The Chief Legatee | Page 9

action. Indeed, that gentleman looked greatly changed.
He not only gave evidence of a sleepless night but showed none of the
spirit of the previous evening, and hesitated quite painfully when
Gerridge asked him if he did not intend to go ahead with the interview
they had promised themselves.
"That's as it may be," was the hesitating reply. "I hardly think that I
shall visit the man you mean this morning. He interests me and I hope
that none of his movements will escape you. But I'm not ready to talk
to him. I prefer to wait a little; to give my wife a chance. I should feel
better, and have less to forget."
"Just as you say," returned the detective stiffly. "He's under our thumb
at present, I can't tell when he may wriggle out."
"Not while your eye's on him. And your eye won't leave him as long as

you have confidence in the reward I've promised you."
"Perhaps not; but you take the life out of me. Last night you were too
hot; this morning you are too cold. But it's not for me to complain. You
know where to find me when you want me." And without more ado the
detective went out.
Mr. Ransom remained alone and in no enviable frame of mind. He was
distrustful of himself, distrustful of the man who had made all this
trouble, and distrustful of her, though he would not acknowledge it.
Every baser instinct in him drove him to the meeting he declined. To
see the man--to force from him the truth, seemed the only rational thing
to do. But the final words of his wife's letter stood in his way. She had
advised patience. If patience would clear the situation and bring him
the result he so ardently desired, then he would be patient--that is, for a
day; he did not promise to wait longer. Yes, he would give her a day.
That was time enough for a man suffering on the rack of such an
intolerable suspense--one day.
But even that day did not pass without breaks in his mood and more
than one walk in the direction of the St. Denis Hotel. If Gerridge's eye
was on him as well as on the special object of his surveillance, he must
have smiled, more than once, at the restless flittings of his client about
the forbidden spot. In the evening it was the same, but the next morning
he remained steadfastly at his hotel. He had laid out his future course in
these words: "I will extend the time to three days; then if I do not hear
from her I will get that wry-necked fellow by the throat and twist an
explanation from him." But the three days passed and he found the
situation unchanged. Then he set as his limit the end of the week, but
before the full time had elapsed he was advised by Gerridge that he
himself was being followed in his turn by a couple of private detectives;
and while still under the agitation of this discovery was further
disconcerted by having the following communication thrust into his
hand in the open street by a young woman who succeeded in losing
herself in the crowd before he had got so much as a good look at her.
You can judge of his amazement as he read the few lines it contained.

Read the papers to-night and forget the stranger at the St. Denis.
That was all. But the writing was hers. The hours passed slowly till the
papers were cried in the street. What Mr. Ransom read in them
increased his astonishment, I might say his anxiety. It was a paragraph
about his wife, an almost incredible one, running thus:
A strange explanation is given of the disappearance of Mrs. Roger
Ransom on her wedding-day. As our readers will remember, she
accompanied her husband to the hotel, but managed to slip away and
leave the house while he still stood at the desk. This act, for which
nothing in her previous conduct has in any way prepared her friends, is
now said to have been due to the shock of hearing, some time during
her wedding-day, that a sister whom she had supposed dead was really
alive and in circumstances of almost degrading poverty. As this sister
had been her own twin the effect upon her mind was very serious. To
find and rescue this sister she left her newly made husband in the
surreptitious manner already recorded in the papers. That she is not
fully herself is shown by her continued secrecy as to her whereabouts.
All that she has been willing to admit to the two persons she has so far
taken into her confidence--her husband and the agent who