“I suppose something went wrong,” she thought, “and he wants me to prove that he’s not Lester. It’s incredibly clumsy of him. Oh, I’ll be so thankful when the wretched anxiety of this thing is over, and I have the poor little baby again! If it wasn’t for the baby, I couldn’t go through with it, but I’d do anything in the world to save the child from that outrageous girl!”
She rang the bell of the apartment, and one of the detectives let her in. He was impressed by her frigid magnificence, her crown of white hair, her penetrating eye.
“Sorry to trouble you, ma’am,” he said. “Won’t take you a minute to clear this[Pg 59] thing up. This fellow here claims he’s Mr. Tracy, and—”
She smiled scornfully. The detective stood aside, and she preceded him down the hall to the living room.
“Where is this—” she began, but stopped short.
Her face blanched. She flung out her hand in a curiously helpless gesture, and it rested upon the detective’s shoulder. She needed his support.
“Lester!” she said faintly. “Oh, Lester! It can’t be—”
He had been filled with a terrible anger against his mother for this brutal and shameful ruse. He had thought he could never bear to see her face again, could never speak to her with common humanity; but when he did see her, in the anguish of her defeat, all that passed.
“Tell these men who I am,” he said, “and send them away.”
Her dry lips could scarcely frame the words.