“Of course I’ll come,” he answered. “What’s the trouble?”
“I don’t know. He said he wanted to see the baby, and when he got into the room he locked the door. He won’t open it. Maybe he’s been drinking. So I came here, to the telephone in the little dressing room—where I bathe the baby, you know,” she explained in her careful, patient way. “It hasn’t any door into the hall. I can’t get out. And—oh, I’m so afraid he might try to hurt the baby!”
Lester didn’t think that. He wrote down the address and ran headlong down the stairs and into the waiting car.
VIII
It was by this absolutely unexpected action of Maisie’s that Mrs. Tracy was defeated. Two detectives, who believed—because they had been so informed—that they were employed by Mr. Lester Tracy to collect evidence against his wife, arrived precisely at the time when they had been told to arrive, and entered the flat. They found Maisie there, with a man who brazenly insisted that he was Mr. Lester Tracy. He didn’t look it. He was disheveled, his coat was torn, he had a bad bruise on his cheek bone and a cut over one eyebrow, and he was incoherent with rage.
The detectives had reason to believe that the fellow was a Mr. Ainsworth Denbigh, and they said so. He told them that they would very likely find Mr. Denbigh in a hospital, although jail was where he belonged. He showed a marked inclination to make a row, which was not what they had been led to expect. In fact, he was so vigorous in his methods that the detectives were at a loss.
“Telephone to Mrs. Tracy,” said he. “She’ll come and identify me. Then you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing who it is that kicks you out!”
They agreed to this, and sat down to wait. It was an odd enough group—the two detectives, both burly and severe, their hats on their knees, while up and down the room walked the disordered and vehement young man. All three were somehow overshadowed by the quiet and downcast Maisie, sitting with her feet crossed, her hands clasped, in that patient, meek attitude of hers. The light of a shaded lamp fell upon her shining dark hair, untidy as always. Just once she raised her clear, honest eyes to the young man’s face, and he stopped short.
“Don’t worry, Maisie!” he said. “I’ll—I’ll look after you!”
Mrs. Tracy had had to be fetched from a bridge party, and she was in no good humor. She was astounded, too, by the maladroitness of that man Denbigh in thus dragging her into an affair which she had strongly desired to avoid.