CHAPTER VI.

A BOLD AND CUNNING SCHEME.

On the afternoon previous to Mr. Dinsmore's death a woman of perhaps sixty years alighted from an elegant private carriage before the door of a fine residence on West ---- street, in New York city.

She was simply but richly clad in heavy, l.u.s.trous black silk, and was a woman of fine appearance, although her face wore a look of deep sadness which seemed to indicate some hidden trouble or sorrow.

Her hair was almost white, but carefully arranged, and lay low upon her placid, but slightly wrinkled, brow in soft, silken waves that were very becoming to her. Her complexion was unusually clear and fair for one of her years, although it might have been enhanced somewhat by the fine vail of white tulle which she wore over it. She was tall and commanding in figure, a little inclined toward portliness, but every motion was replete with graceful dignity and high-bred repose.

After giving directions to her coachman to wait for her, she mounted the steps leading to the door, pausing for an instant to read the name, "R.

Wesselhoff, M.D." engraved upon a silver plate, before ringing the bell.

A colored servant soon answered her call, and responded affirmatively to her inquiry if the noted physician was in, then ushered her into a small but elegantly appointed reception-room upon the right of the lofty hall.

Five minutes later an elderly and singularly prepossessing man entered and saluted his visitor in a gracious and respectful manner.

"Mrs. Walton, I suppose?" he remarked, just glancing at the card which she had given the servant.

The woman bowed, then observed, with a patient but pathetic sigh:

"I have called, Doctor Wesselhoff, upon a very sad errand, and one which I trust you will regard as strictly confidential."

"Certainly, madame; I so regard all communications made by my patients,"

the gentleman courteously responded.

"I have a son," madame resumed, "who has of late betrayed symptoms of the strangest mania, although he appears to be in perfect health in all other respects. He imagines that some gigantic robbery has been committed; sometimes he declares that bonds to a large amount have been stolen, at other times it is money, then again that costly jewels have disappeared; but the strangest phase of his malady consists in the fact that he accuses me, and sometimes other members of the family, of being the thief, and insists that he must have me arrested. This has gone on for some time, and I have been obliged to adopt every kind of device in order to keep him from carrying out his threats and thus creating a very uncomfortable scandal. This morning he became more violent than usual, and I felt obliged to take some decided step in regard to proper treatment for him; therefore my visit to you."

"It is a singular mania, truly," said the physician, who had been listening with the deepest interest to his companion's recital. "I think I never have met with anything exactly like it before in all my experience. How old is your son, Mrs. Walter?"

"Twenty-four years," the woman replied, with a heavy sigh; "and," she added, tremulously, "I cannot bear the thought of sending him to any common lunatic asylum. I learned recently that you sometimes receive private patients to test their cases before sending them to a public inst.i.tution, and that you have frequently effected a cure in critical cases. Will you take my son and see what you think of his case--what you can do for him? I shall not mind the cost--I wish to spare nothing, and I do not wish any one, at least of our friends and acquaintances, to know that he is under treatment for insanity until you p.r.o.nounce your verdict.

He seems sane enough upon all other topics, except now and then he persists in calling himself by some other name, and I know he would be very sensitive, should he recover, to have his condition known. He does not even suspect that I am contemplating any such thing, and I shall be obliged to use strategy in bringing him to you."

Doctor Wesselhoff was evidently very deeply interested in the case; he had never heard of anything like it before, and all his professional enthusiasm was aroused.

He spent some time questioning his visitor, and finally decided that he would receive the young man immediately--to-morrow afternoon Mrs. Walton might bring him, he said, if she could conveniently arrange to do so.

"I think, perhaps, it will not be best for me to come with him myself,"

the lady said, after considering the matter for some time. "Truly," she added, with a sad smile, "I almost fear to go out with him, lest he put his threats into execution and have me arrested. But I think I can arrange with my sister, Mrs. Vanderbeck, to persuade him to come with her as if to call upon a friend."

The matter was arranged thus, and madame arose to take her leave, the physician accompanying her to the door and feeling deep sympathy for the cultured and attractive woman in her strange affliction.

The next day, about one o'clock--the day following Mona Montague's attendance at the opera with Ray Palmer, and only a few hours after Mr.

Dinsmore's death, a brilliantly beautiful woman, who might have been forty-five years of age, entered the handsome store of Amos Palmer & Co., diamond merchants and jewelers.

She was exquisitely dressed in an expensive, tailor-made costume of gray ladies' cloth, with a gray felt bonnet trimmed with the same shade of velvet as her dress. Her hands were faultlessly gloved, her feet incased in costly imported boots, and everything about her apparel bespoke her a favorite of wealth and luxury.

Her appearance was the more marked from the fact that her hair was a deep, rich red, and curled about her fair forehead in lovely natural curls, while she wore over her face a spotted black lace veil, which, however, did not quite conceal some suspicious wrinkles and "crow's-feet," if that had been her object in wearing it.

She had driven to the store in a plain but elegant _coupe_, drawn by a pair of black horses in gold-mounted harness. Her driver was apparently a man of about thirty years, and of eminently respectable appearance in his dark-green livery.

She approached a counter on entering the store, and, in a charmingly affable manner, asked to look at some diamonds.

As it happened, at that hour, one of the clerks was absent, and Mr. Amos Palmer was himself in attendance in his place, and politely served the lady, laying out before her a glittering array of the costly stones she desired to examine.

He saw at once that she was a judge of the gems, for she selected not the largest and most showy, but the purest and the best, and he could but admire her discernment and taste.

When she had made her selections, and she took plenty of time about it, chatting all the while with the gentleman in the most intelligent and fascinating manner, she remarked that she wished her husband to see them before she concluded her purchase.

"But," she added, thoughtfully, "he is something of an invalid, and not able to come to the store to examine them; have you not some one whom you could trust, Mr. Palmer, to take the stones to my home for his inspection? If he sanctions my choice he will at once write a check for their price, or the attendant could return them if they were not satisfactory."

"Certainly," Mr. Palmer graciously responded; "we frequently have such requests, and are only too willing to accommodate our customers. Will madame kindly give me her address?"

Madame smiled as she drew a costly card-case from her no less costly shopping-bag, and taking a heavy card with beveled edges from it, laid it upon the counter before the jeweler, remarking that she should like to have the clerk accompany her directly back in her own carriage, as she wanted the matter decided at once, for the diamonds were to be worn that evening if they suited.

"Mrs. William Vanderbeck, No. 98 ---- street," Mr. Palmer read, and then slipped the card into his vest pocket, after which he beckoned a clerk to him.

"Ask my son to step this way a moment," he said.

The man bowed respectfully, bestowing an admiring glance upon the attractive woman on the other side of the counter, and then withdrew to a private office at the other end of the room.

A moment later Ray Palmer made his appearance and approached his father.

Mr. Palmer introduced his son to Mrs. Vanderbeck, mentioned her desire that some one be sent to her residence with the diamonds she had selected for her husband's approval, and asked if he would a.s.sume the responsibility.

The young man readily consented, for the duty was not an unusual one, and immediately returned to the office for his coat and hat, while his father carefully put up the costly stones in a convenient form for him to take, and chatted socially with the beautiful Mrs. Vanderbeck meantime.

When they were ready Ray slipped the package into one of the outside pockets of his overcoat, but retained his hold upon it, and then followed the lady from the store to her carriage, and the next moment they drove away.

The young man found his companion a most charming woman. She was bright, witty, cultured and highly educated. She had evidently seen a great deal of the world, and was full of anecdotes, which she knew how to relate with such effect that he forgot for the time everything but the charm of her presence and conversation.

The drive was rather a long one, but Ray did not mind that, and was, on the whole, rather sorry when the carriage stopped, and Mrs. Vanderbeck remarked, in the midst of a witty anecdote:

"Here we are at last--ah--"

This last e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n was caused by discovering that she could not rise from her seat, her dress having been shut into the door of the _coupe_.

Ray bent forward with a polite "allow me," to a.s.sist her, but found that he could not disengage the dress.

Just then the coachman opened the door, but in spite of the young man's utmost care, the beautiful cloth was badly torn in the operation.

"What a pity!" he exclaimed, in a rueful tone.

But madame looked up with a silvery laugh.

"Never mind," she said lightly, "accidents will happen, and I ought to have been more careful when I entered the carriage."

Ray stepped out upon the sidewalk, where he stood waiting to a.s.sist his companion, who, however, was trying to pin the rent in her skirt together. Then gathering up some packages that were lying on the seat opposite, she laughingly inquired: