The boys who had been with Ed Kenyon were called to corroborate his story of finding the broken cane. Lawrence had changed his seat, and now sat beside Lyon. He gave no sign of recognition at first, but after a few minutes, when there was a buzz of talk in the room, he turned to Lyon and said, with a casual air that could not conceal his intention,
"You see what this is leading to. They will arrest me for the murder before I leave the room. Don't answer me. Only listen and remember. I am going to ask you to do me a favor,--the very greatest favor that any living man could do me. I want you to go to the house that girl entered and tell her that I am sending her word by you to keep from speaking of this affair. Make her understand that she must volunteer no information, make no explanation, say nothing, no matter what happens. She will hear of my arrest. Make her understand that arrest is a long way off from conviction. Make that as strong as you can. Tell her that no jury in the world would convict on such evidence. Make light of the whole thing as much as possible, but tell her that I implore and entreat--I would use a stronger word if I dared--that she say nothing to any one at any time in regard to this whole matter. To you I will say--and remember this--that I would rather die than to have her name entangled in this affair in any manner. I'll make a fight for it first, of course, but literally, I would rather go through with it to the bitter end than to have her life darkened by any shadow, and this would be a shadow that could never be lifted. If I could speak more strongly, I would. I am trusting this to you because I must get word to her at once and convincingly, and I dare not write,--and because I believe you are my friend. Her name is Edith Wolcott."
And before Lyon could frame any answer, Lawrence had slightly moved his position again, so as to put a space between them.
Lyon listened to the remaining testimony with attentive ears but a throbbing brain. He had been suddenly swept into the very center of the mystery. He knew no more than before, but knowledge was all around him, pressing against the thin walls of his ignorance. His own share in the evening's events suddenly became significant. Lawrence had made no mistake in choosing his envoy. Neither had he made any mistake in his diagnosis of the situation. Before he left the room, he had been arrested for the murder of Warren Fullerton.
[CHAPTER IV]
Percy Lyon had a natural gift for human nature, as some people have for music or for mechanics. Unconsciously and instinctively, he could read character, and as with all instinctive knowledge, he was utterly unable to say how he reached his conclusions. His judgment had so often proved to be truer than appearances that it had surprised even himself. His success in his newspaper work depended almost wholly upon this gift. In news as news he had little interest, and he often chafed at the routine drudgery of his assignments, but when his work was to "write up" some one, whether it was a drunken tramp arrested for disorderly conduct, a visiting diplomat surrounded with mystery and red tape, a famous actress or an infamous trust-president, he was in his element. He would sit and look at his victim with quiet, dreaming eyes, listen with sympathetic attention to whatever he might say, and then go away and write up a sketch that would reveal the inner life of his subject's mind in a manner that was sometimes startling to the man himself.
"Who told you that?--How did you find that out?" was frequently asked.
And Lyon would laugh and pass it off as a joke, or if pressed, would probably answer, "Why, I don't know; that's what I should do, or feel, or think, if I were in his place.--I got that impression about him, that's all." But the point was that the impressions he received were so apt to be psychologically correct that it seemed almost uncanny. It was something like clairvoyance.
As he turned away from the inquest to carry out the mission that had so unexpectedly been entrusted to him, he felt perfectly convinced, in his own mind, of Lawrence's innocence.
In spite of the quarrel in the morning with its proof of Lawrence's temper and Fullerton's self-control, in spite of the damning fact that Lawrence's cane, broken and hidden, would appear to be the instrument with which the fatal blow was struck, in spite of the curious fact that Lawrence had held his peace when he must have recognized the dead man, Lyon found himself inwardly committed to the faith that Lawrence was not directly involved. He faced and set aside as simply unexplained the fact of Lawrence's presence in the neighborhood. By Donohue's testimony, Lawrence was going in the direction of the tragedy about half an hour before the body was discovered. By Lyon's own knowledge, Lawrence must have been behind him on Hemlock Avenue as he came down that block, else how had he, too, seen the running girl? In other words, he had spent half an hour loitering on the street of a winter night within a compass of two blocks. Of course the mystery involved the girl, for whose good name he was so deeply concerned.