Hilda Ramsey, white and worn, kissed her brother with quivering lips and went out of the court leaning on her husband's arm, and making no pretense of concealing her suffering. Neither her belief in her brother's innocence, nor her confidence in Silvia's ability to prove it, could counteract the pain and humiliation of the past weeks. Ramsey wrung his brother-in-law's hand, and gave him a look more eloquent than words, and Frank bade him brace up. "'Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just,' you know, old fellow," he said, with a slap on the shoulder.

There was a grayish pallor on Silvia's face as she gave her client her hand, but he was as composed and almost as cheerful as if he were but "a looker-on in Vienna" as he once more a.s.sured her and Frank of his entire confidence in a verdict of acquittal.

"If you will pardon me," he said, looking at Silvia kindly, "I will change places with you and be the counsellor for a moment, and advise you to eat a good dinner of very simple things, then disconnect your telephone and go to bed and read Omar till you fall asleep; there are times when it is an immense comfort to remember that--

"'He that tossed you down into the Field, _He_ knows about it all--He knows! He knows!'"

His quiet voice acted like a tonic, and her face was full of grat.i.tude as she bade him goodnight, and turned to confer with Frank. Carroll stood by the reporters' tables, irresolutely, until presently Silvia beckoned her. The two women exchanged looks which were enigmatical to Frank, but evidently perfectly intelligible to them, for Carroll turned away with a sound like a strangled sob, and the pall of weariness and depression which had lifted for a moment again settled over Silvia, now that there were no longer any prying or unfriendly eyes upon them.

Without another word she turned and went down to her car. Frank waited until Carroll gathered up her "copy," and then they went out into the street together.

"Why didn't you go home with Miss Holland?" he asked. "She looked as if she wanted you; I supposed she was going to ask you when she called you over."

"Not she," answered the girl. "She knows better than to prepare for the great day of her life by gabbling half the night. Besides, I'm too blue to be of any use to her."

"Anything happened?" he asked, too absorbed in his own affairs to give other matters more than perfunctory attention.

"Yes," she said, vexation in her voice. "I've fallen down on an a.s.signment, the biggest I've had since I came to New York, and I'm all broken up over it."

He turned and looked at her, conscious of a sense of disappointment all out of proportion to the occasion. It was the first time he had ever known her to fail in comprehension or sympathy; that she could even remember, let alone obtrude, a small personal grievance of her own in the face of the tragedy that surrounded them, was so utterly out of keeping with her character that he looked at her in amazement, and it took him several minutes to control his voice so as to make the proper politely concerned query as to the demands of the city editor which had proved too much for her well-known ability.

"It wasn't the city editor," she said, too unhappy to notice the icy timbre of his voice. "It's a good thing to disappoint them once in a while; keeps 'em from expecting you to outdo the labors of Hercules in time to beat the morning papers. No, it was something I was to do for Silvia, and I can't make good; at least I haven't, and I'm at the end of my resources."

In spite of the fact that it was still broad daylight, and a crowded thoroughfare, Frank Earl stopped and gave her hand a cordial grip that made her wince. "You're all right," he said. "You're all right. Now let's go and have dinner."

"Are you not going to the Ramseys'?" she asked, evidently taking it for granted that the family would wish to be together at such a time.

"Oh, no," he answered. "Hilda will go straight to bed, poor girl; and Ramsey will sit beside her and dab cologne on her forehead, and after a while he'll coax her to eat a cracker and drink some tea, and he'll have his dinner right there beside her. You don't know the turtle-doves. I don't hanker for my own society to-night, but I shall have to put up with it unless you take pity on me."

"I can't, Frank," she answered. "I simply can't eat when my mind is so upset; I'm going straight home."

"And make _your_ supper on crackers and tea, I suppose," he said disgustedly. "Well, in that case, I'll go for a tramp and try to get rid of the cobwebs in my brain, and the stuffy air of that courtroom. I always feel as if twenty centuries of alleged justice, injustice and malpractice looked down upon me when I get into court; that's one reason why I'm no good as a trial lawyer. Here, isn't this your street?"

"Yes, no--I don't live where I did any more just now," she answered lucidly. He stopped and looked at her and smiled in spite of every everything. "I've sent in my copy, and you can walk up with me, if you want to."

They walked on in silence; Frank was evidently thinking deeply, and Carroll was following some weary round of conjecture for the thousandth time when she stopped at her number. Frank looked at it and then at her, startled out of his usual debonair manner for once.

"Why--it is----"

"Yes," she answered. "I've been living here for some time, but that wasn't for publication, so I kept my other room, and had my mail go there as usual. Silvia desired it."

"She hasn't left any stone unturned," he said musingly. "I wonder what was in that letter!"

"Oh, she has told you, then?" Carroll asked.

"About Mrs. Bell's letter to her? Oh, yes, she told me to-night, just before you joined us; I thought you knew about it. Anyhow, it seems to be gone beyond recall. Don't you intend to invite me in? Well, of all the inhospitable persons! I'll see you in the morning," and lifting his hat he went on up the Avenue.

Carroll climbed the two flights slowly and unlocked her door. The suite across the hall had been vacated by a superst.i.tious tenant the week after the murder, and the family immediately below had moved away that morning. As Carroll closed the door behind her she was conscious of a sense of oppression. It was not fear, which is a simple, concrete emotion, easily understood; it was not even so subtle as dread of any abstract thing, ghost or goblin d.a.m.ned. She gave her shoulders a little shake, as if the sensation were some tangible thing to be thrown off, and laying aside her hat and gloves she went through to the buffet kitchen and put the kettle on. She returned to the sitting-room and looked about her uneasily, and then put on a house gown and slippers, and arranged her tea-tray. There were but four rooms in the apartment, in addition to the kitchenette, and but one of them offered much in the way of light or ventilation, so Carroll lived in the front room, as Emma Bell had lived there; she worked there, as Emma Bell had worked; she looked upon the same nondescript blue wall paper, and the few pictures that relieved its monotony. With some misty idea, similar to that of the French "_confrontation_," she had brought none of her own books or belongings to disturb the suggestion of the room as it had been. There were three large windows, through which the city lights were beginning to shine; under one of these and across that end of the room was a divan, covered with a bright rug; opposite and against the other wall was a desk, with a chair before it, and bookshelves, and a corner cupboard which held a plentiful supply of tea-things. Between the two windows nearest it was a tea-table, which evidently served a double purpose, for underneath was a basketful of neatly folded sewing. By the table was the high-armed mission rocking-chair in which the dead woman had been found. Opposite was the little sewing-chair, usually occupied by Alice when she and her mother had supper together at the table, which had been a gift of Silvia's. Evidently it had been a fancy of Mrs.

Bell's to set the chair for the child before she opened the fatal box, and Carroll had kept both chairs in their relative positions. The doorway into the alcove bedroom was concealed by a portiere.

There was nothing in the desk now but some of Carroll's writing materials; everything in the room had been ransacked at the time of its mistress' death, and Silvia had herself searched carefully for anything that might afford a possible clue. Sometimes she even thought that some one, possessing a key, had entered the place and removed all evidence while that ghastly witness still sat in the chair, for there were no letters, no papers, nothing. Immediately after going there to stay, Carroll had gone over the tiny place with systematic care. There was no upholstered furniture in which anything could have been concealed; even the divan was a rattan affair; there were only rugs upon the floors. The mattress revealed nothing, and though she laboriously examined every picture, there was nothing concealed back of them or within the frames.

"Don't you think the letter was mailed?" Silvia asked her, and she had replied that while it probably had been, the chances were that a rough draft of it had been written, and preserved somewhere, and it was for this that she searched until it became evident that the slight resources of the flat were exhausted.

It was rather a poor little place, woefully lacking in the closets and cubby-holes so dear to women, and yet, as Carroll sat there in the child's place, with her second cup of strong tea getting cold beside her, she found herself looking at the other chair expectantly, and the empty desk seemed watching her; she was resentfully conscious that everything in that room knew the truth, everything save its human occupant with her keen mind, her active brain. The hours pa.s.sed and still she sat there, waiting, waiting. There were the usual noises, commonplace and mysterious, to be found in vacant houses, but about nine o'clock she became conscious that there were sounds in the recently vacated flat below. Evidently the family had come back for some last articles which they had left behind. They were a quiet old couple with whom Carroll had exchanged greetings now and then on the stairs; the old lady had told her they were going to live with their daughter. Carroll roused herself and lit the gas, and a little while later there came a tap at the door. She was frightened for a second, the sound was so unexpected, and then with a laugh at her foolishness she went to the door and opened it, revealing an old man, her neighbor from the floor below. He held a rather heavy package in his arms, and explained, rather shamefacedly, that they had no high-chair, and when their little grandchild was brought to visit them Mrs. Bell had been accustomed to lend them her big dictionary. "Not bein' literary she didn't need it, and the very afternoon of the day she died I came up to borrow it, same as usual; she had stepped out, but the door was ajar, and the dictionary lying right on the end of the divan, so I took it, and when I brought it back after supper I couldn't get in, and after the trouble my wife wrapped it up and put it away for safe-keeping, Miss, and forgot it till we come to move," he finished breathlessly.

He put the package on the divan, and Carroll talked with him a few moments longer, and then locked the door upon his retreating form and went to the window, and stood there, looking out, yet seeing nothing. It was beginning to rain, and the cool, damp air was pleasant, but she shivered and turned back to the room that still kept its silent mistress' secret, as she had kept it, even in death. The little clock on the mantel struck ten, and there was a quick, light step on the stair, and a brisk knock at her door. As she opened it, Frank stood there, shaking the drops of water from his hat.

"I've had my walk," he said, "I've got over my gloom; I've lost my grouch, but I still have my appet.i.te with me. Now come on, like a good fellow, and let's have supper."

"Oh, go away, Frank," she said, almost crying with vexation. "I was almost on the verge of something when you came."

"That's what I thought," he said cheerfully. "I said, 'She'll drink a pint of strong tea and sit there in the dark until the rugs begin to wiggle and the wall paper glowers at her.' You're on the verge of nervous prostration; that's what you're on the verge of, and nothing else. Now come along, or have I got to come over there and make you?" He noticed her negligee. "Put on your frock, and I'll wait, but hurry."

"It's raining," she demurred, "and I haven't my raincoat here."

"I brushed by one in the hall," he said, and stepping back he lifted down a somewhat shabby gray raincoat and flung it toward her. She picked it up, and slipped it on. It was large, but still she could wear it, and while she stood in the middle of the room hesitating, she slipped her hands into the capacious pockets.

"Well?" demanded Frank impatiently.

The girl did not answer, but stood staring ahead of her. Slowly she raised her left hand, pressing the thumb between her eyebrows, and taking the right hand from the raincoat pocket, she stretched it out, the fingers groping uncertainly. She turned so white that the young man in the doorway stared, frightened, yet under a spell that forbade his moving. Suddenly the trembling, questioning hand grew rigid, and without an instant's hesitation she turned and walked to the divan, and laid her hand upon the bundle.

"It is here, Frank," she said quietly. "Turn up the light, and cut this cord."

He did so, and as the paper fell away from the dictionary, she opened the heavy volume and their eyes fell upon a large manila envelope plainly addressed to "Miss Silvia Holland, City Investment Building, New York." The girl laid her hand upon it.

"Wait a minute; let me tell you what happened," she said. "When the postman came she gave him the letter for Alice, and he gave her the box.

She didn't give him this letter because she hadn't stamps enough--see, it has but one--or perhaps she meant to use it as a threat; there was somebody who had a motive for killing her. The woman across the hall called her and she slipped this envelope into the dictionary and went out, leaving her door open; old Mr. Dillon came up and got the book; he's just been telling me about it. They never opened it, and after her body was found--Mrs. Bell's, I mean--his wife was so upset that she went to her daughter, and they forgot it entirely until to-night. When Mrs.

Bell came back, she opened the package the postman had given her, and she never had a chance to miss anything after that."

She lifted her hand, and Frank picked up the envelope and looked at it and then at her.

"I believe you have solved the mystery," he said, "and that all you have not learned will be revealed when Silvia opens this envelope. Oh, this is wonderful, Carroll! I'll get a taxi, and we'll go to her at once."

"I wouldn't," said the girl. "It'll be nearly midnight by the time we can get there, and if it is bad news--which it isn't--there's nothing she can do to-night, and if it is good--and I am sure it is, for us at least--it can wait until morning. Whichever it is, she needs a night's sleep before she faces any new complication."

She took the envelope and looked at it again, and then at Frank Earl.

With a little laugh she clutched it to her bosom, and holding out the other hand to him, she said, "Now, I'm ready to go to the kitchen and cook anything there is to be found in this section of New York!"

"Carroll," he said, humbly, "would you mind if I proposed to you once more? We seem to need you in our family."

CHAPTER XXI

SILVIA HOLLAND'S GREAT PLEA TO THE JURY