Chapter XXX

Clancy was afraid--like every one else--of the forces of law and order. She was afraid of that menacing thing which we call "society." To feel that society has turned against one, and is hunting one down--that is the most terrible fear of all. Clancy had undergone that fear during the past week. Panic had time and again assailed her.

But the panic that gripped her now was different. It was the fear of bodily injury. And, because Clancy had real courage, the color came back into her cheeks as swiftly as it had departed. More swiftly, because, with returning courage, came anger.

Clancy was not a snob; she would never be one. Yet there is a feeling, born of legitimate pride, that makes one consciously superior to others. Clancy held herself highly. A moment ago, she had been dreaming, triumphantly, of a man immeasurably superior in all ways to these two men who detained her. That this man should anticipate seeing her--and she knew that he did--raised her in her own self-esteem. That these two men here dared stop her progress, for any reason whatsoever, lowered her.

She was decent. These two men were not. Yet one of them held her horse's head, and the other hand was stretched out toward her. They dared, by deed and verbal implication, to threaten her. Her pride, just and well founded, though based on no record of material achievement, would have made her brave, even though she had lacked real courage. Although, as a matter of fact, it is hard to conceive of real courage in a character that has no pride.

Carey's left hand was closing over her right forearm. With the edge of her right hand, Clancy struck the contaminating touch away. She was a healthy girl. Hours of tobogganing to-day had not exhausted her. The blow had vigor behind it. Carey's hand dropped away from her. With her left hand, Clancy jerked the reins taut. A blow of the whip would have made Garland relinquish his grasp of the animal. But Clancy did not deliver it then.

No man, save Beiner, had ever really frightened her. And it had not been fear of hurt that had animated her sudden resistance toward the theatrical agent; it had been dread of contamination. She had been born and bred in the country. In Zenith, the kerosene street-lamps were not lighted on nights when the moon was full. Sometimes it rained, and then the town was dark. Yet Clancy had never been afraid to walk home from a neighbor's house.

So now, indignant, and growing more indignant with each passing second, she made no move toward flight. Instead, she asked the immemorial question of the woman whose pride is outraged.

"How dare you?" she demanded.

Carey stared at her. He rubbed his forearm where the hard edge of her palm had descended upon it. His forehead, Clancy could vaguely discern, in the light that the snow reflected from a pale moon, was wrinkled, as though with worry.

"Some wallop you have!" he said. "No need of getting mad, is there?"

Had Clancy been standing, she would have stamped her foot.

"'Mad?' What do you mean by stopping me?" she cried.

"'Mean?'" Behind his blond mustache the weakness of Carey's mouth was patent. "'Mean?' Why--" He drew himself up with sudden dignity. "Any reason," he asked, "why I shouldn't stop and speak to a friend of my wife's?"

Suddenly Clancy wished that she had lashed Garland with the whip, struck the horse with it, and fled away. She realized that Carey was drunk. He was worse than drunk; he was poisoned by alcohol. The eyes that finally met hers were not the eyes of a drunkard temporarily debauched; they were the eyes of a maniac.

Her impulse to indignation died away. She knew that she must temporize, must outwit the man who stood so close to where she sat. For she realized that she was in as great danger as probably she would ever be again.

Danger dulls the mind of the coward. It quickens the wit of the brave. The most consummate actress would have envied Clancy the laugh that rang as merrily true as though Carey, in a ballroom, had reminded her of their acquaintance and had begged a dance.

"Why, it's _you_, Mr. Carey! How silly of me!"

Carey stepped back a trifle. His hat swung down in his right hand, and he bowed, exaggeratedly.

"'Course it is. Didn't you know me?"

Clancy laughed again.

"Why should I? I never expected to find you walking along a road like this."

"Why shouldn't you?" Carey's voice was suddenly suspicious. "Y' knew I was coming up here, didn't you?"

"Why, no," Clancy assured him. "You see Dutchess County doesn't mean anything to me. Mrs. Carey said that you were going to Dutchess County, but that might as well have been Idaho for all it meant to me. Where is Mrs. Carey?" he asked.

"Oh, she's all right. Nev' min' about her." He swayed a trifle, and seized the edge of the sleigh for support. "Point is"--and he brought his face nearer to hers, staring at her with inflamed eyes--"what are you doin' up here if you didn't know I was here?"

"Visiting the Walbroughs," said Clancy. She pretended to ignore his tone.

"Huh! Tell me somethin' I don't know," said Carey. "Don't you suppose I know _that_? Ain't Sam and I been watchin' you tobogganing with that fat old Walbrough dame all afternoon?"

"Why didn't you join us?" asked Clancy.

"Join you? Join you?" Carey's eyes attempted cunning; they succeeded in crossing. "Thass just _it_! Didn't want to join you. Didn't want you to sus--suspect--" His hand shook the sleigh. "You come right now and tell me what you doin' here?"

"Why, I've told you!" said Clancy.

"Yes; you've _told_ me," said Carey scornfully. "But that doesn't mean that I believe you. Where you going now?"

"To the railroad station," Clancy answered.

"What for?" demanded Carey.

Clancy's muscles tightened; she sat bolt upright. No _grande dame_'s tones could have been icier.

"You are impertinent, Mr. Carey."

"'Impertinent!'" cried Carey. "I asked you a question; answer it!"

"To meet Mr. Vandervent," Clancy told him. She could have bitten her tongue for the error of her judgment.

Carey's hand let go of the side of the seat. He stepped uncertainly back a pace.

"What's he doing up here? What you meeting him for? D'ye hear that, Garland?" he cried.

The elevator-man of the Heberworth Building still stood at the horse's head. He was smoking a cigarette now, and Clancy could see his crafty eyes as he sucked his breath inward and the tip of the cigarette glowed.

"Ain't that what I been tellin' you?" he retorted. "Didn't Spofford go into your house yesterday and stay there with her an hour or so? Wasn't I watchin' outside? And ain't he laid off her? Didn't he tell me to keep my trap closed about seein' her go to Beiner's office? Ain't he workin' hand in glove with her?"

Carey wheeled toward Clancy.

"You hear that?" he demanded shrilly. "And still you try to fool me. You think I killed Beiner, and--" His voice ceased. He licked his lips a moment. When he spoke again, there was infinite cunning in his tone.

"You don't think anything foolish like that, now, do you?" He came a little closer to the sleigh. His left hand groped, almost blindly, it seemed to Clancy, for the edge of the seat again. "Why, even if Morris and I did have a little row, any one that knows me knows I'm a gentleman and wouldn't kill him for a little thing like his saying he----"

"Lay off what he said and you said," came the snarling voice of Garland. "Stick to what you intended saying."

"Don't use that tone, Garland," snapped Carey. "Don't you forget, either, that I'm a--I'm a--gentleman. I don't want any gutter-scum dicta--dictating to me." He spoke again to Clancy. "You're a friend of my wife," he said. "Just wanted to tell you, in friendly way, that friend of my wife don't mean a single thing to me. I want to be friendly with every one, but any one tries to put anything over on me going to get theirs. 'Member that!"

"Aw, get down to cases!" snarled Garland. There was something strange in the voice of the man at the horse's head. There was a snarling quaver in it that was not like the drunken menace of Carey.

Suddenly Clancy knew; she had never met a drug fiend in her life--and yet she knew. Also, she knew that what Don Carey, even maniacally drunk, might not think of doing, the undersized elevator-man from the Heberworth Building would not hesitate to attempt.

Common sense told her that these two men had stopped her only for a purpose. They had watched her to-day. They knew that she was on her way to meet Philip Vandervent. They were reading into that meeting verification of their suspicions.

And they were suspicious, because--she knew why. Carey had killed Beiner. Garland knew of the crime. Garland had blackmailed Carey; Garland feared that exposure of Carey would also expose himself as cognizant of the crime. So they were crazed, one from drink, the other from some more evil cause. No thought of risk would deter them. It was incredible that they would attack her, and yet----

"Now, listen, lady," came the voice of Garland: "We don't mean no harm to you. Get me?"

Incredibly, crazed though the man's voice was, Clancy believed him.

"What do you mean?" she demanded.

"We just want a little time, Carey and me. We want you to promise to keep your mouth shut for a week or so; that's all. Your word'll be good with us."

Again Clancy believed him. But now she was able to reason. She believed Garland, because he meant what he said. But--would he mean what he said five minutes from now? And, then, it didn't matter to her whether or not the man would mean it five years from now. He was attempting to dictate to her, Clancy Deane, who was on her way to meet Philip Vandervent, she who had received flowers from Philip Vandervent only yesterday.

Vandervent was a gentleman. Would he temporize? Would he give a promise that in honor he should not give?

Where there had been only suspicion, there was now certainty. She _knew_ that Don Carey had killed Morris Beiner. On some remote day, she would ponder on the queer ways of fate, on the strange coincidences that make for what we call "inevitability." With, so far as she knew, no evidence against him, Don Carey had convicted himself.

He was a murderer. By all possible implication, Carey had confessed, and Garland had corroborated the confession. And they asked her to become party to a murder!

She would never again be as angry as she was now. It seemed to her inflamed senses that they were insulting not merely herself but Vandervent also. They were suggesting that she was venal, capable of putting bodily safety above honesty. And, in belittling her, they belittled the man who had, of all the women in the world, selected her. For now, in the stress of the moment, it was as though Vandervent's flowers had been a proposal. She fought not merely for herself, but, by some queer quirk of reasoning, for the man that she loved.

Her left hand held whip and reins. She dropped the reins, she rose to her feet and lashed savagely at Garland's head. She heard him scream as the knotted leather cut across his face. She saw him stagger back, relinquishing his hold of the bridle. She turned. Carey's two hands sought for her; his face was but a yard away, and into it she drove the butt of the whip. He, too, reeled back.

Her hand went above her head and the lash descended, swishingly, upon the side of the horse. There was a jerk forward that sat her heavily down upon the seat. A sidewise twist, as the animal leaped ahead, almost threw her out of the sleigh. She gripped at the dashboard and managed to right herself. And then the sleigh went round a bend in the road.

The snow was piled on the left-hand side. The horse, urged into the first display of spirits that, probably, he had shown in years, bore to the left. The left runner shot into the air. Clancy picked herself out of a snow-drift on the right-hand side as the horse and sleigh careened round another turn.

For a moment, she was too bewildered to move. Then she heard behind her the curses of the two men. She heard them plunging along the heavy roadway, calling to each other to make haste.

She was not panicky. Before her was a narrow roadway, branching away from the main highway. Up it she ran, as swiftly as her heavily-shod feet--she wore overshoes that Mrs. Hebron had pressed upon her--could carry her over the rough track.

Round a corner she glimpsed lights. A house stood before her. She raced toward it, her pace slackening as a backward glance assured her that Garland and Carey must be pursuing the empty sleigh, for they certainly were not following her.

But the horse might stop at any moment. He was an aged animal, probably tired of his freedom already. Then the two men would turn, would find her tracks leading up this road. She refused to consider what might happen then. One thing only she knew--that she had justified herself by refusing to treat with them. It was an amazingly triumphant heart that she held within her bosom. She felt strangely proud of herself.

Across a wide veranda she made her way. She rang a door-bell, visible under the veranda-light. She heard footsteps. Now she breathed easily. She was safe. Carey and Garland, even though they discovered her tracks, would hardly follow her into this house.

Then the door opened and she stood face to face with Sophie Carey.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Mrs. Carey held out her hand.

"Why, Miss Deane!" she gasped.

Perfunctorily Clancy took the extended fingers. She stepped inside.

"Lock the door!" she ordered.

Sophie Carey stared at her. Mechanically she obeyed. She stared at her guest.

"Why--why--what's wrong?" she demanded. Her voice shook, and her eyes were frightened.

Clancy's eyes clouded. She wanted to weep. Not because of any danger that had menaced her--that might still menace her--not because of any physical reaction. But Sophie Carey had befriended her, and Sophie Carey was in the shadow of disgrace. And she, Clancy Deane, _must_ tell the authorities.

"Your husband----" she began.

Mrs. Carey's face hardened. Into her eyes came a flame.

"He--he's dared to----"

There was a step on the veranda outside. Before Clancy could interfere, Sophie had strode by her and thrown open the door. Through the entrance came Carey, his bloodshot eyes roving. In his hand he held a revolver.