On the second perusal of this ominous document Suzanne felt the strangling rush of dread, the breathless contraction of the heart, that had seized her when she first read it. Horrors had piled on horrors—as she had risen to each new step of her progress up this Via Dolorosa, another more fearful and unsurmountable had faced her. When she had spoken to Larkin of the money she had never thought of it, how much it might be, how she was to get it. Now, with a stunning impact, she was brought against the appalling fact that she had none of her own and did not dare ask her mother for any.
There was no use in lies; she had lied too much and too diversely to be believed. She would have to tell what it was for, and she knew the mood in which her mother would meet the demand. Money would be forthcoming—any amount—but Mrs. Janney, with her iron nerve and her implacable spirit, would never consent to a tame submission. Suzanne knew that her fortune and her energies would be spent in an effort to apprehend the criminals, and Suzanne had not the courage to take a chance. All she wanted was Bébita, back in her arms again, the fiends who had taken her could go free.
She sat down, pushing the damp hair from her forehead and trying to think. One fact stood out in the midst of her blind, confused suffering. She could not go to Larkin till she had the thirty thousand dollars. Every moment she sat there was a moment lost, a moment added to Bébita's term of imprisonment. She stared about the room, the gleam of her shifting eyes, the rise and fall of her breast, the only movements in her stone-still figure.
Suddenly, piercing her tense preoccupation with a buzzing note, came the sound of the telephone. It made her jump, then mechanically, hardly conscious of her action, she rose to answer it. A woman's voice, languidly nasal, came along the wire:
"Mr. Richard Ferguson is calling."
"Send him up," she gasped and fumbled back the receiver with a shaking hand. With the other she steadied herself against the wall; the room had swung for a moment, blurred before her vision. She closed her eyes and breathed out her relief in a moaning exhalation. It was like an answer to prayer, like the finger of God.
Of course Dick was the person—Dick who could always be trusted, who could always understand. He would give it and say nothing; she could make him. He was not like the others—he would sympathize, would agree with her, in trouble he was a rock to cling to. A broken series of answers to unput questions coursed through her head; she could go to Larkin now—she needn't tell him how she'd got it, he thought she was rich—after it was all over her mother would pay Dick back—in a few days she'd have Bébita, the kidnapers would have made their escape—and it would be all right, all right, all right!
Ferguson had come up, grim-visaged, steeled for battle, but when he saw her his fighting spirit died. There was nothing left of her but a blighted shadow, the cloud of golden hair crowning in gay mockery her drawn and haggard face. Before he could speak she made a clutch at his arm, drawing him into the room, babbling a broken greeting about wanting him, wanting his help. He put his hand on hers and felt it trembling; he would not have been surprised if she had dropped unconscious at his feet.
"Lord, Suzanne, you don't want to take it this way," he soothed, guiding her to the sofa. "You must get hold of yourself; you've been brooding too much. Of course I'll help you—anything I can do—and we'll get her back, it'll be only a few days." He didn't know what to say, he was so sorry for her.
She was past parleys and preliminaries, past coquetry and artifice. The whole of her had resolved itself into one raw longing, and before they were seated on the sofa, she had broken into her story. He didn't at first believe her, thought grief had unsettled her brain, but when she thrust the two letters into his hand all doubts left him.