Chapter Sixteen. Disarming Suspicion
From the house across the street Caroline Smith slipped out upon the pavement and glanced warily about her. The street was empty, quieter and more villagelike than ever, yet she knew perfectly well that John Mark had not allowed her to be gone so long without keeping watch over her. Somewhere from the blank faces of those houses across the street his spies kept guard over her movements. Here she glanced sharply over her shoulder, and it seemed to her that a shadow flitted into the door of a basement, farther up the street.
At that she fled and did not stop running until she was at the door of the house of Mark. Since all was quiet, up and down the street, she paused again, her hand upon the knob. To enter meant to step back into the life which she hated. There had been a time when she had almost loved the life to which John Mark introduced her; there had been a time when she had rejoiced in the nimbleness of her fingers which had enabled her to become an adept as a thief. And, by so doing, she had kept the life of her brother from danger, she verily believed. She was still saving him, and, so long as she worked for John Mark, she knew that her brother was safe, yet she hesitated long at the door.
It would be only the work of a moment to flee back to the man she loved, tell him that she could not and dared not stay longer with the master criminal, and beg him to take her West to a clean life. Her hand fell from the knob, but she raised it again immediately.
It would not do to flee, so long as John Mark had power of life or death over her brother. If Ronicky Doone, as he promised, was able to inspire her brother with the courage to flee from New York, give up his sporting life and seek refuge in some far-off place, then, indeed, she would go with Bill Gregg to the ends of the earth and mock the cunning fiend who had controlled her life so long.
The important thing now was to disarm him of all suspicion, make him feel that she had only visited Bill Gregg in order to say farewell to him. With this in her mind she opened the front door and stepped into the hall, always lighted with ominous dimness. That gloom fell about her like the visible presence of John Mark.
A squat, powerful figure glided out of the doorway to the right. It was Harry Morgan, and the side of his face was swathed in bandages, so that he had to twist his mouth violently in order to speak.
"The chief," he said abruptly. "Beat it quick to his room. He wants you." "Why?" asked Caroline, hoping to extract some grain or two of information from the henchman.
"Listen, kid," said the sullen criminal. "D'you think I'm a nut to blow what I know? You beat it, and he'll tell you what he wants." The violence of this language, however, had given her clues enough to the workings of the chief's mind. She had always been a favored member of the gang, and the men had whistled attendance on her hardly less than upon Ruth Tolliver herself. This sudden harshness in the language of Harry Morgan told her that too much was known, or guessed.
A sudden weakness came over her. "I'm going out," she said, turning to Harry Morgan who had sauntered over to the front door. "Are you?" he asked.
"I'm going to take one turn more up the block. I'm not sleepy yet," she repeated and put her hand on the knob of the door. "Not so you could notice it, you ain't," retorted Morgan. "We've taken lip enough from you, kid. Your day's over. Go up and see what the chief has to say, but you ain't going through this door unless you walk over me." "Those are orders?" she asked, stepping back, with her heart turning cold.
"Think I'm doing this on my own hook?" She turned slowly to the stairs. With her hand on the balustrade she decided to try the effect of one personal appeal. Nerving herself she whirled and ran to Harry Morgan. "Harry," she whispered, "let me go out till I've worked up my courage. You know he's terrible to face when he's angry. And I'm afraid, Harry—I'm terribly afraid!" "Are you?" asked Morgan. "Well, you ain't the first. Go and take your medicine like the rest of us have done, time and time running." There was no help for it. She went wearily up the stairs to the room of the master thief. There she gave the accustomed rap with the proper intervals. Instantly the cold, soft voice, which she knew and hated so, called to her to enter.
She found him in the act of putting aside his book. He was seated in a deep easy-chair; a dressing gown of silk and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles gave him a look of owlish wisdom, with a touch of the owl's futility of expression, likewise. He rose, as usual, with all his courtesy. She thought at first, as he showed her to a chair, that he was going to take his usual damnable tack of pretended ignorance in order to see how much she would confess. However, tonight this was not his plan of battle.
The moment she was seated, he removed his spectacles, drew a chair close to hers and sat down, leaning far forward. "Now, my dear, foolish girl," said the master thief, smiling benevolently upon her, "what have you been doing tonight to make us all miserable?" She knew at once that he was aware of every move she had made, from the first to the last. It gave her firmness to tell the lie with suavity. "It's a queer yarn, John," she said. "I'm used to queer yarns," he answered. "But where have you been all this time? It was only to take five minutes, I thought." She made herself laugh. "That's because you don't know Ronicky Doone, John." "I'm getting to know him, however," said the master. "And, before I'm done, I hope to know him very well indeed." "Well, he has a persuasive tongue." "I think I noticed that for myself." "And, when he told me how poor Bill Gregg had come clear across the continent—" "No wonder you were touched, my dear. New Yorkers won't travel so far, will they? Not for a girl, I mean." "Hardly! But Ronicky Doone made it such a sad affair that I promised I'd go across and see Bill Gregg." "Not in his room?" "I knew you wouldn't let him come to see me here." "Never presuppose what I'll do. But go on—I'm interested—very. Just as much as if Ronicky Doone himself were telling me." She eyed him shrewdly, but, if there were any deception in him, he hid it well. She could not find the double meaning that must have been behind his words. "I went there, however," she said, "because I was sorry for him, John. If you had seen you'd have been sorry, too, or else you would have laughed; I could hardly keep from it at first." "I suppose he took you in his arms at once?" "I think he wanted to. Then, of course, I told him at once why I had come." "Which was?" "Simply that it was absurd for him to stay about and persecute me; that the letters I wrote him were simply written for fun, when I was doing some of my cousin's work at the correspondence schools; that the best thing he could do would be to take my regrets and go back to the West." "Did you tell him all that?" asked John Mark in a rather changed voice.
"Yes; but not quite so bluntly." "Naturally not; you're a gentle girl, Caroline. I suppose he took it very hard." "Very, but in a silly way. He's full of pride, you see. He drew himself up and gave me a lecture about deceiving men." "Well, since you have lost interest in him, it makes no difference." "But in a way," she said faintly, rising slowly from her chair, "I can't help feeling some interest." "Naturally not. But, you see, I was worried so much about you and this foolish fellow that I gave orders for him to be put out of the way, as soon as you left him." Caroline Smith stood for a moment stunned and then ran to him.
"No, no!" she declared. "In the name of the dear mercy of Heaven, John, you haven't done that?" "I'm sorry." "Then call him back—the one you sent. Call him back, John, and I'll serve you the rest of my life without question. I'll never fail you, John, but for your own sake and mine, for the sake of everything fair in the world, call him back!" He pushed away her hands, but without violence. "I thought it would be this way," he said coldly. "You told a very good lie, Caroline. I suppose clever Ronicky Doone rehearsed you in it, but it needed only the oldest trick in the world to expose you." She recoiled from him. "It was only a joke, then? You didn't mean it, John? Thank Heaven for that!" A savagery which, though generally concealed, was never far from the surface, now broke out in him, making the muscles of his face tense and his voice metallic. "Get to your room," he said fiercely, "get to your room. I've wasted time enough on you and your brat of a brother, and now a Western lout is to spoil what I've done? I've a mind to wash my hands of all of you—and sink you. Get to your room, and stay there, while I make up my mind which of the two I shall do." She went, cringing like one beaten, to the door, and he followed her, trembling with rage.
"Or have you a choice?" he asked.
"Brother or lover, which shall it be?" She turned and stretched out her hands to him, unable to speak; but the man of the sneer struck down her arms and laughed in her face. In mute terror she fled to her room.
