CHAPTER XII.
The Truth.
LONG after the house had settled to silence, I paced my room in a perfect frenzy of despair. Gilbert had broken his word! He had said that he would stay as long as I needed him, that he would be at my service always, and I had felt instinctively, from his tone, that he had really meant it; it was no mere formal figure of speech. Worse than anything else, he might have thought me just a silly, horrid little flirt! The Smiths had been only too ready to put that construction upon my talks with him. I had refused to ask him to call, or permit him to make himself known to Alaric and the others.
Of course, he could not have the faintest idea that his being who he was, made all the difference in the world. But why had he jumped to such a hasty conclusion, and gone without even trying to see me again? Oh, if he had only waited!
Then a swift burning thought came, like a sharp stab of pain. Perhaps he hadn't meant what he said! I knew that men didn't always. Perhaps he had only been amusing himself, and the mild sport palling upon him, had gone back to the stalking of bigger game!
What I should do now I didn't know, and I didn't even try to think. My own predicament had faded into insignificance beside the overwhelming knowledge that he had failed me. He had gone forever, without a word or sign. He hadn't cared!
The moon, which on the previous night had been wholly obscured by the clouds, rose slowly now, and sailed in silvery splendor high up over the trees, and I sank down in the low chair by the window, with my head upon the sill, and sobbed my heart out. I felt as if it didn't matter to me, then, if I never left that awful island!
Men were horrible, deceitful, trifling creatures, and Gilbert Spear wasn't any different from the rest! Laddie had been infinitely more trustworthy than his master; he, at least, was faithful
Then, as I crouched, sobbing, all at once through the eerie stillness, a sound, faint and far away, broke upon my ears. It was probably the most unmusical, drearily monotonous plaint conceivable, but no celestial chorus could have flooded my heart with greater rapture and peace. It was a dog, howling at the moon.
"Oh, Laddie!" I cried softly, stretching out my arms into the luminous darkness. "Laddie! Your master has not gone!"
Alaric had lied, lied! Gilbert was there, as he had promised, waiting until my need should bring me to him! He had meant all that he had said, and he would help me out of this unbearable situation! I had accused him in my own mind of being unworthy of confidence, when I had been only too ready to believe the first thing which was said about him, by people whom I had good reason to know were treacherous to a degree.
The blessed reassurance of Laddie's lugubrious wail brought me strength and courage to face what still lay before me, and I resolved that with the coming of the dawn I would steal away and find Gilbert, tell him everything without reservation, and place myself under his protection.
My eyelids grew heavier and heavier, and finally I drifted off to sleep, there by the window, with my head pillowed upon my arm. My dreams were troubled ones and I awakened from them with an apprehensive start, feeling that I must have slept a long while. A faint grayish haze had suffused the darkness, and there was a rosy glow in the east.
As I rubbed my eyes, and stretched my cramped arms, I heard the hall clock on the landing strike five. I had no time to lose! I was still in the dinner gown which I had worn the evening before, but I changed quickly to a dark serviceable linen, and replaced my satin slippers with stout pumps. Then I opened my door softly, and tiptoed out upon the landing.
At the head of the stairs I paused and looked down, and as my eyes pierced the gloom, my heart almost stopped beating. There, in a great chair by the door, sat Monsieur Pelissier! He had changed from his evening clothes into immaculate flannels and he sat quite motionless, as I stood gazing down upon him. I wondered why he did not speak, but gradually my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, and I perceived that he was sound asleep.
I shrank back quickly, lest he should wake and discover me. I knew that I could not hope to steal past his chair and unbolt the heavy door without arousing him, but there must be a servant's stairway somewhere at the back, if I could find it.
With my breath coming fast, and a queer, choking sensation in my throat, I made my way noiselessly down the hall, step by step, toward the wing in the rear, over the kitchen. At a sudden turning, I came upon the stairs which I was seeking—and upon something else for which I had not been prepared. It was Alaric, fast asleep, like Monsieur Pelissier, but snoring stertorously, and there was a strong odor of spirits on the air. He was a very unpleasant spectacle, as he lay back in his chair, with his outstretched legs completely blocking the narrow passage, his collar unfastened, and his mouth wide open. On a small stand beside him was a tray containing a plate of half-eaten sandwiches, a decanter and glass and a cigarette box. The decanter and box were both empty; evidently the means he had taken to while away the tedium of his hours on guard had served to make him relax his vigilance.
But to pass him was out of the question, and there was nothing for it but to return to my room, with tears of helpless anger in my eyes. I seemed to be a prisoner, in very truth! Was there no way in which I could elude them, and get out of the house? Must I own myself defeated?
As I looked from my window, I saw that the red was deepening in the east. The birds were already astir, and soon the sun would rise. What could I do?
All at once, a desperate inspiration came to me. The tree! The great tree, whose stout limb upon which the robin had nested, almost touched my window! I hadn't climbed a tree since I was a tiny girl, back in Texas, but my work in the gymnasium at school had kept me strong and supple, and quick as a cat. It was hazardous, but there was no other way.
I opened my window as wide as it would go, and climbing up, knelt upon the sill. The ground looked very, very far beneath me, and there was a queer sinking feeling about my heart, but I nerved myself, and reached out to the limb.
How I did it I don't know to this day. I was faint and dizzy, and dared not look down again, but I drew myself inch by inch out upon the sturdy branch. I shuddered when my foot left the sill, and the trunk of the tree seemed an appalling distance away but I kept straight on, worming my way slowly forward. I tried to avoid the robin's nest, but my knee dislodged it, and at the piercing outcry of the startled birds I held my breath in swift panic, but there was no sound from the house.
At last, after perilous, interminable minutes I reached the tree-trunk, and clasped it with a little sob of relief, feeling that the worst was over. The branches grew out thickly on every side, and the descent would be very easy. I started down like a monkey, swinging from my arms until my groping feet found hold, and was just beginning to breathe freely, when disaster came.
Too recklessly, I had stepped out upon the rotting stub of a dead branch, and it snapped beneath my weight, sending me crashing down upon the ground. I lay there for a moment, dazed and shaken, but my desperate need goaded me to action, and I struggled to my feet and stood swaying, fighting back the faintness which threatened to overcome me.
The noise of my fall had reverberated hideously in my own ears. What if it had awakened those in the house? I must not wait to find out, it was too late to do anything but go forward, and every instant was precious.
I stumbled through the shrubbery until I reached the woods, and then started running as hard as I could toward the bungalow. I did not know what I should do when I got there. I only knew that I must find Gilbert as quickly as I could, if I had to scream and beat upon the door.
But just before I reached the little clearing in which the bungalow stood, I heard Laddie bark, and a great splashing noise, and the echo of Gilbert's ringing laugh, and I swerved, springing toward the beach.
As I emerged from the undergrowth upon the sand, Gilbert and Laddie were only a few feet away, and both of them stared a moment in surprise at my sudden apparition.
With my arms outflung in a frenzy of appeal I rushed forward.
"Oh, Gilbert! Gilbert!" I cried.
He gave one glance at my pale, frightened face and sprang toward me.
His arms closed about my trembling body, and I clung to him, sobbing breathlessly.
"What is it?" he asked. "What has happened, little girl? And where have you been hiding yourself these two days?"
"Oh," I gasped incoherently. "Gilbert, you must help me to get away from them! They treat me like a prisoner here! They threatened to lock me up because they found out I had been talking to you, and then Alaric said you had gone away, and I was so unhappy until I heard Laddie howling in the night. Oh, you will take care of me?" His arms tightened about me, and as if I were dreaming, I heard his voice, saying softly:
"Always, Lucy, if you will let me. I want to take care of you always!"
And then he kissed me. A sudden trembling seized me, but it wasn't of fear, and my heart fluttered, as if a little bird nestled there, and all at once began to sing.
"Gilbert!" I whispered, "Dear Gilbert!"
Suddenly there came a rustling in the undergrowth back of me, and in a flash, a sharp realization of what I had left behind me swept over my mind.
"Take me somewhere, quickly!" I begged. "There is something I must tell you! Take me where we could not be seen by anyone following me from the house!"
I drew myself slowly from his arms, and as I did so, he uttered a low exclamation of horror.
"My God, Lucy! You are hurt!"
My sleeve was torn and soaked with blood, and I became conscious, as my eyes fell upon it, that my arm burned as though it had been seared with a hot iron.
"It's nothing!" I gasped hurriedly. "I must have scraped my arm against the tree, when I fell."
"Tree? What do you mean, dear?"
"They were guarding both stairways, so that I could not slip away from the house and come to you, and I climbed out of my window, and down a tree, and a branch broke"
"Good heavens! What does it all mean? Why does your aunt treat you so? But come, we won't talk here"
He took my hand and like two children we raced along the hard sand, past the Barford bungalow, to a pile of gray rocks which jutted out like a promontory into the water. A rough seat had been chiselled out of the solid stone in a tiny, cave-like shelter, and I dropped panting upon it, while Gilbert stood anxiously over me, fanning me with his hat.
When I managed to breathe again, he seated himself beside me, and took my hands in his.
"Lucy, dear, I don't know what this trouble is which you are in, but it must end. I am going up to-day to see your aunt!"
"You cannot!" I cried. "Gilbert you don't know. I'm trying to tell you"
"I must," he returned, doggedly. "I have gotten you into serious difficulties already, by meeting you in this way, and I am going to tell her that I love you, that I want you for my wife, dear. You said that she was your guardian, while your father was away."
Anxious as I was to tell him everything, I yielded to a swift, mischievous impulse.
"Are you sure?" I whispered, with a little smile. "Isn't there another girl that you—you might have married?"
"What girl?" he cried in surprise.
"Oh, someone your father might want you to marry; Maida Waring, for instance."
"Maida Waring!" he repeated, blankly. "How on earth did you ever happen to hear that my father— Good Lord! The papers haven't got hold of that, have they?"
"Not that I am aware of," I returned demurely.
"I've never seen her in my life!" he protested, adding quite suddenly. "Nor am I likely to, now, poor girl!"
"Why not?" I asked, in genuine surprise.
"Don't you know? For Heaven's sake don't your people read the newspapers? They've fairly reeked with it for a week or more! She's been kidnapped!"
For an instant everything whirled and went black before my eyes, and it seemed as if an icy wave crept up from my feet and engulfed me! Then, far away, I heard Gilbert's voice, as he continued, all unsuspecting.
"She was stolen, in broad daylight, from under the very nose of her school principal, by an imposter, who passed herself off as an old family friend. The fraud wasn't discovered until several hours later, when the real friend came at the appointed time to take the girl away. She's disappeared as if the ground had opened and swallowed her. Her father and mine, who is his best friend, have been moving heaven and earth to find her, but there isn't a clue, although the police of the whole country are searching for her, and every detective in the business is on the job. The government is helping out with revenue cutters, keeping strict watch of the ports; her father is a power in the world of finance, you know. The gang that have her in their possession demand a cool million dollars reward, and Oil-Well Waring would pay it like a shot, but the police have cautioned him against it."
"Then Daddy isn't in Europe!" I cried. It was the only fact I seemed to be able to grasp. "Thank God! Thank God!"
"What are you saying, dear?" Gilbert asked, looking at me in a bewildered fashion. "Who is 'Daddy'?"
"My father! You call him 'Oil-Well'!" I sobbed hysterically. "Oh, Gilbert, take me to him! I—I am Maida Waring!"
"Good God!" He sprang to his feet, and stood staring down at me as if he had suddenly taken leave of his senses. "You? Why you are Lucy Smith! You can't know what you are talking about!"
"When you heard that woman who said she was my Aunt Julie calling 'Lucie,' she was summoning her maid. You thought I was 'Miss Smith' and I didn't correct you, because you had allowed me to believe you were young Mr. Barford, and I wanted to turn the tables on you. Oh, you must understand, you must believe me, and take me away!" Then as he did not speak, I added, on a swift inspiration. "You've seen Daddy, of course? You know him?"
He nodded, dumbly, and I drew out my precious locket, and snapped it open. There, smiling up at me, was Daddy's dear face, and opposite the inscription.
Gilbert's eyes traveled slowly from it to my face.
"Maida!" he whispered. "You are Maida Waring! That I should have found you, and here!"
"You are sure Gilbert, that it's true?" I gasped. "It isn't some horrible, ghastly joke? These people aren't really the Smiths, after all?"
"Of course they're not! The real Smiths are joining heart and soul in the search for you! Here!" he reached in his hip pocket and drew out a folded wad of newspaper. "I thought I wrapped Laddie's biscuits in the front page of Saturday's Mercury. Look at this!"
The biscuits tumbled to the rocks at his feet, and he smoothed out the crumpled half-sheet upon my knee. My own name stared up at me in letters four inches high, spread out all across the page, and I read: "Maida Waring Still Missing. Police Baffled. No Clue Yet To Abductors." And beneath, in smaller letters the opening paragraph met my eyes.
"The mysterious kidnapping of Maida Waring, only child of the noted financial magnate Larry 'Oil-Well' Waring remains unsolved. No similar crime, since the famous Charley Ross case, has aroused such wide-spread interest. Practically the entire country is aiding in the search, but thus far there has not developed a single clue, and the belief is growing, in some quarters, that the beautiful young woman will never be found. The abductors, who on Wednesday communicated with Mr. Waring, demanding one million dollars as the sum of his daughter's ransom, have been unprecedently bold in their operations, and it appears inconceivable that the police"
Here the paper had been torn away, but the fragment which I had read struck home to my understanding, and as the paper fluttered to the ground, I raised my eyes to Gilbert, and for a moment we stared speechlessly at each other.
"Maida!" he said at last, and his voice lingered caressingly upon the name. "If only you had trusted me, and told me before, dear! But it's not too late, thank God! Now listen carefully, dear! We haven't a moment to lose! I'll go now and get the launch and bring her around here. You must be ready to jump in as soon as I touch at this rock, and then lie flat down in the bottom, and don't move or cry out, no matter what happens. Thank Heaven and Barford she's a fast little craft with a racing engine in her! We'll make for Kittery, for our lives!"
"Kittery!" I cried. "Oh, Gilbert, that's away off in Maine, isn't it?"
"Where do you think we are now?" he asked, grimly.
"Why on Sunset Island, in Buzzard's Bay" the words died in my throat as I looked at him.
"We're on Hog-back Island, off the coast of Maine."
"Impossible!" I exclaimed. "Why it only took us overnight to get here on the yacht from New York!"
"Well, dear, we'll talk about all that later. Now, it's a matter of life and death with us. If they suspect for a moment that I knew who you were, they would shoot me down like a dog, and your chance of escape would be gone! They're too desperate to stop at half-measures. Wait here for me very quietly, dear, and don't show yourself until you hear the launch. I won't be five minutes."
He took me in his arms, kissed me again, impulsively, and was gone, and I sank back into my seat as if stunned. There must be some hideous mistake! We could not have reached an island off the coast of Maine in a bare twenty- four hours from New York! Then my eyes fell upon the scrap of newspaper lying at my feet, and as I stopped and picked it up abstractedly, the date caught my eye. Saturday, the twelfth. How could a New York paper of yesterday have reached here in time for Gilbert to have purchased it on the mainland the very afternoon of the day on which it was printed? Then a swift thought startled me afresh. The bells! The church bells, which I had heard the week before! It must have been Sunday, not Saturday, as I supposed. How could I have lost a day in my reckoning? I went over in my mind all that had occurred from the moment of my departure from Miss Farmingdales, and as the events of that evening on the Tortoise returned to me, I suddenly remembered that queer, heavy punch Monsieur Pelissier had brewed, how sleepy I had grown immediately after drinking it, and how dull and congested and headachy I had felt when I awakened, and weak with hunger, as though I had slept a very long time. The conviction came to me that I had been drugged and instead of awakening the next morning, had been unconscious for another twenty-four hours!
I knew too that my locket chain had not broken; it had been tampered with. I recalled Lorna's probing for a schoolgirl love affair; possibly they planned to obtain money from my lover, too, if I had one. They couldn't open my locket, of course, and feared to betray themselves so early by breaking it.
All sorts of significant facts came trooping back to my mind, and in a growing horror I tried to shut them out. I felt as if I should go mad if I thought any more. The knowledge of the truth had been so crushing, so overwhelming, that my dazed brain refused to grasp the mass of corroborative detail which returned to torture me.
I folded the fragment of newspaper and stuck it in my blouse, crouching low under the rock in an increasing agony of terror. Suppose these fiends came before Gilbert could get back, and found me there! What would they do to me, for having defied them and run away? Would they kill me, or imprison me there, or take me to some far off place where Daddy and Gilbert could never find me again? Each moment that passed brought an increasing realization of the horror of my position, and the actual peril in which I stood. Gilbert had been gone for ages!Could anything have happened to him? Oh, why did he not come!
I strained my ears, but no sound of any approaching launch could be heard, only the lapping of the little waves upon the rocks, and the birds' songs, in the woods behind me. Then all at once there came, not the chug-chug of the motorboat, but a quick light patter of feet, as of someone running over the sand toward me. I shrank back, trembling, against the stone, looking wildly about me for some way of escape, but there was none, save the open sea. The steps came nearer, someone scrambled over the rocks, and I opened my lips to scream, when Gilbert's voice sounded in my ears.
"It's I, Maida! Don't be frightened!"
I sobbed aloud in my relief, but one glance at his pale, troubled face sent a chill to my heart.
"Oh, Gilbert, what is it?" I whispered.
I'm sorry, dear. Try to be brave, I'll manage to get you off this island somehow, but they've cut off our chance of escape in the launch."
"How could they?" I gasped. "It was there, tied to the dock, just a few minutes ago! I saw it as we ran past"
"Yes, but they've put the engine out of commission. They must have done it last night, for it was running like a breeze yesterday afternoon."
"But surely you can fix it?" Despair was settling down closer and closer upon me.
Gilbert shook his head.
"No, dear, they made sure of that. They have smashed it to atoms, and haven't made the least effort to disguise the fact. It looks as if they did it with a sledge hammer! They evidently towed it out to sea quite a distance, so that I would not hear the noise, for it has obviously been moved, and retied to the dock with a different knot from the hitch I always make. They weren't taking any chances on our giving them the slip, you see. We're both prisoners now, Maida!"