Part 9

But she had no chance to "vamp" Vandervent. A Paul Jones was in full swing as they reached the studio, and Judge Walbrough took her from Vandervent after a half-dozen bars had been played. From him she went to Mortimer, the illustrator, and from him to Darnleigh, the poet, and from him to Cavanagh, the millionaire oil-man, the richest bachelor in the world, Judge Walbrough informed her, in a hoarse whisper meant to reach the ears of Cavanagh.

And then Mrs. Carey announced that the storm was increasing so savagely that she feared to detain her guests any longer lest they be unable to reach their homes. There was much excitement, and several offers to take Clancy home. But Mrs. Carey came to her.

"I want you to stay with me, Miss Deane. Please!" she added, in a whisper. Clancy thought there was appeal in her voice. She said that she would. Whereas Randall looked savage, and Vandervent downcast. Which looks made Clancy's heart sing. In this laughing crowd, under these lights, with the jazz band only a moment stilled, it was absurd to suppose that she was really in danger from Vandervent or any one else. Wasn't she innocent of any wrong-doing?

Up and down, down and up! The Clancys of this world are always so. Which is why they are the best beloved and the happiest, all things considered.

She was properly remote and cool to both her suitors, as she called them to herself. Modesty was not her failing.

XV

The room into which Sophie Carey showed Clancy was smaller than her hostess' bedroom, but, in its way, just as exquisite. It made Clancy think--with its marvelous dressing-table, divided into two parts, the mirror between them, its soft rugs, its lacy covers on the bed--of pictures in magazines devoted to the home. It brought, somehow, to a focus, certain uneasy thoughts of the past day. So that her face was troubled when, having donned a wonderful nightgown that Mrs. Carey had lent her, and having put over this a fleecy dressing-gown, she turned to receive her hostess, who was similarly attired. Mrs. Carey pulled up a chair and sank into it.

"You're nervous," she announced.

Clancy shrugged faintly. If Sophie Carey knew just what Clancy had to be nervous about!

"No; I've been wondering," she replied.

"Wondering what?" asked Mrs. Carey.

Clancy's forehead puckered.

"About all this," she replied.

She waved a hand vaguely about the little room. Sophie Carey laughed.

"Like it?" she asked languidly. "Care to live here?"

Clancy stared at her.

"'Live here?'" she demanded incredulously.

"Why not?"

"Why should I?" countered Clancy.

"I like you," Mrs. Carey said. "I think we'd get on well together."

Clancy frowned.

"Why, I couldn't begin to pay----"

"No one said anything about paying," interrupted Mrs. Carey.

"But I couldn't--I never accepted----" Clancy was prim.

Mrs. Carey laughed.

"You'll get over that, I fear. Now, as for the expense--if you feel that way, we'll arrange what's fair."

"You really want me?" said Clancy.

"I told you earlier this evening that I liked success. Well, I like to protégé success. You'll be a success. You're practically one already. With Phil Vandervent interested and the Walbroughs enthusiastically enlisted on your side--It was rather hard on David to-night, wasn't it?"

Clancy blushed.

"'Hard?'"

Mrs. Carey smiled.

"He had an open face, poor David! It tells what is in his heart quite plainly. Oh, well, David is a remarkable youth in lots of ways, but Phil Vandervent--he's a Vandervent."

"You don't really think, can't imagine--" Clancy paused, dazed at the possibilities.

"Why not? Three Vandervents have married chorus-girls. You're a lady, my dear. Phil could do a lot worse. And you could hardly hope to do better."

Clancy shook her head.

"That isn't the career I came to New York to find."

Mrs. Carey chuckled.

"None of us find the career we were looking for. Half the bankers in the world planned to be authors. Half the authors planned to be bankers. And there you are! You'll live here?"

The offer opened up opportunities undreamed of by Clancy. To be chaperoned, guided, protégé'd by a woman like Sophie Carey! She had come to New York intent on making financial and, secondarily, of course--Clancy was young--artistic success. To have a vista of social achievement placed before her enraptured eyes----

"It would be pretty hard," she said naïvely, "to give up a thing like this, wouldn't it? I mean--pretty clothes, a place to live in that was beautiful. I stayed to-night because you wanted me to. But I was wondering. I can see why girls--slide down. And I don't think it's because they want what they haven't got; it's more because they can't give up what they have. Isn't it?"

"It sounds convincing," admitted Mrs. Carey. She sighed. "Well, we're going to be friends, anyway, my dear. It was good of you to spend the night here. I--Donald didn't drop in as he'd threatened, and I'm lonesome, and--blue." She rose suddenly. "I'm keeping you up. It isn't fair." She walked toward the door and turned. "Do you know why I really asked you to stay? Because I saw that something was on your mind, my dear. And I didn't want you to do anything foolish."

"'Foolish?'" Clancy stared at her.

"David Randall would have insisted on taking you home. And--if he'd proposed sudden marriage, what would you have done?"

"'Marriage?'"

"That's what I said," said Mrs. Carey. "You're nervous, a stranger, and--I like you, little girl. I want you to have a fair chance to make up your mind."

"But I wouldn't have--why, it's absurd!" said Clancy.

Her hostess shrugged.

"My third night in New York, I went to a dance. I was terribly depressed. And a boy had conceived the same sudden sort of attachment for me that David has conceived for you. Only one thing saved me from making a little idiot of myself--not a minister would marry us without a license. I'm confessing a lot, my dear. Good-night," she ended abruptly.

Alone, Clancy slipped out of the pretty dressing-gown and got into bed. She could not doubt Sophie Carey's sincerity. Yet how absurd the woman was in thinking that she and David-- She wondered. Suppose that Randall _had_ proposed--in one of her reactions from bravado to fear. To have a man to help her fight her battle, to extricate her from the predicament into which her own frightened folly had hurried her! Sleepily, she decided that Sophie Carey was a wonderful friend. Also, she decided that Clancy Deane wasn't much of an actress. If _every one_ guessed that she was worried----

Once, during the night, she half wakened. She thought that she'd heard the door-bell ringing. But she slipped into unconsciousness again almost at once. But in the morning she knew that she had not been mistaken. For Sophie Carey woke her up, and Clancy saw a face that was like a blush-rose.

"Miss Deane, you must wake up and meet him before he goes."

"Before who goes?" demanded Clancy.

Sophie Carey's face was like fire.

"Don. He came last night after all--late, and he isn't going to get a divorce, because I won't let him." There was fiery pride and touchingly soft self-abasement in her voice. "We've made it up. It was all my fault, anyway."

Clancy, as she bathed and dressed, shook her head wonderingly. Mrs. Carey's life was almost as kaleidoscopic as her own.

She put on the gray foulard and descended, shortly, to the dining-room. There she met Donald Carey. Weak-mouthed, its selfishness was partly hidden by a short mustache, blond. If Clancy hadn't heard something of him, she'd not have known, at first, the essential meanness of his nature. Undoubtedly he had helped himself from one of the decanters on the sideboard, for his nerves were well under control, and Clancy gathered, from his own somewhat boastful remarks, that he'd been intoxicated for the better--or worse--part of the week.

Last night, Sophie Carey had been so attracted by Clancy that not only did she wish to protégé her but wished to support her. Her offer, last night, had meant practically that. But events had transpired, Mrs. Carey was no longer, in effect, a widow. She was a married woman again--pridefully so. Her air of dependence half sickened Clancy. A woman of prestige, ability, and charm, she was a plaything of the momentary whim of the man whose name she bore. Last night independent, mistress of her own destiny, this morning she was an appanage. And how could Sophie Carey respect this weak sot?

But she had more to think about than the affairs of Sophie Carey, no matter how those affairs might affect herself. Few persons, no matter how temperamentally constituted, are nervous on first waking in the morning. They may be cranky and irritable, but not nervous. So Clancy, who had no irritation in her system, was calm until after breakfast. Then she began to fret. This was the day! Assistant District Attorney Philip Vandervent would receive an answer to his telegram to Fanchon DeLisle. He would learn that the real name of the woman who had borne Fanchon's card of introduction to the office of Morris Beiner was Clancy Deane. Her arrest was a matter of--hours, at the outside.

She felt like one condemned, with the electric chair round a turn in the corridor. Of course, she assured herself, the police must believe her story. But even if they did, gone was her opportunity for success. She would be the distasteful figure in a great scandal. Her breakfast was an unsubstantial meal. But her hostess did not notice. She was too intent on seeing that her husband's coy appetite was tempted.

Suddenly, Clancy felt a distaste for herself--a distaste for being protégé'd, for having a patroness. Sophie Carey had taken a liking to her. Sophie Carey had wished to do this and that and the other thing for her. Now Sophie Carey was by the way of forgetting her existence. She accepted the offer of her hostess' car to take her home, but gave vague replies to Sophie's almost equally vague remarks about when they must see each other again. It had been kind of Mrs. Carey to invite her to spend the evening, but it had been a little too much like playing Destiny. Suppose that Randall had proposed and that Clancy had, in a moment of fright, accepted him. It would have been her own business, wouldn't it?

She was almost sullen when she reached Washington Square. Up-stairs in her dingy room, she fought against tears. She had voiced a great truth, without being aware of it, last night, when she had said that what made girls slide down-hill was the having to give up what they had, not the desire for possession of those things which they'd never had.

She almost wished that Sophie Carey had not weakly surrendered to her husband's first advances. Clancy might have been installed in the studio home on Waverly Place, half-mistress of its comforts, its charms--a parasite! That's what she had been by way of becoming within a week of her arrival in the city where she had hoped, by the hardest sort of work, to make a place for herself. Well, that was ended. Why the fact that Sophie Carey had taken back her errant husband should have affected Clancy's attitude toward life and the part she must play in it is one of the incomprehensible things of that strange thing which we call "character."

Yet it had done so. Perhaps, after all, because it had shown Clancy how little dependence must be placed on other people. Not that she felt that Sophie Carey would not be friendly to her, but that Sophie Carey's interest would now be, for a while, at any rate, in the husband to whom she surrendered so easily. And by the time that Sophie had rid herself again of Donald Carey, Clancy would have been forgotten.

Forgotten! As, clad in the storm-overshoes that were necessities in Zenith, she braved the drifts of Washington Square on her way to the 'bus, she laughed wryly. Forgotten! Possibly, but not until her name had been blazoned in the press as a murderess----

Sally Henderson was not at the office when Clancy arrived there. She telephoned later on that the storm was too much for her, and that she would remain at home all day. She told young Guernsey to instruct Clancy in the routine matters of the office.

By one o'clock, Clancy had begun to understand the office machinery. Also, she was hungry, and when Guernsey announced that he was going out to luncheon, Clancy welcomed the cessation of their activities. She had been too apathetic to wonder why she had not heard from Zenda, and was amazed when, just as she had buttoned her coat, the girl clerk summoned her to the telephone.

"Miss Deane? This is Zenda talking. I got your letter. Can I see you right away?"

Clancy vaguely wondered where Zenda had procured her working-address. She had mentioned it this morning, after changing her dress, to Mrs. Gerand, but Mrs. Gerand had been a bit frigid. Mrs. Gerand did not approve of young lodgers of the female sex who spent the nights out. Clancy didn't believe that Mrs. Gerand had heard her. However, inasmuch as Zenda telephoned, the landlady must have heard her lodger's business address.

"Yes," she answered.

It was the beginning of the end. Zenda would believe probably about her connection with Fay Marston and Weber, but he'd perhaps know that Florine Ladue had been in Beiner's office. She shook her head savagely. As on Wednesday, when she'd read of Beiner's murder, she'd been unable to think clearly, her brain now wandered off into absurdities.

For it didn't matter about Zenda. Philip Vandervent had wired Fanchon DeLisle. What did Zenda matter? What did anything matter?

"Can you come over to my office, Miss Deane?"

"Yes," she replied.

"I'll be waiting for you," said Zenda.

She hung up the receiver. She shrugged her shoulders, and, telling the telephone clerk that she was going out to luncheon, left the office.

XVI

Zenda Films, Incorporated, occupied the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth floors of the newly named--though Clancy didn't know it--Zenda Building. In the lobby was a list of the building's tenants, and it stated that the executive offices of Zenda Films were on the tenth floor.

An office-boy heard her name, asked if she had an appointment, and reluctantly, upon her stating that she had, turned toward an inner room, casting over his shoulder the statement that he didn't think Mr. Zenda was in.

But from the room toward which he was making his sullen way--that sullen way peculiar to office-boys--emerged a tall young man, garbed in the height of Broadway fashion. He advanced beamingly to Clancy.

"Miss Deane? Please come right in."

Clancy followed him through the door, across an inner room, and into a further chamber beyond. And the instant she was inside that second room, Clancy knew that she had been a gullible fool, for instead of Zenda, she beheld Grannis.

But what was somehow more terrifying still, she saw beside Grannis, his thick features not good-humored to-day, the face of Weber. She didn't scream--Clancy was not the sort who would use valued and needed energy in vocalities--she turned. But the tall youth had deftly locked the door behind her. He faced her with a triumphant grin, then stepped quickly to one side; the key which he had been holding in his hand he transferred to the hand of Grannis, who put it, with an air of grim finality, into his trousers pocket.

Clancy knew when she was beaten, knew, at least, when the first round had gone against her. She did the one thing that rendered uncertain the mental attitudes of her captors. She walked coolly to a chair and sat.

Grannis, expecting to see a girl reduced by fright to hysteria, eyed her bewilderedly. He had intended to be calm, intending, by calm, to convince Clancy that her danger was the greater. Now he lapsed, at the start, into nervous irritation, the most certain sign of indecision.

"Pretty cool about it, Miss Deane, aren't you?"

Clancy knew, somehow, that her cool desperation had given her, in some inexplicable fashion, an equally inexplicable advantage.

"Why not?" she asked.

Grannis' sallow face reddened.

"Will you feel that way when you see a policeman?" he demanded.

"You talked about policemen yesterday," said Clancy. "Don't talk about them to-day. I want to see Mr. Zenda," she added.

Weber interjected himself into the scene.

"I suppose you do. But you see, Florine, my little dear, we're seeing you first. And you're seeing us first."

"Pretty clever of you, writing to Zenda," said Grannis. "Never occurred to you that, getting a letter from you, I might run through Zenda's mail, looking for a note in the same handwriting, eh?"

"No-o, it didn't," said Clancy slowly. "Yet, I suppose I should have known that one kind of crook is another kind, too."

Grannis nodded his head. His underlip came forward a trifle.

"I'll give you credit; you're game enough. If being a fool can be called gameness. And any one that parts with a thousand dollars in this town is certainly a fool. But _that's_ all right. You probably don't need money. 'Little Miss Millions' is your name, I suppose."

Clancy yawned.

"I don't want to hurt your feelings, Mr. Grannis, but if you're being funny, I somehow can't get it."

"You will!" snapped Grannis. "Look here, Miss Deane! You're breaking into matters that don't concern you."

"I suppose I am," said Clancy.

She turned to Weber.

"I understood that New York's climate was bad for you," she said.

"Not half as unhealthy as it's going to be for you, Florine," he retorted. "You can make up your mind this minute. Either out of town for yours or the Tombs. Take your pick."

He had advanced threateningly until he stood over Clancy. Grannis pushed him aside.

"Let me handle her," he said. "Now, let's get down to cases, Miss Deane. Ike never done anything to you, did he?" Clancy shrugged. "'Course he didn't," said Grannis. "Then why not be a regular feller and keep out of things that don't concern you? Zenda never paid the rent for you, did he? No. We're willing to pay the rent and the eats, too, for a long while to come. That thousand is only a part. Listen: Ike got me on the long-distance last night. I told him it's O. K. to come back to town, that Zenda, with you keeping your face closed, couldn't do a thing to him. And then I get your letter this morning, and grab your note to Zenda. I find out that you're giving me the double cross. Well, we won't quarrel about it. Maybe you think Zenda is a heavier payer than I'd be. But you'd have to gamble on that, wouldn't you? You don't have to gamble on me. You take ten thousand dollars and leave town for just six months. That's all I ask. How about it?"

"I thought that you were Zenda's partner," said Clancy. Her pretty lips curled in the faintest contemptuous sneer.

"Never mind about that," snapped Grannis. "You're not talking to any one's partner, now. You're just talking to me."

"And me," put in Weber.

"And both of you want me to help you in swindling Mr. Zenda?" said Clancy.

Weber took a step toward her, his big fist clenched. Once again, Grannis intervened.

"Never mind the rough stuff, Ike!" he cried. "Let me handle her. Now, Miss Deane, are you going to listen to sense? Ike is back in town. He don't feel like skipping out every time you get a change of heart. And listen to this: Ike is a good-hearted guy, at that. All you can tell Zenda won't _prove_ anything. It'll just cause a lot of trouble--that's all. It'll make a bunch of scandal, you claiming that Fay Marston told you that Ike was gyping Zenda, but it won't _prove_ much."

"I don't suppose that your offering me money to leave town will prove anything, either," said Clancy.

"I'll just say you lie," said Grannis.

"I wonder which one of us Mr. Zenda will believe," retorted Clancy.

"I've never been in jail. I've got no criminal record," said Grannis.

"Neither have I!" cried Clancy.

Grannis smiled. It was a nasty smile, a smile that chilled Clancy. The advantage that she had felt was somehow hers seemed to have left her. She became suddenly just what she always was, a young girl, unwise in the ways of the metropolis. Courage, desperation made her forget this, but when courage ebbed, though ever so slightly, she became fearful, conscious of a mighty aloneness. She felt this way now.

For Grannis turned and walked to a farther door, opposite the one which the tall youth had locked. He opened it and cried out dramatically,

"Come in, Mrs. Weber!"

Clancy's fingers stopped drumming on the table. She eyed, wonderingly and fearfully, the tall figure of Fay Marston, who was cloaked in a short squirrel-skin jacket. Below that appeared the skirt of a dark-blue dress. Her shoes, despite the inclement weather, were merely slippers. Her blond hair was almost entirely hidden by a jaunty hat, also of a squirrel-skin. Altogether, she was an amazingly prosperous-seeming individual. And she was the sort of person to whom prosperity would always bring insolence of manner. Her expression now was languidly insulting as she looked at Clancy.

"This the woman?" asked Grannis.

Fay nodded.

"She's the one."

"No question about it, is there?" demanded Weber.

"Why, you know there isn't," said Fay, in apparent surprise. "I took her to Zenda's party at the Château de la Reine, and, later, up to his apartment. You was with us all the time."

"Yes," said Weber; "but two identifications are better than one, you know." He turned to Grannis. "You might as well call him in," he said.

Grannis had been standing by the door. He swung it wide, and called,

"Come in, officer."

Clancy's fingers clenched. It seemed to her like a scene in a play or a moving picture--Fay's identification of her, Grannis' dramatic manner at the door, and now the entrance of a policeman.

Grannis pointed to Clancy.

"Arrest her, officer!" he cried.

The uniformed man moved toward Clancy. She shrunk away from him.

"What for?" she cried.

"You'll find out soon enough," said the policeman, with a grin.

Fay Marston laughed shrilly.

"Ain't that like a thief, though? Trust her kind to have nerve!"

"'Thief!'" Clancy stared at her.

"Thief's what I said, and it's what I mean, too."

It was too absurd! Had the charge been that of murder, Clancy would not have laughed. That charge would soon be made against her. But, until it was----

"What am I supposed to have stolen?" Clancy asked.

"You ain't _supposed_ to have stolen anything," said Weber. "You're _known_ to have stolen a pearl necklace from my wife."

"A pearl necklace," said Fay glibly. "She came into my room at the Napoli. I was packin', officer, gettin' ready to take a little trip with my husband. I asked her to pack the necklace and some other things for me. She said she'd put them in a bag. The necklace was missin' when I opened the bag next day."

Clancy laughed. It was ridiculous.

"You can't arrest me on a story like that!" she cried.

"Not if we produce the pawnbroker where you pawned the pearls?" sneered Weber.

"You can't," said Clancy.

Yet, as she looked from his sneering face to the threatening eyes of Grannis, she wondered whether or not they could. She had read of "frame-ups." Was it possible that she was to be the victim of one?

"Like to talk it over a bit?" asked Grannis. She made no verbal answer, but her expression was reply enough. "Wait in the next room, officer," said Grannis.

The policeman looked undecided.

"It ain't regular," he muttered.

"I know it isn't," said Grannis, "but--under the circumstances----"

"All right," said the officer.

He walked through the door, which Grannis closed after him. Then Zenda's sallow-faced partner came close to Clancy.