A suppressed shriek answered them, and Molly glared like an angry tiger. “No!” she screamed, “no!”
“Useless talk,” said Zizi, “your fright and your excitement give the lie to your words! Though your words are oftener lies than not. Now, Molly, you don’t dare go contrary to Mr Vail’s orders, I know, but don’t you think you’d better do that than to go to jail?”
“I don’t know——Oh, I don’t know what to do,” and the girl broke down and wept so piteously that Zizi was sorry for her.
“There, there, Molly,” she said, “I’ll take care of you. You’re only a tool in the hands of a villain; you stay by me, and I’ll look after you. Penny, we want Vail.”
They got Vail. At first he brazened it out, and finally, when he was cornered, he turned state’s evidence to save what he could of his own skin.
It seemed, Vail was determined to make the deal for the Binney Buns, and, as a last resort, had waylaid Sir Herbert on his way home from the Hotel Magnifique after the dinner to the chorus girls.
With Vail on that occasion was a friend of his, one Doctor Weldon, who was a skillful surgeon, more careful in his surgical operations than in his mental or moral ones. He was Vail’s tool, by reason of past historic incidents, and the scheme had been planned by the two conspirators.
Binney was invited to Dr Weldon’s home, not far from The Campanile, and there, from midnight on, both Vail and Weldon tried to persuade the Englishman to consent to Vail’s terms.
But Binney was obdurate and finally went home, accompanied by the two men. When near The Campanile, Vail darted on ahead, and managed adroitly to get into the elevator with Moore and be on the way up when Binney and Dr Weldon entered the onyx lobby.
The rest was easy. Binney had the Prall paper-knife with him and the Doctor knew it. With it, the skilled surgeon stabbed his victim and made away at once. Sir Herbert, dying, but with mind alert, wrote the fact that two men were responsible for his death; and whether he tried to continue with ‘get both’ or ‘get Bob’s evidence’ or ‘get bakery,’ or what was in his fast clouding brain, they never knew.