In the Bishop's Carriage

IX.

It's all come so quick, Maggie, and it was over so soon that I hardly remember the beginning.

Nobody on earth could have expected it less than I, when I came off in the afternoon. I don't know what I was thinking of as I came into my dressing-room, that used to be Gray's—the sight of him seemed to cut me off from myself as with a knife—but it wasn't of him.

It may have been that I was chuckling to myself at the thought of Nancy Olden with a dressing-room all to herself. I can't ever quite get used to that, you know, though I sail around there with all the airs of the leading lady. Sometimes I see a twinkle in Fred Obermuller's eye when I catch him watching me, and goodness knows he's been glum enough of late, but it wasn't—

Yes, I'm going to tell you, but—it's rattled me a bit, Maggie. I'm so—so sorry, and a little—oh, just a little, little bit glad!

I'd slammed the door behind me—the old place is out of repair and the door won't shut except with a bang—and I had just squatted down on the floor to unbutton my high shoes, when I noticed the chintz curtains in front of the high dressing-box waver. They must have moved just like that when I was behind them months—it seems years—ago. But, you see, Topham had never served an apprenticeship behind curtains, so he didn't suspect.

"Lordy, Nancy," I laughed to myself, "some one thinks you've got a rose diamond and—"

And at that moment he parted the curtains and came out.

Yes—Tom—Tom Dorgan.

My heart came beating up to my throat and then, just as I thought I should choke, it slid down to my boots, sickening me. I didn't say a word. I sat there, my foot in my lap, staring at him.

Oh, Maggie-girl, it isn't good to get your first glimpse after all these months of the man you love crouched like a big bull in a small space, poking his close-cropped black head out like a turtle that's not sure something won't be thrown at it, and then dragging his big bulk out and standing over you. He used to be trim—Tom—and taut, but in those shapeless things, the old trousers, the dirty white shirt, and the vest too big for him—

"Well," he said, "why don't you say something?"

Tom's voice—Mag, do you remember, the merry Irish boy's voice, with its chuckles like a brook gurgling as it runs?

No—'tisn't the same voice. It's—it's changed, Maggie. It's heavy and—and coarse—and—brutal. That's what it is. It sounds like—like the knout, like—

"Nance—what in hell's—"

"I think I'm—frightened, Tom."

"Oh, the ladyfied airs of her! Ain't you going to faint, Miss Olden?"

I got up.

"No—no. Sit down, Tom. Tell me about it. How—how did you get here?"

He went to the door, opened it a bit and looked out cautiously. Mag—Mag—it hurt me—that. Why, do you suppose?

"You're sure nobody'll come in?" he asked.

I turned the key in the lock, forgetting that it didn't really lock.

"Oh, yes, I'm sure," I said. "Why?"

"Why! You have got slow. Just because I didn't say good-by to them fellows up at the Pen, and—"

"Oh! You've escaped!"

"That's what. First jail-break in fifteen years. What d'ye think of your Tommy, old girl, eh? Ain't he the gamest? Ain't you proud of him?"

My God, Mag! Proud of him. He didn't know—he couldn't see—himself. He, shut in like a wild beast, couldn't see what this year has done for him. Oh, the change—the change in him! My boy Tommy, with the gay, gallus manner, and the pretty, jolly brogue, and the laughing mouth under his brown mustache. And this man—his face is old, Mag, old—oh!—and hard—and—and tough, cheap and tough. There's something in his eyes now and about his shaven mouth—oh, Maggie, Maggie!

"Look here, Nance." He caught me by the shoulders, knocking up my chin so that he could look down squarely at me. "What's your graft? What's it to be between us? What've ye been doing all this time? Out with it! I want to know."

I shook myself free and faced him.

"I've been—Tom Dorgan, I've been to hear the greatest actors and actresses in the world say and do the finest things in the world. I've watched princesses and kings—even if they're only stage ones. I've read a new book every night—a great picture book, in which the pictures move and speak—that's the stage, Tom Dorgan. Much of it wasn't true, but a girl who's been brought up by the Cruelty doesn't have to be told what's true and what's false. I've met these people and lived with them—as one does who thinks the same thoughts and feels what others feel. I know the world now, Tom Dorgan, the real world of men and women—not the little world of crooks, nor yet the littler one of fairy stories. I've got a glimpse, too, of that other world where all the scheming and lying and cheating is changed as if by magic into something that deceives all right, but doesn't hurt. It's the world of art and artists, Tom Dorgan, where people paint their lies, or write them, or act them; where they lift money all right from men's pockets, but lift their souls and their lives, too, away from the things that trouble and bore and—and degrade.

"You needn't sneer; it's made a different Nance out of me, Tom Dorgan. And, oh, but I'm sorry for the pert little beggar we both knew that lied and stole and hid and ran and skulked! She was like a poor little ignorant traveler in a great country where she'd sized up the world from the few fool crooks she was thrown in with. She—"

"Aw, cut it!"

"Tom—does—doesn't it mean anything to you? Can't it mean lots to both of us now that—"

"Cut it, I tell you! Think I killed one guard and beat the other till I'd broke every bone in his body to come here and listen to such guff? You've been having a high old time, eh, and you never give a thought to me up there! I might 'a' rotted in that black hole for all you'd care, you—"

"Don't! I did, Tom; I did." I was shivering at the name, but I couldn't bear his thinking that way of me. "I went up once, but they wouldn't let me see you. I wrote you, but they sent back the letters. Mag went up, too, but had to come back. And that time I brought you—"

My voice trailed off. In that minute I saw myself on the way up to Sing Sing with the basket and all my hopes and all my schemes for amusing him.

And this is what I'd have seen if they'd let me in—this big, gruff, murdering beast!

Oh, yes—yes—beast is what he is, and it didn't make him look it less that he believed me and—and began to think of me in a different way.

"I thought you wouldn't go back on a feller, Nance. That's why I come straight to you. It was my game to have you hide me for a day or two, till you could make a strike somewhere and we'd light out together. How're ye fixed? Pretty smart, eh? You look it, my girl, you look—My eye, Nance, you look good enough to eat, and I'm hungry for you!"

Maggie, if I'd had to die for it I couldn't have moved then. You'd think a man would know when the woman he's holding in his arms is fainting—sick at the touch of him. A woman would. It wasn't my Tom that I'd known, that I'd worked with and played with and—It was a great brute, whose mouth—who had no eyes, no ears, no senses but—ah!...

He laughed when I broke away from him at last. He laughed! And I knew then I'd have to tell him straight in words.

"Tom," I gasped, "you can have all I've got; and it's plenty to get you out of the way. But—but you can't have—me—any more. That's—done!"

Oh, the beast in his face! It must have looked like that when the guard got his last glimpse of it.

"You're kiddin' me?" he growled.

I shook my head.

Then he ripped it out. Said the worst he could and ended with a curse! The blood boiled in me. The old Nance never stood that; she used to sneer at other women who did.

"Get out of here!" I cried. "Go—go, Tom Dorgan. I'll send every cent I've got to you to Mother Douty's within two hours, but don't you dare—"

"Don't YOU dare, you she-devil! Just make up your mind to drop these newfangled airs, and mighty quick. I tell you you'll come with me 'cause I need you and I want you, and I want you now. And I'll keep you when once I get you again. We'll hang together. No more o' this one-sided lay-out for me, where you get all the soft and it's me for the hard. You belong to me. Yes, you do. Just think back a bit, Nance Olden, and remember the kind of customer I am. If you've forgot, just let me remind you that what I know would put you behind bars, my lady, and it shall, I swear, if I've got to go to the Chair for it!"

Tom! It was Tom talking that way to me. I couldn't bear it. I made a rush for the door.

He got there, too, and catching me by the shoulder, he lifted his fist.

But it never fell, Mag. I think I could kill a man who struck me. But just as I shut my eyes and shivered away from him, while I waited for the blow, a knock came at the door and Fred Obermuller walked in.

"Eh? Oh! Excuse me. I didn't know there was anybody else. Nance, your face is ghastly. What's up?" he said sharply.

He looked from me to Tom—Tom, standing off there ready to spring on him, to dart past him, to fly out of the window—ready for anything; only waiting to know what the thing was to be.

My senses came back to me then. The sight of Obermuller, with those keen, quick eyes behind his glasses, his strong, square chin, and the whole poise of his head and body that makes men wait to hear what he has to say; the knowledge that that man was my friend, mine—Nancy Olden's—lifted me out of the mud I'd sunk back in, and put my feet again on a level with his.

"Tom," I said slowly, "Mr. Obermuller is a friend of mine. No—listen! What we've been talking about is settled. Don't bring it up again. It doesn't interest him and it can't change me; I swear to you, it can't; nothing can. I'm going to ask Mr. Obermuller to help you without telling him just what the scrape is, and—and I'm going to be sure that he'll do it just because he—"

"Because you've taken up with him, have you?" Tom shouted savagely. "Because she's your—"

"Tom!" I cried.

"Tom—oh, yes, now I remember." Obermuller got between us as he spoke. "Your friend up—in the country that you went to see and couldn't. Not a very good-looker, your friend, Nance. But—farming, I suppose, Mr.—Tom?—plays the deuce with one's looks. And another thing it does: it makes a man forget sometimes just how to behave in town. I'll be charmed, Mr. Tom, to oblige a friend of Miss Olden's; but I must insist that he does not talk like a—farmer."

He was quite close to Tom when he finished, and Tom was glaring up at him. And, Mag, I didn't know which one I was most afraid for. Don't you look at me that way, Mag Monahan, and don't you dare to guess anything!

"If you think," growled Tom, "that I'm going to let you get off with the girl, you're mighty—"

"Now, I've told you not to say that. The reason I'll do the thing she's going to ask of me—if it's what I think it is—is because this girl's a plucky little creature with a soul big enough to lift her out of the muck you probably helped her into. It's because she's got brains, talent, and a heart. It's because—well, it's because I feel like it, and she deserves a friend."

"You don't know what she is." It was a snarl from Tom. "You don't—"

"Oh, yes, I do; you cur! I know what she was, too. And I even know what she will be; but that doesn't concern you."

"The hell it don't!"

Obermuller turned his back on him. I was dumb and still. Tom Dorgan had struck me after all.

"What is it you want me to do, Nance?" Obermuller asked.

"Get him away on a steamer—quick," I murmured—I couldn't look him in the face—"without asking why, or what his name is."

He turned to Tom. "Well?"

"I won't go—not without her."

"Because you're so fond of her, eh? So fond, your first thought on quitting the—country was to come here to get her in trouble. If you've been traced—"

"Ah! You wouldn't like that, eh?" sneered Tom. "Would you?"

"Well, I've had my share of it. And she ain't. Still—I ... Just what would it be worth to you to have me out of the way?"

"Oh, Tom—Tom—" I cried.

But Obermuller got in front of me.

"It would be worth exactly one dollar and seventy-five cents. I think it will amount to about that for cab-hire. I guess the cars aren't any too safe for you, or it might be less. It may amount to something more before I get you shipped before the mast on the first foreign-bound boat. But what's more important," he added, bringing his fist down with a mighty thump on the table, "you have just ten seconds to make up your mind. At the end of that time I'll ring for the police."

I went down to the boat to see it sail, Mag, at seven this morning. No, not to say good-by to him. He didn't know I was there. It was to say good-by to my old Tommy; the one I loved. Truly I did love him, Mag, though he never cared for me. No, he didn't. Men don't pull down the women they love; I know that now. If Tom Dorgan had ever cared for me he wouldn't have made a thief of me. If he'd cared, the last place on earth he'd have come to, when he knew the detectives would be on his track, would have been just the first place he made for. If he'd cared, he—

But it's done, Mag. It's all over. Cheap—that's what he is, this Tom Dorgan. Cheaply bad—a cheap bully, cheap-brained. Remember my wishing he'd have been a ventriloquist? Why, that man that tried to sell me to Obermuller hasn't sense enough to be a good scene-shifter. Oh—

The firm of Dorgan & Olden is dissolved, Mag. The retiring partner has gone into the theatrical business. As for Dorgan—the real one, poor fellow! jolly, handsome, big Tom Dorgan—he died. Yes, he died, Maggie, and was buried up there in the prison graveyard. A hard lot for a boy; but it's not the worst thing that can happen to him. He might become a man; such a man as that fellow that sailed away before the mast this morning.

X.

There I was seated in a box all alone—Miss Nancy Olden, by courtesy of the management, come to listen to the leading lady sing coon-songs, that I might add her to my collection of take-offs.

She's a fat leading lady, very fair and nearly fifty, I guess. But she's got a rollicking, husky voice in her fat throat that's sung the dollars down deep into her pockets. They say she's planted them deeper still—in the foundations of apartment houses—and that now she's the richest roly-poly on the Rialto.

Do you know, Maggie darlin', what I was saying to myself there in the box, while I watched the stage and waited for Obermuller? He said he'd drop in later, perhaps.

"Nance," I said, "I kind of fancy that apartment sort of idea myself. They tell you, Nancy, that when you've got the artistic temperament, that that's all you'll ever have. But there's a chance—one in a hundred—for a body to get that temperament mixed with a business instinct. It doesn't often happen. But when it does the result is—dollars. It may be, Nance—I shrewdly suspect it is a fact that you've got that marvelous mixture. Your early successes, Miss Olden, in another profession that I needn't name, would encourage the idea that you're not all heart and no head. I think, Nance, I shall have you mimic the artists during working hours and the business men when you're at play. I fancy apartment houses. They appeal to me. We'll call one 'The Nancy' and another 'Olden Hall' and another..."

"What'll I call the third apartment house, Mr. O?" I asked aloud, as I heard the rings on the portiere behind me click.

He didn't answer.

Without turning my head I repeated the question. And yet—suddenly—before he could have answered, I knew something was wrong.

I turned. And in that moment a man took the seat beside me and another stood facing me, with his back against the portieres.

"Miss Olden?" the man beside me asked.

"Yes."

"Nance Olden, the mimic, who entertains at private houses?"

I nodded.

"You—you were at Mrs. Paul Gates' just a week ago, and you gave your specialties there?"

"Yes—yes, what is it you want?"

He was a little man, but very muscular. I could note the play of his muscles even in the slight motion he made as he turned his body so as to get between me and the audience, while he leaned toward me, watching me intently with his small, quick, blue eyes.

"We don't want to make any scene here," he said very low. "We want to do it up as quietly as we can. There might be some mistake, you know, and then you'd be sorry. So should we. I hope you'll be reasonable and it'll be all the better for you because—"

"What are you talk—what—" I looked from him to the other fellow behind us.

He leaned a bit farther forward then, and pulling his coat partly open, he showed me a detective's badge. And the other man quickly did the same.

I sat back in my chair. The fat star on the stage, with her big mouth and big baby-face, was doing a cake-walk up and down close to the footlights, yelling the chorus of her song.

I'll never mimic that song, Mag, although I can see her and hear it as plain as though I'd listened and watched her all my life. But there's no fun in it for me. I hate the very bars the orchestra plays before she begins to sing. I can't bear even to think of the words. The whole of it is full of horrible things—it smells of the jail—it looks like stripes—it ...

"You're not going to faint?" asked the man, moving closer to me.

"Me? I never fainted in my life... Where is he now—Tom Dorgan?"

"Tom Dorgan!"

"Yes. I was sure I saw him sail, but, of course, I was mistaken. He has sent you after me, has he? I can hardly believe it of Tom—even—even yet."

"I don't know anything that connects you with Dorgan. If he was in with you on this, you'd better remember, before you say anything more, that it'll all be used against you."

The curtain had gone down and gone up again. I was watching the star. She has such a boyish way of nodding her head, instead of bowing, after she waddles out to the center; and every time she wipes her lips with her lace handkerchief, as though she'd just taken one of the cocktails she makes in the play with all the skill of a bartender. I found myself doing the same thing—wiping my lips with that very same gesture, as though I had a fat, bare forearm like a rolling-pin—when all at once the thought came to me: "You needn't bother, Nancy. It's all up. You won't have any use for it all."

"Just what is the charge?" I asked, turning to the man beside me.

"Stealing a purse containing three hundred dollars from Mrs. Paul Gates' house on the night of April twenty-seventh."

"What!"

It was Obermuller. He had pushed the curtains aside; the crashing of the orchestra had prevented our hearing the clatter of the rings. He had pushed by the man standing there, had come in and—he had heard.

"Nance!" he cried. "I don't believe a word of it." He turned in his quick way to the men. "What are your orders?"

"To take her to her flat and search it."

Obermuller came over to me then, and took my hand for a minute.

"It's a pity they don't know about the Gray rose diamond," he whispered, helping me on with my jacket. "They'd see how silly this little three-hundred dollar business is.... Brace up, Nance Olden!"

Oh, Mag, Mag, to hear a man like that talk to you as though you were his kind, when you have the feel of the coarse prison stripes between your dry, shaking fingers, and the close prison smell is already poisoning your nostrils!

"I don't see—" my voice shook—"how you can believe—in me."

"Don't you?" he laughed. "That's easy. You've got brains, Nance, and the most imbecile thing you could do just now, when your foot is already on the ladder, would be just this—to get off in order to pick up a trinket out of the mud, when there's a fortune up at the top waiting for you. Clever people don't do asinine things. And other clever people know that they don't. You're clever, but so am I—in my weak, small way. Come along, little girl."

He pulled my hand in his arm and we walked out, followed by the two men.

Oh, no! It was all very quiet and looked just like a little theater party that had an early supper engagement. Obermuller nodded to the manager out in the deserted lobby, who stopped us and asked me what I thought of the star.

You'll think me mad, Mag. Those fellows with the badges were sure I was, but Obermuller's eyes only twinkled, and the manager's grin grew broad when, catching up the end of my skirt and cake-walking up and down, I sang under my breath that coon-song that was trailing over and over through my head.

"Bravo! bravo!" whispered the manager, hoarsely, clapping his hands softly.

I gave one of those quick, funny, boyish nods the star inside affects and wiped my lips with my handkerchief.

That brought down my house. Even the biggest fellow with the badge giggled recognizingly, and then put his hand quickly in front of his mouth and tried to look severe and official.

The color had come back to Obermuller's face; it was worth dancing for—that.

"Be patient, Mag; let me tell it my way."

There wasn't room in the coupe waiting out in front for more than two. So Obermuller couldn't come in it. But he put me in—Mag, dear, dear Mag—he put me in as if I was a lady—not like Gray; a real one. A thing like that counts when two detectives are watching. It counted afterward in the way they treated me.

The big man climbed up on the seat with the driver. The blue-eyed fellow got in and sat beside me, closing the door.

"I'll be out there almost as soon as you are," Obermuller said, standing a moment beside the lowered window.

"You good fellow!" I said, and then, trying to laugh: "I'll do as much for you some day."

He shook his fist laughingly at me, and I waved my hand as we drove of.

"You know, Miss, there may be some mistake about this," said the man next to me, "and—"

"Yes, there may be. In fact, there is."

"I'm sure I'll be very glad if it is a mistake. They do happen—though not often. You spoke of Dorgan—"

"Did I?"

"Yes, Tom Dorgan, who busted out of Sing Sing the other day."

"Surely you're mistaken," I said, smiling right into his blue eyes. "The Tom Dorgan I mentioned is a sleight-of-hand performer at the Vaudeville. Ever see him?"

"N—no."

"Clever fellow. You ought to. Perhaps you don't recognize him under that name. On the bills he's Professor Haughwout. Stage people have so many names, you know."

"Yes, so have—some other people."

I laughed, and he grinned back at me.

"Now that's mean of you," I said; "I never had but one. It was all I needed."

It flashed through me then what a thing like this might do to a name. You know, Mag, every bit of recognition an actress steals from the world is so much capital. It isn't like the old graft when you had to begin new every time you took up a piece of work. And your name—the name the world knows—and its knowing it makes it worth having like everything—that name is the sum of every scheme you've planned, of every time you've got away with the goods, of every laugh you've lifted, of every bit of cleverness you've thought out and embodied, of everything that's in you, of everything you are.

But I didn't dare think long of this. I turned to him.

"Tell me about this charge," I said. "Where was the purse? Whose was it? And why haven't they missed it till after a week?"

"They missed it all right that night, but Mrs. Gates wanted it kept quiet till the servants had been shadowed and it was positively proved that they hadn't got away with it."

"And then she thought of me?"

"And then she thought of you."

"I wonder why?"

"Because you were the only person in that room except Mrs. Gates, the lady who lost the purse, Mrs. Ramsay, and—eh?" "N—nothing. Mrs. Ramsay, you said?"

"Yes."

"Not Mrs. Edward Ramsay, of Philadelphia?"

"Oh, you know the name?"

"Oh, yes, I know it."

"It was printed, you know, in gold lettering on the inside flap and—"

"I don't know."

"Well, it was, and it contained three hundred dollars, Mrs. Ramsay says. She had slipped it under the fold of the spread at the top of the bed in the room where you took off your things in Mrs. Gates' presence, and put them on again when no one else was there."

"And you mean to tell me that this is all?" I raged at him; "that every bit of evidence you have to warrant your treating an innocent girl like—"

"You didn't behave like a very innocent girl, if you'll remember," he said dryly, "when I first came into the box. In fact, if that fellow hadn't just come in then I believe you'd 'a' confessed the whole job.... 'Tain't too late," he added.

I didn't answer. I put my head back against the cushions and closed my eyes. I could feel the scrutiny of his blue eyes on my naked face—your face is so unprotected with the eyes closed; like a fort whose battery is withdrawn. But I was tired—it tires you when you care. A year ago, Mag, this sort of thing—the risk, the nearness to danger, the chances one way or the other—would have intoxicated me. I used to feel as though I was dancing on a volcano and daring it to explode. The more twistings and turnings there were to the labyrinth, the greater glory it was to get out. Maggie darlin', you have before you a mournful spectacle—the degeneration of Nancy Olden. It isn't that she's lost courage. It's only that she used to be able to think of only one thing, and now—What do you suppose it is, Mag? If you know, don't you dare to tell me.

When we got to the flat Obermuller was already there. At the door I pulled out my key and opened it with a flourish.

"Won't you come in, gentlemen, and spend the evening?" I asked.

They followed me in. First to the parlor. The two fellows threw off their coats and searched that through and through—not a drawer did they miss, not a bit of furniture did they fail to move. Obermuller and I sat there guying them as they pried about in their shirt-sleeves. That Trust business has taken the life out of him of late. All their tricks, all their squeezings, their cheatings, their bossing and bragging and bullying have got on to his nerves till he looks like a chained bear getting a drubbing. And he swears that they're in a conspiracy to freeze him and a few others like him out; he believes there's actually a paper in existence that would prove it. But this affair of the purse seemed to excite him till he behaved like a bad school-boy.

And I? Well, Nance Olden was never far behind at the Cruelty when there was anything going on. We trailed after them, and when they'd finished with the bedrooms—yours and mine—I asked the big fellow to come into the kitchen with Mr. O. and me, while the blue-eyed detective tackled the dining-room, and I'd get up a lunch for us all.

Mag, you should have seen Fred Obermuller with a big apron on him, dressing the salad while I was making sandwiches. The Cruelty taught me how to cook, even if it did teach me other things. You wouldn't have believed that the Trust had got him by the throat, and was choking the last breath out of him. You wouldn't have believed that our salaries hadn't been paid for three weeks, that our houses were dwindling every night, that—

I was thinking about it all there in the back of my head, trying to see a way out of it—you know if there is such an agreement as Obermuller swears there is, it's against the law—while we rattled on, the two of us, like a couple of children on a picnic, when I heard a crash behind me.

The salad bowl had slipped from Obermuller's fingers. He stood with his back turned to me, his eyes fixed upon that searching detective.

But he wasn't searching any more, Mag. He was standing still as a pointer that's scented game. He had moved the lounge out from the wall, and there on the floor, spread open where it had fallen, lay a handsome elephant-skin purse, with gold corners. From where I stood, Mag, I could read the plain gold lettering on the dark leather. I didn't have to move. It was plain enough—quite plain.

Mrs. EDWARD RAMSAY

Hush, hush, Mag; if you take on so, how can I tell you the rest?

Obermuller got in front of me as I started to walk into the dining-room. I don't know what his idea was. I don't suppose he does exactly—if it wasn't to spare me the sight of that damned thing.

Oh, how I hated it, that purse! I hated it as if it had been something alive that could be glad of what it had done. I wished it was alive that I could tear and rend it and stamp on it and throw it in a fire, and drag it out again, with burned and bleeding nails, to tear it again and again. I wanted to fall on it and hide it; to push it far, far away out of sight; to stamp it down—down into the very bottom of the earth, where it could feel the hell it was making for me.

But I only stood there, stupidly looking at it, having pushed past Obermuller, as though I never wanted to see anything else.

And then I heard that blue-eyed fellow's words.

"Well," he said, pulling on his coat as though he'd done a good day's work, "I guess you'd just better come along with me."

XI.

"Don't you think you'd better get out of this?" I asked Obermuller, as he came into the station a few minutes after I got there.

"No."

"I do."

"Because?"

"Because it won't do you any good to have your name mixed up with a thing like this."

"But it might do you some good."

I didn't answer for a minute after that. I sat in my chair, my eyes bent on the floor. I counted the cracks between the chair and the floor of the office where the Chief was busy with another case. I counted them six times, back and forth, till my eyes were clear and my voice was steady.

"You're awfully good," I said, looking up at him as he stood by me. "You're the best fellow I ever knew. I didn't know men could be so good to women... But you'd better go—please. It'll be bad enough when the papers get hold of this, without having them lump you in with a bad lot like me."

He put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a quick little shake.

"Don't say that about yourself. You're not a bad lot."

"But—you saw the purse."

"Yes, I saw it. But it hasn't proved anything to me but this: you're innocent, Nance, or you're crazy. If it's the first, I want to stand by you, little girl. If it's the second—good God! I've got to stand by you harder than ever."

Can you see me sitting there, Mag, in the bright, bare little room, with its electric lights, still in my white dress and big white hat, my pretty jacket fallen on the floor beside me? I could feel the sharp blue eyes of that detective Morris feeding on my miserable face. But I could feel, too, a warmth like wine poured into me from that big fellow's voice.

I put my hand up to him and he took it.

"If I'm innocent and can prove it, Fred Obermuller, I'll get even with you for—for this."

"Do you want to do something for me now?"

"Do I?"

"Well, if you want to help me, don't sit there looking like the criminal ghost of the girl I know."

The blood rushed to my face. Nance Olden, a sniveling coward! Me, showing the white feather—me, whimpering like a whipped puppy—me—Nance Olden!

"You know," I smiled up at him, "I never did enjoy getting caught."

"Hush! But that's better.... Tell me now—"

A buzzer sounded. The blue-eyed detective got up and came over to me.

"Chief's ready," he said. "This way."

They stopped Obermuller at the door. But he pushed past them.

"I want to say just a word to you, Chief," he said. "You remember me. I'm Obermuller, of the Vaudeville. If you'll send those fellows out and let me speak to you just a moment, I'll leave you alone with Miss Olden."

The Chief nodded to the blue-eyed detective, and he and the other fellow went out and shut the door behind them.

"I want simply to call your attention to the absurdity and unreasonableness of this thing," Obermuller said, leaning up against the Chief's desk, while he threw out his left hand with that big open gesture of his, "and to ask you to bear in mind, no matter what appearances may be, that Miss Olden is the most talented girl on the stage to-day; that in a very short time she will be at the top; that just now she is not suffering for lack of money; that she's not a high-roller, but a determined, hard-working little grind, and that if she did feel like taking a plunge, she knows that she could get all she wants from me even—"

"Even if you can't pay salaries when they're due, Obermuller." The Chief grinned under his white mustache.

"Even though the Trust is pushing me to the wall; going to such lengths that they're liable criminally as well as civilly, if I could only get my hands on proof of their rascality. It's true I can't pay salaries always when they're due, but I can still raise a few hundred to help a friend. And Miss Olden is a friend of mine. If you can prove that she took this money, you prove only that she's gone mad, but you don't—"

"All right, Obermuller. You're not the lawyer for the defense. That'll come later—if it does come. I'll be glad to bear in mind all you've said, and much that you haven't."

"Thank you. Good night.... I'll wait for you, Nance, outside."

"I'm going to ask you a lot of questions, Miss Olden," the old Chief said, when we were alone. "Sit here, please. Morris tells me you've got more nerve than any woman that's ever come before me, so I needn't bother to reassure you. You don't look like a girl that's easily frightened. I have heard how you danced in the lobby of the Manhattan, how you guyed him at your flat, and were getting lunch and having a regular picnic of a time when—"

"When he found that purse."

"Exactly. Now, why did you do all that?"

"Why? Because I felt like it. I felt gay and excited and—"

"Not dreaming that that purse was sure to be found?"

"Not dreaming that there was such a purse in existence except from the detective's say—so, and never fancying for an instant that it would be found in my flat."

"Hm!" He looked at me from under his heavy, wrinkled old lids. You don't get nice eyes from looking on the nasty things in this world, Mag.

"Why," I cried, "what kind of a girl could cut up like that when she was on the very edge of discovery?"

"A very smart girl—an actress; a good one; a clever thief who's used to bluffing. Of course," he added softly, "you won't misunderstand me. I'm simply suggesting the different kinds of girl that could have done what you did. But, if you don't mind, I'll do the questioning. Nance Olden," he turned suddenly on me, his manner changed and threatening, "what has become of that three hundred dollars?"

"Mr. Chief, you know just as much about that as I do."

I threw up my head and looked him full in the face. It was over now—all the shivering and trembling and fearing. Nance Olden's not a coward when she's fighting for her freedom; and fighting alone without any sympathizing friend to weaken her.

He returned the look with interest.

"I may know more," he said insinuatingly.

"Possibly." I shrugged my shoulders.

No, it wasn't put on. There never yet was a man who bullied me that didn't rouse the fighter in me. I swore to myself that this old thief-catcher shouldn't rattle me.

"Doesn't it occur to you that under the circumstances a full confession might be the very best thing for you? I shouldn't wonder if these people would be inclined to be lenient with you if you'd return the money. Doesn't it occur—"

"It might occur to me if I had anything to confess—about this purse."

"How long since you've seen Mrs. Edward Ramsay?" He rushed the question at me.

I jumped.

"How do you know I've ever seen her?"

"I do know you have."

"I don't believe you."

"Thank you; neither do I believe you, which is more to the point. Come, answer the question: how long is it since you have seen the lady?"

I looked at him. And then I looked at my glove, and slowly pulled the fingers inside out, and then—then I giggled. Suddenly it came to me—that silly, little insane dodge of mine in the Bishop's carriage that day; the girl who had lost her name; and the use all that affair might be to me if ever—

"I'll tell you if you'll let me think a minute," I said sweetly. "It—it must be all of fifteen months."

"Ah! You see I did know that you've met the lady. If you're wise you'll draw deductions as to other things I know that you don't think I do.... And where did you see her?"

"In her own home."

"Called there," he sneered, "alone?"

"No," I said very gently. "I went there, to the best of my recollection, with the Bishop—yes, it was the Bishop, Bishop Van Wagenen."

"Indeed!"

I could see that he didn't believe a word I was saying, which made me happily eager to tell him more.

"Yes, we drove up to the Square one afternoon in the Bishop's carriage—the fat, plum-colored one, you know. We had tea there—at least, I did. I was to have spent the night, but—"

"That's enough of that."

I chuckled. Yes, Mag Monahan, I was enjoying myself. I was having a run for my money, even if it was the last run I was to have.

"So it's fifteen months since you've seen Mrs. Ramsay, eh?"

"Yes."

He turned on me with a roar.

"And yet it's only a week since you saw her at Mrs. Gates'."

"Oh, no."

"No? Take care!"

"That night at Mrs. Gates' it was dark, you know, in the front room. I didn't see Mrs. Ramsay that night. I didn't know she was there at all till—"

"Till?"

"Till later I was told."

"Who told you?"

"Her husband."

He threw down his pencil.

"Look here, this is no lark, young woman, and you needn't trouble yourself to weave any more fairy tales. Mr. Ramsay is in a—he's very ill. His own wife hasn't seen him since that night, so you see you're lying uselessly."

"Really!" So Edward didn't go back to Mrs. Gates' that night. Tut! tut! After his telephone message, too!

"Now, assuming your innocence of the theft, Miss Olden, what is your theory; how do you account for the presence of that purse in your flat?"

"Now, you've hit the part of it that really puzzles me. How do you account for it; what is your theory?"

He got to his feet, pushing his chair back sharply.

"My theory, if you want to know it, is that you stole the purse; that your friend Obermuller believes you did; that you got away with the three hundred, or hid it away, and—"

"And what a stupid thief I must be, then, to leave the empty purse under my lounge!"

"How do you know it was empty?" he demanded sharply.

"You said so... Well, you gave me to understand that it was, then. What difference does it make? It would be a still stupider thief who'd leave a full purse instead of an empty one under his own lounge."

"Yes; and you're not stupid, Miss Olden."

"Thank you. I'm sorry I can't say as much for you."

I couldn't help it. He was such a stupid. The idea of telling me that Fred Obermuller believed me guilty! The idea of thinking me such a fool as to believe that! Such men as that make criminals. They're so fat-witted you positively ache—they so tempt you to pull the wool over their eyes. O Mag, if the Lord had only made men cleverer, there'd be fewer Nancy Oldens.

The Chief blew a blast at his speaking-tube that made his purple cheeks seem about to burst. My shoulders shook as I watched him, he was so wrathy.

And I was still laughing when I followed the detective out into the waiting-room, where Obermuller was pacing the floor. At the sight of my smiling face he came rushing to me.

"Nance!" he cried.

"Orders are, Morris," came in a bellow from the Chief at his door, "that no further communication be allowed between the prisoner and—"

Phew! All the pertness leaked out of me. Oh, Mag, I don't like that word. It stings—it binds—it cuts.

I don't know what I looked like then; I wasn't thinking of me. I was watching Obermuller's face. It seemed to grow old and thin and haggard before my eyes, as the blood drained out of it. He turned with an exclamation to the Chief and—

And just then there came a long ring at the telephone.

Why did I stand there? O Mag, when you're on your way to the place I was bound for, when you know that before you'll set foot in this same bright little room again, the hounds in half a dozen cities will have scratched clean every hiding-place you've had, when your every act will be known and—and—oh, then, you wait, Mag, you wait for anything—anything in the world; even a telephone call that may only be bringing in another wretch like yourself; bound, like yourself, for the Tombs.

The Chief himself went to answer it.

"Yes—what?" he growled. "Well, tell Long Distance to get busy. What's that? St. Francis—that's the jag ward, isn't it? Who is it? Who? Ramsay!"

I caught Obermuller's hand.

"I don't hear you," the Chief roared. "Oh—yes? Yes, we've got the thief, but the money—no, we haven't got the money. The deuce you say! Took it yourself? Out of your wife's purse—yes.... Yes. But we've got the—What? Don't remember where you—"

"Steady, Nance," whispered Obermuller, grabbing my other hand.

I tried to stand steady, but everything swayed and I couldn't hear the rest of what the Chief was saying, though all my life seemed condensed into a listening. But I did hear when he jammed the receiver on the hook and faced us.

"Well, they've got the money. Ramsay took the purse himself, thinking it wasn't safe there under the spread where any servant might be tempted who chanced to uncover it. You'll admit the thing looked shady. The reason Mrs. Ramsay didn't know of it is because the old man's just come to his senses in a hospital and been notified that the purse was missing."

"I want to apologize to you, Chief," I mumbled.

"For thinking me stupid? Oh, we were both—"

"No, for thinking me not stupid. I am stupid—stupid—stupid. The old fellow I told you about, Mr. O., and the way I telephoned him out of the flat that night—it was—"

"Ramsay!"

I nodded, and then crumbled to the floor.

It was then that they sent for you, Mag.

Why didn't I tell it straight at the first, you dear old Mag? Because I didn't know the straight of it, then, myself. I was so heavy-witted I never once thought of Edward. He must have taken the bills out of the purse and then crammed them in his pocket while he was waiting there on the lounge and I was pretending to telephone and—

But it's best as it is—oh, so best! Think, Mag! Two people who knew her—who knew her, mind—believed in Nancy Olden, in spite of appearances: Obermuller, while we were in the thick of it, and; you, you dear girl, while I was telling you of it.