Chapter XXVI

Hand pressed against her bosom, Clancy stared into the dining-room. She could not breathe as she waited for Carey's reply to his visitor's charge. So Don Carey had possessed a key to the office of Morris Beiner! The theatrical man had been locked in his office when Clancy had made her escape from the room by way of the window. The door had not been forced. And Don Carey had possessed a key!

For a moment, she thought, with pity, of the woman up-stairs, the woman who had befriended her, whose life had been shadowed by her husband. But only for a moment. She herself was wanted for this murder; her eyes were hard as she stared into the room.

Carey's fingers reached out aimlessly. They fastened finally upon a half-drained glass.

"Who's going to believe that kind of yarn?" he demanded.

"I can prove it all right," said the other.

"Well, even if you can prove it, what then?"

His visitor shrugged.

"You seemed worried about it a minute ago," he said. "Oh, there ain't no use tryin' to kid me, I know what I know. It all depends on you who I tell it to. I ain't a mean guy." His voice became whining. "I ain't a trouble-maker. I can keep my trap closed as well as any one. When," he added significantly, "there's enough in it for me."

"And you think you can blackmail me?" demanded Carey. His attempt at righteous indignation sounded rather flat. The elevator-man lost his whine; his voice became sulkily hard.

"Sticks and stones won't break no bones," he said. "Call it what you please. I don't care--so long as I get mine."

Carey dropped his pretense of indignation.

"Well, there's no need of you shouting," he said. He rose to his feet, assisting himself with a hand on the edge of the table.

"My wife's up-stairs," he said. "No need of screaming so she'll be butting in again. Shut that door."

Clancy leaped back. She gained the stairs in a bound. She crouched down upon them, hoping that the banisters would shield her. But no prying eyes sought her out. One of the two men in the room closed the dining-room door.

For a minute after it was shut, Clancy remained crouching. She had to _think_. A dozen impulses raced through her mind. To telephone Vandervent, the judge? To run out upon the street and call for a policeman? As swiftly as they came to her, she discarded them. She had begun to glean in recent days something of what was meant by the word "evidence." And she had none against Carey. Not yet!

But she could get it! She _must_ get it! Sitting on the stairs, trembling--with excitement now, not fear--Clancy fought for clarity of thought. What to do? There must be some one correct thing, some action demanded by the situation that later on would cause her to marvel because it had been overlooked. But what was it?

She could not think of the correct thing to do. The elevator-man knew something. He was the same man who had identified her to Spofford, the plain-clothes man. The man assuredly knew the motive that lay behind the request for identification. And now, having told a detective things that made Clancy Deane an object of grave suspicion, the man was blandly--he was mentally bland, if not orally so--blackmailing Don Carey.

Yet Clancy did not disbelieve her ears merely because what she heard sounded incredible. Nor did she, because she believed that the elevator-man had proof of another's guilt, delude herself with the idea that her own innocence was thereby indisputably shown. Her first impulse--to telephone Vandervent--returned to her now. But she dismissed it at once, this time finally.

For a man who brazenly pointed out one person to the police while endeavoring to blackmail another was not the sort of person tamely to blurt out confession when accused of his double-dealing. She had nothing on which to base her accusation of Carey save an overheard threat. The man who had uttered it had only to deny the utterance. Up-stairs was Sophie Carey, torn with anguish, beaten by life and its injustices. The hardness left her eyes again. If she could only be sure that she herself would escape, she would be willing, for Sophie's sake, to forget what she had overheard.

She heard Sophie's voice whispering hoarsely to her from the landing above.

"Miss Deane, Miss Deane!" Then she saw Clancy. Her voice rose, in alarm, above a whisper. "Has he--did he--dare----"

Clancy rose; she ran up the stairs.

"No, no; of course not!" she answered. "I--I twisted my ankle." It was a kindly lie.

It was, Clancy thought, characteristic of Sophie Carey that she forgot her own unhappiness in sympathy for Clancy. The older woman threw an arm about the girl.

"Oh, my dear! You poor thing----"

"It's all right," said Clancy. She withdrew, almost hastily, from the embrace. Postpone it though she might, she was going to bring disgrace upon the name of Carey. She _had_ to--to save herself. She could not endure the other's caress now.

"Who was it?" asked Mrs. Carey.

Clancy averted her eyes.

"I don't know," she said. "I---- The door was closed."

"It doesn't matter," said the older woman. "I--I--I'm nervous. Don is so----" Her speech trailed away into a long sigh. The deep respiration seemed to give her strength. She straightened up. "I'm getting old, I'm afraid. I can't bear my troubles as easily as I used to. I want to force some one to share them with me. You are very kind, Miss Deane. Now----"

She had preceded Clancy into her bedroom. From a desk, she took a slip of paper and a ring from which dangled several keys.

"We're all ready to go," she said. "It only remains to check up my inventory. But I'm quite sure that we can trust you and Sally Henderson"--her smile was apparently quite unforced--"not to cheat us. If there are any errors in my list, Sally can notify me."

She handed Clancy the paper and key-ring. As she did so, the door-bell rang.

Almost simultaneously the door to the dining-room could be heard opening. A moment later, Carey called.

"Ragan's here," he shouted. His voice was surly, like that of a petulant child forced to do something undesirable. Clancy thought that there was more than that in it, that there was the quaver that indicates panic. But Mrs. Carey, who should have been sensitive to any vocal discords in her husband's voice, showed no signs of such sensitiveness.

"Ready in a moment. Send him up," she called.

Ragan was a burly, good-natured Irishman. He grinned at Mrs. Carey's greeting. Here was a servant who adored his mistress, Clancy felt.

"Ready to go to the country, Ragan?" asked Mrs. Carey.

The big man's grin was sufficient answer.

"Ragan," said Mrs. Carey to Clancy, "is the most remarkable man in the world. He can drive a car along Riverside Drive at forty-five miles an hour without being arrested, and he can wait on table like no one else in the world. How's Maria?" she asked him.

"Sure, she's fine," said Ragan. "She's at the station now."

"Where we'll be in ten minutes," said his mistress. She indicated several bags, already packed. Ragan shouldered them. He started down-stairs. Mrs. Carey turned to Clancy. "Hope an empty house doesn't make you nervous," she smiled.

Clancy shook her head. "I'll not be here long, anyway. And isn't your maid here?"

"I think she's gone by now," said Mrs. Carey. "But she'll sleep each night here--until you've found me a tenant. For that matter, she'll be back early this afternoon--to wash dishes and such matters." She was not a person to linger over departures. Her husband had sulkily donned hat and coat and was standing in the hall down-stairs, waiting for her.

So Mrs. Carey held out her hand to Clancy.

"Wish I could ask you to week-end with us sometime, but I don't suppose that the country, in winter-time, means anything in your young life." She seemed to put the statement as a question, almost pleadingly. Impulsively, Clancy answered her.

"Ask me sometime, and find out if it does."

"I'll do that," said Mrs. Carey. "Coming, Don," she called. Her hand clasped Clancy's a moment, and then she trotted down the stairs. The door banged behind them.

A thought came to Clancy. She raised her voice and called. But the door was thick. The Careys could not hear. Frightened, she raced down-stairs. As she passed the dining-room door, she glanced through the opening. Then fear died from her. She had been afraid that the elevator-man from the Heberworth Building still remained in the house. But, when she had seen him talking to Don Carey, his hat and coat were lying on a chair. They were gone now.

Still---- Sudden anger swept over her. This lying, blackmailing thing to frighten Clancy Deane? Anger made her brave to rashness. From the fireplace in the dining-room she picked up a short heavy poker. If he were lurking anywhere in this house, if Don Carey, fearful lest his wife note the sort of person who paid him morning visits, had hidden the man away, she, Clancy Deane, would rout him out. She'd make him tell the _truth_!

Through the dining-room, into the butler's pantry beyond, through the kitchen, to the head of the cellar stairs she marched, holding the poker before her. Her fingers found a switch: the cellar was flooded with light. Without the least timidity, Clancy descended.

But the elevator-man was not there. And as in this tiny house there was but one flight of stairs leading to the upper stories, Clancy knew that the man was not in the house. She suffered reaction. What might have been her fate had she found the man hiding here?

Like all women, Clancy feared the past more than the future. She feared it more than the present. She sank down upon the stairs outside the dining-room. Why, the man might have _shot_ her! What good would her poker have been, pitted against a revolver? And, with the Careys up in the country somewhere, she might have lain here, weltering in her gore--she'd read that somewhere, and grinned as she mentally said it.

Well, she might as well begin the inventory of Mrs. Carey's household effects. But she was not to begin it yet. Some one rang the door-bell.

No weakness assailed Clancy's knees now. Indeed, it never occurred to her that the caller might be any other than the post-man. And so she opened the front door and met the lowering gaze of Spofford, Vandervent's plain-clothes man.