"What do you mean?" Mrs. Atterbury shifted her gaze to the window.
"Haven't you been reading about it in the papers?" persisted the girl, inwardly quaking at her own temerity, but determined to discover if the woman before her would betray any knowledge of what had taken place beneath her roof. "They call it the greatest sensation of years."
"I remember the name, but I carefully avoided the details." Her employer observed coolly. "That sort of thing repels me and it is not from any interest in this present trial that I am sending you there this morning. There will be a man in the courtroom who has a message for me and for certain reasons, as on the other occasions when you have acted for me, it is inadvisable for me to appear personally in the transaction. I have tested you, my dear, and I feel that you are to be trusted, at least as far as is compatible with my oath. We are all members of a powerful secret organization working for broad humanitarian ends. I need not assure you that there is nothing unlawful about it, for you can realize that I would not lend my name or influence to any purpose no matter how charitable, the methods of which could be questioned. It is necessary, however, for diplomatic and political considerations, that the work shall proceed as quietly as possible until the strained relations which exist between certain European powers shall have been adjusted. That is all I am at liberty to tell you now, but later everything will be made plain to you, and you will never regret the slight services you have rendered."
"I am sure that I shall not," Betty remarked quietly. "It is good of you to take me into your confidence, Mrs. Atterbury, and you know that I will respect it, but it was unnecessary as far as I am concerned. It is enough for me that you wished me to go upon these errands."
"You are a model!" There was unusual warmth in her tone, but her eyes, as they rested upon the girl, narrowed with a slow, amused contempt. "Unquestioning obedience is rare and you will find it a valuable asset. Now, my dear, I shall want you to be in the courtroom by eleven. Dress very plainly; your old dark cloak will do. Present this card at the door and you will be ushered into a seat which has been reserved for you. Remain until court adjourns at the end of the morning session and hang back until you are among the last of the spectators to leave. A man will approach you as before and give you a letter for me. Take no more notice of him than you did of the others, and come straight home. You must use the public conveyances, as the car is being overhauled, but I will direct you when you are ready."
The route laid down to her was even more circuitous than that of the previous Sunday and Betty followed it faithfully, keeping a sharp lookout for a possible trailing taxicab, but those which surrounded her in the mazes of traffic seemed bent solely on their own affairs and nowhere did she glimpse the kindly, keen gray eyes of Herbert Ross.
However, the idle artisan was again beneath the lamp-post at the gate and a man in overalls with a plumber's kit emerged from a house midway of the block and sauntered after her, boarding the same car. When she mounted the steps of the courthouse, after many changes of conveyance and crosstown divergencies, a man brushed against her with a swift glance at her scarred cheek. Without the kit of tools and buttoned into a greatcoat which covered him to his knees, she yet had no difficulty in recognizing in him the erstwhile plumber's assistant, and Betty's lips tightened.
Others, then, besides Ross held her under espionage, and the mysterious words of the little dressmaker, Miss Pope, flashed across her memory: "Before you know it you'll be caught, too, and you'll never be able to get free!" Had Mrs. Atterbury employed her in these errands not only for their accomplishment but to identify her secretary irrevocably with the organization of which she had spoken? Was she to be scapegoat as well as catspaw? The price she must pay for her temerity was looming more sinisterly before her with each passing hour, but her will was all the more indomitably fixed. Though she stood within the very shadow of the law she would still fight on.
Finding her way with some difficulty to the grand jury room, Betty presented her pass to the gray-haired doorman. She had received it in a sealed envelope from Mrs. Atterbury and had made no attempt to tamper with it, but as the court attendant extricated the card and read the words pencilled upon it he eyed her with amazement, in which an added respect was mingled, and without a word led her to a seat apart from the other spectators.
It was near the press rail, facing the jury box and almost on a line with the Bench, beside a narrow aisle leading to a single door. Betty seated herself and once again her mission was temporarily forgotten in absorbed interest in the scene before her.