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Within the Law: From the Play of Bayard Veiller, a novel by Marvin Dana |
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Chapter 19. Within The Toils |
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_ CHAPTER XIX. WITHIN THE TOILS The going of Garson left the room deathly still. Dick stared for a moment at the space of window left uncovered by the draperies now, since the man had hurried past them, without pausing to draw them after him. Then, presently, the young man turned again to Mary, and took her hand in his. The shock of the event had somehow steadied him, since it had drawn his thoughts from that other more engrossing mood of concern over the crisis in his own life. After all, what mattered the death of this crook? his fancy ran. The one thing of real worth in all the world was the life that remained to be lived between him and her.... Then, violently, the selfishness of his mood was made plain to him. For the hand he held was shaking like some slender-stalked lily in the clutch of the sirocco. Even as he first perceived the fact, he saw the girl stagger. His arm swept about her in a virile protecting embrace--just in time, or she would have fallen. A whisper came from her quivering lips. Her face was close to his, else he could not have caught the uncertain murmuring. That face now was become ghastly pale. The violet eyes were widened and dull. The muscles of her face twitched. She rested supinely against him, as if bereft of any strength of body or of soul. Yet, in the intensity of her utterance, the feeble whisper struck like a shriek of horror. "I--I--never saw any one killed before!" The simple, grisly truth of the words--words that he might have spoken as well--stirred the man to the deeps of his being. He shuddered, as he turned his eyes to avoid seeing the thing that lay so very near, mercifully merged within the shadows beyond the gentle radiance from the single lamp. With a pang of infinite pity for the woman in his arms, he apprehended in some degree the torture this event must have inflicted on her. Frightful to him, it must in truth be vastly worse to her. There was her womanly sensitiveness to enhance the innate hideousness of the thing that had been done here before their eyes. There was, too, the fact that the murderer himself had been the man to whom she owed her life. Yes, for him, Dick realized with poignant sympathy, the happening that night was terrible indeed: for her, as he guessed now at last, the torture must be something easily to overwhelm all her strength. His touch on her grew tender beyond the ordinary tenderness of love, made gentler by a great underlying compassion for her misery. Dick drew Mary toward the couch, there let her sink down in a huddled attitude of despair. "I never saw a man--killed before!" she said again. There was a note of half-hysterical, almost childish complaint in her voice. She moved her head a little, as if to look into the shadows where it lay, then checked herself violently, and looked up at her husband with the pathetic simplicity of terror. "You know, Dick," she repeated dully, "I never saw a man killed before." Before he could utter the soothing words that rose to his lips, Dick was interrupted by a slight sound at the door. Instantly, he was all alert to meet the exigencies of the situation. He stood by the couch, bending forward a little, as if in a posture of intimate fondness. Then, with a new thought, he got out his cigarette-case and lighted a cigarette, after which he resumed his former leaning over the woman as would the ardent lover. He heard the noise again presently, now so near that he made sure of being overheard, so at once he spoke with a forced cheerfulness in his inflection. "I tell you, Mary," he declared, "everything's going to be all right for you and me. It was bully of you to come here to me like this." The girl made no response. She lived still in the nightmare of murder--that nightmare wherein she had seen Griggs fall dead to the floor. Dick, in nervous apprehension as to the issue, sought to bring her to realization of the new need that had come upon them. "Talk to me," he commanded, very softly. "They'll be here in a minute. When they come in, pretend you just came here in order to meet me. Try, Mary. You must, dearest!" Then, again, his voice rose to loudness, as he continued. "Why, I've been trying all day to see you. And, now, here we are together, just as I was beginning to get really discouraged.... I know my father will eventually----" He was interrupted by the swift swinging open of the hallway door. Burke stood just within the library, a revolver pointed menacingly. "Hands up!--all of you!" The Inspector's voice fairly roared the command. The belligerent expression of his face vanished abruptly, as his eyes fell on Dick standing by the couch and Mary reclining there in limp helplessness. His surprise would have been ludicrous but for the seriousness of the situation to all concerned. Burke's glance roved the room sharply, and he was quickly convinced that these two were in fact the only present spoil of his careful plotting. His face set grimly, for the disappointment of this minute surged fiercely within him. He started to speak, his eyes lowering as he regarded the two before him. But Dick forestalled him. He spoke in a voice coldly repellent. "What are you doing in this house at this time of night?" he demanded. His manner was one of stern disapproval. "I recognize you, Inspector Burke. But you must understand that there are limits even to what you can do. It seems to me, sir, that you exceed your authority by such an intrusion as this." Burke, however, was not a whit dismayed by the rebuke and the air of rather contemptuous disdain with which it was uttered. He waved his revolver toward Mary, merely as a gesture of inquisitiveness, without any threat. "What's she doing here?" he asked. There was wrath in his rough voice, for he could not avoid the surmise that his shrewdly concocted scheme to entrap this woman had somehow been set awry. "What's she doing here, I say?" he repeated heavily. His keen eyes were darting once more about the room, questing some clue to this disturbing mystery, so hateful to his pride. Dick's manner became that of the devoted husband offended by impertinent obtrusion. "You forget yourself, Inspector," he said, icily. "This is my wife. She has the right to be with me--her husband!" The Inspector grinned sceptically. He was moved no more effectively by Mary's almost hysterical effort to respond to her husband's leading. "Why shouldn't I be here? Why? Why? I----" Burke broke in on the girl's pitiful histrionics ruthlessly. He was not in the least deceived. He was aware that something untoward, as he deemed it, had occurred. It seemed to him, in fact, that his finical mechanisms for the undoing of Mary Turner were in a fair way to be thwarted. But he would not give up the cause without a struggle. Again, he addressed himself to Dick, disregarding completely the aloof manner of the young man. "Where's your father?" he questioned roughly. "In bed, naturally," was the answer. "I ask you again: What are you doing here at this time of night?" Burke shook his shoulders ponderously in a movement of impatience over this prolonging of the farce. "Oh, call your father," he directed disgustedly. Dick remonstrated with an excellent show of dignity. "It's late," he objected. "I'd rather not disturb him, if you don't mind. Really, the idea is absurd, you know." Suddenly, he smiled very winningly, and spoke with a good assumption of ingenuousness. "Inspector," he said briskly, "I see, I'll have to tell you the truth. It's this: I've persuaded my wife to go away with me. She's going to give all that other sort of thing up. Yes, we're going away together." There was genuine triumph in his voice now. "So, you see, we've got to talk it over. Now, then, Inspector, if you'll come back in the morning----" The official grinned sardonically. He could not in the least guess just what had in very deed happened, but he was far too clever a man to be bamboozled by Dick's maunderings. "Oh, that's it!" he exclaimed, with obvious incredulity. "Of course," Dick replied bravely, though he knew that the Inspector disbelieved his pretenses. Still, for his own part, he was inclined as yet to be angry rather than alarmed by this failure to impress the officer. "You see, I didn't know----" And even in the moment of his saying, the white beam of the flashing searchlight from the Tower fell between the undrawn draperies of the octagonal window. The light startled the Inspector again, as it had done once before that same night. His gaze followed it instinctively. So, within the second, he saw the still form lying there on the floor--lying where had been shadows, where now, for the passing of an instant, was brilliant radiance. There was no mistaking that awful, motionless, crumpled posture. The Inspector knew in this single instant of view that murder had been done here. Even as the beam of light from the Tower shifted and vanished from the room, he leaped to the switch by the door, and turned on the lights of the chandelier. In the next moment, he had reached the door of the passage across the room, and his whistle sounded shrill. His voice bellowed reinforcement to the blast. "Cassidy! Cassidy!" As Dick made a step toward his wife, from whom he had withdrawn a little in his colloquy with the official, Burke voiced his command viciously: "Stay where you are--both of you!" Cassidy came rushing in, with the other detectives. He was plainly surprised to find the room so nearly empty, where he had expected to behold a gang of robbers. "Why, what's it all mean, Chief?" he questioned. His peering eyes fell on Dick, standing beside Mary, and they rounded in amazement. "They've got Griggs!" Burke answered. There was exceeding rage in his voice, as he spoke from his kneeling posture beside the body, to which he had hurried after the summons to his aides. He glowered up into the bewildered face of the detective. "I'll break you for this, Cassidy," he declared fiercely. "Why didn't you get here on the run when you heard the shot?" "But there wasn't any shot," the perplexed and alarmed detective expostulated. He fairly stuttered in the earnestness of his self-defense. "I tell you, Chief, there hasn't been a sound." Burke rose to his feet. His heavy face was set in its sternest mold. "You could drive a hearse through the hole they've made in him," he rumbled. He wheeled on Mary and Dick. "So!" he shouted, "now it's murder!... Well, hand it over. Where's the gun?" Followed a moment's pause. Then the Inspector spoke harshly to Cassidy. He still felt himself somewhat dazed by this extraordinary event, but he was able to cope with the situation. He nodded toward Dick as he gave his order: "Search him!" Before the detective could obey the direction, Dick took the revolver from his pocket where he had bestowed it, and held it out. And it so chanced that at this incriminating crisis for the son, the father hastily strode within the library. He had been aroused by the Inspector's shouting, and was evidently greatly perturbed. His usual dignified air was marred by a patent alarm. "What's all this?" he exclaimed, as he halted and stared doubtfully on the scene before him. Burke, in a moment like this, was no respecter of persons, for all his judicious attentions on other occasions to those whose influence might serve him well for benefits received. "You can see for yourself," he said grimly to the dumfounded magnate. Then, he fixed sinister eyes on the son. "So," he went on, with somber menace in his voice, "you did it, young man." He nodded toward the detective. "Well, Cassidy, you can take 'em both down-town.... That's all." The command aroused Dick to remonstrance against such indignity toward the woman whom he loved. "Not her!" he cried, imploringly. "You don't want her, Inspector! This is all wrong!" Now, at last, Mary interposed with a new spirit. She had regained, in some measure at least, her poise. She was speaking again with that mental clarity which was distinctive in her. "Dick," she advised quietly, but with underlying urgency in her gently spoken words, "don't talk, please." Burke laughed harshly. "What do you expect?" he inquired truculently. "As a matter of fact, the thing's simple enough, young man. Either you killed Griggs, or she did." The Inspector, with his charge, made a careless gesture toward the corpse of the murdered stool-pigeon. For the first time, Edward Gilder, as his glance unconsciously followed the officer's movement, looked and saw the ghastly inanimate heap of flesh and bone that had once been a man. He fairly reeled at the gruesome spectacle, then fumbled with an outstretched hand as he moved stumblingly until he laid hold on a chair, into which he sank helplessly. It suddenly smote upon his consciousness that he felt very old and broken. He marveled dully over the sensation--it was wholly new to him. Then, soon, from a long way off, he heard the strident voice of the Inspector remorselessly continuing in the vile, the impossible accusation.... And that grotesque accusation was hurled against his only son--the boy whom he so loved. The thing was monstrous, a thing incredible. This whole seeming was no more than a chimera of the night, a phantom of bad dreams, with no truth under it.... Yet, the stern voice of the official came with a strange semblance of reality. "Either you killed him," the voice repeated gratingly, "or she did. Well, then, young man, did she kill him?" "Good God, no!" Dick shouted, aghast. "Then, it was you!" Such was the Inspector's summary of the case. Mary's words came frantically. Once again, she was become desperate over the course of events in this night of fearful happenings. "No, no! He didn't!" Burke's rasping voice reiterated the accusation with a certain complacency in the inevitability of the dilemma. "One of you killed Griggs. Which one of you did it?" He scowled at Dick. "Did she kill him?" Again, the husband's cry came with the fierceness of despair over the fate of the woman. "I told you, no!" The Inspector, always savagely impressive now in voice and look and gesture, faced the girl with saturnine persistence. "Well, then," he blustered, "did he kill him?" The nod of his head was toward Dick. Then, as she remained silent: "I'm talking to you!" he snapped. "Did he kill him?" The reply came with a soft distinctness that was like a crash of destiny. "Yes." Dick turned to his wife in reproachful amazement. "Mary!" he cried, incredulously. This betrayal was something inconceivable from her, since he believed that now at last he knew her heart. Burke, however, as usual, paid no heed to the niceties of sentiment. They had small place in his concerns as an official of police. His sole ambition just now was to fix the crime definitely on the perpetrator. "You'll swear he killed him?" he asked, briskly, well content with this concrete result of the entanglement. Mary subtly evaded the question, while seeming to give unqualified assent. "Why not?" she responded listlessly. At this intolerable assertion as he deemed it, Edward Gilder was reanimated. He sat rigidly erect in his, chair. In that frightful moment, it came to him anew that here was in verity the last detail in a consummate scheme by this woman for revenge against himself. "God!" he cried, despairingly. "And that's your vengeance!" Mary heard, and understood. There came an inscrutable smile on her curving lips, but there was no satisfaction in that smile, as of one who realized the fruition of long-cherished schemes of retribution. Instead, there was only an infinite sadness, while she spoke very gently. "I don't want vengeance--now!" she said. "But they'll try my boy for murder," the magnate remonstrated, distraught. "Oh, no, they can't!" came the rejoinder. And now, once again, there was a hint of the quizzical creeping in the smile. "No, they can't!" she repeated firmly, and there was profound relief in her tones since at last her ingenuity had found a way out of this outrageous situation thrust on her and on her husband. Burke glared at the speaker in a rage that was abruptly grown suspicious in some vague way. "What's the reason we can't?" he stormed. Mary sprang to her feet. She was radiant with a new serenity, now that her quick-wittedness had discovered a method for baffling the mesh of evidence that had been woven about her and Dick through no fault of their own. Her eyes were glowing with even more than their usual lusters. Her voice came softly modulated, almost mocking. "Because you couldn't convict him," she said succinctly. A contented smile bent the red graces of her lips. Burke sneered an indignation that was, nevertheless, somewhat fearful of what might lie behind the woman's assurance. "What's the reason?" he demanded, scornfully. "There's the body." He pointed to the rigid form of the dead man, lying there so very near them. "And the gun was found on him. And then, you're willing to swear that he killed him.... Well, I guess we'll convict him, all right. Why not?" Mary's answer was given quietly, but, none the less, with an assurance that could not be gainsaid. "Because," she said, "my husband merely killed a burglar." In her turn, she pointed toward the body of the dead man. "That man," she continued evenly, "was the burglar. You know that! My husband shot him in defense of his home!" There was a brief silence. Then, she added, with a wonderful mildness in the music of her voice. "And so, Inspector, as you know of course, he was within the law!" _ |
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