When he returned, he didn't step back into the room, but waited outside and knocked on the closed door. This brought old Crotty out in answer to the summons. Just what passed between that worthy trio, immured in their whispering consultation in that half-lighted hallway, failed to reach my ears. But this in no way disturbed me, for I knew well enough that Latreille had at least passed on to them the alarming news that their much needed patient was no longer under that roof. And what was more, I knew that this discovery would serve to bring things to a somewhat speedier climax than we had all anticipated. There was a sort of covert decisiveness about their movements, in fact, as they stepped back into the room and swung the door shut behind them. So I crept closer, listening intently. But it was only patches and shreds of their talk that I could overhear. I caught enough, however, to know they were protesting that their patient was too weak to be interviewed. I could hear Crotty feelingly exclaim that it wasn't kind words which could help this poor child now, but only something much more substantial, and much more mundane.
"Yes, it's only money that can talk in a case like this," pointedly concurred The Doc, clearly spurred on to a more open boldness of advance. And there were further parleyings and arguments and lugubrious enumerations of possibilities from the man of medicine. I knew well enough what they were doing. They were conjointly and cunningly brow-beating and intimidating that solitary girl who, even while she must have gathered some inkling of their worldliness, comprehended nothing of the wider plot they were weaving about her. And I further knew that they were winning their point, for I could hear her stifled little gasp of final surrender.
"Very well," her strained voice said. "I'll give you the check."
This pregnant sentence was followed by an equally pregnant silence. Then came a series of small noises, among which I could distinguish the scrape of a chair-leg and steps crossing the floor. And I surmised that Mary was seating herself at a desk or table, to make out and sign the precious little slip of paper which they were so unctuously conspiring for. So it was at this precise moment that I decided to interfere.
I opened the door, as quietly as I could, and stepped into the room.
It was Latreille who first saw me. The other two men were too intently watching the girl at the desk. They were still watching her as she slowly rose from her chair, with a blue-tinted oblong of paper between her fingers. And at the same moment that Mary Lockwood stood up Latreille did the same. He rose slowly, with his eyes fixed on my face, backing just as slowly away as he continued to stare at me. But that retreat, I very promptly realized, wasn't prompted by any sense of fear.
"Mary," I called out sharply to the girl who still stood staring down at the slip of blue paper.
She looked up as she heard that call, peering at me with half incredulous and slightly startled eyes. I don't know whether she was glad or sorry to see me there. Perhaps it was both. But she neither moved nor spoke.
"Mary," I cried out to her, "don't give that up!"
I moved toward her, but she in turn moved away from me until she stood close beside the ever watchful Latreille.