The man to whom she spoke had gone gray a little. He began to understand, for he was not lacking in intelligence. Somehow, it was borne in on him that this woman had a grievance beyond the usual run of injuries.
“You are that girl?” he said. It was not a question, rather an affirmation.
Mary spoke with the dignity of long suffering—more than that, with the confident dignity of a vengeance long delayed, now at last achieved. Her words were simple enough, but they touched to the heart of the man accused by them.
“I am that girl.”
There was a little interval of silence. Then, Mary spoke again, remorselessly.
“You took away my good name. You smashed my life. You put me behind the bars. You owe for all that.... Well' I've begun to collect.”
The man opposite her, the man of vigorous form, of strong face and keen eyes, stood gazing intently for long moments. In that time, he was learning many things. Finally, he spoke.
“And that is why you married my boy.”
“It is.” Mary gave the answer coldly, convincingly.
Convincingly, save to one—her husband. Dick suddenly aroused, and spoke with the violence of one sure.
“It is not!”
Burke shouted a warning. Demarest, more diplomatic, made a restraining gesture toward the police official, then started to address the young man soothingly.
But Dick would have none of their interference.
“This is my affair,” he said, and the others fell silent. He stood up and went to Mary, and took her two hands in his, very gently, yet very firmly.
“Mary,” he said softly, yet with a strength of conviction, “you married me because you love me.”
The wife shuddered, but she strove to deny.
“No,” she said gravely, “no, I did not!”
“And you love me now!” he went on insistingly.
“No, no!” Mary's denial came like a cry for escape.
“You love me now!” There was a masterful quality in his declaration, which seemed to ignore her negation.
“I don't,” she repeated bitterly.
But he was inexorable.
“Look me in the face, and say that.”
He took her face in his hands, lifted it, and his eyes met hers searchingly.
“Look me in the face, and say that,” he repeated.
There was a silence that seemed long, though it was measured in the passing of seconds. The three watchers dared not interrupt this drama of emotions, but, at last, Mary, who had planned so long for this hour, gathered her forces and spoke valiantly. Her voice was low, but without any weakness of doubt.
“I do not love you.”
In the instant of reply, Dick Gilder, by some inspiration of love, changed his attitude. “Just the same,” he said cheerfully, “you are my wife, and I'm going to keep you and make you love me.”
Mary felt a thrill of fear through her very soul.
“You can't!” she cried harshly. “You are his son!”
“She's a crook!” Burke said.
“I don't care a damn what you've been!” Dick exclaimed. “From now on you'll go straight. You'll walk the straightest line a woman ever walked. You'll put all thoughts of vengeance out of your heart, because I'll fill it with something bigger—I'm going to make you love me.”
Burke, with his rousing voice, spoke again:
“I tell you, she's a crook!”
Mary moved a little, and then turned her face toward Gilder.
“And, if I am, who made me one? You can't send a girl to prison, and have her come out anything else.”
Burke swung himself around in a movement of complete disgust.
“She didn't get her time for good behavior.”
Mary raised her head, haughtily, with a gesture of high disdain.
“And I'm proud of it!” came her instant retort. “Do you know what goes on there behind those stone walls? Do you, Mr. District Attorney, whose business it is to send girls there? Do you know what a girl is expected to do, to get time off for good behavior? If you don't, ask the keepers.”
Gilder moved fussily.
“And you——”
Mary swayed a little, standing there before her questioner.
“I served every minute of my time—every minute of it, three full, whole years. Do you wonder that I want to get even, that some one has got to pay? Four years ago, you took away my name—and gave me a number.... Now, I've given up the number—and I've got your name.”
The Gilders, both father and son, endured much suffering throughout the night and day that followed the scene in Mary Turner's apartment, when she had made known the accomplishment of her revenge on the older man by her ensnaring of the younger. Dick had followed the others out of her presence at her command, emphasized by her leaving him alone when he would have pleaded further with her. Since then, he had striven to obtain another interview with his bride, but she had refused him. He was denied admission to the apartment. Only the maid answered the ringing of the telephone, and his notes were seemingly unheeded. Distraught by this violent interjection of torment into a life that hitherto had known no important suffering, Dick Gilder showed what mettle of man lay beneath his debonair appearance. And that mettle was of a kind worth while. In these hours of grief, the soul of him put out its strength. He learned beyond peradventure of doubt that the woman whom he had married was in truth an ex-convict, even as Burke and Demarest had declared. Nevertheless, he did not for an instant believe that she was guilty of the crime with which she had been originally charged and for which she had served a sentence in prison. For the rest, he could understand in some degree how the venom of the wrong inflicted on her had poisoned her nature through the years, till she had worked out its evil through the scheme of which he was the innocent victim. He cared little for the fact that recently she had devoted herself to devious devices for making money, to ingenious schemes for legal plunder. In his summing of her, he set as more than an offset to her unrighteousness in this regard the desperate struggle she had made after leaving prison to keep straight, which, as he learned, had ended in her attempt at suicide. He knew the intelligence of this woman whom he loved, and in his heart was no thought of her faults as vital flaws. It seemed to him rather that circumstances had compelled her, and that through all the suffering of her life she had retained the more beautiful qualities of her womanliness, for which he reverenced her. In the closeness of their association, short as it had been, he had learned to know something of the tenderer depths within her, the kindliness of her, the wholesomeness. Swayed as he was by the loveliness of her, he was yet more enthralled by those inner qualities of which the outer beauty was only the fitting symbol.
So, in the face of this catastrophe, where a less love must have been destroyed utterly, Dick remained loyal. His passionate regard did not falter for a moment. It never even occurred to him that he might cast her off, might yield to his father's prayers, and abandon her. On the contrary, his only purpose was to gain her for himself, to cherish and guard her against every ill, to protect with his love from every attack of shame or injury. He would not believe that the girl did not care for him. Whatever had been her first purpose of using him only as an instrument through which to strike against his father, whatever might be her present plan of eliminating him from her life in the future, he still was sure that she had grown to know a real and lasting affection for himself. He remembered startled glances from the violet eyes, caught unawares, and the music of her voice in rare instants, and these told him that love for him stirred, even though it might as yet be but faintly, in her heart.
Out of that fact, he drew an immediate comfort in this period of his misery. Nevertheless, his anguish was a racking one. He grew older visibly in the night and the day. There crept suddenly lines of new feeling into his face, and, too, lines of new strength. The boy died in that time; the man was born, came forth in the full of his steadfastness and his courage, and his love.
The father suffered with the son. He was a proud man, intensely gratified over the commanding position to which he had achieved in the commercial world, proud of his business integrity, of his standing in the community as a leader, proud of his social position, proud most of all of the son whom he so loved. Now, this hideous disaster threatened his pride at every turn—worse, it threatened the one person in the world whom he really loved. Most fathers would have stormed at the boy when pleading failed, would have given commands with harshness, would have menaced the recalcitrant with disinheritance. Edward Gilder did none of these things, though his heart was sorely wounded. He loved his son too much to contemplate making more evil for the lad by any estrangement between them. Yet he felt that the matter could not safely be left in the hands of Dick himself. He realized that his son loved the woman—nor could he wonder much at that. His keen eyes had perceived Mary Turner's graces of form, her loveliness of face. He had apprehended, too, in some measure at least, the fineness of her mental fiber and the capacities of her heart. Deep within him, denied any outlet, he knew there lurked a curious, subtle sympathy for the girl in her scheme of revenge against himself. Her persistent striving toward the object of her ambition was something he could understand, since the like thing in different guise had been back of his own business success. He would not let the idea rise to the surface of consciousness, for he still refused to believe that Mary Turner had suffered at his hand unjustly. He would think of her as nothing else than a vile creature, who had caught his son in the toils of her beauty and charm, for the purpose of eventually making money out of the intrigue.
Gilder, in his library this night, was pacing impatiently to and fro, eagerly listening for the sound of his son's return to the house. He had been the guest of honor that night at an important meeting of the Civic Committee, and he had spoken with his usual clarity and earnestness in spite of the trouble that beset him. Now, however, the regeneration of the city was far from his thought, and his sole concern was with the regeneration of a life, that of his son, which bade fair to be ruined by the wiles of a wicked woman. He was anxious for the coming of Dick, to whom he would make one more appeal. If that should fail—well, he must use the influences at his command to secure the forcible parting of the adventuress from his son.
The room in which he paced to and fro was of a solid dignity, well fitted to serve as an environment for its owner. It was very large, and lofty. There was massiveness in the desk that stood opposite the hall door, near a window. This particular window itself was huge, high, jutting in octagonal, with leaded panes. In addition, there was a great fireplace set with tiles, around which was woodwork elaborately carved, the fruit of patient questing abroad. On the walls were hung some pieces of tapestry, where there were not bookcases. Over the octagonal window, too, such draperies fell in stately lines. Now, as the magnate paced back and forth, there was only a gentle light in the room, from a reading-lamp on his desk. The huge chandelier was unlighted.... It was even as Gilder, in an increasing irritation over the delay, had thrown himself down on a couch which stood just a little way within an alcove, that he heard the outer door open and shut. He sprang up with an ejaculation of satisfaction.
“Dick, at last!” he muttered.
It was, in truth, the son. A moment later, he entered the room, and went at once to his father, who was standing waiting, facing the door.
“I'm awfully sorry I'm so late, Dad,” he said simply.
“Where have you been?” the father demanded gravely. But there was great affection in the flash of his gray eyes as he scanned the young man's face, and the touch of the hand that he put on Dick's shoulder was very tender. “With that woman again?”
The boy's voice was disconsolate as he replied:
“No, father, not with her. She won't see me.”
The older man snorted a wrathful appreciation.
“Naturally!” he exclaimed with exceeding bitterness in the heavy voice. “She's got all she wanted from you—my name!” He repeated the words with a grimace of exasperation: “My name!”
There was a novel dignity in the son's tone as he spoke.
“It's mine, too, you know, sir,” he said quietly.
The father was impressed of a sudden with the fact that, while this affair was of supreme import to himself, it was, after all, of still greater significance to his son. To himself, the chief concerns were of the worldly kind. To this boy, the vital thing was something deeper, something of the heart: for, however absurd his feeling, the truth remained that he loved the woman. Yes, it was the son's name that Mary Turner had taken, as well as that of his father. In the case of the son, she had taken not only his name, but his very life. Yes, it was, indeed, Dick's tragedy. Whatever he, the father, might feel, the son was, after all, more affected. He must suffer more, must lose more, must pay more with happiness for his folly.
Gilder looked at his son with a strange, new respect, but he could not let the situation go without protest, protest of the most vehement.
“Dick,” he cried, and his big voice was shaken a little by the force of his emotion; “boy, you are all I have in the world. You will have to free yourself from this woman somehow.” He stood very erect, staring steadfastly out of his clear gray eyes into those of his son. His heavy face was rigid with feeling; the coarse mouth bent slightly in a smile of troubled fondness, as he added more softly: “You owe me that much.”
The son's eyes met his father's freely. There was respect in them, and affection, but there was something else, too, something the older man recognized as beyond his control. He spoke gravely, with a deliberate conviction.
“I owe something to her, too, Dad.”
But Gilder would not let the statement go unchallenged. His heavy voice rang out rebukingly, overtoned with protest.
“What can you owe her?” he demanded indignantly. “She tricked you into the marriage. Why, legally, it's not even that. There's been nothing more than a wedding ceremony. The courts hold that that is only a part of the marriage actually. The fact that she doesn't receive you makes it simpler, too. It can be arranged. We must get you out of the scrape.”
He turned and went to the desk, as if to sit, but he was halted by his son's answer, given very gently, yet with a note of finality that to the father's ear rang like the crack of doom.
“I'm not sure that I want to get out of it, father.”
That was all, but those plain words summed the situation, made the issue a matter not of advice, but of the heart.
Gilder persisted, however, in trying to evade the integral fact of his son's feeling. Still he tried to fix the issue on the known unsavory reputation of the woman.
“You want to stay married to this jail-bird!” he stormed.
A gust of fury swept the boy. He loved the woman, in spite of all; he respected her, even reverenced her. To hear her thus named moved him to a rage almost beyond his control. But he mastered himself. He remembered that the man who spoke loved him; he remembered, too, that the word of opprobrium was no more than the truth, however offensive it might be to his sensitiveness. He waited a moment until he could hold his voice even. Then his words were the sternest protest that could have been uttered, though they came from no exercise of thought, only out of the deeps of his heart.
“I'm very fond of her.”
That was all. But the simple sincerity of the saying griped the father's mood, as no argument could have done. There was a little silence. After all, what could meet such loving loyalty?
When at last he spoke, Gilder's voice was subdued, a little husky.
“Now, that you know?” he questioned.
There was no faltering in the answer.
“Now, that I know,” Dick said distinctly. Then abruptly, the young man spoke with the energy of perfect faith in the woman. “Don't you see, father? Why, she is justified in a way, in her own mind anyhow, I mean. She was innocent when she was sent to prison. She feels that the world owes her——”
But the older man would not permit the assertion to go uncontradicted. That reference to the woman's innocence was an arraignment of himself, for it had been he who sent her to the term of imprisonment.
“Don't talk to me about her innocence!” he said, and his voice was ominous. “I suppose next you will argue that, because she's been clever enough to keep within the law, since she's got out of State Prison, she's not a criminal. But let me tell you—crime is crime, whether the law touches it in the particular case, or whether it doesn't.”
Gilder faced his son sternly for a moment, and then presently spoke again with deeper earnestness.
“There's only one course open to you, my boy. You must give this girl up.”
The son met his father's gaze with a level look in which there was no weakness.
“I've told you, Dad——” he began.
“You must, I tell you,” the father insisted. Then he went on quickly, with a tone of utmost positiveness. “If you don't, what are you going to do the day your wife is thrown into a patrol wagon and carried to Police Headquarters—for it's sure to happen? The cleverest of people make mistakes, and some day she'll make one.”
Dick threw out his hands in a gesture of supreme denial. He was furious at this supposition that she would continue in her irregular practices.
But the father went on remorselessly.
“They will stand her up where the detectives will walk past her with masks on their faces. Her picture, of course, is already in the Rogues' Gallery, but they will take another. Yes, and the imprints of her fingers, and the measurements of her body.”
The son was writhing under the words. The woman of whom these things were said was the woman whom he loved. It was blasphemy to think of her in such case, subjected to the degradation of these processes. Yet, every word had in it the piercing, horrible sting of truth. His face whitened. He raised a supplicating hand.
“Father!”
“That's what they will do to your wife,” Gilder went on harshly; “to the woman who bears your name and mine.” There was a little pause, and the father stood rigid, menacing. The final question came rasping. “What are you going to do about it?”
Dick went forward until he was close to his father. Then he spoke with profound conviction.
“It will never happen. She will go straight, Dad. That I know. You would know it if you only knew her as I do.”
Gilder once again put his hand tenderly on his son's shoulder. His voice was modulated to an unaccustomed mildness as he spoke.
“Be sensible, boy,” he pleaded softly. “Be sensible!”
Dick dropped down on the couch, and made his answer very gently, his eyes unseeing as he dwelt on the things he knew of the woman he loved.
“Why, Dad,” he said, “she is young. She's just like a child in a hundred ways. She loves the trees and the grass and the flowers—and everything that's simple and real! And as for her heart—” His voice was low and very tender: “Why, her heart is the biggest I've ever known. It's just overflowing with sweetness and kindness. I've seen her pick up a baby that had fallen in the street, and mother it in a way that—well, no one could do it as she did it, unless her soul was clean.”
The father was silent, a little awed. He made an effort to shake off the feeling, and spoke with a sneer.
“You heard what she said yesterday, and you still are such a fool as to think that.”
The answer of the son came with an immutable finality, the sublime faith of love.
“I don't think—I know!”
Gilder was in despair. What argument could avail him? He cried out sharply in desperation.
“Do you realize what you're doing? Don't go to smash, Dick, just at the beginning of your life. Oh, I beg you, boy, stop! Put this girl out of your thoughts and start fresh.”
The reply was of the simplest, and it was the end of argument.
“Father,” Dick said, very gently, “I can't.”
There followed a little period of quiet between the two. The father, from his desk, stood facing his son, who thus denied him in all honesty because the heart so commanded. The son rested motionless and looked with unflinching eyes into his father's face. In the gaze of each was a great affection.
“You're all I have, my boy,” the older man said at last. And now the big voice was a mildest whisper of love.
“Yes, Dad,” came the answer—another whisper, since it is hard to voice the truth of feeling such as this. “If I could avoid it, I wouldn't hurt you for anything in the world. I'm sorry, Dad, awfully sorry——” He hesitated, then his voice rang out clearly. There was in his tone, when he spoke again, a recognition of that loneliness which is the curse and the crown of being:
“But,” he ended, “I must fight this out by myself—fight it out in my own way.... And I'm going to do it!”
“A man to see you, sir,” he said.
Gilder made a gesture of irritation, as he sank into the chair at his desk.
“I can't see any one to-night, Thomas,” he exclaimed, sharply.
“But he said it was most important, sir,” the servant went on. He held out the tray insistently.
The master took the card grudgingly. As his eyes caught the name, his expression changed slightly.
“Very well,” he said, “show him up.” His glance met the wondering gaze of his son.
“It's Burke,” he explained.
“What on earth can he want—at this time of night?” Dick exclaimed.
The father smiled grimly.
“You may as well get used to visits from the police.” There was something ghastly in the effort toward playfulness.
A moment later, Inspector Burke entered the room.
“Oh, you're here, too,” he said, as his eyes fell on Dick. “That's good. I wanted to see you, too.”
Inspector Burke was, in fact, much concerned over the situation that had developed. He was a man of undoubted ability, and he took a keen professional pride in his work. He possessed the faults of his class, was not too scrupulous where he saw a safe opportunity to make a snug sum of money through the employment of his official authority, was ready to buckle to those whose influence could help or hinder his ambition. But, in spite of these ordinary defects, he was fond of his work and wishful to excel in it. Thus, Mary Turner had come to be a thorn in his side. She flouted his authority and sustained her incredible effrontery by a restraining order from the court. The thing was outrageous to him, and he set himself to match her cunning. The fact that she had involved Dick Gilder within her toils made him the more anxious to overcome her in the strife of resources between them. After much studying, he had at last planned something that, while it would not directly touch Mary herself, would at least serve to intimidate her, and as well make further action easier against her. It was in pursuit of this scheme that he now came to Gilder's house, and the presence of the young man abruptly gave him another idea that might benefit him well. So, he disregarded Gilder's greeting, and went on speaking to the son.
“She's skipped!” he said, triumphantly.
Dick made a step forward. His eyes flashed, and there was anger in his voice as he replied:
“I don't believe it.”
The Inspector smiled, unperturbed.
“She left this morning for Chicago,” he said, lying with a manner that long habit rendered altogether convincing. “I told you she'd go.” He turned to the father, and spoke with an air of boastful good nature. “Now, all you have to do is to get this boy out of the scrape and you'll be all right.”
“If we only could!” The cry came with deepest earnestness from the lips of Gilder, but there was little hope in his voice.
The Inspector, however, was confident of success, and his tones rang cheerfully as he answered:
“I guess we can find a way to have the marriage annulled, or whatever they do to marriages that don't take.”
The brutal assurance of the man in thus referring to things that were sacred, moved Dick to wrath.
“Don't you interfere,” he said. His words were spoken softly, but tensely.
Nevertheless, Burke held to the topic, but an indefinable change in his manner rendered it less offensive to the young man.
“Interfere! Huh!” he ejaculated, grinning broadly. “Why, that's what I'm paid to do. Listen to me, son. The minute you begin mixing up with crooks, you ain't in a position to give orders to any one. The crooks have got no rights in the eyes of the police. Just remember that.”
The Inspector spoke the simple truth as he knew it from years of experience. The theory of the law is that a presumption of innocence exists until the accused is proven guilty. But the police are out of sympathy with such finical methods. With them, the crook is presumed guilty at the outset of whatever may be charged against him. If need be, there will be proof a-plenty against him—of the sort that the underworld knows to its sorrow.
But Dick was not listening. His thoughts were again wholly with the woman he loved, who, as the Inspector declared, had fled from him.
“Where's she gone in Chicago?”
Burke answered in his usual gruff fashion, but with a note of kindliness that was not without its effect on Dick.
“I'm no mind-reader,” he said. “But she's a swell little girl, all right. I've got to hand it to her for that. So, she'll probably stop at the Blackstone—that is, until the Chicago police are tipped off that she is in town.”
Of a sudden, the face of the young man took on a totally different expression. Where before had been anger, now was a vivid eagerness. He went close to the Inspector, and spoke with intense seriousness.
“Burke,” he said, pleadingly, “give me a chance. I'll leave for Chicago in the morning. Give me twenty-four hours start before you begin hounding her.”
The Inspector regarded the speaker searchingly. His heavy face was drawn in an expression of apparent doubt. Abruptly, then, he smiled acquiescence.
“Seems reasonable,” he admitted.
But the father strode to his son.
“No, no, Dick,” he cried. “You shall not go! You shall not go!”
Burke, however, shook his head in remonstrance against Gilder's plea. His huge voice came booming, weightily impressive.
“Why not?” he questioned. “It's a fair gamble. And, besides, I like the boy's nerve.”
Dick seized on the admission eagerly.
“And you'll agree?” he cried.
“Yes, I'll agree,” the Inspector answered.
“Thank you,” Dick said quietly.
But the father was not content. On the contrary, he went toward the two hurriedly, with a gesture of reproval.
“You shall not go, Dick,” he declared, imperiously.
The Inspector shot a word of warning to Gilder in an aside that Dick could not hear.
“Keep still,” he replied. “It's all right.”
Dick went on speaking with a seriousness suited to the magnitude of his interests.
“You give me your word, Inspector,” he said, “that you won't notify the police in Chicago until I've been there twenty-four hours?”
“You're on,” Burke replied genially. “They won't get a whisper out of me until the time is up.” He swung about to face the father, and there was a complete change in his manner. “Now, then, Mr. Gilder,” he said briskly, “I want to talk to you about another little matter——”
Dick caught the suggestion, and interrupted quickly.
“Then I'll go.” He smiled rather wanly at his father. “You know, Dad, I'm sorry, but I've got to do what I think is the right thing.”
Burke helped to save the situation from the growing tenseness.
“Sure,” he cried heartily; “sure you have. That's the best any of us can do.” He watched keenly as the young man went out of the room. It was not until the door was closed after Dick that he spoke. Then he dropped to a seat on the couch, and proceeded to make his confidences to the magnate.
“He'll go to Chicago in the morning, you think, don't you?”
“Certainly,” Gilder answered. “But I don't like it.”
Burke slapped his leg with an enthusiasm that might have broken a weaker member.
“Best thing that could have happened!” he vociferated. And then, as Gilder regarded him in astonishment, he added, chuckling: “You see, he won't find her there.”
“Why do you think that?” Gilder demanded, greatly puzzled.
Burke permitted himself the luxury of laughing appreciatively a moment more before making his exclamation. Then he said quietly:
“Because she didn't go there.”
“Where did she go, then?” Gilder queried wholly at a loss.
Once again the officer chuckled. It was evident that he was well pleased with his own ingenuity.
“Nowhere yet,” he said at last. “But, just about the time he's starting for the West I'll have her down at Headquarters. Demarest will have her indicted before noon. She'll go for trial in the afternoon. And to-morrow night she'll be sleeping up the river.... That's where she is going.”
Gilder stood motionless for a moment. After all, he was an ordinary citizen, quite unfamiliar with the recondite methods familiar to the police.
“But,” he said, wonderingly, “you can't do that.”
The Inspector laughed, a laugh of disingenuous amusement, for he understood perfectly the lack of comprehension on the part of his hearer.
“Well,” he said, and his voice sank into a modest rumble that was none the less still thunderous. “Perhaps I can't!” And then he beamed broadly, his whole face smiling blandly on the man who doubted his power. “Perhaps I can't,” he repeated. Then the chuckle came again, and he added emphatically: “But I will!” Suddenly, his heavy face grew hard. His alert eyes shone fiercely, with a flash of fire that was known to every patrolman who had ever reported to the desk when he was lieutenant. His heavy jaw shot forward aggressively as he spoke.
“Think I'm going to let that girl make a joke of the Police Department? Why, I'm here to get her—to stop her anyhow. Her gang is going to break into your house to-night.”
“What?” Gilder demanded. “You mean, she's coming here as a thief?”
“Not exactly,” Inspector Burke confessed, “but her pals are coming to try to pull off something right here. She wouldn't come, not if I know her. She's too clever for that. Why, if she knew what Garson was planning to do, she'd stop him.”
The Inspector paused suddenly. For a long minute his face was seamed with thought. Then, he smote his thigh with a blow strong enough to kill an ox. His face was radiant.
“By God! I've got her!” he cried. The inspiration for which he had longed was his at last. He went to the desk where the telephone was, and took up the receiver.
“Give me 3100 Spring,” he said. As he waited for the connection he smiled widely on the astonished Gilder. “'Tain't too late,” he said joyously. “I must have been losing my mind not to have thought of it before.” The impact of sounds on his ear from the receiver set him to attention.
“Headquarters?” he called. “Inspector Burke speaking. Who's in my office? I want him quick.” He smiled as he listened, and he spoke again to Gilder. “It's Smith, the best man I have. That's luck, if you ask me.” Then again he spoke into the mouthpiece of the telephone.
“Oh, Ed, send some one up to that Turner woman. You have the address. Just see that she is tipped off, that Joe Garson and some pals are going to break into Edward Gilder's house to-night. Get some stool-pigeon to hand her the information. You'd better get to work damned quick. Understand?”
The Inspector pulled out that watch of which Aggie Lynch had spoken so avariciously, and glanced at it, then went on speaking:
“It's ten-thirty now. She went to the Lyric Theater with some woman. Get her as she leaves, or find her back at her own place later. You'll have to hustle, anyhow. That's all!”
The Inspector hung up the receiver and faced his host with a contented smile.
“What good will all that do?” Gilder demanded, impatiently.
Burke explained with a satisfaction natural to one who had devised something ingenious and adequate. This inspiration filled him with delight. At last he was sure of catching Mary Turner herself in his toils.
“She'll come to stop 'em,” he said. “When we get the rest of the gang, we'll grab her, too. Why, I almost forgot her, thinking about Garson. Mr. Gilder, you would hardly believe it, but there's scarcely been a real bit of forgery worth while done in this country for the last twenty years, that Garson hasn't been mixed up in. We've never once got him right in all that time.” The Inspector paused to chuckle. “Crooks are funny,” he explained with obvious contentment. “Clever as he is, Garson let Griggs talk him into a second-story job, and now we'll get him with the goods.... Just call your man for a minute, will you, Mr. Gilder?”
Gilder pressed the electric button on his desk. At the same moment, through the octagonal window came a blinding flash of light that rested for seconds, then vanished. Burke, by no means a nervous man, nevertheless was startled by the mysterious radiance.
“What's that?” he demanded, sharply.
“It's the flashlight from the Metropolitan Tower,” Gilder explained with a smile over the policeman's perturbation. “It swings around this way about every fifteen minutes. The servant forgot to draw the curtains.” As he spoke, he went to the window, and pulled the heavy draperies close. “It won't bother us again.”
The entrance of the butler brought the Inspector's thoughts back to the matter in hand.
“My man,” he said, authoritatively, “I want you to go up to the roof and open the scuttle. You'll find some men waiting up there. Bring 'em down here.”
The servant's usually impassive face showed astonishment, not unmixed with dismay, and he looked doubtfully toward his master, who nodded reassuringly.
“Oh, they won't hurt you,” the Inspector declared, as he noticed the man's hesitation. “They're police officers. You get 'em down here, and then you go to bed and stay there till morning. Understand?”
Again, the butler looked at his master for guidance in this very peculiar affair, as he deemed it. Receiving another nod, he said:
“Very well, sir.” He regarded the Inspector with a certain helpless indignation over this disturbance of the natural order, and left the room.
Gilder himself was puzzled over the situation, which was by no means clear to him.
“How do you know they're going to break into the house to-night?” he demanded of Burke; “or do you only think they're going to break into the house?”
“I know they are.” The Inspector's harsh voice brought out the words boastfully. “I fixed it.”
“You did!” There was wonder in the magnate's exclamation.
“Sure,” Burke declared complacently, “did it through a stool-pigeon.”
“Oh, an informer,” Gilder interrupted, a little doubtfully.
“Yes,” Burke agreed. “Stool-pigeon is the police name for him. Really, he's the vilest thing that crawls.”
“But, if you think that,” Gilder expostulated, “why do you have anything to do with that sort of person?”
“Because it's good business,” the Inspector replied. “We know he's a spy and a traitor, and that every time he comes near us we ought to use a disinfectant. But we deal with him just the same—because we have to. Now, the stool-pigeon in this trick is a swell English crook. He went to Garson yesterday with a scheme to rob your house. He tried out Mary Turner, too, but she wouldn't stand for it—said it would break the law, which is contrary to her principles. She told Garson to leave it alone. But he met Griggs afterward without her knowing anything about it, and then he agreed to pull it off. Griggs got word to me that it's coming off to-night. And so, you see, Mr. Gilder, that's how I know. Do you get me?”
“I see,” Gilder admitted without any enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, he felt somewhat offended that his house should be thus summarily seized as a trap for criminals.
“But why do you have your men come down over the roof?” he inquired curiously.
“It wasn't safe to bring them in the front way,” was the Inspector's prompt reply. “It's a cinch the house is being watched. I wish you would let me have your latch-key. I want to come back, and make this collar myself.”
The owner of the house obediently took the desired key from his ring and gave it to the Inspector with a shrug of resignation.
“But, why not stay, now that you are here?” he asked.
“Huh!” Burke retorted. “Suppose some of them saw me come in? There wouldn't be anything doing until after they see me go out again.”
The hall door opened and the butler reentered the room. Behind him came Cassidy and two other detectives in plain clothes. At a word from his master, the disturbed Thomas withdrew with the intention of obeying the Inspector's directions that he should retire to bed and stay there, carefully avoiding whatever possibilities of peril there might be in the situation so foreign to his ideals of propriety.
“Now,” Burke went on briskly, as the door closed behind the servant, “where could these men stay out of sight until they're needed?”
There followed a little discussion which ended in the selection of a store-room at the end of the passage on the ground floor, on which one of the library doors opened.
“You see,” Burke explained to Gilder, when this matter had been settled to his satisfaction, and while Cassidy and the other detectives were out of the library on a tour of inspection, “you must have things right, when it comes to catching crooks on a frame-up like this. I had these men come to Number Twenty-six on the other street, then round the block on the roofs.”
Gilder nodded appreciation which was not actually sincere. It seemed to him that such elaborate manoeuvering was, in truth, rather absurd.
“And now, Mr. Gilder,” the Inspector said energetically, “I'm going to give you the same tip I gave your man. Go to bed, and stay there.”
“But the boy,” Gilder protested. “What about him? He's the one thing of importance to me.”
“If he says anything more about going to Chicago—just you let him go, that's all! It's the best place for him for the next few days. I'll get in touch with you in the morning and let you know then how things are coming out.”
Gilder sighed resignedly. His heavy face was lined with anxiety. There was a hesitation in his manner of speech that was wholly unlike its usual quick decisiveness.
“I don't like this sort of thing,” he said, doubtfully. “I let you go ahead because I can't suggest any alternative, but I don't like it, not at all. It seems to me that other methods might be employed with excellent results without the element of treachery which seems to involve me as well as you in our efforts to overcome this woman.”
Burke, however, had no qualms as to such plotting.
“You must have crooked ways to catch crooks, believe me,” he said cheerfully. “It's the easiest and quickest way out of the trouble for us, and the easiest and quickest way into trouble for them.”
The return of the detectives caused him to break off, and he gave his attention to the final arrangements of his men.
“You're in charge here,” he said to Cassidy, “and I hold you responsible. Now, listen to this, and get it.” His coarse voice came with a grating note of command. “I'm coming back to get this bunch myself, and I'll call you when you're wanted. You'll wait in the store-room out there and don't make a move till you hear from me, unless by any chance things go wrong and you get a call from Griggs. You know who he is. He's got a whistle, and he'll use it if necessary.... Got that straight?” And, when Cassidy had declared an entire understanding of the directions given, he concluded concisely. “On your way, then!”
As the men left the room, he turned again to Gilder.
“Just one thing more,” he said. “I'll have to have your help a little longer. After I've gone, I want you to stay up for a half-hour anyhow, with the lights burning. Do you see? I want to be sure to give the Turner woman time to get here while that gang is at work. Your keeping on the lights will hold them back, for they won't come in till the house is dark, so, in half an hour you can get off the job, switch off the lights and go to bed and stay there—just as I told you before.” Then Inspector Burke, having in mind the great distress of the man over the unfortunate entanglement of his son, was at pains to offer a reassuring word.
“Don't worry about the boy,” he said, with grave kindliness. “We'll get him out of this scrape all right.” And with the assertion he bustled out, leaving the unhappy father to miserable forebodings.