Thomas Patrick dropped asleep very quickly after they had put him in a
cell. He slept heavily, his mouth a trifle open, his figure sprawled.
But toward morning he put an arm out to hold Mary, and she was not
there. That roused him.
He sat up and thought things over. The Chief, of course, would be around
in the morning and explain everything. Of course he hadn’t shot her. He
probably didn’t even know about it. She had shot herself. Those women
were always doing that sort of thing, taking poison or something. They
seemed to go as far as they could, and then at last they reached the end
of the road, and—
She had been a pretty girl. He’d thought that night, seeing her on the
stage, that she had a look of Mary about her. Of course in the wings,
with that make-up on her—and now she was dead.
Well, by and large, she’d left a lot of trouble behind her. The Chief’s
wife, now. It was going to be hard on her; she’d been suspicious anyhow.
And she’d never understood the Chief as, for instance, Mary understood
_him_. Just as like as not she’d raise a fuss, just when a fuss might be
fatal. And she’d never see that if she’d just stuck by, if she’d given
him, Thomas Patrick Finnerty, a bit of a hold to help the Chief over a
slippery place, it would never have happened.
Toward dawn he grew restless and took to pacing the floor in his
stockings. He had taken off his shoes. The fear he had fought down all
night began to rise in him, and with it claustrophobia, a terror of
being shut in. The walls seemed contracting on him; he could hardly
breathe.
Odds and ends of thoughts came to the surface of his mind and then sunk
again: men who had paced floors like this, waiting for morning and the
chair; Mary alone in bed, crying; the Chief, perhaps, getting his first
knowledge in the morning paper, and trying to smile across the breakfast
table at his wife; his old father saying to him, “We Irish may be a bit
weak in the head, but we’re strong in the heart.” Mary’s fur coat. Mr.
Tufts. The safe deposit box and its seven hundred dollars. The rent
money.
He dismissed this last at once. The Chief would look after that. He
would look after everything. And when all this was over they would go to
Washington, and maybe Mary in the gallery seeing the Chief at work on
the nation’s business would understand him at last.
As always, the thought of the Chief steadied him, and when he refused
his breakfast it was with a grin.
“I’ll be eating mine at home!” he said. “Anyhow, I don’t hear your
cooking here highly recommended.”
“Ordered your taxi yet?”
“Taxi nothing. Limousine!” he said, and grinned again.
The morning seemed a day in length, but it was only ten o’clock when his
cell was unlocked and he was taken to a small room to see a visitor. He
had been so sure it would be Mary that he had trembled with excitement
all the way. If only they left him alone with her, so he could explain!
She would believe him. She must.
But it was only Mr. Marks, the Chief’s friend and attorney. In his
disappointment he did not even see the visitor’s hand.
“I’m sorry, my boy, terribly sorry,” said Mr. Marks. And sat down. He
was plainly nervous. “The—the Chief has asked me to look after you, and
so—”
“He knows about it, does he?”
Mr. Marks looked slightly surprised and a trifle wary.
“Yes, of course. He—”
“Then why didn’t he come himself? I sat up pretty nearly all night lying
for him.”
Mr. Marks looked about him anxiously, but the guard had moved away.
“He can’t very well come,” he said, “not under the circumstances. But he
appreciates what you’ve done greatly. You’ve saved him, and you’ve saved
the party.”
“I did it for him,” said Thomas Finnerty doggedly. “The party hadn’t a
God-damned thing to do with it.”
“No. Of course not,” Mr. Marks agreed with alacrity. “But it becomes a
party matter, nevertheless. A scandal like this, breaking at this time,
would be fatal.”
“The scandal’s on _me_, isn’t it?”
“Not entirely,” said Mr. Marks, and bent forward. “Just how far are you
prepared to go in this thing, Pat? I needn’t tell you it won’t be
forgotten.”
“Meaning—money?” asked Thomas Patrick, slowly. His face had turned
scarlet.
“You’ll have stood a certain amount of anxiety,” Mr. Marks said
delicately. “You’re entitled to compensation.”
“Did _he_ send me that message?”
Mr. Marks saw the error in his strategy, and like a wise general
retreated in time.
“No,” he said. “It was an idea of my own. That’s all. And of course it
was based on the hope that you would go through with it.”
“How far have I got to go?”
Mr. Marks relaxed a trifle and leaned back again.
“Not as far as you think. It wasn’t—murder.”
“She did it herself?”
“No,” said Mr. Marks. “There’d been a poker party, and considerable
drinking. The Chief had left his revolver lying about, and one of the
men picked it up. He was playing with it when it went off. There’s no
case, you see. It was purely accidental.”
“Then where do I come in?”
But he came in, he found, very definitely. There would be a verdict of
accidental death; that had already been arranged with the coroner. But
the opposition was hard at work, trying to connect the Chief with it,
and so to raise a scandal.
“It’s a dirty business, any way you look at it,” Mr. Marks said. “If
you’ll stick, we’ll swing the thing right, Pat. But if you don’t, we’re
gone. And—” he looked at Thomas Patrick, “_he’s_ gone. Not only
publicly, but at home. You know what I mean.”
“How about me at home?” Thomas Patrick raised a pair of haggard blue
eyes. “I’m willing to go the limit for him. You can tell him that. But
he’s got to go and square things with Mary. He owes me that much.”
“I’ll see he does.”
“And what’s more,” said Thomas Patrick, raising his voice a little,
“he’d better come here and see me himself. This isn’t any lawyer’s job,
Mr. Marks. It’s between me and him, man to man.”
“So it is, Pat.”
Mr. Marks rose and held out his hand again, but before Thomas Patrick
took it he said: “She’s got to know the whole thing. Mary, I mean. You
can trust her, and the poor kid’s about crazy by this time.”
“You can trust me,” said Mr. Marks. And then Thomas Patrick shook hands.
He ate something at noon that day, being upheld by that promise, and
also by a faint sense of exaltation. If the Chief could trust Mary, and
he could trust Marks, then by heaven they could all trust him. Let
Stuart do his damnedest. He, Thomas Patrick Finnerty, was on the job.
His faith never wavered until he saw Mary that afternoon, in Stuart’s
office. Stuart was at his desk, and Mary was by the window. He saw at
once that, although it was a cold day, she was not wearing the fur coat,
and she made no move toward him.
Stuart’s presence alarmed him and made him self-conscious, too.
“Hello, honey,” he said.
She looked very white, he saw, and she made no effort to answer him. But
her great eyes were fixed on him, staring, as if she were seeing a
stranger and endeavouring to fix him in her mind. “Mary, honey!” he
said, and took a step toward her, but she neither moved nor spoke.
He looked at Stuart.
“I’d like to see my wife alone,” he said.
“You saw your attorney alone,” Stuart said. “Anybody else is against
orders.”
“Has—has anybody been to see you yet, honey?”
“Nobody, except Mrs. Tufts.” There was no life in Mary’s voice. Almost,
it seemed, no interest.
Stuart leaned back in his chair and smiled, and suddenly Thomas Patrick
saw red. They hadn’t told Mary. They weren’t going to tell Mary. They
would let her suffer, while they ran around pulling their dirty little
political strings to keep the thing under cover. By God, then he would
tell her. Let Stuart hear it if he wanted. He would tell Mary the way
they had used him and what they had promised. And he would tell her,
convince her, that there was no other woman. There never had been. There
couldn’t be.
“Nobody came?” he asked thickly.
“The Chief called up. He said not to worry. He was looking after
things.”
The red mist faded. It was Marks who had failed him, not the Chief. The
Chief could be trusted.
“I want you to go and see him, honey,” he said, still from that strange
distance between them. “He—he wants to see you. Marks said so.”
“I never want to see him again,” Mary replied, monotonously.
“Not if I ask you to, honey?”
Mary’s chin suddenly began to work.
“I loved you so!” she said. “I worked and slaved for you. And all the
time you had that girl.”
Thomas Patrick looked at Stuart, and Stuart looked back at him.
“I told you,” he said. “You see how it’s working out, old man.”
Thomas Patrick made a small despairing gesture. “I guess I’d better go
back,” he said. He looked at Mary, but she did not look at him. “I never
loved anybody but you, honey,” he said. “I guess you’ll never know how
much I loved you.”
Then they took him away.
When Mr. Marks, three days later, brought him the news that one Thomas
Patrick Finnerty was free to walk the sunny streets again, he found him
in the jail infirmary, with a fever.
“It’s all over, Pat,” he said. “You’ve stuck by us, and—”
“You bet I have,” said Thomas Patrick. “And what have I got for it?
Three days in hell. You laid down on me, Mr. Marks.”
“If you mean your wife, I saw her yesterday.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her you’d had nothing to do with the shooting.”
“Did you tell her that girl wasn’t mine?”
“That’s what I went to tell her, Pat. But—”
“You didn’t tell her?”
“Look here, Pat,” said Mr. Marks, “you know Mary better than I do.
She—well, she’s pretty excitable, and she hates the Chief. If I’d told
her that, you know what she’d have done. She’d have beaten it hot-foot
down to Stuart, and—I guess you know the rest.”
“My God!” said Thomas Patrick.
He lay back and stared at the ceiling. One wasn’t crucified, then, all
at once, one went on, and on, and there wasn’t any end to it. For Marks
was right, and Thomas Patrick suddenly knew it. Mary would fight to the
death for him, against the Chief, against the world. But maybe he
himself—
“I’ve got to get out of here,” he said feverishly. “I can fix her all
right. You needn’t worry, Mr. Marks.”
“Sure you can,” said Mr. Marks, heartily. “You’ll be all right in a day
or so. And the Chief says anything he can do, just let him know.”
He stayed a little longer, but Thomas Patrick seemed to have nothing to
say. He shook hands finally and departed, and as he looked back Thomas
Patrick was lying very still, staring at the ceiling.
In a conference with the Chief that night, in the library with the
painting, Mr. Marks indicated the situation in a few pointed words.
“I’m warning you,” he said. “He’s all right, but the wife’s a pure
hysterical type. She’ll talk, as sure as fate. And he’s hell bent on
telling her.”
The Chief was sitting in his chair, his head bent.
“He’s got a right to tell her,” he said heavily.
“I’ve warned you. That’s all I can do.”
“What is it you want, anyhow?” the Chief demanded irritably. “I like the
boy. I’m not going to sacrifice him any further than I can help.”
“I’m only talking of the next few weeks.” Mr. Marks’ voice was smooth.
“Get her away, keep her away from him until after election. That’s all.”
He saw the Chief’s face and smiled. “I’m not talking about abduction,
man! Send her for a trip.”
The Chief groaned.
“Or let me do it. You needn’t appear in it at all. She’ll go. She’s
pretty sore, you know.”