第67章 WITHIN THE TOILS(3)

"Not her!" he cried, imploringly."You don't want her, Inspector! This is all wrong!"Now, at last, Mary interposed with a new spirit.She had regained, in some measure at least, her poise.She was speaking again with that mental clarity which was distinctive in her.

"Dick," she advised quietly, but with underlying urgency in her gently spoken words, "don't talk, please."Burke laughed harshly.

"What do you expect?" he inquired truculently."As a matter of fact, the thing's simple enough, young man.Either you killed Griggs, or she did."The Inspector, with his charge, made a careless gesture toward the corpse of the murdered stool-pigeon.For the first time, Edward Gilder, as his glance unconsciously followed the officer's movement, looked and saw the ghastly inanimate heap of flesh and bone that had once been a man.He fairly reeled at the gruesome spectacle, then fumbled with an outstretched hand as he moved stumblingly until he laid hold on a chair, into which he sank helplessly.It suddenly smote upon his consciousness that he felt very old and broken.He marveled dully over the sensation--it was wholly new to him.Then, soon, from a long way off, he heard the strident voice of the Inspector remorselessly continuing in the vile, the impossible accusation....And that grotesque accusation was hurled against his only son--the boy whom he so loved.The thing was monstrous, a thing incredible.

This whole seeming was no more than a chimera of the night, a phantom of bad dreams, with no truth under it....Yet, the stern voice of the official came with a strange semblance of reality.

"Either you killed him," the voice repeated gratingly, "or she did.Well, then, young man, did she kill him?""Good God, no!" Dick shouted, aghast.

"Then, it was you!" Such was the Inspector's summary of the case.

Mary's words came frantically.Once again, she was become desperate over the course of events in this night of fearful happenings.

"No, no! He didn't!"

Burke's rasping voice reiterated the accusation with a certain complacency in the inevitability of the dilemma.

"One of you killed Griggs.Which one of you did it?" He scowled at Dick."Did she kill him?"Again, the husband's cry came with the fierceness of despair over the fate of the woman.

"I told you, no!"

The Inspector, always savagely impressive now in voice and look and gesture, faced the girl with saturnine persistence.

"Well, then," he blustered, "did he kill him?"The nod of his head was toward Dick.Then, as she remained silent: "I'm talking to you!" he snapped."Did he kill him?"The reply came with a soft distinctness that was like a crash of destiny.

"Yes."

Dick turned to his wife in reproachful amazement.

"Mary!" he cried, incredulously.This betrayal was something inconceivable from her, since he believed that now at last he knew her heart.

Burke, however, as usual, paid no heed to the niceties of sentiment.They had small place in his concerns as an official of police.His sole ambition just now was to fix the crime definitely on the perpetrator.

"You'll swear he killed him?" he asked, briskly, well content with this concrete result of the entanglement.

Mary subtly evaded the question, while seeming to give unqualified assent.

"Why not?" she responded listlessly.

At this intolerable assertion as he deemed it, Edward Gilder was reanimated.He sat rigidly erect in his, chair.In that frightful moment, it came to him anew that here was in verity the last detail in a consummate scheme by this woman for revenge against himself.

"God!" he cried, despairingly."And that's your vengeance!"Mary heard, and understood.There came an inscrutable smile on her curving lips, but there was no satisfaction in that smile, as of one who realized the fruition of long-cherished schemes of retribution.Instead, there was only an infinite sadness, while she spoke very gently.

"I don't want vengeance--now!" she said.

"But they'll try my boy for murder," the magnate remonstrated, distraught.

"Oh, no, they can't!" came the rejoinder.And now, once again, there was a hint of the quizzical creeping in the smile."No, they can't!" she repeated firmly, and there was profound relief in her tones since at last her ingenuity had found a way out of this outrageous situation thrust on her and on her husband.

Burke glared at the speaker in a rage that was abruptly grown suspicious in some vague way.

"What's the reason we can't?" he stormed.

Mary sprang to her feet.She was radiant with a new serenity, now that her quick-wittedness had discovered a method for baffling the mesh of evidence that had been woven about her and Dick through no fault of their own.Her eyes were glowing with even more than their usual lusters.Her voice came softly modulated, almost mocking.

"Because you couldn't convict him," she said succinctly.Acontented smile bent the red graces of her lips.

Burke sneered an indignation that was, nevertheless, somewhat fearful of what might lie behind the woman's assurance.

"What's the reason?" he demanded, scornfully."There's the body." He pointed to the rigid form of the dead man, lying there so very near them."And the gun was found on him.And then, you're willing to swear that he killed him....Well, I guess we'll convict him, all right.Why not?"Mary's answer was given quietly, but, none the less, with an assurance that could not be gainsaid.

"Because," she said, "my husband merely killed a burglar." In her turn, she pointed toward the body of the dead man."That man," she continued evenly, "was the burglar.You know that! My husband shot him in defense of his home!" There was a brief silence.Then, she added, with a wonderful mildness in the music of her voice."And so, Inspector, as you know of course, he was within the law!"