Chapter XV

Mr. Rodney did not wait for Dr. Anthony to return to Chester. His anxiety was too great. He drove over to Maywood in the early morning to see the young physician.

He heard the whole story over again. It impressed him strangely. He believed with the doctor that the mysterious wounded girl was Aline herself.

“I have been haunted by that belief ever since I heard the story of your daughter’s disappearance,” he said. “I feared you might think me foolish or presuming, but I could not rest until I had gone over to Chester and told you my story.”

“For which kindness I am most grateful to you,” said Mr. Rodney, grasping his hand cordially. “Who knows but that this information will lead to my daughter’s recovery?”

He found the young doctor most intelligent and agreeable. He consulted with him as to the best method of following up this strange discovery. Both agreed that it would be well to confide the matter to a skillful detective. Mr. Rodney sent to New York at once for the most noted one in the service.

They agreed that they would keep the strange story of the doctor’s experience a profound secret from the public. If once it became publicly known, it might put the villain on his guard. He might hustle Aline off to another place.

When Mr. Rodney went home, he gave Dr. Anthony a most cordial invitation to come over to Chester and visit him. The doctor was not slow to avail himself of the courtesy. It was the beginning of a most pleasant friendship.

Perhaps hazel-eyed Effie had something to do with it. It is certain that she enjoyed the non-professional visits of the Maywood physician as much as was consistent with the trouble and anxiety she was enduring. And Dr. Anthony certainly found the fair, dignified young lady very fascinating. He came often to the dainty little cottage home that nestled in the shadow of the tall trees and pretentious towers of Delaney House. He was so gay and cheerful, so determinately hopeful, that he sometimes wiled Effie to a momentary forgetfulness of their loss and sorrow. He made little Max fond of him. He pleased the nervous, fretful, invalid mother still prostrated by her grief and remorse. His even, sunny temper and handsome face always brightened the cottage parlor when they shone in it. All claimed him as a friend and comforter.

The New York detective came down promptly to Chester. He was quite willing to undertake the case. He flattered himself that he should unravel the mystery.

They showed him the little end room from whence Aline had been so strangely spirited away. He examined it with a great interest. He stood at each of the three windows in turn, and gazed curiously out. The front one gave him a perspective of a quiet little village street. The back one looked out on a brick-paved yard, and a tiny kitchen. The end one presented a more inviting prospect. It showed him the green and flowery garden of Delaney House. The quiet, rustic seats, the cool spray of the fountains, the deep shade of the trees, the delicate fragrance of the flowers, all inspired one with a sense of peace and rest; and the master of all this wealth of summer sweetness, as he walked among the quiet graveled paths, did not inspire one with any suspicion. One envied him, rather, he looked so calm and peaceful, as though the cares and sorrows of the weary world touched him not, hidden as it were, behind his high stone walls and grim, forbidding towers, with their close-shut windows.

Yes, here he still walked daily, as on that day when willful Aline had gone to her fate along a path as rosy and flower-strewn as ever delighted the eyes of heedless youth. His dark, grave face gave no hint of the secret he held, and expressed no sympathy nor sorrow for the shadow that had fallen on his neighbor’s house. He appeared calm, grave, indifferent to all things but himself.

The New York detective studied the house and the man with a good deal of interest. He asked questions about them, but he stood well back from the window, and did not permit Mr. Delaney, by any chance, to observe his curious glances. He was very cautious.

Mr. Rodney was a man of quite acute perceptions. He quickly saw where Mr. Lane’s suspicions were insensibly drifting.

“Your suspicions are tending in quite the wrong direction,” he said: “Dr. Anthony is quite sure that the house where he saw the wounded girl is quite five miles distant from here.”

It was a curious yet so natural mistake that all had drifted insensibly into it. Dr. Anthony had said that he was carried at least five miles from Maywood to the mysterious mansion. No one had reflected that Maywood was five miles distant from Chester, or if they had it did not connect itself at all with the mystery of Aline’s disappearance. No one except the keen-witted detective dreamed for an instant of connecting Delaney House with the mystery, and his suspicions were at once diverted by his employer’s confident remark. He turned his attention at once to another subject, and gave up the vague idea. Delaney House was destined to hold its secret yet.

“With one black shadow at its feet,
The house thro’ all the level shines,
Close-latticed to the brooding heat,
And silent in its dusty vines;
And ‘Ave, Mary,’ was her moan,
‘Madonna, sad is night and morn;’
And ‘Ah,’ she sung, ‘to be all alone,
To live forgotten and love forlorn.’”

Mr. Lane gave his closest attention and best talents to the solution of the mystery, and he felt perfectly confident of success. When had he, the most able detective in the great city of New York, failed in any undertaking? It was not likely he should be foiled here in this little country town.

He settled himself at the pretentious hotel as an invalid gentleman in search of health. He had his own private buggy sent down from the city, and he made solitary excursions into the surrounding country in quest of the Goddess of Health, as he pretended. Sometimes he varied the monotony of these trips by going afoot. No one suspected his real reasons for being in the town. He passed everywhere for that which he represented himself to be.

Weeks came and went, and he was no nearer the solution of the mystery, no nearer the finding of Aline than when he first came to Chester. A baffled feeling began to grow upon him, but still he would not own himself defeated, would not give up the quest.

It was quite impossible that he should fail, he told himself, inspired by the natural self confidence of one who has always succeeded. Some day he would be sure to find the aristocratic mansion with the beautiful blue room where the wounded girl was hidden away from the yearning hearts of those who loved and mourned her.