Not nearly enough admiration has been granted by the male human to the most remarkable quality possessed by the human female—her ability to recuperate. Man worships the heroic virtues in man. But in woman he worships the intangible thing called charm, the fleeting thing called beauty. Man hates to concede that woman is his superior in anything, wherefore even that well-known ability of hers to endure suffering he brushes aside as inconsequential, giving credit to Mother Nature. Possibly Mother Nature does deserve the credit. Still, man has no quality that he has bestowed upon himself. Yet that does not prevent him from being proud of the physique that he inherited from his grandfather, the brain that he inherited from his father, or the wit that descended to him from some other ancestor.
So may women justly be proud of their recuperative powers. For these powers are more than physical. Thousands of years of child-bearing, of undergoing an agony that in each successive generation, because of corsets, because of silly notions of living, of too much work or too little work, has become more poignant, have had their effect upon the female character.
If the baby dies, father is prostrated. It is mother who attends to all the needful details, although her own sense of loss, of unbearable grief,is greater, perhaps, than her husband's. If father loses his job, he mopes in despair; it is mother who encourages him, who wears a smiling face, even though the problem of existence seems more unsolvable to her than to him.
It does not do to attribute this quality to women's histrionic ability. For the histrionism is due to the quality, not the obverse. It was not acting that made Clancy smile coquettishly up into Randall's lowering visage as he swept her away from Vandervent. It was courage—the sheerest sort of courage.
In the moment that Randall had come to claim her, her feet had suddenly become leaden, her eyes had been shifting, frightened. Yet they had not taken half a dozen steps before she was again the laughing heroine of the party. For that she had been! Even a novice such as Clancy Deane knew that more than courtesy to a hostess'protégéewas behind the attentions of Judge Walbrough. And she was versed enough in masculine admiration to realize that Vandervent's interest had been genuinely roused. Flattery, success had made her eyes brilliant, her lips and cheeks redder, her step lighter. Danger threatened her, but cringing would not make the danger any less real. Therefore, why cringe? This, though she did not express it, even to herself, inspired her gayety.
The fact that Randall's brows were gathered together in a frown made her excitement—her pleasurable excitement—greater. Knowing that he had conceived a quick jealousy for Vandervent, she could not forbear asking, after the immemorial fashion of women who know what is the matter,
"What's the matter?"
And Randall, like a million or so youths before him, who have known that the questioner was well aware of the answer, said,
"You know well enough."
"No, I don't," said Clancy.
"Yes, you do, too," asserted Randall.
"Why"—and Clancy was wide-eyed—"how could I?"
Randall stared down at her. He had made a great discovery.
"You're a flirt," he declared bitterly.
He could feel Clancy stiffen in his arms. Her face, quickly averted, seemed to radiate chill, as an iceberg, though invisible, casts its cold atmosphere ahead. He had offended beyond hope of forgiveness. Wherefore, like the criminal who might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, he plunged into newer and greater offenses.
"Well, of course I'm not a multimillionaire, and I don't keep a press-agent to tell the world what a great man I am, like Vandervent, but still—" He paused, as though confronted by thoughts too terrible for utterance. Clancy sniffed.
"Running other men down doesn't run you up, Mr. Randall."
She felt, as soon as she had uttered the words, that they were unworthy of her. And because she felt that she had spoken in a common fashion, she became angry at Randall, who had led her to this—well, indiscretion.
"I didn't mean to do that, Miss Deane," he said hastily; "only, I—I'm sorry I spoke that way. Vandervent doesn't hire a press-agent—so far asI know. And he's a good citizen and an able man. I'm sorry, Miss Deane. I'm jealous!" he blurted.
Clancy grinned. She twisted her head until she met Randall's eyes again. For the moment, she had completely forgotten the deadly though unconscious threat behind Vandervent's words of a few moments ago.
"You mustn't be absurd, Mr. Randall," she said, with great severity.
"I don't mean to be," he answered, "but I can't help it. You promised me atête-à-tête," he said plaintively.
"Did I?" She laughed. Randall reversed as she spoke, and she faced the door. Vandervent was eyeing her. Although his eyes were friendly, eager, she saw him, not as a partner in flirtation but as an officer of the law. Half a minute ago, engrossed in teasing Randall, she'd almost forgotten him. Back and forth, up and down—thus the Clancy spirits. She was, in certain emotional respects, far more Irish than American. She pressed Randall's left hand.
"Let's go down-stairs," she suggested.
She caught the look of disappointment in Vandervent's eyes as she passed him. For a moment, she hesitated. How simple it would be to exchangetête-à-têtepartners, take Vandervent down-stairs, and, from the very beginning, tell him the amazing history of her half-week in New York! Helikedher. Possibly his feeling toward her might grow into something warmer. Certainly, even though it remained merely liking, that was an emotion strong enough to justify her in throwing herself upon his mercy. And, of course, he'dbelieveher.
She wondered. She realized, as she had realized many times before in the past few days, and would realize again in the days to come, that the longer one delays in the frank course, the more difficult frankness becomes. Even if Vandervent did believe her, think of the position in which she would find herself! It came home to her that she liked the affair that she was attending to-night. It was more fun than any kind of work, she imagined—playing round with successful, fashionable, wealthy people. Scandal, if she emerged from it with her innocence proved, might not hurt her upon the stage or in the moving pictures, or even in Sally Henderson's esteem. But it would ruin her socially.
"A husband with the kale." That was what Fanchon DeLisle had said. No such husband could be won by a girl who had been the central figure of a murder trial. Clancy was the born gambler. It had taken the temperament of a gambler to leave Zenith; it had taken the temperament of a gambler to escape from the room that contained Beiner's dead body; it had taken the temperament of a gambler to decide, with less than seven dollars in the world, to brave the pursuit of the police, the wrath of Zenda, the loneliness of New York, rather than surrender to the police, conscious of her innocence.
A gambler! A chance-taker! Thus she had been created, and thus, in the fulfilment of her destiny, she would always be. The impulse to surrender, to throw herself upon Vandervent's mercy, passed as instantly as it had come. Yet, once out of the studio, she leaned heavily upon Randall's arm.
In the drawing-room, on the ground floor, Randallpaused. Clancy withdrew her hand from his arm. They faced each other a bit awkwardly. Clancy always had courage when there were others present, but, when alone with a man, a certain shyness became visible. Also, although there had been boys in Zenith who had fancied themselves in love with her, she had always held herself high. She had not encouraged their attentions.
Randall was different. He was a grown man. And, after his confession of jealousy, it was silly for her not to take him seriously. He was not the flirtatious kind. He frightened her.
"You're worried," he stated surprisingly.
"'Worried?'" She tried to laugh, but something inside her seemed to warn her to beware.
"Yes—worried," repeated Randall. He came close to her. "Has Vandervent annoyed you? You were happy—you seemed to be—until you danced with him. Then——"
"Mr. Randall, you talk like a little boy," she said. "First, you wanttête-à-têtes; then you are jealous; then you are sure that some one is annoying me——"
"Youareworried," he charged.
He did not make the iteration stubbornly. He made it as one who was certain of what he said. Also, there was a patience in his tone, as though he were prepared for denial, and had discounted it in advance and had no intention of changing his belief.
For a moment, Clancy wavered. He was big and strong and competent-seeming. He looked the sort of man who would understand. There are some men who one knows will always be faithful to any trust imposed in them, who can be counted upon always.Randall had the fortunate gift of rousing this impression. He was, perhaps, not overbrilliant—not, at least, in the social way; but he was the sort that always inspires, from men and women both, not merely confidence but confidences. Had he not been making love to her, Clancy would perhaps have confided in him. But a lover is different from a friend. One hides from a lover the things that one entrusts to a friend. It is not until people have been married long enough to inspire faith that confidences result. Whoever heard of a bride telling important secrets to her husband?
Clancy's wavering stopped. Possible husbands could not be entrusted with knowledge prejudicial to her chances as a possible wife.
"If you're going to continue absurd, we'll go up-stairs again," she announced.
Her chin came slightly forward. Randall looked at her doubtfully, but he was too full of himself, as all lovers are, to press the subject of Clancy's worriment. He was tactful enough, after all. And he told her of his boyhood in Ohio, of his decision to come to New York, of the accident that had caused him to leave the bank which, on the strength of his father's Congressional career, had offered him an opening. It had to do with the discontinuance of the account of an apparently valuable customer. Randall, acting temporarily as cashier, had, on his own responsibility, refused further credit to the customer. He had done so because a study of the man's market operations had convinced him that a corner, which would send the customer into involuntary bankruptcy, had been effected. There had ensued a week of disgrace; his job had hung in the balance.Then the customer's firm suspended; the receiver stepped in, and Randall had been offered a raise in salary because of the money—from the refusal of worthless paper offered as security by the bankrupt—that the bank had been saved.
He had refused the increase in salary and left the bank, convinced—and having convinced certain financiers—that his judgment of the stock-market was worth something. His success had been achieved only in the past two years, but he was worth some hundreds of thousands of dollars, with every prospect, Clancy gathered, of entering the millionaire class before he was much over thirty.
He went farther back. Despite his apparently glowing health, he'd suffered a bad knee at football. The army had rejected him in 1917. Later on, when the need for men had forced the examiners to be less stringent, he had been accepted, and had been detailed to a training-camp. But he had won no glory, achieving a sergeancy shortly before the armistice. He had not gone abroad. He was a graduate of the University of Illinois, knew enough about farming to maintain a sort of "ranch" in Connecticut, and was enthusiastic about motor-cars.
This was about as far as he got when he insisted that Clancy supplement his slight knowledge of her. She told him of the Zenith normal school, which she had attended for two years, of the summer residents of Zenith, of the fishing-weirs, of the stage that brought the mail from Bucksport, of the baseball games played within the fort of Revolutionary times on the top of the hill on which the town of Zenith was built. And this was as far as she had reached when Vandervent found them.
He was extremely polite, but extremely insistent in a way that admitted of no refusal.
"I say, Randall, you mustn't monopolize Miss Deane. It's not generous, you know. You've been lucky enough. This is my dance."
Clancy didn't remember the fact, but while she and Randall had rambled on, she had been doing some close thinking. She couldn't confess to Vandervent that she was Florine Ladue, but she could utilize the heaven-sent opportunity to fascinate the man who might, within twenty-four hours, hold her life in his hand—although it couldn't be as serious as that, she insisted to herself. But, in the next breath, she decided that it could easily be as serious as that, and even more serious. Yet, with all her worry, she could repress a smile at Randall's stiff courtesy to his rival. Clancy was young, and life was thrilling.
But she had no chance to "vamp" Vandervent. A Paul Jones was in full swing as they reached the studio, and Judge Walbrough took her from Vandervent after a half-dozen bars had been played. From him she went to Mortimer, the illustrator, and from him to Darnleigh, the poet, and from him to Cavanagh, the millionaire oil-man, the richest bachelor in the world, Judge Walbrough informed her, in a hoarse whisper meant to reach the ears of Cavanagh.
And then Mrs. Carey announced that the storm was increasing so savagely that she feared to detain her guests any longer lest they be unable to reach their homes. There was much excitement, and several offers to take Clancy home. But Mrs. Carey came to her.
"I want you to stay with me, Miss Deane. Please!" she added, in a whisper. Clancy thought there was appeal in her voice. She said that she would. Whereas Randall looked savage, and Vandervent downcast. Which looks made Clancy's heart sing. In this laughing crowd, under these lights, with the jazz band only a moment stilled, it was absurd to suppose that she was really in danger from Vandervent or any one else. Wasn't she innocent of any wrong-doing?
Up and down, down and up! The Clancys of this world are always so. Which is why they are the best beloved and the happiest, all things considered.
She was properly remote and cool to both her suitors, as she called them to herself. Modesty was not her failing.
The room into which Sophie Carey showed Clancy was smaller than her hostess' bedroom, but, in its way, just as exquisite. It made Clancy think—with its marvelous dressing-table, divided into two parts, the mirror between them, its soft rugs, its lacy covers on the bed—of pictures in magazines devoted to the home. It brought, somehow, to a focus, certain uneasy thoughts of the past day. So that her face was troubled when, having donned a wonderful nightgown that Mrs. Carey had lent her, and having put over this a fleecy dressing-gown, she turned to receive her hostess, who was similarly attired. Mrs. Carey pulled up a chair and sank into it.
"You're nervous," she announced.
Clancy shrugged faintly. If Sophie Carey knew just what Clancy had to be nervous about!
"No; I've been wondering," she replied.
"Wondering what?" asked Mrs. Carey.
Clancy's forehead puckered.
"About all this," she replied.
She waved a hand vaguely about the little room. Sophie Carey laughed.
"Like it?" she asked languidly. "Care to live here?"
Clancy stared at her.
"'Live here?'" she demanded incredulously.
"Why not?"
"Why should I?" countered Clancy.
"I like you," Mrs. Carey said. "I think we'd get on well together."
Clancy frowned.
"Why, I couldn't begin to pay——"
"No one said anything about paying," interrupted Mrs. Carey.
"But I couldn't—I never accepted——" Clancy was prim.
Mrs. Carey laughed.
"You'll get over that, I fear. Now, as for the expense—if you feel that way, we'll arrange what's fair."
"You really want me?" said Clancy.
"I told you earlier this evening that I liked success. Well, I like to protégé success. You'll be a success. You're practically one already. With Phil Vandervent interested and the Walbroughs enthusiastically enlisted on your side—It was rather hard on David to-night, wasn't it?"
Clancy blushed.
"'Hard?'"
Mrs. Carey smiled.
"He had an open face, poor David! It tells what is in his heart quite plainly. Oh, well, David is a remarkable youth in lots of ways, but Phil Vandervent—he's a Vandervent."
"You don't really think, can't imagine—" Clancy paused, dazed at the possibilities.
"Why not? Three Vandervents have married chorus-girls. You're a lady, my dear. Phil could do a lot worse. And you could hardly hope to do better."
Clancy shook her head.
"That isn't the career I came to New York to find."
Mrs. Carey chuckled.
"None of us find the career we were looking for. Half the bankers in the world planned to be authors. Half the authors planned to be bankers. And there you are! You'll live here?"
The offer opened up opportunities undreamed of by Clancy. To be chaperoned, guided, protégé'd by a woman like Sophie Carey! She had come to New York intent on making financial and, secondarily, of course—Clancy was young—artistic success. To have a vista of social achievement placed before her enraptured eyes——
"It would be pretty hard," she said naïvely, "to give up a thing like this, wouldn't it? I mean—pretty clothes, a place to live in that was beautiful. I stayed to-night because you wanted me to. But I was wondering. I can see why girls—slide down. And I don't think it's because they want what they haven't got; it's more because they can't give up what they have. Isn't it?"
"It sounds convincing," admitted Mrs. Carey. She sighed. "Well, we're going to be friends, anyway, my dear. It was good of you to spend the night here. I—Donald didn't drop in as he'd threatened, and I'm lonesome, and—blue." She rose suddenly. "I'm keeping you up. It isn't fair." She walked toward the door and turned. "Do you know why I really asked you to stay? Because I saw that something was on your mind, my dear. And I didn't want you to do anything foolish."
"'Foolish?'" Clancy stared at her.
"David Randall would have insisted on taking youhome. And—if he'd proposed sudden marriage, what would you have done?"
"'Marriage?'"
"That's what I said," said Mrs. Carey. "You're nervous, a stranger, and—I like you, little girl. I want you to have a fair chance to make up your mind."
"But I wouldn't have—why, it's absurd!" said Clancy.
Her hostess shrugged.
"My third night in New York, I went to a dance. I was terribly depressed. And a boy had conceived the same sudden sort of attachment for me that David has conceived for you. Only one thing saved me from making a little idiot of myself—not a minister would marry us without a license. I'm confessing a lot, my dear. Good-night," she ended abruptly.
Alone, Clancy slipped out of the pretty dressing-gown and got into bed. She could not doubt Sophie Carey's sincerity. Yet how absurd the woman was in thinking that she and David— She wondered. Suppose that Randallhadproposed—in one of her reactions from bravado to fear. To have a man to help her fight her battle, to extricate her from the predicament into which her own frightened folly had hurried her! Sleepily, she decided that Sophie Carey was a wonderful friend. Also, she decided that Clancy Deane wasn't much of an actress. Ifevery oneguessed that she was worried——
Once, during the night, she half wakened. She thought that she'd heard the door-bell ringing. But she slipped into unconsciousness again almost at once. But in the morning she knew that she hadnot been mistaken. For Sophie Carey woke her up, and Clancy saw a face that was like a blush-rose.
"Miss Deane, you must wake up and meet him before he goes."
"Before who goes?" demanded Clancy.
Sophie Carey's face was like fire.
"Don. He came last night after all—late, and he isn't going to get a divorce, because I won't let him." There was fiery pride and touchingly soft self-abasement in her voice. "We've made it up. It was all my fault, anyway."
Clancy, as she bathed and dressed, shook her head wonderingly. Mrs. Carey's life was almost as kaleidoscopic as her own.
She put on the gray foulard and descended, shortly, to the dining-room. There she met Donald Carey. Weak-mouthed, its selfishness was partly hidden by a short mustache, blond. If Clancy hadn't heard something of him, she'd not have known, at first, the essential meanness of his nature. Undoubtedly he had helped himself from one of the decanters on the sideboard, for his nerves were well under control, and Clancy gathered, from his own somewhat boastful remarks, that he'd been intoxicated for the better—or worse—part of the week.
Last night, Sophie Carey had been so attracted by Clancy that not only did she wish to protégé her but wished to support her. Her offer, last night, had meant practically that. But events had transpired, Mrs. Carey was no longer, in effect, a widow. She was a married woman again—pridefully so. Her air of dependence half sickened Clancy. A woman of prestige, ability, and charm, she was a plaything of the momentary whim of the man whosename she bore. Last night independent, mistress of her own destiny, this morning she was an appanage. And how could Sophie Carey respect this weak sot?
But she had more to think about than the affairs of Sophie Carey, no matter how those affairs might affect herself. Few persons, no matter how temperamentally constituted, are nervous on first waking in the morning. They may be cranky and irritable, but not nervous. So Clancy, who had no irritation in her system, was calm until after breakfast. Then she began to fret. This was the day! Assistant District Attorney Philip Vandervent would receive an answer to his telegram to Fanchon DeLisle. He would learn that the real name of the woman who had borne Fanchon's card of introduction to the office of Morris Beiner was Clancy Deane. Her arrest was a matter of—hours, at the outside.
She felt like one condemned, with the electric chair round a turn in the corridor. Of course, she assured herself, the police must believe her story. But even if they did, gone was her opportunity for success. She would be the distasteful figure in a great scandal. Her breakfast was an unsubstantial meal. But her hostess did not notice. She was too intent on seeing that her husband's coy appetite was tempted.
Suddenly, Clancy felt a distaste for herself—a distaste for being protégé'd, for having a patroness. Sophie Carey had taken a liking to her. Sophie Carey had wished to do this and that and the other thing for her. Now Sophie Carey was by the way of forgetting her existence. She accepted the offer of her hostess' car to take her home, but gave vaguereplies to Sophie's almost equally vague remarks about when they must see each other again. It had been kind of Mrs. Carey to invite her to spend the evening, but it had been a little too much like playing Destiny. Suppose that Randall had proposed and that Clancy had, in a moment of fright, accepted him. It would have been her own business, wouldn't it?
She was almost sullen when she reached Washington Square. Up-stairs in her dingy room, she fought against tears. She had voiced a great truth, without being aware of it, last night, when she had said that what made girls slide down-hill was the having to give up what they had, not the desire for possession of those things which they'd never had.
She almost wished that Sophie Carey had not weakly surrendered to her husband's first advances. Clancy might have been installed in the studio home on Waverly Place, half-mistress of its comforts, its charms—a parasite! That's what she had been by way of becoming within a week of her arrival in the city where she had hoped, by the hardest sort of work, to make a place for herself. Well, that was ended. Why the fact that Sophie Carey had taken back her errant husband should have affected Clancy's attitude toward life and the part she must play in it is one of the incomprehensible things of that strange thing which we call "character."
Yet it had done so. Perhaps, after all, because it had shown Clancy how little dependence must be placed on other people. Not that she felt that Sophie Carey would not be friendly to her, but that Sophie Carey's interest would now be, for a while, at any rate, in the husband to whom she surrenderedso easily. And by the time that Sophie had rid herself again of Donald Carey, Clancy would have been forgotten.
Forgotten! As, clad in the storm-overshoes that were necessities in Zenith, she braved the drifts of Washington Square on her way to the 'bus, she laughed wryly. Forgotten! Possibly, but not until her name had been blazoned in the press as a murderess——
Sally Henderson was not at the office when Clancy arrived there. She telephoned later on that the storm was too much for her, and that she would remain at home all day. She told young Guernsey to instruct Clancy in the routine matters of the office.
By one o'clock, Clancy had begun to understand the office machinery. Also, she was hungry, and when Guernsey announced that he was going out to luncheon, Clancy welcomed the cessation of their activities. She had been too apathetic to wonder why she had not heard from Zenda, and was amazed when, just as she had buttoned her coat, the girl clerk summoned her to the telephone.
"Miss Deane? This is Zenda talking. I got your letter. Can I see you right away?"
Clancy vaguely wondered where Zenda had procured her working-address. She had mentioned it this morning, after changing her dress, to Mrs. Gerand, but Mrs. Gerand had been a bit frigid. Mrs. Gerand did not approve of young lodgers of the female sex who spent the nights out. Clancy didn't believe that Mrs. Gerand had heard her. However, inasmuch as Zenda telephoned, the landlady must have heard her lodger's business address.
"Yes," she answered.
It was the beginning of the end. Zenda would believe probably about her connection with Fay Marston and Weber, but he'd perhaps know that Florine Ladue had been in Beiner's office. She shook her head savagely. As on Wednesday, when she'd read of Beiner's murder, she'd been unable to think clearly, her brain now wandered off into absurdities.
For it didn't matter about Zenda. Philip Vandervent had wired Fanchon DeLisle. What did Zenda matter? What did anything matter?
"Can you come over to my office, Miss Deane?"
"Yes," she replied.
"I'll be waiting for you," said Zenda.
She hung up the receiver. She shrugged her shoulders, and, telling the telephone clerk that she was going out to luncheon, left the office.
Zenda Films, Incorporated, occupied the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth floors of the newly named—though Clancy didn't know it—Zenda Building. In the lobby was a list of the building's tenants, and it stated that the executive offices of Zenda Films were on the tenth floor.
An office-boy heard her name, asked if she had an appointment, and reluctantly, upon her stating that she had, turned toward an inner room, casting over his shoulder the statement that he didn't think Mr. Zenda was in.
But from the room toward which he was making his sullen way—that sullen way peculiar to office-boys—emerged a tall young man, garbed in the height of Broadway fashion. He advanced beamingly to Clancy.
"Miss Deane? Please come right in."
Clancy followed him through the door, across an inner room, and into a further chamber beyond. And the instant she was inside that second room, Clancy knew that she had been a gullible fool, for instead of Zenda, she beheld Grannis.
But what was somehow more terrifying still, she saw beside Grannis, his thick features not good-humored to-day, the face of Weber. She didn't scream—Clancy was not the sort who would use valued and needed energy in vocalities—she turned. But the tall youth had deftly locked the door behindher. He faced her with a triumphant grin, then stepped quickly to one side; the key which he had been holding in his hand he transferred to the hand of Grannis, who put it, with an air of grim finality, into his trousers pocket.
Clancy knew when she was beaten, knew, at least, when the first round had gone against her. She did the one thing that rendered uncertain the mental attitudes of her captors. She walked coolly to a chair and sat.
Grannis, expecting to see a girl reduced by fright to hysteria, eyed her bewilderedly. He had intended to be calm, intending, by calm, to convince Clancy that her danger was the greater. Now he lapsed, at the start, into nervous irritation, the most certain sign of indecision.
"Pretty cool about it, Miss Deane, aren't you?"
Clancy knew, somehow, that her cool desperation had given her, in some inexplicable fashion, an equally inexplicable advantage.
"Why not?" she asked.
Grannis' sallow face reddened.
"Will you feel that way when you see a policeman?" he demanded.
"You talked about policemen yesterday," said Clancy. "Don't talk about them to-day. I want to see Mr. Zenda," she added.
Weber interjected himself into the scene.
"I suppose you do. But you see, Florine, my little dear, we're seeing you first. And you're seeing us first."
"Pretty clever of you, writing to Zenda," said Grannis. "Never occurred to you that, getting aletter from you, I might run through Zenda's mail, looking for a note in the same handwriting, eh?"
"No-o, it didn't," said Clancy slowly. "Yet, I suppose I should have known that one kind of crook is another kind, too."
Grannis nodded his head. His underlip came forward a trifle.
"I'll give you credit; you're game enough. If being a fool can be called gameness. And any one that parts with a thousand dollars in this town is certainly a fool. Butthat'sall right. You probably don't need money. 'Little Miss Millions' is your name, I suppose."
Clancy yawned.
"I don't want to hurt your feelings, Mr. Grannis, but if you're being funny, I somehow can't get it."
"You will!" snapped Grannis. "Look here, Miss Deane! You're breaking into matters that don't concern you."
"I suppose I am," said Clancy.
She turned to Weber.
"I understood that New York's climate was bad for you," she said.
"Not half as unhealthy as it's going to be for you, Florine," he retorted. "You can make up your mind this minute. Either out of town for yours or the Tombs. Take your pick."
He had advanced threateningly until he stood over Clancy. Grannis pushed him aside.
"Let me handle her," he said. "Now, let's get down to cases, Miss Deane. Ike never done anything to you, did he?" Clancy shrugged. "'Course he didn't," said Grannis. "Then why not be a regular feller and keep out of things that don't concern you?Zenda never paid the rent for you, did he? No. We're willing to pay the rent and the eats, too, for a long while to come. That thousand is only a part. Listen: Ike got me on the long-distance last night. I told him it's O. K. to come back to town, that Zenda, with you keeping your face closed, couldn't do a thing to him. And then I get your letter this morning, and grab your note to Zenda. I find out that you're giving me the double cross. Well, we won't quarrel about it. Maybe you think Zenda is a heavier payer than I'd be. But you'd have to gamble on that, wouldn't you? You don't have to gamble on me. You take ten thousand dollars and leave town for just six months. That's all I ask. How about it?"
"I thought that you were Zenda's partner," said Clancy. Her pretty lips curled in the faintest contemptuous sneer.
"Never mind about that," snapped Grannis. "You're not talking to any one's partner, now. You're just talking to me."
"And me," put in Weber.
"And both of you want me to help you in swindling Mr. Zenda?" said Clancy.
Weber took a step toward her, his big fist clenched. Once again, Grannis intervened.
"Never mind the rough stuff, Ike!" he cried. "Let me handle her. Now, Miss Deane, are you going to listen to sense? Ike is back in town. He don't feel like skipping out every time you get a change of heart. And listen to this: Ike is a good-hearted guy, at that. All you can tell Zenda won'tproveanything. It'll just cause a lot of trouble—that's all. It'll make a bunch of scandal, you claiming thatFay Marston told you that Ike was gyping Zenda, but it won'tprovemuch."
"I don't suppose that your offering me money to leave town will prove anything, either," said Clancy.
"I'll just say you lie," said Grannis.
"I wonder which one of us Mr. Zenda will believe," retorted Clancy.
"I've never been in jail. I've got no criminal record," said Grannis.
"Neither have I!" cried Clancy.
Grannis smiled. It was a nasty smile, a smile that chilled Clancy. The advantage that she had felt was somehow hers seemed to have left her. She became suddenly just what she always was, a young girl, unwise in the ways of the metropolis. Courage, desperation made her forget this, but when courage ebbed, though ever so slightly, she became fearful, conscious of a mighty aloneness. She felt this way now.
For Grannis turned and walked to a farther door, opposite the one which the tall youth had locked. He opened it and cried out dramatically,
"Come in, Mrs. Weber!"
Clancy's fingers stopped drumming on the table. She eyed, wonderingly and fearfully, the tall figure of Fay Marston, who was cloaked in a short squirrel-skin jacket. Below that appeared the skirt of a dark-blue dress. Her shoes, despite the inclement weather, were merely slippers. Her blond hair was almost entirely hidden by a jaunty hat, also of a squirrel-skin. Altogether, she was an amazingly prosperous-seeming individual. And she was the sort of person to whom prosperity would alwaysbring insolence of manner. Her expression now was languidly insulting as she looked at Clancy.
"This the woman?" asked Grannis.
Fay nodded.
"She's the one."
"No question about it, is there?" demanded Weber.
"Why, you know there isn't," said Fay, in apparent surprise. "I took her to Zenda's party at the Château de la Reine, and, later, up to his apartment. You was with us all the time."
"Yes," said Weber; "but two identifications are better than one, you know." He turned to Grannis. "You might as well call him in," he said.
Grannis had been standing by the door. He swung it wide, and called,
"Come in, officer."
Clancy's fingers clenched. It seemed to her like a scene in a play or a moving picture—Fay's identification of her, Grannis' dramatic manner at the door, and now the entrance of a policeman.
Grannis pointed to Clancy.
"Arrest her, officer!" he cried.
The uniformed man moved toward Clancy. She shrunk away from him.
"What for?" she cried.
"You'll find out soon enough," said the policeman, with a grin.
Fay Marston laughed shrilly.
"Ain't that like a thief, though? Trust her kind to have nerve!"
"'Thief!'" Clancy stared at her.
"Thief's what I said, and it's what I mean, too."
It was too absurd! Had the charge been that of murder, Clancy would not have laughed. Thatcharge would soon be made against her. But, until it was——
"What am I supposed to have stolen?" Clancy asked.
"You ain'tsupposedto have stolen anything," said Weber. "You'reknownto have stolen a pearl necklace from my wife."
"A pearl necklace," said Fay glibly. "She came into my room at the Napoli. I was packin', officer, gettin' ready to take a little trip with my husband. I asked her to pack the necklace and some other things for me. She said she'd put them in a bag. The necklace was missin' when I opened the bag next day."
Clancy laughed. It was ridiculous.
"You can't arrest me on a story like that!" she cried.
"Not if we produce the pawnbroker where you pawned the pearls?" sneered Weber.
"You can't," said Clancy.
Yet, as she looked from his sneering face to the threatening eyes of Grannis, she wondered whether or not they could. She had read of "frame-ups." Was it possible that she was to be the victim of one?
"Like to talk it over a bit?" asked Grannis. She made no verbal answer, but her expression was reply enough. "Wait in the next room, officer," said Grannis.
The policeman looked undecided.
"It ain't regular," he muttered.
"I know it isn't," said Grannis, "but—under the circumstances——"
"All right," said the officer.
He walked through the door, which Grannis closedafter him. Then Zenda's sallow-faced partner came close to Clancy.
"I'm going to talk turkey," he declared. "You've butted in on a game that's a whole lot bigger than you are, little girl. We don't want to ride you, but we ain't going to let you ride us, neither. It's up to you. Fay will swear that you took her necklace. We've got a pawnbroker all lined up. He'll not only identify you but he'll produce his books and the necklace that you stole. We're in earnest. Now—will you take ten thousand and—get?"
Clancy was beaten; she knew it; at least, she had lost the second round. That it was the final round she could not believe. And yet, if she refused their money, they'd not believe her. They would take her to jail. By this time, Vandervent's men were doubtless searching for her. With the ten thousand dollars she might flee. She wouldn't use a penny of it. But she'd take it, merely in order that they'd believe her. She let Grannis press the money into her hand.
Head down, she heard Grannis call in the policeman and state that she had promised to make restitution. The policeman, with some grumbling, left. Clancy supposed that it was an ordinary sort of thing; the officer was venal, would be unfaithful to his duty for the sake of a few dollars.
She listened apathetically to Grannis' threats. They didn't interest her. New York had whipped her.
Yet, when she left the building, she stopped before a hotel across the street. There she tried to engage a taxi-cab to take her up to Park Avenue. But the taximen were emulating their millionaire brethren. They were profiteering. Inasmuch as thetravel was difficult because of the snow, the man wanted triple fare. Clancy couldn't afford it.
She tramped across Forty-second Street to Fifth Avenue, fought her way, buffeted by the wind, up to Forty-eighth, and then crossed over to Park avenue. She didn't know exactly where Zenda lived, but she did know that it was a corner apartment-building on the east side of the avenue. Her fourth inquiry was rewarded with the information that Zenda lived there. But when her name was telephoned up-stairs, word came back that Mr. Zenda had been taken ill last night with influenza, and was unconscious at the moment.
She turned away. The Fates were against Clancy and with her enemies.
Still—she had ten thousand dollars in her pocketbook. One could do a great deal with ten thousand dollars. But she dismissed the temptation as quickly as it had come to her. She'd go home and wait the certain arrival of Vandervent's men.
She shrugged, her lips curling in a self-amused smile. She'd been frightened at arrest on a trumped-up charge, while imminent arrest on a charge that would be supported by strong circumstantial evidence was just round the corner. She was a funny person, this Clancy. Little things scared her; big things— But big things scared her, too. For when Mrs. Gerand met her at the door of the lodging-house, after Clancy had survived the perilous journey down Fifth Avenue on the 'bus, the landlady's first words were that a gentleman awaited her. Not until Randall had held her hand a full minute could Clancy realize that it wasn't a detective from the district attorney's office.
Clancy had, on the other occasions on which she had met David Randall, been cool, aloof, mildly flirtatious, fun-making. Even when fear had swayed her and he had guessed at some worry eating at her heart, she had managed to preserve a verbal self-command.
But it was a Clancy whom he had never met before who faced him now. It was an incoherent Clancy, who said brokenly, while his big hand still held hers:
"What a surprise! I expected—I'mglad— What a terrible storm—so much snow—in a few hours— Wasn't it fun—last night?"
Then the incoherence that, from a person who had heretofore been always in complete possession of herself, was all the more charming, vanished. She looked down at her hand, then demurely up at him. With Vandervent's detectives ready to knock upon the front door—it is a peculiar thing that one always thinks of detectives as knocking, never ringing—with ten thousand dollars of venal money in her purse; with flight from the city as her only escape—and that, her common sense told her, a temporary one—from her amazing difficulties; with her career, not merely the moving-picture ambitions but the new one of achieving success with Miss Henderson, vanishing as the snow upon the streets would vanish before the rain and sun; with more trouble than she could cope with, Clancy became demure. She wasthoroughly feminine. And a woman regards a man as something to be swayed by her. So Clancy forgot her own troubles for the moment in the pleasing task of making Randall's face redder than it was.
"You like it?" she asked. He didn't understand her. "My hand," she explained.
Randall dropped it at once. Her own incoherence communicated itself to him.
"I didn't mean— I didn't realize——"
"Oh, it's perfectly all right," said Clancy soothingly. "If I were you, I'd probably like to hold my hand, too."
She laughed. Randall discovered from the laugh that he had not offended irreparably. Emboldened, he snatched at the hand again. But they were in the hall, and Mrs. Gerand, disapproving of eye as she looked at this young couple violating the austerity of her house by open and bold flirtation, was only twenty feet away.
"Let's go in the parlor," said Clancy.
There was a sort of sofa near the old-fashioned marble mantel in the parlor, and in the exact center of this Clancy sat. Randall was forced to deposit himself upon a chair, a rickety affair which he drew as near to Clancy as he dared. He coughed nervously. Then he smiled—a broad smile, the smile, he thought, of large friendliness, of kindly impersonality. Clancy was not deceived by it.
"How'd you find me here?" she demanded. "Didn't I refuse to tell you my address?"
"Mrs. Carey told me this morning."
"Oh, she did! Why did she do that?"
"It wasn't a crime, was it?" asked Randall aggrievedly."I guess that she thought she owed it to me—after last night."
"What do you mean?"
Randall's eyes lowered. He fidgeted uneasily in his chair. Then he lifted his eyes until they met hers.
"Well, she wouldn't give me a chance last night."
"'A chance?' What do you mean?" Clancy sat bolt upright on the sofa.
"She was afraid that you might listen to me." The explanation didn't quite explain.
"I'm listening to you now," she said.
"Yes; yes"—and Randall smiled rather wanly—"Mrs. Carey is a mind-reader, I think. She knew that I intended—she knew what I intended to say," he corrected his phrasing, "and she didn't want me to say it."
Into Clancy's eyes came glints of merriment.
"Oh, yes; she was afraid that you would propose to me."
Somehow or other, without Clancy putting it into words, her manner indicated an amused scorn. Randall was in love—in love in that terrific and overwhelmingly passionate fashion that only love at first sight can attain. But he was a grown man, who had proved, by his business success, his right to walk among men. He was good-natured, would always be good-natured. But he had self-respect. And now he hit back.
"Oh, no," he said; "she was afraid that you would accept me."
Not afraid to hit back, nevertheless, for a moment, he feared that he had struck too hard. He misread, at first, the light in Clancy's eyes. He thought it was anger.
But, to his relieved amazement, she began to laugh.
"Some one has a flattering conception of you, Mr. Randall," she told him.
He grinned cheerfully.
"Not flattering, Miss Deane—correct."
"Hm." Clancy pursed her lips. "You think well of Mr. David Randall, don't you?"
"I couldn't offer you goods of whose value I had any doubt, Miss Deane," he retorted.
Clancy's respect for him reached an amazing altitude. He could, after all, then, be quick of speech. And Clancy liked a man who could find ready verbal expression for his thoughts.
"I take it, then, that you are definitely offering me your hand and fifty per cent of all your worldly goods, Mr. Randall."
"Do you accept them?" he asked.
Clancy shook her head, smiling.
"Not to-day, thank you."
Randall frowned.
"Mrs. Carey is altogether too ambitious," he said. "She couldn't play Fate."
Clancy made amoue.
"Oh, then, last night—you think it might have been different?"
"I have no thoughts, Miss Deane—merely hopes. But Mrs. Carey said that you were worried— I could see that, too—and she thought that it wasn't fair——"
Clancy felt a sudden resentment at Sophie Carey. After all, even though Mrs. Carey had been ever so kind, it had all been voluntary. Clancy hadn't dreamed of asking anything of her. And even involuntary kindness, grudging kindness, doesn't bestowupon the donor the right to direct the affairs of the donee. Once again, she was rather certain that she and Sophie Carey would never be real friends. She would always owe the older woman gratitude, but——
"Not fair, eh? You didn't mind that, though."
The humor left Randall's eyes. He was deadly serious as he answered,
"Miss Deane, any way that I could get you would be fair enough for me."
"But why hurry matters?" smiled Clancy.
"'Hurry?'" His smile was a little bit uneasy. "You—you're destined to a great success, Miss Deane, and pretty soon I'm afraid that you'll be way beyond my reach."
"I suppose that I should courtesy," said Clancy. "But I won't. I'll simply tell you that——"
"Don't tell me anything unless it's something I want to hear," he interposed.
"You'll like this, I'm sure," she said naïvely. "Because I was going to tell you that I like you immensely, and—well, I like you."
"And you won't marry me?"
"Well, not now, at any rate," she replied.
He rose abruptly.
"I'm sorry—awfully sorry. You see—last night—it's altogether ridiculous, I suppose, my expecting, daring to hope, even, that a girl like you would fall in love with me so soon. But—you're so lovely! Vandervent—last night—please don't be offended—and I'm leaving town to-day."
"'Leaving town?'" Clancy was shocked.
"That's why. I'll be gone a month. And I've never met a girl like you. Never will again; I knowthat. I—didn't want to tell you last night. It wasn't absolutely decided. If I'd taken you home—well, I'd have told you. Because I'd have proposed then. But not at Mrs. Carey's. I hoped to—sort of surprise you in the taxi. But that chance went. You spent the night at her house. And I'm leaving to-day."
"Where for?" she asked. She didn't know how dull her voice had suddenly become. She wasn't in love with Randall. Clancy Deane was not the kind to surrender her heart at the first request. Her head would not rule her heart, yet it would guide it. Under normal conditions, even had she fallen in love with Randall, she would not have married him offhand, as he suggested. She would demand time in which to think the matter over.
But these were abnormal conditions. She was in danger. In the rare moments, when she could force her mind to analyze the situation, she believed that her danger was not great, that the policemustbelieve her story. But she was a young and somewhat headstrong girl; fear triumphed over reason most of the time.
If she loved Randall, she might have accepted him. Of course, she would have told him her predicament. She was enough of a character-reader to know that Randall would believe her and marry her. But she didn't love him.
"California," he said. "A moving-picture combination. They've asked me to handle the flotation of stock and the placing of the bonds. It's a big thing, and I want to look the proposition over." He leaned suddenly near to her. "Oh, don't you thinkthat you can come with me? If you knew how much I cared!"
She shook her head.
"I don't love you," she said.
He managed a smile. The nicest thing about him, Clancy decided, was his sportsmanship.
"Well, Ihaverushed matters, Miss Deane. But—don't forget me, please."
"I won't," she promised. "And I hope you have a fine trip and make a great success."
"Thank you," he said. "Good-by."
They touched hands for a moment, and then he was gone. Thus banal, almost always, are the moments that follow upon the ones that have reached for the height of emotion.
Clancy was left alone almost before she realized it. Up-stairs, in her shabby bedroom, she wondered if any other girl had ever crowded so much of differing experience into a few days. Truth was stranger than fiction—save in this: in fiction, all difficulties were finally surmounted, all problems solved.
But her own case— One who flees always prejudices his case. Fanchon DeLisle's reply to Vandervent's telegram would arrive by the morrow, anyway. The only reason that Clancy had not been called upon by Vandervent's men that she could conceive was that the storm had delayed the transmission of telegrams. A thin reed on which to lean! She suddenly wished with all her heart that she loved Randall. If she did love him, she could demand his protection. That protection suddenly loomed large before her frightened eyes.
Well, there was only one thing to do. Acceptingdefeat bravely is better than running away from it eternally. Also, in her mind lived the idea that Vandervent might possibly— Absurd! He'd only met her last night. And he was an officer of the law, sworn to do his duty.
She had no preconceived idea of what she'd do. She felt dull, bewildered, dazed.
Surrender! It was the only thing to do. Better by far that than being rudely taken to the Tombs. She'd read of the Tombs prison. What a horrible name! How it suggested the gruesome things! Lesser characters than Clancy for much less reason have had recourse to poison, to other things— It never even entered her head.
Mrs. Gerand, amazed at the question, told her where to find the district attorney's office. Clancy fought her way to the Astor Place subway station. She got off at Brooklyn Bridge. From there, a policeman directed her to the Criminal Courts Building. In the lobby, an attendant told her that Mr. Vandervent's office was on the third floor. She took an elevator, and, after entering two offices, was correctly directed. To a clerk who asked her business, she merely replied:
"Tell Mr. Vandervent that Florine Ladue wishes to see him."
The clerk showed no surprise. That was natural. Vandervent's underlings, of course, knew nothing of the clue which Vandervent possessed to the identity of the Beiner murderer. He departed toward an inner office.
Clancy sank down upon a wooden bench. Well, this was the end. She supposed that she'd be handcuffed, locked in a cell. She picked up a newspaper,a paper largely devoted to theatrical doings. Idly she read the dramatic gossip. She turned a page, and glanced a second time at a portrait displayed there.
It was a picture of Fanchon DeLisle. Her bosom rose; in her excitement she did not breathe. For beneath the picture was a head-line reading:
She read the brief paragraph that followed. Fanchon DeLisle, leading woman of the New York Blondes Company, had died of the "flu" in Belknap, Ohio, on Wednesday afternoon. It was her second attack of the disease. Clancy's eyes blurred. She read no more. She looked about her. She must escape. Fanchon DeLisle was the only person who could tell Vandervent that Florine Ladue was Clancy Deane. Of course, Fay Marston knew, but Fay Marston's knowledge was not known to the police. Only Fanchon DeLisle could, just now, at any rate, tell that Clancy— She had sent in the name, Florine Ladue!
She must escape before Vandervent— But even as she rose tremblingly to her feet, Vandervent entered the outer reception-room. He stopped short at sight of Clancy. His mouth opened. But Clancy didn't hear what he said, because she fainted.
Clancy came out of her faint mentally alert, although physically weak. It took her but the smallest fraction of time after she recovered consciousness to remember all that had led up to her collapse. And she kept her eyes closed long enough to marshal to her aid all those defensive instincts inherent in the human species. So, when she did open her eyes, that consummate courage which is mistaken for histrionism made her wreathe her lips in a smile. She was lying on a leather-covered couch in what she learned, in a moment, was Vandervent's private office. Her eyes rested on the tenant of that office. His broad shoulders were slightly stooped as he bent toward her. In his hand, he held a glass of water. She noted immediately that his hand shook, that water slopped over the edge of the glass.
"You—feel better?" he asked breathlessly.
Clancy sat upright, her hand straying to her hair. She looked beyond Vandervent to where stood a man in a badly cut blue suit. His black mustache was gray at the roots, and the vanity that this use of dye indicated was proved by the outthrust of his lower lip. A shrewder observer than Clancy—one versed in the study of physiognomy—would have known that the jutting lip had been trained to come forward, that the aggressiveness it denoted was the aggressiveness of the bully, not of a man of character.His round chin was belligerent enough, as were his little round blue eyes, but there was that lack of coordination in his features that is found in all weak souls.
But, to Clancy, he was terrifying. His small eyes were filled with suspicion, filled with more than that—with a menace that was personal.
Clancy reached for the glass of water; she drank it thirstily, yet in a leisurely manner. She watched the blue-suited man closely. She put back the glass into Vandervent's outstretched hand.
"Thank you—so much," she said. "It's a wonder that you didn't let me lie where I fell, after my playing such a silly joke."
She saw Vandervent cast a glance over his shoulder at the blue-suited man. His head nodded slightly. Had he phrased it in words, he could not more clearly have said, "I told you so."
And if the blue-suited man had replied verbally, he could not have said more clearly than he did by the expression of his eyes, "She's lying."
Vandervent's shoulders shrugged slightly; his keen gray eyes gleamed. Once again it was as though he spoke and said, "I'll show you that she isn't."
It was a swift byplay, but need sharpens one's wits. Not that Clancy's ever were dull, for, indeed, a lesser character, even in such danger as hers, might have been too concerned with her physical well-being, her appearance, to notice anything else. But she caught the byplay, and it brought a silent sigh of relief up from her chest. She was on her own ground now, the ground of sex. Had Vandervent been a woman, such a woman as Sophie Carey or Sally Henderson, Clancy would have surrenderedimmediately, would have known that she had not a chance in the world of persuading any woman that she had played a joke when she announced herself as Florine Ladue. But with a man—with Philip Vandervent, whose hand shook as he held a glass of water for her, whose eyes expressed a flattering anxiety—Clancy's smile would have been scornful had not scorn been a bit out of place at the moment. Instead, it was shyly confident.
"A—er—a joke, of course, Miss Deane," said Vandervent.
"Not so very funny, though, after all," said Clancy, with just enough timidity in her manner to flatter Vandervent.
The blue-coated man snorted.
"'Joke!' 'Funny!' Excuse me, lady; but where do you get your humor?"
Vandervent wheeled and glared at the man.
"That'll be about all, Spofford!" he snapped.
Spofford shrugged.
"You're the boss," he said. "Only—how does she happen to know the name Florine Ladue? Answer me that, will you?"
"I told her," said Vandervent shortly.
Spofford caressed his mustache.
"Oh, I getcha. Oh-h!" His grin was complimentary neither to Clancy nor Vandervent. Then it died away; his eyes became shrewd, although his voice was drawling. "And the faintin'—that was part of the joke, eh, lady?"
Clancy felt a little chill of nervous apprehension run between her shoulder-blades. Confidence left her. This man Spofford, she seemed to foresee, mightbe dangerous. She was not out of the woods yet. But Vandervent's words reassured her.
"Miss Deane doesn't need to explain anything to you, Spofford."
There was a touch of petulance in the assistant district attorney's voice. Spofford recognized it.
"Sure not, Mr. Vandervent. Certainly she don't. Only—" He paused; he turned, and started for the door.
Vandervent recalled him sharply.
"What do you mean by 'only,' Spofford?"
"Well, she come in here and said she was Florine Ladue—and then she faints when you come out to see her. I meant that, if there was any of the newspaper boys hangin' around——"
"There weren't," said Vandervent. "And if the papers should mention Miss Deane's joke—" The threat was quite patent.
"They won't," said Spofford.
He cast a glance at Clancy. It was a peculiar glance, a glance that told her that in his eyes she was a suspicious character—no better than she should be, to put it mildly.
And Vandervent's expression, as he turned toward her, drove away what fears Spofford's expression had aroused. For, despite his effort to seem casual, the young man was excited. And not excited because of the name that she had sent in, or because she had fainted, but excited simply because Clancy Deane was alone in the room with him. He moved toward her. Quite calmly she assumed control of the situation, and did it by so simple a method as extending her hand for the glass which he still held and uttering the single word: "Please."
She held the glass to her lips for a full minute, sipping slowly. Falsehood was repugnant to her. Yet she must think of how best to deceive Vandervent.
"I suppose I've made you very angry," she said, putting the glass down upon the couch beside her.
"'Angry?' How could you make me angry—by coming to see me?"
Vandervent, with an acquaintance that comprised the flower of American and European society, was no different from any other young and normal male. His attitude now was that of the young man from Zenith or any other town in America. He was embarrassed and flattered. And he was so because a pretty girl was showing a certain interest in him.
"But to—fool you! I—you'll forgive me?" She was conscious that she was pleading prettily.
"Forgive you? Why—" Vandervent had difficulty in finding words. He was not a particularly impressionable young man. Had he been so, he could not, with his name and fortune, have remained a bachelor until his thirtieth birthday.
Clancy took up the not easily rolling ball of conversation.
"Because it was a terrible impertinence. I—you see——"
She paused in her turn.
"Jolly good joke!" said Vandervent, finally finding, apparently to oblige his guest, humor in the situation. "You can't imagine my excitement. Just had a wire from the chief of police in Belknap, Ohio, that Fanchon DeLisle was dead. Didn't see how we could locate this Ladue woman, when in comes a clerk saying that she's outside. I tell you, I never was so excited. Then I saw you, and you—tell me:why did you faint?" He put the question suddenly.
"Why did I faint?" She tried to laugh, and succeeded admirably. "I'm used to cold weather and blizzards. In Zenith, sometimes, it is thirty below, and the snow is piled ten feet high in the big drifts. But one dresses for it, or doesn't go outdoors. And, to-day, I wanted to see New York so much. I've only been here since Monday. The cars aren't running very regularly, so I walked down-town. And I guess I grew cold and tired. I feel ever so much better now," she ended chirpily.
"I'm glad of that," he smiled.
"And some one told me that this was the Criminal Courts Building, and I thought—I thought of—" She paused at exactly the right moment.
"Of me?" asked Vandervent. He colored faintly.
"I'm here," said Clancy. "And I thought that perhaps you wouldn't remember my name; so I—thought I'd play a joke. Youwillforgive me, won't you?"
He laughed.
"I'm afraid that Spofford won't, but I will."
"'Spofford?' The man who was here?" asked Clancy.
"One of the detectives attached to the staff. Hasn't much sense of humor, I'm afraid. But it doesn't matter."
He sat down, pulling up a chair opposite her.