Part 11

"I'm afraid that Spofford won't, but I will."

"'Spofford?' The man who was here?" asked Clancy.

"One of the detectives attached to the staff. Hasn't much sense of humor, I'm afraid. But it doesn't matter."

He sat down, pulling up a chair opposite her.

"I think it's mighty nice of you to call down here, Miss Deane."

"You don't think it's bold of me?" she asked.

"Hardly. Would you like to go over the Tombs?"

Clancy shuddered.

"Indeed I wouldn't!"

"No morbid curiosity? I'm glad of that."

"'Glad?' Why?"

"Oh, well, just because," he blurted.

Clancy looked demurely downward, fixing a button on her glove. For a moment, there was silence. Then Clancy rose to her feet. She held out her hand to Vandervent.

"You've been so kind," she said. "If you'd arrested me for my silly joke, you'd have done to me what I deserved to have happen."

"Not at all," he said. "I feel that--that maybe I scared you when I came in----"

"Not a bit. I was--tired."

"You must let me take you home," he said.

She shook her head.

"I've troubled you enough. _Please!_"--as he seemed about to insist. "I'm _really_ all right."

He eyed her doubtfully.

"You're sure?"

"Positive."

"All right, then; but--I'd _like_ to."

She became mockingly stern.

"I've interrupted the course of justice enough for one day. Some other time, perhaps."

"There'll be another time?" he asked eagerly.

"Well"--she was doubtful--"I can't promise."

"But we might have luncheon together. Or tea? Or dinner?" He was flatteringly eager.

"I'll see," said Clancy.

Down-stairs, in the great lobby of the building, she marveled that she had escaped so easily. To have announced herself as Florine Ladue, the woman wanted for Beiner's murder, to have fainted when Vandervent came out, and still to have avoided, by a puerile explanation, all penalties was a piece of good luck that was incredible. She blessed the person unknown who had left the newspaper on the bench. The luckiest of chances had saved her from betrayal. Had she not read of Fanchon's death-- She shuddered.

Then her eyes clouded. She had been fighting, with all the wit she owned, for liberty. She had not yet had opportunity to pay to Fanchon's death the tribute of sorrow that it demanded. She had known Fanchon but slightly; the woman was of a class to which Clancy could never belong--a coarse but good-hearted vulgarian. And she had tried to help Clancy in return for little kindnesses that Clancy had shown her when she lay ill with the "flu" in Zenith.

And now this same disease had finally killed the kindly soubrette. Her death had saved Clancy from disgrace--from worse, perhaps, if there is anything worse than disgrace-- She suddenly realized how lucky she had been.

She stopped outside to adjust her veil. And she noticed that Spofford, the dyed-mustached gentleman of Vandervent's office, also emerged from the building. She shuddered. If her wit had not been quick, if she had not remembered, on, coming out of her faint, that the item in the paper had removed all danger, his hand might now be clasped about her wrist. Instead of walking toward the subway, she might now be on her way to the Tombs.

Spofford turned south toward the Brooklyn Bridge. She would never, thank God, see him again. For nothing would ever tempt her to the Criminal Courts Building another time. Its shadow would hang over her soul as long as she lived. She had had the narrowest escape that was possible, and she would not tempt fate again.

She would never learn. As her mind ceased to dwell upon the problem of her connection with Beiner's mysterious fate and moved on to consider what she should do with Grannis's ten thousand dollars, it was as though the Beiner incident were forever closed. Clancy had too much Irish in her for trouble to bear down upon her very long. She would never learn that issues are never avoided but must always be met. She was in a congratulatory mood toward herself because Vandervent had not suspected the grim truth behind what she called a jest. She had conquered this difficulty by the aid of fate; fate would help her again to handle the Grannis-Zenda-Weber matter. So she reasoned. It would straighten itself out, she assured herself.

XIX

There was a lunch-room on Broadway, just below Eighth Street. Clancy, walking westward from Astor Place, the station at which she emerged from the subway, saw its window-display of not too appetizing appeal, and paused. To-day was Friday; it was quite possible that Sally Henderson would to-morrow give her new employee an advance upon salary. But Clancy had learned something. That something was that New York is not a place in which to reveal one's pecuniary embarrassment. It was not that New York was hard-hearted, Clancy decided. It was that it was a busy place, and had no time to listen to whines. To ask an advance on salary was, in a way, to whine. Clancy was not going to begin her relationship with Sally Henderson on anything but a basis of independence.

So her pause before the lunch-room was only momentary. She entered it immediately. The Trevor was only two hundred yards away, but Clancy had only a pitiful amount of money in her pocket. That is, money that belonged to her. Grannis's ten thousand was not hers. To whom she would give it, she did not yet know, but she did know that she would starve before she used any of it. It might be that Sally Henderson would pay her a half-week's salary to-morrow. She must hope for that. But she must not rely on it. Hence she must live leanly.

This was only her fifth day in New York. It had been her fortune to eat at restaurants of the better class, at a private home. Now, for the first time since her arrival from Zenith, she had opportunity to find out what might have been, what might still be, her lot. Not that the food in the lunch-room was particularly bad. Of its kind, it was rather good. But there was the stain of egg upon the table-cloth; the waiter who served her was unshaven. The dishes in which the food was served were of the heaviest of china. And Clancy was of the sort that prefers indifferent food well served to good food execrably presented.

She paid her check--considering that she had had only corned-beef hash and tea and bread, she thought that sixty cents was an exorbitant charge--tipped the waiter a dime, and trudged out into the storm again.

The snow had ceased falling, but only one so weather-wise as the Maine-bred Clancy would have known that. For the flurries blown by the gale had all the appearance of a continuing blizzard. Bending forward, she made her way to Fifth Avenue, and thence south across Washington Square. Twice, feeling very much alone in the gloom, she made detours to avoid coming too near men whom she observed moving her way. She was yet to learn that, considering its enormous heterogeneous population, New York holds few dangers for the unescorted girl. And so she ran the last few yards, and breathed with relief when the latch-key that Mrs. Gerand had given her admitted her to the lodging-house on the south side of the square.

In her room, her outer clothing removed, she pulled a shabby rocking-chair to the window and looked out upon the dimly descried trees, ghostly in their snowy habiliments. Chin on elbow, she pondered.

The wraith of Florine Ladue was laid. So she believed. And she could find no reason to fear a resurrection. Beiner, who knew her, could recognize her as Florine Ladue, was dead. So was Fanchon DeLisle. Zenda, Grannis, Weber, and the others of the poker-party at Zenda's knew that she called herself "Florine." But it was quite a distance from knowing that a young woman had named herself Florine to proof that the same young woman's last name was Ladue, and that she had visited Morris Beiner's office. Of course--and Clancy's brows knitted at the thought--if there were any legal trouble over the Weber-Zenda-Grannis matter and she testified in court, and Vandervent or Spofford or some other of the district attorney's office heard or saw testimony which involved the fact that she'd used the name "Florine," that person would do some thinking, would wonder how much jesting had been behind her announcement of herself under the name of the woman wanted for the Beiner murder. In that case----

What about that case? Oddly enough--yet not so oddly, after all, when one considers that Clancy was only twenty years of age--up to now she had given a great deal of thought to her predicament and practically none to the real way out of it. She marveled at herself.

Why in that case, she'd be in desperate danger, as great danger as she had been in just before she picked up the paper in Vandervent's anteroom, and the only way out of that danger, without lasting disgrace at the least, would be the production of the real murderer of Morris Beiner.

The real murderer! She drew in her breath with a whistle.

Beiner had been killed; she was suspected. These were facts, and the only facts that she had reckoned with. But the greater fact, though up to now ignored by her, was that _somebody_ had killed Beiner. Some one had entered the man's office and slain him, probably as he lay unconscious on the floor. That _somebody_ was foot-loose now, perhaps in New York, free from suspicion.

She straightened up, alert, nervous. Suddenly, horror--a horror which fear had managed to keep from her till now--assailed her. _A murderer!_ And free! Free to commit other murders! She started as a knock sounded upon the door. And, queerly, she didn't think of the police; she thought of the murderer of Beiner. It was with difficulty that she mastered herself sufficiently to answer the knock.

It was Mrs. Gerand. Miss Deane was wanted on the telephone. It was not a moment when Clancy wished to talk to any one. She wished to be alone, to study upon this new problem--the problem that should have been in her mind these past three days but that had only popped into it now. But the telephone issued commands that just now she dared not disobey. It might be Grannis or Vandervent. She ran down-stairs ahead of Mrs. Gerand. A booming voice, recognition of which came to her at once, greeted her.

"Hello!"

"Miss Deane? This is Judge Walbrough speaking."

"Oh, how do you do?" said Clancy. In her relief, she was extremely enthusiastic.

The deep voice at the other end of the wire chuckled.

"You know the meaning of the word 'palaver,' don't you, young woman? The happy way you speak, any one'd think I was a gay young blade like David Randall or Vandervent instead of an old fogy."

"'Old fogy!' Why, Judge Walbrough!"

Clancy's tone was rebuking, politely incredulous, amused--everything, in short, that a young girl's voice should be when a man just passing middle age terms himself "old." Walbrough chuckled again.

"Oh, it's a great gift. Miss Deane; never lose it. The young men don't matter. Any girl can catch one of them. But to catch the oldsters like myself--oldsters who know that they can't catch you--that takes genius, Miss Deane."

Clancy laughed.

"Please don't flatter me, Judge. Because, you know, I _believe_ you, and----"

"Sh," said Walbrough. As he uttered the warning, his voice became almost a roar. "The jealous woman might overhear us; she is listening in the next room now----"

There was the sound of a scuffle; then came to Clancy's ears the softer voice of Mrs. Walbrough.

"Miss Deane, the senile person who just spoke to you is absurd enough to think that if an old couple--I mean an old man and his young wife--asked you, you'd probably break an engagement with some dashing bachelor and sit with us at the opera."

"I don't know the senile person to whom you refer," retorted Clancy, "but if you and the judge would like me to go, I'd love to, even though I have no engagement to break."

"We won't insist on the breaking, then. Will you run over and dine with us?"

Clancy was astonished. Then she remembered that she had dined rather early at the Broadway lunch-room. It really wasn't more than six-thirty now. People like the Walbroughs, of course, didn't dine until after seven, possibly until eight.

"I won't do that," she answered. "I'd intended to go to bed--it's such a terrible night. And I ate before I came home--but I'd love to come and sit with you," she finished impulsively.

There was something warm, motherly in the older woman's reply.

"And we'd love to have you, Miss Deane. I'll send the car around right away."

Clancy shrugged as she surveyed again her meager wardrobe. But the Walbroughs must know that she lived in a lodging-house--she supposed that they'd obtained her telephone-number and address from Sophie Carey--and the fact that she didn't possess a gorgeous evening gown wouldn't mean much to them, she hoped. And believed, too. For they were most human persons, even if they did, according to Sophie Carey, matter a lot in New York.

Mrs. Gerand was quite breathless when she announced to Clancy, half an hour after the telephone-call, that a big limousine was calling for the newest Gerand lodger. Clancy was already dressed in the pretty foulard that was her only evening frock. Mrs. Gerand solicitously helped her on with her shabby blue coat. Her voice was lowered in awe as she asked:

"It ain't _the_ Walbroughs, is it? The chauffeur said, 'Judge Walbrough's car;' but not _the_ judge, is it?"

"Are there two of them?" laughed Clancy.

Mrs. Gerand shook her head.

"Not that I ever heard of, Miss Deane. But--gee, you got swell friends, ain't you?"

Clancy laughed again.

"Have I?"

"I'll say you have," said Mrs. Gerand.

* * * * *

The Walbrough home was on Murray Hill, though Clancy didn't know at the time that the section of the city directly south of the Grand Central Station was so named. It was not a new house, and it looked as though it was lived in--something that cannot always be said of New York homes, whether in apartment-buildings or in single houses. It was homey in the sense that the houses in Zenith were homey. And, even though a colored man in evening clothes opened the front door, and though a colored maid relieved Clancy of her coat, Clancy felt, from the moment that she passed the threshold, that she was in a _home_.

Her host met her at the top of a flight of stairs. His great hands enveloped hers. They drew her toward him. Before she knew it, he had kissed her. And Clancy did the thing that made two admiring acquaintances adoring friends for life. She kissed the judge warmly in return. For Mrs. Walbrough was standing a trifle behind the judge, although Clancy hadn't seen her. She came forward now, wringing her hands with a would-be pathetic expression on her face.

"I can't trust the man a moment, Miss Deane. And, to make it worse, I find that I can't trust you." She drew Clancy close to her. She, too, kissed the girl, and found the kiss returned.

"Why shouldn't I kiss him?" demanded Clancy. "He brags so much, I wanted to find out if he knew how."

"Does he?" asked Mrs. Walbrough.

Clancy's eyes twinkled.

"Well, you see," she answered, "I'm not really a judge myself."

The judge exploded in a huge guffaw.

"With eyes like hers, Irish gray eyes, why shouldn't she have wit? Tell me, Miss Deane: You have Irish blood in you?"

"My first name is Clancy," replied the girl.

"Enough," said the judge. He heaved a great mock sigh. "Now, if only Martha would catch a convenient cold or headache----"

Mrs. Walbrough tapped him with an ostrich-plume fan.

"Tom, Miss Deane is our guest. Please stop annoying her. The suggestion that she should spend an hour alone with you must be horrifying to any young lady. Come."

The judge gave an arm to each of the ladies, and they walked, with much stateliness on the part of the judge, to a dining-room that opened off the landing at the head of the stairs.

Clancy felt happier than she had deemed it possible for her to be. Perhaps the judge's humor was a little crude; perhaps it was even stupid. But to be with two people who so evidently liked her, and who so patently adored each other, was to partake of their happiness, no matter how desperate her own fears.

Dinner passed quickly enough, and Clancy found out that she had an appetite, after all. The judge and his wife showed no undue interest in her. Clancy would have sworn that they knew nothing about her when dinner ended and they started for the opera. She did not know that, before he went upon the bench, Judge Walbrough had been the cleverest cross-examiner at the bar, and that all through dinner he had been verifying his first estimate of her character. For the Walbroughs, as she was later to learn, did not "pick up" every lovely young female whom they chanced to meet and admire. A happy couple, they still were lonely at times--lonely for the sound of younger voices.

And the significant glance that the judge cast at his wife at the end of the dinner went unnoticed by Clancy. She did not know that they had passed upon her and found her worth while.

And with this friendly couple she heard her first opera. It was "Manon," and Farrar sang. From the beginning to the tragic dénouement, Clancy was held enthralled. She was different from the average country girl who attends the opera. She was not at all interested in the persons, though they were personages, who were in the boxes. She was interested in the singers, and in them only. She had never heard great music before, save from a phonograph. She made a mental vow that she would hear more again--soon.

XX

The judge and his wife were true music-lovers and didn't attend the opera for social reasons. Nevertheless, they knew, seemingly, every one of importance in the artistic, financial, professional, and social world. During the entr'actes, the judge pointed out to Clancy persons with whom he was acquainted. Ordinarily, Clancy would have been thrilled at the mere sight of the demi-gods and goddesses. To-night, they left her cold. Yet, out of courtesy, she professed interest.

"And there's my little friend Darcy," she heard the judge say.

She roused herself from abstraction, an abstraction in which she was mentally reviewing the acting and singing of the superb Farrar.

"Who is he?" she asked.

The judge smiled.

"Munitions. Used to live in Pennsylvania. Now he dwelleth in the Land of Easy Come."

For a second, her thoughts far away, Clancy did not get the implication. Then she replied.

"But I thought that the munitions millionaires made so much that they found it hard to get rid of it."

"This is a wonderful town, Miss Deane. It affords opportunity for everyone and everything. No man ever made money so fast that New York couldn't take it away from him. If the ordinary methods are not sufficient, some brilliant New Yorker will invent something new. And they're inventing them for Darcy--and ten thousand other Darcys, too."

Clancy stared at the squat little millionaire a few seats away.

"He doesn't look very brilliant," she announced.

"He isn't," said the judge.

"But he's worth millions," protested Clancy.

"That doesn't prove brilliance. It proves knack and tenacity, that's all," said her host. "Some of the most brilliant men I know are paupers; some of the most stupid are millionaires."

"And vice versa?" suggested Clancy.

The judge shrugged.

"The brilliant millionaires are wealthy despite their brilliance. My child, money was never so easy to make--or so easy to spend. And those who make it are spending it."

"But isn't every one spending, not only the millionaires?" demanded Clancy.

"It's the fashion," said the judge. "But fashions change. I'm not worried about America."

The curtain rose, cutting short Walbrough's disquisition. But, for a moment, Clancy pondered on what he had said. "The Land of Easy Come." The people that she had met, the moving-picture millionaires--theirs had come easily-- Would it go as easily? Even David Randall, worth approximately half a million before his thirtieth birthday--she'd read enough to know that brokers went bankrupt over-night. The hotels that she knew were crowded almost beyond capacity with people who were willing to pay any price for any sort of accommodation. The outrageous prices charged--and paid--in the restaurants. The gorgeous motor-cars. The marvelous costly clothing that the women wore. Some one must produce these luxuries. Who were paying for them? Surely not persons who had toiled and sweated to amass a few dollars. Easy come! Her own little nest-egg, bequeathed to her by a distant relative--it had come easily; it had gone as easily. Of course, she hadn't spent it, but--it was gone. But she was too young to philosophize; she forgot herself in the performance.

She was throbbing with gratitude to the Walbroughs as, the opera over, they slowly made their way through the chattering thousands toward the lobby. They had given her the most wonderful evening of her life.

She was about to say something to this effect when some one accosted the judge. For the moment, he was separated from the two women, and verbal expression of Clancy's feelings was postponed. For when the judge joined them, he was accompanied by a man whose mop of hair would have rendered him noticeable without the fading bruise upon his face. It was Zenda!

His recognition was as quick as Clancy's. His dreamy brown eyes--one of them still discolored--lighted keenly. But he had been an actor before he had become one of the most famous directors in Screendom. He held out his hand quite casually.

"Hello, Florine!" he said.

Walbrough stared from one to the other.

"You know each other? 'Florine?'"

"A name," said Clancy quickly, "that I called myself when--when I hoped to get work upon the screen."

She breathed deeply. Of course, Judge Walbrough and Zenda didn't know that a woman named Florine Ladue was wanted for Beiner's murder; but still----

"'On the screen?' That's funny," said the judge. "Sophie Carey told us that you were thinking of stenography until she put you in touch with Sally Henderson. Huh! No fool like an old fool! I was thinking I would put a new idea in your head, and you have it already. Darcy stopped me and introduced his friend Mr. Zenda, and I immediately thought that a girl like you with your beauty--" He interrupted himself a moment while he presented Zenda to his wife. Then he turned to Clancy. "Couldn't you get work?" he asked, abruptly.

They were on the sidewalk now, and the starter was signaling, by electrically lighted numbers, for the judge's car. It was a clear, crisp, wonderful night, and the stars vied with the lights of Broadway.

Clancy looked up and down the street. She had no intention of running away. She'd tried to reach Zenda to-day, and had been told that he was too ill to receive visitors. Nevertheless, the impulse to flee was roused in her again. Then, listening to reason, she conquered it.

She answered the judge.

"'Get work?' I didn't try very long."

"And she didn't come to me," said Zenda. He put into his words a meaning that the Walbroughs could not suspect. Clancy got it.

"Oh, but I did!" she said. "I've tried to get you on the telephone. Central wouldn't give me your number. I wrote you a letter in care of Zenda Films. Your partner, Mr. Grannis, opened it. And to-day I called at your apartment and was told that you were ill."

Zenda's face, which had been stern, softened.

"Is that so?" he asked.

The judge, a trifle mystified, broke into the conversation.

"Well, she seems to have proved that she didn't neglect you, Mr. Zenda. Don't see why she should go to such pains, unless"--and he laughed--"Miss Deane wants to prove that she played fair;--didn't give any one else a prior opportunity to make a million dollars out of her pretty face."

"Miss Deane can easily prove that she is playing fair," said Zenda.

"I want to," said Clancy quickly.