“I beg your pardon.” He caught her arm as she stumbled back. “I guess I startled you.”
“Shish!” She pressed a finger to her lips. “Let me inside, so that I can sit down.”
Giving her his arm, he led her to a chair. Having returned and closed the door, he surveyed her at his leisure.
She had the appearance of a peasant woman dressed in her Sunday best, yet so great was her dignity, she did not seem out of place in her surroundings. She was very aged; her figure was shapeless and bowed. Her gray hair was cropped like a boy's; she wore spread over it, knotted at the throat, a neatly folded kerchief of white linen. She was clad in a black gown of the utmost plainness. Nothing distracted attention from her face, which was as stoical with endurance as a gladiator's. You could almost trace the riverbeds her tears had worn. The fist of fate had punched it flat. It was a ruin to which violence had done its worst, but had failed to destroy its gentleness. And he had expected Santa. Instead of feminine frailty, spurring weak desires, there had come this woman, iron of will, broken in body, ravished by years, with her tremendous impression of moral strength. As she sat before him, her gnarled hands resting on her cane, pushing back the weight of her ancient shoulders, she raised to him the dim valiance of her eyes. “What can I do for you?” he questioned. “Nothing.” She swung her head from side to side with the brooding fierceness of a decrepit lioness. “It is you whom I have come to help.”
“I!” he smiled. “I think you are mistaken.”
“I am never mistaken.” She gazed at him intently. “I have come to help you to act generously. You have it in your power to save a woman, perhaps at the sacrifice of yourself.”
He laughed quietly. “You mean Santa Gorlof. I wonder when I'm to hear the last of her. A secret service man has spent the past two hours instructing me what I can do for her. You must have met him. He had scarcely left when you began to tap. He tried to convince me that if I didn't protect myself by giving him information which would lead to her arrest, my name would be added to her list of victims. A pleasant sort of threat! I'm afraid he found me, as you will probably find me, disappointing. I'm not possessed of any incriminating information, and I don't place any faith in her list of victims. She struck me as being a very gracious and fascinating woman. Beyond that I have no opinion about her, either for or against.”
The old head sank further forward; the dim eyes became searching. “Then you told him nothing?”
“I knew nothing to tell.”
There followed a deep silence, during which they gazed fixedly at each other. She sighed contentedly, nodding her approval. “So you are in love with her! That makes things easier. Even to me you lie—to me who am her friend!”