You are to remember it is what she has come there to prevent. And before she has time scarcely to breathe, he forces her back across the threshold. Up he swoops her in his arms for he is strong like wire, and light and swift as a hound is, and flies with her for the back stairs. I wait, for if she sees me I do not know, any more than he does, which way she will turn. She has stood by him, and perhaps she would have stood by me; but not if she had known the truth. And at the back stairway he asks her, "Can we trust the Deutches?" And she replies, "For me, yes. But I will not trust your life with any one." And then, poor fellow, he must have seen what she thought, and made up his mind to let her think it. I was her sister; and he had gone into that room the man who was to marry me. He could still feel my kisses and my arms about him; and he never dreamed that Ingham was to denounce me for a criminal—he thought I fired not from mingled frenzies, but from only the desperate love of him. Besides, it was only accident he had not fired himself. He would not have given me up if he had died.
For me, almost in a moment, it is too late to run. I stumble on Christina's cloak and scarf, that she has had on her arm and dropped in the dark. I am terribly afraid! I am in panic to think they are all coming, and I bolt the door! I wish only to hide and yet I know I cannot hide! I am wild! I try the closet. It is locked. I run behind the portières, knocking over the little chair in the dark. I have no plan, nothing but fear! Till, with the feeling of the curtains close about me, I remember how I once slipped out of the rooms of a man I had been to see on business, for the Arm of Justice. He had called the people out of the front room into the other, the room where I was, and as they all got in, I had slipped out. How to get them in here? Then I drag in Ingham's body. I stand close in my cloak colored like the curtains, and once I hear Deutch's voice I remember that it is Christina's cloak. He makes it all easy. To come out while those men were working, there at the closet, is terrible, but there are the trolley-car and my automobile making good noises. I have pinned my hat under the cloak, and my slippers I put in its inside pocket. It is when the police have cleared the halls. I have scarcely got to the back-stairs when the people begin peeping out again. I have in my hand Christina's key. I turn to the door of the apartment nearest the back stairs, to pretend I am unlocking it. And the knob turns in my hand. The decorators have left it open and I walk in and slip the catch. There I wait till all the hunt is done. But I wish to be rid of the little pistol, shaped for the impunitura of the Camorra, which, in early days, Filippi had made for me and on which once, before Nicola forbade me, I had tried to scratch "Camorrist." Were I taken with that, I should have every foe on my heels! I wish that I might slip it into the coat-pocket of that great boy with the figure of gods—he who led the chase and deafened me with his hammering. Then I remember him telling the police where he lives. It makes me laugh; there are scraps of wall-paper about. On one of these I write a message and in this I wrap my impunitura. Then, long after, when all my cackling geese have cackled into bed again, I go up to the roof and across into the next house. There is an opening of some feet between the two apartment houses, and it may be that Will jumped it, but I think not. I think he must have gone up to the front, where the cornices join, and crept and balanced along the little ledge behind them, as I do. And I walk boldly down those stairs where all is still, and choose a moment when the night-boy takes some one up in the elevator, and then I cross the office, and Nicola is still waiting with the car. I stuff the impunitura in the letter-box and I am away, away!—But the little rag of a girl, she knows when I went in and when I came out!
So now you see how hard my problem is, my problem that is double: what to do with her, and how to save my love! Three weeks and more go by, and for him I am beginning to breathe. And he tells Christina nothing, nothing at all. Only he asks her did she meet me as she came up, for I have only just run out as he and Ingham quarrel. And she says no, Deutch brought her up in the freight-elevator. Thus she is not surprised to hear about my shadow on the blind; she thinks I came there like her to get Jim away. But she fears I will be implicated and my poor story told. This she thinks of a great deal, and keeps me very quiet in the country. While she, if you please, is no sooner saved from Ingham but she takes up that boy with the figure of gods, who saw my shadow. The fool did not feel such a kindness for that which moved with splendid grace! Nor did he keep my pistol. But perhaps he wants her money. I tell Nicola and the boys he is the spy who drains us of ours, and who is carrying news to her from little Stanley of my letters. They will rid her of him! And no one knows who fired that shot but Will and me, no one. And Mother Pascoe-Ansello watches all the time what we do with Nancy Cornish. I am very good to Nancy Cornish. In case she should, by any chance, get away and tell Will and Christina. For there are some things they would not forgive. I am frightened, now, and I would let her go, if I could.
And, then, Ten Euyck will not pay me! He is furious I have shot Ingham, which he finds out at the inquest, and yet he must give me his protection. And he says what I said in the Ingham letter was a lie, and he will not pay for lies; they are wrong in all ways, for they never work. And money I must have, or that spy of Filippi's will settle us. We have just been received by the Camorra and all must be careful. Then I think Christina can some way get it. But not to know it is for me. So at last I threaten the little Nancy, and she is glad to write as I say. And she cut off the lock of her hair at my own dressing-table with my own scissors, when mine was all down my back to show her that I had more than she.
And when we do not have the answer that we hope for, she begins to fret terribly. She is always listening and watching; she is so helpless and I am lonely and perhaps I talk too much! Then, oh, my God, he is arrested! I cannot keep it to myself, I run screaming through the house! I think I shall die, and I think almost that that rag of a girl will kill me! She recognized his voice up there cry, "Ask Nancy Cornish!" and she has not said one word so that I think she thinks he did it. But when they catch him and she jumps at me that it was I, she can see it in my face. And she makes a terrible scene—begs me and prays me to denounce myself, to save him. And then I know that she must die.
But I have a mind to Mother Pascoe-Ansello, and I make a bargain with this girl. I ask her what she will promise, and she says anything. And I ask her if I write a full confession to the District-Attorney and mail it when things go hard with Will, will that content her? Oh, very fine! So I tell her it is what I would do, who would die for him to-morrow, but that it would give him to her arms. And she says she will go away, she will never see him. I reply, "He will find you, he will make you." And she says to me eager, with open mouth, "What can I do?" I answer, "You are not very well. You grow every day more feverish. Nothing shall ever happen to you under my roof. But if it should, how it would solve all." She says, "Will you let me keep the letter myself and mail it myself?" and I say, "Yes." So then she says, "You gave me laudanum so I could sleep. When I have mailed that letter, give me some more." Oh, I feel such a relief! If she is found, even, with laudanum it is suicide. "Will you ask for it every night, aloud, before them all, and after you have mailed the letter will you take—enough? Will you swear?" "Oh," she says, "upon his freedom, I do swear."
So! Thus far has she read. And now she falls ill. And any hour, now, may Ten Euyck come for this. And I must warn him I will not have him drop another word before Nicola, as though Will would drag us all in by telling I was there with him. Nicola's hand might reach into his prison. When Nancy wakes, she has still this envelope—stuffed with blanks. But if I cannot fool her, Nicola has planned a better way. A fine way! For, after that, she will be silent—she, who thought to be bride to the man I choose.—Oh, my love, you love her. If you, too, must die, it is for that you die, my darling! For no little rag of a girl can frustrate the will of
ALLEGRA ANSELLO ALIENI.