Chapter 18. "You Look As If--As If--"

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_ CHAPTER XVIII. "YOU LOOK AS IF--AS IF--"

I had studiously avoided looking at her while these last few words passed between us, but as the silence which followed this final outburst continued, I felt forced to glance her way if only to see what my next move should be. I found her gazing straight at me with a bright spot on either cheek, looking as if seared there by a red-hot iron.

"You are a detective," she said, as our regards met. "You have known this shameful secret always, yet have met my husband constantly and have never told."

"No, I saw no reason."

"Did you never, when you saw how completely my husband was deceived, how fortunes were bequeathed to Gwendolen, gifts lavished on her, her small self made almost an idol of, because all our friends, all our relatives saw in her a true Ocumpaugh, think it wicked to hold your peace and let this all go on as if she were the actual offspring of my husband and myself?"

"No; I may have wondered at your happiness; I may have thought of the consequences if ever he found out, but--"

I dared not go on; the quick, the agonizing nerve of her grief and suffering had been touched and I myself quailed at the result. Stammering some excuse, I waited for her soundless anguish to subside; then, when I thought she could listen, completed my sentence by saying:

"I did not allow my thoughts to stray quite so far, Mrs. Ocumpaugh. Not till my knowledge of your secret promised to be of use did I let it rise to any proportion in my mind. I had too much sympathy for your difficulties; I have to-day."

This hint of comfort, perhaps from the only source which could afford her any, seemed to move her.

"Do you mean that you are my friend?" she cried. "That you would help me, if any help were possible, to keep my secret and--my husband's love?"

I did not know how to dash the first spark of hope I had seen in her from the beginning of this more than painful interview. To avoid it, I temporized a trifle and answered with ready earnestness:

"I would do much, Mrs. Ocumpaugh, to make the consequences of your act as ineffective as possible and still be true to the interests of Mr. Ocumpaugh. If the child can be found--you wish that? You loved her?"

"O yes, I loved her." There was no mistaking the wistfulness of her tone. "Too well, far too well; only my husband more."

"If you can find her--that is the first thing, isn't it?"

"Yes."

It was a faint rejoinder. I looked at her again.

"_You do not wish her found_," I suddenly declared.

She started, rose to her feet, then suddenly sat again as if she felt that she could not stand.

"What makes you say that? How dare you? how can you say that? My husband loves her, I love her--she is our own child, if not by birth, by every tie which endears a child to a parent. Has that wicked man--"

"Doctor Pool!" I put in, for she stopped, gasping.

"Yes; Doctor Pool, whom I wish to God I had never seen--has he told you any such lies as that? the man who swore--"

I put out my hand to calm her. I feared for her reason if not for her life.

"Be careful," I enjoined. "Your walls are thick but tones like yours are penetrating." Then as I saw she would be answered, I replied to the question still alive in her face: "No; Doctor Pool has not talked of you. I saw it in your own manner, madam; it or something else. Perhaps it was something else--another secret which I have not shared."

She moistened her lips and, placing her two hands on the knobs of the chair in which she sat, leaned passionately forward. Who could say she was cold now? Who could see anything but a feeling heart in this woman, beautiful beyond all precedent in her passion and her woe?

"It is--it was--a secret. I have to confess to the abnormal. The child did not love me; has never loved me. Lavish as I, have been in my affection and caresses, she has never done aught but endure them. Though she believes me her own mother, she has shrunk from me with all the might of her nature from the very first. It was God's punishment for the lie by which I strove to make my husband believe himself the father which in God's providence he was not. I have borne it; but my life has been a living hell. It was that you saw in my face--nothing else."

I was bound to believe her. The child had made her suffer, but she was bent upon recovering her--of course. I dared not contemplate any other alternative. Her love for her husband precluded any other desire on her part. And so I admitted, when after a momentary survey of the task yet before me, I ventured to remark:

"Then we find ourselves once more at the point from which we started. Where shall we look for his child? Mrs. Ocumpaugh, perhaps it would aid us in deciding this question if you told me, sincerely told me, why you had such strong belief in Gwendolen's having been drowned in the river. You did believe this--I saw you at the window. You are not an actress like your friend--you expected to see her body drawn from those waters. For twenty-four hours you expected it, though every one told you it was impossible. Why?"

She crept a step nearer to me, her tones growing low and husky.

"Don't you see? I--I--thought that to escape me, she might have leaped into the water. She was capable of it. Gwendolen had a strong nature. The struggle between duty and repulsion made havoc even in her infantile breast. Besides, we had had a scene that morning--a secret scene in which she showed absolute terror of me. It broke my heart, and when she disappeared in that mysterious way--and--and--one of her shoes was found on the slope, what was I to think but that she had chosen to end her misery--this child! this babe I had loved as my own flesh and blood!--in the river where she had been forbidden to go?"

"Suicide by a child of six! You gave another reason for your persistent belief, at the time, Mrs. Ocumpaugh."

"Was I to give this one?"

"No; no one could expect you to do that, even if there had been no secret to preserve and the child had been your own. But the child did not go to the river. You are convinced of that now, are you not?"

"Yes."

"Where then did she go? Or rather, to what place was she taken? Somewhere near; somewhere within easy reach, for the alarm soon rose and then she could not be found. Mrs. Ocumpaugh, I am going to ask you an apparently trivial and inconsequent question. Was Gwendolen very fond of sweets?"

"Yes."

She was sitting upright now, staring me in the face in unconcealed astonishment and a little fear.

"What sort of candy--pardon me if I seem impertinent--had you in your house on the Wednesday the child disappeared? Any which she could have got at or the nurse given her?"

"There were the confections brought by the caterer; none other that I know of; I did not indulge her much in sweets."

"Was there anything peculiar about these confections either in taste or appearance?"

"I didn't taste them. In appearance they were mostly round and red, with a brandied cherry inside. Why, sir, why do you ask? What have these miserable lumps of sugar to do with Gwendolen?"

"Madam, do you recognize this?"

I took from my pocket the crushed mass of colored sugar and fruit I had picked up from the musty cushions of the old sofa in the walled-up room of the bungalow.

She took it and looked up, staring.

"It is one of them," she cried. "Where did you get it? You look as if--as if--"

"I had come upon a clue to Gwendolen? Madam, I believe I have. This candy has been held in a hot little hand. Miss Graham or one of the girls must have given it to her as she ran through the dining-room or across the side veranda on her way to the bungalow. She did not eat it offhand; she evidently fell asleep before eating it, but she clutched it very tight, only dropping it, I judge, when her muscles were quite relaxed by sleep; and then not far; the folds of her dress caught it, for--"

"What are you telling me?" The interruption was sudden, imperative. "I saw Gwendolen asleep; she held a string in her hand but no candy, and if she did--"

"Did you examine both hands, madam? Think! Great issues hang on a right settlement of this fact. Can you declare that she did not have this candy in one of her little hands?"

"No, I can not declare that."

"Then I shall always believe she did, and this same sweetmeat, this morsel from the table set for your guests on the afternoon of the sixteenth of this month, I found last night in the disused portion of the bungalow walled up by Mr. Ocumpaugh's father, but made accessible since by an opening let into the floor from the cellar. This latter I was enabled to reach by means of a trap-door concealed under the rug in the open part of this same building."

"I--I am all confused. Say that again," she pleaded, starting once more to her feet, but this time without meeting my eyes. "In the disused part of the bungalow? How came you there? No one ever goes there--it is a forbidden place."

"The child has been there--and lately."

"Oh!" her fingers began to tremble and twist themselves together. "You have something more than this to tell me. Gwendolen has been found and--" her looks became uncertain and wandered, as I thought, toward the river.

"She has not been found, but the woman who carried her into that place will soon be discovered."

"How? Why?"

I had risen by this time and could answer her on a level and face to face.

"Because the trail of her steps leads straight along the cellar floor. We have but to measure these footprints."

"And what?--what?"

"We find the abductor."

A silence, during which one long breath issued from her lips.

"Was it a man's or woman's steps?" she finally asked.

"A woman's, daintily shod; a woman of about the size of--"

"Who? Why do you play with my anguish?"

"Because I hate to mention the name of a friend."

"Ah! What do you know of my friends?"

"Not much. I happened to meet one of them, and as she is a very fine woman with exquisitely shod feet, I naturally think of her."

"What do you mean?" Her hand was on my arm, her face close to mine. "Speak! speak! the name!"

"Mrs. Carew."

I had purposely refrained up to this moment from bringing this lady, even by a hint, into the conversation. I did it now under an inner protest. But I had not dared to leave it out. The footprints I alluded to were startlingly like those left by her in other parts of the cellar floor; besides, I felt it my duty to see how Mrs. Ocumpaugh bore this name, notwithstanding my almost completely restored confidence in its owner.

She did not bear it well. She flushed and turned quickly from my side, walking away to the window, where she again took up her stand.

"You would have shown better taste by not following your first impulse," she remarked. "Mrs. Carew's footsteps in that old cellar! You presume, sir, and make me lose confidence in your judgment."

"Not at all. Mrs. Carew's feet have been all over that cellar floor. She accompanied me through it last night, at the time I found this crushed bonbon."

I could see that Mrs. Ocumpaugh was amazed, well-nigh confounded, but her manner altered from that moment.

"Tell me about it."

And I did. I related the doubts I had felt concerning the completeness of the police investigation as regarded the bungalow; my visit there at night with Mrs. Carew, and the discoveries we had made. Then I alluded again to the footprints and the important clue they offered.

"But the child?" she interrupted. "Where is the child? If taken there, why wasn't she found there? Don't you see that your conclusions are all wild--incredible? A dream? An impossibility?"

"I go by the signs," I replied. "There seems to be nothing else to go by."

"And you want--you intend, to measure those steps?"

"That is why I am here, Mrs. Ocumpaugh. To request permission to continue this investigation and to ask for the key to the bungalow. Mrs. Carew's is no longer available; or rather, I should prefer to proceed without it."

With sudden impulse she advanced rapidly toward me.

"What is Mrs. Carew doing this morning?" she asked.

"Preparing for departure. She is quite resolved to sail to-day. Do you wish to see her? Do you wish her confirmation of my story? I think she will come, if you send for her."

"There is no need." This after an instant's hesitation. "I have perfect confidence in Mrs. Carew; and in you too," she added, with what she meant for a kind look. She was by nature without coquetry, and this attempt to please, in the midst of an overwhelming distress absorbing all her faculties, struck me as the most pitiful effort I had ever seen. My feeling for her made it very hard for me to proceed.

"Then I may go on?" I said.

"Of course, of course. I don't know where the key is; I shall have to give orders. You will wait a few minutes, somewhere in one of the adjoining rooms, while I look up Mr. Atwater?"

"Certainly."

She was trembling, feverish, impatient.

"Shall _I_ not look up Mr. Atwater for you?" I asked.

"No. I am feeling better. I can go myself."

In another moment she had left the room, having forgotten her own suggestion that I should await her return in some adjoining apartment. _

Read next: Chapter 19. Frenzy

Read previous: Chapter 17. In The Green Boudoir

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