There was in every word a purr, a coo, an invitation—she assumed the attitude of permitting him to come up, to see her for just a little while at the hotel.
Her low laugh of triumph was more of a chuckle as she turned to me for approbation.
"Fine—so far very good," I commented as though the result was no more than expected and prepared to go into the other room and lock the door, where she did not know I could overhear every whisper that passed, though she may have suspected something of the sort.
Becker's haste to get there was evidenced by the speed with which he came, and his entrance was Falstaffian. But the real Falstaff had no such intrigue arranged for him. He was not a criminal.
The meeting between Bascom and Becker lasted over six hours. The stenographers at the dictaphone in my room made over a hundred pages of evidence to be used at the trial.
When it was over, just before midnight, and I led Miss Bascom out of the hotel to a cab, her sturdy body seemed a wreck. She leaned heavily on me and seemed to have aged greatly. As she was about to enter the vehicle, she looked back into the building, horrified, as though reason was unseated by wild imaginations that she was pursued by a legion of dreaded devils. She did not utter a word until she was seated inside, when she reached her hand, delicate and soft, for mine, and with gentle pressure, exclaimed as though waking from a terrible nightmare:
"Mr. Taylor, I have lived a hundred years in the last six hours—but—but"—she hesitated, gasping for breath—"I have done what I—we—what you wanted me to do."
Of course, when Becker first came the overture was drink; it always is. Having full control of that through the waiter we saw that the first ones had more punch than he expected, but we gave her a mere counterfeit of what he thought she was drinking. The sumptuous food he ordered was carefully served. Later we had to weaken his potions so that his mad desire would run at its height, waiting on neither discretion nor reason. I heard every word, every sound. Her acting was perfection. The indignities she suffered were terrible and could not have been endured except for the reason that they were fortified by a deep, enduring, sacrificial tendency to be loyal. This conclusion forced itself upon me. His protestations were repeated over and over and merged into a plea for sympathy.
Her generalship was superb. He promised her everything. She patiently, cautiously led him to the point where she told him, that by reason of her position in the office she knew he had been led into certain transactions that might lead to her disgrace, in view of the alliance he proposed.
"But that is all stopped," he reiterated a dozen times.