“Unbolt the door, Sergeant.”
Heath obeyed with alacrity, and Vance stepped out on the sidewalk.
“Go to the Dillards’ and wait for me there,” he flung back over his shoulder. And with the child clasped closely to his breast he started diagonally across 76th Street to a house on which I could make out a doctor’s brass name-plate.
CHAPTER XXV.
The Curtain Falls
(Tuesday, April 26; 11 a. m.)
Twenty minutes later Vance rejoined us in the Dillard drawing-room.
“She’s going to be all right,” he announced, sinking into a chair and lighting a cigarette. “She was only unconscious, had fainted from shock and fright; and she was half-suffocated.” His face darkened. “There were bruises on her little wrist. She probably struggled in that empty house when she failed to find Humpty Dumpty; and then the beast forced her into the closet and locked the door. No time to kill her, d’ ye see. Furthermore, killing wasn’t in the book. ‘Little Miss Muffet’ wasn’t killed—merely frightened away. She’d have died, though, from lack of air. And he was safe: no one could hear her crying. . . .”
Markham’s eyes rested on Vance affectionately.
“I’m sorry I tried to hold you back,” he said simply. (For all his conventionally legal instincts, there was a fundamental bigness to his nature.) “You were right in forcing the issue, Vance. . . . And you, too, Sergeant. We owe a great deal to your determination and faith.”
Heath was embarrassed.