Chapter XXIV

Vandervent entered the Walbrough living-room with a jerky stride that testified to his excitement. A dozen questions were crowded against his teeth. But, though the swift motor-ride down-town had not been too brief for him to marshal them in the order of their importance, he forgot them as he met Clancy's eyes.

They should have been penitent eyes; and they were not. They should have been frightened eyes; and they were not. They should have been pleading eyes; and they were not. Instead, they were mischievous, mocking, almost. Also, they were deep, fathomless. Looking into them, the reproach died out in Vandervent's own. The pleading that should have been in Clancy's appeared in Vandervent's, although he undoubtedly was unconscious of the fact.

On the way there, he had been aware of himself as a trained lawyer confronted with a desperate, a possibly tragic situation. Now he was aware of himself only as a man confronting a woman.

He acknowledged the presence of the Walbroughs and of Randall with a carelessness that seemed quite natural to the older people but which made Randall eye the newcomer curiously. In love himself, Randall was quick to suspect its existence in the heart of another man.

"So," said Vandervent, "you weren't joking with me Friday, eh, Miss Deane?"

She shook her head slowly. There was something in her manner that seemed to say to him that she had transferred her difficulties to him, and that, if he were half the man she believed him to be, he'd accept them ungrudgingly.

"Suppose I hear the whole story," suggested Vandervent.

Intently, he listened as, prompted by the judge when she slid over matters that seemed unimportant to her, she retold the tale of the past week. The judge took up the burden of speech as soon as she relinquished it.

"So you see, Vandervent, your job is to get hold of this elevator-man and persuade him that his identification is all wrong."

Vandervent pursed his lips; he whistled softly.

"I haven't as good a memory as I ought to have, Judge. I can't recall the exact penalty for interference with the course of justice."

Clancy's eyes blazed.

"Judge, please don't ask Mr. Vandervent to do anything wrong. I wouldn't have him take any risk. I----"

Vandervent colored.

"Please, Miss Deane! You should know that I intend--that I will do anything--I was intending to be a little humorous."

"No time for humor," grunted the judge.

Vandervent looked at Mrs. Walbrough. Her glance was uncompromisingly hostile. Only in Randall's eyes did he read anything approximating sympathy. And he resented finding it there.

"The--er--difficulties----" he began.

"Not much difficulty in shutting an elevator-boy's mouth, is there?" demanded the judge. "It isn't as though we were asking you really to interfere with the course of justice, Vandervent. You realize that Miss Deane is innocent, don't you?"

"Certainly," said Vandervent. "But--I'm an officer of the law, Judge."

"Does that mean that you won't help Miss Deane? Good God! You aren't going to let a young woman's name be dragged through a filthy mess like this, are you?"

"Not if I can help it," said Vandervent.

"That's better," grunted the judge. "But how do you expect to help it, though?"

"By finding the real murderer."

"When?" roared Walbrough. "To-day?"

Vandervent colored again.

"As soon as possible. I don't know when. But to shut up the boy--think it over, Judge. He works for the Vandervent estate, it's true. But I don't own his soul, you know. Think of the opportunities for blackmail we give him. It's impossible, Judge--and unnecessary. If Spofford goes to him again, it's the elevator-boy's word against yours. Worthless!"

"And you, of course, knowing that I lied, would feel compelled, as an officer of the law----"

"I'd feel compelled to do nothing!" snapped Vandervent. "Your word would be taken unreservedly by the district attorney's office. The matter ends right there."

"Unless," said the judge softly, "the boy goes to a newspaper. In which case, his charge and my alibi would be printed. And five directors of the Metals and Textiles Bank would immediately recollect that I had been present at a meeting on Tuesday afternoon between the hours of one and six. Likewise, thirty-odd ladies, all present at Mrs. Rayburn's bridge, would remember that my wife had been at Mrs. Rayburn's house all of Tuesday afternoon." He groaned. "I had to think of something, Vandervent. I told the first lie that popped into my head. Our alibi for Miss Deane will go crashing into bits once it's examined, once there's the least publicity. Publicity! That's all that Miss Deane fears, all that we fear for her. Scandal! We've got to stop that."

"Exactly; we _will_ stop it," said Vandervent. "There's a way." Oddly, he blushed vividly as he spoke. "I know of one way--but we won't dwell on that just now. I--I have a right--to suppress information that--that I don't think is essential to the enforcing of justice. I--I--if the suppressing of the elevator-man would work good for Miss Deane, I would see to his suppression. Because I know her to be innocent."

"Well, what are you going to do?" demanded the judge.

Vandervent shrugged.

"It's not an offhand matter, Judge. We must think."

They thought. But Clancy's thoughts traveled far afield from the tremendous issue that confronted her. Mentally, she was comparing Randall and Vandervent, trying to find out what it was in Randall that, during the past few hours, had depressed her, aroused her resentment.

"You see," said Vandervent finally, "the relations between the Police Department and the district attorney's office are rather strained at the moment. If the police should happen to learn, in any way, that we've been conducting an independent investigation into the Beiner murder and that we'd dropped it----"

"Where would they learn it?" asked the judge. His brusqueness had left him. With a little thrill that might have been amazement, Clancy noted that the few minutes' silence had somehow caused Judge Walbrough to drop into a secondary place; Vandervent now seemed to have taken command of the situation.

"Spofford," answered Vandervent.

"Would he dare?" asked the judge.

Vandervent laughed.

"Even the lowly plain-clothes man plays politics. There'll be glory of a sort for the man who solves the Beiner mystery. If Spofford finally decides that he is by way of being close to the solution, I don't believe that he can be stopped from telling it to the police or the newspapers."

"And you don't see any way of stopping Spofford?" asked the judge.

"He may have been convinced by your story," Vandervent suggested.

The judge shook his head.

"His conviction won't last."

Vandervent shrugged.

"In that case-- Well, we can wait."

Clancy interjected herself into the conversation.

"You won't really just simply wait? You'll be trying to find out who really killed Mr. Beiner?"

"You may be sure of that," said Vandervent. "You see"--and he shrugged again--"we become one-idea'd a bit too easily in the district attorney's office. It's a police habit, too. We know that a young woman had been in Beiner's office, that Beiner had had an engagement to take a young woman over to a film-studio. We discovered a card introducing a Miss Ladue to Beiner. From its position on Beiner's desk, we dared assume that the young woman of the studio appointment was this Miss Ladue. Our assumptions were correct, it seems. But we didn't stop at that assumption; we assumed that she was the murderess. We were wrong there."

Clancy's bosom lifted at his matter-of-fact statement. With so much evidence against her, and with this evidence apparently corroborated by her flight, it was wonderful to realize that not a single person to whom she had told her story doubted it.

"And, because we believed that we had hit upon the correct theory, we dropped all other ends of the case," continued Vandervent. "Now, with the case almost a week old--oh, we'll get him--or her--all right," he added hastily. "Only--the notoriety that may occur first----" He broke off abruptly.

Clancy's bosom fell; her hopes also. The palms of her hands became moist. In the presence of Vandervent, she realized more fully than ever what notoriety might mean. Vandervent sensed her horror.

"But I assure you, Miss Deane, that we'll avoid that notoriety. I know a way----"

"What?" demanded the judge.

"Well, we'll wait a bit," said Vandervent. "Meanwhile, I'm going to the office."

"On Sunday?" asked Mrs. Walbrough. Vandervent smiled faintly.

"I think I'll be forgiven--considering the cause for which I labor," he finished. He was rewarded by a smile from Clancy that brought the color to his cheeks.

And then, the blush still lingering, he left them. Walbrough escorted him to the door. He returned, a puzzled look upon his face.

"Well, I wonder what he means by saying that he knows a way to keep the thing out of the papers."

"You're an idiot!" snapped his wife "Why--any one ought to know what he means."

The judge ran his fingers across the top of his head.

"'Any one ought to know,' eh? Well, I'm one person that doesn't."

"You'll find out soon enough," retorted Mrs. Walbrough. She turned to Clancy. "Come along, dear; you must lie down."

Randall, whose silence during the past half-hour had been conspicuous, opened his mouth.

"Why--er----," he began.

But Mrs. Walbrough cut him off.

"You'll forgive Miss Deane, won't you?" she pleaded. "She's exhausted, poor thing, though she doesn't know it."

Indeed, Clancy didn't know it, hadn't even suspected it. But she could offer no protest. Mrs. Walbrough was dominating the situation as Vandervent had been doing a few moments ago. She found herself shaking hands with Randall, thanking him, telling him that her plans necessarily were uncertain, but adding, with the irrepressible Clancy grin, that, if she weren't here, she'd certainly be in jail where any one could find her, and bidding him good-by. All this without knowing exactly why. Randall deserved better treatment. Yet, queerly enough, she didn't want to accord it to him.

A little later, she was uncorseted and lying down in a Walbrough guest bedroom, a charming room in soft grays that soothed her and made her yearn for night and sleep. Just now she wasn't the least bit sleepy, but she yielded to Mrs. Walbrough's insistence that she should rest.

Mrs. Walbrough, leaving her guest, found her husband in his study; he was gravely mixing himself a cocktail. She surveyed him with contempt. Mildly he looked at her.

"What have I done now?" he demanded.

"Almost rushed that poor girl into a marriage," she replied.

"'Marriage?' God bless me--what do you mean?"

"Asking again and again what Phil Vandervent meant when he said that he knew a way to avoid publicity. And then you didn't have sense enough to edge young Randall out of the house. You let me be almost rude to him."

"Well, why should I have been the one to be rude? Why be rude, anyway? He's been darned nice to the girl."

"That's just it! Do you want her to keep thinking how nice he is?"

"Well, in the name of heaven, why not?" demanded her exasperated husband.

"Because he's not good enough for her."

"Why isn't he?"

"Because she can do better."

The judge drained his cocktail.

"Mrs. Walbrough, do you know I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about?"

"Of course you haven't! You'd have let her stay here and listen, maybe, to a proposal from that young man, and perhaps accept it, and possibly----"

"Peace!" thundered the judge. "No more supposes,' please. I'll not be henpecked in my own house."

She came close to him and put her arm about him.

"Where shall I henpeck you then, Tommy boy?" she asked.

"'Tommy boy! Tommy boy?' O my good Lord, what talk!" sputtered the judge. But he kissed her as she lifted her mouth to his.