Clancy was afraid--like every one else--of the forces of law and order.
She was afraid of that menacing thing which we call "society." To feel
that society has turned against one, and is hunting one down--that is
the most terrible fear of all. Clancy had undergone that fear during the
past week. Panic had time and again assailed her.
But the panic that gripped her now was different. It was the fear of
bodily injury. And, because Clancy had real courage, the color came back
into her cheeks as swiftly as it had departed. More swiftly, because,
with returning courage, came anger.
Clancy was not a snob; she would never be one. Yet there is a feeling,
born of legitimate pride, that makes one consciously superior to others.
Clancy held herself highly. A moment ago, she had been dreaming,
triumphantly, of a man immeasurably superior in all ways to these two
men who detained her. That this man should anticipate seeing her--and
she knew that he did--raised her in her own self-esteem. That these two
men here dared stop her progress, for any reason whatsoever, lowered
her.
She was decent. These two men were not. Yet one of them held her horse's
head, and the other hand was stretched out toward her. They dared, by
deed and verbal implication, to threaten her. Her pride, just and well
founded, though based on no record of material achievement, would have
made her brave, even though she had lacked real courage. Although, as a
matter of fact, it is hard to conceive of real courage in a character
that has no pride.
Carey's left hand was closing over her right forearm. With the edge of
her right hand, Clancy struck the contaminating touch away. She was a
healthy girl. Hours of tobogganing to-day had not exhausted her. The
blow had vigor behind it. Carey's hand dropped away from her. With her
left hand, Clancy jerked the reins taut. A blow of the whip would have
made Garland relinquish his grasp of the animal. But Clancy did not
deliver it then.
No man, save Beiner, had ever really frightened her. And it had not been
fear of hurt that had animated her sudden resistance toward the
theatrical agent; it had been dread of contamination. She had been born
and bred in the country. In Zenith, the kerosene street-lamps were not
lighted on nights when the moon was full. Sometimes it rained, and then
the town was dark. Yet Clancy had never been afraid to walk home from a
neighbor's house.
So now, indignant, and growing more indignant with each passing second,
she made no move toward flight. Instead, she asked the immemorial
question of the woman whose pride is outraged.
"How dare you?" she demanded.
Carey stared at her. He rubbed his forearm where the hard edge of her
palm had descended upon it. His forehead, Clancy could vaguely discern,
in the light that the snow reflected from a pale moon, was wrinkled, as
though with worry.
"Some wallop you have!" he said. "No need of getting mad, is there?"
Had Clancy been standing, she would have stamped her foot.
"'Mad?' What do you mean by stopping me?" she cried.
"'Mean?'" Behind his blond mustache the weakness of Carey's mouth was
patent. "'Mean?' Why--" He drew himself up with sudden dignity. "Any
reason," he asked, "why I shouldn't stop and speak to a friend of my
wife's?"
Suddenly Clancy wished that she had lashed Garland with the whip, struck
the horse with it, and fled away. She realized that Carey was drunk. He
was worse than drunk; he was poisoned by alcohol. The eyes that finally
met hers were not the eyes of a drunkard temporarily debauched; they
were the eyes of a maniac.
Her impulse to indignation died away. She knew that she must temporize,
must outwit the man who stood so close to where she sat. For she
realized that she was in as great danger as probably she would ever be
again.
Danger dulls the mind of the coward. It quickens the wit of the brave.
The most consummate actress would have envied Clancy the laugh that rang
as merrily true as though Carey, in a ballroom, had reminded her of
their acquaintance and had begged a dance.
"Why, it's _you_, Mr. Carey! How silly of me!"
Carey stepped back a trifle. His hat swung down in his right hand, and
he bowed, exaggeratedly.
"'Course it is. Didn't you know me?"
Clancy laughed again.
"Why should I? I never expected to find you walking along a road like
this."
"Why shouldn't you?" Carey's voice was suddenly suspicious. "Y' knew I
was coming up here, didn't you?"
"Why, no," Clancy assured him. "You see Dutchess County doesn't mean
anything to me. Mrs. Carey said that you were going to Dutchess County,
but that might as well have been Idaho for all it meant to me. Where is
Mrs. Carey?" he asked.
"Oh, she's all right. Nev' min' about her." He swayed a trifle, and
seized the edge of the sleigh for support. "Point is"--and he brought
his face nearer to hers, staring at her with inflamed eyes--"what are
you doin' up here if you didn't know I was here?"
"Visiting the Walbroughs," said Clancy. She pretended to ignore his
tone.
"Huh! Tell me somethin' I don't know," said Carey. "Don't you suppose I
know _that_? Ain't Sam and I been watchin' you tobogganing with that fat
old Walbrough dame all afternoon?"
"Why didn't you join us?" asked Clancy.
"Join you? Join you?" Carey's eyes attempted cunning; they succeeded in
crossing. "Thass just _it_! Didn't want to join you. Didn't want you to
sus--suspect--" His hand shook the sleigh. "You come right now and tell
me what you doin' here?"
"Why, I've told you!" said Clancy.
"Yes; you've _told_ me," said Carey scornfully. "But that doesn't mean
that I believe you. Where you going now?"
"To the railroad station," Clancy answered.
"What for?" demanded Carey.
Clancy's muscles tightened; she sat bolt upright. No _grande dame_'s
tones could have been icier.
"You are impertinent, Mr. Carey."
"'Impertinent!'" cried Carey. "I asked you a question; answer it!"
"To meet Mr. Vandervent," Clancy told him. She could have bitten her
tongue for the error of her judgment.
Carey's hand let go of the side of the seat. He stepped uncertainly back
a pace.
"What's he doing up here? What you meeting him for? D'ye hear that,
Garland?" he cried.
The elevator-man of the Heberworth Building still stood at the horse's
head. He was smoking a cigarette now, and Clancy could see his crafty
eyes as he sucked his breath inward and the tip of the cigarette glowed.
"Ain't that what I been tellin' you?" he retorted. "Didn't Spofford go
into your house yesterday and stay there with her an hour or so? Wasn't
I watchin' outside? And ain't he laid off her? Didn't he tell me to keep
my trap closed about seein' her go to Beiner's office? Ain't he workin'
hand in glove with her?"
Carey wheeled toward Clancy.
"You hear that?" he demanded shrilly. "And still you try to fool me. You
think I killed Beiner, and--" His voice ceased. He licked his lips a
moment. When he spoke again, there was infinite cunning in his tone.
"You don't think anything foolish like that, now, do you?" He came a
little closer to the sleigh. His left hand groped, almost blindly, it
seemed to Clancy, for the edge of the seat again. "Why, even if Morris
and I did have a little row, any one that knows me knows I'm a gentleman
and wouldn't kill him for a little thing like his saying he----"
"Lay off what he said and you said," came the snarling voice of Garland.
"Stick to what you intended saying."
"Don't use that tone, Garland," snapped Carey. "Don't you forget,
either, that I'm a--I'm a--gentleman. I don't want any gutter-scum
dicta--dictating to me." He spoke again to Clancy. "You're a friend of
my wife," he said. "Just wanted to tell you, in friendly way, that
friend of my wife don't mean a single thing to me. I want to be friendly
with every one, but any one tries to put anything over on me going to
get theirs. 'Member that!"
"Aw, get down to cases!" snarled Garland. There was something strange in
the voice of the man at the horse's head. There was a snarling quaver in
it that was not like the drunken menace of Carey.
Suddenly Clancy knew; she had never met a drug fiend in her life--and
yet she knew. Also, she knew that what Don Carey, even maniacally drunk,
might not think of doing, the undersized elevator-man from the
Heberworth Building would not hesitate to attempt.
Common sense told her that these two men had stopped her only for a
purpose. They had watched her to-day. They knew that she was on her way
to meet Philip Vandervent. They were reading into that meeting
verification of their suspicions.
And they were suspicious, because--she knew why. Carey had killed
Beiner. Garland knew of the crime. Garland had blackmailed Carey;
Garland feared that exposure of Carey would also expose himself as
cognizant of the crime. So they were crazed, one from drink, the other
from some more evil cause. No thought of risk would deter them. It was
incredible that they would attack her, and yet----
"Now, listen, lady," came the voice of Garland: "We don't mean no harm
to you. Get me?"
Incredibly, crazed though the man's voice was, Clancy believed him.
"What do you mean?" she demanded.
"We just want a little time, Carey and me. We want you to promise to
keep your mouth shut for a week or so; that's all. Your word'll be good
with us."
Again Clancy believed him. But now she was able to reason. She believed
Garland, because he meant what he said. But--would he mean what he said
five minutes from now? And, then, it didn't matter to her whether or not
the man would mean it five years from now. He was attempting to dictate
to her, Clancy Deane, who was on her way to meet Philip Vandervent, she
who had received flowers from Philip Vandervent only yesterday.
Vandervent was a gentleman. Would he temporize? Would he give a promise
that in honor he should not give?
Where there had been only suspicion, there was now certainty. She _knew_
that Don Carey had killed Morris Beiner. On some remote day, she would
ponder on the queer ways of fate, on the strange coincidences that make
for what we call "inevitability." With, so far as she knew, no evidence
against him, Don Carey had convicted himself.
He was a murderer. By all possible implication, Carey had confessed, and
Garland had corroborated the confession. And they asked her to become
party to a murder!
She would never again be as angry as she was now. It seemed to her
inflamed senses that they were insulting not merely herself but
Vandervent also. They were suggesting that she was venal, capable of
putting bodily safety above honesty. And, in belittling her, they
belittled the man who had, of all the women in the world, selected her.
For now, in the stress of the moment, it was as though Vandervent's
flowers had been a proposal. She fought not merely for herself, but, by
some queer quirk of reasoning, for the man that she loved.
Her left hand held whip and reins. She dropped the reins, she rose to
her feet and lashed savagely at Garland's head. She heard him scream as
the knotted leather cut across his face. She saw him stagger back,
relinquishing his hold of the bridle. She turned. Carey's two hands
sought for her; his face was but a yard away, and into it she drove the
butt of the whip. He, too, reeled back.
Her hand went above her head and the lash descended, swishingly, upon
the side of the horse. There was a jerk forward that sat her heavily
down upon the seat. A sidewise twist, as the animal leaped ahead, almost
threw her out of the sleigh. She gripped at the dashboard and managed to
right herself. And then the sleigh went round a bend in the road.
The snow was piled on the left-hand side. The horse, urged into the
first display of spirits that, probably, he had shown in years, bore to
the left. The left runner shot into the air. Clancy picked herself out
of a snow-drift on the right-hand side as the horse and sleigh careened
round another turn.
For a moment, she was too bewildered to move. Then she heard behind her
the curses of the two men. She heard them plunging along the heavy
roadway, calling to each other to make haste.
She was not panicky. Before her was a narrow roadway, branching away
from the main highway. Up it she ran, as swiftly as her heavily-shod
feet--she wore overshoes that Mrs. Hebron had pressed upon her--could
carry her over the rough track.
Round a corner she glimpsed lights. A house stood before her. She raced
toward it, her pace slackening as a backward glance assured her that
Garland and Carey must be pursuing the empty sleigh, for they certainly
were not following her.
But the horse might stop at any moment. He was an aged animal, probably
tired of his freedom already. Then the two men would turn, would find
her tracks leading up this road. She refused to consider what might
happen then. One thing only she knew--that she had justified herself by
refusing to treat with them. It was an amazingly triumphant heart that
she held within her bosom. She felt strangely proud of herself.
Across a wide veranda she made her way. She rang a door-bell, visible
under the veranda-light. She heard footsteps. Now she breathed easily.
She was safe. Carey and Garland, even though they discovered her tracks,
would hardly follow her into this house.
Then the door opened and she stood face to face with Sophie Carey.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Mrs. Carey held out her hand.
"Why, Miss Deane!" she gasped.
Perfunctorily Clancy took the extended fingers. She stepped inside.
"Lock the door!" she ordered.
Sophie Carey stared at her. Mechanically she obeyed. She stared at her
guest.
"Why--why--what's wrong?" she demanded. Her voice shook, and her eyes
were frightened.
Clancy's eyes clouded. She wanted to weep. Not because of any danger
that had menaced her--that might still menace her--not because of any
physical reaction. But Sophie Carey had befriended her, and Sophie Carey
was in the shadow of disgrace. And she, Clancy Deane, _must_ tell the
authorities.
"Your husband----" she began.
Mrs. Carey's face hardened. Into her eyes came a flame.
"He--he's dared to----"
There was a step on the veranda outside. Before Clancy could interfere,
Sophie had strode by her and thrown open the door. Through the entrance
came Carey, his bloodshot eyes roving. In his hand he held a revolver.