Part 17

She had talked only, it seemed, about her troubles these past few days. Now, under the stimulus of an interested listener, she poured forth her history, her hopes, her ambitions. And, in return, Mrs. Walbrough told of her own life, of her husband's failure to inherit the vast fortune that he had expected, how, learning that speculation had taken it all from his father, he had buckled down to the law; how he had achieved tremendous standing; how he had served upon the bench; how he had resigned to accept a nomination for the Senate; how, having been defeated--it was not his party's year--he had resumed the practise of law, piling up a fortune that, though not vast to the sophisticated, loomed large to Clancy. They were still talking at luncheon, and through it. After the meal Hebron announced that there would be good tobogganing outside after the course had been worn down a little. To Clancy's delighted surprise, Mrs. Walbrough declared that she had been looking forward to it. Together, wrapped in sweaters and with their feet encased in high moccasins--they were much too large for Clancy--they tried out the slide.

The Walbrough house was perched upon the top of a wind-swept hill. The view was gorgeous. On all sides hills that could not be termed mountains but that, nevertheless, were some hundreds of feet high, surrounded the Walbrough hill. A hundred yards from the front veranda, at the foot of a steep slope, was a good-sized pond. Across this the toboggan course ended. And because the wind had prevented the snow from piling too deeply, the toboggan, after a few trials, slid smoothly, and at a great pace, clear across the pond.

It was dusk before they were too tired to continue. Breathlessly, Mrs. Walbrough announced that she would give a house-party as soon as---- She paused. It was the first reference to the cause of their being there that had passed the lips of either to-day. Both had tacitly agreed not to talk about it.

"Let's hope it won't be long," said Clancy. "To drag you away from the city----"

"Tush, tush, my child," said Mrs. Walbrough.

Clancy tushed.

It was at their early dinner that the telephone-bell rang. Clancy answered it. It was Vandervent. He was brisk to the point of terseness.

"Got to see you. Want to ask a few questions. I'll take the eight-twenty. Ask Mrs. Walbrough if she can put me up?"

Mrs. Walbrough, smiling, agreed that she could. Clancy told Vandervent so. He thanked her. His voice lost its briskness.

"Are you--eh--enjoying yourself?"

Clancy demurely replied that she was. "I wish you had time for some tobogganing," she ventured.

"Do you really?" Vandervent was eager. "I'll make time--I--I'll see you to-night, Miss Deane."

Clancy smiled with happy confidence at the things that Vandervent had not said. She played double solitaire with her hostess until eleven o'clock. Then Mrs. Hebron entered with the information that her husband had developed a sudden chest-cold, accompanied by fever, and that she really dreaded letting him meet the train.

Clancy leaped to the occasion. She pooh-poohed Mrs. Walbrough's protests. As if, even in these motorful days, a Zenith girl couldn't hitch an old nag to a sleigh and drive a few rods. And she wouldn't permit Mrs. Walbrough to accompany her, either. Alone, save for a brilliant moon, a most benignant moon, she drove down the hill and over the snow-piled road to the Hinsdale station.

It was a dreamy ride; she was going to meet a man whose voice trembled as he spoke to her, a man who was doing all in his power to save her from dangers, a man who was a Vandervent, one of the great _partis_ of America. Yet it was as a man, rather than as a Vandervent, that she thought of him.

So, engrossed with thoughts of him, thoughts that submerged the memory of yesterday's paper, that made her forget that she had seen no paper to-day, she gave the old horse his head, and let him choose his own path. Had she been alert, she would have seen the men step out from the roadside, would have been able to whip up her horse and escape their clutch. As it was, one of them seized the bridle. The other advanced to her side.

"So you've followed me up here," he said. "Spying on me, eh?"

The moonlight fell upon the face of the man who held the horse's head. It was Garland. The man who spoke to her was Donald Carey. She had not known before that Hinsdale was in Dutchess County.

XXX

Clancy was afraid--like every one else--of the forces of law and order. She was afraid of that menacing thing which we call "society." To feel that society has turned against one, and is hunting one down--that is the most terrible fear of all. Clancy had undergone that fear during the past week. Panic had time and again assailed her.

But the panic that gripped her now was different. It was the fear of bodily injury. And, because Clancy had real courage, the color came back into her cheeks as swiftly as it had departed. More swiftly, because, with returning courage, came anger.

Clancy was not a snob; she would never be one. Yet there is a feeling, born of legitimate pride, that makes one consciously superior to others. Clancy held herself highly. A moment ago, she had been dreaming, triumphantly, of a man immeasurably superior in all ways to these two men who detained her. That this man should anticipate seeing her--and she knew that he did--raised her in her own self-esteem. That these two men here dared stop her progress, for any reason whatsoever, lowered her.

She was decent. These two men were not. Yet one of them held her horse's head, and the other hand was stretched out toward her. They dared, by deed and verbal implication, to threaten her. Her pride, just and well founded, though based on no record of material achievement, would have made her brave, even though she had lacked real courage. Although, as a matter of fact, it is hard to conceive of real courage in a character that has no pride.

Carey's left hand was closing over her right forearm. With the edge of her right hand, Clancy struck the contaminating touch away. She was a healthy girl. Hours of tobogganing to-day had not exhausted her. The blow had vigor behind it. Carey's hand dropped away from her. With her left hand, Clancy jerked the reins taut. A blow of the whip would have made Garland relinquish his grasp of the animal. But Clancy did not deliver it then.

No man, save Beiner, had ever really frightened her. And it had not been fear of hurt that had animated her sudden resistance toward the theatrical agent; it had been dread of contamination. She had been born and bred in the country. In Zenith, the kerosene street-lamps were not lighted on nights when the moon was full. Sometimes it rained, and then the town was dark. Yet Clancy had never been afraid to walk home from a neighbor's house.

So now, indignant, and growing more indignant with each passing second, she made no move toward flight. Instead, she asked the immemorial question of the woman whose pride is outraged.

"How dare you?" she demanded.

Carey stared at her. He rubbed his forearm where the hard edge of her palm had descended upon it. His forehead, Clancy could vaguely discern, in the light that the snow reflected from a pale moon, was wrinkled, as though with worry.

"Some wallop you have!" he said. "No need of getting mad, is there?"

Had Clancy been standing, she would have stamped her foot.

"'Mad?' What do you mean by stopping me?" she cried.

"'Mean?'" Behind his blond mustache the weakness of Carey's mouth was patent. "'Mean?' Why--" He drew himself up with sudden dignity. "Any reason," he asked, "why I shouldn't stop and speak to a friend of my wife's?"

Suddenly Clancy wished that she had lashed Garland with the whip, struck the horse with it, and fled away. She realized that Carey was drunk. He was worse than drunk; he was poisoned by alcohol. The eyes that finally met hers were not the eyes of a drunkard temporarily debauched; they were the eyes of a maniac.

Her impulse to indignation died away. She knew that she must temporize, must outwit the man who stood so close to where she sat. For she realized that she was in as great danger as probably she would ever be again.

Danger dulls the mind of the coward. It quickens the wit of the brave. The most consummate actress would have envied Clancy the laugh that rang as merrily true as though Carey, in a ballroom, had reminded her of their acquaintance and had begged a dance.

"Why, it's _you_, Mr. Carey! How silly of me!"

Carey stepped back a trifle. His hat swung down in his right hand, and he bowed, exaggeratedly.

"'Course it is. Didn't you know me?"

Clancy laughed again.

"Why should I? I never expected to find you walking along a road like this."

"Why shouldn't you?" Carey's voice was suddenly suspicious. "Y' knew I was coming up here, didn't you?"

"Why, no," Clancy assured him. "You see Dutchess County doesn't mean anything to me. Mrs. Carey said that you were going to Dutchess County, but that might as well have been Idaho for all it meant to me. Where is Mrs. Carey?" he asked.

"Oh, she's all right. Nev' min' about her." He swayed a trifle, and seized the edge of the sleigh for support. "Point is"--and he brought his face nearer to hers, staring at her with inflamed eyes--"what are you doin' up here if you didn't know I was here?"

"Visiting the Walbroughs," said Clancy. She pretended to ignore his tone.

"Huh! Tell me somethin' I don't know," said Carey. "Don't you suppose I know _that_? Ain't Sam and I been watchin' you tobogganing with that fat old Walbrough dame all afternoon?"

"Why didn't you join us?" asked Clancy.

"Join you? Join you?" Carey's eyes attempted cunning; they succeeded in crossing. "Thass just _it_! Didn't want to join you. Didn't want you to sus--suspect--" His hand shook the sleigh. "You come right now and tell me what you doin' here?"

"Why, I've told you!" said Clancy.

"Yes; you've _told_ me," said Carey scornfully. "But that doesn't mean that I believe you. Where you going now?"

"To the railroad station," Clancy answered.

"What for?" demanded Carey.

Clancy's muscles tightened; she sat bolt upright. No _grande dame_'s tones could have been icier.

"You are impertinent, Mr. Carey."

"'Impertinent!'" cried Carey. "I asked you a question; answer it!"

"To meet Mr. Vandervent," Clancy told him. She could have bitten her tongue for the error of her judgment.

Carey's hand let go of the side of the seat. He stepped uncertainly back a pace.

"What's he doing up here? What you meeting him for? D'ye hear that, Garland?" he cried.

The elevator-man of the Heberworth Building still stood at the horse's head. He was smoking a cigarette now, and Clancy could see his crafty eyes as he sucked his breath inward and the tip of the cigarette glowed.

"Ain't that what I been tellin' you?" he retorted. "Didn't Spofford go into your house yesterday and stay there with her an hour or so? Wasn't I watchin' outside? And ain't he laid off her? Didn't he tell me to keep my trap closed about seein' her go to Beiner's office? Ain't he workin' hand in glove with her?"

Carey wheeled toward Clancy.

"You hear that?" he demanded shrilly. "And still you try to fool me. You think I killed Beiner, and--" His voice ceased. He licked his lips a moment. When he spoke again, there was infinite cunning in his tone.

"You don't think anything foolish like that, now, do you?" He came a little closer to the sleigh. His left hand groped, almost blindly, it seemed to Clancy, for the edge of the seat again. "Why, even if Morris and I did have a little row, any one that knows me knows I'm a gentleman and wouldn't kill him for a little thing like his saying he----"

"Lay off what he said and you said," came the snarling voice of Garland. "Stick to what you intended saying."

"Don't use that tone, Garland," snapped Carey. "Don't you forget, either, that I'm a--I'm a--gentleman. I don't want any gutter-scum dicta--dictating to me." He spoke again to Clancy. "You're a friend of my wife," he said. "Just wanted to tell you, in friendly way, that friend of my wife don't mean a single thing to me. I want to be friendly with every one, but any one tries to put anything over on me going to get theirs. 'Member that!"

"Aw, get down to cases!" snarled Garland. There was something strange in the voice of the man at the horse's head. There was a snarling quaver in it that was not like the drunken menace of Carey.

Suddenly Clancy knew; she had never met a drug fiend in her life--and yet she knew. Also, she knew that what Don Carey, even maniacally drunk, might not think of doing, the undersized elevator-man from the Heberworth Building would not hesitate to attempt.

Common sense told her that these two men had stopped her only for a purpose. They had watched her to-day. They knew that she was on her way to meet Philip Vandervent. They were reading into that meeting verification of their suspicions.

And they were suspicious, because--she knew why. Carey had killed Beiner. Garland knew of the crime. Garland had blackmailed Carey; Garland feared that exposure of Carey would also expose himself as cognizant of the crime. So they were crazed, one from drink, the other from some more evil cause. No thought of risk would deter them. It was incredible that they would attack her, and yet----

"Now, listen, lady," came the voice of Garland: "We don't mean no harm to you. Get me?"

Incredibly, crazed though the man's voice was, Clancy believed him.

"What do you mean?" she demanded.

"We just want a little time, Carey and me. We want you to promise to keep your mouth shut for a week or so; that's all. Your word'll be good with us."

Again Clancy believed him. But now she was able to reason. She believed Garland, because he meant what he said. But--would he mean what he said five minutes from now? And, then, it didn't matter to her whether or not the man would mean it five years from now. He was attempting to dictate to her, Clancy Deane, who was on her way to meet Philip Vandervent, she who had received flowers from Philip Vandervent only yesterday.

Vandervent was a gentleman. Would he temporize? Would he give a promise that in honor he should not give?

Where there had been only suspicion, there was now certainty. She _knew_ that Don Carey had killed Morris Beiner. On some remote day, she would ponder on the queer ways of fate, on the strange coincidences that make for what we call "inevitability." With, so far as she knew, no evidence against him, Don Carey had convicted himself.

He was a murderer. By all possible implication, Carey had confessed, and Garland had corroborated the confession. And they asked her to become party to a murder!

She would never again be as angry as she was now. It seemed to her inflamed senses that they were insulting not merely herself but Vandervent also. They were suggesting that she was venal, capable of putting bodily safety above honesty. And, in belittling her, they belittled the man who had, of all the women in the world, selected her. For now, in the stress of the moment, it was as though Vandervent's flowers had been a proposal. She fought not merely for herself, but, by some queer quirk of reasoning, for the man that she loved.

Her left hand held whip and reins. She dropped the reins, she rose to her feet and lashed savagely at Garland's head. She heard him scream as the knotted leather cut across his face. She saw him stagger back, relinquishing his hold of the bridle. She turned. Carey's two hands sought for her; his face was but a yard away, and into it she drove the butt of the whip. He, too, reeled back.

Her hand went above her head and the lash descended, swishingly, upon the side of the horse. There was a jerk forward that sat her heavily down upon the seat. A sidewise twist, as the animal leaped ahead, almost threw her out of the sleigh. She gripped at the dashboard and managed to right herself. And then the sleigh went round a bend in the road.

The snow was piled on the left-hand side. The horse, urged into the first display of spirits that, probably, he had shown in years, bore to the left. The left runner shot into the air. Clancy picked herself out of a snow-drift on the right-hand side as the horse and sleigh careened round another turn.

For a moment, she was too bewildered to move. Then she heard behind her the curses of the two men. She heard them plunging along the heavy roadway, calling to each other to make haste.

She was not panicky. Before her was a narrow roadway, branching away from the main highway. Up it she ran, as swiftly as her heavily-shod feet--she wore overshoes that Mrs. Hebron had pressed upon her--could carry her over the rough track.

Round a corner she glimpsed lights. A house stood before her. She raced toward it, her pace slackening as a backward glance assured her that Garland and Carey must be pursuing the empty sleigh, for they certainly were not following her.

But the horse might stop at any moment. He was an aged animal, probably tired of his freedom already. Then the two men would turn, would find her tracks leading up this road. She refused to consider what might happen then. One thing only she knew--that she had justified herself by refusing to treat with them. It was an amazingly triumphant heart that she held within her bosom. She felt strangely proud of herself.

Across a wide veranda she made her way. She rang a door-bell, visible under the veranda-light. She heard footsteps. Now she breathed easily. She was safe. Carey and Garland, even though they discovered her tracks, would hardly follow her into this house.

Then the door opened and she stood face to face with Sophie Carey.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Mrs. Carey held out her hand.

"Why, Miss Deane!" she gasped.

Perfunctorily Clancy took the extended fingers. She stepped inside.

"Lock the door!" she ordered.

Sophie Carey stared at her. Mechanically she obeyed. She stared at her guest.

"Why--why--what's wrong?" she demanded. Her voice shook, and her eyes were frightened.

Clancy's eyes clouded. She wanted to weep. Not because of any danger that had menaced her--that might still menace her--not because of any physical reaction. But Sophie Carey had befriended her, and Sophie Carey was in the shadow of disgrace. And she, Clancy Deane, _must_ tell the authorities.

"Your husband----" she began.

Mrs. Carey's face hardened. Into her eyes came a flame.

"He--he's dared to----"

There was a step on the veranda outside. Before Clancy could interfere, Sophie had strode by her and thrown open the door. Through the entrance came Carey, his bloodshot eyes roving. In his hand he held a revolver.

XXXI

Until she died, Clancy would hold vividly, in memory, the recollection of this scene. Just beyond the threshold Carey stopped. His wife, wild-eyed, leaned against the door which she had closed, her hand still on the knob.

For a full minute, there was silence. Clancy forgot her own danger. She was looking upon the most dramatic thing in life, the casting-off by a woman of a man whom she had loved, because she has found him unworthy.

Not that Sophie Carey, just now--or later on, for that matter--stooped to any melodramatic utterance. But her eyes were as expressive as spoken sentences. Into them first crept fear--a fear that was different from the alarm that she had shown when Clancy had mentioned her husband. But the fear vanished, was banished by the fulness of her contempt. Her eyes, that had been wide, now narrowed, hardened, seemed to emit sparks of ice.

Contemptuous anger heightened her beauty. Rather, it restored it. For, when Clancy had staggered into the house, the beauty of Sophie Carey, always a matter of coloring and spirits rather than of feature, had been a memory. She had been haggard, wan, sunken of cheek, so pale that her rouge had made her ghastly by contrast.

But now a normal color crept into her face. Not really normal, but, induced by the emotions that swayed her, it was the color that should always have been hers. It took years from her age. Her figure had seemed heavy, matronly, a moment ago. But now, as her muscles stiffened, it took on again that litheness which, despite her plumpness, made her seem more youthful than she was.

But it was the face of her husband that fascinated Clancy. Below his left eye, a bruise stood out, crimson. Clancy knew that it was from the blow that she had struck with the butt of the whip. She felt a certain vindictive pleasure at the sight of it. Carey's mouth twitched. His blond mustache looked more like straw than anything else. Ordinarily, it was carefully combed, but now the hairs that should have been trained to the right stuck over toward the left, rendering him almost grotesque. Below it, his mouth was twisted in a sort of sneer that made its weakness more apparent than ever.

His hat was missing; snow was on his shoulders, as though, in his pursuit, he had stumbled headlong into the drifts. And his tie was undone, his collar opened, as though he had found difficulty in breathing. The hand that held the revolver shook.

Before the gaze of the two women, his air of menace vanished. The intoxication that, combined with fear, had made him almost insane, left him.

"Why--why--musta scared you," he stammered.

Sophie Carey stepped close to him. Her fingers touched the revolver in his hand. Her husband jerked it away. Its muzzle, for a wavering moment, pointed at Clancy. She did not move. She was not frightened; she was fascinated. She marveled at Sophie's cool courage. For Mrs. Carey reached again for the weapon. This time, Carey did not resist; he surrendered it to her. Then Clancy understood how tremendous had been the strain, not merely for her but for Sophie. The older woman would have fallen but for the wall against which her shoulders struck. But her voice was steady when she spoke.

"I suppose that there's some explanation, Don?"

Clancy wondered if she would ever achieve Sophie's perfect poise. She wondered if it could be acquired, or if people were born with it. It was not pretense in Sophie Carey's case, at any rate. The casualness of her tone was not assumed. Somehow, she made Clancy think of those _grandes dames_ of the French Revolution who played cards as the summons to the tumbrils came, and who left the game as jauntily as though they went to the play.

For Clancy knew that Sophie Carey had forgiven her husband the other day for the last time; that hope, so far as he was concerned, was now ashes in her bosom forever. To a woman of Mrs. Carey's type, this present humiliation must make her suffer as nothing else in the world could do. Yet, because she was herself, her voice held no trace of pain.

"'Explanation?'" Carey was mastered by her self-control. "Why--course there is! Why----" He took the refuge of the weak. He burst into temper. "'Course there is!" he cried again. "Dirty little spy! Trying to get me in bad. Stopped her--wanted to scare her----"

"Don!" His wife's voice stopped his shrill utterance.

She straightened up, no longer leaning against the wall for support. "You stopped her? Why?" She raised her hand, quelling his reply. "No lies, Don; I want the truth."

Carey's mouth opened; it shut again. He looked hastily about him, as though seeking some road for flight. He glanced toward the revolver that his wife held. For a moment Clancy thought that he would spring for it. But if he held such thought, he let it go, conquered by his wife's spirit.

"'The truth?'" He tried to laugh. "Why--why, Miss Deane's got some fool idea that I killed Morris Beiner, and I wanted to--I wanted to----"

"'Beiner?' 'Morris Beiner?'" Sophie was bewildered.