“You will tell no one until after you have summoned Stone.” This was an assertion rather than a question, and Isis went on. “You can find his address in the telephone book, and then write him a letter. Tell him he must come to you,—but stay,—can you afford it?”
“Is it a great price?”
“As such things go, yes. But not more than a person in fairly good circumstances can pay.”
“I can afford it, then.”
Avice paid the fee of Madame Isis, and went away in a daze. Not so much at the directions she had received, as at the fact of this woman knowing about Kane and knowing that it was a case for a great detective. For it was, Avice felt sure of that. She had become conscious of late, of undercurrents of mystery, of wheels within wheels, and she could not rest for vague, haunting fears of evil still being done, of crime yet to be committed. The whole effect of the clairvoyant’s conversation heightened these feelings, and Avice was glad to be advised to seek out Stone. She had heard of him, but only casually; she knew little of his work and had but a dim impression that he stood high in his profession.
She went to the nearest telephone booth and found his address. But she remembered she had been told to write him, not telephone.
So, not waiting to get home, and also, with a view toward secrecy, she stopped in at one of her clubs, and wrote to Fleming Stone, urging him to take this case, and promising any fee he might ask.
Then, feeling she had burnt her bridges behind her, or, rather that she was building a new bridge in front of her, Avice went home.
CHAPTER XVIII
ALL FOR LOVE
Avice went occasionally to see Landon in The Tombs. The formalities and restrictions had been looked after by Judge Hoyt, and Avice was free to go at certain times, but she was not allowed to see Kane alone. In the warden’s room they met for their short visits, but of late, the warden had been kind enough to efface himself as much as possible, and one day, as he stood looking out of a window, he was apparently so absorbed in something outside, that the two forgot him utterly, and Landon grasped the hands of the girl and stood gazing into her sad brown eyes with a look of longing and despair that Avice had never seen there before.