“Take me back!” she screamed. “You don’t know what you do! Take me back to my Julie! She may need me sore enough!”
“Have sense,” I said close to her ear. “We are going to the bottom of this. You must tell everything—everything from beginning to end.”
She was silent for several seconds while we sped out toward the North Side.
“It’s awful,” she said finally. “And it has gone far enough. It’s been more than I can bear. It’s time for me to tell! If you, whoever you are, and Mr. Estabrook will hear, you shall have it all—the living truth of it—the bottom of what I know.”
“Good!” said I. “And now we’ll go to my house.”
“No, no,” she exclaimed. “There is no need for that. I would not be from the girl while these awful minutes is going by. Who can say what would happen? Oh, no, sir. Take your cab back to our door, and then—sitting on this seat—with my eye on that terrible house—and less need of any of us to worry—I can tell ye all from the first to the last.”
In her voice was that sincerity of emotion which invites confidence.
“Very well,” I said. “That is agreed.”
And then, picking up the speaking-tube, I told the wretched man at the wheel. He swung us around; we turned back, and in five minutes more drew up again, according to my direction, not by the Estabrooks’ door, but under the spreading limbs of the oak across from the Marburys’ ornate residence.
“Take some of this, my boy,” I said as he crawled, wet and trembling, into the interior. “It will be good for you, and for you, Margaret, too!”