Unstrung and in tears, she threw herself into Mrs. Gibson's outstretched arms, and Nellie and her mother, overcome with surprise and grief, supported her as she walked into another room.

"Hosley, I demand that you tell me what this means," said Mr. Gibson, advancing, the lines of his stern face tightly drawn. He had such faith in Gabrielle he could not doubt her words--and yet he had loved Jim Hosley these many years, and he could not, dared not, believe that his faith in Jim was founded on a cleverly contrived imitation of the finest qualities of manhood. "What does this all mean--this opposition of Tescheron, this sudden action of Gabrielle?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I WROTE IT, GABRIELLE--AND FORGIVE ME."--_Page_ 288.]

Jim could only feebly remonstrate against the pursuing evil which had clung close to his heels since the very day he had asked Mr. Tescheron for his daughter's hand, he told Mr. Gibson; since the very night of the fire; since the very night of my connection with the problem when it began to develop as a simple affair of the heart.

"Mr. Gibson, I wrote those letters years ago, foolishly, to be sure, but innocently, believe me. They now appear to ruin me," he huskily proceeded. "But Gabrielle would be fair and forgive me that. No, it is not that I wrote the letters--there is something hidden. She will not tell me what it is. I have begged her to tell me, but she will not. She would only tell me she loved me when I entreated her to confide in me the cause of her father's hatred. Now in a flash she infers something, and I can see she believes her father, and joins him against me. Mr.

Gibson, bear with me a moment. Let me see her now--"

Mr. Gibson went to the door and called her softly.

His wife's voice was heard in reply:

"Gabrielle has gone."

CHAPTER XX

A shambling step along the floor of my hall one evening, long past nine o'clock, aroused me from thoughts of Hosley, the man whose image filled my home hours with a creeping shame and dread. A knock on my door, the first since I had been living there, startled me.

Before I could advance, Jim Hosley stumbled in and braced his worn body against the wall. He reached for my hand and I took it, and forgave him everything I had suspected he had done, and every crime he might have committed. The look on Jim Hosley's face that night would have won the pardon of a cannibal chief; it would have halted a Spanish inquisition, stayed the commune of Paris and wrung unadulterated, anonymous pity from the heart of an Irish landlord or a monopolist. A minute before I was for hanging Jim Hosley (provided my connection with the case was not revealed). Now, when I saw him and felt his hand once more in the grasp of comradeship, I was with him heart and soul, and scoundrel though he might be, a lineal descendant of old Bluebeard, perhaps, I stood ready to sharpen and pa.s.s his knives to him and a.s.sist in any humble way a willing and obliging servant could to make the business a success.

"Ben, I have searched for you for three hours. Thank Heaven, I am near you at last! I lay in the next room at the hospital, but Gabrielle would not let me see you," were his first words.

"In the hospital? With me in the next room? And Gabrielle--"

"Yes, Ben; we can talk all night, and then we shan't understand. How did those letters written to the girl--"

He flung himself into a chair. He was exhausted and ten years older.

Pain in his leg prompted him to ask me to remove his shoe. I helped him into my dressing-gown, gave him a pipe, plenty of pillows in an easy chair and fondled him like a prodigal son. I was never so glad to see a mortal since I peeped into the world. The fatted calf's subst.i.tute, a dish of pork and beans, was put to heat in a pan of water on the gas stove. The coffee-pot was "rastled" under the tap to remove the early morning aroma which clung to the grounds always left to await my attention the following morning. The egg poacher, the toaster, the slab of bacon, and a mince pie, bought an hour before to produce sleep, were brought out and displayed to make a scene like the old days when joy was unconfined, when women were mere theories and courtship a pastime.

Jim in his despair warmed up and actually smiled. That heart-ache which had overwhelmed him and made life so unbearable when he entered, gave way, and hope, with the smell of bacon and fried eggs, mounted higher.

Grief, powerful dynamo though it be, may be tickled by a smaller one--a square meal often brings its victim into line.

"Jim, we'll take the night to talk this thing over. It will take all that time for me to tell you that I am so mighty glad to see you again, and besides, it will take time to eat as well, for you look to me as if food was the one supply you had failed to connect with since that fire.

Tell me, Jim, how Gabrielle could keep you away? How could you allow a woman to separate you from your old pal? Does it seem reasonable? And yet you always were so innocently plausible I could never doubt you. How did that happen? Tell me now, before I give you anything to eat. I would like to feel a little more sure on that point."

I whistled and rattled on, perfectly charmed to be again under the influence of that wife-slayer's magic smile or his potent frown--it was all the same to me.

"I simply don't know," answered Jim. "I can't tell you. I don't know, Ben. I am easily led by Gabrielle. I was weak. Had I insisted upon seeing you from the first, no matter what happened--but there, let it pa.s.s. I asked your help with her father. There I made a bad mistake. You did something--I don't know what it was exactly, but you put your foot 'way down in--you upset me from the first. But let it pa.s.s. I'll take all you can give me to eat and then we'll go at the thing again; not where we left off the night we parted at the flat, but where we stand now. Gabrielle, too, has forsaken me, Ben." He looked at me with his mouth drawn down, his pinched face betraying surrender, his heavy eyes burdened with care.

"Forsaken you! How so? Was she not with you at the hospital?"

"Those letters to the Brown girl, in Thirty-eighth Street, are at the bottom of it, Ben. I told you they would come back, if you wrote so much. Those letters have ruined me--ruined me with the one woman I have loved. The other women--those to whom you wrote, you induced me to fool.

Don't you see you did, Ben? Those letters you signed my name to, and gushed your poetry into like a stream from a fire-hose, swept me off; all the women you wrote to thought they were crazy letters, Ben. I never dared tell you that; but they all put me down for a fool, and as I had no particular interest in them I took the blame, Ben. I never supposed the letters could reach Gabrielle. I had them all in my bureau drawer when the fire started. I forgot to burn them--just chucked them in there when I got them back from Miss Brown. There must have been over a hundred. And, blowed if you didn't work in a lot of my hair! Egad, you must have clipped it when I fell asleep listening to you read them. I have heard them read since, too, at the hospital. Our nurse read one very prettily, and then I thought my hour had come--"

"Our nurse read them! My nurse in your room, too?"

"Yes. We had the same nurse."

"Sit up and have some pork and beans and a cup of coffee, Jim," said I.

I could see then that there was no need to go into too many particulars. I did not care to go much further till I had collected some definite thoughts and arranged to conceal the amount of cash my wisdom had seen fit to call forth from my bank account for a lot of old junk that had been stored in Jim Hosley's bureau, and had fallen down to the next floor when the fire took place--just the spot the detectives wanted it to land precisely, in order to connect me with the case. It would not have surprised me to learn that Smith and Obreeon, his partner (for I could plainly see he was), had started that fire with full knowledge of the location of those letters and the exact spot they would fall if a match were touched to our abode at the proper time. My handwriting in the Tescheron messages had given me away.

"What do you think of those beans, Jim?"

"I think they taste more like home than anything I have met since I took that bath."

"There, don't say another word, Jim. I won't accuse you of anything. You had your bath, and both of us have enjoyed the sweat it produced. When we come out of this thing we'll be the purest mortals that ever took a course in practical morality over a hot stove as a starter. I told you about that quilt. So, that is the way it was, eh? Well, Jim, you certainly do know how to set a house afire, although I never believed you would set the world afire. I take it you will clip the ends pretty short when you start in to make quilts again for that purpose. But never mind, old boy, try another cup of this coffee."

"Why is it they can't make coffee in a hospital?" asked Jim.

"They do make it," I answered; "but the doctors and nurses never let any of it get away from them. They find it too strong for boarders. It's bad for their nerves. The only thing that's good for a sick man is something you can sterilize, and then they may charge double prices for it. Jim, did you ever feel so hungry before when you settled down there?"

I was trying to divert his attention from the trouble I had put him through, for I realized there was no hope for his case unless I yet took a hand in and patched up the chasm which separated him from an imagined paradise.

It is surprising what a relation there is between the digestion and heart.

"We were to have been married a week from to-day, Ben," said Jim.

My knife and fork clattered to the floor!

"That's so; and now we are parted forever."

I was struck dumb--only one week to make good, to save the wreck from total loss! Something must be done quickly. In the past everything I had undertaken had been a failure, but I must persist. It was close to ten o'clock--a bad time to begin, for my midnight correspondence had never been correctly construed.

"When did you leave Gabrielle?" I asked, with an idea ranging in my fancy. It was an intangible idea, but I thought it promised relief.

"About five o'clock to-day; we separated at the Gibsons'."

"You stay here till I come back, and go on eating, Jim," I directed, and grabbing my hat I rushed for the door.

"Stop, Ben! Don't you do a thing to-night," commanded Jim. "What can you do now? Don't you know you made a bad break the last time?"

But I kept right on and sent one more message from the nearest messenger office. It was directed to Miss Tescheron at her home and read:

"Don't recall those wedding invitations till you see me to-morrow.

"BENJAMIN HOPKINS."

There was just enough of the indefinite in that, I imagined, to suspend operations; it would be a straw for the woman to clutch. She would not risk the unpleasant notoriety of a wedding postponement, if there could be a chance that she had acted impulsively at least, and had been misled by circ.u.mstantial evidence she had ignored till there came into the case the other-woman element. I did not fear the wound in her heart, unless the gangrene of jealousy entered to prevent the successful issue of my hastily arranged plan.

When I returned to the house, Jim was greatly disturbed.

"Ben, you have rushed out and sent another message; I can see it in your face," he said. "What can you be thinking of? Why did you not wait till to-morrow and talk this thing over?"