A Husband by Proxy Part 20

"I'll start at once," he a.s.sured her. "If you leave the house in fifteen minutes we shall arrive about the same time. Try to avoid being followed. Good-by."

He listened to hear her answer, but it did not come. He heard the distant receiver clink against its hook, and then the connection was broken.

He was happy, in a wild, lawless manner, as he left the place and hastened to the Elevated station. The prospect of meeting Dorothy once more, in the warm, fragrant night, at a tryst like that of lovers, made his pulses surge and his heart beat quicken with excitement. All thought of her possible connection with the Branchville crime had fled.

The train could not run fast enough to satisfy his hot impatience. He wished to be there beneath the trees when she should presently come.

He alighted at last at the Ninety-third Street station, and hastened to the park.

When he came to the appointed place, he found an entrance to the greenery near by. Within were people on every bench in sight--New York's unhoused lovers, whose wooing is accomplished in the all but sylvan glades which the park affords.

Here and there a bit of animated flame made a tiny meteor streak against the blackness of the foliage--where a firefly quested for its mate, switching on its marvelous little searchlight. Beyond, on the smooth, broad roadways, four-eyed chariots of power shot silently through the avenues of trees--the autos, like living dragons, half tamed to man's control.

It was all thrilling and exciting to Garrison, with the expectation of meeting Dorothy now possessing all his nature. Then--a few great drops of rain began to fall. The effect was almost instantaneous. A dozen pairs of sweethearts, together with as many more unmated stragglers, came scuttling forth from unseen places, making a lively run for the nearest shelter.

Garrison could not retreat. He did not mind the rain, except in so far as it might discourage Dorothy. But, thinking she might have gone inside the park, he walked there briskly, looking for some solitary figure that should by this time be in waiting. He seemed to be entirely alone. He thought she had not come--and perhaps in the rain she might not arrive at all.

Back towards the entrance he loitered. A lull in the traffic of the street had made the place singularly still. He could hear the raindrops beating on the leaves. Then they ceased as abruptly as they had commenced.

He turned once more down the dimly lighted path. His heart gave a quick, joyous leap. Near a bench was a figure--the figure of a woman whose grace, he fancied, was familiar.

Her back was apparently turned as he drew near. He was about to whistle, if only to warn her of his coming, when the shrubbery just ahead and beside the path was abruptly parted and a man with a short, wrapped club in his hand sprang forth and struck him viciously over the head.

He was falling, dimly conscious of a horrible blur of lights in his eyes, as helplessly as if he had been made of paper. A second blow, before he crumpled on the pavement, blotted out the last remaining vestige of emotion. He lay there in a limp, awkward heap.

The female figure had turned, and now came striding to the place with a step too long for a woman. There was no word spoken. Together the two lifted Garrison's unconscious form, carried it quickly to the shrubbery, fumbled about it for a minute or two, struck a match that was s.h.i.+elded from the view of any possible pa.s.ser-by, and then, still in silence, hastily quitted the park and vanished in one of the glistening side streets, where the rain was reflecting the lamps.

CHAPTER XIV

A PACKAGE OF DEATH

A low, distant rumble of thunder denoted a new gathering of storm.

Five minutes pa.s.sed, and then the lightning flashed across the firmament directly overhead. A crash like the splitting of the heavens followed, and the rain came down as if it poured through the slit.

The violence lasted hardly more than five minutes, after which the downpour abated a little of its fury. But a steadier, quieter precipitation continued, with the swiftly moving center of disturbance already far across the sky.

The rain in his face, and the brisk puff of newly washed ozone in his heavily moving lungs, aroused Garrison's struggling consciousness by slow degrees. Strange, fantastic images, old memories, weird phantoms, and wholly impossible fancies played through his brain with the dull, torturing persistency of nightmares for a time that seemed to him endless.

It was fully half an hour before he was sufficiently aroused to roll to an upright position and pa.s.s his hand before his eyes.

He was sick and weak. He could not recall what had happened. He did not know where he was.

He was all but soaked by the rain, despite the fact that a tree with dense foliage was spread above him, and he had lain beneath protecting shrubberies. Slowly the numbness seemed to pa.s.s from his brain, like the mist from the surface of a lake. He remembered things, as it were, in patches.

Dorothy--that was it--and something had happened.

He was stupidly aware that he was sitting on something uncomfortable--a lump, perhaps a stone--but he did not move. He was waiting for his brain to clear. When at length he hoisted his heavy weight upon his knees, and then staggered drunkenly to his feet, to blunder toward a tree and support himself by its trunk, his normal circulation began to be restored, and pain a.s.sailed his skull, arousing him further to his senses.

He leaned for some time against the tree, gathering up the threads of the tangle. It all came back, distinct and sharp at last, and, with memory, his strength was returning. He felt of his head, on which his hat was jammed.

The bone and the muscles at the base of the skull were sore and sensitive, but the hurt had not gone deep. He felt incapable of thinking it out--the reasons, and all that it meant. He wondered if his attacker had thought to leave him dead.

Mechanically his hands sought out his pockets. He found his watch and pocketbook in place. Some weight seemed dragging at his coat. When his hand went slowly to the place, he found the lump on which he had been lying. He pulled it out--a cold, cylindrical affair, of metal, with a thick cord hanging from its end. Then a chill crept all the distance down his spine.

The thing was a bomb!

Cold perspiration and a sense of horror came upon him together. An underlying current of thought, feebly left unfocused in his brain--a thought of himself as a victim, lured to the park for this deed--became as stinging as a blow on the cheek.

The cord on this metal engine of destruction was a fuse. The rain had drenched it and quenched its spark of fire, doubtless at some break in the fiber, since fuse is supposedly water-proof. Nothing but the thunder-storm had availed to save his life. He had walked into a trap, like a trusting animal, and chance alone had intervened to bring him forth alive.

His brain by now was thoroughly active. Reactionary energy rushed in upon him to sharpen all his faculties. There was nothing left of the joyous throbbing in his veins which thoughts of his tryst with Dorothy had engendered. He felt like the wrathful dupe of a woman's wiles, for it seemed as plain as soot on snow that Dorothy, fearing the consequences of his recent discoveries in the Hardy case, had made this park appointment only with this treacherous intent.

All his old, banished suspicions rushed pell-mell upon his mind, and with them came new indications of her guilt. Her voice on the telephone had been weak and faltering. She had chosen the park as their meeting place, as the only available spot for such a deed. And then--then----

It seemed too horrible to be true, but the wound was on his head, and death was in his hand. It was almost impossible that anyone could have heard their talk over the 'phone. He was left no alternative theory to work on, except that perhaps the Robinsons had managed, through some machination, to learn that he and Dorothy were to meet at this convenient place.

One struggling ray of hope was thus vouchsafed him, yet he felt as if perhaps he had already given Dorothy the benefit of too many reasonable doubts. He could be certain of one thing only--he was thoroughly involved in a mesh of crime and intrigue that had now a.s.sumed a new and personal menace. Hereafter he must work more for Garrison and less for romantic ideals.

Anger came to a.s.sist in restoring his strength. Far from undergoing any sense of alarm which would frighten him out of further effort to probe to the bottom of the business, he was stubbornly determined to remain on the case till the whole thing was stripped of its secrets.

Not without a certain weakness at the knees did he make his way back to the path.

He had no fear of lurking enemies, since those who had placed the bomb in his pocket would long before have fled the scene to make an alibi complete. The rain had ceased. Wrapping the fuse about the metal cartridge in his hand, he came beneath a lamp-post by the walk, and looked the thing over in the light.

There was nothing much to see. A nipple of gas-pipe, with a cap on either end, one drilled through for the insertion of the fuse, described it completely. The kink in the fuse where the rain had found entrance to dampen the powder, was plainly to be seen.

Garrison placed the contrivance in his pocket. He pulled out his watch. The hour, to his amazement, was nearly ten. He realized he must have lain a considerable time unconscious in the wet. Halting to wonder what cleverness might suggest as the best possible thing to be done, he somewhat grimly determined to proceed to Dorothy's house.

CHAPTER XV

SIGNIFICANT DISCOVERIES

Damp and uncomfortable, he kept to the farther side of the street, and slackened his pace as he drew near the dwelling which he realized was a place replete with mystery.

He stood on the opposite sidewalk at length, and gazed across at the frowning brownstone front. The place was utterly dark. Not the slightest c.h.i.n.k of light was visible in all its somber windows.

Aware that nothing is so utterly confusing to a guilty being as to be confronted unexpectedly by a victim, supposed to be dispatched, Garrison had come this far without the slightest hesitation. The aspect of the house, however, was discouraging.

Despite the ache at the base of his skull, and despite the excited thumping of his heart, he crossed the street, climbed unhaltingly to the steps, and rang the bell. He had made up his mind to act as if nothing unusual had occurred. Then, should either Dorothy or the Robinsons exhibit astonishment at beholding him here, or otherwise betray a guilty knowledge of the "accident" which had befallen him, his doubts would be promptly cleared.

A minute pa.s.sed, and nothing happened.

He rang the bell again.