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A Bride's Vagary

Two minutes later, I was speeding downward in the elevator, having paused only long enough to give a word of instruction to the head clerk. A glance at my watch showed me that if I would catch the 12.38, I had no time to lose; but luckily a cab was passing at the moment, and I jumped aboard the boat for Jersey City just as the gates were closing.

Not until I was safely aboard the train did I give myself time to conjecture what this imperative summons meant, but during the half-hour run to the little New Jersey city, I had ample time to try to puzzle it out.

One thing was quite certain--it was no ordinary emergency which had moved Mr. Royce to summon me from the office at a time when I was so badly needed there. I got out the telegram again, and read it, word by word. It affected me as a wild cry for help would have done, at midnight, in some lonely place--and it was just that--a wild cry for help! But why had he needed aid, when he himself was so clear-sighted, so ready-witted, so fertile of resource? What was this astounding occurrence which confronted him, this crisis so urgent and over-whelming that it had shaken and startled him out of his self-control? The message itself was proof of his deep excitement. Apparently he had wired for me instinctively, finding himself suddenly in the toils of some dilemma, which left him dazed and nerveless.

Ever since the time when I had succeeded, more by luck than anything else, in discovering the whereabouts of Frances Holladay, and solving the mystery of her father's death, our junior partner had conceived a tremendously exalted opinion of my abilities as an untangler of abstruse problems, and never lost an opportunity of referring to me such as came in his way. Every firm of practising lawyers knows how frequently a case hinges upon some puzzling point of evidence--how witnesses have a way of disappearing--and Graham & Royce had their full share of such perplexing tangles. It had come to be one of the unwritten rules of the office that such points should be referred to me, and while I was by no means uniformly successful in solving them, I always took a lively pleasure in the work. It was no doubt that habit which had caused our junior to turn to me in this emergency. I could guess how terrifying it must have been to overwhelm so completely a man so well-balanced and self-controlled--I could almost see the trembling hand with which he had penned the message.

So it was with a certain quickening of the pulse that I stepped from the train at the triangular Elizabeth station, and an instant later, Mr. Royce had me by the hand.

"I thought it was a mystery of some sort," I said, beginning to tingle in sympathy with him. "What has happened?"

"The bride-to-be has disappeared," answered Mr. Royce simply; "vanished--skipped out!"

For a moment, I scarcely understood. It seemed preposterous to suppose that I had heard aright.

"Disappeared!" I echoed helplessly. "Skipped out!"

"Yes, skipped out!" and Mr. Royce crushed his unlighted cigar savagely in his fingers and hurled it through the carriage window. "I haven't the slightest doubt that she deliberately ran away."

The sight of his emotion calmed me a little.

"At the last moment?" I questioned.

"Wait," I said, putting out a restraining hand. "Begin at the beginning. What's her name?"

"Marcia Lawrence."

"And she's the 'ideal' Curtiss imagined he'd found?"

"Yes," said Mr. Royce slowly, "and so far as I can judge from what I've seen and heard, she really was as nearly perfect as any woman can be."

"Yet she 'skipped out'!"

"That's why I'm so upset--she was the last woman in the world to do such a thing!"

"Tell me about her," I said.

"I don't know very much; but I do know that she wasn't a mere empty-headed chit. She was an accomplished and cultured woman. I've already told you how her beauty affected me."

I paused a moment to consider it--I was fairly nonplussed. It seemed incredible that such a woman should, under any conceivable circumstances, deliberately desert her lover at the altar!

"And in her wedding-gown!" I murmured, half to myself.

"Yes, in her wedding-gown!" repeated our junior, passing his hand feverishly across his eyes. "It's unbelievable! It's--I can't find any word to describe it. I can scarcely believe I'm awake."

"Perhaps she found she didn't love him," I suggested.

"At the last moment?"

"Stranger things have happened."

"I don't believe it!' A woman like Marcia Lawrence knows her own heart before she goes that far!"

"Suppose we say sudden insanity?"

"Well-balanced women don't go mad merely because they're going to get married."

"Then she didn't run away," I said.

Mr. Royce looked at me quickly.

But the carriage stopped with a jolt and the driver jerked open the door.

The Lover's Story

I paused, as soon as we reached the pavement, for a look about me. We were evidently in the fashionable quarter of the town. The street was wide, well-kept, and shaded by stately elms. The houses which stretched away on either hand had that spaciousness, that air of dignity and quiet, which bespeaks wealth and leisure. Here was no gaudy architecture, no flamboyant flourish of the newly-rich; rather the evidence of families long-settled in their present surroundings and long-accustomed to the luxuries of a cultured and generous existence.

But it was to the house directly before us that I gave the closest scrutiny. It was a large one, two-storied, with a wide veranda running across the entire front. It stood well back from the street, and was sheltered on each side by magnificent trees. The grounds seemed to be very extensive and were beautifully kept. Along the pavement, a curious crowd was loitering, kept in motion by a policeman, but staring at the house as though they expected to read the solution of the mystery in its inexpressive front.

Mr. Royce nodded to the officer, and we passed through the gate. As we went up the walk, I noticed that the blinds were closely drawn, as though it were a house of mourning--and, indeed, dead hopes enough lay there!

A maid admitted us, and when my companion inquired for Mr. Curtiss, led the way silently along the hall. In the dim light, I could see the decorations of palms and wreaths of smilax, relieved here and there by a mass of gorgeous bloom, and through a door to the right I caught a glimpse of many tables, set ready for the luncheon which was never to be eaten. There was something ghostly about the deserted rooms--something chilling in the thought of this arrested gaiety, these hopes for happiness so rudely shattered. It recalled that vision which had so astonished poor Pip--the vision of Miss Havisham, decked in her yellow wedding finery, sitting at her gilded dressing-table in the darkened room, with the bride-cake cobwebbed and mouldy, and the chairs set ready for the guests who were never to arrive. Only here, I reflected, the clocks should be stopped at noon, not at twenty minutes to nine!

We turned into a room which I saw to be the library, and a man sprang up as we entered.

"Royce!" he cried, and there was in his tone such an agony of entreaty that I knew instantly who he was.

"No; no news, Burr," said our junior; "but here's Mr. Lester, and if any one can suggest a solution of this mystery, I'm sure he can. Lester, this is Burr Curtiss."

As I shook hands with him, I told myself that Mr. Royce's description had been well within the truth. I could join with him in saying that I had never seen a handsomer man or a more attractive one, though in his eyes, as I met them, misery and anxiety were only too apparent.

"It was very kind of you to come, Mr. Lester," he said.

"Not at all," I protested. "I only hope I can be of some service."

"Only the bare facts," I said. "I'd like to have all the details of the story, if you'll be so kind as to give me them."

"Certainly," he assented instantly, as we sat down. "That's what I wish to do--I know how important details are."

He paused for a moment, to be sure of his self-control, and I had the chance to look at him more closely. His face was not only comely, it was strong, magnetic. The black hair and eyes bespoke a vigorous temperament; the full beard, closely cropped, served rather to accentuate the fine lines of mouth and chin. There was no superfluous flesh about the face--no puffiness; it was thin with the healthy thinness which tells of a busy life, and browned by exposure to wind and sun. It was, altogether, a manly face, not the merely handsome one which I had rather expected. My eyes were drawn especially to his hand as he passed it hastily across his forehead--a hand firm, white, with slightly tapering fingers--an artist's hand which one would scarcely connect with an engineer of construction.

His voice choked, and he paused, unable, for the moment, to go on.

"Let us begin farther back than that, Mr. Curtiss," I suggested, knowing that the beginning was the hardest part. "Mr. Royce tells me you were classmates. When did you graduate from college?"

"Seven years ago."

"And you came at once to New York?"

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