"Was there any reason alleged for the remarkable disappearance of the young man? I knew his father and mother very well, and admired them. I saw the boy in his schooldays, never afterwards. You have a child, I understand."
Edith lowered her eyes and looked out of the window on the busy street.
"It is for my child's sake that I have kept up the search," Sonia answered with maternal tenderness. "Insanity is supposed to be the cause. Horace acted strangely for three months before his disappearance, he grew quite thin, and was absent most of the time. As it was summer, which I spent at the shore with friends, I hardly noticed his condition.
It was only when he had gone, without warning, taking considerable money with him, that I recalled his queer behavior. Since then not a scrap of information, not a trace, nor a hint of him, has ever come back to me.
The detectives did their best until this moment. All has failed."
"Very sad," Livingstone said, touched by the hopeless tone. "Well, as you wish it then, I shall bring suit for divorce and alimony against Horace Endicott, and have the papers served on Arthur Dillon. He can ignore them or make his reply. In either case he must be brought to make affidavit that he is not the man you look for."
"And the others? The priest and Mrs. Dillon?" asked Edith.
"They are of no consequence," was Sonia's opinion.
After settling unimportant details the two women departed. Livingstone found the problem which they had brought to his notice fascinating. He had always marked Arthur Dillon among his associates, as an able and peculiar young man, he had been attracted by him, and had listened to his speeches with more consideration than most young men deserved. His amazing success in dealing with a Livingstone, his audacity and nerve in attacking the policy which he brought to nothing, were more wonderful to the lawyer than to the friends of Dillon, who had not seen the task in its entirety.
And this peculiar fellow was thought to be an Endicott, of his own family, of the English blood, more Irish than the Irish, bitterer towards him than the priests had been. The very impossibility of the thing made it charming. What course of thought, what set of circumstances, could turn the Puritan mind in the Celtic direction? Was there such genius in man to convert one personality into another so neatly that the process remained undiscoverable, not to be detected by the closest observation? He shook off the fascination. These two women believed it, but he knew that no Endicott could ever be converted.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
ARTHUR'S APPEAL.
Suit was promptly begun by Livingstone on behalf of Sonia for a divorce from Horace Endicott. Before the papers had been fully made out, even before the officer had been instructed to serve them on Arthur Dillon, the lawyer received an evening visit from the defendant himself. As a suspicious act he welcomed it; but a single glance at the frank face and easy manner, when one knew the young man's ability, disarmed suspicion.
The lawyer studied closely, for the first time with interest, the man who might yet prove to be his kinsman. He saw a form inclined to leanness, a face that might have been handsome but for the sunken cheeks, dark and expressive eyes whose natural beauty faded in the dark circles around them, a fine head with dead black hair, and a handsome beard, streaked with gray. His dress, gentleman-like but of a strange fashion, the lawyer did not recognize as the bachelor costume of Cherry Hill prepared by his own tailor. Nothing of the Endicott in face or manner, nothing tragical, the expression decorous and formal, perhaps a trifle quizzical, as this was their first meeting since the interview in London.
"I have called to enter a protest," Arthur began primly, "against the serving of the papers in the coming Endicott divorce case on your humble servant."
"As the papers are to be served only on Horace Endicott, I fail to see how you have any right or reason to protest," was the suave answer.
"I know all about the matter, sir, for very good reasons. For some months the movements of the two women concerned in this affair have been watched in my interest. Not long after they left you a few days ago, the result of their visit was made known to me. To anticipate the disagreeable consequences of serving the papers on me, I have not waited. I appeal to you not only as the lawyer of Mrs. Endicott, but also as one much to blame for the new persecution which is about to fall upon me."
"I recognize the touch," said Livingstone, unable to resist a smile.
"Mr. Dillon must be audacious or nothing."
"I am quite serious," Arthur replied. "You know part of the story, what Mrs. Endicott chose to tell you, but I can enlighten you still more. I appeal to you, as the lady's lawyer, to hinder her from doing mischief; and again I appeal to you as one to blame in part for the threatened annoyances. But for the lady who accompanied Mrs. Endicott, I would not be suspected of relationship with your honored family. But for the discipline which I helped to procure for that lady, she would have left me in peace. But for your encouragement of the lady, I would not have been forced to subject a woman to discipline. You may remember the effective Sister Claire?"
So true was the surprise that Livingstone blushed with sudden violence.
"That woman was the so-called escaped nun?" he exclaimed.
"Now Mrs. Curran, wife of the detective employed by Mrs. Endicott for five years to discover her lost husband. She satisfies her noblest aspirations by dancing in the theaters, ... and a very fine dancer she is. Her leisure is devoted to plotting vengeance on me. She pretends to believe that I am Horace Endicott; perhaps she does believe it. Anyway she knows that persecution will result, and she has persuaded Mrs.
Endicott to inaugurate it. I do not know if you were her selection to manage the case."
This time Livingstone did not blush, being prepared for any turn of mood and speech from this singular young man.
"As the matter was described to me," he said, "only a sentimental reason included you in the divorce proceedings. I can understand Mrs. Curran's feelings, and to what they would urge a woman of that character. Still, her statements here were very plausible."
"Undoubtedly. She made her career up to this moment on the plausible.
Let me tell you, if it is not too tedious, how she has pursued this theory in the face of all good sense."
The lawyer bowed his permission.
"I am of opinion that the creature is half mad, or subject to fits of insanity. Her husband had talked much of the Endicott case, which was not good for a woman of her peculiarities. By inspiration, insane suggestion, she assumed that I was the man sought for, and built up the theory as you have heard. First, she persuaded her good-natured husband, with whom I am acquainted, to investigate among my acquaintances for the merest suspicion, doubt, of my real personality. A long and minute inquiry, the details of which are in writing in my possession, was made by the detective with one result: that no one doubted me to be what I was born."
Livingstone cast a look at him to see the expression which backed that natural and happy phrase. Arthur Dillon might have borne it.
"She kept at her husband, however, until he had tried to surprise my relatives, my friends, my nurse, and my mother, ... yes, even my confessor, into admissions favorable to her mad dream. My rooms, my papers, my habits, my secrets were turned inside out; Mrs. Endicott was brought on from Boston to study me in my daily life; for days I was watched by the three. In the detective's house I was drugged into a profound sleep, and for ten minutes the two women examined my sleeping face for signs of Horace Endicott. When all these things failed, Sister Claire dragged her unwilling husband to California, where I had spent ten years of my life, and tried hard to find another Arthur Dillon, or to disconnect me with myself. She proved to her own satisfaction that these things could not be done. But there is a devil of perversity in her. She is like a boa constrictor ... I think that's the snake which cannot let go its prey once it has seized it. She can't let go. In desperation she is risking her own safety and happiness to make public her belief that I am Horace Endicott. In spite of the overwhelming proofs against the theory, and in favor of me, she is bent on bringing the case into court."
"Risking her own safety and happiness?" Livingstone repeated.
"If the wild geese among the Irish could locate Sister Claire, who is supposed to have fled the town long ago, her life would be taken. If this suit continues she will have to leave the city forever. Knowing this the devil in her urges her to her own ruin."
"You have kept close track of her," said Livingstone.
"You left me no choice," was the reply, "having sprung the creature on us, and then thrown her off when you found out her character. If she had only turned on her abettors and wracked them I wouldn't have cared."
"You protest then against the serving of these papers on you. Would it not be better to settle forever the last doubts in so peculiar a matter?"
"What have I to do with the doubts of an escaped nun, and of Mrs.
Endicott? Must I go to court and stand the odium of a shameful imputation to settle the doubts of a lunatic criminal and a woman whose husband fled from her with his entire fortune?"
"It is regrettable," the lawyer admitted with surprise. "As Mrs.
Endicott is perhaps the most deeply interested, I fear that the case must go on."
"I have come to show you that it will not be to the interest of the two women that it should go on. In fact I feel quite certain that you will not serve those papers on me after I have laid a few facts before you."
"I shall be glad to examine them in the interest of my client."
"Having utterly failed to prove me other than I am," Arthur said easily, while the lawyer watched with increasing interest the expressive face, "these women have accepted your suggestion to put me under oath as to my own personality. I would not take affidavit," and his contempt was evident. "I am not going to permit any public or official attempt to cast doubt on my good name. You can understand the feeling. My mother and my friends are not accustomed to the atmosphere of courts, nor of scandal. It would mean severe suffering for them to be dragged into so sensational a trial. The consequences one cannot measure beforehand. The unpleasantness lives after all the parties are dead. Since I can prevent it I am going to do it. As far as I am concerned Mrs. Endicott must be content with a simple denial, or a simple affirmation rather, that I am Arthur Dillon, and therefore not her husband. It is more than she deserves, because there is not a shred of evidence to warrant her making a single move against me. She has not been able to find in me a feature resembling her husband."
"Then, you are prepared to convince Mrs. Endicott that she has more to lose than to gain by bringing you into her divorce suit?"
"Precisely. Here is the point for her to consider: if the papers in this suit are served upon me, then there will be no letting-up afterward. Her affairs, the affairs of this woman Curran, the lives of both to the last detail, will be served up to the court and the public. You know how that can be done. I would rather not have it done, but I proffer Mrs.
Endicott the alternative."
"I do not know how strong an argument that would be with Mrs. Endicott,"
said Livingstone with interest.
"She is too shallow a woman to perceive its strength, unless you, as her lawyer and kinsman, make it plain to her," was the guileless answer.
"Mrs. Curran knows nothing of court procedure, but she is clever enough to foresee consequences, and her history before her New York fiasco includes bits of romance from the lives of important people."
Livingstone resisted the inclination to laugh, and then to get angry.
"You think then, that if Mrs. Endicott could be made to see the possibilities of a desperate trial, the possible exposures of her sins and the sins of others, that she would not risk it?"