Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/62

42 which the mystery rested was Miss Croydon’s motive in making such an appointment, and, above all, in keeping it. That was a thing utterly opposed to her social training, to her maidenly instinct—it was wild, foolish, questionable. She would feel this more acutely than a man could, and yet it had not been sufficient to deter her, to hold her back. What resistless motive was it that had urged her on? What was the secret contained in the papers she had hoped to get from Thompson? Godfrey caught a dim glimpse of something dark, repulsive, terrible. What was the secret? Ah, he would have known, if Goldberg had only been a moment later!

As to Jimmy the Dude, Godfrey had maintained a careful reticence, while commending Simmonds’s promptness in arresting him. Simmonds, no doubt, believed him guilty; but then Simmonds lacked imagination. It might be, Godfrey thought a little savagely, that he himself possessed too much of it, but the theory which that grizzled veteran had built up so adroitly did not in the least satisfy him. It was too prosaic, too matter-of-fact; reasonable, perhaps, but not convincing. It reduced the mystery to a mere sordid crime. Godfrey wanted colour in his mysteries—and right there, he reminded himself again, was his great weakness. Yet Jimmy’s manner had not been that of a guilty man; to be sure, it had changed at the last moment, at the mention of Miss Croydon’s name. Why? What was this wide-stretching net of intrigue, woven in the dark, involving alike Fifth Avenue and the “Tenderloin”—the Delroy mansion, the Marathon, Magraw’s gilded saloon?