"Doctor," he said, in a tone that implored, "I'm obliged to see Webster today."

"Sorry, Mr. Hastings," came the instant refusal; "but it can't be done."

"For one question," qualified Hastings; "less than a minute's talk--one word, 'yes' or 'no'? It's almost a matter of life and death."

"If that man's excited about anything," Garnet retorted, "it will be entirely a matter of death. Frankly, I couldn't see my way clear to letting you question him if his escaping arrest depended on it. I called in Dr. Welles last night; and I'm giving you his opinion as well as my own."

"When can I see him, then?"

"I can't answer that. It may be a week; it may be a month. All I can tell you today is that you can't question him now."

With that information, Hastings decided to interview Judge Wilton.

"He's the next best," he thought. "That whispering across the woman's body--it's got to be explained, and explained right!"

As a matter of fact, he had refrained from this inquiry the day before, so that his mind might not be clouded by anger. His deception by the judge had greatly provoked him.

XIII

MRS. BRACE BEGINS

Court had recessed for lunch when Hastings, going down a second-story corridor of the Alexandria county courthouse, entered Judge Wilton's anteroom. His hand was raised to knock on the door of the inner office when he heard the murmur of voices on the other side. He took off his hat and sat down, welcoming the breeze that swept through the room, a refreshing contrast to the forenoon's heat and smother downstairs.

He reached for his knife and piece of pine, checked the motion and glanced swiftly toward the closed door. A high note of a woman's voice touched his memory, for a moment confusing him. But it was for a moment only. While the sound was still in his ears, he remembered where he had heard it before--from Mrs. Brace when, toward the close of his interview with her, she had shrilly denounced Berne Webster.

Mrs. Brace, her daughter's funeral barely three hours old, had started to make her threats good.

While he was considering that, the door of the private office swung inward, Judge Wilton's hand on the k.n.o.b. It opened on the middle of a sentence spoken by Mrs. Brace:

"--tell you, you're a fool if you think you can put me off with that!"

Her gleaming eyes were so furtive and so quick that they traversed the whole of Wilton's countenance many times, a fiery probe of each separate feature. The inflections of her voice invested her words with ugliness; but she did not shriek.

"You bully everybody else, but not me! They don't call you 'Hard Tom Wilton' for nothing, do they? I know you! I know you, I tell you! I was down there in the courtroom when you sentenced that man! You had cruelty in your mind, cruelty on your face. Ugh! And you're cruel to me--and taking an unG.o.dly pleasure in it! Well, let me tell you, I won't be broken by it. I want fair dealing, and I'll have it!"

At that moment, facing full toward Hastings, she caught sight of him.

But his presence seemed a matter of no importance to her; it did not break the stream of her fierce invective. She did not even pause.

He saw at once that her anger of yesterday was as nothing to the storming rage which shook her now. Every line of her face revealed malignity. The eyebrows were drawn higher on her forehead, nearer to the wave of white hair that showed under her black hat. The nostrils dilated and contracted with indescribable rapidity. The lips, thickened and rolling back at intervals from her teeth, revealed more distinctly that animal, exaggerated wetness which had so repelled him.

"You were out there on that lawn!" she pursued, her glance flashing back to the judge. "You were out there when she was killed! If you try to tell me you----"

"Stop it! Stop it!" Wilton commanded, and, as he did so, turned his head to an angle that put Hastings within his field of vision.

The judge, with one hand on the doork.n.o.b, had been pressing with the other against the woman's shoulders, trying to thrust her out of the room--a move which she resisted by a hanging-back posture that threw her weight on his arm. He put more strength now into his effort and succeeded in forcing her clear of the threshold. His eyes were blazing under the shadow of his heavy, overhanging brows; but there was about him no suggestion of a loss of self-control.

"I'm glad to see you!" he told Hastings, speaking over Mrs. Brace's head, and smiling a deprecatory recognition of the hopelessness of contending with an infuriated woman.

She addressed them both.

"Smile all you please, now!" she threatened. "But the accounts aren't balanced yet! Wait for what I choose to tell--what I intend to do!"

Suddenly she got herself in hand. It was as unexpected and thorough a transformation as the one Hastings had seen twenty-four hours before during her declaration of Webster's guilt. She had the same appearance now as then, the same tautness of body, the same flat, constrained tone.

She turned to Wilton:

"I ask you again, will you help me as I asked you? Are you going to deny me fair play?"

He looked at her in amazement, scowling.

"What fair play?" he exclaimed, and, without waiting for her reply, said to Hastings: "She insists that I know young Webster killed her daughter, that I can produce the evidence to prove it. Can you disabuse her mind?"

She surprised them by going, slowly and with apparent composure, toward the corridor door. There she paused, looking at first one and then the other with an evil smile so openly contemptuous that it affected them strongly. There was something in it that made it flagrantly insulting.

Hastings turned away from her. Judge Wilton gave her look for look, but his already flushed face coloured more darkly.

"Very well, Judge Wilton!" she gave him insolent good-bye, in which there was also unmistakable threat. "You'll do the right thing sooner or later--and as I tell you. You're--get this straight--you're not through with me yet!"

She laughed, one low note, and, impossible as it seemed, proclaimed with the harsh sound an absolute confidence in what she said.

"Nor you, Mr. Hastings!" she continued, taking her time with her words, and waiting until the detective faced her again, before she concluded: "You'll sing a different tune when you find I've got this affair in my hands--tight!"

Still smiling her contempt, as if she enjoyed a feeling of superiority, she left the room. When her footsteps died down the corridor, the two men drew long breaths of relief.

Wilton broke the ensuing silence.

"Is she sane?"

"Yes," Hastings said, "so far as sanity can be said to exist in a mind consecrated to evil."

The judge was surprised by the solemnity of the other's manner. "Why do you say that?" he asked. "Do you know that much about her?"

"Who wouldn't?" Hastings retorted. "It's written all over her."

Wilton led the way into his private office and closed the door.

"I'm glad it happened at just this time," he said, "when everybody's out of the building." He struck the desk with his fist. "By G.o.d!" he ground out through gritted teeth. "How I hate these wild, unbridled women!"

"Yes," agreed Hastings, taking the chair Wilton rolled forward for him.

"She worries me. Wonder if she's going to Sloanehurst."

"That would be the logical sequel to this visit," Wilton said. "But pardon my show of temper. You came to see me?"

"Yes; and, like her, for information. But," the detective said, smiling, "not for rough-house purposes."

The judge had not entirely regained his equanimity; his face still wore a heightened colour; his whole bearing was that of a man mentally reviewing the results of an unpleasant incident. Instead of replying promptly to Hastings, he sat looking out of the window, obviously troubled.