JACK TELLS THE STORY
To say that the expectant Whitney office got a jolt is putting it
mildly. On the threshold of success, to meet such a setback enraged
George and made even the chief grouchy. The new developments added new
complications that upset their carefully elaborated theories. There had
to be a readjustment. Whoever Sammis was and whatever his motive could
have been it was undoubtedly he who had attacked Tony Ford.
It was inexplicable and mysterious. The chief had an idea that there was
a connection between Sammis and Barker, that the man now dead might have
been "planted" in Philadelphia to divert the search from the live man,
who had stolen to safety after a rise to the surface in Toronto. George
scouted it; an accidental likeness had fooled them and made them waste
valuable time. The devil was on the side of Barker, taking care of his
own.
It did look that way. Investigation of the few clues we had led to
nothing. The tailor, whose bill was found in Sammis’s pocket, remembered
selling a suit and overcoat to a man called Sammis on January tenth. He
was a quiet, polite old party who looked poor and shabby but bought good
clothes and paid spot cash for them. The typewritten letter indicated
that Sammis had been sent to Philadelphia and well paid for some work
that had not yet started. It was upon this letter the chief based his
contention that Sammis’s appearance in the case was not a coincidence—he
was another of Barker’s henchmen, and it was part of Barker’s luck that
at the crucial moment he should have died.
But it was all speculation, nothing certain except that we had lost our
man again. Philadelphia had dropped out as a point of interest and the
case swung back to New York, where it now centered round the bed of Tony
Ford.
We were in constant communication with the hospital and on Thursday
received word that Ford would recover. That lifted us up from the smash
of Wednesday night. When he was able to speak we would hear
something—everything if he could be scared into a full confession. The
hospital authorities refused to let anyone see him till he was perfectly
fit, a matter of several days yet. That suited us, as we wanted no
speech with him till he was strong enough to stand the shock of our
knowledge. Caught thus, with his back against the wall, we expected him
to make a clean breast of it.
The enforced waiting was—to me anyway—distracting. With the hope I’d had
of Barker gone, I was now looking to Ford. He _must_, he _could_
exonerate her, there wasn’t the slightest doubt of it. But to have to
wait for it, to be cool and calm, to get through the next few days—I
felt like a man caught in the rafters of a burning building, trying to
be patient while they hacked him out.
After the news from the hospital the temperature of the office fell to
an enforced normal. O’Mally went back to his burrow and Babbitts to his
paper with his big story still in the air. That night in my place, I
measured off the sitting room from eight till twelve—five strides from
the bookcase to the window, seven from the fire to the folding doors.
If _I_ could only induce her to speak, if she herself would only clear
up the points that were against her, there was still a chance of getting
her out of it before Ford opened up. That she had something to hide,
some mystery in connection with her movements that night, some secret
understanding with Barker, even I had to admit. But whatever it was it
would be better to reveal it than to go on into the fierce white light
that would break over the Harland case within a week.
In that midnight pacing I tried to think of some way I could force her
to tell—to tell _me_, but the clocks chimed on and the fire died on the
hearth and I got nowhere. She knew me so slightly, might think I was set
on by the office, the very fact that I was what I was might seal her
lips closer. Instead of breaking down her reticence I might increase it,
strengthen that wall of secretiveness behind which she seemed to be
taking refuge like a hunted creature.
When I went to the office on Friday morning the chief asked me to go to
Buffalo that night, to look up some witnesses in the Lytton case. It
would take me all Saturday and I could get back by Sunday night or at
the latest Monday morning. A phone message sent to the hospital before I
came in had drawn the information that Tony Ford would not be able to
see the Philadelphia detectives—O’Mally and Babbitts posed in that
rôle—till Monday. That settled it—better to be at work out of town than
hanging about cursing the slowness of the hours.
But the questions of the night before haunted me. Why, anyway, couldn’t
I go to see her? Wasn’t it up to me, whether I succeeded or not, to make
the effort to break through her silence—the silence that was liable to
do her such deadly damage? I _had_ to see her. I couldn’t keep away from
her. At lunch time I called her up and asked her if I could come. She
said yes and named four that afternoon. On the stroke I was in the
vestibule, pushing the button below her name, and with my heart thumping
against my ribs like a steel hammer.
She opened the door and as I followed her up the little hall told me the
servant had been sent away and her mother was out. As on that former
visit she seated herself at the desk, motioning me to a chair opposite.
The blinds were raised, the room flooded with the last warm light of the
afternoon. By its brightness I saw that she was even paler and more worn
than she had been that other time—obviously a woman harassed and preyed
upon by some inner trouble.
On the way up I had gone over ways of approach, but sitting there in the
quiet pretty room, so plainly the abode of gentlewomen, I couldn’t work
round to the subject. She didn’t give me any help, seeming to assume
that I had dropped in to pay a call. That made it more difficult. When a
woman treats you as if you’re a gentleman, actuated by motives of common
politeness, it’s pretty hard to break through her guard and pry into her
secrets.
She began to talk quickly and, it seemed to me, nervously, telling me
how the owner of their old farm on the Azalea Woods Estates had offered
them a cottage there, to which they would move next week. It was small
but comfortable, originally occupied by a laborer’s family who had gone
away. The people were very kind, would take no rent, and she and her
mother could live for almost nothing till she found work. I sympathized
with the idea, she’d get away from the wear and tear of the city, have
time to rest and recuperate after her recent worry. She dropped her eyes
to a paper on the desk and said:
"Yes, I’m tired. Everything was so sudden and unexpected. I once thought
I was strong enough to stand anything—but all this—"
She stopped and picking up a pencil began making little drawings on the
paper, designs of squares and circles.
"It’s worn you out," I said, looking at her weary and colorless face.
Like the thrust of a sword a pang shot through me—love of a man, hidden
and disgraced, had blighted that once blooming beauty.
She nodded without looking up:
"It’s not the business only, there have been other—other—anxieties."
That was more of an opening than anything I’d ever heard her say. I
could feel the smothering beat of my heart as I answered, as quietly as
I could:
"Can’t you tell them to me? Perhaps I can help you."
One of those sudden waves of color I’d seen before passed across her
face. As if to hide it she dropped her head lower over the paper,
touching up the marks she was making. Her voice came soft and
controlled:
"That’s very kind of you, Mr. Reddy—But I know you’re kind—I knew it
when I first met you a year ago in the country. No, I can’t tell you."
I leaned nearer to her. If I had a chance to make her speak it was now
or never.
"Miss Whitehall," I said, trying to inject a simple, casual friendliness
into my voice. "You’re almost alone in the world, you’ve no one—no man,
I mean—to look after you or your interests. You don’t know how much help
I might be able to give you."
"In what way?" she asked, with her eyes still on the paper.
For a moment I was nonplused. I couldn’t tell her what I knew—I couldn’t
go back on my office. I was tied hand and foot; all I could do with
honesty was to try to force the truth from her. Like a fool I stammered
out:
"In advice—in—in—a larger knowledge of the world than you can have."
She gave a slight, bitter smile, and tilting her head backward looked
critically at her drawings:
"My knowledge of the world is larger than you think—maybe larger than
yours. There’s only one thing you can do for me, but there is one."
I leaned nearer, my voice gone a little hoarse:
"What is it?"
She turned her head and looked into my eyes. Her expression chilled me,
cold, challenging, defiant:
"Tell me if the Whitney Office has found Johnston Barker yet?"
For a second our eyes held, and in that second I saw the defiance die
out of hers and only question, a desperate question, take its place.
"No," I heard myself say, "they have _not_ found him."
"Thank you," she murmured, and went back to her play with the pencil.
I drew myself to the edge of my chair and laid a hand on the corner of
the desk:
"You’ve asked me a question and I’ve answered it. Now let _me_ ask one.
Why are you so interested in the movements of Johnston Barker?"
She stiffened, I could see her body grow rigid under its thin silk
covering. The hand holding the pencil began to tremble:
"Wouldn’t anyone be interested in such a sensational event? Isn’t it
natural? Perhaps knowing Mr. Barker personally—as I told you in Mr.
Whitney’s office—I’m more curious than the rest of the world, that’s
all."
The trembling of her hand made it impossible for her to continue
drawing. She threw down the pencil and locked her fingers together,
outstretched on the paper, a breath, deep taken and sudden, lifting her
breast. It was pitiful, her lonely fight. I was going to say
something—anything, to make her think I didn’t see, when she spoke
again:
"Do any of you—you men who are hunting him—ever think that he may not be
_able_ to come back?"
"Able?" I exclaimed excitedly, for now again I thought something was
coming. "What do you mean by able?"
I had said—or looked—too much. With a smothered sound she jumped to her
feet and before I could rise or stay her with a gesture, brushed past me
and moved to the window. There, for a moment, she stood looking out, her
splendid shape, crowned with its mass of black hair, in silhouette
against the thin white curtains.
"Look here, Miss Whitehall," I said with grim resolution, "I’ve got to
say something to you that you may not like, may think is butting in, but
I can’t help it."
"What?" came on a caught breath.
"If you know anything about Barker—his whereabouts, his inability to
come back—why don’t you tell it? It will help us and help you."
She wheeled round like a flash, all vehement denial.
"_I—I?_ I didn’t mean that I _knew_. I was only wondering, guessing.
It’s just as I told Mr. Whitney that day. And you seem to think I’m not
open, am hiding something. Why should I do that? What motive could I
have to keep secret anything I might know that would bring Mr. Barker to
justice?"
As she spoke she moved toward me, bringing up in front of me, her eyes
almost fiercely demanding. Mine fell before them. It was no use. With my
memory of those letters, of her mysterious plot with Barker clear in my
mind, I could go no farther.
I muttered some sentences of apology, was sorry if I’d offended her,
hadn’t meant to imply anything, was carried away by my zeal to find the
absconder. She seemed mollified and moved to her seat by the desk. Then
suddenly, as if a spring that had upheld her had snapped, she dropped
into the chair, limp and pallid.
"I’m tired, I’m not myself," she faltered. "I don’t seem to know what
I’m saying. All this—all these dreadful things—have torn me to pieces——"
Her voice broke and she averted her face but not before I’d seen that
her eyes were shining with tears. That sight brought a passionate
exclamation out of me. I went toward her, my arms ready to go out and
enfold her. But she waved me back with an imploring gesture:
"Oh go—I beg of you, go—I want peace—I want to be alone. Please
go—Please don’t torment me any more. I can’t bear it."
She dropped her face into her hands, shrinking back from me, and I
turned and left her. My steps as I went down the hall were the only
sounds in the place, but the silence seemed to thrill with unloosed
emotions, to hum and sing with the vibrations that came from my nerves
and my heart and my soul.
The big moments in your life ought to come in beautiful places, at least
that’s what I’ve always thought. But they don’t—anyway with me. For as I
went down that dingy staircase, full of queer smells, dark and squalid,
the greatest moment I’d ever known came to me—I loved her!
I’d loved her always—I knew it now. Out in the country those few first
times, but then more as a vision, something that wove through my
thoughts, aloof and unapproachable, like an inspiration and a dream. And
that day in Whitney’s office as a woman. And every day since, deeper and
stronger, seeing her beset, realizing her danger, longing with every
fiber to help her. It was the cause of that burst of the old fury, of
the instinct that kept me close and secretive, of this day’s fruitless
attempt to make her speak. All the work, the growing dread, the rush of
events, had held me from seeing, crowded out recognition of the
wonderful thing. I stood in the half-lit, musty little hall in a
trance-like ecstasy, outside myself, holding only that one thought—I
loved her—I loved her—I loved her!
Presently I was in the street, walking without any consciousness of the
way, toward the Park. The ecstasy was gone, the present was back
again—the present blacker and more terrible after those radiant moments.
I don’t know how to describe that coming back to the hideous reality.
Everything was mixed up in me—passion, pity, hope, jealousy. There was a
space when that was the fiercest, gripped me like a physical pang, and
then passed into a hate for Barker, the man she loved who had left her
to face it alone. I think I must have spoken aloud—I saw people looking
at me, and if my inner state was in any way indicated on my outer
envelope I wonder I wasn’t run in as a lunatic.
In a quiet bypath in the Park I got a better hold on myself and tried to
do some clear thinking. The first thing I had to do was to rule Barker
out. Even if my fight was to give her to him I must fight; that I
couldn’t do till we heard from Ford. Until then it was wisdom to say
nothing, to keep my pose of a disinterested adherent of the theory of
her innocence. If Ford’s story exculpated her she was out of the case
forever. If it didn’t I couldn’t decide what I’d do till I heard where
it placed her.
It was a momentary deadlock with nothing for it but to wait. That I was
prepared to do—go to Buffalo, get through my job there and come back.
But I’d come back with my sword loose in its scabbard to do battle for
my lady.