Miss Maitland, Private Secretary

She sat down on the sofa and read the letter again, slowly, getting its full significance. For the first time in her life responsibility was cast upon her; she could throw the burden on no one else. By her own efforts, by her own courage and initiative, she must get Bébita back. She whispered it over, "I must do it. I must do it myself," then fell silent, her face stony in its tension of thought. Suddenly its rigidity broke; in an illuminating flash she saw the first step clear, and rising ran to the telephone. The person she called up was Larkin. He answered himself and she told him she wanted to see him on a matter of great importance and would come at once to his office.

Fifteen minutes later, her face hidden by a chiffon veil, her rumpled smartness covered with a silk motor coat, she was knocking at his door.

Mr. Larkin's office was cool and shady, the blinds half lowered to keep out the glare of the afternoon sun. In the midst of its airy neatness, surrounded by an imposing array of desks, card cabinets, typewriters and files, Mr. Larkin was waiting alone for his important client.

She dropped into the chair he set for her, and, pushing up her veil, revealed a countenance so bereft of the petulant prettiness he knew, that he started and stood gazing in open concern. The sight of his astonishment caused the tears to well into Suzanne's eyes, drowned and sunken by past floods, and her story to break without prelude from her lips.

Larkin's surprise at her appearance gave place to a tight-gripped interest when he grasped the main fact of her narrative. He let her run through it without interruption nodding now and then, a frowning sidelong glance on her face.

When she had finished he drew a deep breath and said:

"The moment I saw you, I knew something was wrong. But this – " he raised his hands and let them drop on the desk – "Good Lord! I hadn't an idea it was anything so serious."

But she hadn't finished – the worst, the thing that had brought her – she had yet to tell. And she began about the letter received an hour ago. At that Larkin forgot his sympathies, was the detective again, hardly concealing his impatience as he watched her fumbling at the cords of her purse. Finally extracted and given to him he read it, once and then again, Suzanne eyeing him like a hungry dog.

"Last evening," he muttered after a scrutiny of the postmark, "Grand Central Station." Then he rose, went to the window and, jerking up the blind, held the paper against the light, sniffed at it, and felt its texture between his thumb and finger. Suzanne saw him shake his head, her avid glance following him as he came back to the desk and studied the sheet through a magnifying glass.

"Nothing to be got that way," he said. "Typepaper – impossible to trace. No amateur business about this."

Suzanne's voice was husky:

"Do you mean it's professional people – a gang?"

"I can't say exactly. But from what you tell me – the way it was accomplished, the plan of action – I should be inclined to think it was the work of more than one person – possibly a group – who had ability and experience."

Suzanne, clutching at the corner of the desk with a trembling hand, cried in her misery:

"Oh, Mr. Larkin, you don't think they'll hurt her. They wouldn't dareto hurt her?"

The detective's glance was kindly but grave:

"Mrs. Price, I'll speak frankly. I think your child is in the hands of a pretty desperate person or persons. But I have no apprehension that they'll do her any harm. They don't want to do that – it's too dangerous. What they might do if their plans fail is a thing we'll not consider – it'll only weaken your nerve. And that's what you've got to keep hold of. You'll get her back all right, but you must be cool and brave."

"I'll be anything; I'll be like another person. I'll do anything. No one need be afraid I'll be weak or silly now."

"Good – that's the way to talk. Now let me know a little about the way the situation stands. It's odd I've seen nothing about this in the papers – heard nothing. Your family must be active in some direction. What are they doing?"

A sudden color burnt in her wasted cheeks.

"They suspect my husband. They think he did it – to – to – get square. We'd quarreled – separated – and he'd made threats."

"Ah, yes, yes, I see – kidnaped his own child, and they're keeping it quiet. I understand perfectly. But you didn't believe this?"

She shook her head and bit on her underlip to control its trembling.

"No – I couldn't, though I tried to. I knew he wouldn't have done it – it's not – it's not – like him. And then while I was thinking the letter came, and I knew, no matter what they thought, no matter what the facts were, that that was true."

"Um," Larkin, his mouth compressed, nodded in understanding. "You would know better than any one else. In these matters instinct is one of the most important factors." He was silent for a moment, then looked at her, a glance of piercing question. "Do I understand that you are willing to enter into these negotiations?"

"Willing!" she cried. "Why should I be here if I wasn't willing?"

"Yes, yes, exactly, but let us understand one another. What I mean is are you willing – realizing what they are – to deal with them on their own terms? In short, pay them what they ask and let them go?"

"Of course." She almost cried it out in her effort to make him comprehend her position. "That's what I want to do; that's why I haven't told any of my own people and won't. I'd have gone straight to my mother with this but I knew she wouldn't agree to it, she'd get the police, want to fight them and bring them to justice."

"Could you be relied on to maintain the secrecy necessary?"

"I can be relied on for anything. Oh, Mr. Larkin, if you knew what I feel you wouldn't waste time asking these questions."

He answered very gently:

"Mrs. Price, I appreciate your feelings to the full, but this is a hazardous undertaking. You don't want to rush into it without realizing what it means. There is the question of money for example – the ransom. Your family is known for its wealth. You can be pretty certain that the parties you're dealing with will hold the child for a large sum."

Suzanne clasped her hands on her breast and the tears, brimming in her eyes, spilled over, falling in a trickle down her cheeks.

"Oh, what's money!" she wailed. "I'd give all the money I have, I've ever had, I ever thought of having, to get my baby back."

Larkin was moved. He looked away from that pitiful, quivering face and his voice showed a slight huskiness as he answered:

"Well, that's all right, Mrs. Price – and don't take it so hard, don't let your fears get the upper hand. There's no harm can come to her; it's to their interest to take care of her. If we do our part cleverly, follow their instructions and keep our heads, you'll have her back in no time." He stopped, arrested by a sudden thought. "I say 'we,' but maybe I'm presupposing too much. Was it your intention to ask for my assistance?"

She dashed her tears away and leaned forward in eager urgence:

"Of course – that's why I came. And you will give it – you will? The letter says it has to be some one having no ties or interests with the family – some one I could trust. I couldn't think of any one at first, and then when I remembered you it was like an inspiration. Oh, you must do it – I'll pay you anything if you will."

Larkin's face satisfied her; she dropped back with a moan of relief.

"I'll undertake it willingly – not only to give you any help I can, but because it will be a good thing for me. Don't be shocked at my plain speaking, but I want to be frank and straight with you. I'm not referring to pay – we can arrange about that later – it's work done for the Janney family, successful work. And with your coöperation, Mrs. Price, this is going to be successful. Now let's get to business." He picked up the letter and glanced over it. "Headed 'Clansmen' and signed 'S. O. S.' I'll copy it, insert my name and address, and have it in to-morrow's Daily Record. Then we'll see what happens."

He smiled at her, reassuring and kindly. There was no response in her tragic face.

"It may be days before they answer," she murmured.

But he was determined to uphold her fainting spirit.

"I think not. They want to end this thing as quickly as they can – get their loot and go. You've got to remember that their position is terribly dangerous and at the first sign from us they'll get busy."

She rose, took the letter and put it in her purse:

"I hope to Heaven you're right. It's so awful to wait."

"I don't think you'll have to. They'll see our answer to-morrow morning and I'll expect a move from them by that evening or the next day. If they communicate with me, I'll let you know at once, and if you hear, do the same by me. It's going to be all right. Keep up your courage and remember – not a word or a sign to any one."

"Oh, I know," she said, drawing down her veil with limp hands, "you needn't be afraid I'll spoil it. You thought me a fool, perhaps, when I first consulted you, and I was, bothering about things that didn't matter – jewels! There isn't one of us that hasn't forgotten all about them now. Good-by. No, don't come out with me. I have a taxi waiting."

CHAPTER XXII – SUZANNE FINDS A FRIEND

On Monday evening Ferguson heard from Molly of the scene in the Whitney office. He was incredulous and enraged, refusing to accept what she insisted were irrefutable proofs of Esther's guilt.

"What do I care about your 'phone messages and your suppositions!" he had almost shouted at her. "What do I care about what you think. You say she didn't answer the charges – she did, she denied them. That's enough for me."

There was no use arguing with him, he was beyond reason. She lapsed into silence, letting him rage on, seething in his wrath at the Janneys, the Whitneys, herself. When he tried to find out where Esther was, she was obdurate —that she couldn't tell him. All the satisfaction he got was that Miss Maitland was not under arrest, that she was "put away somewhere" and had agreed to the arrangement. He left, too angry for good-nights, with a last scattering of maledictions, leaping down the steps and swinging off across the garden.

The next morning he telephoned in to the St. Boniface Hotel and heard that the Janney party were out. Then he tried the Whitney office, got George on the wire, and was told brusquely that Miss Maitland's whereabouts could not be divulged to any one. He spent the rest of the day in a state of morose disquiet, denying himself to visitors, short and surly with his servants. Willitts was solicitous, inquired after his health and was told to go to the devil. In the kitchen quarters they talked about his queer behavior; the butler was afraid he'd had "a touch of sun."

Wednesday wore through to the early afternoon and his inaction became unendurable. He decided to go into town, look up the Janneys and force them to tell him where Esther was. He laid upon his spirit a cautioning charge of self-control; he must keep his head and his temper, use strategy before coercion. He had no idea of what he intended doing when he did find her, but the idea of getting to her, seeing her, championing her, transformed his moody restlessness into a savage energy. His servants flew before his commands; in the garage the chauffeur muttered angrily as orders to hurry were shouted at him from the drive.

Tuesday had been a day of strain for the Janneys. According to the telephone message, that night Chapman was to move the child from the city. He had been under a close surveillance for the two preceding days, and every depot and ferry housed watching detectives. Hope ran high until after midnight when reports and 'phone messages came dropping in upon the group congregated in the library of the Whitney house. No child resembling Bébita had left the city at any of the guarded points. Chapman had been in his office all day, had dined at a hotel and afterward had gone to his rooms and remained there. The plan of moving her had either been abandoned or had been intrusted to unknown parties who had taken her by motor through the city's northern end.

On Wednesday morning a consultation had been held at the Whitney office. This had been stormy, developing the first disagreements in what had been a unity of opinion. Mr. Janney was for going to Chapman and demanding the child and was seconded by the elder Whitney. Mrs. Janney was in opposition. She had no fear for Bébita's welfare – Chapman could be trusted to care for her – and maintained that a direct appeal to him would be an admission of weakness and place them at his mercy. In her opinion he would threaten exposure – he was shameless – or make an offer of a financial settlement. George agreed with her; from the start he had thought Chapman was actuated less by a desire for vengeance than a hope of gain. Mrs. Janney, thus backed up, became adamant. She would have no dealings with him, would run him to earth, and when he was caught, crush and ruin him.

Suzanne had listened to it all very silent and taking neither side. Her hunted air was set down to mental strain and she was allowed to remain an unconsulted spectator, treated by everybody with subdued gentleness. Back in the hotel, Mrs. Janney had suggested a doctor, but her querulous pleadings to be let alone had conquered, and the old people had gone for their afternoon drive, leaving her in the curtained quietness of the sitting room.

The door was hardly shut on them when she drew out of her belt a letter. She had found it in her room on her return from the office and had read it there before lunch. It was a prompter answer than she had dared to hope for.

"Mrs. Suzanne Price,

"Dear Madam:

"In answer to your ad. we would say that we are willing to deal through the agent you name. We take your word for it that he is to be trusted, that both you and he understand any attempt to betray us will be visited on your child.

"Remember Charley Ross!

"The sum necessary for her release will be thirty thousand dollars. On payment of this we will deliver her over at a time and place to be specified later. If you agree to our terms insert following ad. in the Daily Record. 'John – O. K. See you later. Mary.'

"(Signed) Clansmen."

On the second perusal of this ominous document Suzanne felt the strangling rush of dread, the breathless contraction of the heart, that had seized her when she first read it. Horrors had piled on horrors – as she had risen to each new step of her progress up this Via Dolorosa, another more fearful and unsurmountable had faced her. When she had spoken to Larkin of the money she had never thought of it, how much it might be, how she was to get it. Now, with a stunning impact, she was brought against the appalling fact that she had none of her own and did not dare ask her mother for any.

There was no use in lies; she had lied too much and too diversely to be believed. She would have to tell what it was for, and she knew the mood in which her mother would meet the demand. Money would be forthcoming – any amount – but Mrs. Janney, with her iron nerve and her implacable spirit, would never consent to a tame submission. Suzanne knew that her fortune and her energies would be spent in an effort to apprehend the criminals, and Suzanne had not the courage to take a chance. All she wanted was Bébita, back in her arms again, the fiends who had taken her could go free.

She sat down, pushing the damp hair from her forehead and trying to think. One fact stood out in the midst of her blind, confused suffering. She could not go to Larkin till she had the thirty thousand dollars. Every moment she sat there was a moment lost, a moment added to Bébita's term of imprisonment. She stared about the room, the gleam of her shifting eyes, the rise and fall of her breast, the only movements in her stone-still figure.

Suddenly, piercing her tense preoccupation with a buzzing note, came the sound of the telephone. It made her jump, then mechanically, hardly conscious of her action, she rose to answer it. A woman's voice, languidly nasal, came along the wire:

"Mr. Richard Ferguson is calling."

"Send him up," she gasped and fumbled back the receiver with a shaking hand. With the other she steadied herself against the wall; the room had swung for a moment, blurred before her vision. She closed her eyes and breathed out her relief in a moaning exhalation. It was like an answer to prayer, like the finger of God.

Of course Dick was the person – Dick who could always be trusted, who could always understand. He would give it and say nothing; she could make him. He was not like the others – he would sympathize, would agree with her, in trouble he was a rock to cling to. A broken series of answers to unput questions coursed through her head; she could go to Larkin now – she needn't tell him how she'd got it, he thought she was rich – after it was all over her mother would pay Dick back – in a few days she'd have Bébita, the kidnapers would have made their escape – and it would be all right, all right, all right!

Ferguson had come up, grim-visaged, steeled for battle, but when he saw her his fighting spirit died. There was nothing left of her but a blighted shadow, the cloud of golden hair crowning in gay mockery her drawn and haggard face. Before he could speak she made a clutch at his arm, drawing him into the room, babbling a broken greeting about wanting him, wanting his help. He put his hand on hers and felt it trembling; he would not have been surprised if she had dropped unconscious at his feet.

"Lord, Suzanne, you don't want to take it this way," he soothed, guiding her to the sofa. "You must get hold of yourself; you've been brooding too much. Of course I'll help you – anything I can do – and we'll get her back, it'll be only a few days." He didn't know what to say, he was so sorry for her.

She was past parleys and preliminaries, past coquetry and artifice. The whole of her had resolved itself into one raw longing, and before they were seated on the sofa, she had broken into her story. He didn't at first believe her, thought grief had unsettled her brain, but when she thrust the two letters into his hand all doubts left him.

He read them slowly, word by word, then turned upon her a face so charged and vitalized with a fierce interest that, had she been able to see beyond the circle of her own pain, she would have wondered. If he forgot to ask for Esther's hiding place it was because the larger matter of her vindication had swept all else from his mind. The proofs of her innocence were in his hands; he did not for a moment doubt their genuineness.

It was what he had thought from the first.

His manner changed from that of the sympathizing friend to one of stern authority. He shot questions at her, tabulating her answers, discarding cumbering detail, seizing on the important fact and separating it from the jumble of confused impressions and fancies that she poured out. A few inquiries set Larkin's position clear before him. The money he dismissed with a curt sentence; of course he would give it, she wasn't to think of that any more.

"Thank heaven you decided on me," he said. "I'll straighten this out for you and I'll do it quick."

She was ready to take fright at anything and his eagerness scared her.

"But you'll not do anything they don't want? You'll not tell the police or try to catch them?"

He had seen from the start that she was dominated by terror, as the kidnapers had intended she should be: and seeing this had recognized her as a negligible factor. To keep her quiet, soothe her fears, and employ her services just so far as they were helpful was what he had to do with her. What he had to do without her was shaping itself in his mind.

"You can rely on me. I won't make any breaks. And you have to be careful, not a word about me to this man Larkin. He must think the money is yours."

She assured him of her discretion and he felt he could trust her that far.

"Now listen," he said slowly and impressively as if he was speaking to a child, "we've both got to go very charily. A good deal of the threat-stuff in these letters is bluff, but also men who would undertake an enterprise of this kind are pretty tough customers and we don't want to take any risks. When I'm gone you drive over to Larkin's, tell him you have the money for the ransom, and to put in the ad. As soon as either you or he get an answer let me know. I'll be at Council Oaks; I'll go back there now. It's probable you're watched and if they saw me hanging about here they might think I was in the game and take fright. Do you understand?"

She nodded:

"Yes, you've put some courage into me. I was ready to die when you came in."

"Well, that's over now. What you've got to do is to follow my instructions, keep your nerve and have a little patience."

He smiled down at her as she sat, a huddled heap of finery, on the edge of the sofa. She tried to return the smile, a grimace of the lips that did not touch her somber eyes. No man, least of all Dick Ferguson, could have been angry with her.

"She was crazy," he said to himself as he walked down the hall. "They were all crazy and I guess they had enough to make them so. I'll get the child back, and when I do, I'll make them bite the dust before my girl."

Several people who knew him saw Dick Ferguson driving his black car down Fifth Avenue late that afternoon. He saw none of them, steering his way through the traffic, his eyes fixed on the vista in front. He stopped at Delmonico's for an early dinner, telling the waiter to bring him anything that was ready, then sat with frowning brows staring at his plate. Here again were people who knew him and wondered at his gloomy abstraction – not a bit like Ferguson, must have something on his mind.

Night was falling as he crossed the Queensborough bridge, a smoldering glow along the west glazing the surface of the river. When he left the straggling outskirts of Brooklyn and reached the open country the dark had come, deep and velvety, a few bright star points pricking through the cope of the sky. He lowered his speed, his glance roving ahead to the road and its edging grasses, startlingly clear under the radiance of his lamps.

Round him the country brooded in its rest, silence lying on the pale surface of fields, on the black indistinctness of trees. Here and there the lights of farms shone, caught and lost through shielding boughs, and the clustered sparklings of villages. The air was heavy with scents, the breath of clover knee-high in the grass, grain still giving off the warmth of the afternoon sun, and the delicate sweetness of the wild grape draped over the roadside trees. All this night loveliness in its fragrant quietness, its rich and penetrating beauty, reminded him of her. He looked up at the sky, and its calm and steadfast splendor came to him with a new meaning. She was related to it all, in tune with the eternal harmonies, part of everything that was stainless and noble and pure. And he would show the world that she was, clear her of every spot, place her where she would be as far from suspicion, as serenely above the meanness of her accusers, as the stars in the crystal depths of the sky.

When he reached Council Oaks he had a vision of her, belonging there, a piece of its life. He saw a future, when, coming back like this to its friendly doors, she would be waiting on the balcony to greet him. There was no one there now; the house was still, its lights shining across the pebbled drive. Obsessed by his thoughts, he jumped out, and leaving the car at the steps, entered. From the kitchen wing he could hear the servants' voices raised in cheerful clamor. Crossing the hall, he had a glimpse through the dining room door of the table, set and waiting for him, two lamps flanking his place. He had no mind for food and went upstairs, dreams still holding him. In his room he switched on the lights and his vacant glance, sweeping the bureau, brought up on the box with the crystal lid.

In his mind the robbery had faded into a background of inconsequential things. It had become a side issue, a thread in the tangled skein he had pledged himself to unravel. When Molly had told him of the evidence against Esther his interest had centered on the charge of kidnaping – the monstrous and unbelievable charge of which she almost stood convicted. Even now, as he looked at the box and remembered what he had hidden there, it came to his memory not as another weapon to be used in her defense, but as a souvenir of the moment when his present passion had flamed into life. A picture rose of that night, the silver moon spatterings, her hand, white in the white light, with the band on its third finger. He opened the box to take it out – it was not there.