The Mystery of the Hidden Room

I had intended spending the evening at the Club; but after my solitary meal, I found that I was too tired to care to leave my own inviting fireside. Drawing up a chair before the open grate in my library, for the October night was chill and the landlord had not sufficiently relented to order the steam-heat, I settled myself comfortably with my book and pipe. The story I had chosen was a murder mystery, extremely clever and well-written, and so engrossed did I become that I was entirely oblivious to the passage of time.

The entrance of my man, Jenkins, brought me back to my surroundings with a start to find that the clock on the mantel was chiming eleven. A little impatient at the interruption for I had not concluded the story, I grew sarcastic.

"What is it, Jenkins? Have you come to remind me that it is long past my bed-time?" I inquired.

Jenkins' face grew longer if such a thing were possible in a countenance already attenuated by nature into the semblance of perpetual gloom, and shook his head with a grieved air as though he considered my remark an aspersion upon his knowledge of his duties as a valet.

"A man who claims to be Mrs. Darwin's chauffeur, sir," he replied in a tone that indicated that he at least would not be responsible for the veracity of the statement, "has just brought this note. He says that he will await the answer below in his machine, sir."

He extended an unaddressed white envelope with a funereal air. The note was from Ruth. The message was brief and to the point.

"Will you return at once with my chauffeur? I need you."

"My hat and coat, Jenkins," I cried, flinging aside my jacket. "You need not wait up for me. I have my key," I added.

I could have descended the stairs a half dozen times before the elevator finally arrived, or so it seemed to my impatience. The moment we reached the lobby I was out of the elevator and down the steps into the waiting motor before the boy had recovered his wits sufficiently to follow me to the door.

The chauffeur evidently had his instructions, for I was hardly within before the machine was speeding toward the Drive. My bachelor apartments were situated on 72nd Street, just off the Park, and I knew we could not cover the distance to the Darwin home on the outskirts of Riverside Drive in less than twenty minutes, even at the rate at which we were traveling.

I had stuffed Ruth's note into my pocket as I left. Mechanically I drew it forth and tore it to shreds, flinging the scraps from the window. Letters are compromising things.

What had possessed Ruth to commit herself to writing after the compact we had made to have no further communication with each other! It was she who had suggested that we become as strangers, and I could only read in this sudden appeal and the haste with which I was being whirled toward her some dread calamity. Nor was my anxiety lessened by the fact that I was hopelessly in love with her. Yes, hopelessly, I speak advisedly, because she was another man's wife, and while that man lived she would be true to him although he deserved it less than anyone I knew.

To think that a few short months ago Ruth and I had been engaged! If I had had my way we should have been married at once without any fuss, and so should have avoided the trouble that befell us, but Ruth wanted a trousseau and a big wedding, so like many a better man before me I humored her to the extent of promising to wait another month.

Did I say a month? Six have passed and I am waiting yet, while Ruth has had her wish, for her wedding was a sort of nine days' wonder, Philip Darwin having long been voted by his feminine friends as "the type of man who never marries, my dear."

In letting my bitterness run away with my discretion, I have begun my story at the wrong end, giving a false impression of the facts of the case, for I never once dreamed of blaming or censuring Ruth for the misery that her decision cost me.

Two weeks before the date set for my wedding, Ruth came to me with tears in her eyes, and laying the ring I had given her upon the table begged me if I loved her never to see her again. I was decidedly taken aback, but I retained sufficient presence of mind to laugh at her and to request her not to be absurd. She was not to be diverted, however, nor would she say anything beyond a reiteration of the fact that if I loved her I would be willing to obey her without questioning her motives.

All of which was folly to my way of thinking, and being very much in love, I refused to be disposed of in any such high-handed fashion, particularly as I felt that as her affianced husband I was entitled to some say in the proceedings. Never in the course of my life before had I been called upon to plead so skillfully, and plead I did; for it was more than my life I was fighting for, it was our love, our happiness, our future home. Gradually I wore down her defenses and finally she sobbed out the whole pitiful story.

Her brother, her adored and darling Dick, whom she had mothered almost from the time that he was born, had fallen of late under the influence of Philip Darwin, director of the bank of which her father was president and Dick assistant cashier. Handsome, spoiled, the boy had been flattered by the attentions of the older man, who explained his interest on the ground that Dick reminded him strongly of what he had been ten years before. Under his tutelage, then, the boy early became a devotee of the twin gods of gambling and of drink.

Two nights before in a questionable gambling den to which Philip Darwin had taken him, Dick, his temper inflamed by the strong liquor he had been drinking, quarreled with his neighbor, accusing him of trying to cheat. The fellow, a big, powerful chap, made for Dick, who pulled out a pistol which Darwin had given him, and fired. His opponent went down like a log, and as the man fell, Darwin extinguished the light. In the confusion that ensued the older man got the boy away to his home, where Dick gathered some things together and with the connivance of his father left for the West.

Of course the affair came out in the papers, I recalled it as Ruth spoke, and the police were on the hunt for the unknown assailant of the dead man. Fortunately for Dick, both he and Darwin attended these places in disguise and a trip West for the scion of a wealthy family was no unusual event, hence his absence from social circles was easily accounted for, and Ruth and her father were merely waiting for the furore to abate before sending for the boy, when Darwin exploded a bomb in their midst.

He had always admired Ruth, he had always wanted to make her his wife. She had spurned his love and he had accepted defeat stoically. But now things were different. Her brother was wanted by the police for murder. The police, to be sure, didn't know it was her brother that they wanted but he, Philip Darwin, was quite willing to supply them with the information unless Ruth agreed to become his bride.

"What was there for me to do, Carlton, but to acquiesce?" she had ended with a sob. "Philip Darwin is an implacable man. And even if Dick eluded the police, think of the disgrace for Daddy and for me. It's terrible enough that he should have killed a man, but that he should become a hunted thing, my little brother-! No, no! I'd rather sacrifice my love than have that happen!"

I remained silent, for I could think of no argument that would suffice to meet the situation, and taking my apparent immobility for acceptance, she continued: "It's a big sacrifice, dear, I know, but you will bear it bravely for my sake, because-because there is more in life than love alone and it's the honor of my name that is at stake."

In the face of her sublime unselfishness I felt that I could do no less than prove myself as noble as she deemed me. I agreed, therefore, to give her up and when she said we had better not meet again I consented dumbly, comprehending the wisdom of her decision even while my heart rebelled against its enforcement.

When she had gone my resentment flared full and strong, but curiously enough not against the one who had been the chief cause of the ruin of my happiness. I felt only pity, a profound and sincere pity, for the misguided boy who had committed the crime. My anger blazed toward that man who by his foolish adoration of his only son had spoiled and indulged the boy to his own undoing. What right had any man to bring up a son in that fashion? How dared his father let him loose upon the world without teaching him the first principles of self-restraint?

It was not Dick but Mr. Trenton who was to blame for the boy's act. Almost from the moment that he could make his wants known the boy had been given to understand that what he wanted was his for the asking. Everyone in the home had to give way before him. He was never crossed and never denied. Small wonder that when he grew to manhood he should expect the world to give as much and more than his father had done, that when he ran across temptation he had no moral strength to resist, and that he became an easy prey to a man of Philip Darwin's type.

Here my thoughts veered abruptly to the man who would soon become Ruth's husband and for a moment I saw red. Ruth, pure, sweet Ruth, married to that vile wretch! I could not endure it.

I had actually grasped my hat and was on the point of hastening to her home to plead with her not to sacrifice herself in so dreadful a manner, even if she never married me, when I paused, for the horrible alternative flashed across my mind. With a groan I returned to my library where the remainder of the night I wrestled with what to me seemed the only solution to the problem, the instant and speedy death of Philip Darwin.

By morning I was saner. There was not much use in jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire, and besides what did I know of Philip Darwin beyond the fact that he had been the one to lead Dick astray? For ought I knew to the contrary he might make Ruth a very good and devoted husband. There were hundreds of cases on record where a man had been reformed and steadied by marriage.

Though all this philosophizing by no means alleviated the pain in my heart, still it helped to allay the fever in my tortured brain, and from that time on I resolutely put Ruth from my mind and plunged into my work in an effort to forget.

Forget! How much had I forgotten in the six months that had passed? Not one single detail had escaped my memory and it all came back with tenfold force for having been thrust out of sight so long. With a groan I buried my head in my hands.

How long I remained thus oblivious to time and space I do not know. The chauffeur's voice brought me back to a realization that we had arrived at our destination. I alighted and as he backed the car down the drive I paused a moment before ascending the steps to try to distinguish something of this home whose mistress Ruth had become.

It was very dark, a dull, cloudy night, and all I beheld was a great black bulk looming before me like some Plutonian monster, harbinger of evil, and the soughing of the wind in the branches of the nearby trees gave me such a feeling of superstitious dread that I raced up the steps and rang the bell as though in fear of my life.

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