第65章 WITHIN THE TOILS(1)

The going of Garson left the room deathly still.Dick stared for a moment at the space of window left uncovered by the draperies now, since the man had hurried past them, without pausing to draw them after him.Then, presently, the young man turned again to Mary, and took her hand in his.The shock of the event had somehow steadied him, since it had drawn his thoughts from that other more engrossing mood of concern over the crisis in his own life.After all, what mattered the death of this crook? his fancy ran.The one thing of real worth in all the world was the life that remained to be lived between him and her....Then, violently, the selfishness of his mood was made plain to him.

For the hand he held was shaking like some slender-stalked lily in the clutch of the sirocco.Even as he first perceived the fact, he saw the girl stagger.His arm swept about her in a virile protecting embrace--just in time, or she would have fallen.

A whisper came from her quivering lips.Her face was close to his, else he could not have caught the uncertain murmuring.That face now was become ghastly pale.The violet eyes were widened and dull.The muscles of her face twitched.She rested supinely against him, as if bereft of any strength of body or of soul.

Yet, in the intensity of her utterance, the feeble whisper struck like a shriek of horror.

"I--I--never saw any one killed before!"

The simple, grisly truth of the words--words that he might have spoken as well--stirred the man to the deeps of his being.He shuddered, as he turned his eyes to avoid seeing the thing that lay so very near, mercifully merged within the shadows beyond the gentle radiance from the single lamp.With a pang of infinite pity for the woman in his arms, he apprehended in some degree the torture this event must have inflicted on her.Frightful to him, it must in truth be vastly worse to her.There was her womanly sensitiveness to enhance the innate hideousness of the thing that had been done here before their eyes.There was, too, the fact that the murderer himself had been the man to whom she owed her life.Yes, for him, Dick realized with poignant sympathy, the happening that night was terrible indeed: for her, as he guessed now at last, the torture must be something easily to overwhelm all her strength.His touch on her grew tender beyond the ordinary tenderness of love, made gentler by a great underlying compassion for her misery.

Dick drew Mary toward the couch, there let her sink down in a huddled attitude of despair.

"I never saw a man--killed before!" she said again.There was a note of half-hysterical, almost childish complaint in her voice.

She moved her head a little, as if to look into the shadows where IT lay, then checked herself violently, and looked up at her husband with the pathetic simplicity of terror.

"You know, Dick," she repeated dully, "I never saw a man killed before."Before he could utter the soothing words that rose to his lips, Dick was interrupted by a slight sound at the door.Instantly, he was all alert to meet the exigencies of the situation.He stood by the couch, bending forward a little, as if in a posture of intimate fondness.Then, with a new thought, he got out his cigarette-case and lighted a cigarette, after which he resumed his former leaning over the woman as would the ardent lover.He heard the noise again presently, now so near that he made sure of being overheard, so at once he spoke with a forced cheerfulness in his inflection.

"I tell you, Mary," he declared, "everything's going to be all right for you and me.It was bully of you to come here to me like this."The girl made no response.She lived still in the nightmare of murder--that nightmare wherein she had seen Griggs fall dead to the floor.

Dick, in nervous apprehension as to the issue, sought to bring her to realization of the new need that had come upon them.

"Talk to me," he commanded, very softly."They'll be here in a minute.When they come in, pretend you just came here in order to meet me.Try, Mary.You must, dearest!" Then, again, his voice rose to loudness, as he continued."Why, I've been trying all day to see you.And, now, here we are together, just as Iwas beginning to get really discouraged....I know my father will eventually----"He was interrupted by the swift swinging open of the hallway door.Burke stood just within the library, a revolver pointed menacingly.

"Hands up!--all of you!" The Inspector's voice fairly roared the command.

The belligerent expression of his face vanished abruptly, as his eyes fell on Dick standing by the couch and Mary reclining there in limp helplessness.His surprise would have been ludicrous but for the seriousness of the situation to all concerned.Burke's glance roved the room sharply, and he was quickly convinced that these two were in fact the only present spoil of his careful plotting.His face set grimly, for the disappointment of this minute surged fiercely within him.He started to speak, his eyes lowering as he regarded the two before him.

But Dick forestalled him.He spoke in a voice coldly repellent.

"What are you doing in this house at this time of night?" he demanded.His manner was one of stern disapproval."I recognize you, Inspector Burke.But you must understand that there are limits even to what you can do.It seems to me, sir, that you exceed your authority by such an intrusion as this."Burke, however, was not a whit dismayed by the rebuke and the air of rather contemptuous disdain with which it was uttered.He waved his revolver toward Mary, merely as a gesture of inquisitiveness, without any threat.

"What's she doing here?" he asked.There was wrath in his rough voice, for he could not avoid the surmise that his shrewdly concocted scheme to entrap this woman had somehow been set awry.

"What's she doing here, I say?" he repeated heavily.His keen eyes were darting once more about the room, questing some clue to this disturbing mystery, so hateful to his pride.

Dick's manner became that of the devoted husband offended by impertinent obtrusion.