“To the jail at White Plains, Westchester County. You are arrested on charge of murder;” and he displayed the warrant.
Patience touched the bell button. “Take my trunk downstairs to the cab,” she said to the butler. Then she stepped to the portières and said good-bye to Rosita.
“She’s a cool one,” said one man to the other. “She done it.”
They went down in the elevator. As they left it, one of the men preceded her, the other followed close. Both entered the cab with her. She felt that they were regarding her with the frank curiosity of their kind, and kept her eyes fixed on the street with an expressionless stare. On the train they gave her a seat to herself, each taking the outside of another, one before and one behind. The passengers did not suspect the meaning of the party. She saw no one she knew. It was not the line that passed Peele Manor. For small mercies she was duly thankful. She guessed, however, that a meagre wiry black-eyed young man on the opposite side of the aisle, a man with a mean sharp common face, was Bart Tripp. He stared at her until she thought she should scream aloud, or, what would be almost as fatal, relax the proud calm of her face. It was with a sigh of profound relief that she stepped from the train at White Plains.
“We won’t meet no one,” said one of the detectives, as they entered the hack. “The sheriff’s got ready for you, I guess; he was wired yesterday; but we took good care not to say what train we was coming on, so there wouldn’t be no crowd. Feeling’s pretty high against you, I guess.”
As they drove through the ugly little town, Patience wondered why it was called White Plains. She had never seen a more undulating country. One or two of the environing hills were almost perpendicular. She also noticed with the minute observance of persons approaching crises, that the court house was a big handsome building of grey stone, and decided that she liked its architecture. The extension behind, one of the keepers told her, was the jail.
She was escorted before a police justice, who read the charge and explained such privileges as the law allowed her; then to the sheriff’s office, where she was registered. A crowd of men were in the office. They watched her with deep but respectful attention, as she answered the many questions put to her, but she managed to maintain her impassive demeanour. There was a buzz of excitement by this time all through the court house, and a little of it began to communicate itself to her. The few that are sustained through life’s trials by public interest are immeasurably fortunate. Before the sheriff—who could not have treated her with more consideration were she a dethroned queen—had finished, word had gone up into the court room, and a sudden trampling on the back stair indicated that the case in hand had lost its interest.
“That’s all,” said the sheriff, hurriedly. “Guess you’d better get along.—Tarbox,” he called.
A short stout man with a ruddy kind face came forward, offered Patience his arm, pushed his way through the crowd of men in the hall, and led her out of a back door and down a long yard beside the jail. At the end of the building he inserted a key in a lock.
“Go right up, ma’am,” he said politely, and she ascended a narrow flight of stairs. At its head he unlocked another door, and again they ascended, again a door was unlocked. Then Patience stepped into a long low clean well-lighted room. In the middle of its length was a stove over which a kettle boiled. On a bench sat four women. At each end and on one side were low grated windows. On the other side were a number of grated doors.