The Chief Legatee

The test was one he had not sought and did not welcome. Yet he felt bound, now that he recognized it as such, to see it through and accept its teaching for what it surely would be worth. Only he began to move with more precaution and studied more to hide his approach than to give any warning of it.

The close ranks of the elderberry bushes lining the fences on the final hill-top lent themselves to the concealment he now sought. As soon as he was sure of her having left the road he drew up close to these bushes and walked under them till he was almost at the gate. Then he allowed himself to peer through their close branches and received an unexpected shock at seeing her figure standing very near him, posed in an uncertainty which, for some reason, he had not expected, but which restored him to himself, though why he had not the courage, the time, nor the inclination to ask.

She was babbling in a low tone to herself, an open sesame to her mind, which Ransom hailed with a sense of awe. If only he might distinguish the words! But this was difficult; not only was her head turned partly away, but she spoke in a murmur which was far from distinct. Yet—yes, that one sentence was plain enough. She had muttered musingly, anxiously, and with a searching look among the graves:

"It was on this side. I know it was on this side."

Watching her closely lest some chance glance of hers should stray his way, he listened still more intently and was presently rewarded by catching another sentence.

"A single grave all by itself. I fell over it and my mother scolded me, saying it was my father's. There was a bush near it. A bush with white flowers on it. I tried to pick some."

Ransom's heart was growing lighter and lighter. She did not even know that there had been placed over that grave a monument with her name on it and that of the mother who had scolded her for tripping over her father's sod. Only Anitra could be so ignorant or expect to find a grave by means of a bush blooming with flowers fifteen years ago. As she went wandering on, peering to right and left, he thought of Hazen and his doubts, and wished that he were here beside him to mark her perplexity.

When quite satisfied that she would never find what she sought without help, Ransom stepped from his hiding-place and joined her among the grassy hillocks. The start of pleasure she gave and her almost childish look of relief warmed his heart, and it was with a smile he waited for her to speak.

"My father's grave!" she explained. "I was looking for my father's grave. I remember my mother taking me to it when I was little. There was a bush close by it—oh! I see what you think. The bush would be big now—I forgot that. And something else! You are thinking of something else. Oh, I know, I know. He wouldn't be lying alone any more. My mother must have died, or sister would have taken me to her. There ought to be two graves."

He nodded, and taking her by the hand led her to the family monument. She gazed at it for a moment, amazed, then laid her finger on one of the inscriptions.

"My father's name?" she asked.

He nodded.

She hung her head thoughtfully for a moment, then slipping to the other side of the stone laid her hand on another.

"My mother's?"

Again he signified yes.

"And this? Is this sister's name? No, she's not buried yet. I had a brother. Is it his?"

Ransom bowed. How tell her that it was a false inscription and that the man whose death it commemorated was not only alive but had only a little while before spoken to her.

"I didn't like my brother. He was cruel and liked to hurt people. I'm glad he's dead."

Ransom drew her away. Her frankness was that of a child, but it produced an uncomfortable feeling. He didn't like this brother either, and in this thoughtless estimate of hers he seemed to read a warning to which his own nature intuitively responded.

"Come!" he motioned, leading the way out.

She followed with a smile, and together they entered the highway. As they did so, Ransom caught sight of a man speeding down the hill before them on a bicycle. He had not come front the upper road, or they would have seen him as he flew past the gateway. Where had he come from, then? From the peep-hole where Ransom himself had stood a few minutes before. No other conclusion was possible, and Ransom felt both angry and anxious till he could find out who the man was. This he did not succeed in doing till he reached the hotel. There a bicycle leaning against a tree gave point to his questions, and he learned that it belonged to a clerk in one of the small stores near by, but that the man who had just ridden it up and down the road on a trial of speed was the stranger who had just come to town with Mr. Hazen.

CHAPTER XXI

ON THE CARS

This episode, which to Ransom's mind would bear but one interpretation, gave him ample food for thought. He decided to be more circumspect in the future and to keep an eye out for inquisitive strangers. Not that he had any thing to conceal, but no man enjoys having his proceedings watched, especially where a woman is concerned.

That Hazen was antagonistic to him he had always known; but that he was regarded by him with suspicion he had not realized till now. Hazen suspicious of him! that meant what? He wished that he had Mr. Harper at his side to enlighten him.

It was now five o'clock and he was sitting in his room awaiting the usual report from the river, when a quick tap at his door was followed by the entrance of the very man he was thinking about. He rose eagerly to receive him, determined, however, to allow no inconsiderate impulse to drive him into unnecessary speech.

"I have already said too much," he reminded himself in self-directed monition. "It's time he did some of the talking."

Hazen seemed willing enough to do this. Taking the seat proffered him, he opened the conversation as follows:

"Mr. Ransom, I have been doing you an injustice. I do not consider it necessary to tell you just how I have found this out, but I am now convinced that you are as much in the dark as myself in regard to this unfortunate affair, and are as willing as I am to take all justifiable means to enlighten yourself. I own that at first I thought it more than probable you were in collusion with the girl here to deceive me. That I wouldn't stand. I'm glad to find you as truly a victim of this mystery as myself."

Ransom straightened himself.

"If this is an apology," he returned, "I am willing to accept it in the spirit in which it is proffered. But I should like something more than apology from you. Candor for candor;—your whole story in return for mine."

"I'm afraid it would be a trifle tedious,—my whole story," smiled Hazen. "If you mean such part of it as concerns Georgian's peculiar actions and the complications with which we are at this moment struggling, I can only repeat what I have already told you, both at the St. Denis in New York and here. I am Georgian's returned brother, saved from the jaws of hell to see my own country again. I arrived in New York on the tenth. Naturally, after securing a room at the hotel, I took up the papers. They were full of the approaching marriage of Miss Hazen. I recognized my sister's name, though not her splendor, for we were the sole survivors of a poor country family and I knew nothing of the legacy I am now told she received. Anxious to see her, I attended the ceremony. She recognized me. I had not expected this, and feeling old affections revive, I followed her friends to the house and was presented to them and to you. What I whispered to her on this occasion were my assumed name and the place where I was to be found. My changed countenance called for explanations, for which a bridal reception offered no opportunity. Besides, as I have already said, I stood in sore need of a definite amount of money. I meant her to come and see me, but I did not expect her to play a trick on you in order to do so. This had its birth in the to me unaccountable mystery embodied in the girl you call Anitra, but whom I'm not ready yet to name. For when I do, action must follow conviction and that without mercy or delay."

"Action?" repeated Ransom, with quick suspicion and a confused rush of contradictory visions in his mind. "What do you mean by that?"

Hazen covered his chin with his hand.

"I will try and explain," he replied. "If I am abrupt in my language, it is owing to the exigencies of the case. I have no time to waste and no disposition to whitewash a rough piece of work. To speak to the point, I have an intense interest in my sister Georgian. I have little or none in my sister Anitra. Georgian's intelligence, good-will, and command of money would be of inestimable benefit to me. Anitra, on the contrary, could be nothing but a burden, unless—" here he cast a very sharp glance at Ransom—"unless Georgian should have been sufficiently considerate to leave her a good share of her fortune in the will you say she made just before her disappearance and supposed death."

"That I can say nothing about," rejoined Ransom in answer to this feeler. "The will is in the hands of her lawyer, but if it will help your argument any we will suppose that she left her sister to the care of her friends without any especial provision for her in the way of money."

The steady fingers clutching the scarred neck loosed their grip to wave this supposition aside.

"A hardly supposable case," was the cold comment with which he supplemented this disclaimer; "but one which would make the girl a burden indeed; a burden which for many reasons I could not assume." Here he struck himself sharply on the neck, with the first display of passion he had shown. "My advantages are not such as to make it easy for me to support myself. It would be simply impossible for me to undertake the care of any girl, least of all of one with a manifest infirmity."

"Anitra will prosper without your care," replied Ransom, overlooking the heartlessness of the man in the mad, unaccountable sense of relief with which he listened to his withdrawal from concerns for which he showed so little sympathy. "There are others who will be glad to do all that can be done for Georgian's forsaken sister."

"Yes. That is all right, but—" Here Hazen squared himself across the top of the table before which he had been sitting; "I must be made sure that the facts have been rightly represented to me and that the girl now in this house is Georgian's deserted sister. I'm not yet satisfied that she is, and I must be convinced not only on this point but on many others, before this day is over. Business of great importance calls me back to the city and, it may be, out of the country. I may never be able to spend another day on purely personal affairs, so this one must tell. I have a scheme (it is a very simple one) which, if carried out as I have planned, will satisfy me as nothing else will as to the identity of the girl we will call, from lack of positive knowledge, Anitra. Will you help me in its furtherance? It lies with you to do so."

"First, your reasons for doubting the girl," retorted Ransom. "They must be excellent ones for you to resist the evidence of such conclusive proofs as you have yourself been witness to since entering this house. I am Georgian's husband. I have the strongest wish in the world to see her again at my side; yet with the exception of her wonderful likeness to my wife, I find nothing in this raw if beautiful girl, of the polished, highly trained woman I married. I have not even succeeded in startling her ear—something which I should have been able to do if she were not the totally deaf woman she appears. Confide to me then your reasons for demanding additional proofs of her identity. If they carry conviction with them, I will aid you in any scheme you can propose which will neither frighten nor afflict her."

Hazen rose to his feet. Narrow as the room was, he yielded to his restless desire to move about and began pacing up and down the restricted quarters bounded by the edge of the table and the door. Not until he had made the second turning did he speak; then it was with seeming openness.

"It's like putting the torch to my last ship," said he; "but this is no time to hesitate. Mr. Ransom, I do not trust my eyes, I do not trust my ears, nor your eyes, nor your ears, nor those of any one here, because I have talked with a man who was on the same train with my sisters. He noticed them because of their similar appearance and close intimacy. They were not dressed alike, but they were veiled alike and one did not move without the other. More than that, they not only walked about the various stations where they waited, arm in arm, but they sat thus closely joined in the cars all the way from New York. This interested him especially as he noted great anxiety and incessant movement in the one, and complete passiveness in the other. She who sat in the outer seat was watchful, busy, and ready to press the other's arm at the least provocation, but if either spoke it was always the other. It was not till the quick rush and shrill whistle of a passing train made one start and not the other, that he got the idea that one of them was deaf. As this was the one by the window, he felt that their peculiar actions were now accounted for, and indeed thus far it all tallied with what we might expect from Georgian traveling with the hapless Anitra. But there remained a fact to be told, which rouses doubt. When they reached G– and he saw from their quick rising that they were about to leave the train, he naturally glanced their way again, and this time he caught a glimpse of the inner one's neck. Her veil had become slightly disarranged, exposing the whole nape. It was unexpectedly dark, almost brunette in color, and quite devoid of delicacy; such a skin as one might look for in the gipsy Anitra after years of outdoor living and a long lack of nice personal attention, but not such as I saw and admired a few hours ago on the neck of the woman bending over her work in the landlady's room. Oh, I recognized the difference; I have an eye for necks."

He paused, coming to a standstill in the middle of the room, to see what effect his words had had on Ransom.

"I have that man's name," he continued, "and can produce him if I have time and it seems to be necessary. But I had rather come to my own decision without any outside interference. This is not an affair for public gossip or newspaper notoriety. It is a question of justice to myself. If this girl is Georgian—" His whole face changed. For a moment Ransom hardly knew him. The quiet, self-contained man seemed to have given way to one of such unexpected power and threat that Ransom rose instinctively to his feet in recognition of a superiority he could no longer deny.

The action seemed to recall Hazen to himself. He wheeled about and recommenced his quiet pacing to and fro.

"I beg pardon," he quietly finished. "If it is Georgian, she must stand my friend. That is all I was going to say. If it is, against all reason and probability, her strangely restored twin, I shall leave this house by midnight, never probably to see any of you again. So you perceive that it is incumbent upon us to work promptly. Are you ready to hear what I have to propose?"

"Yes."

Hazen paused again, this time in front of the door. Laying his hand lightly on one of the panels, he glanced back at Ransom.

"You are nicely placed here for observation. Your door directly faces the hall she must traverse in returning to her room."

"That's quite true."

"She's in her room now. Ah, you know that?"

"Yes." Ransom seemed to have no other word at his command.

"Will she come out again before night to eat or to visit?"

"There's no telling. She's very fitful. No one can prophesy what she will do. Sometimes she eats in the landlady's room, sometimes in her own, sometimes not at all. If you have frightened her, or she has been disturbed in any way by your companion who shows such interest in her and in me, she probably will not come out at all."

"But she must. I expect you to see that she does. Use any messenger, any artifice, but get her away from this hall for ten minutes, even if it is only into Mrs. Deo's room. When she returns I shall be on my knees before this keyhole to watch her and observe. To see what, I do not mean to tell you, but it will be something which will definitely settle for me this matter of identity. Does this plan look sufficiently harmless to meet with your approval?"

"Yes, but looks cannot always be trusted. I must know just what you mean to do. I will leave nothing to a mind and hand I do not trust any more fully than I do yours. You are too eager for Georgian's money; too little interested in herself; and you are too sly in your ways. I overlooked this when you had the excuse of a possible distrust of myself. But now that your confidence is restored in me, now that you recognize the fact that I stand outside of this whole puzzling affair and have no other wish than to know the truth about it and do my duty to all parties concerned, secrecy on your part means more than I care to state. If you persist in it I shall lend myself to nothing that you propose, but wait for time to substantiate her claim or prove its entire falsity."

"You will!"

The words rang out involuntarily. It almost seemed as if the man would spring with them straight at the other's throat. But he controlled himself, and smiling bitterly, added:

"I know the marks of human struggle. I have read countenances from my birth. I've had to, and only one has baffled me—hers. But we are going to read that too and very soon. We are going to learn, you and I, what lies behind that innocent manner and her rude, uncultivated ways. We are going to sound that deafness. I say we," he impressively concluded, "because I have reconsidered my first impulse and now propose to allow you to participate openly, and without the secrecy you object to, in all that remains to be done to make our contemplated test a success. Will that please you? May I count on you now?"

"Yes," replied Ransom, returning to his old monosyllable.

"Very well, then, see if you can make a scrawl like this."

Pulling a piece of red chalk from his pocket, he drew a figure of a somewhat unusual character on the bare top of the table between them; then he handed the chalk over to Ransom, who received it with a stare of wonder not unmixed with suspicion.

"I'm not an adept at drawing," said he, but made his attempt, notwithstanding, and evidently to Hazen's satisfaction.

"You'll do," said he. "That's a mystic symbol once used by Georgian and myself in place of our names in all mutual correspondence, and on the leaves of our school-books and at the end of our exercises. It meant nothing, but the boys and girls we associated with thought it did and envied us the free-masonry it was supposed to cover. A ridiculous make-believe which I rate at its full folly now, but one which cannot fail to arouse a hundred memories in Georgian. We will scrawl it on her door, or rather you shall, and according to the way she conducts herself on seeing it, we shall know in one instant what you with your patience and trust in time may not be able to arrive at in weeks."

Ransom recalled some of the tests he had himself employed, many of which have been omitted from this history, and shrugged his shoulders mentally, if not physically. If Hazen noted this evidence of his lack of faith, he remained entirely unaffected by it, and in a few minutes everything had been planned between them for the satisfactory exercise of what Hazen evidently regarded as a crucial experiment. Ransom was about to proceed to take the first required step, when they heard a disturbance in front, and the coach came driving up with a great clatter and bang and from it stepped the lean, well-groomed figure of Mr. Harper.

"Bah!" exclaimed Hazen with a violent gesture of disappointment. "There comes your familiar. Now I suppose you will cry off."

"Not necessarily," returned Ransom. "But this much is certain. I shall certainly consult him before hazarding this experiment. I am not so sure of myself or—pardon me—of yourself as to take any steps in the dark while I have at hand so responsible a guide as the man whom you choose to call my familiar."

CHAPTER XXII

A SUSPICIOUS TEST

"Let him make his experiment. It will do no harm, and if it rids us of him, well and good."

Such was Mr. Harper's decision after hearing all that Mr. Ransom had to tell him of the present situation.

"His disappointment when he learns that he has nothing to hope for from his sister's generosity calls for some consideration from us," proceeded the lawyer. "Go and have your little talk with the landlady or take whatever other means suggest themselves for luring this girl from her room. I will summon Hazen and hold him very closely under my eye till the whole affair is over. He shall get no chance for any hocus-pocus business, not while I have charge of your interests. He shall do just what he has laid out for himself and nothing more; you may rely on that."

Ransom expressed his satisfaction, and left the room with a lighter heart than he had felt since Hazen came upon the scene. He did not know that all he had been through was as nothing to what lay before him.

It was an hour before he returned. When he did, it was to find Hazen and the lawyer awaiting him in ill-concealed impatience. These two were much too incongruous in tastes and interests to be very happy in a forced and prolonged tête-à-tête.

"Have you done it?" exclaimed Hazen, leaping eagerly to his feet as the door closed softly behind Ransom. "Is she out of her room? I have listened and listened for her step, but could not be sure of it. There seem to be a lot of people in the house to-night."

"Too many," quoth Ransom. "That is why I couldn't get hold of Mrs. Deo any sooner. Anitra is having her hair brushed or something else of equal importance done for her in one of the rear rooms. So we can proceed fearlessly. Have you looked to see if you can get a good glimpse of her door through the keyhole of this one?"

"Haven't you already made a trial of that? Then do so now," suggested Hazen, drawing out the key and laying it on the table.

But this was too uncongenial a task for Ransom.

"I shall be satisfied," said he, "if Mr. Harper tells me that it can."

"It can," asserted that gentleman, falling on his knees and adjusting his eye to the keyhole. "Or rather, you can see plainly the face of any one approaching it. I don't suppose any of us expected to see the door itself."

"No, it is not the door, but the woman entering the door, we want to see. Did you ask for an extra lamp?"

"Yes, and saw it placed. It is on a small table almost opposite her room."

"Then everything is ready."

"All but the mark which I am to put on the panel."

"Very good. Here is the chalk. Let us see what you mean to do with it before you risk an attempt on the door itself."

Ransom thought a minute, then with one quick twist produced the following:

"Correct," muttered Hazen, with what Harper thought to be a slight but unmistakable shudder. "One would think you had been making use of this very cabalistic sign all your life."

"Then one would be mistaken. I have simply a true eye and a ready hand."

"And a very remarkable memory. You have recalled every little line and quirk."

"That's possible. What I have made once I can make the second time. It's a peculiarity of mine."

There was no mistaking the continued intensity of Hazen's gaze. Ransom felt his color rise, but succeeded in preserving his quiet tone, as he added:

"Besides, this character is not a wholly new one to me. My attention was called to it months ago. It was when I was courting Georgian. She was writing a note one day when she suddenly stopped to think and I saw her pen making some marks which I considered curious. But I should not have remembered them five minutes, if she had not impulsively laid her hand over them when she saw me looking. That fixed the memory of them in my mind, and when I saw this combination of lines again, I remembered it. That is why I lent myself so readily to this experiment. I lent that what you said about her acquaintance with this odd arrangement of lines was true."