No uniformed agent of pursuing justice confronted her; only the face
of him she loved best; and the great uplifting wave of relief cast her
breathless in Craig's arms.
"Come away," he begged, his answering clasp the witness and the seal of
their reconciliation. "Come away."
"Craig!" she whispered. "Craig!"
"I only just learned where you were. A reporter came to the studio,
showed me his paper--"
"Falsehoods! They perverted my words--"
"I knew, I knew. I'm the one to blame, not you. If I'd gone home,
stayed home, you would never have come here. Forgive me, Jean. I've
been a fool."
"Hush," she said, laying a hand upon his lips. "We were both wrong. But
I must have come to Amy. After what she told me last night, there was
no choice. You'll understand when I explain. It's ghastly clear."
"But come away first. Don't give anyone a chance to ferret out your
life, Jean. Why should you stay here now?"
A low, convulsive moan issued from the bedroom. Jean sprang to the
door.
"Amy!" she called. "Don't be frightened. It's only Craig. Do you hear
me? It was Craig who rang. I'll come to you soon."
Atwood followed to the little parlor.
"You see?" she said.
"But there must be some one else, some other woman--"
"There is no one who knows what I know. You must hear it, too, Craig.
It's more than I can face alone. You must think for me, help me." And
she poured the whole petrifying truth into his ears.
"She must give herself up," he said, at last.
"But--" And the dilemma of moral and legal guilt plagued her again.
He brushed her tender casuistry aside.
"The law must deal with such doubts," he answered. "We must help her
face it, help her see that delay only counts against her. She must tell
her story before they come at the facts without her."
"She believes they suspect already. They've found out something about
that wretched man's life,--the reporters don't say what,--and she lies
in that room shaking with terror at every ring of the bell. We thought
you were the police."
"We must help her face it," he repeated. "I will drive her to police
headquarters."
"Not you, Craig. You must not. The papers shall not drag you into this
again. I will go with her."
"Isn't your name mine? You see it makes no difference. I'll not allow
you to go through this alone. I've let you meet too much alone. We'll
talk to Amy together, if you think best."
Jean's glance fell on Grimes's gilt clock.
"Amy has tasted nothing, and it's nearly noon," she said. "I must make
coffee or something to give her strength. Wait till she has eaten."
She started for the kitchen, but brought up, white-faced, at the
recurring summons of the bell. Their eyes met in panic. Were they
too late? The ring was repeated while they questioned. Jean took a
faltering step toward the door, listening for an out-burst from the
bedroom; but Amy seemed not to hear. Craig stepped before her into the
hall.
"Let me answer it," he said.
Then, before either could act, a key explored the lock, and Paul
Bartlett's anxious face peered through the opening. He started at sight
of them, but came forward with an ejaculation of relief.
"I remembered I had a key," he explained. "It was so still I thought
something had gone wrong. Where's Amy?"
Jean signed toward the bedroom, and the three tip-toed into the parlor
and shut the door. An awkward silence rested upon them for an instant.
Jean's thoughts raced back to her last meeting with the dentist in this
room, and she knew that Paul could be scarcely less the prey of his
memories. Atwood himself, divining something of what such a reunion
meant, was stricken with a share of their embarrassment.
Paul pulled himself together first.
"I came to help Amy, if I could," he said to Jean; "and also to see
you. I've read the papers, and I thought"--he hesitated lamely--"I
thought somebody ought to take your place. It's not pleasant to be
dragged into a murder case--not pleasant for a lady, I mean," he
corrected himself hastily. "_I_ don't mind. Mrs. St. Aubyn won't mind,
either. I've 'phoned her--she always liked Amy, you know--and she's
coming soon. You needn't wait. You mustn't be expected to--to--oh, for
God's sake, sir," he broke off, wheeling desperately upon Atwood, "take
your wife away!"
Jean's eyes blurred with sudden tears, which fell unrestrained when
Craig's chivalry met the dentist's halfway.
"Now _I_ know you for the true man Jean has praised," he said, gripping
Paul's hand. "But I can't take her away. She has a responsibility--we
both have a responsibility it's impossible to shirk. Tell him, Jean!"
The dentist squared his shoulders in the old way, when she ceased.
"I'll see that Amy reaches headquarters," he said doggedly. "Neither of
you need go. There isn't the slightest necessity. I'm her old friend,
the lessee of this flat: who would be more likely to act for her? You
convince her that she must toe the mark--I can't undertake that part;
and then, the sooner you leave, the better."
Atwood turned irresolutely toward the window and threw up the shade as
if his physical being craved light. Jean met the straightforward eyes.
"Why should you shoulder it, Paul?"
Bartlett shot a look at Atwood, who nervously drummed the pane, his
gaze fixed outward; and then, with a sweeping gesture, invoked the
silent argument of the room.
"I guess you know," he added simply.
Her face softened with ineffable tenderness.
"I'll tell Amy you are here," she said.
The men heard her pass down the hall and knock; wait, knock again,
calling Amy's name; wait once more; and then return.
"Shall we let her sleep while she can?" she whispered. "It's a hideous
thing that she must meet."
Atwood's look questioned the dentist, whose reply was to brush by them
both and assault Amy's door.
"Amy!" he shouted. "Amy!"
They held their breath. Back in the parlor the gilt clock ticked like
a midsummer mad insect; the cries of newsboys rose muffled from the
street; even a drip of water sounded from some leaky kitchen tap; but
from the bedroom came nothing.
Jean tried the knob.
"Locked!"
The dentist laid his shoulder to the woodwork, put forth his strength,
and the door burst in with an impetus that carried him headlong; but
before either could follow he had recovered himself and turned to block
the way.
"Keep back, Jean," he commanded sharply. "Keep back!"
Their suspense was brief. Almost immediately he came out, closed the
door gently after him, and held up a red-labeled vial.
"Carbolic acid!" he said hoarsely.
Jean uttered a sharp cry.
"A doctor!" she exclaimed.
Paul shook his head.
"I am doctor enough to know death. Atwood, get your wife away."
"But now--" Jean resisted.
"Go, go!" he commanded, driving them before him. "Mrs. St. Aubyn will
do what a woman can. I will attend to the police. You left for rest,
believing her asleep. I suspected suicide, and broke down the door.
That's our story. Go while you can."
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's _all_ behind 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 bother _you_ again, 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. It _will_ be forgotten to-morrow."
From that dear shelter she, too, foresaw a kindlier future.
[Illustration: From that dear shelter she, too, foresaw a kindlier
future.]
"To-morrow," she echoed.