The going of Garson left the room deathly still. Dick stared for a
moment at the space of window left uncovered by the draperies now, since
the man had hurried past them, without pausing to draw them after him.
Then, presently, the young man turned again to Mary, and took her hand
in his. The shock of the event had somehow steadied him, since it had
drawn his thoughts from that other more engrossing mood of concern over
the crisis in his own life. After all, what mattered the death of this
crook? his fancy ran. The one thing of real worth in all the world
was the life that remained to be lived between him and her.... Then,
violently, the selfishness of his mood was made plain to him. For the
hand he held was shaking like some slender-stalked lily in the clutch
of the sirocco. Even as he first perceived the fact, he saw the girl
stagger. His arm swept about her in a virile protecting embrace--just in
time, or she would have fallen.
A whisper came from her quivering lips. Her face was close to his, else
he could not have caught the uncertain murmuring. That face now was
become ghastly pale. The violet eyes were widened and dull. The muscles
of her face twitched. She rested supinely against him, as if bereft of
any strength of body or of soul. Yet, in the intensity of her utterance,
the feeble whisper struck like a shriek of horror.
“I--I--never saw any one killed before!”
The simple, grisly truth of the words--words that he might have spoken
as well--stirred the man to the deeps of his being. He shuddered, as
he turned his eyes to avoid seeing the thing that lay so very near,
mercifully merged within the shadows beyond the gentle radiance from the
single lamp. With a pang of infinite pity for the woman in his arms, he
apprehended in some degree the torture this event must have inflicted
on her. Frightful to him, it must in truth be vastly worse to her. There
was her womanly sensitiveness to enhance the innate hideousness of the
thing that had been done here before their eyes. There was, too, the
fact that the murderer himself had been the man to whom she owed her
life. Yes, for him, Dick realized with poignant sympathy, the happening
that night was terrible indeed: for her, as he guessed now at last,
the torture must be something easily to overwhelm all her strength. His
touch on her grew tender beyond the ordinary tenderness of love, made
gentler by a great underlying compassion for her misery.
Dick drew Mary toward the couch, there let her sink down in a huddled
attitude of despair.
“I never saw a man--killed before!” she said again. There was a note of
half-hysterical, almost childish complaint in her voice. She moved
her head a little, as if to look into the shadows where _it_ lay,
then checked herself violently, and looked up at her husband with the
pathetic simplicity of terror.
“You know, Dick,” she repeated dully, “I never saw a man killed before.”
Before he could utter the soothing words that rose to his lips, Dick was
interrupted by a slight sound at the door. Instantly, he was all alert
to meet the exigencies of the situation. He stood by the couch, bending
forward a little, as if in a posture of intimate fondness. Then, with
a new thought, he got out his cigarette-case and lighted a cigarette,
after which he resumed his former leaning over the woman as would the
ardent lover. He heard the noise again presently, now so near that
he made sure of being overheard, so at once he spoke with a forced
cheerfulness in his inflection.
“I tell you, Mary,” he declared, “everything's going to be all right for
you and me. It was bully of you to come here to me like this.”
The girl made no response. She lived still in the nightmare of
murder--that nightmare wherein she had seen Griggs fall dead to the
floor.
Dick, in nervous apprehension as to the issue, sought to bring her to
realization of the new need that had come upon them.
“Talk to me,” he commanded, very softly. “They'll be here in a minute.
When they come in, pretend you just came here in order to meet me. Try,
Mary. You must, dearest!” Then, again, his voice rose to loudness, as he
continued. “Why, I've been trying all day to see you. And, now, here we
are together, just as I was beginning to get really discouraged.... I
know my father will eventually----”
He was interrupted by the swift swinging open of the hallway door. Burke
stood just within the library, a revolver pointed menacingly.
“Hands up!--all of you!” The Inspector's voice fairly roared the
command.
The belligerent expression of his face vanished abruptly, as his eyes
fell on Dick standing by the couch and Mary reclining there in limp
helplessness. His surprise would have been ludicrous but for the
seriousness of the situation to all concerned. Burke's glance roved the
room sharply, and he was quickly convinced that these two were in fact
the only present spoil of his careful plotting. His face set grimly, for
the disappointment of this minute surged fiercely within him. He started
to speak, his eyes lowering as he regarded the two before him.
But Dick forestalled him. He spoke in a voice coldly repellent.
“What are you doing in this house at this time of night?” he demanded.
His manner was one of stern disapproval. “I recognize you, Inspector
Burke. But you must understand that there are limits even to what you
can do. It seems to me, sir, that you exceed your authority by such an
intrusion as this.”
Burke, however, was not a whit dismayed by the rebuke and the air of
rather contemptuous disdain with which it was uttered. He waved his
revolver toward Mary, merely as a gesture of inquisitiveness, without
any threat.
“What's she doing here?” he asked. There was wrath in his rough voice,
for he could not avoid the surmise that his shrewdly concocted scheme to
entrap this woman had somehow been set awry. “What's she doing here, I
say?” he repeated heavily. His keen eyes were darting once more about
the room, questing some clue to this disturbing mystery, so hateful to
his pride.
Dick's manner became that of the devoted husband offended by impertinent
obtrusion.
“You forget yourself, Inspector,” he said, icily. “This is my wife. She
has the right to be with me--her husband!”
The Inspector grinned sceptically. He was moved no more effectively by
Mary's almost hysterical effort to respond to her husband's leading.
“Why shouldn't I be here? Why? Why? I----”
Burke broke in on the girl's pitiful histrionics ruthlessly. He was
not in the least deceived. He was aware that something untoward, as he
deemed it, had occurred. It seemed to him, in fact, that his finical
mechanisms for the undoing of Mary Turner were in a fair way to be
thwarted. But he would not give up the cause without a struggle. Again,
he addressed himself to Dick, disregarding completely the aloof manner
of the young man.
“Where's your father?” he questioned roughly.
“In bed, naturally,” was the answer. “I ask you again: What are you
doing here at this time of night?”
Burke shook his shoulders ponderously in a movement of impatience over
this prolonging of the farce.
“Oh, call your father,” he directed disgustedly.
Dick remonstrated with an excellent show of dignity.
“It's late,” he objected. “I'd rather not disturb him, if you don't
mind. Really, the idea is absurd, you know.” Suddenly, he smiled very
winningly, and spoke with a good assumption of ingenuousness.
“Inspector,” he said briskly, “I see, I'll have to tell you the truth.
It's this: I've persuaded my wife to go away with me. She's going to
give all that other sort of thing up. Yes, we're going away together.”
There was genuine triumph in his voice now. “So, you see, we've got
to talk it over. Now, then, Inspector, if you'll come back in the
morning----”
The official grinned sardonically. He could not in the least guess just
what had in very deed happened, but he was far too clever a man to be
bamboozled by Dick's maunderings.
“Oh, that's it!” he exclaimed, with obvious incredulity.
“Of course,” Dick replied bravely, though he knew that the Inspector
disbelieved his pretenses. Still, for his own part, he was inclined
as yet to be angry rather than alarmed by this failure to impress the
officer. “You see, I didn't know----”
And even in the moment of his saying, the white beam of the flashing
searchlight from the Tower fell between the undrawn draperies of the
octagonal window. The light startled the Inspector again, as it had done
once before that same night. His gaze followed it instinctively. So,
within the second, he saw the still form lying there on the floor--lying
where had been shadows, where now, for the passing of an instant, was
brilliant radiance.
There was no mistaking that awful, motionless, crumpled posture. The
Inspector knew in this single instant of view that murder had been done
here. Even as the beam of light from the Tower shifted and vanished from
the room, he leaped to the switch by the door, and turned on the lights
of the chandelier. In the next moment, he had reached the door of the
passage across the room, and his whistle sounded shrill. His voice
bellowed reinforcement to the blast.
“Cassidy! Cassidy!”
As Dick made a step toward his wife, from whom he had withdrawn a little
in his colloquy with the official, Burke voiced his command viciously:
“Stay where you are--both of you!”
Cassidy came rushing in, with the other detectives. He was plainly
surprised to find the room so nearly empty, where he had expected to
behold a gang of robbers.
“Why, what's it all mean, Chief?” he questioned. His peering eyes fell
on Dick, standing beside Mary, and they rounded in amazement.
“They've got Griggs!” Burke answered. There was exceeding rage in his
voice, as he spoke from his kneeling posture beside the body, to which
he had hurried after the summons to his aides. He glowered up into the
bewildered face of the detective. “I'll break you for this, Cassidy,”
he declared fiercely. “Why didn't you get here on the run when you heard
the shot?”
“But there wasn't any shot,” the perplexed and alarmed detective
expostulated. He fairly stuttered in the earnestness of his
self-defense. “I tell you, Chief, there hasn't been a sound.”
Burke rose to his feet. His heavy face was set in its sternest mold.
“You could drive a hearse through the hole they've made in him,” he
rumbled. He wheeled on Mary and Dick. “So!” he shouted, “now it's
murder!... Well, hand it over. Where's the gun?”
Followed a moment's pause. Then the Inspector spoke harshly to Cassidy.
He still felt himself somewhat dazed by this extraordinary event, but
he was able to cope with the situation. He nodded toward Dick as he gave
his order: “Search him!”
Before the detective could obey the direction, Dick took the revolver
from his pocket where he had bestowed it, and held it out.
And it so chanced that at this incriminating crisis for the son, the
father hastily strode within the library. He had been aroused by the
Inspector's shouting, and was evidently greatly perturbed. His usual
dignified air was marred by a patent alarm.
“What's all this?” he exclaimed, as he halted and stared doubtfully on
the scene before him.
Burke, in a moment like this, was no respecter of persons, for all his
judicious attentions on other occasions to those whose influence might
serve him well for benefits received.
“You can see for yourself,” he said grimly to the dumfounded magnate.
Then, he fixed sinister eyes on the son. “So,” he went on, with somber
menace in his voice, “you did it, young man.” He nodded toward the
detective. “Well, Cassidy, you can take 'em both down-town.... That's
all.”
The command aroused Dick to remonstrance against such indignity toward
the woman whom he loved.
“Not her!” he cried, imploringly. “You don't want her, Inspector! This
is all wrong!”
Now, at last, Mary interposed with a new spirit. She had regained,
in some measure at least, her poise. She was speaking again with that
mental clarity which was distinctive in her.
“Dick,” she advised quietly, but with underlying urgency in her gently
spoken words, “don't talk, please.”
Burke laughed harshly.
“What do you expect?” he inquired truculently. “As a matter of fact, the
thing's simple enough, young man. Either you killed Griggs, or she did.”
The Inspector, with his charge, made a careless gesture toward the
corpse of the murdered stool-pigeon. For the first time, Edward Gilder,
as his glance unconsciously followed the officer's movement, looked and
saw the ghastly inanimate heap of flesh and bone that had once been a
man. He fairly reeled at the gruesome spectacle, then fumbled with an
outstretched hand as he moved stumblingly until he laid hold on a chair,
into which he sank helplessly. It suddenly smote upon his consciousness
that he felt very old and broken. He marveled dully over the
sensation--it was wholly new to him. Then, soon, from a long way off,
he heard the strident voice of the Inspector remorselessly continuing
in the vile, the impossible accusation.... And that grotesque accusation
was hurled against his only son--the boy whom he so loved. The thing
was monstrous, a thing incredible. This whole seeming was no more than
a chimera of the night, a phantom of bad dreams, with no truth under
it.... Yet, the stern voice of the official came with a strange
semblance of reality.
“Either you killed him,” the voice repeated gratingly, “or she did.
Well, then, young man, did she kill him?”
“Good God, no!” Dick shouted, aghast.
“Then, it was you!” Such was the Inspector's summary of the case.
Mary's words came frantically. Once again, she was become desperate over
the course of events in this night of fearful happenings.
“No, no! He didn't!”
Burke's rasping voice reiterated the accusation with a certain
complacency in the inevitability of the dilemma.
“One of you killed Griggs. Which one of you did it?” He scowled at Dick.
“Did she kill him?”
Again, the husband's cry came with the fierceness of despair over the
fate of the woman.
“I told you, no!”
The Inspector, always savagely impressive now in voice and look and
gesture, faced the girl with saturnine persistence.
“Well, then,” he blustered, “did he kill him?”
The nod of his head was toward Dick. Then, as she remained silent: “I'm
talking to you!” he snapped. “Did he kill him?”
The reply came with a soft distinctness that was like a crash of
destiny.
“Yes.”
Dick turned to his wife in reproachful amazement.
“Mary!” he cried, incredulously. This betrayal was something
inconceivable from her, since he believed that now at last he knew her
heart.
Burke, however, as usual, paid no heed to the niceties of sentiment.
They had small place in his concerns as an official of police. His sole
ambition just now was to fix the crime definitely on the perpetrator.
“You'll swear he killed him?” he asked, briskly, well content with this
concrete result of the entanglement.
Mary subtly evaded the question, while seeming to give unqualified
assent.
“Why not?” she responded listlessly.
At this intolerable assertion as he deemed it, Edward Gilder was
reanimated. He sat rigidly erect in his, chair. In that frightful
moment, it came to him anew that here was in verity the last detail in a
consummate scheme by this woman for revenge against himself.
“God!” he cried, despairingly. “And that's your vengeance!”
Mary heard, and understood. There came an inscrutable smile on her
curving lips, but there was no satisfaction in that smile, as of one who
realized the fruition of long-cherished schemes of retribution. Instead,
there was only an infinite sadness, while she spoke very gently.
“I don't want vengeance--now!” she said.
“But they'll try my boy for murder,” the magnate remonstrated,
distraught.
“Oh, no, they can't!” came the rejoinder. And now, once again, there
was a hint of the quizzical creeping in the smile. “No, they can't!”
she repeated firmly, and there was profound relief in her tones since
at last her ingenuity had found a way out of this outrageous situation
thrust on her and on her husband.
Burke glared at the speaker in a rage that was abruptly grown suspicious
in some vague way.
“What's the reason we can't?” he stormed.
Mary sprang to her feet. She was radiant with a new serenity, now that
her quick-wittedness had discovered a method for baffling the mesh of
evidence that had been woven about her and Dick through no fault
of their own. Her eyes were glowing with even more than their usual
lusters. Her voice came softly modulated, almost mocking.
“Because you couldn't convict him,” she said succinctly. A contented
smile bent the red graces of her lips.
Burke sneered an indignation that was, nevertheless, somewhat fearful of
what might lie behind the woman's assurance.
“What's the reason?” he demanded, scornfully. “There's the body.” He
pointed to the rigid form of the dead man, lying there so very near
them. “And the gun was found on him. And then, you're willing to swear
that he killed him.... Well, I guess we'll convict him, all right. Why
not?”
Mary's answer was given quietly, but, none the less, with an assurance
that could not be gainsaid.
“Because,” she said, “my husband merely killed a burglar.” In her turn,
she pointed toward the body of the dead man. “That man,” she continued
evenly, “was the burglar. You know that! My husband shot him in defense
of his home!” There was a brief silence. Then, she added, with a
wonderful mildness in the music of her voice. “And so, Inspector, as you
know of course, he was within the law!”