They went out as in a dream, striking away at random when they issued on the street, seeking only to shun the still idling curious, grateful beyond words for release, avid for the pure, vital air. Presently, in some quarter, they knew not where, a cab-driver hailed them, and they passively entered his hansom and as passively sat dependent on his superior will.
"Where to?" asked the man, impatiently.
Atwood shook himself awake. "The Copley Studios," he answered. "Do you know the building? It's near—"
The closing trap clipped his directions, and they drove away. They gave no heed to their course till, passing a park entrance, they came full upon a knot of urchins and nursemaids clustered between lake and drive.
"That's where the Chapman murder took place," volunteered the driver.
Jean shut her eyes.
"This way of all ways!"
"It is behind us now," Craig comforted. "It'sallbehind us now."
Neither spoke again till they reached the studio, and a porter announced the arrival of several trunks.
"They're yours, Jean," Atwood said. "I ordered them sent here when Julie telephoned for instructions. I realize that there is no going back. She admits that she did you a wrong—she will tell you so herself; but that doesn't alter matters. We must live our own lives. To-night we'll go away for a time. In the mountains or by the sea, whichever you will, we'll plan for the future. It's time the air-castles were made real."
He ordered a luncheon from a neighboring restaurant, forced her to eat, and then to rest. She said that sleep was impossible, and that she must repack against their journey; but her eyelids grew heavy even while she protested, and she was just drowsily aware that he threw over her some studio drapery which emitted a spicy oriental scent.
It was a dreamless sleep until just before she woke, when she shivered again under the obsession of Amy's door-bell. The studio furnishings delivered her from the delusion, but a bell rang on. Where was Craig? Then her eye fell upon a scrawl, transfixed to her pillow by a hatpin, which told her that he had gone to arrange for their departure; and she roused herself to answer the door. Here, for an instant, the dream seemed still to haunt, for the caller who greeted her was the reporter of the morning who had taken her denial.
"I'm right sorry to botheryouagain, Mrs. Atwood," he apologized. "I'm looking for your husband."
"Mr. Atwood is out."
"Could I see him later, perhaps? It's about five-thirty now. Would six o'clock suit?"
"Why do you annoy him?" she asked wearily. "I told you that he has nothing to do with this awful affair."
"The public thinks he has, and in a way, through your knowing Mrs. Chapman, it's true. Anyhow, I'm authorized to make him a proposition with dollars in it. Our Sunday editor is willing to let him name his own figure for a column interview and a sketch of the Wilkes girl, in any medium he likes, which he can knock off from our own photographs. We got some rattling good snap-shots just as she was taken into custody."
Jean stared blankly into his enthusiastic face.
"Taken into custody?" she said. "The Wilkes girl! You mean—on suspicion—of murder!"
"Haven't you seen the afternoon editions?" cried the man, incredulously. "You don't say you haven't heard about the new figure in the case, the Fourteenth Street music-hall favorite, Stella Wilkes! It was Chapman's divorced wife who put the police on the scent. She'd spotted them together, and the janitor of the Wilkes girl's flat-house identified Chapman as a man who'd been running there after her. Of course by itself, that's no evidence of guilt; but they've unearthed more than that. One of the clever men of our staff got hold of a letter which the girl wrote Chapman. The police are holding it back, but it's a threat of some kind, and strong enough to warrant them gathering her in for the grand jury's consideration. But let me send up a hall-boy with the latest. I'll try again at six for Mr. Atwood."
Stella! Stella accused of the murder! She pressed her hands to her dizzy head and groped back to the studio. Could fate devise a more ironic jest! Stella, wrecker of Amy's happiness, herself dragged down! Then, her brain clearing, her personal responsibility overwhelmed her. She alone had received Amy's confession. She alone could vouch for Stella's innocence. She must dip her hands again into this defiling pitch, endure more publicity, risk exposure, humiliate Craig! And for Stella—byword of Shawnee Springs, fiend who had made the refuge twice a hell, terror of her struggle to live the dark past down—of all human creatures, Stella Wilkes!
But it must be done. She made herself ready for the street with benumbed fingers, till the thought of Craig again arrested her. Should she wait for him?
He entered as she hesitated.
"Rested, Jean?" he called cheerily, delaying a moment in the hall. "Here are your papers. The boy said you wanted them." Then, from the threshold, "You're ill!"
She caught one of the newspapers from him and struck it open. Its head-lines shouted confirmation of the reporter's words.
"Look!"
"'Footlight favorite ... damaging letter ... journalistic enterprise,'" he repeated.
"You see what it means?"
"Wait, wait!" He read on feverishly to the end.
Jean gave a last mechanical touch to her veil.
"I am going down to police headquarters to tell what I know, Craig."
"No," he cried. "You must not mix in this again. You shall not. There is some better way. We must think it out. There is Bartlett—he knows!"
"Through me!"
"I think he'd be willing—no; that's folly. We can't ask the man to perjure himself. We must hit on something else. You must not be the one. Think what it might mean!"
"I've thought."
"They would dig up the past—all your acquaintance with Amy. The Wilkes creature's tongue could never be stopped. She doesn't know now that Mrs. Atwood means Jean Fanshaw. She must not know. Take no rash step. We must wait, temporize."
"Temporize with an innocent person accused of crime!"
"They don't accuse her yet—formally. She is held—detained—whatever the lawyer's jargon is. She isn't convicted. She never will be. They can't convict her on one letter.—I doubt if they'll indict her. Why, she may prove an alibi at once! Wait, Jean, wait! She's merely under suspicion of—"
"Murder!" She stripped away his sophistries with a word. "Isn't that enough? What of her feelings while we wait? Is it nothing to be suspected of killing a man?"
"What is her reputation now? Unspeakable!"
"More reason that we make it no worse. No, no, Craig; I must do this thing at any cost."
He threw out his hands in impassioned appeal.
"Any cost! Any cost!" he cried. "Do you realize what you're saying? Will you let her rag of a reputation weigh against your own, against the position you've fought for, against my good name? If you won't spare yourself, spare me!"
"Craig!" she implored, "be just!"
"I am only asking you to wait. A night may change everything. It can't make her name blacker; it may save you."
"Suppose it changes nothing; suppose no alibi is proved; suppose they do indict! How would my delay look then? Can't you see that my way is the only way? Don't think I'm not counting the cost." Her voice wavered and she shut her eyes against his unnerving face which seemed to have shed its boyishness forever, against this room which everywhere bespoke the future she jeopardized. "I do! I do! But we must go—go at once."
His face set sternly.
"I refuse."
"Craig!"
"I refuse. This morning, when we had no way to turn, I was ready to stand by you. But now—now I wash my hands of it all. If you go—"
Her face turned ashen.
"If I go?" she repeated.
"You go alone."
"And afterward?"
He dashed a distracted hand across his forehead and turned away without answer.
"Yet I must go," she said.
Before her blind fingers found the outer door, he was again beside her.
"You're right," he owned. "Forgive me, Jean. We'll see it through."
Their ride in the twilight seemed an excursion in eternity. Home-going New York met them in obstructive millions. Apparently they alone sought the lower city. From zone to zone they descended—luxury, shabby gentility, squalor succeeding in turn—till their destination loomed a dread tangible reality. It was fittingly seated here, Jean felt, where life's dregs drifted uppermost, sin was a commonplace, arrest a diversion. Would not such as these glory in the deed she found so hard? Would not the brain beneath that "picture" hat, the sable plumes of which—jaunty, insolent, triumphant—floated the center of a sidewalk throng, envy her the publicity from which she shrank? Then, as the ribald crowd passed and the garish blaze of a concert-saloon lit the woman's face, she threw herself back in the shadow with a sharp cry.
"Look, Craig! Look!"
Atwood craned from the cab, which a dray had blocked, but saw only agitated backs as the saloon swallowed up the pavement idol.
A policeman grinned sociably from the curb.
"Stella Wilkes," he explained. "Chesty, ain't she? She was pretty wilted, though, when they ran her in. I saw her come."
Craig's hand convulsively gripped Jean's.
"They've let her go?" he questioned. "She's free?"
"Sure—an' callin' on her friends. Hadn't you heard? Mrs. Chapman left a note ownin' up. If they'd found it sooner, this party would have had a pleasanter afternoon. Still, I guess she's plenty satisfied. They say a vaudeville house has offered her five hundred a week. She'd better cinch the deal to-night. It will all be forgotten to-morrow."
Atwood strained the white-faced figure to his breast.
"You heard him, Jean? He's right. Itwillbe forgotten to-morrow."
From that dear shelter she, too, foresaw a kindlier future.
"To-morrow," she echoed.
From that dear shelter she, too, foresaw a kindlier future.
From that dear shelter she, too, foresaw a kindlier future.
From that dear shelter she, too, foresaw a kindlier future.