AN EXPLANATION SUGGESTED.

"Wait for me a moment, Paul," said Ralph Harmon as the people began to pour out of the church.

He went to the room in the vestry where Clara Hilman sat pale and tearless. With her were Mr. Pembroke, his daughter Louise, and two or three other young ladies who were intimate friends of the unfortunate bride. Ralph did not approach the group, but paused at the door and looked significantly at Miss Pembroke. She went to him at once, and, unseen by the others, he took both her hands in his and said:

"I am going to Strobel's room and shall take Palovna with me. If I find any trace or news, as I undoubtedly shall, I will go directly to your house and report. You may tell Miss Hilman so if you think it will relieve her."

"Clara, dear!" exclaimed Miss Pembroke, impulsively, "Ralph is going to find Ivan, and will come back as quickly as he can to tell you."

For several minutes the bride had been sitting as if petrified, making no answer to the well-meant questions of her friends, unconscious apparently of their tearful sympathy, but at this announcement her eyes were lit by just a gleam of gratitude and she tried to speak to Ralph. Her lips quivered with unformed words, and she turned appealingly to her uncle.

"Come," she faltered, "let us go home."

Ralph bowed and returned immediately to the vestibule, where Paul Palovna waited for him. Both were accosted by many of the outgoing audience, but they shook their heads and hurried down the steps and up the street to the nearest line of cars. They said little to each other on the way to Ashburton Place, for they were oppressed with forebodings, and the consciousness that they had nothing upon which to base speculation.

Once Ralph exclaimed desperately, "What can have happened!" and Paul answered, "He must have fallen violently ill." Both hoped that this might be the case, and neither believed it. Mrs. White knew them both, for they were frequent callers upon her lodger, and her surprise, therefore, passed all bounds when she met them at the door and heard them ask as with one voice, "Where is Strobel?"

"Where?" she repeated, "where should he be? Haven't you seen him?"

"No," replied Ralph, "he did not come to the church, and the rector dismissed the congregation."

Mrs. White threw up her hands and sank into a chair. "Why—why—" she stammered, "he left here all dressed and gay as could be."

"Did he seem quite well?" asked Paul.

The good lady remembered her surprise and disappointment at finding Ivan's eggs unbroken, his breakfast almost untasted and she told the young men about it.

"That signifies nothing," said Paul; "I don't wonder he didn't care to eat. Did he appear to be troubled about anything?"

"Not when he went away," answered Mrs. White; "I thought he seemed put out when the strange gentleman called."

"There we have it!" exclaimed Paul, eagerly. "Who was the caller and what was his business, if you happen to know?"

"I don't know either. I never saw the gentleman before. He was here only a few minutes. He sent up his card, and though I looked at the name, I couldn't remember it, for it had a strange look, something like yours."

"May we go to his room? The card may still be there."

"I don't think it is," said Mrs. White, rising to follow the young men who were already half way up the stairs; "I don't remember seeing it when I cleaned up."

When Ralph and Paul had vainly examined the catch-alls, the vases, and every probable place into which a visitor's card might have been tucked, the Russian asked what had been done with the contents of the waste basket.

"My daughter Lizzie helped me," replied Mrs. White, "and took the waste papers downstairs. I'll ask her to find them and look for the card."

She left the room, and while she was gone the young men moved about nervously, repeatedly asking who the caller could have been, what possible connection his call could have had with Ivan's failure to appear at his wedding, and all manner of questions, vain and irritating, that arise when men are confronted by an emergency that teems with mystery. Mrs. White reported that her daughter had gone out and that the waste paper from Mr. Strobel's room had been burned.

"Lizzie may have seen that card," she said, "and I'll ask her when she comes in. I can't think where she can have gone."

"Was she here when the stranger called?" asked Ralph.

"Oh, yes, and until after Mr. Strobel started away. I didn't know that she had left the house, and I can't imagine what she went out for. Perhaps she'll be back soon."

"Do you know where Strobel hired his carriage?" inquired Paul.

"No, I don't. Lizzie might, for I remember he said something to her about it the day before. I wonder where she——"

"He probably ordered his carriage from Clark & Brown," said Ralph to Paul. He had no intention of ignoring Mrs. White's motherly anxiety about her daughter, but he saw no reason for attaching significance to her absence, and his mind was burdened with a growing conviction that something serious had happened to his friend.

"Suppose we make some inquiries," responded Paul. "If you will go to Clark & Brown's office, I will take a run around all the hotel cab-stands in the vicinity. He might have left his order at the Tremont House or in Bosworth Street, you know."

"I'm agreed," said Ralph. "We must get hold of the man who drove him. One of us is likely to succeed. Suppose, as Strobel may after all turn up at any minute, we meet here as soon as we can. I'll take in the Revere House as well as Clark & Brown's."

"I wish you would meet here, gentlemen," interposed Mrs. White; "Lizzie may be back then."

"I hope she will be, Mrs. White," said Ralph. "She may be able to tell us something about Strobel. It seems strange that he hasn't sent some word."

"I begin to fear that we shall find him at a hospital, badly injured," remarked Paul.

"Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Mrs. White. "I declare! it makes me feel dreadfully about Lizzie."

The young men departed at once upon their errands. It was Paul Palovna who came upon a clew. He found where Ivan had engaged his carriage, and he went to the livery stable, which was in the South End, to find what had become of the driver and his passenger. He arrived there just after the driver had come in with his damaged carriage.

"I started in with the gentleman," said the driver, "but I broke down at the corner of Tremont and Park Streets and he went along with somebody else."

"Who was it?" asked Paul.

"I don't know. I never saw the cabman before."

"Whose rig was it?"

"I don't know that, either. I never saw the horse before, and the carriage was like hundreds of others that you might see in Boston any day."

Paul tried to think what ought to be done next.

"Did Mr. Strobel have a second accident?" asked one of the stable proprietors.

"I fear so," replied Paul; "we haven't seen him, and as he was going to his own wedding, his failure to turn up is rather alarming."

"Going to be married, was he?" the stableman spoke thoughtfully. "Then I guess you'll find that he has been made the victim of a practical joke. I suppose he had plenty of friends who were aware of his intentions?"

"Certainly, but I cannot imagine," said Paul with some indignation, "that any of them would have carried a joke to the extent of keeping him away from his wedding."

"Perhaps not," admitted the stableman, "but it looks as if some one had deliberately tried to delay him. Don't you know how the accident happened to our carriage?"

"No. What was the matter?"

"Somebody had loosened the nut of the forward right wheel so that it was bound to come off before they had gone very far. The breakdown was no accident."

"You are sure of this, I suppose," exclaimed Paul; "but when could it have been done?"

"When Mike was waiting in front of the door to Mr. Strobel's place. You'd better tell this gentleman what you told me, Mike."

"I waited there a good half hour before Mr. Strobel came out," replied the driver. "And while I was there a fellow crossed the street and spoke to me. He stood in the street kind o' leaning on the wheel. 'Go'n' to take Mr. Strobel to his wedding?' says he. 'I'm go'n' to take a gent of that name,' says I 'but I don't know nothing 'bout his wedding.' 'That's what 'tis,' says he, 'and a very fine man he is, and a fine day it is for the ceremony; and that's a fine horse you have,' and all that kind of palaver, till I thought he'd talk me blind. After a while he said good-morning, and went on, bad luck to him."

Paul looked at the stableman in surprise. "Could the nut have been removed then without the driver knowing it?" he asked.

"Yes, but it wasn't necessarily removed. It may have been started. You get up on the seat and sit back indifferently, as a driver would be likely to sit. Just try it. I want you to be satisfied."

Paul climbed to the driver's seat on the coupÉ, and the stableman leaned over the wheel.

"You see," said the latter, "unless you bent over and looked down sharply you wouldn't make out what I was up to, and not having any reason to suspect a trick, you'd likely sit still; more likely than not, if you was an ordinary driver, you'd look the other way most of the time; and—but I don't need to talk any longer for here is the nut!" and he held up a small wrench in which was the nut of the wheel by which he was standing.

"Great Scott!" exclaimed Paul, smiling, in spite of his anxiety, at the dexterous way in which the stableman had proved that the trick might have been done. "What sort of man was this, Mike, who talked to you?"

"I dunno, sir. Medium sized, young, I should say."

"Would you know him again?"

"I would that!"

"By the way, did you see anybody call at the house while you were waiting?"

"Yes, a gentleman went in. I heard him ask for Mr. Strobel, and he came out again inside of five minutes."

"What was he like and where did he go?"

"I couldn't tell you what he was like. I paid no attention to him. He went away toward Somerset Street. The fellow at the wheel was talking to me as he went along."

This was all the information of value that Paul could obtain, although he asked many more questions. He found Ralph waiting for him in Ivan's room, and Mrs. White was there, overcome with anxiety on account of the continued absence of her daughter.

"I think," said Ralph when he had heard his friend's report, "that we'd better speak of this at police headquarters."

"Are you going to say anything about Lizzie?" asked Mrs. White.

"Certainly not, unless you wish it. She will doubtless come in before evening."

"I don't know," murmured the landlady, despairingly; "she didn't say a word about going out, and I'm dreadfully afraid! I can't find her little traveling bag——"

She stopped suddenly as Paul wheeled about and glanced at her with a startled glance. There was a moment of silence, and then the Russian said quietly: "I will come back early in the evening, Mrs. White, and if your daughter has not appeared, I'll help you to make inquiries. We must look after Strobel now."

The young men reported the circumstances at police headquarters and then went to Roxbury. It was five o'clock when they arrived at Mr. Pembroke's house, and they cherished a hope that some word from Ivan, if not Ivan himself, would be found there. They were disappointed. Louise Pembroke told them that nothing had occurred except that Clara had succumbed to the shock and strain, and was under the care of a physician.

"About an hour ago she broke down and cried," said Louise, "and the physician said it was the best thing that could have happened to her. He would have been afraid to have Ivan return before that. Now she is not in any immediate danger."

"Are you going to tell her what we have done?" asked Ralph.

"Yes. I'll do so now."

Louise found her cousin calm and hopeful.

"Ralph has come back," said Clara. "I heard the bell, and knew it must be he. Well?"

"Ralph says, dear," replied Louise, "that Ivan started for the church in a carriage, and that there was a breakdown on the way that appears to have been caused by a trick. He then took another carriage, and after that they do not know what became of him."

"Lou," said the sufferer, "I suppose people would expect that I should feel humiliation most of all, but I don't, and if I did I should no longer feel it now that I know Ivan started for the church. Don't you see? He meant to come, of course! Something dreadful has happened to him—" Her eyes filled with tears, and she paused a moment before continuing: "There must be more details, of course, but I am not well enough yet to hear them. Ask Ralph and Paul to come to-morrow morning, will you, please? I must talk with them."

"I will," replied Louise; "Ivan may come before that."

Ralph went to his home immediately after leaving Mr. Pembroke's, but Paul, who had no other home than a furnished room in a lodging house, returned according to his promise to see Mrs. White. He felt that there might be a chance that the daughter, Lizzie, could throw some light on Ivan's movements, but he had no doubt whatever that she herself had returned. He reached the house just as a postman was leaving it. Mrs. White stood in the hall, the door remaining open, nervously opening a letter. When she had read it she screamed, and would have fallen to the floor had not Paul sprung forward to catch her. She recovered in a moment sufficiently to sob:

"I'm so glad you've come. Lizzie has gone! Read what she says."

Paul took the letter which she tremblingly handed him and read:

"Dear Mother: I am going away and shall not come back for a long time. Do not be anxious, and do not try to find me. You are not to blame for anything, and I cannot now tell you why I go. Some time I may do so, and I may write to you. I don't know yet. Do not think unkindly of me. You will know some time that it is best. I love you and——"

Two words here had been laboriously scratched out. Then came the signature, "Lizzie." Paul made out the erased words to be "I love."

In spite of himself a dreadful fear came over him, a fear of something more painful for all of Ivan's friends to bear than an accident, no matter how serious.