Part 6

"Your first commission, Miss Deane," she said. "He wants to rent an apartment. He has oodles of money. Here is a list of places. Mr. Guernsey will order a car for you. You'll find the rental-rates on this card. God be with you, my child!"

She grinned, and Clancy started for the door. Her footsteps were faltering and her face white. Grannis was an unusual name. And Grannis had been one of the players in the Zenda poker game three nights ago!

IX

New as she was to New York, limited of observation and of ability to digest her observations and draw from them sane conclusions, Clancy realized that each business in the city was confined to certain restricted districts. For instance, Times Square was the center of the theatrical and night life of the city. A cursory glance at the women on Fifth Avenue near Forty-second Street was enough to make her pretty certain that this was the heart of the shopping-district. And, of course, all the reading world knew that the financial district was down-town.

This knowledge had contributed to her feeling of security. She was a single atom in a most enormous city. Even though the police, by reason of the card bearing Fanchon DeLisle's introduction of Clancy to Morris Beiner, might be investigating her, it seemed hardly probable to Clancy that any chance meeting would betray her. She thought that one could live years, decades in New York without meeting a single acquaintance. Until the police should get in touch with Fanchon DeLisle and discover that Florine Ladue and Clancy Deane were the same person, Clancy believed that she was comparatively safe.

But now, as she hesitated on the threshold of the outer office, it came to her with a shock that New York was a small place. Later on, she would learn that the whole world is a tiny hiding-place for a fugitive, but just now it seemed to her that fate was treating her most unkindly in bringing her into contact with Grannis to-day. But at the moment she could only blame fate, not realizing that, from the very nature of its geography, having so much north and south and so comparatively little east and west, all New York, practically, must, at some time during its working-day, be in the neighborhood of Times Square or the Grand Central Station, and that shrewd men, realizing this fact, have centered certain businesses, such as the retail-clothing trade, the jewelry and other luxury-merchandising, the hotels and theaters in these neighborhoods. The money may be made in other parts of the town, but it is spent here.

So, had Clancy but realized it, it was not at all unusual that, within the first hour of her employment by Sally Henderson, Grannis should enter the offices. He needed an apartment; Sally Henderson, catering to the class of persons who could afford expensive rentals, was naturally located in a district contiguous to other places where cost was not counted by the customer.

It was only by a tremendous effort of will that Clancy forced herself across the threshold.

But Grannis's sallow face did not change its expression as she entered. It so happened that he had a lot on his mind, of which the renting of an apartment was but a minor detail. And young Guernsey and the stenographer were not particularly observant; they merely saw that Miss Henderson's new employee seemed a bit timid.

"Miss Deane, this is Mr. Grannis," said Guernsey. "Miss Deane will show you several apartments," he added.

Grannis nodded absent-mindedly. He glanced at Clancy for a moment; then his eyes dropped. Clancy drew a long breath. Something seemed about to burst within her bosom. Relief is quite as violent in its physical effects as fear, though not so permanent. Then her pulse slowed down. But her eyes were filmily unseeing until they had entered the motor, a closed car, that Guernsey ordered.

Then they cleared. Unflattering as it might be to her vanity, it was nevertheless a fact that Grannis had no recollection of having met her before. It was natural enough, Clancy assured herself. She had simply been an extra person at a dance, at a poker-party. Further, in her coat suit and wearing a hat, she was not the same person that had accompanied Fay Marston three nights ago to the Château de la Reine.

Why, it was quite probable that even Zenda would not remember her if he saw her again. Then her throat seemed to thicken up a trifle. That was not so, because Morris Beiner had told her that not only had Zenda remembered her first name but had been able to describe her so accurately that Beiner had recognized her from the description.

But, at the moment, she had nothing to fear. She looked at the card Miss Henderson had given her. There were half a dozen addresses written on it. The rentals placed opposite them ranged from five to twelve hundred.

"How much did you wish to pay, Mr. Grannis?" she asked.

Grannis started as she spoke. He stared at her; his brows furrowed. Clancy felt herself growing pale. Then Grannis smiled.

"I meet so many people--oh, thousands, Miss Deane--that I'm always imagining that I've met my newest acquaintance before. I haven't met you, have I?"

The direct lie was something that Clancy abhorred, hardly ever in her life had she uttered one.

She compromised between the instinct for self-preservation and a rigid upbringing by shaking her head. He accepted the quasi-denial with a smile, then answered her question.

"Oh, six or eight hundred a month--something like that," he said carelessly.

Clancy smothered a gasp. Miss Henderson had told her nothing of the details of the business. That had been careless to an extreme of Miss Henderson. Yet Clancy supposed that Miss Henderson felt that, if an employee didn't have common sense, she wouldn't retain her. Still, not to have told Clancy that these rentals marked on this card were by the _month_, instead, as Clancy had assumed, by the year, was to have relied not merely on Clancy's possession of common sense but on her experience of New York. But Miss Henderson didn't know that Clancy had just come from the country. Probably sending Clancy out offhand in this fashion had been a test of Clancy's adaptability for the business. Well--and her chin stuck forward a bit--she'd show that she had that adaptability. If Grannis were willing to pay six or eight hundred dollars a month for an apartment, she'd rent him one.

She handed the card to Grannis.

"You're a busy man," she said. "Which address looks best to you?"

Grannis stared at her.

"I congratulate you, Miss Deane. Most women would have taken me to the least desirable first, tried to foist it upon me, then dragged me to another. This one."

He put his finger on the third apartment listed. The rental was eight hundred and fifty dollars a month, and opposite it were the words: "six months." Clancy interpreted this to mean that the tenant must sign a six months' lease. She said as much to Grannis, who merely nodded acquiescently.

Clancy had never been in a limousine in her life before. But she picked up the speaking-tube, which told its own purpose to her quick wit, and spoke to the chauffeur. The car moved toward Park Avenue, turned north, and stopped a dozen blocks above Forty-seventh Street.

* * * * *

One hour and a half later, Grannis left Miss Sally Henderson's offices. Behind him, Miss Henderson fingered a lease, signed by Grannis, and a check for eight hundred and fifty dollars, also signed by the moving-picture man.

"My dear," she said, "you're wonderful! You have passed the test."

"'Test?'" echoed Clancy innocently.

"I have only one," said Miss Henderson. "Results. You got them. How did you do it?"

Clancy shrugged carelessly.

"I don't know. I showed him the apartment. He liked it. That's all."

"You're engaged!" cried Miss Henderson.

"'Engaged?'"

"Yes--to work for me."

"But you engaged me before I went out with Mr. Grannis," said Clancy.

Miss Henderson smiled. Clancy discovered that those full lips could be as acidulous as they were sensuous.

"But not permanently, my dear. Oh, I may have talked about salaries and employing you and all that sort of thing, but--that was to give you confidence. If you'd failed in letting an apartment to Mr. Grannis--but you didn't, my dear." She turned to Guernsey. "If you had the pep of Miss Deane, Frank, you'd be running this business instead of working for me. Why don't you show some jazz?"

Guernsey shrugged.

"I'm not a pretty girl," he replied.

He left the office, and Miss Henderson looked Clancy over critically.

"Better call it a day, my dear, and run over to Forty-fifth Street and see my dressmaker. I'll 'phone her while you're on the way. Put yourself entirely in her hands, and I'll attend to the bill. Only--you promise to stay three months?"

"I promise," said Clancy.

Sally Henderson laughed.

"Then run along. Miss Conover. Jennie Conover. Number Sixty-three A West Forty-fifth. Take whatever she chooses for you. Good-by."

Clancy was crossing Fifth Avenue a moment later. She was as dazed as she'd been when Morris Beiner had made the engagement with Hildebloom, of the Rosebush studios. This amazing town, where some starved and others walked into fortune! This wondrous city that, when it smiled, smiled most wondrously, and, when it frowned, frowned most horrendously! But yesterday it had pursued her, threatened her with starvation, perhaps. The day before, it had promised her fame and fortune. To-day, it promised her, if neither fame nor fortune, at least more immediate money than she had ever earned in her life, and a chance for success that, while not dazzling, yet might be more permanent than anything that the stage could offer her.

She felt more safe, too, now that she had met one of the players in Zenda's poker game. Doubtless she could meet any of the rest of them, except Zenda himself, and escape recognition. The town no longer seemed small to her; it seemed vast again. It was quite improbable that she would ever again run across any of those few Broadwayites who knew her. At any rate, sufficient time would have elapsed for the real murderer of Morris Beiner to have been apprehended. Up to now, oddly enough, she had not devoted much thought to the possible identity of the murderer. She had been too greatly concerned with her own peril, with the new interests that despite the peril, were so engrossing. Her meeting with Randall, her acquaintance with Sophie Carey, her new position--these had occupied most of her thoughts of the last twenty-four hours. Before that, for eight hours or so, she had been concerned with her danger. That danger had revived momentarily this afternoon; it had died away almost immediately. But the only way to remove the cause of the danger was to discover the identity of the person who had killed Morris Beiner.

She drew a deep breath. She couldn't do any investigating, even if she knew how, without subjecting herself to great risk. Still-- She refused to think about the matter. Which is exactly what youth always does; it will not face the disagreeable, the threatening. And who shall say that it is not more sensible in this than age, which, knowing life's inevitability of act and consequence, is without hope?

She entered the establishment of Jennie Conover with that thrill which comes to every woman at her modiste's or furrier's or jeweler's. Clothes may not make the man, but they may mar the woman. Clancy knew that her clothes marred her. Miss Sally Henderson, whose own garb was nothing wonderful, but who apparently knew the things that were deemed fashionable, had said for Clancy to trust entirely to the judgment of Miss Conover. Clancy would do so.

Care, that had hovered about her, now resting on her slim shoulders, now apparently flying far off, suddenly seemed to have left her for good and all. It was discarded even as she discarded her coat suit, petticoat, and waist before the appraising eyes of Miss Conover, the plump, good-humored dressmaker to whom Miss Henderson had sent her.

But she donned these undistinguished garments an hour later. Also, she donned Care, the lying jade who had seemed to leave her. For, walking measuredly up and down, as though prepared to wait forever for her reappearance, was Grannis, the man whom she had been so certain had not recognized her earlier to-day.

She hesitated a moment upon the stoop of the building that had once been a private residence, then a boarding-house, and was now remodeled into intimate shops and tiny apartments. But Grannis had seen her; flight would merely postpone the inevitable. Bravely she descended the short flight of steps, and, as Grannis approached, she forced a smile to her white lips.

He stopped a yard away from her, studying her carefully with eyes that she suddenly sensed were near-sighted. His sallow, lean countenance was wrinkled with puzzlement.

"Miss Deane," he said slowly, "you told me this afternoon that we had not met before."

Clancy had not said anything of the sort. She had simply evaded a question with a nod of the head. But now she merely shrugged her shoulders. It was an almost despairing little shrug, pathetic, yet with defiance in it, too. It expressed her mental attitude. She was despairing; also she was defiant.

Grannis studied her a moment longer. Then, abruptly, he said:

"I haven't the best memory in the world, Miss Deane, but--from the moment I heard your voice to-day, I've been sure that we've met before. I know where, now. In fact, I'd hardly left you when I remembered. And I waited outside Miss Henderson's office and followed you. Isn't there some place where we can go and talk?"

"You seem to be talking quite clearly here," said Clancy. She knew that her cheeks were white and that her voice trembled, but her eyes never left the eyes of Grannis.

The tall, thin moving-picture magnate shrugged his narrow shoulders. But his shrug was not like Clancy's. It was neither despairing, nor pathetic, nor defiant. It was careless.

"Just as you say, of course, Miss Deane. Only--there are pleasanter places than a police station. Don't you think so?"

Clancy gasped. She seemed to grow cold all over, then hot. Then she felt as if about to faint. She gripped herself with an effort that would have done credit to a woman ten years older.

"All right," she said. "Where shall we go?"

X

Grannis turned abruptly to the east. It would have been quite easy, Clancy thought, to slip away and lose herself in the crowd that swarmed upon Fifth Avenue. But she had common sense. She knew that ahead of every flight waits the moment of pause, and that when she paused, Grannis or Zenda or the police would catch up with her; And--she had no money. Unless she chose to starve, she must return to-morrow, or the next day to Miss Sally Henderson's office. There, Grannis would be waiting for her. Besides, he had already threatened, "Pleasanter places than a police station!"

A police station!

What courage she had mustered to meet Grannis' first words had evaporated as she followed him meekly up three steps and through the revolving door of a restaurant.

Within was a narrow hall, the further side of which was framed by glass windows that ran to the ceiling, and through which was visible a dining-room whose most conspicuous decorations were tubs of plants. At one end of the hall was a grill, and at the other end was another restaurant.

Grannis turned to a check-boy and surrendered his hat and coat. He threw a question at Clancy.

"Powder your nose?" He took it for granted that she would, and said: "I'll be up-stairs. Tea-room."

He sauntered toward an elevator without a glance at her. A maid showed Clancy to a dressing-room. She learned what she had not happened to discover at the Château de la Reine three nights ago--that every well-appointed New York restaurant has a complete supply of powder and puffs and rouge and whatever other cosmetics may be required.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She had never rouged in her life, considering it one of those acts the commission of which definitely establishes a woman as not being "good." So, even though her usually brilliant skin was pale with apprehension, she refused the maid's offer of artificial coloring. But she did use the powder.

Up-stairs she hesitated timidly on the threshold of the tea-room. An orchestra was playing, and a score of couples were dancing. This was Fifth Avenue, and a word overheard in the dressing-room had informed her that this restaurant was Ferroni's, one of the most famous, she believed, in the world. In her unsophistication--for Clancy was sophisticated only within certain definite limits; she could take care of herself in any conflict with a man, but would be, just now, helpless in the hands of a worldly woman--she supposed that Ferroni's patronage was drawn from the most exclusive of New York's society. Yet the people here seemed to be of about the same class as those who had been at the Château de la Reine on Monday night. They were just as noisy, just as quiet. The women were just as much painted, just as daring in the display of their limbs. They smoked when they weren't dancing.

Clancy would soon learn that the difference between Broadway and Fifth Avenue is something that puzzles students of New York, and that most students arrive at the conclusion that the only difference is that the Avenue has more money and has had it longer. Arriving at that truth, it is simple of comprehension that money makes society. There is a pleasant fiction, to which Clancy in her Maine rearing had given credence, that it takes generations to make that queer thing known as a "society" man or woman. She did not realize that all the breeding in the world will not make a cad anything but a cad, or a loose woman anything but a loose woman.

She had expected that persons who danced on Fifth Avenue would have round them some visible, easily discernible aura of gentility. For, of course, she thought that a "society man" must necessarily be a gentleman. But, so far as she could see, the only difference between this gathering and the gathering at Zenda's Broadway party was that the latter contained more beautiful women, and that the men had been better dancers.

The music suddenly stopped, and at that instant she saw Grannis sitting at a table across the room. Timidly she advanced toward him, but her timidity was in no wise due to her association with him. It was a shyness born of lack of confidence. She was certain that her shoes clattered upon the waxed floor and that every woman who noticed her smiled with amused contempt at her frock. These things, because Clancy was young, were of more importance than the impending interview with Grannis.

"That rouge becomes you," said Grannis brusquely, as she sat down in the chair beside him.

Clancy stared at him. She did not know that embarrassment had restored color to her cheeks.

"I never rouge," she replied curtly.

"Oh, well, don't get mad about it. I don't care a rap whether you do or don't," he said. "Only, you're looking prettier than a while ago." He eyed her closely. His near-sighted eyes took on an expression of personal interest. Heretofore, his expression had been impersonal. But now she felt that Grannis was conscious that she was a young girl, not bad to look upon. She resented it. Perhaps Grannis caught that resentment. He picked up a menu.

"Eat?" he asked.

He was a monosyllabic sort of person, Clancy decided, frugal of words. Something inside her bade her be cautious. Those who are frugal of speech force others to be wasteful, and Clancy, in so far as, in her chaotic mental state, she had arrived at any decision, had decided to commit herself as little as possible. If she was to be accused of the murder of Morris Beiner, the less she said the better.

But the one-word questions demanded an answer. She suddenly realized that excitement had temporarily made her forget hunger. But hunger forgotten is not hunger overcome. She hadn't eaten since breakfast. Yet, because of the social timidity that had made her walk mincingly across the room, she said she preferred that Grannis should order. Clancy was only four days away from Maine, where it is still not considered too well bred to declare that one is famished.

Fortunately, however, Grannis was hungry. He ordered sandwiches--several varieties--and a pot of tea. Then he looked at Clancy. She was experiencing various emotions to-day, many of them survivals of age-old instinct. Now she felt suddenly conscious that Grannis was dishonest.

"Dance?" Grannis asked. She shook her head. "Been in the city long?"

"Not very," she replied.

"Not living at the Napoli any more, eh?" She shook her head again. "Seen Fay to-day? Fay Marston?" Once more she shook her head. "Don't feel like talking, eh?" She shrugged. "Oh, well, there's no hurry. I can wait----"

She did not learn what Grannis would wait for, because the arrival of the waiter stopped Grannis's speech. She hoped that her face did not show her anxiety, not about his questioning, but about the food. The instinct that told her that Grannis was dishonest also told her that one need not fear greatly a dishonest person. She began, as the waiter arranged the service, to analyze Grannis's actions. If he knew of her visits to Beiner, why did he bring her here? Why didn't he denounce her to the police? The question answered itself. He knew nothing of those visits.

Her hands were steady as she reached for the tea-pot. She poured it with a grace that caught Grannis's attention.

"Wish to God that was something you could teach a woman who never had any real bringing-up. Trouble with pictures is the same trouble that's the matter with everything else in this world--the people in them. How can you teach a girl that ain't a lady to act like one? You could get money just for that way you handle that tea. Never thought of trying pictures, did you?"

"Not--seriously," said Clancy.

"Pretty good graft you got at Miss Henderson's, I suppose. Ike Weber steer you against it?"

Clancy bit into a sardine sandwich in a leisurely manner. She swallowed, then drank some tea. Then, in a careless tone, she replied:

"Mr. Weber never steered me against anything. I never met him until the night of Mr. Zenda's party. And I haven't seen him since."

"You'd stick to that--in a court-room?"

Clancy laughed. "I'll never have to, will I?"

Into Grannis's dull eyes crept admiration.

"Kid, I'm for you," he said. Clancy shrugged again. Although no one had ever commented on it, she knew that her shrug was a prettily provocative thing. "Don't care whether I'm for you or not, eh?"

Clancy stared at him. "You know," he said, "if I tipped off this Miss Henderson that Weber planted you with her so's you could steer suckers--wealthy folks that don't mind a little game--his way, how long do you think your graft would last?"

"You'd have to prove what you said, you know," Clancy reminded him.

"Kid, why haven't you been round to see Zenda?" he asked.

"Why should I go round to see him?"

Grannis's eyes took on a cunning look.

"Now you're talking business. We're getting down to cases. Listen, kid: You were scared of me a while ago. You've forgotten that. Why?" Clancy reached for another sandwich. She made no answer. "You're certainly there, kid!" exclaimed her companion. "No one is running a blazer on you, are they?"

"No one is fooling me, if that's what you mean," said Clancy.