On Monday evening Ferguson heard from Molly of the scene in the Whitney
office. He was incredulous and enraged, refusing to accept what she
insisted were irrefutable proofs of Esther’s guilt.
"What do I care about your ’phone messages and your suppositions!" he
had almost shouted at her. "What do I care about what you _think_. You
say she didn’t answer the charges—she did, she denied them. That’s
enough for me."
There was no use arguing with him, he was beyond reason. She lapsed into
silence, letting him rage on, seething in his wrath at the Janneys, the
Whitneys, herself. When he tried to find out where Esther was, she was
obdurate—_that_ she couldn’t tell him. All the satisfaction he got was
that Miss Maitland was not under arrest, that she was "put away
somewhere" and had agreed to the arrangement. He left, too angry for
good-nights, with a last scattering of maledictions, leaping down the
steps and swinging off across the garden.
The next morning he telephoned in to the St. Boniface Hotel and heard
that the Janney party were out. Then he tried the Whitney office, got
George on the wire, and was told brusquely that Miss Maitland’s
whereabouts could not be divulged to any one. He spent the rest of the
day in a state of morose disquiet, denying himself to visitors, short
and surly with his servants. Willitts was solicitous, inquired after his
health and was told to go to the devil. In the kitchen quarters they
talked about his queer behavior; the butler was afraid he’d had "a touch
of sun."
Wednesday wore through to the early afternoon and his inaction became
unendurable. He decided to go into town, look up the Janneys and force
them to tell him where Esther was. He laid upon his spirit a cautioning
charge of self-control; he must keep his head and his temper, use
strategy before coercion. He had no idea of what he intended doing when
he did find her, but the idea of getting to her, seeing her, championing
her, transformed his moody restlessness into a savage energy. His
servants flew before his commands; in the garage the chauffeur muttered
angrily as orders to hurry were shouted at him from the drive.
Tuesday had been a day of strain for the Janneys. According to the
telephone message, that night Chapman was to move the child from the
city. He had been under a close surveillance for the two preceding days,
and every depot and ferry housed watching detectives. Hope ran high
until after midnight when reports and ’phone messages came dropping in
upon the group congregated in the library of the Whitney house. No child
resembling Bébita had left the city at any of the guarded points.
Chapman had been in his office all day, had dined at a hotel and
afterward had gone to his rooms and remained there. The plan of moving
her had either been abandoned or had been intrusted to unknown parties
who had taken her by motor through the city’s northern end.
On Wednesday morning a consultation had been held at the Whitney office.
This had been stormy, developing the first disagreements in what had
been a unity of opinion. Mr. Janney was for going to Chapman and
demanding the child and was seconded by the elder Whitney. Mrs. Janney
was in opposition. She had no fear for Bébita’s welfare—Chapman could be
trusted to care for her—and maintained that a direct appeal to him would
be an admission of weakness and place them at his mercy. In her opinion
he would threaten exposure—he was shameless—or make an offer of a
financial settlement. George agreed with her; from the start he had
thought Chapman was actuated less by a desire for vengeance than a hope
of gain. Mrs. Janney, thus backed up, became adamant. She would have no
dealings with him, would run him to earth, and when he was caught, crush
and ruin him.
Suzanne had listened to it all very silent and taking neither side. Her
hunted air was set down to mental strain and she was allowed to remain
an unconsulted spectator, treated by everybody with subdued gentleness.
Back in the hotel, Mrs. Janney had suggested a doctor, but her querulous
pleadings to be let alone had conquered, and the old people had gone for
their afternoon drive, leaving her in the curtained quietness of the
sitting room.
The door was hardly shut on them when she drew out of her belt a letter.
She had found it in her room on her return from the office and had read
it there before lunch. It was a prompter answer than she had dared to
hope for.
"Mrs. Suzanne Price,
"_Dear Madam_:
"In answer to your ad. we would say that we are willing to deal
through the agent you name. We take your word for it that he is
to be trusted, that both you and he understand any attempt to
betray us will be visited on your child.
"_Remember Charley Ross!_
"The sum necessary for her release will be thirty thousand
dollars. On payment of this we will deliver her over at a time
and place to be specified later. If you agree to our terms
insert following ad. in the _Daily Record_. ’John—O. K. See you
later. Mary.’
"(Signed) _Clansmen_."
On the second perusal of this ominous document Suzanne felt the
strangling rush of dread, the breathless contraction of the heart, that
had seized her when she first read it. Horrors had piled on horrors—as
she had risen to each new step of her progress up this Via Dolorosa,
another more fearful and unsurmountable had faced her. When she had
spoken to Larkin of the money she had never thought of it, how much it
might be, how she was to get it. Now, with a stunning impact, she was
brought against the appalling fact that she had none of her own and did
not dare ask her mother for any.
There was no use in lies; she had lied too much and too diversely to be
believed. She would have to tell what it was for, and she knew the mood
in which her mother would meet the demand. Money would be
forthcoming—any amount—but Mrs. Janney, with her iron nerve and her
implacable spirit, would never consent to a tame submission. Suzanne
knew that her fortune and her energies would be spent in an effort to
apprehend the criminals, and Suzanne had not the courage to take a
chance. All she wanted was Bébita, back in her arms again, the fiends
who had taken her could go free.
She sat down, pushing the damp hair from her forehead and trying to
think. One fact stood out in the midst of her blind, confused suffering.
She could not go to Larkin till she had the thirty thousand dollars.
Every moment she sat there was a moment lost, a moment added to Bébita’s
term of imprisonment. She stared about the room, the gleam of her
shifting eyes, the rise and fall of her breast, the only movements in
her stone-still figure.
Suddenly, piercing her tense preoccupation with a buzzing note, came the
sound of the telephone. It made her jump, then mechanically, hardly
conscious of her action, she rose to answer it. A woman’s voice,
languidly nasal, came along the wire:
"Mr. Richard Ferguson is calling."
"Send him up," she gasped and fumbled back the receiver with a shaking
hand. With the other she steadied herself against the wall; the room had
swung for a moment, blurred before her vision. She closed her eyes and
breathed out her relief in a moaning exhalation. It was like an answer
to prayer, like the finger of God.
Of course Dick was the person—Dick who could always be trusted, who
could always understand. He would give it and say nothing; she could
make him. He was not like the others—he would sympathize, would agree
with her, in trouble he was a rock to cling to. A broken series of
answers to unput questions coursed through her head; she could go to
Larkin now—she needn’t tell him how she’d got it, he thought she was
rich—after it was all over her mother would pay Dick back—in a few days
she’d have Bébita, the kidnapers would have made their escape—and it
would be all right, all right, all right!
Ferguson had come up, grim-visaged, steeled for battle, but when he saw
her his fighting spirit died. There was nothing left of her but a
blighted shadow, the cloud of golden hair crowning in gay mockery her
drawn and haggard face. Before he could speak she made a clutch at his
arm, drawing him into the room, babbling a broken greeting about wanting
him, wanting his help. He put his hand on hers and felt it trembling; he
would not have been surprised if she had dropped unconscious at his
feet.
"Lord, Suzanne, you don’t want to take it this way," he soothed, guiding
her to the sofa. "You must get hold of yourself; you’ve been brooding
too much. Of course I’ll help you—anything I can do—and we’ll get her
back, it’ll be only a few days." He didn’t know what to say, he was so
sorry for her.
She was past parleys and preliminaries, past coquetry and artifice. The
whole of her had resolved itself into one raw longing, and before they
were seated on the sofa, she had broken into her story. He didn’t at
first believe her, thought grief had unsettled her brain, but when she
thrust the two letters into his hand all doubts left him.
He read them slowly, word by word, then turned upon her a face so
charged and vitalized with a fierce interest that, had she been able to
see beyond the circle of her own pain, she would have wondered. If he
forgot to ask for Esther’s hiding place it was because the larger matter
of her vindication had swept all else from his mind. The proofs of her
innocence were in his hands; he did not for a moment doubt their
genuineness.
It was what he had thought from the first.
His manner changed from that of the sympathizing friend to one of stern
authority. He shot questions at her, tabulating her answers, discarding
cumbering detail, seizing on the important fact and separating it from
the jumble of confused impressions and fancies that she poured out. A
few inquiries set Larkin’s position clear before him. The money he
dismissed with a curt sentence; of course he would give it, she wasn’t
to think of that any more.
"Thank heaven you decided on me," he said. "I’ll straighten this out for
you and I’ll do it quick."
She was ready to take fright at anything and his eagerness scared her.
"But you’ll not do anything they don’t want? You’ll not tell the police
or try to catch them?"
He had seen from the start that she was dominated by terror, as the
kidnapers had intended she should be: and seeing this had recognized her
as a negligible factor. To keep her quiet, soothe her fears, and employ
her services just so far as they were helpful was what he had to do with
her. What he had to do without her was shaping itself in his mind.
"You can rely on me. I won’t make any breaks. And _you_ have to be
careful, not a word about me to this man Larkin. He must think the money
is yours."
She assured him of her discretion and he felt he could trust her that
far.
"Now listen," he said slowly and impressively as if he was speaking to a
child, "we’ve both got to go very charily. A good deal of the
threat-stuff in these letters is bluff, but also men who would undertake
an enterprise of this kind are pretty tough customers and we don’t want
to take any risks. When I’m gone you drive over to Larkin’s, tell him
you have the money for the ransom, and to put in the ad. As soon as
either you or he get an answer let me know. I’ll be at Council Oaks;
I’ll go back there now. It’s probable you’re watched and if they saw me
hanging about here they might think I was in the game and take fright.
Do you understand?"
She nodded:
"Yes, you’ve put some courage into me. I was ready to die when you came
in."
"Well, that’s over now. What you’ve got to do is to follow my
instructions, keep your nerve and have a little patience."
He smiled down at her as she sat, a huddled heap of finery, on the edge
of the sofa. She tried to return the smile, a grimace of the lips that
did not touch her somber eyes. No man, least of all Dick Ferguson, could
have been angry with her.
"She was crazy," he said to himself as he walked down the hall. "They
were all crazy and I guess they had enough to make them so. I’ll get the
child back, and when I do, I’ll make them bite the dust before my girl."
Several people who knew him saw Dick Ferguson driving his black car down
Fifth Avenue late that afternoon. He saw none of them, steering his way
through the traffic, his eyes fixed on the vista in front. He stopped at
Delmonico’s for an early dinner, telling the waiter to bring him
anything that was ready, then sat with frowning brows staring at his
plate. Here again were people who knew him and wondered at his gloomy
abstraction—not a bit like Ferguson, must have something on his mind.
Night was falling as he crossed the Queensborough bridge, a smoldering
glow along the west glazing the surface of the river. When he left the
straggling outskirts of Brooklyn and reached the open country the dark
had come, deep and velvety, a few bright star points pricking through
the cope of the sky. He lowered his speed, his glance roving ahead to
the road and its edging grasses, startlingly clear under the radiance of
his lamps.
Round him the country brooded in its rest, silence lying on the pale
surface of fields, on the black indistinctness of trees. Here and there
the lights of farms shone, caught and lost through shielding boughs, and
the clustered sparklings of villages. The air was heavy with scents, the
breath of clover knee-high in the grass, grain still giving off the
warmth of the afternoon sun, and the delicate sweetness of the wild
grape draped over the roadside trees. All this night loveliness in its
fragrant quietness, its rich and penetrating beauty, reminded him of
her. He looked up at the sky, and its calm and steadfast splendor came
to him with a new meaning. She was related to it all, in tune with the
eternal harmonies, part of everything that was stainless and noble and
pure. And he would show the world that she was, clear her of every spot,
place her where she would be as far from suspicion, as serenely above
the meanness of her accusers, as the stars in the crystal depths of the
sky.
When he reached Council Oaks he had a vision of her, belonging there, a
piece of its life. He saw a future, when, coming back like this to its
friendly doors, she would be waiting on the balcony to greet him. There
was no one there now; the house was still, its lights shining across the
pebbled drive. Obsessed by his thoughts, he jumped out, and leaving the
car at the steps, entered. From the kitchen wing he could hear the
servants’ voices raised in cheerful clamor. Crossing the hall, he had a
glimpse through the dining room door of the table, set and waiting for
him, two lamps flanking his place. He had no mind for food and went
upstairs, dreams still holding him. In his room he switched on the
lights and his vacant glance, sweeping the bureau, brought up on the box
with the crystal lid.
In his mind the robbery had faded into a background of inconsequential
things. It had become a side issue, a thread in the tangled skein he had
pledged himself to unravel. When Molly had told him of the evidence
against Esther his interest had centered on the charge of kidnaping—the
monstrous and unbelievable charge of which she almost stood convicted.
Even now, as he looked at the box and remembered what he had hidden
there, it came to his memory not as another weapon to be used in her
defense, but as a souvenir of the moment when his present passion had
flamed into life. A picture rose of that night, the silver moon
spatterings, her hand, white in the white light, with the band on its
third finger. He opened the box to take it out—it was not there.
He had seen it a few days before, was certain he had, shook up the
contents, then overturned the box, strewing the studs and pins on the
bureau. But it was fruitless—the band, crushed and flattened as he
remembered it, was gone. He muttered an angry phrase, its loss came as a
jar on the exaltation of his mood. Then a soft step on the staircase
caught his ear, and looking up he saw Willitts’ head rise into view. The
man came down the passage and spoke with his customary quiet deference:
"I saw the car outside, sir, and knew you’d come back. Would you like
dinner—the cook says she can have it ready in a minute?"
"No," Ferguson’s voice was short, "I dined in town. Look here, I’ve lost
something—" he pointed to the scattered jewelry—"I had a cigar band in
that box and it’s gone. Did you see it?"
Willitts looked at the box and shook his head:
"No, sir. A cigar band, a thing made of paper?" There was the faintest
suggestion of surprise in his voice.
"Yes, you must have seen it. It was there a few days ago, underneath all
that truck—I saw it myself."
The man again shook his head and, moving to the bureau, began to shift
the toilet articles and look among them.
"I’m afraid I didn’t see it, sir, or if I did I didn’t notice. Maybe
it’s got strayed away somewhere."
He continued his search, Ferguson watching him with moody irritation:
"What the devil could have happened to it? I put it in there myself, put
it in that particular place for safekeeping."
Willitts, feeling about the bureau with careful fingers, said:
"Was it of any _value_, sir?"
"Yes," Ferguson having little hope of finding it turned away and threw
himself into a chair, "it was of great value. I wouldn’t have lost it
for anything. It was evidence—" he stopped, growling a smothered "Damn."
He had said enough; he didn’t want the servants chattering.
"I’m very sorry, sir, but it doesn’t seem to be here. Perhaps the
chambermaid threw it away, thinking it had got in the box by mistake."
"I daresay—it sounds likely. I wish the people in this house would let
my room alone, control their mad desire for neatness and leave things
where I put them. Have the car taken to the garage, I’m not coming down
again. If any one calls up I’m out. Good-night."
"Good-night, sir," said Willitts, and softly withdrew.