But the elevator-man was not there. And as in this tiny house there was but one flight of stairs leading to the upper stories, Clancy knew that the man was not in the house. She suffered reaction. What might have been her fate had she found the man hiding here?
Like all women, Clancy feared the past more than the future. She feared it more than the present. She sank down upon the stairs outside the dining-room. Why, the man might have shot her! What good would her poker have been, pitted against a revolver? And, with the Careys up in the country somewhere, she might have lain here, weltering in her gore—she'd read that somewhere, and grinned as she mentally said it.
Well, she might as well begin the inventory of Mrs. Carey's household effects. But she was not to begin it yet. Some one rang the door-bell.
No weakness assailed Clancy's knees now. Indeed, it never occurred to her that the caller might be any other than the post-man. And so she opened the front door and met the lowering gaze of Spofford, Vandervent's plain-clothes man.
[XXVII]
Clancy felt no impulse to slam the door in Spofford's face. Instead, she opened it wider.
"Come in," she said.
He stepped across the threshold. Just beyond, he paused uncertainly. And now his lips, which had been sullen, Clancy thought, shaped themselves into a smile that was deprecatory, apologetic.