"Well, if you think it's any good, I'll send a detective after him," said Bobby, with the composure of one to whom money is no object.
Chapter XXXIII
The services of a detective proved imperative in finding Gerard. His banks when applied to by cable, regretted to reply that they did not know his address. He had left no directions to have his mail forwarded. Apparently his one idea had been to efface himself and break with some home ties. It was a proceeding which did not altogether surprise Mrs. Bobby, who understood the phase of mind which it indicated; but to Mr. Fenton it was proof positive of his own suspicions, that Gerard dreaded to be summoned as witness on behalf of the woman whom he had once loved.
"She is glad to have him out of the way," thought the astute lawyer to himself. "No doubt he has evidence which she is afraid of. Yes, she lied no doubt when she said she had told him herself of her marriage, just as she lied when she said she couldn't remember what she had done on the twenty-third of December. She remembered—I could see that plainly—very well." The counsel for the defence was reluctantly convinced of his client's guilt, but he had good hopes of saving her nevertheless, though he did not think it was to be done by means that were strictly legal. He said little and accepted Gerard's disappearance with philosophy, even though he did not absolutely discourage Bobby Van Antwerp from sending a detective on his track. It could at least, the lawyer argued, do no harm, since he was quite certain that Gerard however urgently summoned would not come. Bobby lost heart and would have let the matter drop, but his wife's influence again carried the day. The detective started, with urgent directions from Mrs. Bobby to find the witness at any cost, and equally urgent directions from Mr. Fenton by no means to find him, unless his evidence were desirable.
Meanwhile the summer came and life in The Tombs assumed a different phase.
The atmosphere in Elizabeth's cell grew unbearable, and the warden allowed her to spend a large part of her time in the prison court. Here, too, since the intense heat, the other women assembled for an hour every day, and she was brought in actual contact with them for the first time. The court was large, and she could sit on the bench which the warden had placed for her in the shadow of the wall. And yet, though she tried to, she could not ignore them; she found herself, little by little, observing them, taking even some faint interest in them. She grew to know them by name, and would talk to some of them, asking timid questions, partly with an instinctive desire to get away from her own thoughts, partly with the feeling that they were human beings, in trouble like herself. There was a lurking sympathy in her heart for even the most depraved. She would share with them her fruit and flowers, or make little presents of one kind or another, even though the matron, discovering this assured her that they were in many cases quite unworthy of her kindness.
"They won't thank you for it, Miss," she said "they won't indeed. They're just as likely as not to say the worst things of you behind your back."