[CHAPTER XXIV—CARDS ON THE TABLE]
In spite of Molly's excited certainty that Willitts was the thief, Ferguson was not convinced. He met her impetuous demand for the valet's arrest with a recommendation for a fuller knowledge of his activities on the night of the robbery. Willitts had gone to the movies with the Grasslands servants and if he had been with them the whole evening he was as innocent as Dixon or Isaac. She had to agree and promised to do nothing until she had satisfied herself that his movements tallied with their findings.
Ferguson had a restless night. There was matter on his mind to keep him awake; he was fearful that Suzanne might make some false step. She was at best a shifty, unstable creature, how much more so now strained to the breaking point. He felt he ought to be in town where he could keep her under his eye, and decided to motor in in the morning. Also he began to think that Molly was probably right; she was shrewd and experienced, knew more of such matters than he. He would go to the Whitney office and put the Willitts' affair in their hands, then run up to the St. Boniface, take a room, and have a look in at Suzanne.
He left the house at nine-thirty, telling the butler he was called to the city on business, and might be gone a day or two. At the Whitney office he was informed that Mr. and Mrs. Janney were in consultation with the heads of the firm, and, saying he would not disturb them, waited in an outer room from whence he telephoned to Suzanne, telling her he would be at the hotel later. When the Janneys had gone he was ushered into the old man's office where he found the air still vibrating with the clash of battle. A combined attack had been made on Mrs. Janney who, under its pressure and the slow undermining of her confidence by a week of failure, had given in and consented to a move on Price. It had been planned for that afternoon, when he was to be summoned to the office, charged with the kidnaping and commanded to render up the child.
Whitney and his son listened to Ferguson's story of the cigar band with unconcealed interest. George, however, was skeptical—it was ingenious and plausible, showed Molly's fine Italian hand; but his mind had accepted the theory of Esther's participation and was of the unelastic, unmalleable kind. His father was obviously impressed by it, admitting that his original conviction of the girl's guilt had been shaken. To George's indignant rehearsal of the evidence, he accorded a series of acquiescing nods, agreed that the facts were against him and maintained his stand. He would see Willitts as soon as possible and put him through a grilling examination. O'Malley could be sent to Council Oaks at once to bring him in, and his business could be disposed of before they got round to Price. As Ferguson rose to go George had the receiver of the desk telephone down and was giving low-voiced instructions to O'Malley to report immediately at the office.
It was nearly one when the young man found himself on the street level. There was no use going to the St. Boniface now as the family would be at lunch and speech alone with Suzanne impossible. On the way uptown he stopped at a restaurant, ordered food which he hardly touched, filling out the time with cigarettes. By half-past two he was on the move again, threading a slow way through the traffic, his eye lingering on the clock faces that loomed at intervals along the Avenue. Suzanne had told him that the old people always went for a drive after lunch and he scanned the motors that passed him, hoping to see them. He was in no mood for polite conversation—felt with the passing of the hours an increasing tension, a gathering of his forces for a leap and a struggle.
At the desk in the St. Boniface he heard that Mr. and Mrs. Janney had just gone out, and waited while Mrs. Price's room was called up. There was no response; Mrs. Price must be out too. The information made him uneasy; she had told him she went nowhere except to Larkin's. More than ever anxious to see her, he engaged a room and left the message that he would be there and to be called up when she came in. The door shut on him, his uneasiness increased; wondering what had taken her out, wondering if she had done anything foolish, cursing the fate that had placed so much in her feeble hands, perturbed and restless as a lion in a cage.
Suzanne had gone to Larkin's, called there by a telephone message. It had come almost on the heels of her parents' departure and was brief—a request to come to him as soon as she could. She had scrambled into her street clothes, and, shaking in every limb, slipped out of the hotel's side door and sped across town in a taxi to hear how Bébita was to be found.
She was hardly inside the door, her veil lifted from a face as pale as Cæsar's ghost, when Larkin answered her look of agonized question:
"Yes, the letter's come—what we expect, very clear and explicit. It was sent to me this time—came on the two o'clock delivery."