Her Forbidden Knight

by Rex Stout

  But Sherman was not the man to waste time crying over spilled milk. After all, he reflected, the damage was not irreparable, since his knowledge gave him a power over her that should prove irresistible. By the time the boat had returned to Twenty-third Street he was once more fiercely exultant.

  But he took the precaution of following Lila uptown; nor was he satisfied until he saw her white face dimly outlined at her own window.

  Then he turned, muttering: “I guess she’ll do no more mischief tonight.”

  He was determined that he would not make a second mistake. The first thing was to make sure of Knowlton. Perhaps early in the morning—He glanced at his watch; it was a quarter past nine.

  At the corner he turned into a saloon and telephoned the office of Detective Barrett, and, finding him in, made an appointment to call on him in three-quarters of an hour.

  He was there five minutes ahead of time. The detective was alone in the office and opened the door himself in response to his visitor’s knock.

  He was in ill humor.

  “You’ve got us in a pretty mess,” he began, placing a chair for Sherman and seating himself at his desk. “We got Knowlton all right, but there wasn’t a scrap of stuff in the whole place. Unless we can dig up something, what he can do to us won’t be a little. That was a beautiful tip-off of yours—I don’t think. I don’t say it wasn’t on the square, but it looks like—”

  Sherman cut him short.

  “Wait a minute, Barrett. You shut your eyes and go to sleep, and then when you don’t see anything you blame it on me. The stuff was there, and it’s your own fault you didn’t get it.”

  “Then you’d better go up there and show it to Corliss. He’s probably looking for it yet.”

  “Oh, he won’t find it now.” Sherman leaned forward in his chair and held up a finger impressively. “When you went in that house Knowlton wasn’t alone. There was a woman in his rooms with him, and a big bundle of the queer. And you politely closed your eyes and let her walk out with it.”

  The other stared at him.

  “What sort of a game is this?” he demanded.

  “This is straight,” said Sherman, “and I can prove it. I know who the woman was, and I know what she did with the stuff. What I can’t understand is how she ever got away.”

  “Do you mean to say she was inside when we got there?”

  Sherman nodded emphatically.

  The detective looked puzzled:

  “Then how in the name of—” He stopped short, while his face was suddenly filled with the light of understanding—and chagrin.

  “Well, I’m jiggered,” he said finally. Then he explained Knowlton’s ruse—or rather Lila’s—to Sherman. “It’s an old trick,” he ended, “but we weren’t looking for it. We thought he was alone. But where did she go? What did she do with it? Who is she?”

  “She took a ride on a ferryboat and dropped it in the middle of the Hudson.”

  “Then it’s gone.”

  “Thanks to you, yes.”

  “But where did you get all this? Of course, she’s a—”

  “Back up!” Sherman interrupted. “She’s a friend of mine.”

  “She seems not exactly to hate Knowlton,” the detective observed dryly. “Who is she?”

  Sherman winced.

  “What does that matter? She knows enough to send him higher than a kite, and she’ll have to come through with it.”

  The other became impatient.

  “But who is she? We ought to get her tonight.”

  There was a pause; then Sherman said slowly:

  “You won’t get her at all.”

  At the look of inquiry and surprise on the detective’s face he proceeded to explain:

  “I told you she’s a friend of mine. Maybe it would be better to say I’m a friend of hers. Put it however you please, but she’s not to be locked up. Serve her as a witness, and she’ll give you all you need against Knowlton, and more, too.

  “I’ll see to that. She can’t get out of it. Anyway, if you arrested her, what would happen? You couldn’t make them testify against each other, and they’d both get off.”

  “But as soon as we serve her she’ll beat it,” the other objected.

  “Leave that to me. Of course, I’ve got a personal interest in this, and you ought to consider it. I don’t have to remind you—”

  “No,” the detective interrupted hastily, “you don’t. I have a memory, Billy.”

  “Well, then it’s up to you.”

  The detective finally capitulated and agreed to do as Sherman wished. Sherman gave him Lila’s name and address, and advised him to postpone serving the subpoena as long as possible.

  “I want to prepare her for it,” he explained as the detective accompanied him to the door. “I’ll see her first thing in the morning. If possible, we want to prevent Knowlton from knowing that she is to appear against him, and I think I can manage it. You’ll hear from me tomorrow. Going uptown?”

  The other replied that he had work to do in the office that would keep him till midnight, and wished him good night.

  Sherman was well satisfied with the day’s work. With Knowlton in the Tombs and Lila completely in his power, he felt that there was nothing left to be desired. As he sat in an uptown subway local he reviewed his position with the eye of a general, and, discovering no possible loophole for the enemy, sighed with satisfaction.

  At Twenty-third Street he left the train and made his way to the lobby of the Lamartine.

  He was led there more by force of habit than by any particular purpose. At first he had thought of going to see Lila at once, but had decided that it would serve his ends better to allow her to have a night for reflection over the day’s events. She would be less able to resist his demands.

  It was but little past ten o’clock, and he found the lobby almost deserted. Night at the Lamartine began late and ended early—in the morning.

  One or two nondescripts loitered about the entrance inside, the hotel clerk yawned behind his desk, and the weary-looking female who took Miss Hughes’s place during the hours of darkness was drumming on the counter with her fingers, chewing gum, and reading a newspaper, thus exercising three different sets of muscles at the same time.

  Sherman approached her:

  “Have any of the boys been in?”

  She looked up from her newspaper and regarded him chillingly:

  “Huh?”

  It was this young girl’s habit never to understand questions addressed to her till they had been repeated at least once. It argued a superiority over the questioner; an indifference to common and sublunary affairs.

  She condescended finally to inform Sherman that Driscoll and Booth had been seen in the lobby some two hours before. While talking she contrived somehow to lose not a single stroke on the gum.

  Sherman wandered about for half an hour, tried to find someone to take a cue at billiards without success, and had about decided to go home when Dumain and Dougherty entered arm-in-arm.

  Dumain called to Sherman, and the three proceeded to the bar. Sherman ordered a whisky, Dougherty a gin rickey, and Dumain an absinth frappé. This is for the benefit of those who judge a man by what he drinks. You see what it amounts to.

  The ex-prizefighter was a little ill at ease. He felt that he had treated Sherman a little shabbily by breaking his promise not to speak to Knowlton till the following day; perhaps, after all, he thought, Sherman had acted in good faith.

  “I suppose you called off your sleuth,” he observed.

  Sherman looked up quickly.

  “What? Oh, yes. I saw him this afternoon. Good thing, too. He was costing me more than a prima donna. Fill ’em up, bartender.”

  “Then it’s all right to speak to Knowlton now?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, yes.”

  “The reason I wanted to know,” Dougherty hesitated, “is because I already spoke to him. It wasn’t because I wanted to put anything over on you—don’t think that. He
came in here about noon, and it was too good a chance to pass up.

  “Besides, Miss Williams was going out with him, and I had to head him off somehow. I was a little uneasy about it, but since you say it’s all right, I’ll forget it. And, thank Heaven, we’ve seen the last of Knowlton. By this time he’s probably so far away from little old New York you couldn’t see him with a telescope from the top of the Singer Building.”

  “Well, you didn’t do any harm.” Sherman was picking up his change on the bar.

  “Eet was best,” put in Dumain. “Zee sooner zee bettaire. He was a quiet scoundrel. You should have seen heem when Dougherty told heem! He had not a word. He walked out wiz a frown.”

  Each man lifted his glass in silence. Each had his own thoughts.

  “I’m a little worried about Miss Williams,” said Dougherty presently. “I wonder what she thought when she saw him walk out without speaking to her? Knowlton asked me to tell her, but I didn’t have the nerve. I think they had a date to go to lunch. And all afternoon she kept watching for him. I saw her.”

  “She’ll soon forget him,” said Sherman.

  “I doubt it,” declared Dougherty. “You know yourself he was different from us. And from the way she looked this afternoon—I doubt it.”

  “Bah!” Dumain snapped his fingers. “She care not zat much for heem. If she did would she not have been—ah, grief—distrait—when she hear he was a what you call eet counterfeiter?”

  There was a sudden pause, while Dougherty turned and gazed at Dumain keenly.

  “When did you tell her?” he demanded finally.

  Dumain was silent, while his face reddened in confusion, and Sherman raised his hand to his mouth to conceal a smile.

  “When did you tell her?” repeated the ex-prizefighter, more sternly than before.

  “Tonight,” Dumain stammered. “You see, Knowlton had left so sudden, and I thought she ought to know. You see—”

  “Yes, I see!” Dougherty roared. “You’re a darn Frenchman. That’s what you are; you’re a darn’ Frenchman! You can’t keep your mouth shut. You ought to be muzzled. If you wasn’t such a human shrimp I’d—Bartender, for the love of Mike, give us a drink.”

  He drained a highball with two prodigious gulps.

  Dumain took courage.

  “But eet was best. She had to know sometime. So tell her at once, zat is what I theenk. Zen I tell her.”

  “What did she say?” Dougherty demanded.

  “Nozzing.” The little Frenchman shrugged his shoulders expressively. “I tell you she care leetle for heem. She lifted her eyes upward in surprise”—he rolled his own toward heaven—“and say, ‘Has he gone?’ like zat. Zen she say good night like any other time and went home.”

  Dougherty grunted in disbelief.

  Sherman had for some minutes been meditating on the question whether he should tell his companions what he knew—or, rather, what he had done. It would be in the nature of a triumph over them, but would it not be dangerous? He reflected, and could not resist the temptation.

  He took up Dumain’s last words:

  “And what makes you think she went home?”

  The others stared at him—a stare that plainly meant:

  “Where else should she go?”

  “You evidently don’t know the lady very well,” Sherman continued. “You think she’s as innocent as she looks. She went straight from here to Knowlton’s rooms, and she seemed to know pretty well how to get there. You can guess as well as I can what she went after. And how many times—”

  He stopped suddenly, though not of his own volition. The compelling cause was Dougherty’s fingers about his throat, in a grip of steel.

  Dumain had hurriedly stepped aside, and the bartender was loudly expostulating in a tone of alarm, while three or four men who were standing at the bar a few feet away looked on with pleasurable expectations. They knew Dougherty.

  The ex-prizefighter spoke no word—he never talked and acted at the same time. He pressed his fingers tighter and tighter, till the face of the man who had insulted Lila began to assume a hue of purple as he pawed helplessly at the wrists that seemed to be made of iron.

  “You keel heem,” said Dumain quietly. “Let heem go, Tom.”

  Dougherty did so, and Sherman stood erect. Then, with a single glance charged with malevolence and hatred, he turned to go.

  “No, you don’t,” said the ex-prizefighter grimly, stepping in front of him. “You’ve said too much. Tell us what you meant.”

  Sherman opened his lips to speak, but the words would not pass his throat. He gulped spasmodically.

  “Here,” said the bartender, handing him a drink of brandy. “This’ll fix you.”

  Sherman drained the glass at one swallow, with a grimace of pain.

  “Now,” said Dougherty, “speak up.”

  Sherman wanted to defy him, but dared not. He, too, knew Dougherty.

  He began:

  “I’ll even up for this, Dougherty. What I said was the truth.”

  “Go on. I’ll take care of myself.”

  Sherman spoke with difficulty, but in a tone of sneering satisfaction:

  “Immediately after Dumain spoke to her tonight she went to Knowlton’s rooms. She was there when the cops came for Knowlton, and she crawled out somehow with a bundle of the queer and threw it in the middle of the Hudson. Knowlton’s in the Tombs, where he ought to be.”

  The others were gazing at him speechless with surprise.

  “That’s what your innocent Miss Williams has come to.” Sherman continued with a sneer. “And it’s your own fault. You wouldn’t listen to me. And now—”

  The look in Dougherty’s eyes stopped him.

  The ex-prizefighter’s tone was threatening:

  “Who put them onto Knowlton?”

  “How do I know?” Sherman retorted with an assumption of bravado.

  “Maybe you don’t,” said Dougherty grimly, “but I do. Sherman, you’re a skunk. I don’t want to touch you. You’re too rotten. But I want to ask you some questions—and look here! No—look in my eyes. Now talk straight. Who peached on Knowlton?”

  The answer was low but distinct:

  “I did.”

  “You say he’s in the Tombs?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s the charge against him?”

  “Passing counterfeit money.”

  “Where is Miss Williams?”

  “How do I know?”

  “Answer!” Dougherty advanced a step. “You know, all right, you sneak. Where is she?”

  “At home.”

  “Who arrested Knowlton?”

  “Detective Barrett, of the Secret Service.”

  “Does he know anything about Miss Williams?”

  Sherman opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again and was silent.

  “Answer!” Dougherty’s voice trembled with his effort to control it. “And look at me! Don’t try to lie!”

  There was no escape.

  “He—he knows all about her,” Sherman stammered.

  Then, at the look of uncontrollable fury that appeared on his questioner’s face, he sprang to one side, bounded to the door, and fled through the lobby and madly down the street.

  Dougherty had started to pursue him, but thought better of it and halted.

  He turned to Dumain and said shortly:

  “Come on; get home and go to bed. We have work to do in the morning.”

  CHAPTER XIV.

  The Morning After

  MRS. AMANDA BERRY PAUSED at the head of the stairs and looked curiously at a closed door to the right.

  “Now, I call that funny,” she remarked to herself. “I ain’t seen her go out, and it’s past nine o’clock. Surely she ain’t sick.”

  She hesitated, glanced again at the door, and started to descend the stairs, then turned suddenly and reascended them, and knocked sharply on the door at which she had aimed her remark.

  Mrs. Berry was a curious phenomenon—a rar
a avis. She owned and operated a rooming house on One Hundred and Fourth Street, New York, and she took a personal interest in her roomers. Not that she was inquisitive or—to put it vulgarly—nosy; she merely had a heart. This was so far from being resented by the roomers that they were all a little jealous of one of their number for whom Mrs. Berry had more than once betrayed a decided preference—Lila Williams.

  Receiving no response to her knock, Mrs. Berry knocked again. After a long pause there was a faint “Come in.”

  She entered.

  Lila was sitting in a chair by the window. Her hat and coat lay on another chair near the door. The bed had not been slept in.

  “Now what’s the matter?” Mrs. Berry sang out cheerily, crossing the room. “Another headache, I’ll bet a dollar. If you don’t—why, what’s the matter? Goodness sakes alive, just look at the girl’s face! No wonder you didn’t go to work! You just wait—”

  “Now, please, Mrs. Berry,” Lila interrupted, rising to her feet and trying to smile, “don’t bother about me. I—I want to be alone. Really.”

  Her face was deadly white, giving her eyes and cheeks a sunken appearance, and as she stood with one hand resting heavily on the back of the chair she was quivering from head to foot. Mrs. Berry stared at her in wrathful amazement.

  “You want to be alone! Look at you! You get right in that bed—and look at it! You ain’t been in bed at all—and I know you come in early, because I heard you. So you ain’t sick. Then you’re in trouble.”

  She looked at Lila keenly to confirm her diagnosis, and nodded her head. She knew the signs, and she knew the one thing that would help.

  Mrs. Berry was a good-sized woman. She walked over to Lila, picked her up in her arms as though she were a baby, and seated herself in a chair.

  Then she spoke grimly:

  “You’re a little fool. If you keep on like this you’ll die. Don’t you know what tears is good for? Now go on and cry as hard as you can, and hurry up about it.”

  Lila was motionless and silent. Mrs. Berry folded her arms tighter around her and continued:

  “You know, if it’s any real trouble I’ll help you. Of course I ain’t like a mother, but I’ll do all I can. Look, dearie, look at me! What is it? Tell me. Tell me all about it. I’m your mother now, you know. Here, put your arm round my neck—that’s right. Now what is it, dearie; won’t you tell me?”