The Destroying Angel

"Hugh Morten Whitaker."

"If it hadn't been so much in character," commented Drummond, "I'd've thought the thing a forgery – or a poor joke. Knowing you as well as I did, however … I just sat back to wait for word from Mrs. Whitaker."

"And you never heard, except that once!" said Whitaker thoughtfully.

"Here's the sole and only evidence I ever got to prove that you had told the truth."

Drummond handed Whitaker a single, folded sheet of note-paper stamped with the name of the Waldorf-Astoria.

"Carter S. Drummond, Esq., 27 Pine Street, City.

"Dear Sir: I inclose herewith a bank-note for $500, which you will be kind enough to credit to the estate of your late partner and my late husband, Mr. Hugh Morten Whitaker.

"Very truly yours,

"Mary Ladislas Whitaker."

"Dated, you see, the day after the report of your death was published here."

"But why?" demanded Whitaker, dumfounded. "Why?"

"I infer she felt herself somehow honour-bound by the monetary obligation," said the lawyer. "In her understanding your marriage of convenience was nothing more – a one-sided bargain, I think you said she called it. She couldn't consider herself wholly free, even though you were dead, until she had repaid this loan which you, a stranger, had practically forced upon her – if not to you, to your estate."

"But death cancels everything – "

"Not," Drummond reminded him with a slow smile, "the obligation of a period of decent mourning that devolves upon a widow. Mrs. Whitaker may have desired to marry again immediately. If I'm any judge of human nature, she argued that repayment of the loan wiped out every obligation. Feminine logic, perhaps, but – "

"Good Lord!" Whitaker breathed, appalled in the face of this contingency which had seemed so remote and immaterial when he was merely Hugh Morten, bachelor-nomad, to all who knew him on the far side of the world.

Drummond dropped his head upon his hand and regarded his friend with inquisitive eyes.

"Looks as though you may have gummed things up neatly – doesn't it?"

Whitaker nodded in sombre abstraction.

"You may not," continued Drummond with light malice, "have been so generous, so considerate and chivalric, after all."

"Oh, cut that!" growled Whitaker, unhappily. "I never meant to come back."

"Then why did you?"

"Oh … I don't know. Chiefly because I caught Anne Presbury's sharp eyes on me in Melbourne – as I said a while ago. I knew she'd talk – as she surely will the minute she gets back – and I thought I might as well get ahead of her, come home and face the music before anybody got a chance to expose me. At the worst – if what you suggest has really happened – it's an open-and-shut case; no one's going to blame the woman; and it ought to be easy enough to secure a separation or divorce – "

"You'd consent to that?" inquired Drummond intently.

"I'm ready to do anything she wishes, within the law."

"You leave it to her, then?"

"If I ever find her – yes. It's the only decent thing I can do."

"How do you figure that?"

"I went away a sick man and a poor one; I come back as sound as a bell, and if not exactly a plutocrat, at least better off than I ever expected to be in this life… To all intents and purposes I made her a partner to a bargain she disliked; well, I'll be hanged if I'm going to hedge now, when I look a better matrimonial risk, perhaps: if she still wants my name, she can have it."

Drummond laughed quietly. "If that's how you feel," he said, "I can only give you one piece of professional advice."

"What's that?"

"Find your wife."

After a moment of puzzled thought, Whitaker admitted ruefully: "You're right. There's the rub."

"I'm afraid you won't find it an easy job. I did my best without uncovering a trace of her."

"You followed up that letter, of course?"

"I did my best; but, my dear fellow, almost anybody with a decent appearance can manage to write a note on Waldorf stationery. I made sure of one thing – the management knew nothing of the writer under either her maiden name or yours."

"Did you try old Thurlow?"

"Her father died within eight weeks from the time you ran away. He left everything to charity, by the way. Unforgiving blighter."

"Well, there's her sister, Mrs. Pettit."

"She heard of the marriage first through me," asserted Drummond. "Your wife had never come near her – nor even sent her a line. She could give me no information whatever."

"You don't think she purposely misled you – ?"

"Frankly I don't. She seemed sincerely worried, when we talked the matter over, and spoke in a most convincing way of her fruitless attempts to trace the young woman through a private detective agency."

"Still, she may know now," Whitaker said doubtfully. "She may have heard something since. I'll have a word with her myself."

"Address," observed Drummond, dryly: "the American Embassy, Berlin… Pettit's got some sort of a minor diplomatic berth over there."

"O the devil!.. But, anyway, I can write."

"Think it over," Drummond advised. "Maybe it might be kinder not to."

"Oh, I don't know – "

"You've given me to understand you were pretty comfy on the other side of the globe. Why not let sleeping dogs lie?"

"It's the lie that bothers me – the living lie. It isn't fair to her."

"Rather sudden, this solicitude – what?" Drummond asked with open sarcasm.

"I daresay it does look that way. But I can't see that it's the decent thing for me to let things slide any longer. I've got to try to find her. She may be ill – destitute – in desperate trouble again – "