Dangerous Ground: or, The Rival Detectives

Vernet was a man of many resources, and trying, indeed, must be the situation which his fertile brain could not master.

Having successfully introduced his double into the house, he made his way, once more, to the side of his patron, and, drawing him away from the vicinity of possible listeners, said:

“Mr. Warburton, if you have anything further to say to me, please make use of the present moment. After this it will be best for us to hold no further conversation to-night.”

Alan Warburton turned his eyes toward the detective with a cold, scrutinizing stare.

“Why such caution?”

“Because it seems to me necessary; and, if I may be permitted to suggest, you may make some slight discoveries by keeping an eye, more or less, upon Mrs. Warburton.”

With these words Van Vernet turns upon his heel, and strides away with the air of a man who can do all that he essays.

“He is cool to the verge of impudence!” mutters Alan, as he gazes after the receding figure in the British uniform. “But I will act upon his advice; I will watch Mrs. Warburton.”

It is some moments before he catches sight of her glimmering robes, and then he sees them receding, gliding swiftly, and, as he thinks, with a nervous, hurried movement unusual to his stately sister-in-law.

She is going through the drawing-room, away from the dancers, and he hastens after, wondering a little as to her destination.

From a flower-adorned recess, a fairy form springs out, interrupting the lady in the glimmering robes.

“Mamma!” cries little Daisy, “oh Mamma, I have found Mother Goose —real, live Mother Goose!”

And she points with childish delight to a quaintly dressed personation of that old woman of nursery fame, who sits within the alcove, leaning upon her oaken staff, and peering out from beneath the broad frill of her cap, her gaze eagerly following the movements of the animated child.

“Oh Mamma!” continues the little one, “can’t I stay with Mother Goose? Millie says I must go to bed.”

At another time Leslie Warburton would have listened more attentively, have answered more thoughtfully, and have noted more closely the manner of guest that was thus absorbing the attention of the little one. Now she only says hurriedly:

“Yes, yes, Daisy; you may stay a little longer, – only,” with a hasty glance toward the alcove, “you must not trouble the lady too much.”

“The lady wants me, mamma.”

“Then go, dear.”

And Leslie gathers up her glimmering train and hastens on without once glancing backward.

Pausing a few paces behind her, Alan Warburton has noted each word that has passed between the lady and the child. And now, as the little one bounds back to Mother Goose, who receives her with evident pleasure, he moves on, still following Leslie.

She glides past the dancers, through the drawing rooms, across the music room, and then, giving a hasty glance at the few who linger there, she pulls aside a silken curtain, and looks into the library. The lights are toned to the softness of moonlight; there is silence there, and solitude.

With a long, weary sigh, Leslie enters the library and lets the curtain fall behind her.

Alan Warburton pauses, hesitates for a moment, and then, seeing that the little group of maskers near him seem wholly absorbed in their own merriment, he moves boldly forward, parts the curtain a little way, and peers within.

He sees a woman wearing the garments of Sunlight and the face of despair. She has torn off her mask, and it lies on the floor at her feet. In her hand is a crumpled scrap of paper, and, as she holds it nearer the light and reads what is written thereon, a low moan escapes her lips.

“Again!” she murmurs; “how can I obey them? – and yet I must go.” Then, suddenly, a light of fierce resolve flames in her eyes. “I will go,” she says, speaking aloud in her self-forgetfulness; “I will go, – but it shall be for the last time!”

She thrusts the crumpled bit of paper into her bosom, goes to the window and looks out. Then she crosses to a door opposite the curtained entrance, opens it softly, and glides away.

In another moment, Alan Warburton is in the library. Tearing off the black and scarlet domino he flings it into a corner, and, glancing down at his nautical costume mutters:

“Sailors of this description are not uncommon. Wherever she goes, I can follow her – in this.”

Ten minutes later, while Leslie Warburton’s guests are dancing and making merry, Leslie Warburton, with sombre garments replacing the robes of Sunlight, glides stealthily out from her stately home, and creeps like a hunted creature through the darkness and away!

But not alone. Silently, with the tread of an Indian, a man follows after; a man in the garments of a sailor, who pulls a glazed cap low down across his eyes, and mutters as he goes:

“So, Madam Intrigue, Van Vernet advised me well. Glide on, plotter; from this moment until I shall have unmasked you, I am your shadow!”

CHAPTER XI.

“DEAR MRS FOLLINGSBEE.”

While the previously related scenes of this fateful night are transpiring Richard Stanhope finds his silken-trained disguise a snare in which his own feet become entangled, both literally and figuratively.

Moving with slow and stately steps through the vista of splendid rooms, taking note of all that he sees from behind his white and blue mask, he suddenly becomes the object of too much attention. A dashing Troubador presents himself, and will not be denied the pleasure of a waltz with “the stately and graceful Miss Columbia.”

The detective’s feet are encased in satin shoes that, if not small, are at least shapely. He has yet nearly an hour to spare to the masquerade, and his actual business is done. Why not yield to the temptation? He dances with the grace and abandon of the true music worshipper; he loves brightness and gayety, laughter and all sweet sounds; above all, he takes such delight in a jest as only healthy natures can.

“It would be a pity to disappoint such a pretty Troubador,” muses Richard while he seems to hesitate; “he may never have another opportunity to dance with a lady like me.”

And then, bowing a stately consent, he moves away on the arm of the Troubador, who, chuckling at his success, mentally resolves to make a good impression on this mysterious uninvited lady.

Van Vernet’s plot works famously. The Troubador is enchanted with the dancing of the mysterious Goddess, who looks at him with the handsomest, most languid and melting of brown, brown eyes, letting these orbs speak volumes, but saying never a word. And when his fellow-plotter claims the next dance, he yields his place reluctantly, and sees the waist of the Goddess encircled by the arm of the Celestial, with a sigh of regret.

Richard Stanhope, now fully given over to the spirit of mischief, leans confidingly upon the arm of this second admirer, looking unutterable things with his big brown eyes.

They hover about him after this second dance, and he dances again with each. If the Troubador is overflowing with flattery, the Celestial is more obsequious still. Stanhope finds the moments flying, and the attention of the two gallants cease to amuse, and begin to annoy. In vain he tries to shake them off. If one goes, the other remains.

After many futile efforts to free himself from his tormentors, he sees Mr. Follingsbee approach, and beckons him forward with a sigh of relief.

The two maskers, recognizing Uncle Sam as a fitting companion for Miss Columbia, reluctantly yield their ground and withdraw.

“Have those fellows been pestering you?” queries the lawyer, with a laugh.

“Only as they bade fair to prove a hindrance,” with an answering chuckle. “They’re such nice little lady killers: but I must get away from this in a very few minutes. My disguise has been very successful.”

“I should think so! Why, my boy, half the people here, at least those who have recognized me through my costume, think you are – ha! ha! – my wife!”

“So much the better.”

“Why, little Winnie French – she found me out at once – has been looking all through the card rooms for “Dear Mrs. Follingsbee.”” And the jolly lawyer laughs anew.

“Mr. Follingsbee,” – Stanhope has ceased to jest, and speaks with his usual business brusqueness – “Mrs. Warburton, I don’t know for what reason, wished to be informed when I left the house. Will you tell her I am about to go, and that I will let her hear from me further through you? I will go up to the dressing room floor, and wait in the boudoir until you have seen her.”

The boudoir opening upon the ladies’ dressing rooms, is untenanted. But from the inner room, Stanhope catches the hum of feminine voices, and in a moment a quartette of ladies come forth, adjusting their masks as they move toward the stairway.

Suddenly there is a little exclamation of delight, and our detective, standing near the open window, with his face turned from the group, feels himself clasped by a pair of pretty dimpled arms, while a gay voice says in his ear:

“Oh! you dear old thing! Have I found you at last? Follingsbee, you look stunning in that costume. Oh! – ” as Stanhope draws back with a deprecating gesture – “you needn’t deny your identity: isn’t Mr. Follingsbee here as Uncle Sam? I found him out at once, and didn’t Leslie and I see you enter together?”

Stanhope quakes inwardly, and the perspiration starts out under his mask. It is very delightful, under most circumstances, to be embraced by a pair of soft feminine arms, but just now it is very embarrassing and – very ridiculous.

Divided between his desire to laugh and his wish to run away, the detective stands hesitating, while Winnie French, for she it is, begins a critical examination of his costume.

“Don’t you think the dress muffles your figure a little too much, Follingsbee? If it were snugger here,” – giving him a little poke underneath his elbows, – “and not so straight from the shoulders. Why didn’t you shorten it in front, and wear pointed shoes?”

And she seizes the flowing drapery, and draws it back to illustrate her suggestion.

Again Stanhope recoils with a gesture which the gay girl misinterprets, and, quite ignoring the persistent silence of the supposed Mrs. Follingsbee, she chatters on:

“I hope you don’t resent my criticisms, Follingsbee; you’ve picked me to pieces often enough. Or are you still vexed because I won’t fall in love with your favorite Alan? There, now,” – as Stanhope, grown desperate, seems about to speak, – “I know just what you want to say, and you need not say it. Follingsbee,” lowering her voice to a more confidential tone, “if I ever had a scrap of a notion of that sort, I have been cured of it since I came into this house to live. Oh! I know he’s your prime favorite, but you can’t tell me anything about Alan; I’ve got him all catalogued on my ten fingers. Here he is pro and con; pro’s your idea of him, you know. You say he is rich. Well, that’s something in these days! He’s handsome. Bah! a man has no business with beauty; it’s woman’s special prerogative. He came of a splendid blue-blooded family. Fudge! American aristocracy is American rubbish. He’s talented. Well, that’s only an accident for which he deserves no credit. He’s thoroughly upright and honorable. Well, he’s too bolt upright for me.”

“So,” murmurs Stanhope to his inner consciousness, “I am making a point in personal history, but – it’s a tight place for me!” And as Winnie’s arms give him a little hug, while she pauses to take breath, he feels tempted to retort in kind.

“Now, then,” resumes Winnie, absorbed in her topic; and releasing her victim to check off her “cons” on the pretty right hand; “here’s my opinion of Mr. Warburton. He’s proud, ridiculously proud. He worships his name, if not himself. He is suspicious, uncharitable, unforgiving. He’s hard-hearted. If Leslie were not an angel she would hate him utterly. He treats her with a lofty politeness, a polished indifference, impossible to resent and horrible to endure, – and all because he chooses to believe that she has tarnished the great Warburton name, by taking it for love of the Warburton fortune instead of the race.”

Up from the ball-room floats the first strains of a delicious waltz. Winnie stops, starts, and turns toward the door.

“That’s my favorite waltz, and I’m engaged to Charlie Furbish – he dances like an angel. Follingsbee, bye, bye!”

She flits to the mirror, gives two or three dainty touches to her coquettish costume, tosses a kiss from her finger tips, and is gone.

“Thank Heaven,” mutters Stanhope. “I consider that the narrowest escape of my life! What a little witch it is, and pretty, I’ll wager.”

He draws from beneath his flowing robe a tiny watch such as ladies carry, and consults its jewelled face.

“My time is up!” he ejaculates. “Twenty minutes delay, now, will ruin my Raid. Ah! here’s Follingsbee.” And he moves forward at the sound of an approaching step.

But it is not Follingsbee who appears upon the threshold. It is, instead, Stanhope’s too-obsequious, too-attentive admirer, the Celestial, who has voted the prospect of a flirtation with a mysterious mask, a thing of spice.

CHAPTER XII.

A “’MELLICAN LADY’S” LITTLE TRICK

In such an emergency, when every moment has its value, to think is to act with Richard Stanhope. And time just now is very precious to him.

This importunate fellow is determined to solve the mystery of his identity, to see him unmask. Ten minutes spent in an attempt to evade him will be moments of fate for the ambitious detective.

And, for the sake of his patroness, he cannot leave the house at the risk of being followed. This difficulty must be overcome and at once.

These thoughts flash through his mind as if by electricity; and then, as the Celestial approaches, he turns languidly toward the open window and rests his head against the casement, as if in utter weariness.

“‘Mellican lady slick?” queries the masker solicitously; “‘Mellican lady walm? Ching Ling flannee, flannee.”

And raising his Japanese fan, he begins to ply it vigorously.

Mentally confiding “Ching Ling,” to a region where fans are needed and are not, Stanhope sways, as if about to faint, and motions toward a reclining chair.

The mask propels it close to the window, and the detective sinks into it, with a long drawn sigh.

Then, plying his fan with renewed vigor, the Celestial murmurs tenderly:

“‘Mellican lady slick?”

“Confound you,” thinks Stanhope; “I will try and be too slick for you.” Then, for the first time, he utters a word for the Celestial’s hearing. Moving his head restlessly he articulates, feebly:

“The heat – I feel – faint!” Then, half rising from the chair, seeming to make a last effort, he reels and murmuring: “Water – water,” sinks back presenting the appearance of utter lifelessness.

“Water!” The Celestial, utterly deceived, drops the fan and his dialect at the same moment, and muttering: “She has fainted!” springs to the door.

It is just what Stanhope had hoped for. When the Celestial returns with the water, the fainting lady will have disappeared.

But Fate seems to have set her face against Stanhope. The Celestial does not go. At the very door he encounters a servant, none other than the girl, Millie, who, having for some time lost sight of little Daisy, is now wandering from room to room in quest of the child.

“Girl,” calls the masker authoritatively, “get some water quick; a lady has fainted.”

Uttering a startled: “Oh, my!” Millie skurries away, and the Celestial returns to the side of the detective, who seems just now to be playing a losing game.

But it is only seeming. The case, grown desperate, requires a desperate remedy, and the Goddess of Liberty resolves to do what, probably, no “‘Mellican Lady” ever did before.

Through his drooping eyelids he notes the approach of the Celestial, sees him fling aside his fan to bend above him, and realizes the fact that he is about to be unmasked.

The Celestial bends nearer still. His hands touch the draped head, searching for the secret that releases the tightly secured mask. It is a sentimental picture, but suddenly the scene changes. Sentiment is put to rout, and absurdity reigns.

With indescribable swiftness, the body of the Goddess darts forward, and the head comes in sudden contact with the stomach of the too-devoted Celestial, who goes down upon the floor in a state of collapse, while Stanhope, bounding to his feet and gathering up his trailing draperies, springs through the open window!

When Millie returns with water and other restoratives, she finds only a disarranged masker sitting dolefully upon the floor, with one hand pressed against his stomach and the other supporting his head; still too much dazed and bewildered to know just how he came there.

When he has finally recovered sufficiently to be able to give a shrewd guess as to the nature of the calamity that so suddenly overcame him, he is wise enough to see that the victory sits perched on the banner of the vanished Goddess, and to retire from the field permanently silent upon the subject of “spicy flirtations” and mysterious ladies.

Meantime, Stanhope having alighted, with no particular damage to himself or his drapery, upon a balcony which runs half the length of the house, is creeping silently along that convenient causeway toward the gentlemen’s dressing-room, situated at its extreme end.

Foreseeing some possible difficulty in leaving the house unnoticed while attired in so conspicuous a costume, the Goddess had come prepared with a long black domino, which had been confided to Mr. Follingsbee, who, at the proper moment, was to fetch it from the gentlemen’s dressing-room, array Stanhope in its sombre folds, and then see him from the house, and safely established in the carriage which the detective had arranged to have in waiting to convey him to the scene of the Raid.

Owing to his little encounter with the Celestial, Stanhope knows himself cut off from communication with Mr. Follingsbee, and he now creeps toward the dressing-room wholly intent upon securing the domino and quitting the house in the quickest manner possible.

As he approaches the window, however, he realizes that there is another lion in his path.

The room is already occupied; he hears two voices speaking in guarded tones.

“Be quick, Harvey; some one may come in a moment.”

“I have locked the door.”

“But it must be opened at the first knock. There must be no appearance of mystery, no room for suspicion, Harvey.”

At the sound of a most familiar voice, Richard Stanhope starts, and flushes with excitement underneath his mask. Then he presses close against the window and peers in.

Two men are rapidly exchanging garments there; the one doffing a uniform such as is worn by an officer of Her Majesty’s troops, the other passing over, in exchange for said uniform, the suit of a common policeman.

With astonished eyes and bated breath, Stanhope recognizes the two. Van Vernet, his friend, and Harvey, a member of the police force, who is Vernet’s staunch admirer and chosen assistant when such assistance can be of use.

How came Vernet at this masquerade, of all others? And what are they about to do?

He is soon enlightened, for Van Vernet, flushed with his success, present and prospective, utters a low triumphant laugh as he dons the policeman’s coat, and turns to readjust his mask.

“Ah! Harvey,” he says gayly; “if you ever live to execute as fine a bit of strategy as I did to-night, you may yet be Captain of police. Ha! ha! this most recent battle between America and England has turned out badly for America – all because she will wear petticoats!”

America! England! petticoats! Stanhope can scarcely suppress an exclamation as suddenly light flashes upon his mental horizon.

“I’ve done a good thing to-night, Harvey,” continues Vernet with unusual animation, “and I’ve got the lead on a sharp man. If I can hold my own to-night, you’ll never again hear of Van Vernet as only ‘one of our best detectives.’ Is your mask adjusted? All right, then. Now, Harvey, time presses; there’s a big night’s work before me. You are sure you understand everything?”

“Oh, perfectly; my work’s easy enough.”

“And mine begins to be difficult. Unlock the door, Harvey, I must be off.” Then turning sharply he adds, as if it were an after-thought: “By the way, if you happen to set your eye on a Goddess of Liberty, just note her movements; I would give something to know when she contrives to leave the house and,” with a dry laugh, “and how.”

In another moment the dressing-room is deserted.

And then Richard Stanhope steps lightly through the window. With rapid movements he singles out his own dark domino, gathers his colored draperies close about him, and flings it over them, drawing the hood down about his head, and the long folds around his person. Then he goes out from the dressing-rooms, hurries down the great stairway, and passing boldly out by the main entrance, glances up and down the street.

Only a few paces away, a dark form is hurrying toward a group of carriages standing opposite the mansion, and Stanhope, in an instant, is gliding in the same direction. As the man places a foot upon the step of a carriage that has evidently awaited his coming, Stanhope glides so near that he distinctly hears the order, given in Vernet’s low voice:

“To the X – street police station. Drive fast.”

A trifle farther away another carriage, its driver very alert and expectant, stands waiting.

Having heard Vernet’s order, Stanhope hurries to this carriage, springs within, and whispers to the driver:

“The old place, Jim; and your quickest time!”

Then, as the wheels rattle over the pavement, the horses speeding away from this fashionable quarter of the city, a strange transformation scene goes on within the carriage, which, evidently, has been prepared for this purpose. The Goddess of Liberty is casting her robes, and long before the carriage has reached its destination, she has disappeared, there remaining, in her stead, a personage of fantastic appearance. He is literally clothed in rags, and plentifully smeared with dirt; his tattered garments are decorated with bits of tinsel, and scraps of bright color flutter from his ragged hat, and flaunt upon his breast; there is a monstrous patch over his left eye and a mass of disfiguring blotches covers his left cheek; a shock of unkempt tow-colored hair bristles upon his head, and his forehead and eyes are half hidden by thick dangling elf-locks.

If this absurd apparition bears not the slightest resemblance to the Goddess of Liberty, it resembles still less our friend, Richard Stanhope.

Suddenly, and in an obscure street, the carriage comes to a halt, and as its fantastically-attired occupant descends to the ground, the first stroke of midnight sounds out upon the air.

CHAPTER XIII.

A CRY IN THE DARK

One more scene in this night’s fateful masquerade remains to be described, and then the seemingly separate threads of our plot unite, and twine about our central figures a chain of Fate.

While Van Vernet is setting snares for the feet of his rival, and while that young man of many resources is actively engaged in disentangling himself therefrom, – while Leslie Warburton, tortured by a secret which she cannot reveal, and dominated by a power she dare not disobey, steals away from her stately home – and while Alan Warburton, soured by suspicion, made unjust by his own false pride, follows like a shadow behind her – a cloud is descending upon the house of Warburton.

Sitting apart from the mirthful crowd, quite unobserved and seemingly wholly engrossed in themselves, are little Daisy Warburton and the quaintly-attired Mother Goose, before mentioned.

It is long past the child’s latest bedtime, but her step-mamma has been so entirely preoccupied, and Millie so carelessly absorbed in watching the gayeties of the evening, that the little one has been overlooked, and feels now quite like her own mistress.

“Ha! ha!” she laughs merrily, leaning, much at her ease, upon the knee of Mother Goose; “ha! ha! what nice funny stories you tell; almost as nice as my new mamma’s stories. Only,” looking up with exquisite frankness, “your voice is not half so nice as my new mamma’s.”