“Exactly so!” agreed Warner. “Only you haven’t the remotest idea how terrible. Miss Ayer, this company—you as well as the rest of us—needs money and needs it right away. Ozias Cowler has money—a great deal of money. Somebody’s bound to get it—and why not we? We use various means to get money out of suckers. There’s only one way with Cowler. He’s stuck on you. You can get it from him. We want you to do that—we expect you to do that.”
Susannah stared at him. “Mr. Warner, I think you are crazy. I could no more do that ... I couldn’t ... I wouldn’t even know how ... my resignation goes into effect immediately. I couldn’t possibly stay here another minute.” She turned to leave the office.
“Just one moment!” Mr. Warner’s words purled on. His tone was low, his accent bland—but his voice stopped her instantly. “Miss Ayer, you don’t understand yet. Unless we get some money—a great deal of money—we shan’t last another two weeks. The situation is—but I won’t take the time to explain that. Unless we clean up that aforesaid money, we go to jail—fora good long term. If we get the money—we don’t. Never mind the details. I assure you it’s true.”
“I’m sorry,” said Susannah, her lips scarcely moving as she spoke, “but I fail to see what I have to do with that—”
“I was about to go on to say, Miss Ayer, that you have everything to do with it. You must be aware, if you look back over your service with us, that you are as much involved as anyone. Your name is on our letterhead. You have signed hundreds and perhaps thousands of letters to woman investors. Putting a disagreeable fact rather baldly, what happens to us happens to you. If it’s the stir—if it’s jail—for us, it’s jail for you.”
Susannah stared at him. She grew rigid. But she roused herself to a trembling weak defense.
“I’ll tell them, if they arrest me ... all that has gone on here ...” she began.
“If you do,” put in Mr. Warner smoothly, “you only create for yourself an unfavorable impression. You put yourself in the position of going back on your pals, and it will not get you immunity. If Mr. Cowler comes through, youare entitled to a share of the proceeds. Whether you take it or no is a matter for your private feelings. But the main point is that with Cowler in, this thing will be fixed, and without him in, you are in jail or a fugitive from justice.”
He paused now and looked at Susannah—paused not as one who pities but as one who asks himself if he has said enough. Susannah’s face proved that he had.
“Now of course you won’t feel like working this morning. And I don’t blame you. Go home and think it over. Your first instinct, probably, will be to see a lawyer. For your own sake, I advise you not to do that. For ours, I hope you do. If he tells you the truth, he will show you how deeply involved you are in this thing. No lawyer whom you can command will handle your case. What you’d better do is lie down and take a nap. Then at about five o’clock this afternoon, send for hot coffee and doll yourself up—Mr. Cowler will call for you at seven.”
Susannah took part of Mr. Warner’s advice. She went home immediately. But she did not takea nap. Instead, she walked up and down her bedroom for an hour, thinking hard. She could think now; in her passage home on the Subway, her first wild panic had beaten its desperate black wings to quiet. What Warner had told her she now believed implicitly. She was as much caught in the trap as any one of the three crooks with whom she had been associated. The only difference was that she did not mean to stay in the trap. She meant to escape. Also she did not mean to let it drive her from the city in which she was challenging success. She meant to stay in New York. She meant to escape. But how?
If there were only somebody to whom she could go! She had in New York a few acquaintances—but no real friends. Besides, she didn’t want anybody to know; all she wanted was to get away from—to vanish from their sight. But where could she go—when—how?
Fortunately she had plenty of money on hand, plenty at least for her immediate purposes. She owned a few pawnable things, though only a few. But at present what she needed, more even than money, was time. She must get away at once.But again where? For a moment resurgent panic tore her. Then common sense seemed to offer a solution. Here she was in the biggest city in the country; the biggest in the world. She had heard somewhere that a big city was the best place in the world to hide in. She would hide in New York. Then—
She had forgotten one terrifying fact. Byan boarded in the same house.
She realized why now. A fortnight before—shortly after Mr. Cowler appeared in the office—he had come to her for advice. He had given up one bachelor apartment, he said, and was taking another. Repairs had become inevitable in the new apartment. He did not want to go to a hotel. Did she know of a good boarding-house in which to spend a month? She did, of course—her own. Byan came there the next day; although, curiously enough, she saw but little of him. They had separate tables, and his meal-hours and hers were different.
Byan usually came in at about six o’clock. But today he might follow her. She must work quickly.
She pulled her trunk out from under the bed and began in frenzied haste to pack it. Down came all the pictures from her walls. Into the trunk went most of her clothes; some of her toilet articles; her half-dozen books; her stationery; all her slender Lares and Penates. When she had finished with her trunk, she packed her suitcase. As many thin dresses as she could crush in—inconsequent necessities—her storm boots; her tooth-brush—
Then she wrote a note to her landlady. It read: “Dear Mrs. Ray: I have been suddenly called away from the city. Will you keep my trunk until I send for it? Yours in great haste and some trouble, Susannah Ayer.” She put it with her board money in an envelope, addressed to Mrs. Ray, and placed it on the trunk.
At three o’clock, her suitcase in one hand, her bag and her umbrella in the other, her long cape over her arm, she ventured into the hall.
It was vacant and silent.
She stole silently down the stairs. She met nobody. She noiselessly opened the front door. Apparently nobody noticed her. She walkedbriskly down the steps; turned toward the Avenue. At the corner something impelled her to look back.
Byan, his look directed downward, two fingers fumbling in his side pocket for his key, was briskly ascending the steps.