CHAPTER XXIII

SARA WRANDALL'S DECISION

When Smith returned from the Far West, a few days after the events narrated in the foregoing chapter, he repaired at once to Sara's apartment, bringing with him not only the signed statement of the Ashtley girl, but the well-worn and apparently cherished prayer-book that had been her solace during the last few months of her life.

On the fly-leaf she had written: "I have nothing of G.o.d's earthly gifts to leave behind but this. It has brought me riches, but it is a poor thing in itself. I bequeath it, my only earthly possession, to the kind and merciful one who taught me that there is good in this bad world of ours." It was inscribed to "Mrs. Challis Wrandall."

"She made me promise to give it to you with my own hands, Mrs.

Wrandall," said Smith, in the library, putting as much emotion into his voice and manner as he thought the occasion and the audience demanded. Miss Castleton and Mr. Booth were also present. "She was a queer girl. I never saw one just like her, believe me. Just after she signed that paper, I had a chance to be alone with her for a minute or two. She asked me to stoop over so's I could hear what she had to say, and she made me promise not to say a word about it until after she was gone. Well, it will surprise you just as much as it did me, what she had to say with her dying breath, so to speak." He paused for the effect.

"What did she say to you?" demanded Sara.

"Well, sir, do you know that that girl knew all along who it was that went up to Burton's Inn that evening with your husband? What do you think of that?"

There was not a sound in the room. Even the coals in the fireplace seemed to take that instant to hush their blithe crackling. Smith's listeners might have been absolutely breathless, they were so rigid.

Each had the grotesque fear that he was about to point his finger at Hetty Glynn and call upon her to answer to an accusation from the grave.

The next moment they drew a deep, quivering breath of relief. The detective went on, almost apologetically. "I tried to bluff her into telling me who she was, Mrs. Wrandall, but she wouldn't fall for it. After a little while, I saw it was no use questioning her.

She was as firm as a rock about it. And she was pretty near gone, I can tell you. As a matter of fact, her heart went back on her suddenly not ten minutes later, sort of surprising all of us. But she did manage to whisper a few things to me while the others were conversing in the hall. She said that she saw another girl with Mr.

Wrandall about a week before the murder, a stranger and a very pretty one. He knew how to pick out the pretty--I--I beg your pardon, ma'am. That sort of slipped out. You see--"

"Never mind. I understand. Go on."

"Right after that he told her he was through with her. Chucked her, that's the sum and substance of it, for the new one, whoever she was. She raised a row with him about it, and he laughed at her.

For nearly a week she spied on him, and she saw him out in the car with the stranger at least half a dozen times. Now comes the queer part of it, and the thing that made her keep her lips closed at first, right after the killing--the murder, I mean. She laid for him in front of his home on the very day of the murder and swore she'd do something desperate if he didn't give the other one up. He took her to a cheap restaurant on the West Side, and she was sure that several waiters saw that they were quarrelling. To get her out of the place, he induced her to get in his car and they went for a ride out as far as Van Courtlandt Park. The police never got onto all this. But she lived in terror for a few days, believing that the waiters might remember them, although neither of them had ever been in the place before. When she was taken up for examination, she still wondered if they would be called on to identify her.

Nothing doing. It was right then, Mrs. Wrandall, that you stepped in and said that her alibi was sufficient, and staked her for life out there in the West. She says she saw the other girl after the murder, but she wouldn't say where it was or when. Of course, she couldn't swear that this girl did the job up there at Burton's, but she was pretty nearly dead certain she was the one who went up there with him. She was just on the point of telling the police about this girl, to save herself, when you helped her out of the fix, and then she got to thinking strange things, she said. This is what she said to me, there on her death-bed, and I want to tell you it gave me an idea of character that I had never come across before in all my experience. She said that if Mrs. Wrandall here could be fine enough to befriend her, knowing all you did, ma'am, about her and your husband, it oughtn't to be hard for her to help another erring girl by keeping her mouth shut. And that's just what she did. She kept still. That sort of reasoning was new to me. But, when you stop to think it over, maybe she was right. A word from her might have sent a fellow creature to the chair. She had had her lesson in charity from you, Mrs. Wrandall, and, while you didn't mean it to have that effect, you undoubtedly spoiled the best chance we'll ever have to get the real woman in the case."

There was a moment of tense silence. Booth was the first to risk the effort at speech.

"And she wouldn't say a word more? She gave you no--no clue?"

"Not the faintest idea, sir. She took that girl's name to the grave with her."

"Her name! She knew her name?" cried Sara, leaning forward.

"She heard it a day or two after you had her set free, Mrs.

Wrandall. Don't it beat all? Now, don't you see what might have happened if we'd let the police put the screws on her out there?

Why, the chances are, a hundred to one, she would have broken down in the end, and told who this other woman is. There is where we made a fatal mistake. But it's too late now, confound it."

"Yes, it's too late now," said Sara, relaxing in her chair.

"I'm telling you this, although maybe I wasn't expected to. She made me promise not to tell the police. Well, I guess I can keep that promise. You ain't the police."

"It is a most remarkable story, Mr. Smith," said Sara, "but I do not see that it leads us anywhere. We are quite as much in the dark as before."

The detective studied the pattern in the rug at his feet, a defeated look in his eyes.

"I suppose I MIGHT have forced her to tell me, Mrs. Wrandall, but I--I didn't have the heart to bully her. I suppose you'll always have it in for me for letting the chance slip?"

"I think I have already told you, Mr. Smith, that I am not at all curious."

With the departure of the detective, the three conspirators fell into an agitated discussion of the revelations he had made; so grave had their peril appeared to be at the opening of his narrative that they were still in a state of perturbation from which they were not to recover for a long time. Their cheeks were white and their eyes were dark with the dread that remained even after the danger was past. Hetty's arms hung limp and nerveless at her sides as she lay back in the chair and stared numbly at her friends.

"Do you really believe she knew that I was the one?" she asked miserably. "Do you think she knew my name?" she shuddered.

"What if she did?" demanded Booth with an a.s.sumption of indifference he was not yet able to feel. "She was a brick to keep it to herself.

The danger's past, dearest. Don't let it worry you now."

"But just think of it! At any time she could have told this story to the police and--Oh, wasn't it appalling? I thought my heart would never beat again!"

"We never knew till now how close we were to the abyss," said Sara, drawing the thin wrap closer about her shoulders. Suddenly she laughed. "But why contemplate the disaster that didn't occur?

We are more secure than ever. This girl was the only one who knew, because no one else could have had the same incentive to spy upon him, Hetty. She is dead. Your name isn't likely to be shouted from the housetops, for the simple reason that it is safely locked up in a grave." She hesitated for a moment and then added: "In two graves, if it makes you feel more secure."

The others looked at her in open astonishment.

Booth was frowning. Sara glanced at his stern face and her eyes fell.

"If that sounded cold and unfeeling, I am sorry, Hetty. It was my unfortunate way of trying to convince you that there is nothing left for you to fear."

She left them a moment later, bending over to kiss Hetty's cheek as she pa.s.sed by her chair.

"Now, you see what I mean, Brandon, when I insist that it would be a mistake for you to marry me," said Hetty in a troubled voice.

"We could never be sure of immunity."

"You refer to that remark of hers?"

"She is a strange woman. I sometimes have the feeling that she wants to keep me with her for ever. I feel that she will not let me go."

"That's pure nonsense, Hetty," he said. "She wants you to marry me, I am positive." He may have thought his tone convincing, but something caused her to regard him rather fixedly, as if she were trying to solve an elusive puzzle.

He took her by the arms and raised her to her feet. Holding her quite close, he looked down into her questioning eyes and said very seriously:

"You are suspicious, even of me, dearest. I want you. There is but one way for you to be at peace with yourself: shift your cares over to my shoulders. I will stand between you and everything that may come up to trouble you. We love one another. Why should we sacrifice our love for the sake of a shadow? For a week, dearest, I've been pleading with you; won't you end the suspense to-day--end it now--and say you will be my wife?"

The appeal was so gentle, so sincere, so full of longing that she wavered. Her tender blue eyes, lately so full of dread, grew moist with the ineffable sweetness of love, and capitulation was in them.

Her warm, red lips parted in a dear little smile of surrender.

"You know I love you," she said tremulously.

He kissed the lovely, appealing lips, not once but many times.

"G.o.d, how I worship you," he whispered pa.s.sionately. "I can't go on without you, darling. You are life to me. I love you! I love you!"

She drew back in his arms, the shadow chasing the light out of her eyes.

"We are both living in the present, we are both thinking only of it, Brandon. What of the future? Can we foresee the future? Dear heart, I am always thinking of your future, not my own. Is it right for me to bring you--"

"And I am thinking only of your future," he said gravely. "The future that shall be mine to shape and to make glad with the fulfilment of every promise that love has in store for both of us. Put away the doubts, drive out the shadows, dearest. Live in the light for ever. Love is light."

"If I were only sure that my shadows would not descend upon you, I--"