The Mission of Poubalov

CHAPTER XXVII.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

"About this hour, one week ago to-day," thought Clara as she took her place again in the coupé, "I should have been getting into a carriage at the church door, with Ivan, as his wife! What an eternity seems to have passed since then! Will the search and the waiting never end?"

There were no tears now, no disposition to give way. The dull ache at her heart was there, and it seemed as if it would stay forever, but all emotion now was held in check by her determination not to let the day pass without a decisive investigation of this latest clew that had so far led to so much racing about, and thus far, too, to the utter defeat of her every plan.

"Where to, miss?" asked Mike who had been standing at the coupé door.

Clara had forgotten him for the moment, forgotten even where she was.

Aroused to the work in hand, she debated for about one second whether to appeal to a lawyer to get a search-warrant for her.

She dismissed the suggestion as likely to involve too much delay. She had never had any experience in law suits, but she had that general conviction due to the accepted phrase "the law's delay," that no one should resort to the courts unless there were ample time and to spare.

"We will go first to my uncle's house," she said, "and I would like to have you take such a route that you will pass the house where we saw Poubalov and Patterson this forenoon."

"An' I s'pose I'm to let you know if I see what's-his-name or Patterson on the way?"

"By all means! do not stop unless you do."

The half hour's drive to Roxbury was without adventure. Clara now had the curtains of the coupé up, and she glanced from side to side through the windows as they rolled along, ever alert to catch any sign of her adversaries.

The old tavern looked, indeed, deserted.

It needed but a touch of moss or ivy, to suggest a ruin, for it was not only an ancient building, but sadly out of repair as well.

After they had passed beyond it a little way, Clara signaled to Mike to stop.

"I dare not leave this place unguarded a moment," she said; "there is no telling when Poubalov will return, but I must go home for a very short time, or there will be anxiety and perhaps search for me. Suppose you stay here till I come back. It won't take me long if I go by car. Please, Michael, don't do anything rash. There was another good fellow, not so sensible as you, poor man! who tried to help me, and he got himself into dreadful trouble over it. This man, Poubalov, is a terrible enemy, Michael."

"Is he the sort that carries a gun in one pocket and a razor in another?" asked Mike with perfect seriousness.

"He goes well armed," replied Clara, earnestly, "and he has neither conscience nor fear. You know what I want to accomplish, Michael, but if any life is risked to save another's, it must be mine. I shall be very much displeased if anything serious happens while I am gone. Wait for me, sure."

"All right, miss," said Mike, resignedly; "if anything happens after you get back, though, you bet I'll take a hand in!"

And if there had been any temptation for a scrimmage during Clara's absence, there is no manner of doubt that Mike would have taken part in it in spite of her injunctions.

Clara found Louise in a very nervous condition.

"I have not been so much worried about you, dear," she said, "for I have learned to feel confidence that you can take care of yourself. Still I am relieved to see you safe again. My chief anxiety is about papa. I am afraid there is something very troublesome in his business, and that he is breaking down under the strain."

"I know that his business has been troubling him very much of late," responded Clara, "for he told me so, and any one could see that he is much disturbed; but how has he shown it to-day? I didn't see him at breakfast, you know."

"No, he hurried to his office, as he told me later, to get some important mail. I didn't notice anything beyond his usual nervous manner – that is, his recent manner, at breakfast time, but about half an hour after you had gone he returned in great haste and inquired for you. I told him you had gone with Paul and another man who had given you a clew, and that I couldn't tell when you would return. He seemed very much disappointed, and walked up and down the room several times. I asked him if he had any news about Ivan. He answered abruptly: 'I think so. I must see Clara.'"

Startled by hope and fear at once, Clara sank into a chair.

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Louise in dismay, "don't please break down now, for that isn't all, and I am so afraid you'll need all your strength to-day."

"I am strong," said Clara, resolutely, but it was all she could do to keep her voice steady; "this day will see the end one way or another, and I am prepared for it."

"I begged papa to tell me what he had heard, but he refused to do so, almost roughly, too. 'Tell her to wait when she comes in,' he said, and he went out again. He came back at luncheon time looking dreadfully excited. His first words were an inquiry for you. The perspiration rolled down his face as he tried to be calm. He couldn't eat or keep still. I tried to soothe him, but he wouldn't let me. Then I insisted that he tell me what he had heard. 'I haven't heard anything,' he answered excitedly; 'who said I had? I only surmise. I must see Clara.' We both supposed you would come home to luncheon, and he waited for you as long as his impatience would let him. He went away about fifteen minutes ago, telling me again to have you wait for him. I am dreadfully alarmed."

"So am I," said Clara in a low voice. She was beginning to feel a sense of confusion, and she had to think hard to convince herself that she had really left Paul on guard at Bulfinch Place and Michael in the street near the old tavern. It seemed to her essential that she should be in both places, and here at home also. She had intended to seek her uncle's assistance in any event, and now he was vainly looking for her with some manner of important and, it seemed likely, bad news.

"I am faint," she added after a moment; "perhaps I can think better if I have a cup of tea."

Louise hastened to give the orders to the servant, and a few minutes later Clara ate and drank. It was well that she thought of luncheon, well that she could eat, for her vital energies had been severely drawn on, and there was much more ahead of her to do. After she had refreshed herself she said:

"I cannot wait for uncle. I don't know what is the most important thing to do, but I feel that I must not wait here. I will send Michael, the cabman, back. Please see that he has luncheon, and keep him here until uncle returns. Then send him for me. He will know where to find me, and I promise to come home at once unless – Well, send him to me, and I will return if I can."

Louise was tearful at Clara's departure, but she did not try to detain her. It would have done no good, and she knew it.

When Clara found Mike faithfully on guard just where she had left him, she told him her programme, and together they hunted for a place from which she could keep her eyes on the old tavern, unobserved by Poubalov, should he return.

They found it in the sitting-room of a house across the way, the mistress of which, a plain, practical woman who knew the woes of economy, was not averse to renting for a few hours the apartment she seldom had time to use, and never on a Monday.

This done, Mike drove to Mr. Pembroke's and hitched his horse at the gate, with its nose in a feed-bag. The young man made short work of the luncheon Louise had prepared for him, and then promptly fell asleep over the book she gave him to while away time with.

No good end will be served by reviewing the lonely hours of Clara's vigil. It was with her, as with Paul, a monotonous period, far harder to endure, in some senses, than the exciting and exacting experiences of the forenoon.

It will be enough, then, to say that when Mike came in the edge of the evening to tell her that her uncle was at home, she had seen no sign of Poubalov or Patterson, or of life in the ancient tavern.

Reluctantly she quitted her post, because nothing had happened, willingly because she hoped for definite information of some kind from her uncle. The coupé was at the door.

"Will you want me longer, miss?" asked Mike as she came out, prepared to go home.

"I suppose you ought to go," answered Clara, doubtfully.

"I dunno," said Mike, in the same manner; "me boss will be wonderin' what's become of the rig."

The long day, spent so far as he could see to no purpose, had tried him, and yet, had Clara said the word he would have remained in one spot through the night. Clara did not say it.

She, too, was fatigued, not more with the exertion of the first half of the day than with the tedious watching of she second.

"You may drive me home," she said wearily; "and if your employer will let you, you might come back in an hour or two to see if I need you."

Mike, therefore, drove away, when he had left Clara at Mr. Pembroke's gate.

She went up to the house, and Louise met her at the door with a white, frightened face.

"Papa is worse than ever," she whispered; "go to him at once. He is in the library."

Clara opened the door and went in.

Her uncle sat at the table, with his arms and head upon it, and he did not look up until she touched him and spoke to him.

"I am sorry, uncle dear," she said, "that I was not at home when you wanted me."

He raised his head with a groan.

"It doesn't matter," he responded; "you could have done nothing, as it has happened."

"Didn't you have some news for me, uncle? Tell me; I can endure anything."

He tried to look at her, but a violent fit of trembling seized him and he averted his eyes.

"I thought there was going to be news, good news," he stammered, "but – " and he shook his head sorrowfully.

"Do you mean that you have been disappointed, uncle?"

"Disappointed!" he repeated excitedly; "worse! All is lost, Clara, lost! Oh! that wily Russian!"

"What Russian, uncle? In mercy's name, tell me!"

"Your man Poubalov! He is – " Mr. Pembroke's words stuck in his throat and he looked at Clara with watery eyes.

"You have seen him then," she whispered faintly.

Mr. Pembroke nodded.

"And you have nothing to tell me?"

Her uncle opened his lips, tried to speak, and failing, grasped the table with both hands while his eyes fixed themselves in a stare and his face grew livid.

Clara ran to the sideboard in the dining-room and brought him a glass of brandy.

She poured a quantity down his throat till he gasped with pain.

The spasm passed, but left him weak, well-nigh helpless, and Clara summoned the servant to take him to his room.

A neighboring physician was called in, and after half an hour or so he reported that Mr. Pembroke was in no immediate danger.

Clara wished to see him, not, however, to torment him with questions, but the physician advised that he be left alone, with merely a servant, or Louise at hand to attend to his needs.

"I am pretty certain," added the doctor, "that your presence would irritate him."

Clara withdrew to the drawing-room and tried to collect her thoughts. She had not heard from Paul and it was now eight o'clock. It could not be that nothing had happened during the long afternoon. Something surely had occurred, and that through Poubalov, to prostrate her uncle – Ah! she could not sit still. Her programme had not been fully performed. She was useless here, in the way, the doctor had said that plainly enough. The tavern must be searched to-night, and if Paul were not there to help, she must do without him.

She said nothing to Louise, or the servants. In the kitchen she found a candle and a box of matches. There and elsewhere about the house were keys of various descriptions. She took every one she could lay her hands on, and thus provided, set forth alone.

It was a very quiet, retired street, on which the tavern stood. Once it had been a main road, but traffic had long since been diverted into other channels. She saw nobody as she approached the gloomy structure with its overhanging porch, and few lights were in the windows of adjacent houses. Under the porch she paused a moment in the effort to still the beating of her heart. Then, instead of making any attempt to pass through the front door, she went around to the driveway that Paul had described, and came to an entrance at the very back of the tavern. She placed a trembling hand upon the knob and sought to insert a key in the lock – but the door was opening before her! It was not only not locked, it had not been latched, and the pressure of her hand had set it ajar.

With unsteady step and with her mind bewildered by grewsome conjectures, Clara entered. She closed the door behind her and lit the candle. Had Poubalov, then, returned when she had weakly given up the watching, and abducted Ivan a second time? What did her uncle's words mean? "All is lost!" Was Ivan – She did not permit herself to frame the thought completely, but gathering all her resolution set forth to accomplish her task. Not even indulging in a useless regret that Paul was not with her, she looked about the room in which she stood. It had once been a kitchen, and a glance at it was enough. An open door was before her and she passed through it.

This was evidently the dining-room, and several doors were in view, only one of which was open. Feeling that this indicated the course taken by Poubalov in carrying Ivan out of the house from the room where he had been confined, she pushed on, and passing through this door, found herself in the front hall. There was a stairway at her right hand, and doors at both right and left. Whither should she go? The doors were closed and she chose the stairs.

At the top were two corridors as well as the passage leading to another flight of stairs. Haphazard she proceeded along the corridor to the left. It was tortuous, like all hotel passages, and the floor was broken here and there by steps, now up, now down. She passed many doors, but all were closed. At the very end were two doors, almost side by side, and as she stood hesitant, her blood chilled and her heart leaped to her throat.

Was that a groan that she had heard behind one of those doors?

Utterly unable to move, she listened with painful intentness. Yes – again it came, muffled, feeble, inarticulate, but unmistakably the sound of a human voice. In her agony of apprehension Clara found herself halting, from a strange inability to decide which door to open.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

POUBALOV SUCCEEDS

Her indecision was but momentary. Every nerve tingling with apprehension, her arms straining to embrace her lover and allay his suffering, she threw open the door at her right hand. Dusty furniture, faded hangings confronted her, nothing else. Aroused by the disappointment to a fever of anxiety and energy, she laid her hand upon the other door, and above the rattling of the knob she heard again the faint moan. The door was locked, and it merely creaked complainingly when she exerted all the pressure she could bring to bear against it.

She must work quickly. Holding the candle parallel to the floor, she allowed several drops of the melted tallow to fall, and on them she fastened her tiny torch upright. Then she applied her keys, one after the other, to the lock. It was a commonplace lock, a boot-buttoner would have worked it, and the most commonplace key in her collection at last turned freely and shot back the bolt. She threw the door open and rushed in, and as she passed, her flying skirts whisked out the candle flame and she was in darkness, but in the flashing glance she had had of the room she had seen the figure of a man bound to a chair, a cloth wound about his head and across his mouth.

Clara did not seek the prisoner in the darkness. All impulse to rush forward and throw her arms about him had vanished; in its place was an icy chill at the heart and an infinite sob that lodged in her throat and would not out. Hastily still but with nerveless limbs she stooped and felt for the candle, and, having found it, she again brought its wick to flickering life and raised it from the floor. Standing then upon the threshold, one hand clutching the jamb, she made certain that the fleeting vision of surprise and disappointment was bitter and amazing reality. The man bound upon the chair was old Dexter.

He turned upon her his blinking eyes, rendered sightless for the moment by the mild glare of the candle flame. He could stir no other part of his body by so much as a hair's breadth. A long rope was coiled many times about him, binding his legs to the chair rungs, his arms to his side, and his head to the back of the chair. A pitiful groan gurgled again in his throat as Clara held up the candle and looked at him.

She stood thus not longer than a second, and then, having placed the candle in a cup that stood on the mantel, she sought to loose him. That he was concerned in some way with Ivan's disappearance she could not doubt, but she allowed herself no thought or hesitation on that account. His evident suffering appealed to her, and she plied her fingers hard and fast to undo the rope. The knot was at his back and it had not been drawn extremely taut, the numerous coils in themselves being almost sufficient to hold the prisoner in his place. Very shortly, therefore, she had the free ends of the rope in hand, and she unwound them from Dexter's arms, still standing behind his back and working above his head. When with his own hands he began to loose the coils from his lower limbs, she untied the handkerchief that held the gag in his mouth, and Dexter was free.

He arose trembling. His limbs were stiff with long constraint and he steadied himself by grasping the back of the chair and leaning upon it. Breathing heavily and muttering unintelligible curses he turned slowly about and peered into Clara's eyes.

"Ha!" he gasped, "it's you, is it!"

His eyes, till then glowing with the rage of a baffled will, now flamed with ungovernable hate. Clara, all her resolution gone, her very life seeming to depart from her, yet stood ready to do what she could to help him, when with a passionate shriek he suddenly extended his thin quivering hands and seized her violently by the throat. Taken by surprise, her nervous energy exhausted by the long strain and its attendant disappointments, Clara made but slight resistance. Dexter clutched her with the desperate strength of a maniac and pushed her back against the wall.

What with the noise they made in moving across the floor, and Dexter's snarling curses, she did not hear the sound of rapidly approaching steps along the corridor; but just as the frenzied old man had pressed her against the wall, and when it seemed as if his fingers would lock inextricably upon her throat, Poubalov dashed into the room, laid hold of Dexter, wrenched him away from her, picked him up bodily, bore him screaming across the chamber and threw him heavily upon a bed. Then he placed his hand over the old man's mouth and looked around. Clara was now held hard and fast by another man, and although Poubalov's eyes glittered with a fierce light, he made no effort to interfere. Paul Palovna appeared in the doorway, his weary face glowing with joy as he looked upon his friend restored at last to the arms of her who loved him.

After a moment Strobel raised his head, and Clara, still embracing him, followed his eyes with her own, almost unbelieving that this meeting was reality. She turned her gaze with Ivan's to where Poubalov sat on the bed forcibly quieting the ravings of old Dexter.

"Miss Hilman," said the spy in his deepest tones, "you have been the hardest adversary I ever encountered. Last evening you gave me two alternatives of action. You told me to take you to your lover, or you would pursue me relentlessly. You have made it a desperately hard task for me, but to some extent at least I have succeeded in evading both alternatives, and have, instead, brought your lover to you."

Clara turned her wondering eyes to Ivan's for confirmation and explanation.

"It is true, dearest," he said. "We owe my deliverance to Poubalov, and without his efforts I shudder to think what would have happened to me."

"Is it possible," asked Clara in a subdued voice, "that you have really been trying to find Ivan all along?"

"Miss Hilman," replied Poubalov, "until this Monday morning I did not know where Mr. Strobel was, and I had not the least suspicion of the truth until late last Friday night."

"Let me sit down," said Clara faintly, "I cannot grasp it all. Tell me, Ivan."

Ivan had conducted her to the chair wherein she had found Dexter a prisoner, and at her last words Poubalov turned away his head with a bitter smile. Not even yet would she trust him to speak the truth!

"We owe our separation," said Ivan, "to the villain who lies there under Poubalov's hand and to him alone. To Poubalov we owe the deliverance. This man Dexter, Clara, is a money lender of the most outrageous type. Your uncle, to tide over a business depression, borrowed nearly a hundred thousand dollars from him. This debt was due to Dexter two days after what was to have been our wedding. I am telling you what Poubalov learned after his suspicions were attracted in the right direction. Tell her, my friend! You can do it better than I."

"Miss Hilman will not believe me," replied Poubalov.

"Oh, but I will!" cried Clara starting from the chair impulsively as she realized the situation. She went to the bed where the spy still sat with his hand over Dexter's mouth, and held out her hand. "Won't you forgive me?" she faltered; "I know I have cruelly misjudged you."

Poubalov raised her hand to his lips and was about to answer when Dexter, the pressure removed from his mouth, scrambled to his knees, clinging to the Russian for support, and screamed, "Pay me! pay me! you're not married yet and you've got to pay me! I'll ruin Mat Pembroke! Pay me! I'll – "

The old man choked, pawed with both palsied hands at his collar and would have fallen from the bed if Poubalov had not turned hastily from Clara and caught him. Clara shrank away, not terrified but shocked at Dexter's appearance, while Palovna hurried across the room to lend a hand.

"He is dying!" exclaimed Clara faintly.

"No, Miss Hilman, not dying," responded Poubalov quickly, "but he is a very sick man. Thanks, Paul Palovna, but I can get on better with him alone. You may go ahead of me, if you please, and try to find a physician – "

"I saw a doctor's sign near the street corner," interrupted Palovna.

"Summon him at once, then," said Poubalov who was bearing old Dexter as tenderly as a nurse might carry a sick child; "I will await you at the door and," addressing Clara, "be with you here in a moment if you would hear the hidden history of your troubles."

"Better here, sweetheart," whispered Strobel, "here where I passed my week of death than in any other place!"

It was several minutes before Poubalov returned. He carried Dexter not only to the door but through the street to the physician's house where medical skill was promptly applied with a view to restoring the miser's wreck of a body to something like life. If Dexter's course had run tranquilly he might, perhaps, have lingered like a noxious weed, for a long time upon the earth, but after the complex shocks of disappointment, imprisonment and fear, he had thrown the total of his nervous and physical energies into that mad attack upon Clara. There remained, then, but the dregs of his vicious vitality, and these sustained him less than the length of the night. He was still alive but the end was plainly in sight when Poubalov left him to rejoin the lovers.

"Miss Hilman," he said the moment he came in, "your judgment of me has been marvellously correct. It is true that you have erred in detail and believed me deceiving you when I was doing my utmost to put the truth before you; but it is impossible for me to be straightforward. Mr. Strobel has said that his deliverance is due to me; that is true, but no credit is due me for generosity or nobility of conduct. What I have done in the way of searching for him and restoring him to liberty, has been done entirely in accordance with my nature. My desire to appear well in your eyes might lead me to vain reflections on what my nature might have been if the circumstances of my life had been other than they were, but past circumstances cannot be changed and nothing can palliate the fact that long practice as a detecter of stealthy criminals has made me habitually devious in my methods."