The door opened, banged shut and I was alone.
I wonder if anyone reading this story can imagine what I felt. It was awful, so awful that now, here, writing it down peaceful and happy, I can feel the sinking at my heart and the sick sensation like I could never eat food again. And laugh? It was an art I'd lost and never in this world would get back.
It was not only that he loved her—that woman, that vampire, who could sin at the word of an old man—but it was the thought, the certainty, that he was ready to betray his trust, go back on his partners, be a traitor to his office. All the work they'd done, all the hopes they'd built up, all their efforts for success, he was going to destroy. It was disgrace for him, he'd never get over it, he'd be an outcast. As long as he lived he'd be pointed at as the man who gave his honor for the love of a wicked woman.
That was the first of my thoughts and the second was that I wasn't going to let him do it. There was just one way of preventing it, and honest to God—think as badly of me as you like, I can't help it—when I got what that way was I was so relieved I didn't care whether I was a traitor or not. All that mattered then was if there'd got to be one—and as far as I could see there had to—it was better for it to be Molly Babbitts, who didn't amount to much in the world, than Jack Reddy, who was a big man and was going to be a bigger.
As I put on my coat and hat I heard the clock strike half-past eleven. There were no trains out to the Azalea Woods Estates before seven the next morning. Even if he took his own auto, which I guessed he'd do, it would take him the best part of an hour and a half to get there, and long before that she'd have had her warning from me.
Yes—that's what I was going to do—go to her and tell her before he could. Dishonest? Well, I guess yes! I know what's straight from what's crooked as well as most. But it seemed to me the future of a man, that man—was worth more than my pledged word, or the glory of Whitney & Whitney, or Babbitts' scoop. That was the cruelest of all—my own dear beloved Soapy—to go back on him too! Gosh!—going over in the taxi through the dark still streets, how I felt! But it didn't matter. If I died when I was through I'd got to do it. Maybe you never experienced those sensations, maybe you can't understand. But, take it from me, there are people who'd break all the commandments and all the laws to save their friends and, bad or good, I'm one of them.
[CHAPTER XVI]
MOLLY TELLS THE STORY
As the taxi rolled up to her corner I saw that the windows of her floor were bright. She was still up, which would make things easier—much better than having to wake her from her sleep. In that sort of apartment they lock the outer doors at half-past ten and to get at the bells you have to wake the janitor, which I didn't want to do, as no one must know I'd been there. So before I rang the outside bell that connects with his lair in the basement, I tried the door, hoping some late comer had left it on the jar as they sometimes do. It opened—an immense piece of luck—which made me feel that fate was on my side and braced me like a tonic.
In the vestibule I pressed the button under her letter box and in a minute came the click, click of the inner latch and I entered. As I ascended the stairs I heard the door on the landing above softly open and looking up I saw a bright light illumine the dimness and then, through the balustrade, her figure standing on the threshold.