CHAPTER XI. THE THIEF.
Mary remained in joyous spirits after her victorious matching of brainsagainst a lawyer of high standing in his profession. For the time being,conscience was muted by gratified ambition. Her thoughts just then werefar from the miseries of the past, with their evil train of consequencesin the present. But that past was soon to be recalled to her with avividness most terrible.
She had entered the telephone-booth, which she had caused to beinstalled out of an extra closet of her bedroom for the sake of greaterprivacy on occasion, and it was during her absence from the drawing-roomthat Garson again came into the apartment, seeking her. On being toldby Aggie as to Mary's whereabouts, he sat down to await her return,listening without much interest to the chatter of the adventuress.... Itwas just then that the maid appeared.
"There's a girl wants to see Miss Turner," she explained.
The irrepressible Aggie put on her most finically elegant air.
"Has she a card?" she inquired haughtily, while the maid titteredappreciation.
"No," was the answer. "But she says it's important. I guess the poorthing's in hard luck, from the look of her," the kindly Fannie added.
"Oh, then she'll be welcome, of course," Aggie declared, and Garsonnodded in acquiescence. "Tell her to come in and wait, Fannie. MissTurner will be here right away." She turned to Garson as the maid leftthe room. "Mary sure is an easy boob," she remarked, cheerfully. "Blessher soft heart!"
A curiously gentle smile of appreciation softened the immobility of theforger's face as he again nodded assent.
"We might just as well pipe off the skirt before Mary gets here," Aggiesuggested, with eagerness.
A minute later, a girl perhaps twenty years of age stepped just withinthe doorway, and stood there with eyes downcast, after one swift,furtive glance about her. Her whole appearance was that of dejection.Her soiled black gown, the cringing posture, the pallor of her face,proclaimed the abject misery of her state.
Aggie, who was not exuberant in her sympathies for any one other thanherself, addressed the newcomer with a patronizing inflection, modulatedin her best manner.
"Won't you come in, please?" she requested.
The shrinking girl shot another veiled look in the direction of thespeaker.
"Are you Miss Turner?" she asked, in a voice broken by nervous dismay.
"Really, I am very sorry," Aggie replied, primly; "but I am only hercousin, Miss Agnes Lynch. But Miss Turner is likely to be back anyminute now."
"Can I wait?" came the timid question.
"Certainly," Aggie answered, hospitably. "Please sit down."
As the girl obediently sank down on the nearest chair, Garson addressedher sharply, so that the visitor started uneasily at the unexpectedsound.
"You don't know Miss Turner?"
"No," came the faint reply.
"Then, what do you want to see her about?"
There was a brief pause before the girl could pluck up courage enoughfor an answer. Then, it was spoken confusedly, almost in a whisper.
"She once helped a girl friend of mine, and I thought--I thought----"
"You thought she might help you," Garson interrupted.
But Aggie, too, possessed some perceptive powers, despite the fact thatshe preferred to use them little in ordinary affairs.
"You have been in stir--prison, I mean." She hastily corrected the lapseinto underworld slang.
Came a distressed muttering of assent from the girl.
"How sad!" Aggie remarked, in a voice of shocked pity for one soinconceivably unfortunate. "How very, very sad!"
This ingenuous method of diversion was put to an end by the entrance ofMary, who stopped short on seeing the limp figure huddled in the chair.
"A visitor, Agnes?" she inquired.
At the sound of her voice, and before Aggie could hit on a fittinglyelegant form of reply, the girl looked up. And now, for the firsttime, she spoke with some degree of energy, albeit there was a sinisterundertone in the husky voice.
"You're Miss Turner?" she questioned.
"Yes," Mary said, simply. Her words rang kindly; and she smiledencouragement.
A gasp burst from the white lips of the girl, and she cowered as onestricken physically.
"Mary Turner! Oh, my God! I----" She hid her face within her arms andsat bent until her head rested on her knees in an abasement of misery.
Vaguely startled by the hysterical outburst from the girl, Mary'simmediate thought was that here was a pitiful instance of one sufferingfrom starvation.
"Joe," she directed rapidly, "have Fannie bring a glass of milk with anegg and a little brandy in it, right away."
The girl in the chair was shaking soundlessly under the stress of heremotions. A few disjointed phrases fell from her quivering lips.
"I didn't know--oh, I couldn't!"
"Don't try to talk just now," Mary warned, reassuringly. "Wait untilyou've had something to eat."
Aggie, who had observed developments closely, now lifted her voice intardy lamentations over her own stupidity. There was no affectation ofthe fine lady in her self-reproach.
"Why, the poor gawk's hungry!" she exclaimed! "And I never got the dopeon her. Ain't I the simp!"
The girl regained a degree of self-control, and showed something offorlorn dignity.
"Yes," she said dully, "I'm starving."
Mary regarded the afflicted creature with that sympathy born only ofexperience.
"Yes," she said softly, "I understand." Then she spoke to Aggie. "Takeher to my room, and let her rest there for a while. Have her drink theegg and milk slowly, and then lie down for a few minutes anyhow."
Aggie obeyed with an air of bustling activity.
"Sure, I will!" she declared. She went to the girl and helped her tostand up. "We'll fix you out all right," she said, comfortingly. "Comealong with me.... Hungry! Gee, but that's tough!"
Half an hour afterward, while Mary was at her desk, giving part of herattention to Joe Garson, who sat near, and part to a rather formidablepile of neatly arranged papers, Aggie reported with her charge, who,though still shambling of gait, and stooping, showed by some faint colorin her face and an increased steadiness of bearing that the food hadalready strengthened her much.
"She would come," Aggie explained. "I thought she ought to rest for awhile longer anyhow." She half-shoved the girl into a chair opposite thedesk, in an absurd travesty on the maternal manner.
"I'm all right, I tell you," came the querulous protest.
Whereupon, Aggie gave over the uncongenial task of mothering, andsettled herself comfortably in a chair, with her legs merely crossed asa compromise between ease and propriety.
"Are you quite sure?" Mary said to the girl. And then, as the othernodded in assent, she spoke with a compelling kindliness. "Then youmust tell us all about it--this trouble of yours, you know. What is yourname?"
Once again the girl had recourse to the swift, searching, furtiveglance, but her voice was colorless as she replied, listlessly:
"Helen Morris."
Mary regarded the girl with an expression that was inscrutable when shespoke again.
"I don't have to ask if you have been in prison," she said gravely."Your face shows it."
"I--I came out--three months ago," was the halting admission.
Mary watched the shrinking figure reflectively for a long minute beforeshe spoke again. Then there was a deeper resonance in her voice.
"And you'd made up your mind to go straight?"
"Yes." The word was a whisper.
"You were going to do what the chaplain had told you," Mary went on ina voice vibrant with varied emotions. "You were going to start all overagain, weren't you? You were going to begin a new life, weren't you?"The bent head of the girl bent still lower in assent. There came acynical note into Mary's utterance now.
"It doesn't work very well, does it?" she asked, bitterly.
The girl gave sullen agreement.
"No," she said dully;
"I'm whipped."
Mary's manner changed on the instant. She spoke cheerfully for the firsttime.
"Well, then," she questioned, "how would you like to work with us?"
The girl looked up for a second with another of her fleeting, stealthyglances.
"You--you mean that----?"
Mary explained her intention in the matter very explicitly. Her voicegrew boastful.
"Our kind of work pays well when you know how. Look at us."
Aggie welcomed the opportunity for speech, too long delayed.
"Hats from Joseph's, gowns from Lucile's, and cracked ice fromTiffany's. But it ain't ladylike to wear it," she concluded with areproachful glance at her mentor.
Mary disregarded the frivolous interruption, and went on speaking to thegirl, and now there was something pleasantly cajoling in her manner.
"Suppose I should stake you for the present, and put you in with a goodcrowd. All you would have to do would be to answer advertisements forservant girls. I will see that you have the best of references. Then,when you get in with the right people, you will open the front door somenight and let in the gang. Of course, you will make a get-away when theydo, and get your bit as well."
There flashed still another of the swift, sly glances, and the lips ofthe girl parted as if she would speak. But she did not; only, her headsagged even lower on her breast, and the shrunken form grew yet moreshrunken. Mary, watching closely, saw these signs, and in the sameinstant a change came over her. Where before there had been anunderlying suggestion of hardness, there was now a womanly warmth ofgenuine sympathy.
"It doesn't suit you?" she said, very softly. "Good! I was in hopes itwouldn't. So, here's another plan." Her voice had become very winning."Suppose you could go West--some place where you would have a fairchance, with money enough so you could live like a human being till yougot a start?"
There came a tensing of the relaxed form, and the head lifted a littleso that the girl could look at her questioner. And, this time, theglance, though of the briefest, was less furtive.
"I will give you that chance," Mary said simply, "if you really wantit."
That speech was like a current of strength to the wretched girl. She satsuddenly erect, and her words came eagerly.
"Oh, I do!" And now her hungry gaze remained fast on the face of thewoman who offered her salvation.
Mary sprang up and moved a step toward the girl who continued to stareat her, fascinated. She was now all wholesome. The memory of herown wrongs surged in her during this moment only to make her moreappreciative of the blessedness of seemly life. She was moved to adivine compassion over this waif for whom she might prove a beneficentprovidence. There was profound conviction in the emphasis with which shespoke her warning.
"Then I have just one thing to say to you first. If you are going tolive straight, start straight, and then go through with it. Do you knowwhat that means?"
"You mean, keep straight all the time?" The girl spoke with a forcedrawn from the other's strength.
"I mean more than that," Mary went on earnestly. "I mean, forget thatyou were ever in prison. I don't know what you have done--I don't thinkI care. But whatever it was, you have paid for it--a pretty big price,too." Into these last words there crept the pathos of one who knew. Thesympathy of it stirred the listener to fearful memories.
"I have, I have!" The thin voice broke, wailing.
"Well, then," Mary went on, "just begin all over again, and be sure youstand up for your rights. Don't let them make you pay a second time. Gowhere no one knows you, and don't tell the first people who are kind toyou that you have been crooked. If they think you are straight, why, beit. Then nobody will have any right to complain." Her tone grew suddenlypleading. "Will you promise me this?"
"Yes, I promise," came the answer, very gravely, quickened with hope.
"Good!" Mary exclaimed, with a smile of approval. "Wait a minute," sheadded, and left the room.
"Huh! Pretty soft for some people," Aggie remarked to Garson, with asniff. She felt no alarm lest she wound the sensibilities of the girl.She herself had never let delicacy interfere between herself and money.It was really stranger that the forger, who possessed a more sympatheticnature, did not scruple to speak an assent openly. Somehow, he felt aninexplicable prejudice against this abject recipient of Mary's bounty,though not for the world would he have checked the generous impulse onthe part of the woman he so revered. It was his instinct on her behalfthat made him now vaguely uneasy, as if he sensed some malign influenceagainst her there present with them.
Mary returned soon. In her hand she carried a roll of bills. She wentto the girl and held out the money. Her voice was business-like now, butvery kind.
"Take this. It will pay your fare West, and keep you quite a while ifyou are careful."
But, without warning, a revulsion seized on the girl. Of a sudden, sheshrank again, and turned her head away, and her body trembled.
"I can't take it," she stammered. "I can't! I can't!"
Mary stood silent for a moment from sheer amazement over the change.When she spoke, her voice had hardened a little. It is not agreeable tohave one's beneficence flouted.
"Didn't you come here for help?" she demanded.
"Yes," was the faltering reply, "but--but--I didn't know--it was you!"The words came with a rush of desperation.
"Then, you have met me before?" Mary said, quietly.
"No, no!" The girl's voice rose shrill.
Aggie spoke her mind with commendable frankness.
"She's lying."
And, once again, Garson agreed. His yes was spoken in a tone of completecertainty. That Mary, too, was of their opinion was shown in her nextwords.
"So, you have met me before? Where?"
The girl unwittingly made confession in her halting words.
"I--I can't tell you." There was despair in her voice.
"You must." Mary spoke with severity. She felt that this mystery held init something sinister to herself. "You must," she repeated imperiously.
The girl only crouched lower.
"I can't!" she cried again. She was panting as if in exhaustion.
"Why can't you?" Mary insisted. She had no sympathy now for the girl'sdistress, merely a great suspicious curiosity.
"Because--because----" The girl could not go on.
Mary's usual shrewdness came to her aid, and she put her next questionin a different direction.
"What were you sent up for?" she asked briskly. "Tell me."
It was Garson who broke the silence that followed.
"Come on, now!" he ordered. There was a savage note in his voice underwhich the girl visibly winced. Mary made a gesture toward him that heshould not interfere. Nevertheless, the man's command had in it athreat which the girl could not resist and she answered, though witha reluctance that made the words seem dragged from her by some outsideforce--as indeed they were.
"For stealing."
"Stealing what?" Mary said.
"Goods."
"Where from?"
A reply came in a breath so low that it was barely audible.
"The Emporium."
In a flash of intuition, the whole truth was revealed to the woman whostood looking down at the cowering creature before her.
"The Emporium!" she repeated. There was a tragedy in the single word.Her voice grew cold with hate, the hate born of innocence long tortured."Then you are the one who----"
The accusation was cut short by the girl's shriek.
"I am not! I am not, I tell you."
For a moment, Mary lost her poise. Her voice rose in a flare of rage.
"You are! You are!"
The craven spirit of the girl could struggle no more. She could onlysit in a huddled, shaking heap of dread. The woman before her hadbeen disciplined by sorrow to sternest self-control. Though racked byemotions most intolerable, Mary soon mastered their expression to suchan extent that when she spoke again, as if in self-communion, her wordscame quietly, yet with
overtones of a supreme wo.
"She did it!" Then, after a little, she addressed the girl with acertain wondering before this mystery of horror. "Why did you throw theblame on me?"
The girl made several efforts before her mumbling became intelligible,and then her speech was gasping, broken with fear.
"I found out they were watching me, and I was afraid they would catchme. So, I took them and ran into the cloak-room, and put them in alocker that wasn't close to mine, and some in the pocket of a coat thatwas hanging there. God knows I didn't know whose it was. I just put themthere--I was frightened----"
"And you let me go to prison for three years!" There was a menace inMary's voice under which the girl cringed again.
"I was scared," she whined. "I didn't dare to tell."
"But they caught you later," Mary went on inexorably. "Why didn't youtell then?"
"I was afraid," came the answer from the shuddering girl. "I told themit was the first time I had taken anything and they let me off with ayear."
Once more, the wrath of the victim flamed high.
"You!" Mary cried. "You cried and lied, and they let you off with ayear. I wouldn't cry. I told the truth--and----" Her voice broke in atearless sob. The color had gone out of her face, and she stood rigid,looking down at the girl whose crime had ruined her life with anexpression of infinite loathing in her eyes. Garson rose from his chairas if to go to her, and his face passed swiftly from compassion toferocity as his gaze went from the woman he had saved from the riverto the girl who had been the first cause of her seeking a grave in thewaters. Yet, though he longed with every fiber of him to comfort thestricken woman, he did not dare intrude upon her in this time of heranguish, but quietly dropped back into his seat and sat watching witheyes now tender, now baleful, as they shifted their direction.
Aggie took advantage of the pause. Her voice was acid.
"Some people are sneaks--just sneaks!"
Somehow, the speech was welcome to the girl, gave her a touch of couragesufficient for cowardly protestations. It seemed to relieve the tensiondrawn by the other woman's torment. It was more like the abuse that wasfamiliar to her. A gush of tears came.
"I'll never forgive myself, never!" she moaned.
Contempt mounted in Mary's breast.
"Oh, yes, you will," she said, malevolently. "People forgive themselvespretty easily." The contempt checked for a little the ravages of hergrief. "Stop crying," she commanded harshly. "Nobody is going to hurtyou." She thrust the money again toward the girl, and crowded it intothe half-reluctant, half-greedy hand.
"Take it, and get out." The contempt in her voice rang still sharper,mordant.
Even the puling creature writhed under the lash of Mary's tones. Shesprang up, slinking back a step.
"I can't take it!" she cried, whimpering. But she did not drop themoney.
"Take the chance while you have it," Mary counseled, still with thecontempt that pierced even the hardened girl's sense of selfishness. Shepointed toward the door. "Go!--before I change my mind."
The girl needed, indeed, no second bidding. With the money stillclutched in her hand, she went forth swiftly, stumbling a little in herhaste, fearful lest, at the last moment, the woman she had so wrongedshould in fact change in mood, take back the money--ay, even give herover to that terrible man with the eyes of hate, to put her to death asshe deserved.
Freed from the miasma of that presence, Mary remained motionless for along minute, then sighed from her tortured heart. She turned and wentslowly to her chair at the desk, and seated herself languidly, weakenedby the ordeal through which she had passed.
"A girl I didn't know!" she said, bewilderedly; "perhaps had neverspoken to--who smashed my life like that! Oh, if it wasn't so awful, itwould be--funny! It would be funny!" A gust of hysterical laughter burstfrom her. "Why, it is funny!" she cried, wildly. "It is funny!"
"Mary!" Garson exclaimed sharply. He leaped across the room to face her."That's no good!" he said severely.
Aggie, too, rushed forward.
"No good at all!" she declared loudly.
The interference recalled the distressed woman to herself. She made adesperate effort for self-command. Little by little, the unmeaning lookdied down, and presently she sat silent and moveless, staring at the twowith stormy eyes out of a wan face.
"You were right," she said at last, in a lifeless voice. "It's done, andcan't be undone. I was a fool to let it affect me like that. I reallythought I had lost all feeling about it, but the sight of that girl--theknowledge that she had done it--brought it all back to me. Well, youunderstand, don't you?"
"We understand," Garson said, grimly. But there was more than grimness,infinitely more, in the expression of his clear, glowing eyes.
Aggie thought that it was her turn to voice herself, which she didwithout undue restraint.
"Perhaps, we do, but I dunno! I'll tell you one thing, though. If anydame sent me up for three years and then wanted money from me, do youthink she'd get it? Wake me up any time in the night and ask me. Notmuch--not a little bit much! I'd hang on to it like an old woman to herlast tooth." And that was Aggie's final summing up of her impressionsconcerning the scene she had just witnessed.
Within the Law: From the Play of Bayard Veiller Page 11