Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter

Céline poured forth a mixture of French and English, expressive of her contrition and horror at having "almost overturned madame," and wound up by saying, "Madame has been to my room? Madame has desired some service, perhaps? If so, she has only to command."

Cora drew a breath of relief, having sufficiently recovered from the collision and accompanying confusion, to draw a breath of any kind, and at once rallied her forces.

"Yes, Céline, I wanted you to do something for me, if you will."

"Anything, madame."

Madame was collecting her thoughts. "I – I wanted to ask if you could find time to come to my room and try and do something with my hair. Your hair-dressing is perfect, and I am so tired of my own."

Céline would be only too happy. Should she come now? She had just returned from the village; she would put off her hat and be at madame's disposal. But madame was not inclined to be manipulated just then. Céline might come to her dressing room and do her hair for dinner – after she was done with Miss Arthur, of course.

So they separated, mutually satisfied.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A VERITABLE GHOST

What a day of glory it had been to the spinster, this day on which Madeline had read her three letters, and Cora had explored the shut-up wing.

And what a day of torture to fastidious Edward Percy, who would have welcomed any third presence, even Cora or John Arthur – any one, anything, was better than that long slavery at the feet of a painted and too-visibly ancient mistress. But even the longest days have an end. At last he was set at liberty, and he hurried back to the little inn, literally kicking his way through the Autumn darkness.

The old house of Oakley stood, with its last light extinguished, tall and somber, against a back-ground of black sky and blacker trees. At last every soul under its roof was asleep – all but one. That one was very wide awake and intent on mischief.

Love-making, dear reader, although you may not know it, is a wearisome business, even if ever so agreeable. Especially is it wearisome to those like Miss Arthur – maidens whose waists are too tight, whose complexions will ill-endure lip service, and whose tresses are liable to become not only dishevelled but dislocated. Therefore, when Miss Arthur had dismissed her lover, with a sigh of regret, she lost no time in doffing her glories with a sigh of relief.

Even a very rich and hearty luncheon, which her maid had provided, was gormandized rather than enjoyed, so tempting did her couch look to the worn-out damsel.

Miss Arthur had refreshed herself with an hour's uninterrupted repose, and was revelling in a dreamy Arcadia, hand in hand with her beloved, when something cold falling on her cheek dispelled her visions. She started broad awake, and face to face with a horrible reality.

The moon was pouring a flood of silvery light in through the two windows, facing the south, whose curtains were drawn back, making the room almost as light as at mid-day.

And there, near her bed, almost within reach of her hand, stood Madeline Payne, all swathed in white clinging cerements, ghastly as a corpse, hollow-eyed and awful, but, nevertheless, Madeline Payne! Over her white temples dropped rings of curly, yellow hair, and across the pale lips a mocking smile was flitting.

Miss Arthur gasped and closed her eyes very tight, but they would not stay closed. They flew open again to behold the vision still there. The spinster was transfixed with horror. Cold drops of perspiration oozed out upon her forehead and trickled down her nose. She clutched at the bedclothes convulsively, and gazed and gazed.

Wider and wider stared her eyes, but no sound escaped her lips. She gazed and gazed, but the specter would not vanish. Poor Miss Arthur was terror-stricken almost to the verge of catalepsy.

In consideration of the persistence with which they return again and again, according to good authority, ghosts in general must be endowed with much patience. Be this as it may of the average ghost, certain it is that this particular apparition, after glaring immovably at the spinster for the space of five minutes, began to find it monotonous.

Slowly, slowly from among the snowy drapery came forth a white hand, that pointed at the occupant of the bed with silent menace.

The spell was broken. The lips of Miss Arthur were unclosed, and shrieks, one following the other in rapid succession, resounded in the ears of even the most remote sleepers.

With the utterance of her first yell, Miss Arthur had made a desperate plunge to the further side of her bed, away from the specter; and, turning her face to the wall, shut out thus the appalling white vision.

Having once found her voice, Miss Arthur continued to clutch at the bed clothes, glare at the wall, and shriek spasmodically, even after her "inner consciousness" must have assured her that the room now held others beside herself and the ghost, supposing it to be still on the opposite side of the bed.

Cora, in a state of wild deshabille; John Arthur, ditto, and armed with a cane; Susan and Mary, half in the room and half out; then Céline Leroque, apparently much frightened, without knowing at what.

A volley of questions from the master of the house, and a return of courage to the mistress. But Miss Arthur only gathered herself together, took in a fresh supply of breath, and embarked in another series of howls.

Nothing was amiss in the room; it could not have been a burglar. The night lamp was burning dimly behind its heavy shade; on the table were the fragments of Miss Arthur's lunch; and Mr. and Mrs. Arthur had found easy access through the closed, but unbolted door.

After a time, a long time, during which Cora and Céline administered sal volatile and other restoratives, Mr. Arthur douched her with oaths and ice water, and the servants whispered in a group, the maiden found voice.

It was a very feeble voice, and it conveyed to her audience the astounding intelligence that she had seen a ghost – Madeline Payne's ghost.

Upon hearing her story, John Arthur seemed at first a little startled. But Cora only laughed, and Céline, glancing significantly at the lunch table, said, with a slight smile:

"Mademoiselle has nerves, and she may have lunched heartily before retiring."

John Arthur strode across the room and viewed the débris of luncheon. "Humph!" he grunted. "Oysters and salads, potted meat and pastry; strong coffee and lemon syllabub with brandy. Good Lord, I don't know what should have kept the contents of an entire cemetery from sweeping down upon your slumbers, you female gourmand. Ghosts indeed!"

And he stamped out of the room in high dudgeon. His tirade was wholly lost upon his sister, however, for that lady was whimpering comfortably and putting all her feeble energy into the effort.

Cora glanced up as the door banged after her lord and master, and ordered the servants back to bed. Then she turned toward Céline, saying:

"That door was certainly not locked when we came to it, for I was here even sooner than Mr. Arthur."

Céline smiled again: "Mademoiselle dismissed me before she had finished her luncheon. I had disrobed her previously, and she said she should retire as soon as she drank her coffee. She may have forgotten the door."

Cora turned toward the bed. "Did you lock your door, Ellen?"

But Ellen did not know; she could not remember if she had or had not.

Then Cora said to Céline: "I am glad to find you so sensible. We shall have hard work now to convince those ridiculous servants that there is not a ghost in every corner."

"I do not think that graves open," replied the girl, seriously.

Then she gave her undivided attention to her mistress, who bade fair to be hysterical for the rest of the night.

Miss Arthur would not be left alone again. No argument could convince her that the specter was born of her imagination, and therefore not likely to return. So Cora bade Céline prepare to spend the remainder of the night in Miss Arthur's dressing room.

Accordingly, Céline withdrew to her own apartment, where her preparations were made as follows:

First, she shook out the folds of a sheet that hung over a chair, and restored it to its proper place on the bed. Then she removed from her dressing stand a box of white powder, and brushed away all traces of said powder from her garments and the floor. Next, she carefully hid away a key that had fallen to the floor and lay near the classically folded sheet. These things accomplished, she made a few additions to her toilet, extinguished the light, locked her door carefully, trying it afterward to make assurance doubly sure, and retraced her steps to relieve Cora, who was dutifully sitting by the spinster's bed, and beginning to shiver in her somewhat scanty drapery.

As the night wore on, and Miss Arthur became calmed and quiet, the girl lay back in the big dressing chair, gazing into the grate, and thinking. Her thoughts were sometimes of Claire, sometimes of Clarence; of the Girards, and of Edward Percy; then of her success as a ghostess, and at this she would almost laugh.

But from every subject her mind would turn again and again to one question, that repeated itself until it took the form of a goblin and danced through her dreams, when at last she slept, whispering over and over:

"What is it that Cora Arthur carries in a belt about her waist? what is it? what is it?"

For the girl had made a strange discovery while Cora was sitting beside Miss Arthur's bed, clad only in night's scanty drapery.

CHAPTER XXV.

SOME DAYS OF WAITING

Doctor Vaughan had written that he could find his way with ease to Nurse Hagar's cottage, and he did.

Swinging himself down upon the dark end of the platform, when the evening train puffed into Bellair village, he crossed the track, and walked rapidly along the path that led in the direction of the cottage. He strode on until the light from the cottage window gleamed out upon the night, and his way led over the field. Half way between the stile and the cottage, a form, evidently that of a woman, appeared before him, and coming in his direction.

The figure came nearer, and a voice, that was certainly not Madeline's, said: "Is the gentleman going to old Hagar's cottage?"

"Are you Hagar?" replied Clarence, Yankee fashion.

"I am Hagar; and you are?"

"Doctor Vaughan."

"Then pass on, sir; the one you seek is there."

And the old woman waved her hand toward the light and hobbled on.

Clarence stared after her for a moment; but the darkness had devoured her, and he resumed his way toward the cottage.

In hastening to meet a friend we naturally have, in our mind, a picture. Our friend will look so, or so. Thus with Clarence Vaughan. Expecting to meet a pair of deep, sad, beautiful eyes, lifted to his own; to behold a fair forehead shadowed by soft, shining curls; judge of Clarence's surprise when the opened door revealed to him a small being of no shape in particular; a very black head of hair, surmounted by an ugly maid's cap; and a pair of unearthly, staring blue glasses.

Madeline had chosen to appear "in character" at this interview. She intended to keep her own personality out of sight, and she felt that she needed the aid and concealment that her disguise would afford. She would give Claire's schemes no vantage ground.

So Madeline Payne was carefully hidden away under the wig and pigment and padding; and Céline Leroque courteseyed demurely as she held the door open to admit him, and said:

"Good evening, Monsieur le Docteur; you perceive I am here before you."

"Rather, I don't perceive it. You are here before me in a double sense of the word; yes. And I suppose you call yourself – "

"Céline Leroque, at your service; maid-in-waiting to Miss Arthur, of Oakley."

Doctor Vaughan laughed.

"Well, won't you shake hands with an American of no special importance, Céline Leroque?"

She placed her hand in his and then drew forward a chair.

"I hope you found no difficulty in getting out to-night?" he said, sitting down and looking at her with a half-amused, half-grave countenance.

"None whatever; I have been suffering with a sick-headache all day."

"And you can get in again unseen?"

"Easily; in the evening the servants are all below stairs."

"But what an odd disguise! Do they never question your blue glasses?"

"Not half so much as they would question the eyes without them. They believe my eyes were ruined by close application to fine needle-work. And then – " she pushed up the glasses a trifle, and he saw that the eyelid, and a line underneath the eye, were artistically rouged– "they all acknowledge that my eyes look very weak."

"I fancy they'll find those eyes have looked too sharply for them, by and by."

She laughed lightly. "I hope so."

Sitting there in her prim disguise, the girl felt glad to gaze upon him; felt as if, look as much as she would, she was gazing from a safe distance.

Dr. Vaughan came straight to the point of his visit, beginning by requesting a repetition of such portion of the facts she had discovered as related most particularly to the two men, Davlin and Percy. Then he made his suggestion. To his surprise it was a welcome one to the girl.

"That is just what I have had in mind," she said, thoughtfully. "After reflecting, I have changed my plans somewhat, and I don't see my way quite so clearly as before."

He was looking at her attentively, but asked no questions.

"Since I came from the city," she resumed, with some hesitation, "I have thought that I would be glad to talk again with all of you. But it won't do to incur the risk of more absences, for if I do not mistake the signs, things will be pretty lively up there," nodding in the direction of Oakley, "before many days. So perhaps we had better see what our two heads can develop in the way of counterplot, and you can make known the result to Olive."

"If your own invention will not serve, I fear mine will be at an utter loss. But you know how glad I shall be to share your confidence."

"My invention must serve," she said, firmly, and quite ignoring the latter clause of his speech; "and so must yours. You see, my plan before going to the city was a comparatively simple one. I intended to work my way into the confidence of Mrs. John Arthur. Failing in that, Hagar must have been reinstated, and then the denouement would have been easy: to get possession of specimens of the medicine prescribed for Mr. Arthur; to hunt down this sham doctor they are to introduce into the house; to show John Arthur the manner of wife he has; to make my own terms with him, and then expose and turn out the whole pack. But all this must be changed."

"Changed? And how?"

"I can't turn them out of Oakley. I must keep them there, every one of them, at any cost."

Dr. Vaughan looked puzzled. "We can't allow them to kill that old man, not even to vindicate poetical justice," he said, gravely.

"No; we can't allow just that. But don't you see, if we turn these people away now, we defeat a chief end and aim – the liberation of Philip Girard?"

"True."

"Well, this is why I have changed my plan."

He looked at her with an admiration that was almost homage.

"And you will give up your own vengeance, for the sake of Olive and her happiness?"

She laughed oddly. "Not at all. I only defer it, to make it the more complete. Now, listen to what I propose to do, and see if you can suggest anything safer or better."

And then she unfolded a plan that made Clarence Vaughan start in amazement, but which, after it was fully revealed, he could not amend nor condemn. He could see no other way by which all that they aimed at could be accomplished.

"Of course, the plan has its risks," concluded the girl. "But we could try no other scheme without incurring the same, or greater. And I believe that I shall not fail."

"I wish it were not necessary that you should undergo so much; think what it will be for you," gently.

"Oh, for me, …" indifferently; "I shall be less of a spy, and more of an actress, – that is all."

"Then I shall set the detectives at work?"

"Immediately."

"Have you any further instructions, any clue, to give them?"

"Nothing; it is to be simply a research. Neither must know to what end the information is desired. It will be better to employ your men from different Agencies, so that one may not know of the other, or his business."

"And is there nothing more I can do?"

"Nothing, for the present. When once we get these men together, we shall all have our hands full. Then you can help me, perhaps, as I suggested."

"Well," sighing, and looking at his watch, "it's a strange business, and a difficult, for a young girl like you. But we are in your hands; you are worth a thousand such as I."

"Nonsense," she said, almost angrily. Then, abruptly, "When does Claire return to Baltimore?"

He started and flushed under her gaze. "I – I really don't know."

"Then, as my brother, I command you to know all about Claire. She is my special charge to you. And you are to tell her, from me, that I won't have her go away."

"Then I must do all in my power to detain her? Your command will have more effect than all of my prayers," he said, softly.

"Well, keep on reiterating my commands and your prayers, then; by and by she won't be able to distinguish the one from the other. What time is it?"

He smiled at the sudden change of tone and subject. "Half-past nine," he said.

While the words were on his lips, Old Hagar entered.

Clearly it was time to end the interview. Doctor Vaughan must be ready for the return train, which flew cityward soon, and Céline Leroque must not be too long absent. So there were a few words more about their plans, a few courteous sentences addressed to Hagar by Doctor Vaughan, and then they separated.

The next day two men were at work, – following like sleuth hounds the trail on which they were put, unravelling slowly, slowly, the webs of the past that had been spun by the two men who were to be hunted down.

And now came a time of comparative dullness at Oakley. Even eventful lives do not always pace onward to the inspiring clang of trumpet and drum. There is the bivouac and the time of rest, even though sleeping upon their arms, for all the hosts that were ever marshalled to battle.

Céline Leroque found life rather more dreary than she had expected during these days of inaction. After all, it is easier to be brave than to be patient. So, in spite of her courage and her self-sacrifice, she was restless and unhappy.

And she was not alone in her restlessness. It is curious to note what diverse causes produce the same effects. Cora Arthur was restless, very restless. The fruit of her labor was in her hands, but it was vapid, tasteless, unsatisfying. What her soul clamored for, was the opera, the contact of kindred spirits, the rush and whirl, the smoke and champagne, and giddiness of the city; the card-won gold, and painted folly that made the be-all and end-all of life to such as she.

She did not lose sight of the usefulness she trusted to find in Céline Leroque, however. During these days of ennui and quietude, the two came to a very good understanding; not all at once, and not at all definite. Only, by degrees, Cora became convinced that Céline Leroque cherished a very laudable contempt for her would-be-girlish mistress, and that she was becoming rather weary in her service. Once, indeed, the girl had said, as if unable to restrain herself, and while dressing Mrs. Cora's yellow hair – a task which she professed to delight in:

"Ah! madame, if only it was you who were my mistress! It is a pleasure to dress a beautiful mistress, but to be constantly at war against nature, to make an old one young – faugh! it is labor."

And Cora had been much amused and had held out a suggestion that, in case of any rupture between mistress and maid, the latter should apply to her.

But if existence was a pain to Céline, and a weariness to Cora, it was anguish unutterable to Edward Percy. He would have been glad to put a long span of miles between his inamorata and himself had he not felt that, with Cora in the same house as his fair one, it were more discreet to be on the ground, and watch over his prey pretty closely. But to this man, who made love to every pretty woman as a child eats bon bons, the task of wooing where his eye was not pleased, his ear was not soothed, and his vanity not in the least flattered, was intensely wearisome.

CHAPTER XXVI.

NOT A BAD DAY'S WORK

The first thing that Doctor Vaughan did on returning from Bellair, was to seek an interview with Henry, the dark servant of Lucian Davlin.

It was a mixed motive that had first prompted Henry to espouse the cause of a helpless, friendless girl; a motive composed of one part inward wrath, long nourished, against the haughty and over-exacting Lucian, and one part pity for the young girl who, as his experienced eyes told him, was not such as were the women who had usually been entertained by his master.

He had expected to assist her to escape from the place, to enjoy his master's chagrin, and to see the matter end there. But Madeline's illness had changed the current of events, and strengthened his determination to stand her friend, if need be, more especially when Olive, pressing upon him a generous gift, had signified her wish that he should continue in Madeline's service. She had added that when he chose to leave his present master, she would see that he fell into no worse hands, for so long as the sick girl remained under that shelter, Olive felt that the man must be their servant, not Davlin's. And, to do him justice, Henry had long since become truly attached to the two ladies.

He lost no time in responding to the summons of Doctor Vaughan, and was eager to know of the welfare of the "young lady" and Mrs. Girard. Doctor Vaughan satisfied him on this point, and then said:

"I am authorized by Miss Payne to see you, and ask some questions that she thinks you may be able to answer. First, then," said the doctor, in his kindly manner, "how long have you been with your present master?"

"Nearly three years, sir."

"And how long has the woman whom he calls Cora been known to you?"

"She has been known to me all that time, sir," replied Henry.

"You first saw her in company with Davlin?"

"No, sir; she came to his rooms when I had been there but a few days, and ordered me about like a countess. I didn't know the ropes then, but she made me know my duty soon enough," dryly.

"Evidently, then, she and your master were friends of long standing, even at that time?"

"Yes, sir."

"You used to hear them talk often, I suppose?"

"I used to hear parts of their talks. They seemed not to care to have even so much of a machine as I, hear them at all times."

"Now, will you try and recall some of these fragments of talk? Think if you heard them speak of their travels, together or separately; and if you can recall the names of any persons or places they have mentioned."

Henry pondered. "I think," he said, after a time, "that they have been in Europe together. In fact, I am sure of it."

Doctor Vaughan started. "Oh! that is to the point. You don't recall any time mentioned?"

"No, sir. They used to talk of luck with the cards, and sometimes spoke of operas or plays, and almost always disagreed. Sometimes I would hear him describing men to her, and she seemed to be getting ready for a part in some 'game' that he was trying to play."

"Very likely."

"Once I heard them having high words about some old man that she had been fleecing, and he said that she had carried the thing too far; and that if she did not keep out of the old man's way, she might get into trouble. I heard the name," putting a forefinger to his forehead and wrinkling his brows; "it was – was – Verage; 'Old Verage,' she called him."

"Verage!"

"That was the name; I am sure, sir."

Clarence took out a note-book, and made an entry.

"When did this conversation take place?" he asked.

"Not more than two months before the young lady was brought there, sir."

"Ah!" Evidently a fresh glimmer of light had been thrown on the subject. "And you heard nothing more about this old man?"