Consumed with eager concern, Grey had himself driven to the office of the Herald. He was perturbed, distraught, and nervously apprehensive.
“Under a cloud,” he repeated, thoughtfully; “under a cloud. That may mean anything—murder, arson, theft, elopement. I’m a fugitive from justice, I suppose. That much Frothingham made very clear when he urged my stopping those cables.” And then his mood changed, and he argued that he was unnecessarily agitated. It could not be so bad. In his senses or out of them he would never, he felt sure, have committed a crime—some indiscretion, possibly, but not a crime.
When at length the file of the newspaper was before him and he was turning the pages, he noted that his fingers were unsteady and that perspiration was oozing from every pore. Carefully he scanned20 each headline, running down column after column with keen scrutiny. Ten minutes passed and he had reached nearly the middle of the month without finding so much as a line of what he sought. Much of the matter, however, was familiar, from which he argued that the date of revelation must be farther on. Each leaf of the book of days he turned now with dread expectation. He had been standing, the file on a table at arm’s length, but suddenly he sat down, stunned by the message of the types that faced him:
“Carey Grey an Embezzler—Well-known Wall Street Broker Hypothecates Firm’s Securities and Disappears—Upwards of a Hundred Thousand Dollars Gone.”
His heart was pounding very hard and his head was bursting.
“It’s a lie,” he muttered, inaudibly, “an outrageous, despicable lie. It’s impossible. It’s preposterous. Embezzle from my own firm? It’s ridiculous.”
He leaned forward and pulled the file of papers down until one end rested in his lap, and then he read hastily, but with the scrupulous heed of absolute21 concentration, every word of the two columns that told with minute detail the story of his defalcation and flight.
“Carey Grey, of the firm of Mallory & Grey, stockbrokers, with offices in the Mills Building,” began the account, “has been missing for a week and securities to the value of $110,000, it was discovered yesterday, have disappeared from the firm’s safe deposit vault. Most of the securities, including first mortgage bonds of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad Company, to the amount of $40,000, and Brooklyn Rapid Transit 5s, worth $40,000 more, Grey hypothecated, personally, with the Shoe and Leather Bank on the day prior to his flight.
“The news of the defalcation caused a sensation in the Street and in society as well. Carey Grey was one of the most popular members of the Stock Exchange and his character had always been regarded as beyond reproach. A member of an old New York family—his mother was a Livingstone—his social position was of the best. He occupied bachelor apartments in the Dunscombe, on Sixty-sixth street, near Madison avenue, and22 his name appears on the membership lists of the union, Knickerbocker, and other clubs.
“Mr. Mallory, his partner, said yesterday: ‘Mr. Grey was at his desk last Wednesday when I reached the office, and he was there when I went away at half-past three. There was nothing unusual in his manner. He discussed with me several matters of business and spoke of a certain directors’ meeting that he should attend the next day. I have not seen or heard from him since. When he did not appear on Thursday I feared he was ill and telephoned to his rooms, but the answer came that he was not in. The whole business is to me inexplicable. I have known Carey Grey from childhood, and I would have been willing to swear that there was not a dishonest bone in his body. But the evidence against him is simply indisputable. The loss struck us at an especially bad time, but we shall pull through all right.’
“Inspector McClusky admitted that he was all at sea concerning Grey’s whereabouts. The case was not reported to him for a week—not until the securities were missed—and so it was quite possible the absconder had left the country; nevertheless23 he was doing all in his power to locate him.
“At Grey’s apartments yesterday Franz Lutz, his valet, was preparing to seek employment elsewhere.
“‘Mr. Grey,’ he said, ‘slept here last Wednesday night. He rose about eight o’clock Thursday morning, saying he had an urgent business appointment at the Waldorf-Astoria at ten sharp. He went away in a cab, and I have not seen him since.’
“Grey’s mother, who lives with her sister, Mrs. Hermann Valkenburgh, in Washington Square, North, has been prostrated by the revelations of the past twenty-four hours, and is under the care of her physician, Dr. Elbridge Bond.
“A rumour that Grey was engaged to be married to Miss Hope Van Tuyl, daughter of Nicholas Van Tuyl, president of the Consolidated Mortgage Company, was current yesterday. Miss Van Tuyl when seen last night denied the report.”
There was more of it, much more, all of which Grey read with deep and astonished interest; but it was merely repetition and speculation. When24 he finished the two columns he turned to the paper of the day following, and found a column there. As Frothingham had told him, the newspapers had kept up the sensation for weeks, and the Herald was as energetic as any. At length came a report that a man answering his description had jumped overboard from a steamer in the Gulf of Mexico and had been drowned before assistance could reach him. There was nothing in his effects to give a hint as to his identity, but the world, with one accord, apparently, had accepted the suggestion that it was the missing Grey, and then the subject was dropped.
He ran through the files for another month, but other matters of more immediate interest had crowded the Grey affair out of the public thought.
He returned the papers to the clerk who had provided them, and went out onto the Avenue de l’Opéra, horrified and perplexed. He was a felon, hiding from the law. And yet never, so far as he could remember, had he harboured a dishonest impulse. He was disguised to escape detection, and the disguise when he had discovered it had been, and still was, more mystifying to himself25 than it could possibly be to others. Then he began to wonder what his cables would bring forth. He would be arrested, of course, and tried, and in all probability found guilty. The evidence against him as set forth in the newspaper account was not merely strong—it was irrefutable. Against the testimony of Mallory and of the bank officials what could he offer in refutation? To fancy any court or jury would put faith in his asseveration that he was unconscious when the act was committed was to count on the impossible. Nevertheless it was clearly his duty now to return at once to America and do all in his power to make reparation. And then it occurred to him that in spite of his alleged embezzlement he was, apparently, practically without funds. If he had taken the money, as charged, it must, of course, be somewhere, but of its location he had not the faintest idea. That he had disposed of a hundred or even eighty thousand dollars in five months was in the highest degree improbable.
At the corner of the Rue de la Paix is the office of Thomas Cook & Sons, and Grey entered and inquired as to the sailing of transatlantic liners.26 The Celtic, he learned, was to sail the next day from Liverpool, but he could make better time probably, the clerk told him, by taking the Deutschland from Boulogne, or the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse from Cherbourg, on Saturday. The tide of travel was all the other way at this season and he would have no difficulty in securing a stateroom, even at the last minute.
Resuming his stroll he had very nearly reached his hotel when a young man, pale and evidently much agitated, halted before him, and raising his hat, deferentially, said:
“A thousand pardons, Herr Arndt, but I beg you to make haste. Herr Schlippenbach—he is dying.”
He spoke in German, and Grey noted that in feature and manner he was Teutonic. For an instant the American imagined the youth had addressed him by mistake, but he had sufficient presence of mind to give no sign. A second later he was reassured.
“I went to your room, Herr Arndt, as usual at four-thirty, but you were gone out, and the portier told me you left no message.”
27 Grey hesitated over a reply. He realized that he was on the verge of a discovery. It was very evident now that he was not alone in Paris—that he had acquaintances, at least; probably companions; and that one of them was dying. In order to learn more he must give no indication of the change that had been wrought in him in the last few hours.
“Dying!” he exclaimed, in a tone of surprise; “I had no idea it was so serious.”
His German was excellent. In his early youth he had spent two years at G?ttingen, and had lived for one winter with a German family in Vienna.
“Yes,” went on the young man, excitedly, “the Herr Doctor says it is a matter now of hours only, perhaps minutes. They have sent for a priest. Herr Schlippenbach—poor old Herr Schlippenbach—he is quite unconscious.”
“He can recognise no one?”
“No, Herr Arndt, he just lies staring at the ceiling, and breathing very hard and loud. Oh, it is so pitiful! And the Fr?ulein, she is sobbing, sobbing, sobbing all the time.”
28 Herr Arndt. So that is the name he is known by here in Paris, at the H?tel Grammont, by those he has met—those he has travelled with, perhaps! And there is a Fr?ulein in the party! Herr Schlippenbach’s daughter, probably. A hundred questions crowded for utterance, but he held them back.
“It was the Fr?ulein who sent for the priest, I suppose?” he ventured.
“Yes, Herr Arndt; she and Herr Captain Lindenwald. When Herr Schlippenbach dies Fr?ulein von Altdorf will have a great fortune; yes?”
“Surely,” Grey hazarded. Then the girl was not the old German’s daughter, after all, though she was to inherit his property. The affair was growing a trifle complicated.
“And Herr Captain Lindenwald—will he, do you think, Herr Arndt, marry the Fr?ulein?”
Grey was silent. If this fellow was a servant he was evidently forgetting his place, and it was well to remind him of it.
“How odd it is I never can remember your name!” he said, at length, ignoring the question and scowling a little.
29 “Johann, Herr Arndt.”
“Yes, yes, to be sure. How stupid!”
And then they turned in at the broad marble entrance of the hotel.