Very simply and easily, because it was my cue, but even more because I was immensely interested, I fell into her mood. We talked a long time and of many things. She asked about my work, and I gave her some details of its amusing side. She spoke of the books she had read and was reading, of places she had visited, and, in much the same tone, of her nights in prison, made hideous by her neighbors in near-by cells.

As she talked, two dominating impressions strengthened in me momentarily: she was the most immaculate human being I had ever seen, and the most perfectly poised.

When she had sewed on the last b.u.t.ton, fastening the thread with workman-like deftness, she opened a box of pipe-clay and whitened both shoes with a moist sponge.

"I don't quite know why I do all this," she murmured, casually. "I suppose it's the force of habit. It's surprising how some habits last and others fall away. The only wish I have now is that I and my surroundings may remain decently clean."

"May I quote that?" I asked, tentatively--"that, and what you have told me about the books you are reading?"

Her expression of indifferent tolerance changed. She regarded me with narrowed eyes under drawn, black brows. "No," she said, curtly.

"You'll be good enough to keep to your bond. You agreed not to repeat a word I said."

I rose to go. "And I won't," I told her, "naturally. But I hoped you had changed your mind."

She rose also, the slight, ironic smile again playing about her lips.

"No," she answered, in a gentler tone, "the agreement holds. But I don't wonder I misled you! I've prattled like a school-girl, and"--the smile subtly changed its character--"do you know, I've rather enjoyed it. I haven't talked to any one for months but my maid and my lawyer.

Mary's chat is punctuated by sobs. I'm like a freshly watered garden when she ends her weekly visits. And the charms of Mr. Davies's conversation leave me cold. So this has been"--she hesitated--"a pleasure," she ended.

We shook hands again. "Thank you," I said, "and good-by. I hope"--In my turn I hesitated an instant, seeking the right words. The odd sparkle deepened in her eyes.

"Yes?" she murmured. "You hope--?"

"I hope you will soon be free," I ended simply.

Her eyes held mine for an instant. Then, "Thank you," she said, and turned away. The guard, who had waited outside with something of the effect of a clock about to strike, opened the iron door, and I pa.s.sed through.

Late that night, after I had turned in my copy and received in acknowledgment the grunt which was Mr. Hurd's highest tribute to satisfactory work, I sat at my desk still thinking of the Brandow case. Suddenly the chair beside me creaked as G.o.dfrey Morris dropped into it.

"Just been reading your Brandow story. Good work," he said, kindly.

"Without bias, too. What do you think of the woman now, after meeting her?"

"She's innocent," I repeated, tersely.

"Then she didn't confess?" laughed Morris.

"No," I smiled, "she didn't confess. But if she had been guilty she might have confessed. She talked a great deal."

Morris's eyes widened with interest. The day's work was over, and he was in a mood to be entertained. "Did she?" he asked. "What did she say?"

I repeated the interview, while he leaned back and listened, his hands clasped behind his head.

"She _was_ communicative," he reflected, at the end. "In a mood like that, after months of silence, a woman will tell anything. As you say, if she had been guilty she might easily have given herself away. What a problem it would have put up to you," he mused, "if she _had_ been guilty and _had_ confessed! On the one hand, loyalty to the _Searchlight_--you'd have had to publish the news. On the other hand, sympathy for the woman--for it would be you who sent her to the electric chair, or remained silent and saved her."

He looked at me quizzically. "Which would you have done?" he asked.

It seemed no problem at all to me, but I gave it an instant's reflection. "I think you know," I told him.

He nodded. "I think I do," he agreed. "Just the same," he rose and started for his desk, "don't you imagine there isn't a problem in the situation. There's a big one."

He turned back, struck by a sudden idea. "Why don't you make a magazine story of it?" he added. "I believe you can write fiction.

Here's your chance. Describe the confession of the murderess, the mental struggle of the reporter, her suppression of the news, and its after-effect on her career."

His suggestion hit me much harder than his problem. The latter was certainly strong enough for purposes of fiction.

"Why," I said, slowly, "thank you. I believe I will."

Before Mr. Morris had closed the door I was drawing a fresh supply of copy-paper toward me; before he had left the building I had written the introduction to my first fiction story; and before the roar of the presses came up to my ears from the bas.e.m.e.nt, at a quarter to two in the morning, I had made on my last page the final cross of the press-writer and dropped the finished ma.n.u.script into a drawer of my desk. It had been written with surprising ease. Helen Brandow had entered my tale as naturally as she would enter a room; and against the bleak background of her cell I seemed to see her whole life pa.s.s before me like a series of moving-pictures which my pen raced after and described.

The next morning found me severely critical as I read my story. Still, I decided to send it to a famous novelist I had met a few months before, who had since then spent some of her leisure in good-naturedly urging me to "write." I believed she would tell me frankly what she thought of this first sprout in my literary garden, and that night, quite without compunction, I sent it to her. Two days later I received a letter which I carried around in my pocket until the precious bit of paper was almost in rags.

"Your story is a corker," wrote the distinguished author, whose epistolary style was rather free. "I experienced a real thrill when the woman confessed. You have made out a splendid case for her; also for your reporter. Given all your premises, things _had_ to happen as they did. Offer the story to Mrs. Langster, editor of _The Woman's Friend_. Few editors have sense, but I think she'll know enough to take it. I inclose a note to her."

If Mrs. Appleton had experienced a thrill over my heroine's confession we were more than quits, for I experienced a dozen thrills over her letter, and long afterward, when she came back from a visit to England with new honors thick upon her, I amused her by describing them.

Within twenty-four hours after receiving her inspiring communication I had wound my way up a circular staircase that made me feel like an animated corkscrew, and was humbly awaiting Mrs. Langster's pleasure in the room next to her dingy private office. She had read Mrs.

Appleton's note at once, and had sent an office boy to say that she would receive me in a few minutes. I gladly waited thirty, for this home of a big and successful magazine was a new world to me--and, though it lacked the academic calm I had a.s.sociated with the haunts of literature in the making, everything in it was interesting, from the ink-spattered desks and their aloof and busy workers to the recurrent roar of the elevated trains that pounded past the windows.

Mrs. Langster proved to be an old lady, with a smile of extraordinary sweetness. Looking at her white hair, and meeting the misty glance of her near-sighted blue eyes, I felt a depressing doubt of Mrs.

Appleton's wisdom in sending me to her with a work of fiction which turned on murder. One instinctively a.s.sociated Mrs. Langster with organ recitals, evening service, and afternoon teas in dimly lighted rooms. But there was an admirable brain under her silver hair, and I had swift proof of the keenness of her literary discrimination; for within a week she accepted my story and sent me a check for an amount equal to the salary I received for a month of work. Her letter, and that of Mrs. Appleton, went to Sister Irmingarde--was it only a year ago that I had parted from her and the convent? Then I framed them side by side and hung them in a place of honor on my study wall, as a solace in dark hours and an inspiration in brighter ones. They represented a literary ladder, on the first rung of which I was sure I had found firm footing, though the upper rungs were lost in clouds.

Mrs. Langster allowed my story to mellow for almost a year before she published it; and in the long interval Helen Brandow was acquitted, and disappeared from the world that had known her.

I myself had almost forgotten her, and I had even ceased to look for my story in the columns of _The Woman's Friend_, when one morning I found on my desk a note from Mr. Hurd. It was brief and cryptic, for Mr. Hurd's notes were as time-saving as his speech. It read:

Pls. rept. immed.

N. H.

Without waiting to remove my hat I entered Mr. Hurd's office. He was sitting bunched up over his desk, his eyebrows looking like an intricate pattern of cross-st.i.tching. Instead of his usual a.s.sortment of newspaper clippings, he held in his hand an open magazine, which, as I entered, he thrust toward me.

"Here!" he jerked. "What's this mean?"

I recognized with mild surprise the familiar cover of _The Woman's Friend_. A second glance showed me that the page Mr. Hurd was indicating with staccato movements of a nervous forefinger bore my name. My heart leaped.

"Why," I exclaimed, delightedly, "it's my story!"

Mr. Hurd's hand held the magazine against the instinctive pull I gave it. His manner was unusually quiet. Unusual, too, was the sudden straight look of his tired eyes.

"Sit down," he said, curtly. "I want to ask you something."

I sat down, my eyes on the magazine. As Mr. Hurd held it, I could see the top of one ill.u.s.tration. It looked interesting.

"See here," Mr. Hurd jerked out. "I'm not going to beat around the bush. Did you throw us down on this story?"

I stared at him. For an instant I did not get his meaning. Then it came to me that possibly I should have asked his permission to publish any work outside of the _Searchlight_ columns.

"But," I stammered, "you don't print fiction."

Mr. Hurd tapped the open page with his finger. The unusual quiet of his manner began to impress me. "_Is_ it fiction?" he asked. "That's what I want to know."

G.o.dfrey Morris rose from his desk and came toward us. Until that instant I had only vaguely realized that he was in the room.