CHAPTER XI

When William Browne reached home, after his aimless walk which he had taken on leaving the bank that tumultuous morning, he endeavored to reach his room unnoticed by any member of the family, but on the landing of the second floor he met Celeste. She regarded him with a slow look of tentative surprise.

"I've been worried", she said.

"Worried, why?" he questioned, with a start.

"Because Mr. Bradford telephoned me two hours ago that you had started home and that you were not feeling very well. He seemed worried, from the excited way he spoke. Of course I looked for you at once. How could I tell but that you were seriously ill somewhere?"

"I thought a walk would do me good, and I took it," William bethought himself to say. "If I'd known he was telephoning I would have come directly home."

He started to pass her, but, touching his arm, she detained him. Her cheeks were pale, her thin lips were quivering.

"What is the matter?" she demanded.

"I told you I was not feeling very well," he answered, lamely, trying to meet her penetrating stare with an air of complete self-possession. "I've had a lot of head-work to do at night. I'm afraid I am near a breakdown. Bradford noticed it and advised me to come home."

He passed her now, and went into his room. She followed close behind him, and when he turned he saw her.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, in surprise, for he thought he had left her outside. "What is it now, Lessie? You know you are acting strangely."

The window-shades were drawn down, but she resolutely raised one, letting the sunlight stream in on him.

"If I am acting strangely, so are you—so are you," she said, desperately. "Something has happened, William, and you can't keep it from me. I have a right to know and I will know." She sat down in an arm-chair and folded her white hands in her lap.

He tried to smile, but his smile was such a ghastly failure that he gave it up. He turned to the bureau. He began to unbutton his collar and untie his cravat. His brain had never been more active than now. She would soon know the whole story through the afternoon papers, why keep it from her now? The only explanation was that William Browne could not find within himself the power and poise openly to accuse his brother. His conscience was against it and something else was against it—the fear of Celeste's shrewd condemnatory intuition. She did not leave him long to his turbulent reflections. "You may as well tell me," he heard her say. "I shall sit right here till you do. Is it about Charles?"

He was glad that she was behind him, since he had to speak.

"Yes, it concerns him," William answered. "He has gone away, no one knows where. You know how he has been acting of late? Well, well, he is gone this time for good, it seems."

"But that isn't all—it isn't all, and you know it isn't!" Celeste leaned forward and fixed him with a demanding stare. "That wouldn't make you act as you are now acting, or look as you look."

William jerked his cravat from his neck and stood folding it with unsteady fingers. "You may as well know the—the rest," he stammered. "It will be in the papers. He has been reckless. Half the time he did not know what he was doing. He must have been out of his head, for a large amount of money is missing from the vault. He had free access to it. The examiners were due here to-day, and—and the thing could not have been kept from them, so—so he left last night."

"I know. You told me this morning at breakfast," Celeste's tone was firm, impersonal, impatient. "He wrote you a note. Was it about that—about the missing money?"

William's eyes sought the carpet as he answered: "Yes, he didn't have much else to say. He seemed to think that would be sufficient to—to thoroughly explain why—why he was leaving."

Celeste stood up. She sighed. Her husband had never seen in her face the expression that was in it now.

"William, I am not a child. I am not a fool!" she said, fiercely. "I want you to be frank with me. He is your brother and we love him. Why are you not perfectly—perfectly, absolutely open about this?"

"Open? Am I not open?" he evaded, as stupidly as a guilty child facing indisputable proof. "What—what is wrong now? Haven't I told you all that I know about it? You ought not to—to expect me to be in a natural, normal state of mind after a thing like this has happened. Surely you see that it was all due to me—I mean that but for me the directors would not have allowed Charlie to be about the bank after he became so dissipated. As it is—as it is, I have agreed to repay the missing money. It will almost bankrupt me, but I shall do it some way or other."

"You did not know it before you got his note at breakfast?" Celeste asked.

"No, not till then. It was like a bolt from a clear sky," said William, slightly more at ease.

"I don't believe it—I don't believe a word of that," Celeste said, firmly.

"You don't? You think I am lying, then?" William gasped. "My God! that you should say that to me!"

"I don't believe it," Celeste repeated. "I don't, because this morning when you came down you were very dejected. I have never seen you look so much so. It lasted till you read Charles's note. Then your face fairly blazed with relief. If Charles told you for the first time in that note that he was a thief, you could not have looked like that. You say you are all upset now over it. Why were you not then?"

"I was—I was, but I tried to hide it from you," was the slow answer.

"I know you did, in a way, but you did not assume that first look of joy and relief. I see that you are bent on keeping me in the dark. I see a reason for it, but I won't mention it now. When you feel like putting complete confidence in your wife, let me know. This is our first misunderstanding, but it is a serious one."

She left him stupefied, unable to formulate any defense. He was aware, too, that his helplessness was in its way a confession that she was right in her contention against him, but what was he to do? Retaining her respect and love meant much to him, but the other horror quite forced it into the background. Celeste must wait. The first thing to be considered was the retention of his high standing at the bank and the respect of the public. The seed of suspicion and disrespect was sown in his own home, but that could not be avoided. Celeste had defended her brother-in-law before; she was doing the same now. She was pitying the absent man too much for the absolute safety of William's plans. The feeling Celeste was entertaining might leak out into public channels, flow here and there, and create dangerous pools of suspicion. William threw himself on his bed. He really needed sleep, but his brain was too active for repose. He was listening for the ring of the 'phone in the hall below—or, worse than that, the ring of the door-bell. What was to keep those shrewd men at the bank from seeing through a pretense already half punctured by a woman? William thought of the revolver, but that was at the bank. He thought of quick poisons, but he had none, then of gas, but the room was too large and airy. Suddenly he sat up on the bed, his stockinged feet on the floor, his ears strained to catch a sound which came from the street.

"Extra! Extra! Extra! Big Bank Robbery! Sixty Thousand! Thief in High Social Standing!"

The front door below was opened, but not closed. He crept to a window over the stoop and peered through the ivy hanging from the wall. It was Celeste buying a paper from a newsboy. She was reading it. Only the top of her head was visible, outlined against the paper. How unlike Celeste to stand like that on the stoop, in the view of people passing by! An automatic pang of pity went through the storm-tossed man. Could that really be the young girl whom he had loved so passionately—the frail, tender feminine creature he had taken from the care and protection of devoted parents, and brought to this? A dead ivy-leaf was swinging by a spider's web and spinning before his eyes. How odd that he should note it, that he should notice how the rays of the sun fell on the dome of the Capitol, that he should find his brain estimating how many copies of the paper the shouting boy could dispose of in that street! Celeste was coming into the house. She was out of his view now. He knew that she was in the hall below, still reading, still wondering, still bent on knowing more than the paper could reveal.

When she had finished reading the account, Celeste, white in the face and yet steady in her step, went back to the dining-room. Michael was there at work, a cleaning-cloth and metal-polish in hand, rows of knives, forks, and spoons ranged in perfect order on the table in front of him. His mistress faced him.

"Did you know, Michael," she began, spreading out the paper on the table, "that this paper says that Charles has stolen a large amount of money and run away?"

Instead of answering, he bent over the paper. His kindly eyes took in the head-lines at a glance and he looked up, slowly shaking his head.

"Yes, yes, I see it is here," he answered. "I was afraid something would be said. I was afraid last night that something was wrong, but I don't believe he took any money. I don't! I never will believe it."

Celeste stepped to him. He was merely a servant, but she put an eager hand on his arm and looked into his face steadily.

"I don't believe it, either, Michael," she said, huskily. "I'll never believe it. He's gone—he's gone, but something else was at the bottom of it. It may have been like this—don't you see? Don't you see my idea? I know that he was thoroughly disgusted over his dissipation—over what they say happened at the police station and his club; he made up his mind that perhaps he was a burden on us and determined that he would go away. And it just happens, you see, that the money was missing and they all connect him with the loss because he is gone?"

"It does look like that, madam," Michael said almost eagerly.

"But, Michael, Michael, what do you think of this?" and she pointed to a paragraph in the paper. "Here is what they say was in the note you handed Mr. Browne at breakfast. See! See! Look! Read it!"

Michael obeyed stolidly, then he looked up. "I know," he said, "and I think he wrote it. I think so from something he said to me about bank money last night, but still I don't think he is guilty. He didn't look it, madam."

"You say he didn't?" Celeste's fine features held an incipient fire which glowed through her thin skin and was focused in her eyes.

"No, madam, he was too—I might say, too happy-looking. Oh, I know the difference between the looks of a guilty man and an innocent one! I've run against both brands."

"And you say he was happy—happy over leaving us, perhaps never to return? Don't you think that is strange, Michael?"

"Yes, madam, that was odd. I must say that I could not make it out. He was jolly, and he was not drinking, either. If I never see him again, I'll never forget how he looked."

"I've been to his room," Celeste went on. "He took very few things, but do you remember the last photograph of Ruth that he had, in a silver frame on his bureau? He took that; at least it is missing."

"Yes, I saw him put it into his bag," said the servant. "Oh, he thinks a lot of the child!"

"And she almost worships him"—Celeste's voice shook at its lowest depths—"and she will never understand his absence. How am I to tell her? What am I to say? She may hear this"—indicating the paper with a gesture of contempt—"from other children. Oh, Michael, to think that her ideal is to be destroyed, and unjustly destroyed, for, as you say, and as I say, our Charlie is not a thief!"

Michael had taken up his cleaning-cloth and a silver platter. "I shall never believe that he is, madam," he faltered. "I shall not read that paper, either. It would upset me—make me mad."

"I had to," Celeste replied, dejectedly. "I see now that I'll have to read other things about him. He may be brought back to Boston, Michael. You see the mention of the big reward? They will search everywhere, and Charlie is too unsuspecting, too innocent, to get away—that is, if he really wants to get away. Did it strike you last night that he wanted to get away unhindered, Michael?"

"Yes, madam, he was anxious about that, and that is strange, too."

"Yes, it is strange," Celeste said, "for he is not guilty. He must have had a reason, but what could it have been, Michael?"

"I can't say, madam," answered the servant, applying his polish and rubbing the platter vigorously.

Celeste folded the paper. "This talk is just between us," she said, half questioningly.

"I understand, madam, I understand," Michael said, bowing as she was leaving the room.

In the hall she met her husband coming down the stairs, his trembling hand sliding on the walnut balustrade as for support. Their eyes met. "I am going back to the bank," he explained. "It is after closing-time, but the directors may be holding a consultation. It would be better, I think, for me to offer any assistance in my power. Bradford suggested that I stay away for a while, but I have thought it over and I think I ought to be there."

"Yes, it might be better," Celeste agreed, or seemed to agree. "If you hear anything bearing on—on Charlie's innocence—if they discover that the money was taken by some one else—I wish you would telephone me at once."

"Some one else?" he said, staring blankly. "But you see they have his note. Bradford wanted that to—to show to the rest."

"Yes, I know about the note"—Celeste was turning into the parlor, her eyes averted—"but something else may come up to throw light on even the note."

"Yes, perhaps," he admitted, stupidly, "and in that case I'll 'phone you."

She vanished through the door, and he stalked down the steps into the street. He walked slowly and with a self-imposed limp. He kept his head down.

"Something is wrong with her," he mused, turbulently. "She does not believe it all. She may never be satisfied, and in that case what am I to do? I can't keep this up. It is as unbearable as the other thing from which Charlie saved me. But I must not give in—I must not! He has given me his word of honor never to reveal our compact and never to return. If he is not caught I shall escape. I may lose my wife, but I'll escape."