The Window at the White Cat | Page 2

heard exactly the same
thing before, but to leave a woman like that, hardly more than a girl,
and lovely!
"Ten days."
"I should think it ought to be looked into," I said decisively, and got up.
Somehow I couldn't sit quietly. A lawyer who is worth anything is
always a partisan, I suppose, and I never hear of a man deserting his
wife that I am not indignant, the virtuous scorn of the unmarried man,
perhaps. "But you will have to tell me more than that. Did this
gentleman have any bad habits? That is, did he--er--drink?"
"Not to excess. He had been forbidden anything of that sort by his
physician. He played bridge for money, but I--believe he was rather
lucky." She colored uncomfortably.
"Married, I suppose?" I asked casually.

"He had been. His wife died when I--" She stopped and bit her lip.
Then it was not her husband, after all! Oddly enough, the sun came out
just at that moment, spilling a pool of sunlight at her feet, on the dusty
rug with its tobacco-bitten scars.
"It is my father," she said simply. I was absurdly relieved.
But with the realization that I had not a case of desertion on my hands,
I had to view the situation from a new angle.
"You are absolutely at a loss to account for his disappearance?"
"Absolutely."
"You have had no word from him?"
"None."
"He never went away before for any length of time, without telling
you?"
"No. Never. He was away a great deal, but I always knew where to find
him." Her voice broke again and her chin quivered. I thought it wise to
reassure her.
"Don't let us worry about this until we are sure it is serious," I said.
"Sometimes the things that seem most mysterious have the simplest
explanations. He may have written and the letter have miscarried
or--even a slight accident would account--" I saw I was blundering; she
grew white and wide-eyed. "But, of course, that's unlikely too. He
would have papers to identify him."
"His pockets were always full of envelopes and things like that," she
assented eagerly.
"Don't you think I ought to know his name?" I asked. "It need not be
known outside of the office, and this is a sort of confessional anyhow,
or worse. People tell things to their lawyer that they wouldn't think of
telling the priest."

Her color was slowly coming back, and she smiled.
"My name is Fleming, Margery Fleming," she said after a second's
hesitation, "and my father, Mr. Allan Fleming, is the man. Oh, Mr.
Knox, what are we going to do? He has been gone for more than a
week!"
No wonder she had wished to conceal the identity of the missing man.
So Allan Fleming was lost! A good many highly respectable citizens
would hope that he might never be found. Fleming, state treasurer,
delightful companion, polished gentleman and successful politician of
the criminal type. Outside in the corridor the office boy was singing
under his breath. "Oh once there was a miller," he sang, "who lived in a
mill." It brought back to my mind instantly the reform meeting at the
city hall a year before, where for a few hours we had blown the feeble
spark of protest against machine domination to a flame. We had sung a
song to that very tune, and with this white-faced girl across from me,
its words came hack with revolting truth. It had been printed and
circulated through the hall.
"Oh, once there was a capitol That sat on a hill, As it's too big to steal
away It's probably there still. The ring's hand in the treasury And
Fleming with a sack. They take it out in wagon loads And never bring
it back."
I put the song out of my mind with a shudder.
"I am more than sorry," I said. I was, too; whatever he may have been,
he was her father. "And of course there are a number of reasons why
this ought not to be known, for a time at least. After all, as I say, there
may be a dozen simple explanations, and--there are exigencies in
politics--"
"I hate politics!" she broke in suddenly. "The very name makes me ill.
When I read of women wanting to--to vote and all that, I wonder if they
know what it means to have to be polite to dreadful people, people who
have even been convicts, and all that. Why, our last butler had been a
prize fighter!" She sat upright with her hands on the arms of the chair.

"That's another thing, too, Mr. Knox. The day after father went away,
Carter left. And he has not come back."
"Carter was the butler?"
"Yes."
"A white man?"
"Oh, yes."