The man who was ushered into the room was of a stature and demeanor which might well have cowed the valet. Tall, strongly built, altogether fitter and more muscular than the stalwart Senator, he carried with him an impression of truculence, of a savage forcefulness, not often clothed in the staid garments of city life. Were his skin bronze, were he decked in the barbaric trappings of a Pawnee chief, his appearance would be more in accord with the chill and repellant significance of his personality. His square, hard features might have been chiseled out of granite. A pair of singularly dark eyes blazed beneath heavy and prominent eyebrows. A high forehead, a massive chin, and a well-shaped nose lent a certain intellectuality to the face, but this attribute was negatived by the coarse lines of a brutal mouth.

From any point of view the visitor must invite attention, while compelling dislike – even fear. In a smaller frame, such qualities might escape recognition, but this man’s giant physique accentuated the evil aspect of eyes and mouth. Hardly waiting till the door was closed, he laughed sarcastically.

“You are well fixed here, brother o’ mine,” he said.

The man whom he addressed as “brother” leaned with his hands on the table that separated them. His face was quite ghastly. All his self-control seemed to have deserted him.

“You?” he gasped. “To come here! Are you mad?”

“Need you ask? It will not be the first time you have called me a lunatic, nor will it be the last, I reckon.”

“But the risk, the infernal risk! The police know of you. Rachel is arrested. A detective was here a few hours ago. They are probably watching outside.”

“Bosh!” was the uncompromising answer. “I’m sick of being hunted. Just for a change I turn hunter. Where’s the mazuma you promised Rachel?”

Meiklejohn, using a hand like one in a palsy, produced a pocketbook and took from it a bundle of notes.

“Here!” he quavered. “Now, for Heaven’s sake – ”

“Just the same old William,” cried the stranger, seating himself unceremoniously. “Always ready to do a steal, but terrified lest the law should grab him. No, I’m not going. It will be good nerve tonic for you to sit down and talk while you strain your ears to hear the tramp of half a dozen cops in the hall. What a poor fish you are!” he continued, voice and manner revealing a candid contempt, as Meiklejohn did indeed start at the slamming of a door somewhere in the building. “Do you think I’d risk my neck if I were likely to be pinched? Gad! I know my way around too well for that.”

“But you don’t understand,” whispered the other in mortal terror. “By some means the detective bureau may know of your existence. Rachel promised to be close-lipped, but – ”

“Oh, take a bracer out of that decanter. At the present moment I am registered in a big Fifth Avenue hotel, a swell joint which they wouldn’t suspect in twenty years.”

“How can that be? Rachel said you were in desperate need.”

“So I was until I went through that idiot’s pockets. He had two hundred dollars in bills and chicken-feed. I knew I’d get another wad from you to-night.”

“Why did you want to murder me, Ralph?”

“Murder! Oh, shucks! I didn’t want to kill anybody. But I don’t trust you, William. I’m always expecting you to double-cross me. Last night it was a lasso. To-night it is this.” And he suddenly whipped out a revolver.

CHAPTER VII
STILL MERE MYSTERY

Meiklejohn pushed his chair back so quickly that it caught the fender and brought down some fire-irons with a crash.

“More nerves!” croaked his grim-visaged relative, but the revolver disappeared.

“Tell me,” said the tortured Meiklejohn; “why have you returned to New York? Above all, why did you straightway commit a crime that cannot fail to stir the whole country?”

“That’s better. You are showing some sort of brotherly interest. I came back because I was sick of mining camps and boundless sierras. I had a hankering after the old life – the theaters, dinners, race-meetings, wine and women. As to ‘the crime,’ I thought that fool was you. He called for the cops.”

“For the police! Why?”

“Because my line of talk was a trifle too rough, I suppose.”

“Did he know you were there to meet me?”

“Can’t say. The whole thing was over like a flash. I am quick on the trigger.”

“But if you had killed me what other goose would lay golden eggs?”

“You forget that the goose was unwilling to lay any more eggs. I only meant scaring you. To haul you neck and crop into the river was a good scheme. You see, we haven’t met for some years.”

“Then why – why murder Ronald Tower?”

“There you go again. Murder! How you chew on the word. I never touched the man, only to haul him into the boat and go through his pockets. I guess he had a weak heart, due to over-eating, and the cold water upset him.”

“But you left him in the river?”

“Wrong every time. I chucked him into a barge and covered him tenderly with a tarpaulin.”

Meiklejohn sprang upright. “Good God,” he cried, “he may be alive!”

“Sit down, William, sit down,” was the cool response. “If he’s alive, he’ll turn up. In any case, he’ll be found sooner or later. Shout the glad news now and you go straight to the Tombs.”

This was obviously so true that the Senator collapsed into his chair again, and in so doing disturbed the fire-irons a second time.

The incident amused the unbidden guest. “I see you won’t be happy till I leave you,” he laughed, “so let’s go on with the knitting. That girl – she is becoming a woman – what is to be done with her?”

“Rachel takes every care – ”

“Rachel is excellent in her way. But she is growing old. She may die. The girl is the living image of her mother. It’s a queer world, and a small one at times. For instance, who would have expected your double to walk onto the terrace at the landing-stage at nine o’clock precisely last night? Well, some one may recognize the likeness. Inquiries might be instituted. That would be very awkward for you.”

“Far more awkward for you.”

“Not a bit of it. I’ve lived with my neck in the loop for eighteen years. I’m getting used to it. But you, William, with your Senatorship and high record in Wall Street – really the downfall would be terrible!”

“What can we do with her? Murder her, as you – ”

“The devil take you and your parrotlike repetition of one word!” roared brother Ralph, bringing his clenched fist down on the table with a bang. “I never laid violent hands on a woman yet, whatever I may have done to men. Who has reaped the reward of my misdeeds, I’d like to know – I, an outcast and a wanderer, or you, living here like Lord Tomnoddy? None of your preaching to me, you smug Pharisee! We’re six of one and half a dozen of the other.”

When this self-proclaimed adventurer was really aroused he dropped the rough argot of the plains. His diction showed even some measure of culture.

Meiklejohn walked unsteadily to the door. He opened it. There was no one in the passage without.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a strangely subdued voice. “What do you want? What do you suggest?”

“This,” came the instant reply. “It was a piece of folly on Rachel’s part to educate the girl the way she did. You stopped the process too late. In a year or two Miss Winifred will begin to think and ask questions, if she hasn’t done so already. She must leave the East – better quit America altogether.”

“Very well. When this affair of Tower’s blows over I’ll arrange it.”

The other man seemed to be somewhat mollified. He lighted a cigarette. “That rope play was sure a mad trick,” he conceded sullenly, “but I thought you were putting the cops on my trail.”

A bell rang and the Senator started. Many callers, mostly reporters, had been turned away by Phillips already that day, but brother Ralph’s untimely visit had made the position peculiarly dangerous. Moreover, the valet’s protests had proved unavailing this time. The two heard his approaching footsteps.

Meiklejohn’s care-worn face turned almost green with fright, and even his hardier companion yielded to a sense of peril. He leaped up, moving catlike on his toes.

“Where does that door lead to?” he hissed, pointing.

“A bedroom. But I’ve given orders – ”

“You dough-faced dub, don’t you see you create suspicion by refusing to meet people? And, listen! If this is a cop, bluff hard! I’ll shoot up the whole Bureau before they get me!”

He vanished, moving with a silence and celerity that were almost uncanny in so huge a man. Phillips knocked and thrust his head in. He looked scared yet profoundly relieved.

“Mr. Tower to see you, sir,” he said breathlessly.

“What?” shrieked the Senator in a shrill falsetto.

“Yes, sir. It’s Mr. Tower himself, sir.”

“H’lo, Bill!” came a familiar voice. “Here I am! No spook yet, thank goodness!”

Meiklejohn literally staggered to the door and nearly fell into Ronald Tower’s arms. Of the two men, the Senator seemed nearer death at that moment. He blubbered something incoherent, and had to be assisted to a chair. Even Tower was astonished at the evident depth of his friend’s emotion.

“Cheer up, old sport!” he cried affectionately. “I had no notion you felt so badly about my untimely end, as the newspapers call it. I tried to get you on the phone, but you were closed down, the exchange said, so Helen packed me off here when she was able to sit up and take nourishment. Gad! Even my wife seems to have missed me!”

Many minutes elapsed before Senator Meiklejohn’s benumbed brain could assimilate the facts of a truly extraordinary story. Tower, after being whisked so unceremoniously into the Hudson, remembered nothing further until he opened his eyes in numb semi-consciousness in the cubbyhole of a tug plodding through the long Atlantic rollers off the New Jersey coast.

When able to talk he learned that the captain of the tug Cygnet, having received orders to tow three loaded barges from a Weehawken pier to Barnegat City, picked up his “job” at nine-thirty the previous night, and dropped down the river with the tide. In the early morning he was amazed by the sight of a man crawling from under the heavy tarpaulin that sheeted one of the barges – a man so dazed and weak that he nearly fell into the sea.

“Cap’ Rickards slowed up and took me aboard,” explained Tower volubly. “Then he filled me with rock and rye and packed me in blankets. Gee, how they smelt, but how grateful they were! What between prime old whiskey inside and greasy wool outside I dodged a probable attack of pneumonia. When the Cygnet tied up at Barnegat at noon to-day I was fit as a fiddle. Cap’ Rickards rigged me out in his shore-going suit and lent me twenty dollars, as that pair of blackguards in the launch had robbed me of every cent. They even took a crooked sixpence I found in London twenty years ago, darn ’em! I phoned Helen, of course, but didn’t realize what a hubbub my sad fate had created until I read a newspaper in the train. When I reached home poor Helen was so out of gear that she hadn’t told a soul of my escape. I do believe she hardly accepted my own assurance that I was still on the map. However, when I got her calmed down a bit, she remembered you and the rest of the excitement, so I phoned the detective bureau and the club, and came straight here.”

“That is very good of you, Tower,” murmured Meiklejohn brokenly. He looked in far worse plight than the man who had survived such a desperate adventure.

“Well, my dear chap, I was naturally anxious to see you, because – but perhaps you don’t know that those scoundrels meant to attack you, not me?”

Meiklejohn smiled wanly. “Oh, yes,” he said. “The police found that out by some means. I believe the authorities actually suspected me of being concerned in the affair.”

Tower laughed boisterously. “That’s the limit!” he roared. “Come with me to the club. We’ll soon spoil that yarn. What a fuss the papers made! I’m quite a celebrity.”

“I’ll follow you in half an hour. And, look here, Tower, this matter did really affect me. There was a woman in the case. I butted into an old feud merely as a friend. I think matters will now be settled amicably. Allow me to make good your loss in every way. If you can persuade the police that the whole thing was a hoax – ”

For the first time Tower looked non-plussed. He was enjoying the notoriety thrust on him so unexpectedly.

“Well, I can hardly do that,” he said. “But if I can get them to drop further inquiries I’ll do it, Meiklejohn, for your sake. Gee! Come to look at you, you must have had a bad time… Well, good-by, old top! See you later. Suppose we dine together? That will help dissipate this queer story as to you being mixed up in an attack on me. Now, I must be off and play ghost in the club smoking-room.”

Meiklejohn heard his fluttering man-servant let Tower out. He tottered to a chair, and Ralph Voles came in noiselessly.

“Well, what about it?” chuckled the reprobate. “We seem to have struck it lucky.”

“Go away!” snarled the Senator, goaded to a sudden rage by the other man’s cynical humor. “I can stand no more to-day.”

“Oh, take a pull at this!” And the decanter was pushed across the table. “Didn’t Dr. Johnson once say that claret is the liquor for boys, port for men, but he who aspires to be a hero should drink brandy? And you must be a hero to-night. Get onto the Bureau and use the soft pedal. Then beat it to the club. You and Tower ought to be well soused in an hour. He’s a good sport, all right. I’ll mail him that sixpence if it’s still in my pants.”

“Do nothing of the sort!” snapped Meiklejohn. “You’re – ”

“Ah, cut it out! Tower wants plenty to talk about. His crooked sixpence will fill many an eye, and the more he spiels the better it is for you. Gee, but you’re yellow for a two-hundred pounder! Now, listen! Make those cops drop all charges against Rachel. Then, in a week or less, I’ll come along and fix things about the girl. She’s the fly in the amber now. Mind she doesn’t get out, or the howl about Mr. Ronald Tower’s trip to Barnegat won’t amount to a row of beans against the trouble pretty Winifred can give you. Dios! It’s a pity. She’s a real beauty, and that’s more than any one can say for you, Brother William.”

“You go to – ”

“That’s better! You’re reviving. Well, good-by, Senator! Au revoir sans adieux!”

The big man swaggered out. Meiklejohn drank no spirits. He needed a clear brain that evening. After deep self-communing he rang up police headquarters and inquired for Mr. Clancy.

“Mr. Clancy is out,” he was told by some one with a strong, resonant voice. “Anything we can do, Senator?”

“About that poor woman, Rachel Craik – ”

“Oh, she’s all right! She gave us a farewell smile two hours ago.”

“You mean she is at liberty?”

“Certainly, Senator.”

“May I ask to whom I am speaking?”

“Steingall, Chief of the Bureau.”

“This wretched affair – it’s merely a family squabble between Miss Craik and a relative – might well end now, Mr. Steingall.”

“That is for Mr. Tower and Mr. Van Hofen to decide.”

“Yes, I quite understand. I have seen Mr. Tower, and he shares my opinion.”

“Just so, Senator. At any rate, the yacht mystery is almost cleared up.”

“I agree with you most heartily.”

For the first time in nearly twenty-four hours Senator Meiklejohn looked contented with life when he hung up the receiver. Therefore, it was well for his peace of mind that he could not hear Steingall’s silent comment as he, in turn, disconnected the phone.

“That old fox agreed with me too heartily,” he thought. “The yacht mystery is only just beginning – or I’m a Dutchman!”

CHAPTER VIII
THE DREAM FACE

That evening of her dismissal from Brown’s, and her meeting with Rex Carshaw, Winifred opened the door of the dun house in One Hundred and Twelfth Street the most downhearted girl in New York. Suddenly, mystery had gathered round her. Something threatened, she knew not what. When the door slammed behind her her heart sank – she was alone not only in the house, but in the world. This thought possessed her utterly when the excitement caused by Carshaw and Fowle, and their speedy arrest, had passed.

That her aunt, the humdrum Rachel Craik, should have any sort of connection with the murder of Ronald Tower, of which Winifred had chanced first to hear on Riverside Drive that morning, seemed the wildest nonsense. Then Winifred was overwhelmed afresh, and breathed to herself, “I must be dreaming!”

And yet – the house was empty! Her aunt was not there – her aunt was held as a criminal! It was not a dream, but only like one, a waking nightmare far more terrifying. Most of the rooms in the house had nothing but dust in them. Rachel Craik had preferred to live as solitary in teeming Manhattan as a castaway on a rock in the midst of the sea.

Winifred’s mind was accustomed now to the thought of that solitude shared by two. This night, when there were no longer two, but only one, the question arose strongly in her mind – why had there never been more than two? Certainly her aunt was not rich, and might well have let some of the rooms. Yet, even the suggestion of such a thing had made Rachel Craik angry. This, for the first time, struck Winifred as odd. Everything was puzzling, and all sorts of doubts peeped up in her, like ghosts questioning her with their eyes in the dark.

When the storm of tears had spent its force she had just enough interest in her usual self to lay the table and make ready a meal, but not enough interest to eat it. She sat by a window of her bedroom, her hat still on her head, looking down. The street lamps were lit. It grew darker and darker. Down there below feet passed and repassed in multitudes, like drops of the eternal cataract of life.

Winifred’s eyes rested often on the spot where Rex Carshaw had spoken to her and had knocked down Fowle, her tormentor. In hours of trouble, when the mind is stunned, it will often go off into musings on trivial things. So this young girl, sitting at the window of the dark and empty house, let her thoughts wander to her rescuer. He was well built, and poised like an athlete. He had a quick step, a quick way of talking, was used to command; his brow was square, and could threaten; he had the deepest blue eyes, and glossy brown hair; he was a tower of strength to protect a girl; and his wife, if he had one, must have a feeling of safety. Thoughts, or half-thoughts, like these passed through her mind. She had never before met any young man of Carshaw’s type.

It became ten o’clock. She was tired after the day’s work and trouble of mind. The blow of her dismissal, the fright of her interview with the police, the arrest of her aunt – all this sudden influx of mystery and care formed a burden from which there was no escape for exhausted nature but in sleep. Her eyes grew weary at last, and, getting up, she discarded her hat and some of her clothes; then threw herself on the bed, still half-dressed, and was soon asleep.

The hours of darkness rolled on. That tramp of feet in the street grew thin and scattered, as if the army of life had undergone a repulse. Then there was a rally, when the theaters and picture-houses poured out their crowds; but it was short, the powers of night were in the ascendant, and soon the last stragglers retreated under cover. Of all this Winifred heard nothing – she slept soundly.

But was it in a dream, that voice which she heard? Something somewhere seemed to whisper, “She must be taken out of New York – she is the image of her mother.”

It was a hushed, grim voice.

The room, the whole house, had been in darkness when she had thrown herself on the bed. But, somewhere, had she not been conscious of a light at some moment? Had she dreamed this, or had she seen it? She sat up in bed, staring and startled. The room was in darkness. In her ears were the words: “She is the image of her mother.”

She had heard them in some world, she did not know in which. She listened with the keen ears of fear. Not a wagon nor a taxi any longer moved in the street; no step passed; the house was silent.

But after a long ten minutes the darkness seemed to become pregnant with a sound, a steady murmur. It was as if it came from far away, as if a brook had spurted out of the granite of Manhattan, and was even more like a dream-sound than those words which still buzzed in Winifred’s ear. Somehow that murmur as of water in the night made Winifred think of a face, one which, as far as she could remember, she had never consciously seen – a man’s face, brown, hard, and menacing, which had looked once into her eyes in some state of semi-conscious being, and then had vanished. And now this question arose in her mind: was it not that face, hard and brown, which she had never seen, and yet once had seen – were not those the cruel lips which somewhere had whispered: “She is the image of her mother?”

Winifred, sitting up in bed, listened to the steady, dull murmuring a long time, till there came a moment when she said definitely: “It is in the house.”

For, as her ears grew accustomed to its tone, it seemed to lose some of its remoteness, to become more local and earthly. Presently this sound which the darkness was giving out became the voices of people talking in subdued undertones not far off. Nor was it long before the murmur was broken by a word sharply uttered and clearly heard by her – a gruff and unmistakable oath. She started with fright at this, it sounded so near. She was certain now that there were others in the house with her. She had gone to bed alone. Waking up in the dead of the small hours to find men or ghosts with her, her heart beat horribly.

But ghosts do not swear – at least such was Winifred’s ideal of the spirit world. And she was brave. Nerving herself for the ordeal, she found the courage to steal out of bed and make her way out of the room into a passage, and she had not stood there listening two minutes when she was able to be certain that the murmur was going on in a back room.

How earnest that talk was – how low in pitch! It could hardly be burglars there, for burglars do not enter a house in order to lay their heads together in long conferences. It could not be ghosts, for a light came out under the rim of the door.

After a time Winifred stole forward, tapped on a panel, and her heart jumped into her mouth as she lifted her voice, saying:

“Aunty, is it you?”

There was silence at this, as though they had been ghosts, indeed, and had taken to flight at the breath of the living.

“Speak! Who is it?” cried Winifred with a fearful shrillness now. A chair grated on the floor inside, hurried steps were heard, a key turned, the door opened a very little, and Winifred saw the gaunt face of Rachel Craik looking dourly at her, for she had frightened this masterful woman very thoroughly.

“Oh, aunt, it is you!” gasped Winifred with a flutter of relief.

“You are to go to bed, Winnie,” said Rachel.

“It is you! They have let you out, then?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what happened; let me come in – ”

“Go back to bed; there’s a good girl. I’ll tell you everything in the morning.”

“Oh, but I am glad! I was so lonely and frightened! Aunt, what was it all about?”

“About nothing; as far as I can discover,” said Rachel Craik – “a mere mare’s-nest found by a set of stupid police. Some man – a Mr. Ronald Tower – was supposed to have been murdered, and I was supposed to have some connection with it, though I had never seen the creature in my life. Now the man has turned up safe and sound, and the pack of noodles have at last thought fit to allow a respectable woman to come home to her bed.”

“Oh, how good! Thank heaven! But, you have some one in there with you?”

“In here – where?”

“Why, in the room, aunt.”

“I? No, no one.”

“I am sure I heard – ”

“Now, really, you must go to bed, Winifred! What are you doing awake at this hour of the morning, roaming about the house? You were asleep half an hour ago – ”

“Oh, then, it was your light I saw in my sleep! I thought I heard a man say: ‘She is the image – ’”

“Just think of troubling me with your dreams at this unearthly hour! I’m tired, child; go to bed.”

“Yes – but, aunt, this day’s work has cost me my situation. I am dismissed!”

“Well, a holiday will do you good.”

“Good gracious – you take it coolly!”

“Go to bed.”

A sudden din of tumbling weights and splintering wood broke out behind the half-open door. For, within the room a man had been sitting on a chair tilted back on its two hind legs. The chair was old and slender, the man huge; and one of the chair-legs had collapsed under the weight and landed the man on the floor.

“Oh, aunt! didn’t you say that no one – ” began Winifred.

The sentence was never finished. Rachel Craik, her features twisted in anger, pushed the young girl with a force which sent her staggering, and then immediately shut the door. Winifred was left outside in the darkness.

She returned to her bed, but not to sleep. It was certain that her aunt had lied to her – there was more in the air than Winifred’s quick wits could fathom. The fact of Rachel Craik’s release did not clear up the mystery of the fact that she had been arrested. Winifred lay, spurring her fancy to account for all that puzzled her; and underlying her thoughts was the man’s face and those strange words which she had heard somewhere on the borders of sleep.

She fancied she had seen the man somewhere before. At last she recalled the occasion, and almost laughed at the conceit. It was a picture of Sitting Bull, and that eminent warrior had long since gone to the happy hunting-grounds.

Meantime, the murmur of voices in the back room had recommenced and was going on. Then, towards morning, Winifred became aware that the murmur had stopped, and soon afterward she heard the click of the lock of the front door and a foot going down the front steps.

Rising quickly, she crept to the window and looked out. Going from the door down the utterly empty street she saw a man, a big swaggerer, with something of the over-seas and the adventurer in his air. It was Ralph “Voles,” the “brother” of Senator William Meiklejohn. But Winifred could not distinguish his features, or she might have recognized the man she had seen in her half-dreams, and who had said: “She must be taken out of New York – she is the image of her mother.”

Voles had hardly quitted the place before a street-car conductor, who had taken temporary lodgings the previous evening in a house opposite, hurried out into the coldness of the hour before dawn. He seemed pleased at the necessity of going to work thus early.

“Oh, boy!” he said softly. “I’m glad there’s somethin’ doin’ at last. I was getting that sleepy. I could hardly keep me eyes open!”

When Detective Clancy came to the Bureau a few hours later he found a memorandum to the effect that a Mr. Ralph V. Voles, of Chicago, stopping at a high-grade hotel in Fifth Avenue, had dined with Rachel Craik in a quiet restaurant, had parted from her, and met her again, evidently by appointment. The two had entered the house in One Hundred and Twelfth Street separately shortly before midnight, and Voles returned to his hotel at four o’clock in the morning.

Clancy shook his head waggishly.

“Who’d have thought it of you, Rachel?” he cackled. “And, now that I’ve seen you, what sort of weird specimen can Mr. Ralph V. Voles, of Chicago, be? I’ll look him up!”