to make a fool of me all this year—that’s been after me, as I wrote you. And if you remember my letters, even you—I mean even a girl brought up in a city ought to see how it’s a matter of honor with me now to settle with him alone!”

“If he is merely trying to ‘make a fool of you,’ as you say—yes, Howard,” the girl returned hotly. “But from what you yourself have told me of him, you know he must be keeping after you for some serious reason! Yes; you know it! I can see it! You can’t deny it!”

“Ethel—what do you mean by that?”

“I mean that, if you do not think that the man who has been following you from Calcutta to Cape Town, to Chicago, means more than a joke for you to settle for yourself; anyway, _I_ know that the man who has now twice gone through the things in _my_ room, is something for me to go to the police about!”

“And have the papers flaring the family scandal again?” the man returned. “I admit, Ethel,” he conceded, carefully calculating the sharpness of his second sting before he delivered it, “that if you or I could call in the police without setting the whole pack of papers upon us again, I’d be glad to do it, if only to please you. But I told you, before I came back, that if there was to be any more airing of the family affairs at all, I could not come; so if you want to press the point now, of course I can leave you,” he gave the very slightest but most suggestive glance about the rich, luxurious furnishings of the great room, “in possession.”

“You know I can’t let you do that!” the girl flushed scarlet. “But neither can you prevent me from making the private inquiry I spoke of for myself!” She went to the side of the room and, in his plain hearing, took down the telephone and called a number without having to look it up.

“Mr. Caryl, please,” she said. “Oh, Henry, is it you? You can take me to your—Mr. Trant, wasn’t that the name—as soon as you can now. . . . Yes; I want you to come here. I will have my brougham. Immediately!” And still without another word or even a glance at Axton, she brushed by him and ran up the stairs to her room.

He had made no effort to prevent her telephoning; and she wondered at it, even as, in the same impetus of reckless anger, she swept up the scattered letters and papers on her writing desk, and put on her things to go out. But on her way downstairs she stopped suddenly. The curl of his cigarette smoke through the open library door showed that he was waiting just inside it. He meant to speak to her before she went out. Perhaps he was even glad to have Caryl come in order that he might speak his say in the presence of both of them. Suddenly his tobacco’s sharp, distinctive odor sickened her. She turned about, ran upstairs again and fled, almost headlong, down the rear stairs and out the servants’ door to the alley.

The dull, gray fog, which was thickening as the morning advanced, veiled her and made her unrecognizable except at a very few feet; but at the end of the alley, she shrank instinctively from the glance of the men passing until she made out a hurrying form of a man taller even than Axton and much broader. She sprang toward it with a shiver of relief as she saw Henry Caryl’s light hair and recognized his even, open features.

“Ethel!” he caught her, gasping his surprise. “You here? Why—”

“Don’t go to the house!” She led him the opposite way. “There is a cab stand at the corner. Get one there and take me—take me to this Mr. Trant. I will tell you everything. The man came again last night. Auntie is sick in bed from it. Howard still says it is his affair and will do nothing. I had to come to you.”

Caryl steadied her against a house-wall an instant; ran to the corner for a cab and, returning with it, half lifted her into it.

Forty minutes later he led her into Trant’s reception-room in the First National Bank Building; and recognizing the abrupt, decisive tones of the psychologist in conversation in the inner office, Caryl went to the door and knocked sharply.

“I beg your pardon, but—can you possibly postpone what you are doing, Mr. Trant?” he questioned quickly as the door opened and he faced the sturdy and energetic form of the red-haired young psychologist who, in six months, had made himself admittedly the chief consultant in Chicago on criminal cases. “My name is Caryl. Henry Howell introduced me to you last week at the club. But I am not presuming upon that for this interruption. I and—my friend need your help badly, Mr. Trant, and immediately. I mean, if we can not speak with you now, we may be interrupted—unpleasantly.”

Caryl had moved, as he spoke, to hide the girl behind him from the sight of the man in the inner office, who, Caryl had seen, was a police officer. Trant noted this and also that Caryl had carefully refrained from mentioning the girl’s name.

“I can postpone this present business, Mr. Caryl,” the psychologist replied quietly. He closed the door, but reopened it almost instantly. His official visitor had left through the entrance directly into the hall; the two young clients came into the inner room.

“This is Mr. Trant, Ethel,” Caryl spoke to the girl a little nervously as she took a seat. “And, Mr. Trant, this is Miss Waldron. I have brought her to tell you of a mysterious man who has been pursuing Howard Axton about the world, and who, since Axton came home to her house two weeks ago, has been threatening her.”

“Axton—Axton!” the psychologist repeated the name which Caryl had spoken, as if assured that Trant must recognize it. “Ah! Of course, Howard Axton is the son!” he frankly admitted his clearing recollection and his comprehension of how the face of the girl had seemed familiar. “Then you,” he addressed her directly, “are Miss Waldron, of Drexel Boulevard?”

“Yes; I am that Miss Waldron, Mr. Trant,” the girl replied, flushing red to her lips, but raising her head proudly and meeting his eyes directly. “The step-daughter—the daughter of the second wife of Mr. Nimrod Axton. It was my mother, Mr. Trant, who was the cause of Mrs. Anna Axton getting a divorce and the complete custody of her son from Mr. Axton twenty years ago. It was my mother who, just before Mr. Nimrod Axton’s death last year, required that, in the will, the son—the first Mrs. Axton was then dead—should be cut off absolutely and entirely, without a cent, and that Mr. Axton’s entire estate be put in trust for her—my mother. So, since you doubtless remember the reopening of all this again six months ago when my mother, too, died, I am now the sole heir and legatee of the Axton properties of upwards of sixty millions, they tell me. Yes; I am that Miss Waldron, Mr. Trant!”

“I recall the accounts, but only vaguely—from the death of Mr. Axton and, later, of the second Mrs. Axton, your mother, Miss Waldron,” Trant replied, quietly, “though I remember the comment upon the disposition of the estate both times. It was from the pictures published of you and the accompanying comment in the papers only a week or two ago that I recognized you. I mean, of course, the recent comments upon the son, Mr. Howard Axton, whom you have mentioned, who has come home at last to contest the will.”

“You do Miss Waldron an injustice—all the papers have been doing her a great injustice, Mr. Trant,” Caryl corrected quickly. “Mr. Axton has not come to contest the will.”

“No?”

“No. Miss Waldron has had him come home, at her own several times repeated request, so that she may turn over to him, as completely as possible, the whole of his father’s estate! If you can recall, in any detail, the provisions of Mr. Axton’s will, you will appreciate, I believe, why we have preferred to let the other impression go uncorrected. For the second Mrs. Axton so carefully and completely cut off all possibility of any of the property being transferred in any form to the son, that Miss Waldron, when she went to a lawyer to see how she could transfer it to Howard Axton, as soon as she had come into the estate, found that her mother’s lawyers had provided against every possibility except that of the heir marrying the disinherited son. So she sent for him, offering to establish him into his estate, even at that cost.”

“You mean that you offered to marry him?” Trant questioned the girl directly again. “And he has come to gain his estate in that way?”

“Yes, Mr. Trant; but you must be fair to Mr. Axton also,” the girl replied. “When I first wrote him, almost a year ago, he refused point blank to consider such an offer. In spite of my repeated letters it was not till six weeks ago, after a shipwreck in which he lost his friend who had been traveling with him for some years, that he would consent even to come home. Even now I—I remain the one urging the marriage.”

The psychologist looked at the girl keenly and questioningly.

“I need scarcely say how little urging he would need, entirely apart from the property,” Caryl flushed, “if he were not gentleman enough to appreciate—partly, at least—Miss Waldron’s position. I—her friends, I mean, Mr. Trant—have admitted that he appeared at first well enough in every way to permit the possibility of her marrying him if she considers that her duty. But now, this mystery has come up about the man who has been following him—the man who appeared again only this morning in Miss Waldron’s room and went through her papers—”

“And Mr. Axton cannot account for it?” the psychologist helped him.

“Axton won’t tell her or anybody else who the man is or why he follows him. On the contrary, he has opposed in every possible way every inquiry or search made for the man, except such as he chooses to make for himself. Only this morning he made a threat against Miss Waldron if she attempted to summon the police and ‘take the man out of his hands’; and it is because I am sure that he will follow us here to prevent her consulting you—when he finds that she has come here—that I asked you to see us at once.”

“Leave the details of his appearance this morning to the last then,” Trant requested abruptly, “and tell me where you first heard of this man following Mr. Axton, and how? How, for instance, do you know he was following him, if Mr. Axton is so reticent about the affair?”

“That is one of the strange things about it, Mr. Trant”—the girl took from her bosom the bundle of letters she had taken from her room—“he used to write to amuse me with him, as you can see here. I told you I wrote Mr. Axton about a year ago to come home and he refused to consider it. But afterwards he always wrote in reply to my letters in the half-serious, friendly way you shall see. These four letters I brought you are almost entirely taken up with his adventures with the mysterious man. He wrote on typewriter, as you see”—she handed them over—“because on his travels he used to correspond regularly for some of the London syndicates.”

“London?”

“Yes; the first Mrs. Axton took Howard to England with her when he was scarcely seven, immediately after she got her divorce. He grew up there and abroad. This is his first return to America. I have arranged those letters, Mr. Trant,” she added as the psychologist was opening them for examination now, “in the order they came.”

“I will read them that way then,” Trant said, and he glanced over the contents of the first hastily; it was postmarked at Cairo, Egypt, some ten months before. He then re-read more carefully this part of it:

“But a strange and startling incident has happened since my last
letter to you, Miss Waldron, which bothers me considerably. We are,
as you will see by the letter paper, at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo,
but could not, after our usual custom, get communicating rooms. It
was after midnight, and the million noises of this babel-town had
finally died into a hot and breathless stillness. I had been writing
letters, and when through I put out the lights to get rid of their
heat, lighted instead the small night lamp I carry with me, and
still partly dressed threw myself upon the bed, without, however,
any idea of going to sleep before undressing. As I lay there I heard
distinctly soft footsteps come down the corridor on which my room
opens and stop apparently in front of the door. They were not, I
judged, the footsteps of a European, for the walker was either
barefooted or wore soft sandals. I turned my head toward the door,
expecting a knock, but none followed. Neither did the door open,
though I had not yet locked it. I was on the point of rising to see
what was wanted, when it occurred to me that it was probably not at
my door that the steps had stopped but at the door directly
opposite, across the corridor. Without doubt my opposite neighbor
had merely returned to his room and his footsteps had ceased to
reach my ears when he entered and closed his door behind him. I
dozed off. But half an hour later, as nearly as I can estimate it, I
awoke and was thinking of the necessity for getting undressed and
into bed, when a slight—a very slight rustling noise attracted my
attention. I listened intently to locate the direction of the sound
and determine whether it was inside the room or out of it, and then
heard in connection with it a slighter and more regular sound which
could be nothing else than breathing. Some living creature, Miss
Waldron, was in my room. The sounds came from the direction of the
table by the window. I turned my head as silently as I was able, and
was aware that a man was holding a sheet of paper under the light of
the lamp. He was at the table going through the papers in my writing
desk. But the very slight noise I had made in turning on the bed had
warned him. He rose, with a hissing intake of the breath, his feet
pattered softly and swiftly across the floor, my door creaked under
his hand, and he was gone before I could jump from the bed and
intercept him. I ran out into the hallway, but it was empty. I
listened, but could hear no movement in any of the rooms near me. I
went back and examined the writing desk, but found nothing missing;
and it was plain nothing had been touched except some of my letters
from you. But, before finally going to bed, you may well believe, I
locked my door carefully; and in the morning I reported the matter
to the hotel office. The only description I could give of the
intruder was that he had certainly worn a turban, and one even
larger it seemed to me than ordinary. The hotel attendants had seen
no one coming from or entering my corridor that night who answered
this description. The turban and the absence of European shoes, of
course, determined him to have been an Egyptian, Turk or Arab. But
what Egyptian, Turk or Arab could have entered my room with any
other object than robbery—which was certainly not the aim of my
intruder, for the valuables in the writing desk were untouched. That
same afternoon, it is true, I had had an altercation amounting
almost to a quarrel with a Bedouin Arab on my way back from
Heliopolis; but if this were he, why should he have taken revenge on
my writing desk instead of on me? And what reason on earth can any
follower of the Prophet have had for examining with such particular
attention my letters from you? It was so decidedly a strange thing
that I have taken all this space to tell it to you—one of the
strangest sort of things I’ve had in all my knocking about; and
Lawler can make no more of it than I.”

“Who is this Lawler who was with Mr. Axton then?” Trant looked up interestedly from the last page of the letter.

“I only know he was a friend Howard made in London—an interesting man who had traveled a great deal, particularly in America. Howard was lonely after his mother’s death; and as Mr. Lawler was about his age, they struck up a friendship and traveled together.”

“An English younger son, perhaps?”

“I don’t know anything else except that he had been in the English army—in the Royal Sussex regiment—but was forced to give up his commission on account of charges that he had cheated at cards. Howard always held that the charges were false; but that was why he wanted to travel.”

“You know of no other trouble which this Lawler had?”

“No, none.”

“Then where is he now?”

“Dead.”

“Dead?” Trant’s face fell.

“Yes; he was the friend I spoke of that was lost—drowned in the wreck of the _Gladstone_ just before Howard started home.”

Trant picked up the next letter, which was dated and postmarked at Calcutta.

“Miss Waldron, I have seen him again,” he read. “Who, you ask? My
Moslem friend with a taste for your correspondence. You see, I can
again joke about it; but really it was only last night and I am
still in a perfect funk. It was the same man—I’ll swear it—shoeless
and turbaned and enjoying the pleasant pursuit of going through my
writing desk for your letters. Did he follow us down the Red Sea,
across the Indian Ocean—over three thousand miles of ocean travel? I
can imagine no other explanation—for I would take oath to his
identity—the very same man I saw at Cairo, but now here in this
Great Eastern Hotel at Calcutta, where we have two rooms at the end
of the most noisome corridor that ever caged the sounds and odors of
a babbling East Indian population, and where the doors have no
locks. I had the end of a trunk against my door, notwithstanding the
fact that an Indian servant I have hired was sleeping in the
corridor outside across the doorway, but it booted nothing; for
Lawler in the next room had neglected to fasten his door in any way,
trusting to his servant, who occupied a like strategic position
outside the threshold, and the door between our two rooms was open.
I had been asleep in spite of everything—in spite of the snores and
stertorous breathing of a floorful of sleeping humans, for the
partitions between the rooms do not come within several feet of the
ceiling; in spite of the distant bellowing of a sacred bull, and the
nearer howl of a very far from sacred dog, and a jingling of
elephant bells which were set off intermittently somewhere close at
hand whenever some living thing in their neighborhood—animal or
human—shifted its position. I was awakened—at least I believe it was
this which awakened me—by a creaking of the floor boards in my room,
and, with what seemed a causeless, but was certainly one of the most
oppressive feelings of chilling terror I have ever experienced, I
started upright in my bed. He was there, again at my writing desk,
and rustling the papers. For an instant I remained motionless; and
in that instant, alarmed by the slight sound I had made, he fled
noiselessly, pattered through the door between the rooms and loudly
slammed it shut, slammed Lawler’s outer door behind him, and had
gone. I crashed the door open, ran across the creaking floor of the
other room—where Lawler, awakened by the slamming of the doors, had
whisked out of bed—and opened the door into the corridor. Lawler’s
servant, aroused, but still dazed with sleep, blubbered that he had
seen no one, though the man must have stepped over his very body. A
dozen other servants, sleeping before their masters’ doors in the
corridor, had awakened likewise, but cried out shrilly that they had
seen no one. Lawler, too, though the noise of the man’s passage had
brought him out of bed, had not seen him. When I examined my writing
desk I found, as before at Cairo, that nothing had been taken. The
literary delight of looking over your letters seems to be all that
draws him—of course, I am joking; for there must be a real reason.
What it is that he is searching for, why it is that he follows me,
for he has never intruded on anyone else so far as I can learn, I
would like to know—I would like to know—I would like to know! The
native servants asked in awe-struck whispers whether I noticed if
his feet were turned backwards; for it seems they believe that to be
one of the characteristics of a ghost. But the man was flesh and
blood—I am sure of it; and I am bound that if he comes again I will
learn his object, for I sleep now with my pistol under my pillow,
and next time—I shall shoot!”

Trant, as he finished the last words, looked up suddenly at Miss Waldron, as though about to ask a question or make some comment, but checked himself, and hastily laying aside this letter he picked up the next one, which bore a Cape Town date line:

“My affair with my mysterious visitor came almost to a conclusion
last night, for except for a careless mistake of my own I should
have bagged him. Isn’t it mystifying, bewildering—yes, and a little
terrifying—he made his appearance here last night in Cape Town,
thousands of miles away from the two other places I had encountered
him; and he seemed to have no more difficulty in entering the house
of a Cape Town correspondent, Mr. Arthur Emsley, where we are
guests, than he had before in entering public hotels, and when
discovered he disappeared as mysteriously as ever. This time,
however, he took some precautions. He had moved my night lamp so
that, with his body in shadow, he could still see the contents of my
desk; but I could hear his shoulders rubbing on the wall and located
him exactly. I slipped my hand noiselessly for my revolver, but it
was gone. The slight noise I made in searching for it alarmed him,
and he ran. I rushed out into the hall after him. Mr. Emsley and
Lawler, awakened by the breaking of the glass, had come out of their
rooms. They had not seen him, and though we searched the house he
had disappeared as inexplicably as the two other times. But I have
learned one thing: It is not a turban he wears, it is his coat,
which he takes off and wraps around his head to hide his face. An
odd disguise; and the possession of a coat of that sort makes it
probable he is a European. I know of only two Europeans who have
been in Cairo, Calcutta and Cape Town at the same time we were—both
travelers like ourselves; a guttural young German named Schultz, a
freight agent for the Nord Deutscher Lloyd, and a nasal American
named Walcott, who travels for the Seric Medicine Co. of New York. I
shall keep an eye on both of them. For, in my mind at least, this
affair has come to be a personal and bitter contest between the
unknown and myself. I am determined not only to know who this man is
and what is the object of his visits, but to settle with him the
score which I now have against him. I shall shoot him next time he
comes as mercilessly as I would a rabid dog; and I should have shot
him this time except for my own careless mistake through which I had
let my revolver slip to the floor, where I found it. By the bye, we
sail for home—that is, England—next week on the steamer _Gladstone_,
but, I am sorry to say, without my English servant, Beasley. Poor
Beasley, since these mysterious occurrences, has been bitten with
superstitious terror; the man is in a perfect fright, thinks I am
haunted, and does not dare to embark on the same ship with me, for
he believes that the _Gladstone_ will never reach England in safety
if I am aboard. I shall discharge him, of course, but furnish him
with his transportation home and leave him to follow at his leisure
if he sees fit.”

“This is the first time I have heard of another man in their party who might possibly be the masquerader, Miss Waldron;” Trant swung suddenly in his revolving chair to face the girl again. “Mr. Axton speaks of him as his English servant—I suppose, from that, he left England with Mr. Axton.”

“Yes, Mr. Trant.”

“And therefore was present, though not mentioned, at Cairo, Calcutta and Cape Town?”

“Yes, Mr. Trant; but he was dismissed at that time by Mr. Axton and is now, and also was, at the mysterious man’s next appearance, in the Charing Cross Hospital in London. He had his leg broken by a cab; and one of the doctors there wrote Mr. Axton two days ago telling him of Beasley’s need of assistance. It could not have been Beasley.”

“And there was no one else with Mr. Axton, except his friend Lawler who, you say, was drowned in a wreck?”

“No one else but Mr. Lawler, Mr. Trant; and Howard himself saw him dead and identified him, as you will see in that last letter.”

Trant opened the envelope and took out the enclosure interestedly; but as he unfolded the first page, a printed sheet dropped out. He spread it upon his desk—a page from the London _Illustrated News_ showing four portraits with the caption, “Sole survivors of the ill-fated British steamer _Gladstone_, wrecked off Cape Blanco, January 24,” the first portrait bearing the name of Howard Axton and showing the determined, distinctly handsome features and the full lips and deep-set eyes of the man whom the girl had defied that morning.

“This is a good portrait?” Trant asked abruptly.

“Very good, indeed,” the girl answered, “though it was taken almost immediately after the wreck for the _News_. I have the photograph from which it was made at home. I had asked him for a picture of himself in my last previous letter, as my mother had destroyed every picture, even the early pictures, of him and his mother.”

Trant turned to the last letter.

“Wrecked, Miss Waldron. Poor Beasley’s prophecy of disaster has come
only too true, and I suppose he is already congratulating himself
that he was ‘warned’ by my mysterious visitor and so escaped the
fate that so many have suffered, including poor Lawler. Of course
you will have seen all about it in the staring headlines of some
newspaper long before this reaches you. I am glad that when found I
was at once identified, though still unconscious, and my name listed
first among the very few survivors, so that you were spared the
anxiety of waiting for news of me. Only four of us left out of that
whole shipload! I had final proof this morning of poor Lawler’s
death by the finding of his body.

“I was hardly out of bed when a mangy little man—a German
trader—came to tell me that more bodies had been found, and, as I
have been called upon in every instance to aid in identification, I
set out with him down the beach at once. It was almost impossible to
realize that this blue and silver ocean glimmering under the blazing
sun was the same white-frothing terror that had swallowed up all my
companions of three days before. The greater part of the bodies
found that morning had been already carried up the beach. Among
those remaining on the sand the first we came upon was that of
Lawler. It lay upon its side at the entrance of a ragged sandy cove,
half buried in the sand, which here was white as leprosy. His ears,
the sockets of his eyes, and every interstice of his clothing were
filled with this white and leprous sand by the washing of the waves;
his pockets bulged and were distended with it.”

“What! What!” Trant clutched the letter from the desk in excitement and stared at it with eyes flashing with interest.

“It is a horrible picture, Mr. Trant,” the girl shuddered.

“Horrible—yes, certainly,” the psychologist assented tensely; “but I was not thinking of the horror,” he checked himself.

“Of what, then?” asked Caryl pointedly.

But the psychologist had already returned to the letter in his hand, the remainder of which he read with intent and ever-increasing interest:

“Of course I identified him at once. His face was calm and showed no
evidence of his last bitter struggle, and I am glad his look was
thus peaceful. Poor Lawler! If the first part of his life was not
all it should have been—as indeed he frankly told me—he atoned for
all in his last hour; for undoubtedly, Miss Waldron, Lawler gave his
life for mine.

“I suppose the story of the wreck is already all known to you, for
our one telegraph wire that binds this isolated town to the outside
world has been laboring for three days under a load of messages. You
know then that eighteen hours out of St. Vincent fire was discovered
among the cargo, that the captain, confident at first that the fire
would be got under control, kept on his course, only drawing in
somewhat toward the African shore in case of emergency. But a very
heavy sea rising, prevented the fire-fighters from doing efficient
work among the cargo and in the storm and darkness the _Gladstone_
struck several miles to the north of Cape Blanco on a hidden reef at
a distance of over a mile from the shore.

“On the night it occurred I awakened with so strong a sense of
something being wrong that I rose, partly dressed myself, and went
out into the cabin, where I found a white-faced steward going from
door to door arousing the passengers. Heavy smoke was billowing up
the main companion-way in the light of the cabin lamps, and the
pitching and reeling of the vessel showed that the sea had greatly
increased. I returned and awoke Lawler, and we went out on deck. The
sea was a smother of startling whiteness through which the
_Gladstone_ was staggering at the full power of her engines. No
flame as yet was anywhere visible, but huge volumes of smoke were
bursting from every opening in the fore part of the vessel. The
passengers, in a pale and terrified group, were kept together on the
after deck as far as possible from the fire. Now and then some
pallid, staring man or woman would break through the guard and rush
back to the cabin in search of a missing loved one or valuables.
Lawler and I determined that one of us must return to the stateroom
for our money, and Lawler successfully made the attempt. He returned
in ten minutes with my money and papers and two life preservers. But
when I tried to put on my life preserver I found it to be old and in
such a condition as made it useless. Lawler then took off the
preserver that he himself had on, declaring himself to be a much
better swimmer than I—which I knew to be the case—and forced me to
wear it. This life preserver was all that brought me safely ashore,
and the lack of it was, I believe, the reason for Lawler’s death.
Within ten minutes afterward the flames burst through the forward
deck—a red and awful banner which the fierce wind flattened into a
fan-shaped sheet of fire against the night—and the _Gladstone_
struck with terrific force, throwing everything and everybody flat
upon the deck. The bow was raised high upon the reef, while the
stern with its maddened living freight began to sink rapidly into
the swirl of foaming waters. The first two boats were overfilled at
once in a wild rush, and one was stove immediately against the
steamer’s side and sank, while the other was badly damaged and made
only about fifty yards’ progress before it went down also. The
remaining boats all were lowered from the starboard davits, and got
away in safety; but only to capsize or be stove upon the reef.
Lawler and I found places in the last boat—the captain’s. At the
last moment, just as we were putting off, the fiery maw of the
_Gladstone_ vomited out the scorched and half-blinded second
engineer and a single stoker, whom we took in with difficulty. There
was but one woman in our boat—a fragile, illiterate Dutchwoman from
the neighborhood of Johannesburg—who had in her arms a baby. How
strange that of our boatload those who alone survived should be the
Dutchwoman, but without her baby; the engineer and stoker, whom the
fire had already partly disabled, and myself, a very indifferent
swimmer—while the strongest among us all perished! Of what happened
after leaving the ship I have only the most indistinct recollection.
I recall the swamping of our boat, and cruel white waters that
rushed out of the night to engulf us; I recall a blind and painful
struggle against a power infinitely greater than my own—a struggle
which seemed interminable; for, as a matter of fact, I must have
been in the water fully four hours and the impact of the waves alone
beat my flesh almost to a jelly; and I recall the coming of
daylight, and occasional glimpses of a shore which seemed to project
itself suddenly above the sea and then at once to sink away and be
swallowed by it. I was found unconscious on the sands—I have not the
faintest idea how I got there—and I was identified before coming to
myself (it may please you to know this) by several of your letters
which were found in my pocket. At present, with my three rescued
companions—whose names even I probably never should have known if
the _Gladstone_ had reached England safely—I am a most enthralling
center of interest to the white, black and parti-colored inhabitants
of this region; and I am writing this letter on an antiquated
typewriter belonging to the smallest, thinnest, baldest little
American that ever left his own dooryard to become a missionary.”

Trant tossed aside the last page and, with eyes flashing with a deep, glowing fire, he glanced across intensely to the girl watching him; and his hands clenched on the table, in the constraint of his eagerness.

“Why—what is it, Mr. Trant?” the girl cried.

“This is so taken up with the wreck and the death of Lawler,” the psychologist touched the last letter, “that there is hardly any more mention of the mysterious man. But you said, since Mr. Axton has come home, he has twice appeared and in your room, Miss Waldron. Please give me the details.”

“Of his first appearance—or visit, I should say, since no one really saw him, Mr. Trant,” the girl replied, still watching the psychologist with wonder, “I can’t tell you much, I’m afraid. When Mr. Axton first came home, I asked him about this mysterious friend; and he put me off with a laugh and merely said he hadn’t seen much of him since he last wrote. But even then I could see he wasn’t so easy as he seemed. And it was only two days after that—or nights, for it was about one o’clock in the morning—that I was wakened by some sound which seemed to come from my dressing-room. I turned on the light in my room and rang the servant’s bell. The butler came almost at once and, as he is not a courageous man, roused Mr. Axton before opening the door to my dressing-room. They found no one there and nothing taken or even disturbed except my letters in my writing desk, Mr. Trant. My aunt, who has been taking care of me since my mother died, was aroused and came with the servants. She thought I must have imagined everything; but I discovered and showed Mr. Axton that it was _his letters to me_ that had appeared to be the ones the man was searching for. I found that two of them had been taken and every other typewritten letter in my desk—and only those—had been opened in an apparent search for more of his letters. I could see that this excited him exceedingly, though he tried to conceal it from me; and immediately afterwards he found that a window on the first floor had been forced, so some man had come in, as I said.”

“Then last night.”

“It was early this morning, Mr. Trant, but still very dark—a little before five o’clock. It was so damp, you know, that I had not opened the window in my bedroom, which is close to the bed; but had opened the windows of my dressing-room, and so left the door between open. It had been closed and locked before. So when I awoke, I could see directly into my dressing-room.”

“Clearly?”

“Of course not at all clearly. But my writing-desk is directly opposite my bedroom door; and in a sort of silhouette against my shaded desk light, which he was using, I could see his figure—a very vague, monstrous looking figure, Mr. Trant. Its lower part seemed plain enough; but the upper part was a formless blotch. I confess at first that enough of my girl’s fear for ghosts came to me to make me see him as a headless man, until I remembered how Howard had seen and described him—with a coat wrapped round his head. As soon as I was sure of this, I pressed the bell-button again and this time screamed, too, and switched on my light. But he slammed the door between us and escaped. He went through another window he had forced on the lower floor with a queer sort of dagger-knife which he had broken and left on the sill. And as soon as Howard saw this, he knew it was the same man, for it was then he ordered me not to interfere. He made off after him, and when he came back, he told me he was sure it was the same man.”

“This time, too, the man at your desk seemed rummaging for your correspondence with Mr. Axton?”

“It seemed so, Mr. Trant.”

“But his letters were all merely personal—like these letters you have given me?”

“Yes.”

“Amazing!” Trant leaped to his feet, with eyes flashing now with unrestrained fire, and took two or three rapid turns up and down the office. “If I am to believe the obvious inference from these letters, Miss Waldron—coupled with what you have told me—I have not yet come across a case, an attempt at crime more careful, more cold-blooded and, withall, more surprising!”

“A crime—an attempt at crime, Mr. Trant?” cried the white and startled girl. “So there was cause for my belief that something serious underlay these mysterious appearances?”

“Cause?” Trant swung to face her. “Yes, Miss Waldron—criminal cause, a crime so skillfully carried on, so assisted by unexpected circumstance that you—that the very people against whom it is aimed have not so much as suspected its existence.”

“Then you think Howard honestly believes the man still means nothing?”

“The man never meant ‘nothing,’ Miss Waldron; but it was only at first the plot was aimed against Howard Axton,” Trant replied. “Now it is aimed solely at you!”

The girl grew paler.

“How can you say that so surely, Mr. Trant?” Caryl demanded, “without investigation?”

“These letters are quite enough evidence for what I say, Mr. Caryl,” Trant returned. “Would you have come to me unless you had known that my training in the methods of psychology enabled me to see causes and motives in such a case as this which others, untrained, can not see?

“You have nothing more to tell me which might be of assistance?” he faced the girl again, but turned back at once to Caryl. “Let me tell you then, Mr. Caryl, that I am about to make a very thorough investigation of this for you. Meanwhile, I repeat: a definite, daring crime was planned first, I believe, against Howard Axton and Miss Waldron; but now—I am practically certain—it is aimed against Miss Waldron alone. But there cannot be in it the slightest danger of intentional personal hurt to her. So neither of you need be uneasy while I am taking time to obtain full proof—”

“But, Mr. Trant,” the girl interrupted, “are you not going to tell me—you _must_ tell me—what the criminal secret is that these letters have revealed to you?”

“You must wait, Miss Waldron,” the psychologist answered kindly, with his hand on the doorknob, as though anxious for the interview to end. “What I could tell you now would only terrify you and leave you perplexed how to act while you were waiting to hear from me. No; leave the letters, if you will, and the page from the _Illustrated News_,” he said suddenly, as the girl began gathering up her papers. “There is only one thing more. You said you expected an interruption here from Howard Axton, Mr. Caryl. Is there still a good chance of his coming here or—must I go to see him?”

“Miss Waldron telephoned to me, in his presence, to take her to see you. Afterwards she left the house without his knowledge. As soon as he finds she has gone, he will look up your address, and I think you may expect him.”

“Very good. Then I must set to work at once!” He shook hands with both of them hurriedly and almost forcing them out his door, closed it behind them, and strode back to his desk. He picked up immediately the second of the four letters which the girl had given him, read it through again, and crossed the corridor to the opposite office, which was that of a public stenographer.

“Make a careful copy of that,” he directed, “and bring it to me as soon as it is finished.”

A quarter of an hour later, when the copy had been brought him, he compared it carefully with the original. He put the copy in a drawer of the desk and was apparently waiting with the four originals before him when he heard a knock on his door and, opening it, found that his visitor was again young Caryl.

“Miss Waldron did not wish to return home at once; she has gone to see a friend. So I came back,” he explained, “thinking you might make a fuller statement of your suspicions to me than you would in Miss Waldron’s presence.”

“Fuller in what respect, Mr. Caryl?”

The young man reddened.

“I must tell you—though you already may have guessed—that before Miss Waldron inherited the estate and came to believe it her duty to do as she has done, there had been an—understanding between us, Mr. Trant. She still has no friend to look to as she looks to me. So, if you mean that you have discovered through those letters—though God knows how you can have done it—anything in Axton which shows him unfit to marry her, you must tell me!”

“As far as Axton’s past goes,” Trant replied, “his letters show him a man of high type—moral, if I may make a guess, above the average. There is a most pleasing frankness about him. As to making any further explanation than I have done—but good Lord! what’s that?”

The door of the office had been dashed loudly open, and its still trembling frame was filled by a tall, very angry young man in automobile costume, whose highly colored, aristocratic looking features Trant recognized immediately from the print in the page of the _Illustrated London News_.

“Ah, Mr. Caryl here too?—the village busybody!” the newcomer sneered, with a slight accent which showed his English education. “You are insufferably mixing yourself in my affairs,” he continued, as Caryl, with an effort, controlled himself and made no answer. “Keep out of them! That is my advice—take it! Does a woman have to order you off the premises before you can understand that you are not wanted? As for you,” he swung toward Trant, “you are Trant, I suppose!”

“Yes, that is my name, Mr. Axton,” replied the psychologist, leaning against his desk.

The other advanced a step and raised a threatening finger. “Then that advice is meant for you, too. I want no police, no detectives, no outsider of any sort interfering in this matter. Make no mistake; it will be the worse for anyone who pushes himself in! I came here at once to take the case out of your hands, as soon as I found Miss Waldron had come here. This is strictly my affair—keep out of it!”

“You mean, Mr. Axton, that you prefer to investigate it personally?” the psychologist inquired.

“Exactly—investigate and punish!”

“But you cannot blame Miss Waldron for feeling great anxiety even on your account, as your personal risk in making such an investigation will be so immensely greater than anyone’s else would be.”

“My risk?”

“Certainly; you may be simply playing into the hand of your strange visitor, by pursuing him unaided. Any other’s risk,—mine, for instance, if I were to take up the matter—would be comparatively slight, beginning perhaps by questioning the nightwatchmen and stableboys in the neighborhood with a view to learning what became of the man after he left the house; and besides, such risks are a part of my business.”

Axton halted. “I had not thought of it in that light,” he said reflectively.

“You are too courageous—foolishly courageous, Mr. Axton.”

“Do you mind if I sit down? Thank you. You think, Mr. Trant, that an investigation such as you suggest, would satisfy Miss Waldron—make her easier in her mind, I mean?”

“I think so, certainly.”

“And it would not necessarily entail calling in the police? You must appreciate how I shrink from publicity—another story concerning the Axton family exploited in the daily papers!”

“I had no intention of consulting the police, or of calling them in, at least until I was ready to make the arrest.”

“I must confess, Mr. Trant,” said Axton easily, “that I find you a very different man from what I had expected. I imagined an uneducated, somewhat brutal, perhaps talkative fellow; but I find you, if I may say so, a gentleman. Yes, I am tempted to let you continue your investigation—on the lines you have suggested.”

“I shall ask your help.”

“I will help you as much as is in my power.”

“Then let me begin, Mr. Axton, with a question—pardon me if I open a window, for the room is rather warm—I want to know whether you can supplement these letters, which so far are the only real evidence against the man, by any further description of him,” and Trant, who had thrown open the window beside him, undisturbed by the roar that filled the office from the traffic-laden street below, took the letters from his pocket and opened them one by one, clumsily, upon the desk.

“I am afraid I cannot add anything to them, Mr. Trant.”

“We must get on then with what we have here,” the psychologist hitched his chair near to the window to get a better light on the paper in his hand, and his cuff knocked one of the other letters off the desk onto the windowsill. He turned, hastily but clumsily, and touched, but could not grasp it before it slipped from the sill out into the air. He sprang to his feet with an exclamation of dismay, and dashed from the room. Axton and Caryl, rushing to the window, watched the paper, driven by a strong breeze, flutter down the street until lost to sight among wagons; and a minute later saw Trant appear below them, bareheaded and excited, darting in and out among vehicles at the spot where the paper had disappeared; but it had been carried away upon some muddy wagon-wheel or reduced to tatters, for he returned after fifteen minutes’ search disheartened, vexed and empty handed.