The Art of Disappearing Part 51

"She has family pride," said Arthur seriously, "and would not care to expose her own to scorn. I presume you know something about the Endicott disappearance?"

"Nothing more than the fact, and the failure to find the young man?"

"His wife employed the detective Curran to make the search for Endicott, and Curran is a Fenian, as interested as myself in such matters. He was with me in the little enterprise which ended so fatally for Ledwith and ... others." Livingstone was too sore on this subject to smile at the pause and the word. "Curran told me the details after he had left the pursuit of Endicott. They are known now to Mrs. Endicott's family in part. It is understood that she will marry her cousin Quincy Lenox when she gets a divorce. He was devoted to her before her marriage and is faithful still, I am told."

Not a sign of feeling in the utterance of these significant words!

"It is not affection, then, which prompts the actions of my client? She wishes to make sure of the existence or non-existence of her husband before entering upon this other marriage?"

"Of course I can tell you only what the detective and one other told us," Arthur said. "When Horace Endicott disappeared, it is said, he took with him his entire fortune, something over a million, leaving not one cent to his wife. He had converted his property into cash secretly. Her anxiety to find him is very properly to get her lawful share in that property, that is, alimony with her divorce?"

"I see," said Livingstone, and he began to understand the lines and shadows on this young man's face. "A peculiar, and I suppose thorough, revenge."

"If the papers are served on me, you understand, then in one fas.h.i.+on or another Mrs. Endicott shall be brought to court, and Quincy Lenox too, with the detective and his wife, and a few others. It is almost too much that you have been made acquainted with the doubts of these people. I bear with it, but I shall not endure one degree more of publicity. Once it is known that I am thought to be Horace Endicott, then the whole world must know quite as thoroughly that I am Arthur Dillon; and also who these people are that so foolishly pursue me. It cannot but appear to the average crowd that this new form of persecution is no more than an outgrowth of the old."

Then they glared at each other mildly, for the pa.s.sions of yesterday were still warm. Livingstone's mood had changed, however. He felt speculatively certain that Horace Endicott sat before him, and he knew Sonia to be a guilty woman. As his mind flew over the humiliating events which connected him with Dillon, consolation soothed his wounded heart that he had been overthrown perhaps by one of his own, rather than by the Irish. The unknown element in the contest had given victory to the lucky side. He recalled his sense of this young fellow's superiority to his environment. He tried to fathom Arthur's motive in this visit, but failed. As a matter of fact Arthur was merely testing the thoroughness of his own disappearance. His visit to Livingstone the real Dillon would have made. It would lead the lawyer to believe that Sonia, in giving up her design, had been moved by his advice and not by a quiet, secret conversation with her husband. Livingstone quickly made up his mind that the divorce suit would have to be won by default, but he wished to learn more of this daring and interesting kinsman.

"The decision must remain with Mrs. Endicott," he said after a pause. "I shall tell her, before your name is mixed up with the matter, just what she must expect. If she has anything to fear from a public trial you are undoubtedly the man to bring it out."

"Thank you."

"I might even use persuasion ..."

"It would be a service to the Endicott family," Arthur said earnestly, "for I can swear to you that the truth will come out, the scandal which Horace Endicott fled to avoid and conceal forever."

"Did you know Endicott?"

"Very well indeed. I was his guide in California every time he made a trip to that country."

"I might persuade Mrs. Endicott," said the lawyer with deeper interest, "for the sake of the family name, to surrender her foolish theory. It is quite clear to any one with unbiased judgment that you are not Horace Endicott, even if you are not Arthur Dillon. I knew the young man slightly, and his family very well. I can see myself playing the part which you have presented to us for the past five years, quite as naturally as Horace Endicott would have played it. It was not in Horace's nature, nor in the Endicott nature to turn Irish so completely."

Arthur felt all the bitterness and the interest which this shot implied.

"I had the pleasure of knowing Endicott well, much better than you, sir," he returned warmly, "and while I know he was something of a good-natured b.u.t.terfly, I can say something for his fairness and courage. If he had known what I know of the Irish, of their treatment by their enemies at home and here, of English hypocrisy and American meanness, of their banishment from the land G.o.d gave them and your attempt to drive them out of New York or to keep them in the gutter, he would have taken up their cause as honestly as I have done."

"You are always the orator, Mr. Endi ... Dillon."

"I have feeling, which is rare in the world," said Arthur smiling. "Do you know what this pa.s.sion for justice has done for me, Mr. Livingstone?

It has brought out in me the eloquence which you have praised, and inspired the energy, the deviltry, the trickery, the courage, that were used so finely at your expense.

"I was like Endicott, a wild irresponsible creature, thinking only of my own pleasure. Out of my love for one country which is not mine, out of a study of the wrongs heaped upon the Irish by a civilized people, I have secured the key to the conditions of the time. I have learned to despise and pity the littleness of your party, to recognize the shams of the time everywhere, the utter hypocrisy of those in power.

"I have pledged myself to make war on them as I made war on you; on the power that, mouthing liberty, holds Ireland in slavery; on the powers that, mouthing order and peace, hold down Poland, maintain Turkey, rob and starve India, loot the helpless wherever they may. I was a harmless hypocrite and mostly a fool once. Time and hards.h.i.+p and other things, chiefly Irish and English, have given me a fresh start in the life of thought. You hardly understand this, being thoroughly English in your make-up.

"You love good Protestants, pagans who hate the Pope, all who bow to England, and that part of America which is English. You can blow about their rights and liberties, and denounce their persecutors, if these happen to be French or Dutch or Russian. For a Pole or an Irishman you have no sympathy, and you would deny him any place on the earth but a grave. Liberty is not for him unless he becomes a good English Protestant at the same time. In other words liberty may be the proper sauce for the English goose but not for the Irish gander."

"I suppose it appears that way to you," said Livingstone, who had listened closely, not merely to the sentiments, but to the words, the tone, the idiom. Could Horace Endicott have ever descended to this view of his world, this rawness of thought, sentiment, and expression? So peculiarly Irish, anti-English, rich with the flavor of the Fourth Ward, and nevertheless most interesting.

"I shall not argue the point," he continued. "I judge from your earnestness that you have a well-marked ambition in life, and that you will follow it."

"My present ambition is to see our grand cathedral completed and dedicated as soon as possible, as the loudest word we can speak to you about our future. But I fear I am detaining you. If during the next few days the papers in the divorce case are not served on me, I may feel certain that Mrs. Endicott has given up the idea of including me in the suit?"

"I shall advise her to leave you in peace for the sake of the Endicott name," said Livingstone politely.

Arthur thanked him and departed, while the lawyer spent an hour enjoying his impressions and vainly trying to disentangle the Endicott from the Dillon in this extraordinary man.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

THE END OF MISCHIEF.

Arthur set out for the Curran household, where he was awaited with anxiety. Quite cheerful over his command of the situation, and inclined to laugh at the mixed feelings of Livingstone, he felt only reverence and awe before the human mind as seen in the light of his own experience. His particular mind had once been Horace Endicott's, but now represented the more intense and emotional personality of Arthur Dillon.

He was neither Horace, nor the boy who had disappeared; but a new being fas.h.i.+oned after the ideal Arthur Dillon, as Horace Endicott had conceived him. What he had been seemed no more a part of his past, but a memory attached to another man. All his actions proved it.

The test of his disappearance delighted him. He had gone through its various scenes with little emotion, with less than Edith had displayed; far less than Arthur Dillon would have felt and shown. Who can measure the mind? Itself the measure of man's knowledge, the judge in the court of human destiny, how feeble its power over itself! A few years back this mind directed Horace Endicott; to-day it cheerfully served the conscience of Arthur Dillon!

Edith and her husband awaited their executioner. The detective suffered for her rather than himself. From Dillon he had nothing to fear, and for his sake, also for the strange regard he had always kept for Curran's wife, Arthur had been kind when harshness would have done more good. Now the end had come for her and Sonia. As the unexpected usually came from this young man, they had reason to feel apprehension. He took his seat comfortably in the familiar chair, and lit his cigar while chaffing her.

"They who love the danger shall perish in it," he said for a beginning.

"You court it, Colette, and not very wisely."

"How, not wisely?" she asked with a pretence of boldness.

"You count on the good will of the people whom you annoy and wrong, and yet you have never any good will to give them in return. You have hated me and pursued me on the strength of my good will for you. It seems never to have occurred to you to do me a good turn for the many I have done for you. You are a bud of incarnate evil, Colette."

How she hated him when he talked in that fas.h.i.+on!

"Well, it's all settled. I have had the last talk with Livingstone, and spoiled your last trick against the comfort of Arthur Dillon. There will be no dragging to court of the Dillon clan. Mr. Livingstone believes with me that the publicity would be too severe for Mrs. Endicott and her family, not to mention the minor revelations connected with yourself. So there's the end of your precious tomfoolery, Colette."

She burst into vehement tears.

"But you weep too soon," he protested. "I have saved you as usual from yourself, but only to inflict my own punishment. Don't weep those crocodile diamonds until you have heard your own sentence. Of course you know that I have followed every step you took in this matter. You are clever enough to have guessed that. You discovered all that was to be discovered, of course. But you are too keen. If this trial had come to pa.s.s you would have been on the witness stand, and the dogs would have caught the scent then never to lose it. You would have ruined your husband as well as yourself."

"Why do you let him talk to me so?" she screamed at Curran.

"Because it is for your good," Arthur answered. "But here's briefness.

You must leave New York at once, and forever. Get as far from it as you can, and stay there while I am alive. And for consolation in your exile take your child with you, your little boy, whom Mrs. Endicott parades as her little son, the heir of her beloved Horace."

A frightful stillness fell in the room with this terrific declaration.

But for pity he could have laughed at the paralysis which seized both the detective and his wife. Edith sat like a statue, white-faced, pouting at him, her hands clasped in her lap.

"Well, are you surprised? You, the clever one? If I am Horace Endicott, as you pretend to believe, do I not know the difference between my own child and another's? I am Arthur Dillon only, and yet I know how you conspired with Mrs. Endicott to provide her with an heir for the Endicott money. You did this in spite of your husband, who has never been able to control you, not even when you chose to commit so grave a crime. Now, it is absolutely necessary for the child's sake that you save him from Mrs. Endicott's neglect, when he is of no further use to her. She loves children, as you know."

"Who are you, anyway?" Curran burst out hoa.r.s.ely after a while.

"Not half as good a detective as you are, but I happen in this matter to be on the inside," Arthur answered cheerfully. "I knew Horace Endicott much better than his wife or his friends. The poor fellow is dead and gone, and yet he left enough information behind him to trouble the clever people. Are you satisfied, Colette, that this time everything must be done as I have ordered?"