VI
VI
“How did they find me, Glorious Lutie?” Susannah asked next morning. “Howdidthey find me? If I could only teach myself to listen to the warning of those little hammers. Something told me when I saw Warner walking along the corridor of the Carman Building that he was not there by accident. Something told me when I ran into O’Hearn at the Attic the other night thathewas notthereby accident. They have been following me all the time. They’ve known what I’ve been doing every moment. Just as Byan knows where I am now. How did they do it? I’ve never suspected it for a moment. I’ve never seen anybody. I’m frightened, Glorious Lutie; I’m dreadfully frightened. I don’t know where to turn. If I only had a real friend— But perhaps that wouldn’t help as much as I think. For I’m afraid—I’m too afraid to tellanybody—”
All this, she said as usual, wordlessly. But she said it from her bed, her eyes fixed in alackluster stare on the little oval gleam of the miniature.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Glorious Lutie, to tell my troubles to. You’re a great deal more than a picture to me. You’re a real presence— Oh, if you could only see for me now. I wonder if Byan is still in his room? I wonder what he’s going to do. I mean—what is the next move? Oh, of course he’s there! He wants to talk with me. But I won’t let him talk with me. I’ll stay in this room until I starve! And he can’t telephone. How can he put over what he wants to say?”
That question answered itself automatically when she dragged herself up from bed. A white square glimmered beside her door. She pounced upon it.
“Dear Miss Ayer:“Of course we have known where you were and what you were doing every instant since you left the office. We did not interfere with your quitting your boarding-house because we preferred to give you a few days to think things over. I hopeyou’ve been enjoying your little excursions to the Museum and the Aquarium. We knew you’d come to your senses after a while and be ready to talk business. That is why you’ve had those little, accidental meetings from time to time. That advertisement for a job in the Carman Building was a decoy ad. It is useless for you to try to get away from us.“And in the meantime the situation is getting more and more desperate. You know why. Now listen. We can clean up on that little business deal in three days. Do you know what that means? Maybe a hundred thousand dollars. We’ll let you in. Your share would be twelve thousand five hundred. Don’t that sound pretty good to you? You can avoid any trouble by going away with us. Or you can go alone and nobody will bother you. We’ll give you the dope on that; for believe me, we know how. And you wouldn’t have to do a thing you don’t want to do. We’ve got grandpa tamed now in regard to you. We’ve told him that you’re a lady, and won’t stand for that rough stuff. He’s wild about you, and crazy to see you, and make it all right again. Now whynot use a little sense? Slip a note under my door across the way and tell me that you’ll doll yourself up and be ready to go to dinner with him tonight at seven.”A postscript added: “This is unsigned and typewritten on your own typewriter and so couldn’t be used by anyone who didn’t like our way of doing business. For your own safety though, I advise you to burn it.”
“Dear Miss Ayer:
“Of course we have known where you were and what you were doing every instant since you left the office. We did not interfere with your quitting your boarding-house because we preferred to give you a few days to think things over. I hopeyou’ve been enjoying your little excursions to the Museum and the Aquarium. We knew you’d come to your senses after a while and be ready to talk business. That is why you’ve had those little, accidental meetings from time to time. That advertisement for a job in the Carman Building was a decoy ad. It is useless for you to try to get away from us.
“And in the meantime the situation is getting more and more desperate. You know why. Now listen. We can clean up on that little business deal in three days. Do you know what that means? Maybe a hundred thousand dollars. We’ll let you in. Your share would be twelve thousand five hundred. Don’t that sound pretty good to you? You can avoid any trouble by going away with us. Or you can go alone and nobody will bother you. We’ll give you the dope on that; for believe me, we know how. And you wouldn’t have to do a thing you don’t want to do. We’ve got grandpa tamed now in regard to you. We’ve told him that you’re a lady, and won’t stand for that rough stuff. He’s wild about you, and crazy to see you, and make it all right again. Now whynot use a little sense? Slip a note under my door across the way and tell me that you’ll doll yourself up and be ready to go to dinner with him tonight at seven.”
A postscript added: “This is unsigned and typewritten on your own typewriter and so couldn’t be used by anyone who didn’t like our way of doing business. For your own safety though, I advise you to burn it.”
This last was the one bit of advice in the letter which Susannah followed. She lighted a match and burned it over her water basin. Then she forced her protesting throat to swallow a glass of milk. She ate some crackers. After that she went to bed.
What to do and where to go! Over and over again, she turned the meager possibilities of her situation. Nothing offered escape. A hackneyed phrase floated into her mind—“woman’s wit.” From time immemorial it had been a bromidiom that any woman, however stupid, could outwit any man, however clever. Was it true? Perhaps not all the time, and perhaps sometimes. That wasthe only way though—she must pit her nimble, inexperienced woman’s wit against their heavier but trained man’s wit. Her problem was to get out of this house, unseen. But how? All kinds of fantastic schemes floated through her tired mind. If she could only disguise herself— But she would have to go out first to get the disguise. And Byan was across the hall, waiting for just that move. If there were only a convenient fire-escape! But of course he would anticipate that. If she could only summon a taxi, leap into it and drive for an hour! But she would have to telephone for the taxi in the outside hall, where Byan could hear her. On and on, she drove her tired mind; inventing schemes more and more impracticable. For a long time, that woman’s wit spawned nothing—
Then suddenly a curious idea came to her. It was so ridiculous that she rejected it instantly. Ridiculous—and it stood ninety-nine per cent chance of failure; offered but one per cent chance of success. Nevertheless it recurred. It offered more and more suggestion, more and more temptation. True, it was a thing barely possible; truealso, that it was the only thing possible. But could she put it through? Had she the nerve? Had she the strength?
She must find both the nerve and the strength.
She bathed and dressed quickly and with a growing steadiness. She packed her belongings into her suitcase, put Glorious Lutie’s miniature in her handbag.
She sat down at her bureau and wrote a note:
“If you will come to my room, after you have had your breakfast, I will talk the matter over with you. I will not leave the building before you return. I will be ready to see you at ten o’clock.”
She opened her door, walked across the corridor; slipped the note under the door of Byan’s room. Then she hurried back; locked her door; sat down and waited, her hands clasped. Her hands grew colder and colder until they seemed like marble, but all the time her mind seemed to steady and clarify.
After a long while she heard Byan’s door open. She heard his steps retreating down the hall and over the stairs.
Ten minutes later, Susannah appeared, suitcase in hand, at the janitor’s office on the first floor. “I’m Miss Ayer in No. 9, second floor,” she said. “May I leave this suitcase here? I’ve just thought that I wanted to go to a friend’s room on the fifth floor and I don’t want to lug it up all those stairs.”
The janitor considered her for a puzzled second. Of course he was in Byan’s pay, Susannah reflected.
“Sure,” he answered uncertainly after a while.
“I’m expecting a gentleman to call on me,” Susannah went on steadily. “Tell him I’ll be on the fifth floor at No. 9. My friend is out,” she ended in glib explanation, “but she’s left her key with me. There’s a little work that I wanted to do on her typewriter.” The janitor—she had worked this out in advance—must know that Room 9, fifth floor—was occupied by a woman who owned a typewriter. Susannah established that when, a few days before, she had restored to its owner a letter shoved by mistake under her own door.
Susannah deposited her bag on the floor in thejanitor’s office. She walked steadily up the stairs to the second floor. She felt the janitor’s gaze on the first flight of her progress. She stopped just before she reached her own room, glanced back. She was alone there. The janitor had not followed her. Perhaps Byan’s instructions to him were only to watch the door. With a swift pounce, she ran to Byan’s door, turned the knob.
It opened.
She ran to the closet; opened that. As she suspected, it was empty. Indeed, her swift glance had discovered no signs of occupancy in the room. Even the bed was undisturbed. Byan had hired it, of course, just for the purpose of being there that one night. Susannah closed the closet door after her, so that the merest crack let in the air she should demand—and waited. In that desperate hour when she lay thinking, the idea had suddenly flashed into her mind that there was only one place in the house where Byan would not look for her. That place was his own room. But it would not have occurred to her to take refuge there if she had not noted, even in her taut terror of the night before, that when Byan entered hisown room he had omitted to lock the door after him. As indeed, why should he? There was nothing to steal in it but Byan. Moreover, of course Byan had sat up all night—his door unlocked—ready to forestall any effort of hers to escape.
An hour later Susannah heard a padded, rather brisk step ascending the stairs, coming along the hall. It was Byan, of course—no one could mistake his pace. He knocked on the door of her room; at first gently, then insistently. A pause. Then he tried the knob, again at first gently, then insistently. His steps retreated down the hall and the stairs. He must have got a pass-key from the janitor, for when, a long minute later, she heard his steps return, the scraping of a lock sounded from across the hall. She heard her somewhat rusty door-hinges creak. There followed a low whistle as of surprise, then an irregular succession of steps and creaks proving that he was looking under the bed, was inspecting the closet. She heard him retreat again down the stairs, and braced herself to endure a longer wait. At last,two pairs of feet sounded on the stairs. Had her ruse fully succeeded—would they mount at once to Room 9, fifth floor? No—they were coming again along the second-floor corridor. With a tingle of nerves in her temples and cheeks, she realized that she had reached the supreme moment of peril. They began knocking at every door on the second-floor corridors. Once she heard a muffled colloquy—the impatient tones of some strange man, the apologetic voice of the janitor. At other doors she heard, shortly after the knock, the scraping of the pass-key. Now they were in the room just beyond the wall of the closet where she was crouching. She heard them enter and emerge—the moment had come! But their footsteps passed her door; an instant later, she heard the pass-key grate in the door of the room on the other side. Then—one hand shaking convulsively on the knob of Byan’s closet door—she heard them go flying up the stairs to the third story—the fourth—
Before noon of that haunted, hunted morning, Susannah found a room in a curious way. Whenshe escaped from the house in the West Twenties, she had walked westward almost to the river. In a little den of a restaurant just off the docks, she ordered breakfast and the morning newspapers. But when she tried to look over the advertising columns with a view to finding a room, she had a violent fit of trembling. The members of the Carbonado Mining Company, she recalled to herself, were studying those advertisements just as closely as she; and perhaps at that very moment.
Hiding in a great city! Why, she thought to herself, it’s the only place where you can’t hide!
Susannah dawdled over breakfast as long as she dared. She found herself wincing as she emerged onto the busy dingy street of docks. She stopped under the shade of an awning and controlled the abnormal fluttering of her heart while she thought out her situation. She dared no longer walk the streets. She dared not go to a real-estate agent. How, then, might she find a room and a hiding-place?
Then a Salvation Army girl came picking her way across the crowded, cluttered dock-pavementtoward her awning. And Susannah had a sudden impulse which she afterwards described to Glorious Lutie as a stroke of genius. She came out to the edge of the pavement and accosted the Blue Bonnet.
“Do you know of any place where a girl who’s a stranger in New York may find a cheap and respectable lodging?” she asked.
The Salvation Army girl gave her a long, steady scrutiny from under the scoop of her bonnet.
“My sister keeps a rooming-house up on Eighth Avenue,” she said finally. “She always has an extra room, and she will take you in, I guess. Have you a bit of paper? I’ll write her a note.”
Susannah flew, swift as a homing dove, to the address. The landlady, a shapeless, featureless, middle-aged blonde, read the note; herself gave a long glance of scrutiny, and showed the room. Susannah’s examination was merely perfunctory. In fact, she looked with eyes which saw not. Probably never before did a shabby, battered bedchamber, stained as to ceiling, peeling as towallpaper, carelessly patched as to carpet, indescribably broken-down and nondescript as to furniture, seem a very paradise to the eyes of twenty-five.
The bed was humpy, but it was a double bed; and clean. Susannah sank on to it. She did not rise for a long time. Then, true to her accepted etiquette on occasions of this kind, she drew the miniature from her handbag and pinned it on to the wall beside her bureau.
“Glorious Lutie,” her thoughts ran, “I’m as weak as a sick cat. If there was ever a girl more terrified, more friendless, more worn-out than I feel at this moment, I’d like to know how she got that way. I want to crawl into that bed and stay there for a week just reveling in the thought that I’m safe. Safe, Glorious Lutie. Safe! Alone with you. And nobody to be afraid of. Our funds are running low of course. I’ve nothing to pawn except you. But don’t be afraid—I’ll never pawn you. If we have to go down, we’ll go down together and with all sails set. I’ve got an awful hate and fear on this job-hunting business now. Heaven knows I don’t want much money; only enough to live on. I guess I won’ttry to be a high-class queen of secretaries any longer—or at least for the present. My lay is to lie low for a month or two. I’ll rest for a few days. Then I’ll go into—what? What, Glorious Lutie, tell me what? I’ve got it! Domestic service. That’s my escape. I’ve certainly got brains enough to be a second girl and they never could find me tucked away in somebody’s house, especially if I never take my afternoons out. Which, believe me, Glorious Lutie, I won’t. I’ll spend them all with you. Oh, what an idea that is! I’ll wait around here for about a week and then I’ll tackle one of the domestic service agencies. If I know anything about after-the-war conditions, I’ll be snapped up like hot cakes.”
Keeping her promise to herself, Susannah stayed as much as possible indoors. The landlady consented to give her breakfast, but she would do no more—even that was an accommodation. In gratitude, Susannah took care of her own room. She kept it in spotless order; she even pottered with repairs. With breakfast at home, she had no need to leave the house of mornings. She went without luncheon; and late in theafternoon, before the home-going flood from the offices, she had dinner in a Child’s restaurant round the corner. For the rest of the time, she read the landlady’s books—few, and mostly cheap. But they included a set of Dickens; and she renewed acquaintance with a novelist whom she loved for himself and who called up memories of her happiest times. But her mood with Dickens was curiously capricious. His deaths and persecutions and poignant tragedies she could no longer endure—they swept her into a gulf of black melancholy. On the second day of her voluntary imprisonment, she glanced throughBleak House; stumbled into the wanderings of Little Jo through the streets of London. Suddenly she surprised herself by a fit of hysterical, trembling tears. This explosion cleared her mental airs; but afterward she skipped through Dickens, picking and choosing his humors, his love-passages, his gargantuan feasts in wayside inns.
When her eyes grew weary with reading, or when she ran into one of those passages which brought the black cloud, Susannah gazed vacantly out of the window.
Her lodging-house stood on a corner; she had a back, corner room on the third floor. The house next door, on the side street, finished to the rear in a two-story shed. Its roof lay almost under her window. The landlady, upon showing the room, had called her attention to this shed. “We’ve got no regular fire escapes, dearie,” she said, “but in case of trouble, you’re all right. You just step out here and if the skylight ain’t open, somebody’ll get you down with a ladder. A person can’t be too careful about fires!” Across the skylight lay a few scanty backyards—treeless, grassless, uninteresting. This city area of yards and sheds seemed to be the club, the Rialto for all the stray cats of Eighth Avenue. Susannah named them, endowed them with personalities. Their squabbles, their amours, their melodramatic stalking, gave her a kind of apathetic interest.
The interest lessened as three days went by, and the apathy deepened. “It’s my state of mind, Glorious Lutie,” she apprised the miniature. “It’s this weight that’s on my spirit. It’s fear. Just as soon as I can get my mind off—Imean just as soon as I become convinced that I’m never going to be bothered again, it will go, I’m sure. Of course I can’t help feeling as I do. But I ought not to. I’m perfectly safe now. In a few days those crooks won’t trouble about me any more. It will be too late. And I know it.”
She reiterated those last two sentences as though Glorious Lutie were a difficult person to convince. The next morning, however, came diversion. Work—roofing—began on the shed just under her window. Susannah watched the workmen with an interest that held, at first, an element of determined concentration. The roofers, an elderly man and a younger one, incredibly dirty in their blackened overalls, which were soon matched by face and hands, were very conscious at first of the brilliant tawny head just above. Once, muffled by the window, she caught an allusion to white horses. But Susannah ignored this; continued to watch them disappearing and emerging through the open skylight, setting up their melting-pot, arranging their sheets of tin.
Before she was out of bed next morning theywere making a metallic clatter with their hammers. In her normal state, Susannah was a creature almost without nerves. She even retained a little of the child’s enjoyment of a racket for its own sake. But now—the din annoyed her, annoyed her unspeakably. She crept languidly out of bed, peeped through the edge of the curtain. They were just beginning work. It would keep up all day.
“I can’t stand this!” said Susannah aloud; and then began one of her wordless addresses to the miniature.
“I guess the time has come, anyhow, to strike into pastures new. Behold, Glorious Lutie, your Glorious Susie descending from the high and mighty position of pampered secretary to that of driven slave. Tomorrow morn I apply for a job as second girl. If it weren’t for this headache, I’d do it today.”
However, the hammering only intensified her headache; she must get outside. So when the landlady arrived with her breakfast, Susannah inquired for the address of the nearest employment office. She dressed, and descended to the street.As always, of late, she had a shrinking as she stepped out into the open world of men and women. When she had controlled this, she moved with a curious apathy to the old, battered ground-floor office with yellow signs over its front windows, where girls found work at domestic service. Presently, she was registered, was sitting on a long bench with a row of women ranging from slatternly to cheaply smart. She scarcely observed them. That apathy was settling deeper about her spirits; her only sensation was her dull headache. Somehow, when she sat still it was not wholly an unpleasant headache. Then the voice of the sharp-faced woman at the desk in the corner called her name. It tore the veil, woke her as though from sleep. She rose, to face her first chance—a thin, severe woman with a mouth like a steel trap.
This first chance furnished no opening, however; neither, as the morning wore away, did several other chances. The process of getting a second maid’s job was at the same time more difficult and less difficult than she had thought. Susannah had forgotten that people always ask servants forreferences. She had supposed her carefully worked out explanation would cover that situation—that she had been a stenographer in Providence; that she had come to New York soon after the Armistice was signed, hoping for a bigger outlook; that the returning soldiers were snapping up all the jobs; that she had tried again and again for a position; that her money was fast going; that she had been advised to enter domestic service. Housekeepers from rich establishments and the mistresses of small ones interviewed her; but the lack of references laid an impassable barrier. In the afternoon, however, luck changed. A suburbanite from Jamaica, a round, grizzled, middle-aged woman, desperately in need of a second girl, cut through all the red-tape that had held the others up. “You’re perfectly honest,” she said meditatively, “about admitting you’ve had no experience, and youlooktrustworthy.”
“I assure you, madam,”—Susannah was eager, but wary; not too eager. She even laughed a little—“I am honest—so honest that it hurts.”
“The only thing is,” her interlocutor went on hesitatingly; “you must pardon me for putting itso bluntly; but we might as well be open with each other. I’m afraid you’ll feel a little above your position.”
“Well,” Susannah responded honestly, “to be straightforward withyou, I suppose I shall. But I give you my word, I’ll nevershowit. And that’s the only thing that counts, isn’t it?”
The woman smiled.
“I must confess I like you,” she burst out impulsively. “But how am I going to know that you’re—all right?”
Susannah sighed. “I understand your situation perfectly. I don’t know how you’re to know I’m all right—morally or just in the matter of mere honesty. For there’s nobody but me to tell you that I’m moral and honest. And of course I’m prejudiced.”
“Well, anyway I’m going to risk it. I’m engaging you now. It is understood—ten dollars a week; and alternate Thursdays and Sundays out. I don’t want you until tomorrow because I want my former maid out of the house before you come. Now will you promise me that you’ll take the nine train tomorrow?”
“I promise,” Susannah agreed.
“But that reminds me,” the woman came on another difficulty, “what’s to guarantee that you’ll stay with me?”
“I guarantee,” Susannah said steadily, “that if you keep to your end of the agreement, I’ll stay with you at least three months.”
The woman sparkled. “All right, I’ll expect you tomorrow on the nine train. I’ll be there with the Ford to meet you. Here are the directions.” She scribbled busily on a card.
Susannah walked home as one who treads on air. The veil of apathy had broken. And in spite of her headache, which caught her by fits and starts, her mood broke into a joy so wild that it sent her pirouetting about the room. “Glorious Lutie, I never felt so happy in my life. So gayly, grandly, gorgeously, gor-gloriously happy! All my troubles are over. I’m safe.” And on the strength of that security, she washed and ironed her lavender linen suit. Her headache was better again. Perhaps if she went out now to an early dinner, it might disappear altogether. But how languorous she felt, how indisposed to effort. Shewould sit and read a while. She openedPickwick Paperson its last pages. She had almost finished the book.
“I suppose it will be a long time before I have a chance to do any more reading,” she meditated. “So I think I’ll finish this. You’ve helped me through a hard passage in my life, Charles Dickens, and I thank you with all my heart.”
But she could not read. As soon as she sat down by the window and settled her eyes on the book, the headache returned. The men were still at work on the roof, hammering away at one corner. Every blow seemed to strike her skull. Midway of the roof, the skylight yawned open; their extra tools were laid out beside it. At five o’clock they would quit for the day. Usually she disliked to have them go. In spite of their noise, she felt that still. They gave her a kind of warm, human sense of companionship. And they had become accustomed to her appearances at the window. Their flirtatious first glances had ceased for want of encouragement. They scarcely seemed to see her when they looked up. But now—that hammering at her skull! Susannahsuddenly rose and closed the window, hot though the day was, against this torrent of sound. As though its futile shield would give added protection, she drew the curtain. In the dimmed light she sat rocking, her head in her hands. Her face was fire-hot—why, she wondered— The hammering stopped. They were soldering now. They were always doing that; beating the tin sheets into place and stopping to solder them. There would be silence for a time. In a moment, she would open the window for a breath of air on her burning face....
She started at a knock on her door, low, quick, but abrupt. Before she could answer, it opened. His face shadowed in the three-quarters light, but his form perfectly outlined, instantly recognizable—stood Warner. Behind Warner was Byan, and behind Byan, O’Hearn.
All the blood of her heart seemed to strike in one wave on Susannah’s aching head, and then to recede. She knew both the tingling of terror and the numbness of horror. Prickling, stinging darts volleyed her face, her hands, her feet; and yet she seemed to be freezing to stone.
They came into the room before anyone spoke—Warner first. Byan lolled to a place in the corner; the three-quarters light, filtering through the thin fabric of the flimsy, yellow curtain, revealed his clean profile, his mysterious half-smile. O’Hearn stood just at the entrance. He did not continue to look at her. His eyes sought the floor.
Warner was speaking now:
“Good-evening, Miss Ayer. We have come to finish up that little piece of business with you. It has been delayed as long as it can be. Pardon us for breaking in upon you like this. Your landlady tried to prevent us, but we assured her that you would want to see us. As I think you will when you come to your senses and hear what I have to say.”
He stopped, as though awaiting her reply. But Susannah made no answer. She had dropped her eyes now; her hands lay limp in her lap. And in this pause, a curious piece of byplay passed between Warner and O’Hearn. The master of this trio caught the glance of his assistant and, with a swift motion of three fingers toward the lapel ofhis coat, gave him that “office” in the underworld sign manual—which means “look things over.” O’Hearn, moving so lightly that Susannah scarcely noted his passage, stepped to the window, lifted the edge of the curtain. He took a swift, intent look outside and returned to Warner. His back to Susannah, he spoke with his lips, scarcely vocalizing the words.
“No getaway there, Boss—straight drop—” he said.
Warner was speaking again.
“Your landlady says we may have her parlor for our conference. Wouldn’t you prefer to make yourself presentable for the street and then join us there—in about ten minutes, say?”
Ten minutes—this gave her a chance to play for time—the only chance she had. She looked up. Nothing on the clean-cut, pearl-white exterior of her face gave a clue to the anarchy within; nothing, even, in her black-fringed, blue gaze the tautly-held scarlet lips. Her fire-bright head lifted a little higher and she gazed steadily into Warner’s eyes, as she spoke in a voice which seemed to her to belong to someone else:
“I can give you a few minutes, but I have not changed my determination.”
“But I think you will,” said Warner. “I really think you will. Before we go, I might remind you that we have been extremely gentle and patient with you, Miss Ayer. I might also remind you that you have never succeeded in giving us the slip. You were very clever when you escaped from your last lodging. We don’t know yet exactly how you did it. Perhaps you will tell us in the course of our little talk this afternoon. But you were not quite clever enough. You did not figure that with such important matters pending, we would have the outside of the house watched as well as the inside. So that you may not think our meeting this afternoon is accidental, let me remind you that you have an engagement for tomorrow afternoon in Jamaica—to take a job as second maid. What we have to offer you this afternoon will probably be so attractive that you will overlook that engagement.”
He paused.
“I will be with you in ten minutes,” said Susannah. She was conscious of no emotion now—onlythat her head ached, and that the faded roses in the old carpet were entwined with forget-me-nots—a thing she had never noticed before.
“Thank you.” Warner made her a gallant little bow. “Mr. Byan and I will wait in the parlor. Until we come to an understanding, we shall have to continue the old arrangement. It will therefore be necessary for Mr. O’Hearn to watch in the hall. If you do not arrive in ten minutes—this room will probably do as well as the parlor. Until then, Miss Ayer!”
He opened the door, passed out. Byan retreated after him, flashing one of his pathetically sweet, floating smiles. Susannah looked up now, followed their movements as the felon must follow the movements of the man with the rope. O’Hearn had been standing close to Susannah, his veiling lashes down. He fell in behind the other two. But before he joined the file, those lashes came up in a quick glance which stabbed Susannah. His hand came up too. He was pointing to the window. And then he spoke twowords in a whisper so low that they carried only to the ears of Susannah, scarce three feet away—so low that she could not have made them out but for the exaggerated, expressive movement of his lips.
“Skylight—quick—” he said. He made for the door in the wake of the other two.
For the fraction of an instant Susannah did not comprehend. And then suddenly one of those little intuitive blows which she was always receiving and ignoring gave, on the hard surface of her mind, a faint tap. This time, she was conscious of it. This time, she trusted it instantly. This time, it told her what to do.
“I’ll be with you as soon as I get dolled up,” she called.
“That’s right,” came the suave voice of Warner from the hall.
She closed the door. She listened while two sets of footsteps descended the stairs. She heard a third set, which must be O’Hearn’s, retreat for a few paces and then stop. She fell swiftly to work. She put on her hat and cape. She took the miniature, thumbtack and all, from the wall,and put it in her wrist bag. “Help me, Glorious Lutie,” she called from the depths of her soul. “Help me! Help me! Help me! I’m lost if you don’t help me! I can’t do it any more alone.”