Find the Woman

by Arthur Somers Roche

For even Grannis's attempt to bribe her—that was what it was—was a minor matter compared to the Beiner murder. She wondered what the evening papers would have to say further about that mystery.

A newsboy crying an extra at Thirty-fourth Street sold her a paper. She wanted to open it at once, but, somehow, she feared that reading a newspaper on a cold wintry evening would be most conspicuous on Fifth Avenue.

Even when she had secured a seat on a down-town 'bus, she was half afraid to open the paper. But, considering that practically everyone else in the vehicle was reading, she might safely open hers.

She found what she was looking for without difficulty. Her eyes were keen and the name "Beiner" leaped at her from an inside page. But the reporters had discovered nothing new to add to the morning account. A theory, half-heartedly advanced by the police, that possibly Beiner had killed himself was contradicted by the findings of the coroner, but if the police had any inkling as to the identity of the murderer, they had not confided in the reporters.

That was all. She began to feel justified in her course. To have gone to the police would have meant, even though the police had believed her story, scandal of the most hideous sort. She would have been compelled to tell that Beiner had embraced her, had tried to kiss, had— She remembered the look in the murdered man's eyes, and blushed hotly at the recollection. She would never have been able to hold her head up again. For she knew that the uncharitable world always says, when a man has insulted a woman, "Well, she must have done something herself to make him act that way."

But now she supposed, optimistically, that there must have been, in Beiner's desk, scores of letters and cards of introduction. Why on earth should she have worried herself by thinking that Fanchon DeLisle's card of introduction would have assumed any importance to the police? No matter what investigation the police set on foot, it would hardly be based on the fact that they had found Fanchon's card.

So then, as she had avoided discovery by the mere fact of not having gone to the police, and had thus avoided scandal, and as there was no prospect of discovery, she could congratulate herself on having shown good sense. That she had lost a matter of six hundred and fifty dollars, deposited in the Thespian Bank, was nothing. A good name is worth considerably more than that. Further, she might reasonably dare to withdraw that money—what of it she needed, at any rate—from the bank now. If the police had not by this time discovered the connection between Fanchon's card of introduction and the woman who had been observed upon the fire-escape of the Heberworth Building, they surely never would discover it.

The pocketbook in her hand no longer burned her. There was now no question about her returning Grannis's bribe. In fact, there never had been any question of this. But Clancy was one of those singularly honest persons who are given to self-analysis. Few of us are willing to do that, and still fewer are capable of doing it.

She wondered if it would not be best to do now what she should have done last Tuesday morning. If she went to Zenda and told him what Fay Marston had said to her, she would be doing Zenda a great favor. She was human. She could not keep from her thoughts the possibility of Zenda's returning that favor. And the only return of that favor for which she would ask, the only one that she'd accept, would be an opportunity in the films. The career which she had come to New York to adopt, and which rude chance had torn away from her, was capable of restoration now.

She had fled from Zenda's apartment because scandal had frightened her. The presence of a graver scandal had almost obliterated her fear of the first. She'd go to Zenda, tell him that his partner was deceiving him, plotting against him.