Though the wire was in a measure public, Raymer risked a single word.
"Charlotte."
None of the sudden passion that leaped into Margery Grierson's eyes was suffered to find its way into her voice when she said: "What makes you think that?"
"Oh, a lot of little things. I was over at the house last night, and there is some sort of a tea-pot tempest going on; I couldn't make out just what. But from the way things shaped up, I gathered that our friend was wanted in Lake Boulevard, and wanted bad—for some reason or other. I had to promise that I'd try to dig him up, before I got away."
"Well?" went the questioning word over the wires, and this time the impatient accent was unconcealed.
"I promised; but this morning Doctor Bertie called me up to say that it was all right; that I needn't trouble myself."
"And I needn't have troubled you," said the voice at the Mereside transmitter. "Excuse me, as Hank Billingsly used to say when he happened to shoot the wrong man. Come over when you feel like it—and have time. You mustn't forget that you owe me two calls. Good-by."
After Margery Grierson had let herself out of the stifling little closet under the hall stair, she went into the darkened library and sat for a long time staring at the cold hearth. It was a crooked world, and just now it was a sharply cruel one. There was much to be read between the lines of the short telephone talk with Edward Raymer. The trap was sprung and its jaws were closing; and in his extremity Kenneth Griswold was turning, not to the woman who had condoned and shielded and paid the costly price, but to the other.
"Dear God!" she said softly, when the prolonged stare had brought the quick-springing tears to her eyes; "and I—I could have kept him safe!"