"No, I questioned him careful about that. He thought she'd seen the excitement on Broadway and run down and maybe met someone who'd told her what had happened. And not wanting to get in it she'd gone out the side door. Anyway he said she wasn't in the ground floor hall, or out in the street with the others or he'd have seen her."
There was a pause. In that pause—like figures in a picture—I saw George, amazed, petrified, staring at his father, Molly looking from one to the other, and the chief with his brows low down and his head drooped, gazing at the fire. In a moment they would burst into speech—the speech that was withheld while that astounding revelation found acceptance in their minds.
To hear what they said—to listen to what I couldn't believe and yet couldn't contradict—was more than I could stand just then. Without a word, unnoticed by any of them, I slipped out, fled down the hall, into the elevator and out to the street.
It was cold, a sharp, frosty night, with a few stars shining in the deep-blue sky. Dark masses of men flowed out of the doors of skyscrapers and drained away down the subway entrances. I jostled through them, elbowing them right and left, instinctively turning my face uptown, deaf to the curses that followed me, blind to the lights that stretched in a spangled vista in front.
What did it mean? What could it mean? I'd understood the lie about Barker but now those other lies! She had said she went down about six, in the elevator. I'd heard her, there was no getting away from it. Was that the reason the old man had wanted to see her? Suddenly I saw again his look of hungry expectation when Molly was announced, and with a stifled sound, I stopped short. As lightning plays upon a dark landscape, for a moment showing it plain, I had a clear glimpse of the line of thought he'd been pursuing. The horror of it held me rooted there, rigid as a dead man, in the midst of the hurrying crowd.
Incredible—hideous—unbelievable! Association with criminals had warped and diseased his judgment. And then like a sinister shadow, creeping on me dark and ominous, rose the memory of her guarded face, the flame of color she couldn't hide, the dropped purse. I started out again, fighting the shadow, but all I had to fight with was my belief in her. She couldn't—it was impossible, I'd die swearing it. And battering against that belief, came questions, insistent, maddening. Why couldn't she speak out? Why didn't she admit the truth—say that Barker was her lover and have done with it? Why had she lied—about him, about the time she left, about everything she could have frankly admitted, if—if—— When I got there I could go no farther. Cursing under my breath I forged along, the air ice-cold on the sweat that was damp on my forehead.
[CHAPTER X]
MOLLY TELLS THE STORY
Friday night I brought the information from Troop in to Mr. Whitney, and knew then for the first time why he wanted it.
Gee, it was an awful thought!