Down-stairs, in the great lobby of the building, she marveled that she had escaped so easily. To have announced herself as Florine Ladue, the woman wanted for Beiner's murder, to have fainted when Vandervent came out, and still to have avoided, by a puerile explanation, all penalties was a piece of good luck that was incredible. She blessed the person unknown who had left the newspaper on the bench. The luckiest of chances had saved her from betrayal. Had she not read of Fanchon's death— She shuddered.
Then her eyes clouded. She had been fighting, with all the wit she owned, for liberty. She had not yet had opportunity to pay to Fanchon's death the tribute of sorrow that it demanded. She had known Fanchon but slightly; the woman was of a class to which Clancy could never belong—a coarse but good-hearted vulgarian. And she had tried to help Clancy in return for little kindnesses that Clancy had shown her when she lay ill with the "flu" in Zenith.
And now this same disease had finally killed the kindly soubrette. Her death had saved Clancy from disgrace—from worse, perhaps, if there is anything worse than disgrace— She suddenly realized how lucky she had been.
She stopped outside to adjust her veil. And she noticed that Spofford, the dyed-mustached gentleman of Vandervent's office, also emerged from the building. She shuddered. If her wit had not been quick, if she had not remembered, on, coming out of her faint, that the item in the paper had removed all danger, his hand might now be clasped about her wrist. Instead of walking toward the subway, she might now be on her way to the Tombs.
Spofford turned south toward the Brooklyn Bridge. She would never, thank God, see him again. For nothing would ever tempt her to the Criminal Courts Building another time. Its shadow would hang over her soul as long as she lived. She had had the narrowest escape that was possible, and she would not tempt fate again.
She would never learn. As her mind ceased to dwell upon the problem of her connection with Beiner's mysterious fate and moved on to consider what she should do with Grannis's ten thousand dollars, it was as though the Beiner incident were forever closed. Clancy had too much Irish in her for trouble to bear down upon her very long. She would never learn that issues are never avoided but must always be met. She was in a congratulatory mood toward herself because Vandervent had not suspected the grim truth behind what she called a jest. She had conquered this difficulty by the aid of fate; fate would help her again to handle the Grannis-Zenda-Weber matter. So she reasoned. It would straighten itself out, she assured herself.
[XIX]
There was a lunch-room on Broadway, just below Eighth Street. Clancy, walking westward from Astor Place, the station at which she emerged from the subway, saw its window-display of not too appetizing appeal, and paused. To-day was Friday; it was quite possible that Sally Henderson would to-morrow give her new employee an advance upon salary. But Clancy had learned something. That something was that New York is not a place in which to reveal one's pecuniary embarrassment. It was not that New York was hard-hearted, Clancy decided. It was that it was a busy place, and had no time to listen to whines. To ask an advance on salary was, in a way, to whine. Clancy was not going to begin her relationship with Sally Henderson on anything but a basis of independence.