YOUR ONCE LOVED HUSBAND.

He addressed it and gave it to the waitress to drop in the mail-box. He had no money to squander on detectives, but he had a friend, Connery, who as a reporter had achieved a few bits of sleuthing in cases that had baffled the police. That evening Gilfoyle went hunting for Connery.

CHAPTER XXIX

Kedzie simmered in her own wrath a long while before she realized that she had let Gilfoyle escape. He was the very man she was looking for, and she had planned to go even to Chicago to find him.

He had stumbled into her trap, and she had driven him out. She ran to the window and stared up and down the street, but there was no trace of him. She had no idea where he could have gone. She wrung her hands and denounced herself for a fool.

She went to the hall to pick up the photograph of Jim Dyckman. Both halves of it were gone. Now she was frightened. Gilfoyle had departed meekly, but he had taken the picture; therefore he must have been filled with hate. He had revenge in his mind. And she trembled at her danger.

He might strike at any time.

She suspected his exact intention. She dreaded to have Jim Dyckman call on her. She had a wild notion of asking him to take her away from New York--down to Atlantic City or up to the Berkshires--anywhere to be rid of Gilfoyle without being left alone. If she had done this she would have done just what Gilfoyle wanted her to, and the Mann Act could have been wielded again as a blackjack.

Meanwhile Anita was afraid to have Dyckman come to her apartment as he constantly did. She telephoned to him that she would be busy at the studio all day. She would meet him at dinner somewhere. But afterward she would come home alone on one pretext or another.

She carried out this plan--and spent a day of confused terror and anger.

When Gilfoyle's letter arrived, saying that he was on his way to Chicago, it gave her more delight than any other writing of his had ever given her. She need not skulk any more. Her problem was as far from solution as ever, but she wanted a respite from it, and she gave herself up to a few days of rapture. She was free from her work at the studio, and she was like a girl home from boarding-school on a vacation.

Dyckman found her charming in this mood. She made a child of him, and his years of dissatisfaction were forgotten. He romped through the festivals of New York like a cub.

There was no discussion of any date of marriage, and he was glad enough to let the matter drift. He did not want to marry Kedzie. He was satisfied to have her as a playmate. He was afraid to think of her as a wife, not only from fear of the public sensation it would make, but from fear of her in his home. Young men also know the timidities that are considered maidenly. He did not dream of Kedzie's reason for postponing always the matter of a wedding date.

Kedzie had come to depend on Jim for her entertainment. He took care of her evenings, gave them vivacity and opulence. He took her to theaters, to the opera, the music-halls, the midnight roofs, and other resorts for the postponement of sleep. Occasionally he introduced her to friends of his whom they encountered. It pained and angered him, and Kedzie, too, to note that the men were inclined to eye Kedzie with tolerant amus.e.m.e.nt. There was a twinkle of contempt in their smiling eyes that seemed to say:

"Where did Dyckman pick you up, my pretty?"

Kedzie's movie fame was unknown to Dyckman's crowd. She was treated, accordingly, as some exquisite chorus-girl or cabaret-pony that he had selected as a running-mate.

Dyckman could not openly resent what was subtly implied, but it touched his chivalry, and since he was engaged to Kedzie he felt that he ought at least to announce the fact. He was getting the game without the name, and that seemed unfair to Kedzie.

Kedzie felt the same veiled scorn, and it alarmed her; yet when Dyckman proposed the publication of their troth she forbade it vigorously. She writhed at the worse than Tantalus fate that compelled her to push from her own thirsty lips the grapes of felicity.

She had no intention of committing bigamy, even if she had been temptable to such recklessness. The inevitable brevity of its success was only too evident. A large part of the fun of marrying Dyckman would be the publication of it, and that would bring Gilfoyle back. She never before longed so ardently to see her husband as now.

She finally wrote him a letter begging him to return to New York for a conference. She couched it in luringly affectionate tones and apologized lavishly for scratching his face when he called. She addressed the appeal to the General Delivery in Chicago, as he had directed in the letter he wrote as a blind.

She neglected, as usual, to put her own address on the envelope or inside on the letter, which she signed with a mere "Anita." Gilfoyle did not call for the letter in Chicago, since he was in New York. It was held in Chicago for the legal period and then it was sent to the Dead Letter Office, where a clerk wasted a deal of time and ingenuity in an effort to trace the sender or the addressee.

Kedzie meanwhile had watched for the postman and hunted through her mail with frenzy. There was a vast amount of mail, for it is one of the hardships of the movie business that the actors are fairly showered with letters of praise, criticism, query, and flirtation.

But there was no letter ever from Gilfoyle.

Yet Gilfoyle was constantly within hailing distance. With the aid of his friend Connery he had concocted a scheme for keeping Kedzie and Dyckman under espionage. They had speedily learned that Dyckman was in constant attendance on Kedzie, and that they were careless of the hours alone, careless of appearances.

Gilfoyle never dreamed that the couple was chaperoned doubly by a certain lukewarmth of emotion and by an ambition to become man and wife. Gilfoyle imagined their relations to be as intimate as their opportunities permitted. He suffered jealous wrath, and would have a.s.saulted Dyckman in public if Connery had not quelled him.

Connery kept a cool head in the matter because his heart was not involved. He saw the wealth of Dyckman as the true object of their attack, and he convinced Gilfoyle of the profitableness of a little blackmail. He convinced Gilfoyle easily when they were far from Kedzie and close to poverty; but when they hovered near Kedzie, Connery had the convincing to do all over again.

He worked up an elaborate campaign for gaining entrance to Kedzie's apartment without following the cla.s.sic method of smashing the door down. He disliked that noisy approach because it would command notice; and publicity, as he well knew, is death to blackmail.

Connery adopted a familiar stratagem of the private detectives. He went to the apartment one day when he knew that Kedzie was out, and inquired for an alleged sister of his who had worked for Kedzie. He claimed to be a soldier on furlough. He engaged the maid in a casual parley which he led swiftly to a flirtation. She was a lonely maid and her plighted lover was away on a ca.n.a.l-boat. Connery had little difficulty in winning her to the acceptance of an invitation to visit a movie-show on her first evening off.

He paid the girl flattering attentions, and when he brought her back, gallantly asked for the key to unlock the door for her. He dropped the key on the floor, stooped for it, pressed it against a bit of soft soap he had in his left palm. Having secured the outline of the key, he secured also a return engagement for the next evening off. On this occasion he brought with him a duplicate of the key, and when he unlocked the door for the maid this time he gave her the duplicate and kept the original.

And now that he and Gilfoyle had an "open sesame" to the dovecote they grew impatient with delay. Gilfoyle's landlady had also grown impatient with delay, but Connery forced her to wait for what he called the psychological moment.

And thus Kedzie moved about, her life watched over by an invisible husband like a malignant Satan to whom she had sold her soul.

CHAPTER x.x.x

Jim Dyckman had many notes from Kedzie, gushing, all adjectives and adverbs, capitalized and underscored. He left them about carelessly, or locked them up and left the key. If he had not done that the lock on his desk was one that could be opened with a hairpin or with a penknife or with almost any key of a proper size.

There was no one to care except his valet. Dallam cared and read and made notes. He was horrified at the thought of Dyckman's marrying a movie actress. He would have preferred any intrigue to that disgrace.

It would mean the loss of a good position, too, for while Dyckman was an easy boss, if he were going to be an easy marrier as well, Dallam had too much self-respect to countenance a marriage beneath them.

If he could only have known of Gilfoyle's existence and his quests, how the two of them could have collaborated!

But Dallam's interest in life woke anew when one evening, as he was putting away the clothes Dyckman had thrown off, he searched his master's coat and found a letter from Mrs. Cheever.

DEAR OLD JIM,--What's happent you? I haven't seen you for ages. Couldn't you spare this evening to me? I'm alone--as always--and lonelier than usual. Do take pity on

Your devoted CHARITY C.

That note, so lightly written in seeming, had been torn from a desperate heart and written in tears and blood.

Since she had learned that her husband really loved Zada and that she was going to mother him a child, Charity had been unable to adjust her soul to the new problem.

The Reverend Doctor Mosely had promised her advice, but the poor man could not match his counsel with the situation. He did not believe in divorce, and yet he did not approve of illegal infants. How happy he could have been with either problem, with t'other away! In his dilemma he simply avoided Charity and turned his attention to the more regular ch.o.r.es of his parish.

Charity understood his silence, and it served to deepen her own perplexity. She was sure of only one thing--that she was caged and forgotten.

Cheever came home less and less, and he was evidently so harrowed with his own situation that Charity felt almost more sorry for him than angry at him. She imagined that he must be enduring no little from the whims and terrors of Zada. He was evidently afraid to speak to Charity. To ask for her mercy was contrary to all his nature. He never dreamed that the dictagraph had brought her with him when he learned of Zada's intensely interesting condition, and her exceedingly onerous demands. He did not dare ask Charity for a divorce in order that he might legitimize this byblow of his. He could imagine only that she would use the information for some ruinous vengeance. So he dallied with his fate in dismal irresolution.

Charity had his woes to bear as well as her own. She knew that she had lost him forever. The coquetries she had used to win him back were impossible even to attempt. He had no use for her forgiveness or her charms. He was a mere specter in her home, doomed for his sins to walk the night.

In despising herself she rendered herself lonelier. She had not even herself for companion. Her heart had always been eager with love and eager for it. The spirit that impelled her to endure hardships in order to expend her surplusage of love was unemployed now. She had feasted upon love, and now she starved.

Cheever had been a pa.s.sionate courtier and, while he was interested, a fiery devotee. When he abandoned her she suffered with the devastation that deserted wives and recent widows endure but must not speak of. It meant terribly much to Charity Coe to be left alone. It was dangerous to herself, her creeds, her ideals.