XI

Driving downtown again with every thought in his head, every plan, every purpose, hurtling around and around in absolute chaos, his roving eyes lit casually upon the huge sign of a detective bureau that loomed across the street. White as a sheet with the sudden new determination that came to him, and trembling miserably with the very strength of the determination warring against the weakness and fatigue of his body, he dismissed his cab and went climbing up the first narrow, dingy stairway that seemed most liable to connect with the brain behind the sign-board.

It was almost bed-time before he came down the stairs again, yet, "I think her name is Meredith, and I think she's gone to Vermont, and she has the most wonderful head of mahogany-colored hair that I ever saw in my life," were the only definite clues that he had been able to contribute to the cause.

In the slow, lagging week that followed, Stanton did not find himself at all pleased with the particular steps which he had apparently been obliged to take in order to ferret out Molly's real name and her real city address, but the actual audacity of the situation did not actually reach its climax until the gentle little quarry had been literally tracked to Vermont with detectives fairly baying on her trail like the melodramatic bloodhounds that pursue "Eliza" across the ice.

"Red-headed party found at Woodstock," the valiant sleuth had wired with unusual delicacy and caution.

"Denies acquaintance, Boston, everything, positively refuses interview, temper very bad, sure it's the party," the second message had come.

The very next northward-bound train found Stanton fretting the interminable hours away between Boston and Woodstock. Across the sparkling snow-smothered landscape his straining eyes went plowing on to their unknown destination. Sometimes the engine pounded louder than his heart. Sometimes he could not even seem to hear the grinding of the brakes above the dreadful throb-throb of his temples. Sometimes in horrid, shuddering chills he huddled into his great fur-coat and cursed the porter for having a disposition like a polar bear. Sometimes almost gasping for breath he went out and stood on the bleak rear platform of the last car and watched the pleasant, ice-cold rails go speeding back to Boston. All along the journey little absolutely unnecessary villages kept bobbing up to impede the progress of the train. All along the journey innumerable little empty railroad-stations, barren as bells robbed of their own tongues, seemed to lie waiting--waiting for the noisy engine-tongue to clang them into temporary noise and life.

Was his quest really almost at an end? Was it--was it? A thousand vague apprehensions tortured through his mind.

And then, all of a sudden, in the early, brisk winter twilight, Woodstock--happened!

Climbing out of the train Stanton stood for a second rubbing his eyes at the final abruptness and unreality of it all. Woodstock! What was it going to mean to him? Woodstock!

Everybody else on the platform seemed to be accepting the astonishing geographical fact with perfect simplicity. Already along the edge of the platform the quaint, old-fashioned yellow stage-coaches set on runners were fast filling up with utterly serene pa.s.sengers.

A jog at his elbow made him turn quickly, and he found himself gazing into the detective's not ungenial face.

"Say," said the detective, "were you going up to the hotel first? Well you'd better not. You'd better not lose any time. She's leaving town in the morning." It was beyond human nature for the detective man not to nudge Stanton once in the ribs. "Say," he grinned, "you sure had better go easy, and not send in your name or anything." His grin broadened suddenly in a laugh. "Say," he confided, "once in a magazine I read something about a lady's 'piquant animosity'. That's her! And _cute_? Oh, my!"

Five minutes later, Stanton found himself lolling back in the quaintest, brightest, most pumpkin-colored coach of all, gliding with almost magical smoothness through the snow-glazed streets of the little narrow, valley-town.

"The Meredith homestead?" the driver had queried. "Oh, yes. All right; but it's quite a journey. Don't get discouraged."

A sense of discouragement regarding long distances was just at that moment the most remote sensation in Stanton's sensibilities. If the railroad journey had seemed unhappily drawn out, the sleigh-ride reversed the emotion to the point of almost telescopic calamity: a stingy, transient vista of village lights; a brief, narrow, hill-bordered road that looked for all the world like the aisle of a toy-shop, flanked on either side by high-reaching shelves where miniature house-lights twinkled cunningly; a sudden stumble of hoofs into a less-traveled snow-path, and then, absolutely unavoidable, absolutely unescapable, an old, white colonial house with its great solemn elm trees stretching out their long arms protectingly all around and about it after the blessed habit of a hundred years.

Nervously, and yet almost reverently, Stanton went crunching up the snowy path to the door, knocked resonantly with a slim, much worn old bra.s.s knocker, and was admitted promptly and hospitably by "Mrs.

Meredith" herself--Molly's grandmother evidently, and such a darling little grandmother, small, like Molly; quick, like Molly; even young, like Molly, she appeared to be. Simple, sincere, and oh, so comfortable--like the fine old mahogany furniture and the dull-shining pewter, and the flickering firelight, that seemed to be everywhere.

"Good old stuff!" was Stanton's immediate silent comment on everything in sight.

It was perfectly evident that the little old lady knew nothing whatsoever about Stanton, but it was equally evident that she suspected him of being neither a highwayman nor a book agent, and was really sincerely sorry that Molly had "a headache" and would be unable to see him.

"But I've come so far," persisted Stanton. "All the way from Boston.

Is she very ill? Has she been ill long?"

The little old lady's mind ignored the questions but clung a trifle nervously to the word Boston.

"Boston?" her sweet voice quavered. "Boston? Why you look so nice--surely you're not that mysterious man who has been annoying Mollie so dreadfully these past few days. I told her no good would ever come of her going to the city."

"Annoying Molly?" cried Stanton. "Annoying _my_ Molly? I? Why, it's to prevent anybody in the whole wide world from ever annoying her again about--anything, that I've come here now!" he persisted rashly.

"And don't you see--we had a little misunderstanding and--"

Into the little old lady's ivory cheek crept a small, bright, blush-spot.

"Oh, you had a little misunderstanding," she repeated softly. "A little quarrel? Oh, is that why Molly has been crying so much ever since she came home?"

Very gently she reached out her tiny, blue-veined hand, and turned Stanton's big body around so that the lamp-light smote him squarely on his face.

"Are you a good boy?" she asked. "Are you good enough for--my--little Molly?"

Impulsively Stanton grabbed her small hands in his big ones, and raised them very tenderly to his lips.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Are you a good boy?" she asked]

"Oh, little Molly's little grandmother," he said; "n.o.body on the face of this snow-covered earth is good enough for your Molly, but won't you give me a chance? Couldn't you please give me a chance? Now--this minute? Is she so very ill?"

"No, she's not so very ill, that is, she's not sick in bed," mused the old lady waveringly. "She's well enough to be sitting up in her big chair in front of her open fire."

"Big chair--open fire?" quizzed Stanton. "Then, are there two chairs?"

he asked casually.

"Why, yes," answered the little-grandmother in surprise.

"And a mantelpiece with a clock on it?" he probed.

The little-grandmother's eyes opened wide and blue with astonishment.

"Yes," she said, "but the clock hasn't gone for forty years!"

"Oh, great!" exclaimed Stanton. "Then won't you please--please--I tell you it's a case of life or death--won't you _please_ go right upstairs and sit down in that extra big chair--and not say a word or anything but just wait till I come? And of course," he said, "it wouldn't be good for you to run upstairs, but if you could hurry just a little I should be _so_ much obliged."

As soon as he dared, he followed cautiously up the unfamiliar stairs, and peered inquisitively through the illuminating crack of a loosely closed door.

The grandmother as he remembered her was dressed in some funny sort of a dullish purple, but peeping out from the edge of one of the chairs he caught an unmistakable flutter of blue.

Catching his breath he tapped gently on the woodwork.

Round the big winged arm of the chair a wonderful, bright aureole of hair showed suddenly.

"Come in," faltered Molly's perplexed voice.

All m.u.f.fled up in his great fur-coat he pushed the door wide open and entered boldly.

"It's only Carl," he said. "Am I interrupting you?"

The really dreadful collapsed expression on Molly's face Stanton did not appear to notice at all. He merely walked over to the mantelpiece, and leaning his elbows on the little cleared s.p.a.ce in front of the clock, stood staring fixedly at the time-piece which had not changed its quarter-of-three expression for forty years.

"It's almost half-past seven," he announced pointedly, "and I can stay till just eight o'clock."

Only the little grandmother smiled.