In and Out

The Web

Just the manner of the man startled Anthony and caused him to hitch back in his chair and stare for an instant. Johnson Boller was not so affected.

"Say, what's the matter with you, Hitchin?" he asked. "Are you a plain nut?"

Hitchin snapped his fingers at him angrily and continued his stare at Anthony Fry.

"Well?" he said tensely.

"Well, upon my soul, Hitchin!" Anthony stammered. "I believe Boller's right!"

"Oh, no, you don't," Hobart Hitchin said quietly. "You know a great deal better and Boller knows a great deal better, but he has a good deal more self-control than you have. Fry, where is David Prentiss?"

"Gone home, of course!" Anthony snapped.

"When did he go?"

"What? Last night!"

"And can you give me an idea of the hour?"

"Oh—half-past twelve, perhaps."

"At half-past twelve last night, David Prentiss left this apartment. He went down in the elevator?"

"I suppose so."

"And—just be patient, Fry." Hitchin smiled disarmingly. "Did the young man wear from this apartment the clothes he wore into this apartment?"

It was perfectly apparent to Anthony that the wretched fool had taken what he fancied to be a scent of some sort; it was equally clear that, in his present state of mind, Anthony would answer perhaps three more questions and then, losing himself completely, would smash the flower-vase over Hobart Hitchin's shining bald head solely as salve for his nerves!

Doubtless the long coat and the down-pulled cap had started him off—they were sufficiently mysterious-looking to impress a less sensitive imagination than Hitchin's. Whatever troubled the crime specialist, David Prentiss would have to be lied out of here in detail, lied home and lied to bed.

"Hitchin," said Anthony, "Heaven alone knows what concern of yours it can be, but the Prentiss boy—the son of an old friend of mine who has seen better days—came back here with me last night for some things, cast-offs, I had promised his unfortunate father. We met him on the street on the way home."

"Just around the corner," supplied Johnson Boller, who was growing steadily more anxious to speak his mind to Anthony about the Mrs. Boller matter.

"And having come upstairs with us and having selected the things he thought his father would like best," Anthony went on, "they were wrapped in a bundle of ordinary brown paper, tied up with ordinary, non-mysterious, crime-proof string and carried out by David, who, I have no doubt at all, reached home within half an hour, gave the clothes to his father, said his prayers and went to bed without further ado. If there is anything else you'd like to know, ask!"

Hobart Hitchin had not blinked. Now he smiled strangely and shrugged his shoulders.

"At least," said he, "you have perfected the story, haven't you?"

"I——"

"And now," Mr. Hitchin broke in incisively, "let us consider the facts! We will take them, one by one, and I beg that you will listen. Item one: I sat in the lobby downstairs until seventeen minutes of one o'clock this morning, Fry. No David Prentiss passed me, going out. Nobody left this hotel with a bundle or a bag!"

"You didn't see him," Anthony said.

"Because he was not there! Listen, please, and do not interrupt, Fry. I like you, or I should not be here. I wish to help you, if such a thing is possible, or I should have gone at once to the police," said the remarkable Mr. Hitchin. "You, like many a man before you, forget perfectly plain details. In this case, you have forgotten that my apartment is directly beneath yours—that the elevators here have latticed gates, so that one can see from any floor whoever may be passing in one of the cars—that sound travels perfectly in this building when the street is quiet, as at night. So to get to item two. About two o'clock this morning there was the sound of a heavy fall in this very room!"

Johnson Boller was grasping the trend more rapidly than was Anthony, and he was growing less comfortable.

"I fell!" he said.

"Did you really?" asked the demon detective. "Yet—you're in that room, I take it? Yet you got out of bed immediately after and walked in here; I heard your step. Don't flush, Boller! It takes practice to carry out a thing of this kind and whatever the motive may have been, you gentlemen are not old hands. And so to item three: it must have been about four when a policeman came to this door. Why?"

"There was supposed to be a burglar here. It was a false alarm," Anthony said, less collectedly.

Hitchin lighted the pipe he had filled and smiled.

"That is the tale they tell in the office," he said. "I confess that that detail puzzles me and as yet I haven't had time to get inside information from my good friend our police captain. However, we can well call this detail immaterial and pass to item four."

He gazed into the blue cloud of smoke and smiled again.

"The woman in the case!" he said in a deep, bass voice.

"There was no woman!" Anthony exploded. "And——"

"The Frenchwoman, Fry!" Hitchin corrected.

"Well, she——"

"Don't explain her," said Hobart Hitchin. "Let us see just what happened when she was about. She came after daylight. She passed through the office downstairs so suddenly that nobody was able to stop her, and she knew where to come. She was in the elevator naming her floor to the man—who supposed her to have been passed by the office—perhaps two seconds after she entered the house itself. She came directly to this apartment, Fry, and almost immediately she burst into hysterical weeping!"

His eyes were boring again and Hobart Hitchin also pointed the stem of his pipe accusingly at Anthony.

"Fry," he said, "what did that girl see, evidently at the end of the corridor, which produced that outburst of grief?"

"Nothing," Anthony said thickly.

"There was nothing to cause her acute grief?"

"No, and——"

"Wait! She wept all the way down in the elevator; I saw her myself! She wept so violently when she reached the street that an officer approached her—and she fled from him and disappeared."

It was high time to say something and to say it well. Dignity had always served Anthony, and while it was an effort he eyed Hobart Hitchin coldly.

"Hitchin," said he, "it would be quite possible, believe me, to soothe your feverish mind by telling you the perfectly simple errand on which that girl came, but I'm damned if I'll do it! Some things are too ridiculous, and you're one of them. If there are any further questions you wish to ask about my personal affairs, will you please leave them unasked? And if there are other things over which you wish to rave, don't let me detain you here."

He fastened his best majestic gaze on Hobart Hitchin, yet Hitchin only laughed his low, sinister laugh.

"You're a curious customer, Fry," he said, leaning back comfortably. "I had hoped before this that your nerve would have broken and—however, listen to this little theory of mine. The boy knew something, I can't say what, about you, something which had to be suppressed at any cost. You brought him here, I can't say on what pretext, but the boy fancied that all was well. Perhaps you promised him money; I'm inclined to believe that, for the girl came, evidently by appointment, ready to travel. Doesn't take much deduction to guess that they were going to be married with the money you gave him, does it? She came and she saw what happened, and then——"

"Well, what had happened?" Anthony almost shouted.

"That's what I'm waiting for you to tell me, so that I can give you a helping hand," said the crime student. "And while I'm waiting, and while you're still plainly convinced that I know nothing at all, let me ask you one question again: did the Prentiss boy leave here with the clothes he wore when he entered?"

"Yes!" Anthony said wearily.

With a sudden startling slap, the fat brief-case was placed upon the table and its straps undone. And there was another slap and Hobart Hitchin cried:

"Then explain these, Fry! Explain these!"

There can be no denying that Anthony's mouth opened and that his eyes grew rounder. Before him, spread upon the table, lay David's trousers!

"Well, those—those——" he stammered. "Where did you get them?"

"From the dumbwaiter, where you placed them so very quietly, so very cautiously, so very early this morning!" said Hobart Hitchin, with his devilish laugh. "You even went so far as to run the thing down, so that it would be emptied at once, didn't you? But you didn't happen to look down! You didn't see me take the whole suit from the dumbwaiter as it passed my door."

He leaned back triumphantly and puffed his pipe and for a little there was a thick tangible silence in Anthony's living-room.

More than once, like most of us, Johnson Boller had wondered just what he would do if accused of a murder of which he was entirely innocent. In a fond and confident way he had pictured himself sneering at the captain of police, impressing him despite himself as Johnson Boller not only established his alibi in a few crisp sentences, but also directed the stupid detective force toward the true criminal.

At present, however, he discovered that he was downright scared. Unless one of them rose up and told about Mary and then called her in to verify the truth, it seemed that Hobart Hitchin, idiot though he might be, had established something of a case. And instead of sneering, Johnson Boller grew redder and redder, until Hitchin said:

"Ah, you know all about it, eh? I had wondered!"

"Well, cut out your wondering!" Johnson Boller said roughly. "Because——"

"I wouldn't talk now, if I were you," said Hitchin, kindly enough. "I'm devoting myself to Fry. Well, Fry?"

As yet Anthony had not found the proper line of speech.

"The boy, a stranger, comes here at midnight," Hitchin purred relentlessly. "There is a heavy fall at two. There is weeping before seven, the weeping of a strange woman. There are the boy's clothes—the rest of them are downstairs. So, once more—where is David Prentiss?"

He waited, and Anthony Fry drew a long breath. All his life he had been painfully addicted to the truth; it was part of his cherished and spotless reputation. All his life he had shunned fiction, and was therefore ignorant of plot technique. So he did fairly well in smiling sourly and saying, calmly enough:

"So far as I know, David is about starting for his work, Hitchin. The thing had slipped my mind altogether, but I remember now that the boy took a suit—a blue suit—for himself and changed into it while here. That outfit was decidedly shabby. After that he left, and as to the French girl, you may theorize and be hanged, for she happens to be none of your infernal business, and she has no connection with David."

"None, eh?"

"None whatever!"

Mr. Hitchin grinned without humor and examined the trousers in silence, thinking, and later humming to himself. He smoothed them out and then folded them carefully, finally replacing them in his brief case. After that he looked at Anthony.

"If I were you, Fry, I should tell the truth, and let me help you. You know, and I know, that the boy never left this apartment. Well?"

"Well?" snapped Anthony.

"And you know and I know that what remains of him is still here, and——"

"Are you accusing me of murder?" Anthony demanded savagely.

"I have been doing that for some time."

"Hitchin, you're the most utter ass that ever breathed! You——"

"Doubtless, but at the same time murder is murder, and murder will out, Fry!" the extraordinary crime student said steadily, as he arose, "Now hear me quietly. I shall do nothing—you understand, nothing—until afternoon, unless circumstances render action imperative. You know where we stand; I know where we stand. I want to help you, to come to the unfortunate end quietly if nothing else. I shall be in my apartment all morning. Think it over. Talk it over with Boller. Then, when you have decided that you need help, come and see me." He took up his case and faced Anthony squarely. "At least I can see that you obtain a privilege or two in the local prison," he concluded. "Good-by."

"Good Lord!" breathed Anthony Fry.

"And in going," said Hobart Hitchin, "let me leave just one caution behind me, Fry. Have nothing shipped from this apartment until we have talked again!"

Then Mr. Hitchin, courageously turning his back upon the pair, moved out of the flat, leaving Johnson Boller and his oldest friend in a state of partial paralysis. Anthony recovered in perhaps three seconds.

"That—that infernal idiot!" said Anthony. "Why, the lunatic asylums have saner people in strait-jackets!"

"Maybe they have," Johnson Boller said hoarsely, "but all the same, many a good man has sat in the electric chair on the strength of circumstantial evidence not nearly so good as he made out!"

"Well, are you afraid of sitting there?" Anthony snapped.

Johnson Boller mopped his brow.

"Maybe not," he said. "But with the things he's pieced together he can go to the police and have 'em around here in ten minutes! That son-of-a-gun can have you and me locked up without bail, and—that'd be nice, huh?"

"He can do nothing of the sort!"

"He can unless you show him a David Prentiss!" Mr. Boller urged. "He can unless we have the girl out and tell him the truth and have her corroborate it! Are you going to do that?"

Anthony Fry hugged his head for an instant; it was really aching now.

"No!" he said.

"It's better than being jugged, Anthony," suggested Johnson Boller. "You know, I've got some reputation as well as you, and—say, what did you mean by introducing her as my wife?"

"Was there anything else to do?"

"Why not as your sister?"

"Because Hitchin knows perfectly well that I haven't a sister, of course. Don't fume and thresh around like that, Johnson; it bothers me."

"But if my wife ever hears of it——"

"She never will," said Anthony, without great concern, "unless you have Hitchin for dinner some night and ask him to tell about it."

"And Wilkins—he heard it, too!"

"Well, I shall instruct Wilkins not to mention it, later on," Anthony sighed. "Now quiet down, will you, and let us think how——"

"Have you decided how to get me out of here?" Mary asked brightly, entering without a sound.

Anthony stayed the bitter words that were in his very throat.

"We have been accused of murdering David Prentiss!" he said.

"Really?"

"Very really indeed!"

"Isn't that funny?" Mary laughed. "Isn't it perfectly ridiculous?"

"It's a scream!" said Johnson Boller. "About the time we both get pinched it may be up to you to——"

"Tell the truth?" Mary said quickly.

"Just that!"

"I'll never do it!" the girl cried passionately. "No! Not even to save both of you! I'm not here through any fault of my own, and—and—why, a man who could suggest such a thing——"

"He's not suggesting it; he's just excited," Anthony said miserably, "Now, suppose we try, just once more, to sit down sanely and devise the way of getting you safely home, Miss Mary?"

"And soon!" said the girl, somewhat feverishly. "If I could have gotten home while it was dark Felice could have smuggled me in and—and lied about it, if necessary. But it isn't night any longer; it's nine o'clock or past nine, and——"

She said no more. Lips parted, and eyes, all in an instant, thoroughly horrified, she stood and listened; and from the door of Anthony's apartment a thumping sounded once more and a voice said:

"Hurry up! Open that door!"

"Robert again!" Mary gasped.

"Is that possible?" Anthony gasped, bouncing to his feet.

It was not only possible. It was the solid fact, for Wilkins, muttering as he fumbled at the latch, was mentioning Mr. Vining's name and bidding him be patient for an instant—and Mary, with a little scream, had made another of her projectile disappearances down the corridor—and into the room came Robert Vining!

He was far from being the same collected young man. His whole person seemed to have been towsled by some overwhelming excitement. His eyes belonged in the head of a madman, and his hands waved irresponsibly as he rushed at Anthony Fry and clutched his coat and panted:

"Fry! You'll have to help me!"

"Help you—how?"

"You know more people than I—you know people everywhere, Anthony! You'll have to help me by calling them up and having them call up their friends, you know. That—that may do some good. I—I don't know! I don't know what I'm talking about, Anthony! I feel as if I'd gone crazy!"

"You act very much that way," Anthony said quietly. "What's wrong?"

Robert Vining gaped at him and then laughed quite insanely.

"Wrong!" he shouted. "Wrong! Mary's disappeared!"

"Mary——"

"You don't know Mary—no, of course not!" young Mr. Vining rushed on. "She—she's the girl I'm going to marry, Anthony! Yes, I'm engaged, although it hasn't been announced yet. I've been engaged for a week now, and we—great Heaven! I can't think. I—why, Anthony, I was talking to her even at dinner last night and there was never a hint that she even meant to go out of the house. In fact, when we parted, she seemed rather bored at the idea of staying home and—why, not a soul knows even when she left the house! She's gone, Fry! She's just gone!"

A coarse nature ever, Johnson Boller winked at Anthony and turned his back!

"Mary! Why, my little Mary out alone at night——" young Robert choked. "She's just twenty, Anthony—a delicate, beautiful girl like that disappearing from the most beautiful, the happiest home in all New York! Why, from the day she was born, Dalton never spared her a penny to——"

"Eh? What Dalton?" Anthony asked suddenly.

"What? Theodore Dalton, of course. He's her father—Dalton, the patent-medicine man, Anthony. You must have met him? You know Theodore Dalton?"

Curiously, fortunately enough, sheer nervous tension jerked him away from Anthony Fry just then and set him to pacing the floor, a man distracted, a man unseeing, a man who recked of nothing on earth beyond his terrible and immediate grief.

And this was very well indeed, for Anthony was making himself conspicuous!

Anthony took three backward steps and looked at the unconscious Robert much as if the young man had branded himself a leper. He looked at Johnson Boller, too, although his eyes were blank—and then, one hand on his head, Anthony staggered straight out of the room and into the corridor; and, having gone that far, he turned and staggered down to the window at the end of the window-seat, where he collapsed much as if the bones had been whisked from his long, slender legs!

Here Johnson Boller, following, found him five seconds later. Mr. Boller, who was beginning to feel downright peculiar himself with Vining threshing about the living-room and babbling incoherent agony, shook his old friend with no gentle hand as he demanded:

"Say, you! What is it now? What in blazes got you that time, Anthony? Are you going to have a fit?"

"Johnson!" Anthony said feebly, clutching coldly at Mr. Boller's plump hand. "Oh, Johnson!"

"What?"

"Her father! She's the daughter of Theodore Dalton, Johnson! She's the daughter of the man they call the liniment king!"

"Yes?" said Johnson Boller.

The icy hand closed tighter about his own, rousing something almost akin to sympathy in Johnson Boller's bosom and causing him to lay a soothing hand on Anthony's shoulder—for so do men cling to a raft in mid-ocean.

"Johnson," Anthony Fry said piteously. "I've kidnaped the daughter of the only man in the world who can ruin me, and he'll do it!"

The Other Lady

It was plain enough to Johnson Boller.

Anthony, poor devil, was raving at last! Since there was no one likely to ruin Anthony, the strain had developed the illusion that—or was it an illusion? Anthony had calmed these last few seconds, clinging childlike to his friend; his eyes denoted the general state of mind of a hunted doe, but there was nothing more abnormal.

"Say, kid," Johnson Boller began kindly. "You——"

"You don't understand," Anthony said hoarsely but more quietly. "I've never told you about the Dalton matter, because I've tried my best to forget the interview—but Dalton is the man who controls virtually the whole proprietary liniment market, barring only Fry's Imperial. My—my liniment," said Anthony, and there was an affectionate note in his voice which Johnson Boller had never heard before in connection with the Imperial, "is the only one he has failed to acquire."

"Yes?" said Johnson Boller, with rising interest.

Anthony smiled wanly, dizzily.

"Well, Dalton came to the office one day about five years ago, having made an appointment to meet me personally there. He wanted to buy us out, and I wouldn't hear of it—partly sentiment and partly because he didn't want to pay enough. Then he tried his usual tactics of threatening to drive Imperial off the market, and I sat down and pointed out to him just what it would cost and what it would gain him. He's a hard devil, Johnson, and he was pretty angry, yet he saw the reason in what I told him."

"Go on," said Johnson Boller.

"We parted on rather curious terms," groaned Anthony. "One might call it an armed truce, I suppose. He seemed to be willing to let matters rest as they were, and he has done just that ever since; but he told me in so many words that if ever I tried to break into his particular market, if ever, for any cause, I offended him in any way, he'd sail in and advertise me out of business."

"Can he do it?"

"He can do it," Anthony said, with pained conviction. "He can do it, because he's able to spend a million where I spend ten thousand, and once he starts Fry's Imperial Liniment is as dead as Julius Cæsar. And when he learns about this thing——"

"He—he might never learn," Johnson Boller said, without even trying to be convincing.

Anthony laughed forlornly.

"Hell learn; I'm done for!" said he. "It's as good as done and over with now, Johnson. Almost every cent I have in the world is invested in the firm, you know, and once that goes to pieces I—why, great Heaven, Johnson! I'll have to get out and work for a living!"

Johnson Boller, for a little, said nothing at all. Coming from another man, he would have fancied the statements largely exaggeration and imagination; coming from Anthony he knew that they were mostly solid truth.

"Well, I told you in the first place that kid meant trouble," he muttered.

"You have a prophetic soul!" Anthony sighed.

"Trouble isn't the word!" Mr. Boller mused further. "If you tell the truth, according to your figuring, the old gentleman will ruin you—but that doesn't matter much, because when you've told the truth it's a dead sure thing Vining will let the daylight through you, so that you'll have no need for money anyway. And if you go on trying to keep it all dark and succeed in doing it, that Hitchin idiot will have us both jailed for murder—and we'll have to produce a David Prentiss before we get out!"

Anthony, gazing fixedly at him, felt hope that hardly dared to be creeping into his eyes.

"Johnson, could we get hold of a boy somewhere and bribe him?" he asked.

"To do what?"

"To go into a police court and swear that he was David Prentiss and that he came here last night and left again about half-past twelve," said the model citizen, without even reflecting that it involved perjury. "If we could manage that it might be best of all to let Hitchin go ahead."

"Stick you and me in jail?" Johnson Boller asked harshly.

"Better that than risk——"

"I don't see it!" the less chivalrous gentleman snapped. "There's nothing inside urging me to go to jail for anybody's sake, even overnight. And another thing, I've got a wife, Anthony! Just consider where this would put me with Beatrice, and how dead certain it would be, with Hitchin airing his views and conclusions, that he'd mention the lady you introduce as Mrs. Boller!"

"But——"

"But nothing!" Johnson Boller said, his personal trouble coming uppermost again. "That's the worst break you've made so far, Anthony! That Mrs. Boller business is likely to cause me——"

He shut his teeth on the end of the sentence. Wilkins, white and distressed, was coming down the corridor with what looked rather like kangaroo leaps. He came to David's door and stopped, turning the knob. He entered—and immediately he left the room again and sped to Anthony.

"She wishes to see you again, sir!"

Anthony jerked obediently to his feet and laid a cold hand on Johnson Boller's.

"Get up there and keep Vining busy," he said. "That's all. Hurry!"

Johnson Boller shuffled back to the living-room, where the unfortunate paced up and down and wrung his hands. Anthony, waiting tremulously until he heard both their voices, hurried into Mary's room—and looked at her with a new, dreadful terror. She was no longer a merely unfortunate, unknown young woman whose good name he had placed in considerable jeopardy; Mary, by now, had become the potential stick of dynamite that bade fair to blast him out of the Lasande, out of his regular life, out of everything but the chance to sally forth and hunt a job!

"Well? Well?" she asked swiftly.

"Yes?"

"Is he gone? Is he gone?" Mary cried.

"He will—go shortly!" Anthony said thickly. "You—you are Theodore Dalton's daughter!"

Mary stared at him.

"So you've discovered that?"

"He—in a business way——" Anthony muttered vaguely.

"Yes, that was my reason for coming here," Mary said, cheerfully enough. "I've heard him speak of you—oh, no, not very flatteringly; I don't think he likes you. I've heard him say that some day he'd wreck you, when he was ready; and I was very curious indeed to see what sort of man you were and whether you were nice enough to plead for, if he ever started. I don't like dad to wreck people."

Anthony nodded.

"And that was another reason why I was afraid to tell the truth last night," said Mary. "If you were business enemies—bitter ones, I mean—and you found out that you had father's daughter here—well, that has nothing to do with getting Bobby away, has it?"

"He'll go presently."

"Presently isn't soon enough!" Mary informed her captor. "I sent for Wilkins to tell you that he must go now!"

"But the boy is distracted and——"

"About me?"

"Yes."

"Is he really suffering?" Mary asked.

"I think so."

The girl considered very thoughtfully indeed.

"Maybe I'd better go out there and quiet him, poor little boy!" she said staggeringly. "He'll believe me if I tell him the truth and——"

"I wouldn't do that!" Anthony exploded. "He's wildly excited now, and the truth might not appeal to him as reasonable."

Again Mary hesitated, causing his blood to congeal.

"Very well. Then get rid of him now!" she said sharply. "If he ever came down here and found me, all the explaining in the world would never help!"

"He will not," Anthony said impatiently. "Bob isn't the sort to stray about one's apartment and——"

And from the corridor came:

"She's gone, Boller! Johnson, she's gone!"

And steps came in their direction, too, and while Mary Dalton turned to flame, Anthony Fry turned to ice! He was coming and coming steadily, and the door was open fully two inches. He was abreast of them now and faithful Johnson Boller apparently was with him, for they heard—

"Well, I wouldn't go wandering around like that, old man. Come back and sit down and we'll talk it over."

"I'll sit here on the window-seat!" Robert Vining panted.

"Don't do that," Mr. Boller protested. "No, not there, Bobby! That's weak and likely to go down in a heap with you!"

The steps ceased. Through ten terrible seconds Anthony Fry and lovely Mary stood listening to the panting of the afflicted youth. Then:

"My God, Johnson!" he cried wildly. "I—I want to look over the whole world at once for her! I want to look into every room in New York! I want to look into every room in this place and then tear out and look——"

"Yes, but you couldn't do that," Johnson Boller assured him soothingly. "Now, cut out the mad-house talk, old man, and come back. Have one of Anthony's good, strong cigars and I'll dig out that brandy he keeps for his best friends. Don't go nosing around these rooms!" said Johnson Boller, and simultaneously they caught the shiver in his voice and saw the door move as Vining's hand landed on the knob. "Just control yourself and come back."

Robert Vining laughed hideously and helplessly.

"I suppose I'm making an ass of myself!" said his weak voice. "I can't help it! On my soul, I can't help it. Give me a shot of the brandy, though, and maybe I'll steady a bit!"

Something like one hundred years passed; then the hand slid from the door and they could hear Johnson Boller leading the sufferer gently away from the shock of his whole lifetime. Mary, her eyes closed for a moment, gripped herself and spoke very softly:

"Mr. Fry, if—if you don't get that boy out of here and then find a way of sending me home—if you don't do it instantly, I'm going out there to Bob and tell him that you brought me here and kept me here all night against my will! After that, whatever happens, happens!"

Life returned to Anthony's frozen legs.

"I will go!" he managed to say, and he went.

The brandy was already within Robert Vining, yet it seemed to have made small difference in his condition. The young man's eyes were wild and rolling; they rested on Anthony for a moment as if they had seen him before but could not quite place him.

"You—you've been telephoning," he said.

"Not yet," said Anthony, "but if you'll run along and do your share, I'll think up ways of helping you."

"My share?" Vining echoed.

Mentally, he was not more than half himself. Anthony Fry, therefore, grew very firm and very stern, pleasantly certain that Robert was paying no heed to his pallor or the uncontrollable shake that had come to his hands.

"If the girl has really disappeared," he said steadily, "your part is not to be sitting here and whining for help, Robert. Why don't you get out and hustle and see if you can't get track of her? Have you gone to all her friends?"

"Eh? No!"

"Then go now!" said Anthony Fry. "You know her girl friends? Get after the most intimate at first—and get about it!"

Here he scowled, and Robert Vining, rising, shook himself together.

"You're right, Anthony," he said. "I'm an ass; I've lost my head completely this last hour. I—I caught it from her father, I think; the man's going about like an infuriated bull, swearing to kill everybody in the world if Mary isn't returned and—but you're right, old chap. Thank you for steadying me." Robert concluded bravely. "Where's my hat? I've been wearing it all this time, eh? Good-by, Anthony. Good-by, Johnson."

He tried to smile at them—and he fled. This time it was Johnson Boller who turned weak at his going. Mr. Boller, smiling at his old friend in a sickly, greenish way, dropped into a chair and mopped his forehead.

"Narrow squeak, Anthony!"

"Yes!" Anthony agreed, with some difficulty.

"I was never so scared as that in all my life!" Johnson Boller went on faintly. "I thought sure I'd have to watch it and—Anthony, it turned me so sick I could hardly stand on my feet!"

"What did?"

"The idea of seeing you shot down there," Mr. Boller said with a shudder. "Gad! I could picture the whole thing, Anthony! I could see him start and look at you both—I swear I could see him pull a gun from his pocket and shoot! I could see the blood spurting out of your forehead, Anthony, and hear the chicken screech, and it turned me so infernally sick——"

"Didn't think of any of my sensations, did you?" Anthony asked caustically.

"As a matter of fact—no, I didn't!" muttered Johnson Boller, with another great shiver. "What do your confounded sensations matter, anyway? This whole affair is your fault, not mine! You deserve whatever you get—I don't! You've got nobody in the world to worry over you, but I've got a wife, Anthony!"

"You have mentioned it before."

"And I'm likely to mention it again!" said Mr. Boller savagely. "You know, Anthony, I'm about through with this thing! I'm a nervous man, and I can stand about so much suffering of my own, but I don't see the idea of taking on yours as well. And what is more, this thing of introducing this girl as my wife is——"

"Well? What is it?" Mary herself asked very crisply, appearing in her disconcertingly and silent fashion.

Johnson Boller smiled feebly.

"It's very flattering in some ways, Miss—Miss Dalton, but for a man like me, who loves his wife, you know, and all that sort of thing——"

His voice thinned out and died before the decidedly cold light in Mary's eye. It seemed to Johnson Boller that she had a low opinion of himself; and when she looked at Anthony he noted that she had a low opinion of Anthony as well.

"Have you settled it yet!" she snapped.

"The—er—means of getting you out?"

"Is there anything more important?"

"Ah—decidedly not," Anthony said wearily. "Several times, I think, we've attempted a council of war, and we may as well try it again. There will be no interruptions this time, I think, and if we all put our minds to it——"

That was all. As on several other similar occasion, he halted because of sounds from the doorway. It seemed to Anthony, indeed, that he had heard Wilkins muttering at the telephone a moment ago, too; and now the faithful one was at the door and working over the latch.

Mary's ears were preternaturally keen, too; Mary had acquired a way of standing erect and poising every time sounds came from that door. She did it now, remaining on tiptoe until the oddest little giggle brought Anthony and Johnson Boller to their feet also.

"That's a woman's voice!" Mary whispered.

And she looked about wildly, and, since there was no hope of escape unseen by the corridor, her eyes fell upon the open door of Johnson Boller's room. Mary, with a bound that would have done credit to a young deer, was across the room, and the door clicked behind her just as Wilkins, smiling in a perturbed and mystified way, appeared to announce:

"A lady, sir, who——"

Then the lady had passed him, moving with a speed almost equal to Mary's own—a lovely lady, indeed, with great, flashing black eyes and black hair—a lady all life and spirit, her face suffused just now with a great joy. Wilkins, perceiving that neither gentleman protested after gazing at her for one second, backed away to regions of his own, and the spell on Johnson Boller broke and his soul found vent in one great, glad cry of:

"Bee!"

"Pudgy-wudgy!" cried the lady, and flew directly into Johnson Boller's arms!

Anthony Fry steadied himself, mentally and physically, and the little smile that came to his lips was more than half sneer—because Johnson Boller and his lovely wife were hugging each other and babbling senselessly, and the best that Anthony could make of it at first was something like:

"And was it lonely? Oh, Pudgy-wudgy, was it lonely?"

Whereat Johnson Boller burbled:

"Lonely, sugar-plum? Lonely, sweetie? Oh, Beetie-girl, if Pudgy-wudgy could tell you how lonely——"

Here they kissed again, three times, four times, five times!

"Hell!" said Anthony Fry.

"And did it come back?" the imbecile that had been Johnson Boller gurgled.

The dark, exquisite head burrowed deep on Boller's shoulder.

"Oh, Pudgy!" a muffled voice protested, almost tearfully. "I couldn't do it! I thought I could, but I couldn't, sweetest!"

"And so it came back to its Pudgy-wudgy!" Johnson Boller oozed ecstatically. "So it turned around and came back to its Pudgy!"

Mrs. Boller regarded him solemnly, holding him off for a moment.

"At some awful, awful place north of Albany," she said. "I couldn't go any farther and I—I was going to wire you to come for me, Pudgy! And then I thought I'd stay at their terrible hotel and come down and surprise you, and you weren't home and they said you'd come here!"

"Yes!" Johnson Boller agreed.

"How could you leave our home, Pudgy-wudgy?" his darling asked reprovingly.

"If I had stayed there another hour without my little chicky-biddy, I'd have shot myself!" said Pudgy-wudgy. "Ask Anthony!" And here he looked at Anthony and demanded: "Ain't we silly? Like a couple of kids!"

"You certainly are!" Anthony Fry rasped.

"You don't have to screw your face all up when you say it!" Mr. Boller informed him, disengaging himself.

Beatrice laughed charmingly.

"You'll overlook it, Mr. Fry?" said she. "We've never been separated before in all the——"

"Six months!" beamed Johnson Boller.

"—that we've been married!" finished his wife, squeezing his hand.

Followed a pause. Anthony had nothing whatever to say; after witnessing an exhibition like that he never had anything to say for an hour or more that a lady could hear. He stood, a cold, stately, disgusted figure, surging internally, thanking every star in the firmament that he had never laid himself open to a situation of that kind—and after a time the inimical radiations from him reached Beatrice, for she laughed uneasily.

"May I—may I fix my hair?" she asked. "And then we'll go home, Pudgy?"

"Yes, my love," purred Johnson Boller.

"Which is your room, pigeon-boy?" his bride asked.

So far as concerned Johnson Boller, Mary had been wafted out of this world; all aglow with witless happiness, he pointed at the door as he said:

"That one, Beetie-chicken."

Beatrice turned—and ten thousand volts shot through Anthony and caused his hair to stand on end. His laugh, coming simultaneously, was a loud, weird thing, splitting the still air.

"Your bedroom, Johnson!" he cried. "She means your bedroom!"

"Well—of course?" Beatrice said wonderingly.

"Well, that's down at the end of the corridor, dear madam," Anthony smiled wildly, and went so far as to stay her by laying hands on her arm. "Right down there—see? The open door. That's Johnson's room!"

Beatrice, distinctly startled, glanced at him and nodded and left. Anthony, drawing the first real breath in a full minute, glared at his friend in silence; but the morning's dread situation had slid from Johnson Boller's shoulders as a drop of water from a duck's back. For a second or two he had been slightly jarred at the magnitude of the break he had made—but that was all over now.

"My mistake, old scout," he chuckled softly. "You saved the day—what are you glowering about?"

"Clod!" gasped Anthony.

"Clod your necktie!" Johnson Boller said airily. "Well, did you ever see the like of it? Did you ever see anything like the little squeezicks, Anthony! She's back, bless her little heart! She couldn't stand it."

"Umph!" said his host.

"And so I'm let out of it!" Mr. Boller chuckled on. "We'll just scoot along to the little dove-cote, old vinegar-face, and see how she looks after all this time. I can get my things later on. Well—I'm sorry to leave you with the problem on your hands, you know."

"Don't let it disturb you!" Anthony snapped.

"But at that, you know, fate's doing the kind, just thing by snatching me out," Mr. Boller concluded earnestly and virtuously. "It wasn't my muddle in the first place, and somehow I feel that you haven't acted just on the level with me about any of it."

Anthony's mouth opened to protest. Yet he did not protest. Instead, he jumped, just as one jumps at the unexpected explosion of a fire-cracker—for down the corridor a scream, shrill and sharp, echoed suddenly.

And after the scream came a long, choking gasp, so that even Wilkins appeared in the doorway and Johnson Boller darted forward to learn what had overtaken his only darling. He was spared the trouble of going down the corridor, however. Even as he darted forward, Beatrice had rejoined them; and having looked at her just once Johnson Boller stood in his tracks, rooted to the floor!

Because Beatrice, the lovely, the loving, Beatrice of the melting eyes and the high color, had left them. The lady in the doorway was white as the driven snow and breathing in a queer, strangling way; and whatever her eyes may have expressed, melting love for Johnson Boller was not included.

For this unpleasant condition the hat in her hand seemed largely responsible. It was a pretty little hat, expensively simple, but it was the hat of a lady!

And, looking from it to Johnson Boller, Beatrice finally managed:

"This—this! This hat!"

Johnson Boller moved not even a muscle.

"Who is the woman?" Beatrice cried vibrantly. "Who is she?"

And still neither Anthony nor Johnson Boller seemed able to canter up to the situation and carry it of with a blithe laugh. Anthony was making queer mouths; Johnson Boller was doing nothing whatever, even now; and when three seconds had passed Beatrice whirled abruptly on the only other possible source of information present, which happened to be Wilkins.

"You were here!" she said swiftly. "You answer me: who was the woman?"

"The—the woman, ma'am!" Wilkins repeated.

Beatrice came nearer and looked up at him, and there was that in her eyes which sent Wilkins back a full pace.

"You—you creature!" Beatrice said. "What woman was in this apartment last night?"

Now, as it chanced, Wilkins was far more intelligent than he looked. Give him the mere hint to a situation and he could lumber through somehow. Only a little while ago, when Hobart Hitchin came upon them, he had caught the key to this affair—so he smiled quite confidently and bowed.

"There was no woman here last night, ma'am," said Wilkins, "only Mrs. Boller, the wife of that gentleman there!"

The Crash

Now it was the turn of Beatrice to become rigid.

She did not even wink, those first few seconds. She looked straight at Wilkins, searching his soul; and Wilkins, pleasantly conscious of having done the right thing well, preserved his quiet, respectful smile and wondered just which lady this newest might be.

He was telling the truth. He was telling the horrible, the incredible truth—and although those eyes of Mrs. Boller's might have suggested that she was capable of passionate murder if goaded far enough, they belied her actions just now. One slim, white hand went to her throat for a moment, as if to ease her breathing, but when she spoke her tone was very low, very quiet indeed:

"Mrs. Boller was here?"

"Yes, madam!" Wilkins responded in round tones.

"All last night?"

"Er—yes, madam. She——"

Johnson Boller returned to life! Johnson Boller, with a thick, senseless shout, bounded forward and landed directly between Wilkins and his beloved as he snarled:

"Say, you—you lying dog! You——"

"Let him alone!" his wife said quickly. "Permit him to tell me the truth!"

"He's not telling you the truth!" cried Johnson Boller. "He's lying! He—why, Wilkins, I'll smash your face into so many nasty little pieces that——"

"I beg pardon, sir!" Wilkins said hastily. "The—the lady was here——"

"There was no lady here!" Mr. Boller shouted.

Wilkins put up his hands.

"Well, the lady that was eating breakfast, sir, after a manner of speaking," he stammered. "Her that was introduced as Mrs. Boller, which caused me to take it, sir, that she——"

"Say! I said there was no lady here and there was no lady here! Get that, you putty-faced idiot!" Johnson Boller cried frantically, for he was beyond reason. "What do you mean by standing there and lying and babbling about some woman——"

Again Wilkins's intelligence manifested itself. To be a perfect servant, one's teeth must remain in place and one's face must be free from bruises. Wilkins, after a brief, intent look at Johnson Boller's fists, turned and fled!

"So this," said Mrs. Johnson Boller with deadly calm, "is what happens when you think I've gone away!"

Her husband turned upon her and threw out his hands.

"Beatrice!" he cried. "I swear to you——"

"Don't touch me, you filthy creature!" said his Beatrice. "I—I couldn't have thought it. You seemed different from other men!"

"This woman——" Johnson Boller floundered, and then caught Anthony's cold eye. It was an amused eye, too, and the sneer was in it; and Johnson Boller pointed at its owner suddenly and said: "If—if there was a woman here, blame him!"

Beatrice Boller looked Anthony Fry up and down, and her lips curled.

"I do—a little!" she said bitterly. "I've never cared very much for you, Mr. Fry, but—oh, why did you do that? You know as well as I know that Johnson isn't that—that sort of a man! If he wanted to come here and stay with you, couldn't you have been, just for once—decent?"

"Madam!" thundered Anthony Fry, when breath came to him.

There was no music in Beatrice's laugh; an ungreased saw goes through hardwood more sweetly.

"Spare yourself the effort of that righteous rage," she said. "I know your saintly type of man so well, and I've begged Johnson to have nothing to do with you."

"And I give you my word——" Johnson Boller began.

"That he brought the woman here?" his wife asked.

"Yes!"

"And you remained!" finished Johnson Boller's better half. "Where is she?"

"She isn't here now!" came almost automatically from Anthony.

Once more Beatrice laughed.

"Isn't she, though?" said she. "That sort doesn't leave a twenty-dollar hat behind, Mr. Fry—nor a bag worth perhaps five times as much. She had moved in quite cozily, hadn't she? If I hadn't appeared, her trunk would have been along—or perhaps it is here now? If I hadn't——" Mrs. Boller continued, and her voice broke as the unearthly calm splintered and departed.

"Where is she?" And, her whole mien altering in an instant, Mrs. Boller's hands clenched tightly and her face flamed with outraged fury. "Where is she?"

Johnson Boller looked around wildly and helplessly.

"I tell you, she isn't here!" he began. "You see——"

"And I tell you that that's a lie!" said his wife. "I'll find her, and when I do find her, Johnson Boller, some one will pay on the spot for the home I've lost! Do you hear? I'll suffer—suffer for it, perhaps! But she'll pay!"

The Spanish grandmother had risen in Beatrice and declared herself! Cold-blooded assassination shook the air of Anthony's apartment. His head spun; he wondered hysterically if there would be much screaming before it was all over—if the police and the Lasande employees would break in before the ghastly finish of the affair. There would be just one finish, and it was written in those flaming eyes, written more clearly than any print!

And afterward? Well, there would be no afterward for Anthony. He understood that perfectly, yet he was too numb to grieve just now. Fifteen minutes after the worst had happened, the Lasande would present him with a check covering the balance of his lease and would request him to go: such was the procedure here and it had proved court-proof. Although he could afford to laugh at them. He had merely to sit down and wait until the news had traveled a bit; Mary's father or Robert Vining would attend to the rest—and there would be the end of Anthony Fry's stately, contented existence.

Beatrice was gone!

Flaming eyes, heaving bosom, pathetic little hat—all had vanished together, but they had vanished down the corridor, and life leaped suddenly through Anthony's veins. Even now there was a chance—faint and forlorn, but still a chance to save Mary's life at least! He turned, did Anthony Fry, just as Johnson Boller flew after his demented spouse, and glided into Johnson Boller's bedroom.

Mary, very white indeed, was waiting for him.

"Where is she now?" she panted.

"You heard?"

"Of course I heard!"

"Miss Mary," said Anthony, "I'm afraid that the time has come when we'll have to stop planning and act. The lady is—er—essentially crazy just now. It is painful enough, but you'll have to leave as you are. Yes, even without a hat, for she has that. Simply leave!"

"And if I'm recognized?"

"It is unavoidable."

Mary stamped her foot.

"Well, it isn't, and I think you're the stupidest old man I ever knew!" she said flatteringly, as she sped to the closet. "Here! Give me a hand with it!"

"With what?"

"The wardrobe trunk, of course. I've been looking at it and trying to get it open, but I cannot do it in there. I'm going out in that trunk!"

"Eh?" said Anthony, tugging at it quite stupidly.

"Open it!" Mary commanded.

Anthony opened it.

"Yes, there's room and to spare, if you'll take out those drawers and things!" the girl said quickly. "No! Pile them in the closet neatly; she'll look in there! Now, about your man; is he strong?"

"Very, I believe."

"Get him here, quick!" said Mary.

She seemed to have taken matters into her own hand; more, she seemed to know what she was about. Anthony, after an instant of blank staring, pushed four times on the button of Johnson Boller's room, which signal indicated that Wilkins was needed in a hurry.

Some four or five seconds they stood, breathing hard, both of them, and listening for the sounds of disaster which might echo any minute from the corridor. They had not echoed when Wilkins appeared.

"You! Wilkins is your name?" Mary said. "Wilkins, I'm going to get into the trunk! Have you grasped that?"

"Why—yes, Miss!"

"And you, instantly, are going to take the trunk, with me in it, to my home—you know where that is? You don't, of course. Well, load the trunk into a taxi and tell the man to go across to West End Ave!"

"And the corner of Eighty—th Street!" Anthony supplied.

"Exactly!" said the girl. "Go to the side door and take in the trunk, through the yard, of course, and say it is for Felice—Felice Moreau, my maid? Have you the name, Wilkins?"

"Felice Moreau, miss. Yes, miss," said the blunderer.

"And then take it to her room and get out!" Mary concluded. "Don't lock the thing. Load it into the back of the cab with yourself and try to get it open a little so that I'll have air, when we've started!"

Saying which, Mary Dalton, who knew a really desperate situation when she saw one, and who also inherited much of her father's superb executive ability in a genuine emergency—Mary gathered her skirts and stepped into the trunk, huddling down as prettily and gracefully as if it had been rehearsed for weeks!

She looked at Wilkins, and Wilkins, with a sweep, had closed the lid; and with a great emotional gulp Wilkins looked at his master and said:

"My eye, sir! A bit of all right, that, Mr. Fry!"

Anthony Fry nodded quickly and thrust several bills into his hand.

"Don't stand there talking about it!" he said. "Get your hat and hustle, Wilkins! Take the first taxi you see and—and handle her gently! Felice Moreau, Wilkins—remember that."

"I shall, indeed, sir!" said the faithful one; and, delicate consideration in every finger, he lifted the trunk and walked into the living-room, while Anthony Fry held his breath and followed every move with fascinated eyes.

Through the room, then, went Wilkins and trunk together and to the door. The sober black felt affair he had used these three years was on Wilkins's head now, and he lugged the trunk onward—turned in the outer hall and lugged it to the freight elevator—and now, as Anthony watched from the doorway of his lately peaceful home, onto the freight elevator.

The door closed on the little car. The door closed on Anthony's apartment, with Anthony inside—and again he was that stately, dignified, reticent and austere being; the Anthony Fry of yesterday!

A trifle stiffly, perhaps, he moved to his pet armchair, and into it he sank with an undeniable thud, grasping the arms fondly as one might grasp a friend returned from a long and perilous journey, and staring straight ahead.

Amazing! More than that, dumfounding!

Five minutes back he had been seriously resigned to ruin and death. Now he was quite utterly all right once more!

Anthony looked about at all the familiar things; it seemed to him that he had not seen them for a long, long time, and that they stretched out welcoming hands to him. Weakly, he smiled and rested his head in the well-worn spot on the back.

What a wonderfully capable little person she was! Why had none of them thought of a trunk before? Or—what matter if none of them had, so that Mary had gained the inspiration? She had saved herself and she had saved Anthony—bless her little heart! She had saved everything, because she was gone!

And she was perfectly safe in Wilkins's hands. Wilkins, faithful, powerful soul, would carry her tidily into the room of the maid Felice, wherever that might lie in Dalton's absurdly ornate pile, and between Felice and Mary a story would be arranged to cover everything. Momentarily, Anthony frowned, for he disapproved of mendacity in any form—but there are some lies so much better than the truth that shortly he smiled again and hoped from the bottom of his heart that Mary's lie would be a winner.

And now that all was well—Anthony sat upright quite abruptly. All was not exactly well as yet; Johnson Boller and his wife were coming down the corridor and, almost as he heard them, the lady passed him.

She said nothing. Beatrice had passed the talking stage. Cheeks white again and eyes blazing, she threw open the door of Anthony's chamber and shot inward! One felt the pause as she looked around; one heard the door of the closet open—and then the door of the other closet. Then one saw the pleasing Beatrice again as she shot out, hat still in hand.

One lightning, searing glance whizzed over the calm Anthony and the purple, perspiring Johnson Boller. Then Beatrice had turned and hurtled into Johnson Boller's room itself, and Johnson Boller dropped into the chair beside Anthony and whined.

"It's over!" said he. "It's over!"

"Oh, no," Anthony said.

"And you listen to this!" Johnson Boller thundered suddenly, sitting up and pointing one pudgy finger at his friend. "The poor kid's crazy! I can't stop her! She'll kill the little skirt as sure as there's a sky overhead, and she'll go to the chair for it, laughing! And when she has gone, Fry, when it's all over, I'm going to shoot you full of holes and then kill myself! Get me? This world isn't big enough for you to get away from me, now! I swear to you——"

"You might better dry up," said Anthony with his incomprehensible calm.

Boller turned dully. Beatrice was with them again, and yet there had been no scream, no crash. There was about Beatrice nothing at all to suggest a woman who has tasted the sweet of revenge. White lips shut, she sailed past them, on her way to Wilkins's pantry and his humble bedroom beyond.

"Didn't she find her?" choked Boller.

"She didn't!"

"Why not?"

"She isn't there."

"Where'd she go?"

Anthony smiled cynical condescension.

"Once in a while I'm able to manage these things if I'm left alone," he said, assuming much credit to which he had no title.

"Well, is she out of this flat?" Johnson Boller asked hopefully.

"She certainly is, you poor fool," said his host.

Beatrice had finished her unlovely hunt. Even again, she was with them, and now she looked straight at Johnson Boller, ignoring the very existence of Anthony Fry.

"I haven't found her," said Beatrice. "She's hidden somewhere, or else she's with other friends in this wretched, sanctimonious hole."

"Beatrice——" Johnson Boller began, with a great, hopeful gasp.

"But I will find her!" the lady assured him, "and when I do—I'm going now."

"Home?"

Momentarily, Beatrice's eyes swam. It seemed a good sign, and Johnson Boller rose hurriedly. The eyes ceased swimming and blazed at him!

"I am never going there again," Beatrice informed him, with the old, chilling calm. "I shall go to a hotel, and later, I hope, back to father and mother. You will hear from my lawyers, Johnson, within a day or two."

"But, Beatrice——" Johnson Boller protested. "That doesn't mean that you're crazy enough to—to try divorcing me?"

"I am not crazy, and there will be very little trouble about it, Johnson," the lady said gravely. "That is what it means. Good-by."

A moment she paused before Johnson Boller, looking him up and down with a scorn so terrible that, innocent or otherwise, he cringed visibly. Another moment her eyes seemed to soften a little, for they were deep and wonderful, maddeningly beautiful, but millions of miles from the unworthy creature who had once called them his own. This, apparently, was Beatrice's fashion of saying an eternal good-by to one she had once loved—for having looked and thrilled him, she moved on, and the door closed behind her.

"She means it!" croaked Johnson Boller.

"She'll cool down," said Anthony.

"She will not, and—she means it!" cried his friend, wrath rising by great leaps. "She's going to sue me for divorce—me, that never even looked a chicken in the eye on the street. She's going to bust up our happy little home, Anthony, and it's your fault!"

"Poppycock!" said his host.

"That be damned!" stated Johnson Boller, and this time he actually howled the foul words. "That's what she wants to do, and I don't blame her! But she'll never do it, Anthony! Your reputation's all right—it's unfortunate for the girl, of course, but I'm going to stop her!"