第16章 THE VICTIM OF THE LAW(2)

The two went forward very slowly, the officer, carelessly conscious of his duty, walking with awkward steps to suit the feeble movements of the girl, the girl letting herself be dragged onward, aware of the futility of any resistance to the inexorable power that now had her in its grip, of which the man was the present agent.As the pair came thus falteringly into the center of the room, Sarah at last found her voice for an expression of sympathy.

"I'm sorry, Mary," she said, hesitatingly."I'm terribly sorry, terribly sorry!"The girl, who had halted when the officer halted, as a matter of course, did not look up.She stood still, swaying a little as if from weakness.Her voice was lifeless.

"Are you?" she said."I did not know.Nobody has been near me the whole time I have been in the Tombs." There was infinite pathos in the tones as she repeated the words so fraught with dreadfulness."Nobody has been near me!"The secretary felt a sudden glow of shame.She realized the justice of that unconscious accusation, for, till to-day, she had had no thought of the suffering girl there in the prison.To assuage remorse, she sought to give evidence as to a prevalent sympathy.

"Why," she exclaimed, "there was Helen Morris to-day! She has been asking about you again and again.She's all broken up over your trouble."But the effort on the secretary's part was wholly without success.

"Who is Helen Morris?" the lifeless voice demanded.There was no interest in the question.

Sarah experienced a momentary astonishment, for she was still remembering the feverish excitement displayed by the salesgirl, who had declared herself to be a most intimate friend of the convict.But the mystery was to remain unsolved, since Gilder now entered the office.He walked with the quick, bustling activity that was ordinarily expressed in his every movement.He paused for an instant, as he beheld the two visitors in the center of the room, then he spoke curtly to the secretary, while crossing to his chair at the desk.

"You may go, Sarah.I will ring when I wish you again."There followed an interval of silence, while the secretary was leaving the office and the girl with her warder stood waiting on his pleasure.Gilder cleared his throat twice in an embarrassment foreign to him, before finally he spoke to the girl.At last, the proprietor of the store expressed himself in a voice of genuine sympathy, for the spectacle of wo presented there before his very eyes moved him to a real distress, since it was indeed actual, something that did not depend on an appreciation to be developed out of imagination.

"My girl," Gilder said gently--his hard voice was softened by an honest regret--"my girl, I am sorry about this.""You should be!" came the instant answer.Yet, the words were uttered with a total lack of emotion.It seemed from their intonation that the speaker voiced merely a statement concerning a recondite matter of truth, with which sentiment had nothing whatever to do.But the effect on the employer was unfortunate.

It aroused at once his antagonism against the girl.His instinct of sympathy with which he had greeted her at the outset was repelled, and made of no avail.Worse, it was transformed into an emotion hostile to the one who thus offended him by rejection of the well-meant kindliness of his address"Come, come!" he exclaimed, testily."That's no tone to take with me.""Why? What sort of tone do you expect me to take?" was the retort in the listless voice.Yet, now, in the dullness ran a faint suggestion of something sinister.

"I expected a decent amount of humility from one in your position," was the tart rejoinder of the magnate.

Life quickened swiftly in the drooping form of the girl.Her muscles tensed.She stood suddenly erect, in the vigor of her youth again.Her face lost in the same second its bleakness of pallor.The eyes opened widely, with startling abruptness, and looked straight into those of the man who had employed her.

"Would you be humble," she demanded, and now her voice was become softly musical, yet forbidding, too, with a note of passion, "would you be humble if you were going to prison for three years--for something you didn't do?"There was anguish in the cry torn from the girl's throat in the sudden access of despair.The words thrilled Gilder beyond anything that he had supposed possible in such case.He found himself in this emergency totally at a loss, and moved in his chair doubtfully, wishing to say something, and quite unable.He was still seeking some question, some criticism, some rebuke, when he was unfeignedly relieved to hear the policeman's harsh voice.

"Don't mind her, sir," Cassidy said.He meant to make his manner very reassuring."They all say that.They are innocent, of course! Yep--they all say it.It don't do 'em any good, but just the same they all swear they're innocent.They keep it up to the very last, no matter how right they've been got."The voice of the girl rang clear.There was a note of insistence that carried a curious dignity of its own.The very simplicity of her statement might have had a power to convince one who listened without prejudice, although the words themselves were of the trite sort that any protesting criminal might utter.

"I tell you, I didn't do it!"

Gilder himself felt the surge of emotion that swung through these moments, but he would not yield to it.With his lack of imagination, he could not interpret what this time must mean to the girl before him.Rather, he merely deemed it his duty to carry through this unfortunate affair with a scrupulous attention to detail, in the fashion that had always been characteristic of him during the years in which he had steadily mounted from the bottom to the top.

"What's the use of all this pretense?" he demanded, sharply.