To Clifford it seemed that all Mary’s shrewd scheming had brought her up at last against an unsurmountable wall. Again Clifford wondered what was passing behind that pale face: wondered what was going to be the ending of her great worldly plan, which thus far had had so many undreamed-of developments: wondered how all this tangled affair was going to come out for her—and again wondered which of the two persons he knew in her was to be the dominant Mary Regan when this matter had played itself through to its unguessable conclusion.
The taxi-cab halted, and Clifford escorted her to the door of her apartment house.
“What are you going to do next, if you don’t mind telling?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet—perhaps nothing,” she said absently. And then, with quiet vigor: “Jack’s not to blame so much for what he is. It’s chiefly his father’s fault. I wish I could make his father pay!” Her dark eyes flashed, her figure tensed with sudden purpose. “Yes, somehow I am going to make his father pay!”
She held out her hand, and gave him a steady look. “At any rate, I want to thank you. You’ve done all you could for me. Good-night.”
“Good-night.”
He watched her in—this strange, confident young woman, so tangled in the web of her own spinning, whom he had drifted into so strangely helping, and whom, though she could now have no part in his life, he knew he still loved. But back in the taxi-cab, his mind at once was on another matter. He had glimpsed Peter Loveman lurking within the doorway during the end of that scene in front of Le Minuit; and he knew that keen little lawyer was no man to give up merely because he seemed to be beaten. In fact Loveman would act all the more quickly for just that reason.
Clifford drove two blocks to the south, a block west, and a block north, then, ordering his cab to wait, he stepped out and walked north to the next corner. He peered around this and waited. Presently he saw what he more than half expected to see—Loveman crossing from a taxi to the entrance of Mary’s apartment house. He saw him press Mary’s button, and after a space saw Loveman push open the door and enter.
Clifford tried to guess what plan the little lawyer, whose wiles he had exposed to Mary only an hour before at Le Minuit, could regard as so important that it had to be undertaken at two o’clock in the morning, without the loss of a single possible minute. He wanted to slip down the street, enter the house, and try to watch and overhear; but the chauffeur in Loveman’s waiting taxi might also be Loveman’s lookout and personal guard. There was nothing for it but to wait where he was and watch.
Within, up on the fourth floor, Mary stood outside her open door, looking down into the dark, narrow stairway, with its sharp turns and tiny landings. When the dim, mounting figure started up the last flight and she saw it was Loveman, she drew sharply back and tried to close her door. But Loveman, quick despite his plump figure, sprang up the final steps and thrust his walking-stick into the closing aperture. He tried to force the door with his shoulder, but Mary’s strength on the other side was fully equal to his own and the door did not budge. He desisted, but kept the advantage held by his walking-stick.