The Tragedy of Z Read Online Free Page A

Leeds and himself—quite as if we had been old friends. We found that he was a widower; he spoke with sad affection of his dead wife, and remarked that one of the great regrets of his life was that he had no daughter to replace his wife. It semed to me that in his own and proper setting Elihu Clay was a vastly different individual from the brusque business man who had enlisted our services in New York. I grew to like him in the quiet days that followed.
    Father and Clay spent many hours closeted together in the study. One entire day they spent at the quarries, which were located a few miles out of Leeds near the Chataharie River. Father was scouting the enemy, and from his perpetual grouch the first few days I saw that he anticipated a long and probably unsuccessful struggle.
    â€œNot a single bit of documentary proof, Patty,” he grumbled to me. “This man Fawcett must be the devil’s own keeper. No wonder Clay yelped for help. This thing is tougher than I thought.”
    But while I sympathized, there was very little that I could do to assist the investigation. Dr. Fawcett was not in evidence. He had, as it happened, left Leeds the morning of our arrival—while we were en route—bound for an unknown destination. I gathered that this was not unusual; he worked in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, and his comings and goings were always dark and unpredictable. Had he been available, I might have been able to exercise whatever charms nature had provided me. I doubt that father would have fallen in with this plan of campaign, and certainly I should have had an armful of trouble with him.
    The situation was rather agreeably complicated by another factor. There was a second Mr. Clay—a junior Mr. Clay of awesome construction and too handsome a smile for the good of the local belles. This gentleman’s name was Jeremy, which matched his curly chestnut hair and a certain devil-may-care quirk of his lips. With that name, and dressed in the appropriate costume, he might have stepped out of the pages of a Farnol novel. Jeremy was freshly out of Dartmouth in more than one sense, weighed one hundred and ninety pounds, had rowed stroke-oar, knew half a dozen All-America football heroes by their first names, ate nothing but vegetables, and danced like a cloud. He was, he assured me gravely at the dinner-table on the first evening of our stay in Leeds, about to make America marble-conscious. He had hurled his diploma into a rock-crusher and was laboring at his father’s Leeds quarries by the side of sweaty Italian drillers, tossing explosives about and getting his hair full of stone-dust. He was sure, he said enthusiastically, that he could learn to produce more marble of superior quality than … His father looked proud but skeptical.
    I found Jeremy a most fascinating young man. For a few days, at any rate; his ambition to make America marble-conscious was put tenderly aside; for his father excused him from work to keep me company. Young Jeremy possessed a small but excellent stable, and for several afternoons we went riding. My education abroad, it soon developed, had been neglected in one respect: I had never been thoroughly schooled in the art of resisting the love-making methods of young American collegians.
    â€œYou’re just a pup,” I told him severely one day when he had neatly pocketed our horses in a little gully from which there was no escape and had proceeded without permission to seize my hand.”
    â€œLet’s both be pups,” he suggested with a grin, and swung sideways out of his saddle. My riding-crop caught him on the tip of his nose just in time to prevent a minor catastrophe.
    â€œOuch!” he said, jumping back. “Is that nice? Pat, you’re breathing fast.”
    â€œI’m not!”
    â€œYou are. You like it.”
    â€œI don’t!”
    â€œAll right,” he said ominously. “I can wait.” And he grinned all the way