Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/329

Rh his friend Lawler who, you say, was drowned in a wreck?"

"No one else but Mr. Lawler, Mr. Trant; and Howard himself saw him dead and identified him, as you will see in that last letter."

Trant opened the envelope and took out the enclosure interestedly; but as he unfolded the first page, a printed sheet dropped out. He spread it upon his desk—a page from the London Illustrated News showing four portraits with the caption, "Sole survivors of the ill-fated British steamer Gladstone, wrecked off Cape Blanco, January 24," the first portrait bearing the name of Howard Axton and showing the determined, distinctly handsome features and the full lips and deep-set eyes of the man whom the girl had defied that morning.

"This is a good portrait?" Trant asked abruptly.

"Very good, indeed," the girl answered, "though it was taken almost immediately after the wreck for the News. I have the photograph from which it was made at home. I had asked him for a picture of himself in my last previous letter, as my mother had destroyed every picture, even the early pictures, of him and his mother."

Trant turned to the last letter.

"Wrecked, Miss Waldron. Poor Beasley's prophecy of disaster has come only too true, and I suppose he is already congratulating himself that he was 'warned' by my mysterious visitor and so escaped the fate that so many have suffered, including poor Lawler. Of course you will have seen all about it in the staring headlines of some newspaper long before this reaches you. I am glad that when found