"My wife's up-stairs," he said. "No need of screaming so she'll be butting in again. Shut that door."
Clancy leaped back. She gained the stairs in a bound. She crouched down upon them, hoping that the banisters would shield her. But no prying eyes sought her out. One of the two men in the room closed the dining-room door.
For a minute after it was shut, Clancy remained crouching. She had to think. A dozen impulses raced through her mind. To telephone Vandervent, the judge? To run out upon the street and call for a policeman? As swiftly as they came to her, she discarded them. She had begun to glean in recent days something of what was meant by the word "evidence." And she had none against Carey. Not yet!
But she could get it! She must get it! Sitting on the stairs, trembling—with excitement now, not fear—Clancy fought for clarity of thought. What to do? There must be some one correct thing, some action demanded by the situation that later on would cause her to marvel because it had been overlooked. But what was it?
She could not think of the correct thing to do. The elevator-man knew something. He was the same man who had identified her to Spofford, the plain-clothes man. The man assuredly knew the motive that lay behind the request for identification. And now, having told a detective things that made Clancy Deane an object of grave suspicion, the man was blandly—he was mentally bland, if not orally so—blackmailing Don Carey.
Yet Clancy did not disbelieve her ears merely because what she heard sounded incredible. Nor did she, because she believed that the elevator-man had proof of another's guilt, delude herself with the idea that her own innocence was thereby indisputably shown. Her first impulse—to telephone Vandervent—returned to her now. But she dismissed it at once, this time finally.
For a man who brazenly pointed out one person to the police while endeavoring to blackmail another was not the sort of person tamely to blurt out confession when accused of his double-dealing. She had nothing on which to base her accusation of Carey save an overheard threat. The man who had uttered it had only to deny the utterance. Up-stairs was Sophie Carey, torn with anguish, beaten by life and its injustices. The hardness left her eyes again. If she could only be sure that she herself would escape, she would be willing, for Sophie's sake, to forget what she had overheard.
She heard Sophie's voice whispering hoarsely to her from the landing above.
"Miss Deane, Miss Deane!" Then she saw Clancy. Her voice rose, in alarm, above a whisper. "Has he—did he—dare——"
Clancy rose; she ran up the stairs.