Part 7

"You've said it! Well, I won't try to bluff you, kid. I've found you. It's a lucky chance, and I don't deserve any credit for it, but--I found you--before Zenda did. Before Ike did, if it comes to that. And Ike's the guy that wants you. I been feeling you out, to find out where you stood. I know that Ike didn't plant you with Miss Henderson. I dunno how you got in there. All Fay knows of you is that you were living at the Napoli, and were going in the movies, she thought. But Fay's a blab-mouth, and Ike and I know what she told you--about her and Ike working together to gyp people in poker games. Well, Ike figures that, as long as you disappear, he should worry, but when I run into you to-day, I begin to wonder. Now I see that you're no boob. Well then, take a look at that!"

"That" was a bill. The denomination was the largest Clancy had ever seen on a piece of money. One thousand dollars! And Grannis placed it on the table by her plate.

"Slip it into your kick, kid. There's more where it came from. Put it away before the waiter sees it. Understand?" Clancy didn't understand, and her face showed it. "Weber is coming back to town," said Grannis. "He can't come back if there's real evidence against him. The only _real_ evidence is what Fay Marston told you. Can you keep your mouth shut?"

Clancy stared at him. Grannis grinned. He entirely misunderstood her bewilderment. He rose suddenly, placing a five-dollar bill on the table.

"I'm in a hurry. That's for the tea. So long, kid." He walked away, leaving Clancy staring at the thousand-dollar bill.

XI

It was more difficult to leave Ferroni's than it had been to enter it. It was Clancy's first experience in a restaurant that, she assumed--and correctly enough--was a fashionable one. And it was not merely the paying of the obsequious waiter that flustered Clancy. She felt like a wallflower at a college dance. Conscious that her clothing was not modish, she had slipped timidly across the room to join Grannis. Now, having tipped the waiter, she must walk lonesomely across the room to the door, certain that everyone present was sneering inwardly at the girl whose cavalier had deserted her.

For Clancy was like most other girls--a mixture of timidity and conceit. She knew that she was beautiful; likewise, she knew that she was ugly. With a man along, admiration springing from his eyes--Clancy felt assured. Alone, running the gantlet of observation--she felt hobbledehoyish, deserted.

As a matter of fact, people _were_ looking at her. Neither the cheap hat nor her demoded coiffure could hide the satiny luster of her black hair. Embarrassment lent added brilliance to her wonderful skin, and the awkwardness that self-consciousness always brings in its train could not rob her walk of its lissom grace. She almost ran the last few steps of her journey across the room, and seeing a flight of stairs directly before her, hastened down them, not waiting for the elevator.

She walked rapidly the few steps from the entrance to Ferroni's to Fifth Avenue, then turned south. The winter twilight, which is practically no twilight at all, had ended. The darkness brought security to Clancy. Also the chill air brought coolness to a forehead that had been flushed by youth's petty alarms.

It did more than that; it gave her perspective. She laughed, a somewhat cynical note in her mirth, which Zenith had never heard from the pretty lips of Clancy Deane. With a charge of murder in prospect, she had let herself be concerned over such matters as the fit of a skirt, the thickness of the soles of her shoes, the casual opinions of staring persons whom she probably would never see again, much less know.

She had placed Grannis's thousand-dollar bill in her pocketbook. She clasped the receptacle tightly as she crossed Forty-second Street, battling, upon the sidewalks and curbs, with the throng of commuters headed for the Grand Central Station. For a moment she was occupied in making her way through it, but another block down the avenue brought her to a backwater in the six-o'clock throng. She sauntered more slowly now, after the fashion of people who are engaged in thought.

Her instinct had been correct--Grannis was dishonest. His gift of a thousand dollars proved that. But why the gift? He knew, of course, that she was aware of his partnership with Zenda. His statement that he didn't want Zenda to know that he had seen her had been proof of his assumption of her knowledge of the partnership that existed between himself and the famous director. Then why did he dare do something that indicated disloyalty to his associate?

Why hadn't she made him take the money back? He had every right to assume that she was as dishonest as she seemed. She had permitted him to leave without protest. Further, with the five-dollar bill that he had put upon the table, she had paid the check. She made a mental note of the amount of the bill. Three dollars; and she had given the waiter fifty cents. One dollar and seventy-five cents, then--an exact half of the bill she owed to Grannis. She wouldn't let such a man buy her tea. Also, the change from the five-dollar bill, one dollar and a half. Three dollars and a quarter in all. Plus, of course, the thousand.

She felt tears, vexatious tears, in her eyes. She was in a mood when it would have been easy for her to slap a man's face. She had never done such a thing in her life--at least, not since a little child, and then it had been the face of a boy, not a man. But now, once again, minor things assumed the ascendency in her thoughts.

For even Grannis's attempt to bribe her--that was what it was--was a minor matter compared to the Beiner murder. She wondered what the evening papers would have to say further about that mystery.

A newsboy crying an extra at Thirty-fourth Street sold her a paper. She wanted to open it at once, but, somehow, she feared that reading a newspaper on a cold wintry evening would be most conspicuous on Fifth Avenue.

Even when she had secured a seat on a down-town 'bus, she was half afraid to open the paper. But, considering that practically everyone else in the vehicle was reading, she might safely open hers.

She found what she was looking for without difficulty. Her eyes were keen and the name "Beiner" leaped at her from an inside page. But the reporters had discovered nothing new to add to the morning account. A theory, half-heartedly advanced by the police, that possibly Beiner had killed himself was contradicted by the findings of the coroner, but if the police had any inkling as to the identity of the murderer, they had not confided in the reporters.

That was all. She began to feel justified in her course. To have gone to the police would have meant, even though the police had believed her story, scandal of the most hideous sort. She would have been compelled to tell that Beiner had embraced her, had tried to kiss, had-- She remembered the look in the murdered man's eyes, and blushed hotly at the recollection. She would never have been able to hold her head up again. For she knew that the uncharitable world always says, when a man has insulted a woman, "Well, she must have done _something herself_ to make him act that way."

But now she supposed, optimistically, that there must have been, in Beiner's desk, scores of letters and cards of introduction. Why on earth should she have worried herself by thinking that Fanchon DeLisle's card of introduction would have assumed any importance to the police? No matter what investigation the police set on foot, it would hardly be based on the fact that they had found Fanchon's card.

So then, as she had avoided discovery by the mere fact of not having gone to the police, and had thus avoided scandal, and as there was no prospect of discovery, she could congratulate herself on having shown good sense. That she had lost a matter of six hundred and fifty dollars, deposited in the Thespian Bank, was nothing. A good name is worth considerably more than that. Further, she might reasonably dare to withdraw that money--what of it she needed, at any rate--from the bank now. If the police had not by this time discovered the connection between Fanchon's card of introduction and the woman who had been observed upon the fire-escape of the Heberworth Building, they surely never would discover it.

The pocketbook in her hand no longer burned her. There was now no question about her returning Grannis's bribe. In fact, there never had been any question of this. But Clancy was one of those singularly honest persons who are given to self-analysis. Few of us are willing to do that, and still fewer are capable of doing it.

She wondered if it would not be best to do now what she should have done last Tuesday morning. If she went to Zenda and told him what Fay Marston had said to her, she would be doing Zenda a great favor. She was human. She could not keep from her thoughts the possibility of Zenda's returning that favor. And the only return of that favor for which she would ask, the only one that she'd accept, would be an opportunity in the films. The career which she had come to New York to adopt, and which rude chance had torn away from her, was capable of restoration now.

She had fled from Zenda's apartment because scandal had frightened her. The presence of a graver scandal had almost obliterated her fear of the first. She'd go to Zenda, tell him that his partner was deceiving him, plotting against him.

She could hardly wait to take off her coat when she reached her room in Mrs. Gerund's lodging-house. Using some of the note-paper that sold in Zenith as the last word in quiet luxury, she wrote to Zenda:

MY DEAR MR. ZENDA: I was frightened Monday night at your apartment, and so I ran away. But to-day Mr. Grannis saw me and talked to me and gave me a thousand dollars. He said that Mr. Weber could not return to New York while there was any real evidence against him, and that, as I had been told by Miss Marston that she was really Mr. Weber's wife and that she helped him in his card-cheating, I must keep my mouth shut. He said that he didn't want you to know that he had met me. I think you ought to know that Mr. Grannis is on Mr. Weber's side, and if you wish me to, I will call and tell you all that I know.

Yours truly, CLANCY DEANE.

In the telephone book down-stairs, under "Zenda Films," she found the address of his office on West Forty-fifth Street, and addressed the letter there.

Then she wrote to Grannis. She enclosed the thousand-dollar bill that he had given her. Her letter was a model of simplicity.

MY DEAR MR. GRANNIS:

I think you made a mistake.

Yours truly, CLANCY DEANE.

She addressed the letter to Grannis in care of the Zenda Films and then sealed them both. As she applied the stamps to the envelopes, she wondered whether or not she should have signed her name in the Zenda letter, "Florine Ladue."

She had thoroughly convinced herself that she had nothing to fear from the use of that name. The frights of yesterday and to-day were vanished.

Still, she had dropped the name of "Florine Ladue" as suddenly as she had assumed it. Zenda would write or telephone for her. If she signed herself as "Florine Ladue," she'd have to tell Mrs. Gerand about her _nom de théâtre_. And Clancy was the kind that keeps its business closely to itself. She was, despite her Irish strain, distinctly a New England product in this respect--as canny as a Scotchman.

So it was as "Clancy Deane" that she sent the letters. She walked to the corner of Thompson Street, found a letter-box, and then returned to the lodging-house. Up-stairs again, she heard the clang of the telephone-bell below. Her door was open, and she heard Mrs. Gerand answering.

She heard her name called aloud. She leaped from the chair; her hand went to her bosom. Then she laughed. She'd given Miss Sally Henderson her address and Mrs. Gerand's 'phone-number to-day. She managed to still the tumultuous beating of her heart before she reached the telephone. Then she smiled at her alarms. It was Mrs. Carey.

"Do be a dear thing, Miss Deane," she said. "I'm giving an impromptu dance at the studio, and I want you to come over."

Clancy was delighted.

"What time?" she asked.

"Oh, come along over now and dine with me. My guests won't arrive until ten, but there's lots of fixing to be done, and you look just the sort of girl that would be good at that. Sally Henderson's been telling me what a wonder you are. Right away?"

"As soon as I can dress," said Clancy. Her step was as light as her heart as she ran up-stairs.

XII

On Monday night, Clancy had had her introduction to metropolitan night life. She didn't know, of course, what sort of party Sophie Carey would give. It probably would differ somewhat from Zenda's affair at the Château de la Reine. Probably--because Mrs. Carey was a painter of great distinction--there would be more of what Clancy chose to denominate as "society" present. Wherefore she knew that her gray foulard was distinctly not _au fait_.

Having hastily donned the gown, she scrutinized herself distastefully in the mirror, and was unhappy.

For a moment, she thought of telephoning Mrs. Carey and offering some hastily conceived excuse. Then she reflected. David Randall would perhaps be at the party. Clancy had had a unique experience as regards New York men thus far. They had proved inimical to her--all except Randall. He had shown, in the unsubtle masculine ways which are so legible to women, that he had conceived for her one of those sudden attachments that are flattering to feminine vanity. She wanted to see him. And she was honest enough to admit to herself that one of her reasons for wishing to see him had nothing to do with herself. She wanted to observe him with Sophie Carey, to watch his attitude toward her. For, vaguely, she had sensed that Sophie Carey was interested in young Randall. But she tried to put this idea, born of a strange jealousy that she hated to admit, away from her. Mrs. Carey had been an angel to her.

She shrugged. If they didn't like her, they could leave her. About her neck she fastened a thin gold chain, and carefully adjusted the little gold locket that contained a lock of her mother's hair, upon her bosom. She gave a last look at herself, picked up her cheap little blue coat, turned off the electric light, and ran lightly down-stairs.

Mrs. Gerand was in the front hall. Her sharp features softened as she viewed Clancy.

"Party?" she asked.

"Dinner--and dance," said Clancy.

Mrs. Gerand had come from the kitchen to answer the door-bell. She wore an apron, on which she now wiped her hands.

"It's snowing. You oughta have a taxi," she said.

Clancy's jaw dropped in dismay. Even including the change from the five-dollar bill that Grannis had left upon the table--she suddenly realized that she hadn't sent Grannis this money--she had only about seven dollars. Then her face brightened. She had convinced herself that on the morrow it would be perfectly safe to withdraw some of the funds that stood in the Thespian Bank to the credit of Florine Ladue.

And, anyway, it would have been poor economy to ruin the only pair of slippers fit for evening wear that she owned to save a taxi-fare. The snow was swirling through the street as Clancy ran down the steps to the waiting taxi-cab. It was, though she didn't know it, the beginning of a blizzard that was to give the winter of Nineteen-twenty a special prominence. In the cab Clancy wondered if the snow that had fallen upon her hair would melt and disarrange her coiffure. And when Mrs. Carey opened the door herself on Clancy's arrival at the studio-house in Waverly Place, she noticed the girl's hands patting the black mass and laughed.

"Don't bother about it, my dear," she advised. "I want to fix it for you myself after dinner."

She took Clancy's coat from her and hung it in a closet.

"Usually," she said, "I have a maid to attend to these things, but this is Thursday, and she's off for the day."

Clancy suddenly remembered Mrs. Carey's talk of the morning.

"But your cook----"

Mrs. Carey shrugged. They were shoulders well worth shrugging. And the blue gown that her hostess wore this evening revealed even more than the black gown of the Trevor last night.

"Still sick," laughed Mrs. Carey. "That's why I'm giving a party. I like to prove that I'm not dependent on my servants. And I'm not. Of course"--and she chuckled--"I'm dependent upon caterers and that sort of thing, but still--I deceive myself into thinking I'm independent. Self-deception is God's kindest gift to humanity."

She was even more beautiful than last night, Clancy thought. Then she felt a sudden sinking of the heart. If Sophie Carey, with her genius, her fame, her _savoir-faire_, her beauty, _wanted_ David Randall-- She shook her head in angry self-rebuke as she followed Mrs. Carey to the tiny dining-room.

Clancy had never seen such china or silver. And the dinner was, from grapefruit to coffee, quite the most delicious meal that Clancy had ever eaten. Her hostess hardly spoke throughout the dinner, and Clancy was ill at ease, thinking that Mrs. Carey's silence was due to her own inability to talk. The older woman read her thoughts.

"I'm frequently this way, Miss Deane," she laughed, as she poured coffee from a silver pot that was as exquisite in its simplicity of design as some ancient vase. "You mustn't blame yourself. Work went wrong to-day--it often does. I can't talk. I felt blue; so I telephoned half New York and invited it to dance with me to-night. And then I wanted company for dinner, and I picked on you, because my intimate friends won't permit me to be rude to them. And I knew you would. And I won't be any more. Have a cigarette?"

Clancy shook her head.

"I never smoke," she admitted.

"It's lost a lot of its fascination since it became proper," said Mrs. Carey. "However, I like it. It does me good. Drink? I didn't offer you a cocktail, because I ain't got none. I didn't believe it possible that prohibition would really come, and I was fooled. But I have some liqueurs?" Clancy shook her head. Mrs. Carey clapped her hands. "Don will adore you!" she cried. "He loves simplicity, primeval innocence--I hope you break his heart, Miss Deane."

"I hope so, too, if it will please you," smiled Clancy. "Who is Don?"

"My husband," said Mrs. Carey. "If I can't find some one new, fresh, for him to fall in love with, he'll be insisting on returning to me, and I can't have him around. I'm too busy."

Clancy gasped.

"You're joking, of course?"

Mrs. Carey's eyebrows lifted.

"Deed and deedy I'm _not_ joking," she said. "I haven't seen Don for seven months. Last time, he promised me faithfully that he'd go to Reno and charge me with desertion or something like that. I thought he'd done it. I might have known better. He's been paying attentive court to a young lady on Broadway. He telephoned me this afternoon, demanding my sympathy because the young woman had eloped with her press-agent. He insisted on coming down here and letting me hold his hand and place cold cloths on his fevered brow." She laughed and rose from the table. "I'm going to saw him off on you, Miss Deane."

Clancy was like a peony. Mrs. Carey came round the table and threw an arm about her.

"Don't take me too seriously, Miss Deane. I talk and I talk, and when one talks too much, one talks too wildly. Sometimes, when I think upon the foolishness of youth-- Don't you marry too soon, Miss Deane."

"I won't!" exclaimed Clancy.

Mrs. Carey laughed.

"Oh, but you will! But we won't argue about it." She stepped away a pace from Clancy. Her eyes narrowed as she stared. "I wonder," she said, "if you're a very--touchy--person."

Clancy hoped that she wasn't, and said so.

"Because," said Sophie Carey, "I've taken an--does it sound too patronizing? Well, no matter. I'm interested in you, Miss Deane. I want you to be a success. Will you let me dress you? Just for to-night? I have a yellow gown up-stairs. Let me see your feet."

Clancy surrendered to the mood of her hostess. She held out her gray-clad foot. Mrs. Carey nodded.

"The slipper will fit. Let's go up."

"Let's!" said Clancy excitedly.

Mrs. Carey's bedroom was furnished in a style that Clancy had never dreamed of. But the impression of the furnishings, the curtains and rugs and lacy pillows--this vanished before the display that the closet afforded. Gown after gown, filmy, almost intangible in their exquisite delicacy-- She offered no objection as Sophie Carey unhooked her gray foulard. She slipped into the yellow-silk dress with her heart beating in wild excitement.

In the mirror, after yellow stockings and slippers to match, with bright rhinestone buckles, had been put on, she looked at herself. She blushed until her bosom, her back even, were stained. What _would_ they think in Zenith? She turned, and, by the aid of a hand-mirror, saw her back. A V ran down almost to the waist-line.

"Satisfied?" asked Mrs. Carey.

Clancy ran to her hostess. She threw her arms round Sophie Carey's neck and kissed her. Mrs. Carey laughed.

"That kiss, my dear, is for yourself. But I thank you just the same."

Down-stairs, the door-bell tinkled.

"You'll have to answer it," said Mrs. Carey.

XIII

The opened door admitted more than David Randall. It let in a snowy gust that beat upon Clancy's bosom, rendering her more conscious than even a masculine presence could that the dress she wore was new to her experience. Randall was almost blown through the doorway. He turned and forced the door closed. Turning again, he recognized Clancy, who had retreated, a pink picture of embarrassment, to the foot of the staircase.

"Do I frighten you?" he asked dryly.

Clancy recovered the self-possession that never deserted her for long.

"No one does that," she retorted.

"I believe you," said Randall. His good-humored face wore a slightly pathetic expression. If no man is a hero to his valet, still less is he to the woman for whom he has conceived a sudden devotion which is as yet unreturned.

Clancy dropped him a courtesy.

"Thank you," she said, "for believing me."

He moved toward her, holding out his big hands. Clancy permitted them to envelop one of hers. Randall bowed over it. His face, when he lifted it, was red.

Blushes are as contagious as measles. Clancy was grateful for the cry from above.

"Miss Deane," called Sophie Carey, "who is it?"

"Mr. Randall," Clancy called back.

"Send him into the dining-room. Tell him that there are no cocktails, but Scotch and soda are on the sideboard. Come up, won't you? And tell David to answer the door-bell."

Clancy turned to Randall. His mouth sagged open the least bit. He looked disappointed.

"Don't mind," she whispered. "We'll have it by and by."

"Have what?" he asked blankly.

"The _tête-à-tête_ you want." She laughed. Then she wheeled and ran up the stairs, leaving him staring after her, wondering if she were the sweetly simple country maiden that she had appeared last night, or a wise coquette.

Mrs. Carey, still in the bedroom, where she was, by twisting her lithe, luscious figure, managing to hook up her dress in the back, smiled at Clancy's entrance.

"Is he overwhelmed?" she asked.

Clancy grinned entrancingly. Then she became suddenly demure.

"He--liked me," she admitted.

"He would; they all would," said Mrs. Carey.

She managed the last hook as Clancy offered her aid. She glanced at herself in the mirror, wriggled until the blue frock set more evenly over the waist-line, then turned to Clancy.

"Your hair--I said I'd fix it. Come here," she commanded.

Meekly, Clancy obeyed.