Felix O'Day Part 37

"No," said Felix firmly.

"Well, then, move on, both of you--you can't block up the desk."

Felix turned and left the station-house, Kitty following in silence, her heart torn for the man beside her. Never had he seemed finer to her than at this moment; never had her own heart stirred with greater loyalty.

But never since she had known him had she seen him so shaken.

"There is nothing more we can do to-day," he said, speaking evenly, almost coldly, when they reached the corner of the street. "I will see Father Cruse to-night and tell him of your kindness, and he can decide as to what is to be done. And if you do not mind, I will leave you."

She stood and watched him as he disappeared in the throng. She understood her dismissal and was not offended. It was not her secret and she had no right to interfere or even to advise. When he was ready he would tell her. Until that time she would wait with her hands held out.

Felix crossed the street, halted for an instant as if uncertain as to his course, and turned toward the river. He wanted to be alone, and the crowd gave him a greater sense of isolation. It was the first time in months that he had tramped the thoroughfares without some definite object in view. All that was now a thing of the past, never to be revived. His quest was finished. The interview with the sergeant had ended it all. Every item in his detailed account of the woman now in the Tombs tallied with Kitty's description of the woman with the sleeve-b.u.t.tons and so on, in turn, with the woman who was once his wife.

With this knowledge there flamed up in his heart an uncontrollable anger, fanned to white heat by hatred of the man who had caused it all.

His fingers tightened and his teeth ground together. That reckoning, he said to himself, would come later, once he got his hands on him. If she were a thief, Dalton had made her so. If she were an outcast and a menace to society, Dalton had done it. By what h.e.l.lish process, he could not divine, knowing Lady Barbara as he did, but the fact was undeniable.

What then was he to do? Go back to London and leave her, or stay here and fight on in the effort to save her? SAVE HER! Who could save her?

She had stolen the goods; been arrested with them in her possession; was in the Tombs; and, in a few weeks, would be lost to the world for a term of years.

He could even now see the vulgar, leering crowd; watch the jury, picked from the streets, file in and take their seats; hear the few, curt, routine words, cold as bullets, drop from the lips of the callous judge, the frail, desolate woman deserted by every soul, paying the price without murmur or protest--glad that the end had come.

And then, with one of those tricks that memory sometimes plays, he saw the altar-rail, where he had stood beside her--she in her bridal robes, her soft blue eyes turned toward his; he heard again the responses, "for better or for worse"--"until death do us part," caught the scent of flowers and the peal of the organ as they turned and walked down the aisle, past the throng of richly dressed guests.

"Great G.o.d!" he choked, worming his way through the crowd, unconscious of his course, unmindful of his steps, oblivious to pa.s.sers-by--alone with an agony that scorched his very soul.

Chapter XXII

When Martha, on her return from Stephen's, had climbed the dimly lighted stairs leading to her apartment, she ran against a thick-set man, in brown clothes and derby hat, seated on the top step. He had interviewed the faded old wreck who served as janitress and, learning that Mrs.

Munger would be back any minute, had taken this method of being within touching distance when the good woman unlocked her door. She might decide to leave him outside its panels while she got in her fine work of hiding the thing he had climbed up three flights of stairs to find. In that case, a twist of his foot between the door and the jamb would block the game.

"Are you the man who has been waiting for me?" she exclaimed, as the detective's big frame became discernible under the faint rays from the "Paul Pry" skylight.

"Yes, if you are the woman who is living with Mrs. Stanton." He had risen to his feet and had moved toward the door.

"I'm Mrs. Munger, if that's who you are looking for, and we live together. She's not back yet, so the woman down-stairs has just told me.

Are you from Rosenthal's?"

"I am." He had edged nearer, his fingers within reach of the k.n.o.b, his lids narrowing as he studied her face and movements.

"Did they find the lace--the mantilla?"

"Not as I heard," he answered, noting her anxiety. "That's what brought me down. I thought maybe you might know something about it."

"Didn't find it?" she sighed. "No, I knew they wouldn't. She was sure she had taken it up night before last, but I knew she hadn't. Where's my key?--Oh, yes--stand back and get out of my light so I can find the keyhole. It's dark enough as it is. That's right. Now come inside. You can wait for her better in here than out on these steps. Look, will you!

There's her coffee just as she left it. She hasn't had a crumb to eat to-day. What do you want to see her about? The rest of the work? It's in the box there."

Pickert, with a swift, comprehensive glance, summed up the apartment and its contents: the little table by the window with Lady Barbara's work-basket; the small stove, and pine table set out with the breakfast things; the cheap chairs; the dresser with its array of china, and the two bedrooms opening out of the modest interior. Its cleanliness and order impressed him; so did Martha's unexpected frankness. If she knew anything of the theft, she was an adept at putting up a bluff.

"When do you expect Mrs. Stanton back?" he began, in an offhand way, stretching his shoulders as if the long wait on the stairs had stiffened his joints. "That's her name, ain't it?"

"I expected to find her here," she answered, ignoring his inquiry as to Lady Barbara's ident.i.ty. "They are keeping her, no doubt, on some new work. She hasn't had any breakfast, and now it's long past lunch-time.

And they didn't find the piece of lace? That's bad! Poor dear, she was near crazy when she found it was gone!"

Pickert had missed no one of the different expressions of anxiety and tenderness that had crossed her placid face. "No--it hadn't turned up when I left," he replied; adding, with another stretch, quite as a matter of course, "she had it all right, didn't she?"

"Had it! Why, she's been nearly a week on it. I helped her all I could, but her eyes gave out."

"Then you would know it again if you saw it?" The stretch was cut short this time.

"Of course I'd know it--don't I tell you I helped her fix it?"

The detective turned suddenly and, with a thrust of his chin, rasped out: "And if one, or both of you, p.a.w.ned it somewhere round here, you could remember that, too, couldn't you?"

Martha drew back, her gentle eyes flashing: "p.a.w.ned it! What do you mean?"

The detective lunged toward her. "Just what I say. Now don't get on your ear, Mrs. Munger." He was the thorough bully now. "It won't cut any ice with me or with Mr. Mangan. It didn't this morning or he wouldn't have sent me down here. We want that mantilla and we got to have it. If we don't there'll be trouble. If you know anything about it, now's the time to say so. The woman you call Mrs. Stanton got all balled up this morning, and couldn't say what she did with it. They all do that--we get half a dozen of 'em every week. She's p.a.w.ned it all right--what I want to know is WHERE. Rosenthal's in a hole if we don't get it. If you've spent the money, I've got a roll right here." And he tapped his pocket.

"No questions asked, remember! All I want is the mantilla, and if it don't come she'll be in the Tombs and you'll go with her. We mean business, and don't you forget it!"

Martha turned squarely upon him--was about to speak--changed her mind--and drawing up a chair, settled down upon it.

"You're a nice young man, you are!" she exclaimed, scornfully. "A very nice young man! And you think that poor child is a thief, do you? Do you know who she is and what she's suffered? If I could tell you, you'd never get over it, you'd be that ashamed!"

She was not afraid of him; her army hospital experience had thrown her with too many kinds of men. What filled her with alarm was his reference to Lady Barbara. But for this uncertainty, and the possible consequences of such a procedure, she would have thrown open her door and ordered him out as she had done Dalton. Then, seeing that Pickert still maintained his att.i.tude--that of a setter-dog with the bird in the line of his nose--she added testily:

"Don't stand there staring at me. Take a chair where I can talk to you better. You get on my nerves. It's p.a.w.ned, is it? Yes. I believe you, and I know who p.a.w.ned it. Dalton's got it--that's who. I thought so last night--now I'm sure of it." She was on her feet now, tearing at her bonnet-string as if to free her throat. "He sneaked it out of that box on the floor beside you, when she was hiding from him in her bedroom."

Pickert retreated slightly at this new development; then asked sharply: "Dalton! Who's Dalton?"

"The meanest cur that ever walked the earth--that's who he is. He's almost killed my poor lady, and now she must go to jail to please him.

Not if I'm alive, she won't. He stole that mantilla! I'm just as sure of it as I am that my name is Martha Munger!"

Pickert's high tension relaxed. If this new clew had to be followed it could best be followed with the aid of this woman, who evidently hated the man she denounced. She would be of a.s.sistance, too, in identifying both the lace and the thief--and he had seen neither the one nor the other as yet. So it was the same old game, was it?--with a man at the bottom of the deal!

"Do you know the p.a.w.n-shops around here?" he asked, becoming suddenly confidential.

"Not one of them, and don't want to," came the contemptuous reply. "When I get as low down as that, I've got a brother to help me. He'll be up here himself to-night and will tell you so."

Pickert had been standing over her throughout the interview, despite her invitation to be seated. He now moved toward a seat, his hat still tilted back from his forehead.

"What makes you think this man you call Dalton stole it?" he asked, drawing a chair out from the table, as though he meant to let her lead him on a new scent.

"Come over here before you sit down and I'll tell you," she exclaimed, peremptorily. "Now take a look at that box. Now watch me lift the lid, and see what you find," and she enacted the little pantomime of the morning.

The detective stroked his chin with his forefinger. He was more interested in Martha's talk about Dalton than he was in the contents of the box. "And you want to get him, don't you?" he asked slyly.