CHAPTER IV
Lydia would have been displeased to know how little her curt refusal affected the emotional state of the man driving away from her door. It was the deed rather than the word that he remembered—the fact that he had held a beautiful and eventually unresisting woman in his arms that occupied his attention on his way home.
He found his mother sitting up—not for him. It was many years since Mrs. O'Bannon had gone to bed before two o'clock. She was a large woman, massive rather than fat. She was sitting by the fire in her bedroom, wrapped in a warm, loose white dressing gown, as white as her hair and smooth pale skin. Her eyes retained their deep darkness. Evidently Dan's gray eyes had come from his father's Irish ancestry.
It was only the other day—after he was grown up—that O'Bannon had ceased to be afraid of his mother. She was a woman passionately religious, mentally vigorous and singularly unjust, or at least inconsistent. It was this quality that made her so confusing and, to her subordinates, alarming. She would have gone to the stake—gone with a certain bitter amusement at the folly of her destroyers—for her belief in the right; but her affections could entirely sweep away these beliefs and leave her furiously supporting those she loved against all moral principles. Her son had first noticed that trait when she sent him away to boarding school. His mother—his father had died when he was seven—was a most relentless disciplinarian as long as a question of duty lay between him and her; but let an outsider interfere, and she was always on his side. She frequently defended him against the school authorities, and even, it seemed to him, encouraged him in rebellion. In her old age most of her strong passions had died away and left only her God and her son. Perhaps it was a trace of this persecutory religion in her that made Dan accept his present office.
She looked up like a sibyl from the great volume she was reading.
"You're late, my son."
"I've been gambling, mother."
He said it very casually, but it was the last remnant of his fear that made him mention particularly those of his actions of which he knew she would disapprove. In old times he had been a notable poker player, but had abandoned it on his election as district attorney. Her brow contracted.
"You should not do such things—in your position."
"My dear mother, haven't you yet grasped that there is a touch of the criminal in all criminal prosecutors? That's what draws us to the job."
She wouldn't listen to any such theory.
"Have you lost a great deal of money?" she asked severely.
"Not enough to turn us out of the old home," he smiled. "I won something under four hundred dollars."
Her brow cleared. She liked her son to be successful, preëminent in anything—right or wrong—which he undertook.
"You made a mistake to get mixed up with people like that," she said. She knew where he had been dining.
"I can't be said to have got mixed up with them. The only one I expressed any wish to see again slammed the door in my face."
The next instant he wished he had not spoken. He hoped his mother had not noticed what he said. She remained silent, but she had understood perfectly, and he had made for Lydia an implacable enemy. A woman who slammed the door in the face of Dan was deserving of hell-fire, in Mrs. O'Bannon's opinion. She did not ask who it was, because she knew that in the course of everyday life together secrets between two people are impossible and the name would come out.
After an almost sleepless night he woke in the morning with the zest of living extraordinarily renewed within him. Every detail in the pattern of life delighted him, from the smell of coffee floating up from the kitchen on the still cold of the November morning to the sight from his window of the village children in knit caps and sweaters hurrying to school—tall, lanky, competent girls bustling their little brothers along, and inattentive boys hoisting small sisters up the school steps by their arms. Life was certainly great fun, not because there were lovely women to be held in your arms, but because when young and vigorous you can bully life into being what you want it to be. And yet, good heavens, what a girl! At four that very afternoon he would see her again.
He was in court all the morning. The courthouse, which if it had been smaller would have looked like a mausoleum in a cemetery, and if it had been larger would have looked like the Madeleine, was set back from the main street. The case he was prosecuting—a case of criminal negligence against a young driver of a delivery wagon who had run over and injured a prominent citizen—went well; that is to say, O'Bannon obtained a conviction. It had been one of those cases clear to the layman, for the young man was notoriously careless; but difficult, as lawyers tell you criminal-negligence cases are, from the legal point of view.
O'Bannon came out of court very well satisfied both with himself and the jury and drove straight to the Thorne house. The smell of the grapes started his pulses beating. Morson came to the door. No, Miss Thorne was not at home.
"Did she leave any message for me?" said O'Bannon.
"Nothing, sir, except that she is not at home."
He eyed Morson, feeling that he would be within his masculine rights if he swept him out of the way and went on into the house; but tamely enough he turned and drove away. His feelings, however, were not tame. He was furious against her. How did she dare behave like this—driving about the country at midnight, gambling, letting him kiss her, and then ordering her door slammed in his face as if he were a book agent? Civilization gave such women too much protection. Perhaps the men she was accustomed to associating with put up with that kind of treatment, but not he. He'd see her again if he wanted to—yes, if he had to hold up her car on the highroad.
He thought with approval of Eleanor, a woman who played no tricks with you but left you cool and braced like a cold shower on a hot day. Yet he found that that afternoon he did not want to see Eleanor. He drove on and on, steeping himself in the bitterness of his resentment.
At dinner his mother noticed his abstraction and feared an important case was going wrong. Afterwards, supposing he wanted to think out some tangle of the law, she left him alone—not meditating, but seething.
The next morning at half past eight he was in his office. The district attorney's office was in an old brick block opposite the courthouse. It occupied the second story over Mr. Wooley's hardware shop. As he went in he saw Alma Wooley, the fragile blond daughter of his landlord, slipping in a little late for her duties as assistant in the shop. She was wrapped in a light-blue cloak the color of her transparent turquoise-blue eyes. She gave O'Bannon a pretty little sketch of a smile. She thought his position a great one, and his age extreme—anyone over thirty was ancient in her eyes. She was profoundly grateful to him, for he had given her fiancé a position on the police force and made their marriage a possibility at least.
"How are things, Alma?" he said.
"Simply wonderful, thanks to you, Mr. O'Bannon," she answered.
He went upstairs thinking kindly of all gentle blond women. In the office he found his assistant, Foster, the son of the local high-school teacher, a keen-minded ambitious boy of twenty-two.
"Oh," said Foster, "the sheriff's been telephoning for you. He's at the Thornes'."
O'Bannon felt as if his ears had deceived him.
"Where?" he asked sternly.
"At the Thornes' house—you know, there's a Miss Thorne who lives there—the daughter of old Joe S. Thorne." Then, seeing the blank look on his chief's face, Foster explained further. "It seems there was a jewel robbery there last night—a million dollars' worth, the sheriff says." He smiled, for the sheriff was a well-known exaggerator, but he met no answering smile. "They've been telephoning for you to come over."
"Who has?" said O'Bannon.
Foster thought him unusually slow of understanding this morning, and answered patiently, "Miss Thorne has. There's been a robbery there."
The district attorney was not slow in action.
"I'll go right over," he said, and left the office.
There were some advantages in holding public office. You could be sent for in your official capacity—and stick to it, by heaven!
This time he asked no questions at the door, but entered.
Morson said timidly, "Who shall I say, sir?"
"Say the district attorney."
Morson led the way to the drawing-room and threw open the door.
"The district attorney," he announced, making it sound like a title of nobility, and O'Bannon and Lydia stood face to face again—or rather he stood. She, leaning back in her chair, nodded an adequate enough greeting to a public servant in the performance of his duty. They were not alone—a slim gray-haired lady, Miss Bennett, was named.
"I understood at my office you had sent for me," said he.
"I?" There was something wondering in her tone. "Oh, yes, the sheriff, I believe, wanted you to come. All my jewels were stolen last night. He seemed to think you might be able to do something about it." Her tone indicated that she did not share the sheriff's optimism. Miss Bennett, with a long habit of counteracting Lydia's manners, broke in.
"So kind of you to come yourself, Mr. O'Bannon."
"It's my job to come."
"Yes, of course. I think I know your mother." She was very cordial, partly because she felt something hostile in the air, partly because she thought him an attractive-looking young man. "She's so helpful in the village improvement, only we're all just a little afraid of her. Aren't you just a little afraid of her yourself?"
"Very much," he answered gravely.
Miss Bennett wished he wouldn't just stare at her with those queer eyes of his—a little crazy, she thought. She liked people to smile at her when they spoke. She went on, "Not but what we work all the better for her because we are a little afraid"
Lydia interrupted.
"Mr. O'Bannon hasn't come to pay us a social visit, Benny," she said, and this time there was something unmistakably insolent in her tone.
O'Bannon decided to settle this whole question on the instant. He turned to Miss Bennett and said firmly, "I should like to speak to Miss Thorne alone."
"Of course," said Miss Bennett, already on her way to the door, which O'Bannon opened for her.
"No, Benny, Benny!" called Lydia, but O'Bannon had shut the door and leaned his shoulders against it.
"Listen to me!" he said. "You must be civil to me—that is, if you want me to stay here and try to get your jewels back."
Lydia wouldn't look at him.
"And what guaranty have I that if you do stay you can do anything about it?"
"I think I can get them, and I can assure you the sheriff can't." There was a long pause. "Well?" he said.
"Well what?" said Lydia, who hadn't been able to think what she was going to do.
"Will you be civil, or shall I go?"
"I thought you just said it was your duty to stay."
"Make up your mind, please, which shall it be?"
Lydia longed to tell him to go, but she did want to get her jewels back, particularly as she was setting out for the Emmonses' in a few minutes, and it would save a lot of trouble to have everything arranged before she left. She thought it over deliberately, and looking up saw that he was amused at her cold-blooded hesitation. Seeing him smile, she found to her surprise that suddenly she smiled back at him. It was not what she had intended.
"Well," she thought, "let him think he's getting the best of me. As a matter of fact, I'm using him."
She hoped he would be content with the smile, but, no, he insisted on the spoken word. She was forced to say definitely that she would be civil. She carried it off, in her own mind at least, by saying it as if it were a childish game he was playing. Having received the assurance, he moved from the door and stood opposite her, leaning on the back of a chair.
"Now tell me what happened?" he said.
She told him how she had been waked up just before dawn by the sound of someone moving in her dressing room. At first she had thought it was a window, or a curtain blowing, until she had seen a fine streak of light under the door. Then she had sprung up—to find herself locked in. She had rung her bells, pounded on the door—finally succeeded in rousing the household. The dressing room was empty, but her safe had been opened—her jewels and about five hundred dollars gone—her recent winnings at bridge.
"You've had good luck lately?" he asked.
"Good partners," she answered with one of her illuminating smiles.
She'd gone all over the house after that. Alone? No. Morson had tagged on. Morson was afraid of burglars, having had experience with them in some former place. Besides, she always had a revolver. Oh, yes, she knew how to shoot! She'd gone over the whole house—there wasn't a lock undone.
He questioned her about the servants. Suspicion seemed to point to Evans, who had the run of the safe and might so easily have failed to lock it in the evening when she had put her mistress to bed. Lydia demurred at the idea of Evans' guilt. The girl had been with her for five years.
"I don't really think she has the courage to steal," she said.
"Do you know the circumstances of her life? Anything to make her feel in special need of money just now?" he inquired.
Lydia shook her head.
"I never see how servants spend their wages anyhow," she said. "But what makes me feel quite sure it isn't Evans is that I'm sure she would have confessed to me when I questioned her. Instead of that she's been packing my things for me just as usual."
O'Bannon cut the interview short by announcing that he'd see the sheriff. Lydia had expected—"dreaded" was her own word—that he would say something about the incidents of their last meeting. But he didn't. He left the room, saying as he went: "You'll wait here until I've had a talk with the girl."
His tone had a rising inflection of a question in it, but to Lydia it sounded like an order. She had had every intention of waiting, but now she began to contemplate the possibility of leaving at once. The car was at the door and her bags were on the car. How it would annoy him, she thought, if when he came back, instead of finding her patiently waiting to be civil, he learned that she had motored away, as much as to say: "It's your duty as an officer of the law to find my jewels, but it isn't my duty to be grateful to you."
Presently Miss Bennett and the sheriff came in together, talking—at least the sheriff was talking.
"It looks like it was her all right," he was saying, "and if so he'll get a confession out of her. That's why I sent for him. He's a great feller for getting folks to confess." Then with natural courtesy he turned to Lydia. "I was just saying to your friend, Miss Thorne, that O'Bannon's great on getting confessions."
"Really?" said Lydia. "I wonder why."
A Paramount Picture Manslaughter
O'BANNON BEGINS HIS INVESTIGATION OF THE THEFT.
"Well," said the sheriff, ignoring the note of doubt in her wonder, "most criminals want to confess. It's a lonely thing—to have a secret and the whole world against you. He plays on that. And between you and I, Miss Thorne, there's some of this so-called psychology in it. You see, I prepare the way for him—telling how he always does get a confession, and how a confession last time saved the defendant from the chair, and a lot of stuff like that, and then he comes along, and I guess there's a little hypnotism in it too. Did you ever notice his eyes?"
"I noticed that he has them," answered Lydia.
Miss Bennett said that she had noticed them at once, as soon as he came into the room. Perhaps it was remembrance of them that made her add, "He won't be too hard on the poor girl, will he?"
"No, ma'am, he won't be hard at all," said the sheriff. "He'll just talk with her ten or fifteen minutes, and then she'll want to tell him the truth. I couldn't say how it's done."
Lydia suddenly stamped her foot.
"She's a fool if she does!" she said, biting into her words.
So this young man went in for being a woman tamer, did he?—the mistress downstairs ordered to be civil and the maid upstairs ordered to confess. If she had time, she thought, it would amuse her to show him that things did not run so smoothly as that. She almost wished that Evans wouldn't confess. It would be worth losing her jewels to see his face when he came down to announce his failure.
Steps overhead, the door opened, a voice called, "Sheriff, get your men up here, will you?"
The sheriff's face lit up.
"Didn't I tell you?" he said. "He's done it!" He hurried out of the room.
When, a few minutes later, the district attorney came down he found Miss Bennett alone. He looked about quickly.
"Where's Miss Thorne?" he said.
Miss Bennett had not wanted Lydia to go—she had urged her not to. What difference did the Emmonses make in comparison with the jewels? But now she sprang to her defense.
"She was forced to go. She had a train to catch—a long-standing engagement. She was so sorry. She left all sorts of messages." This was not, strictly speaking, true.
O'Bannon smiled slightly.
"She does not seem to take much interest in the recovery of her jewels," he said.
"She has every confidence in you," said Miss Bennett flatteringly.
Miss Bennett herself had. Never, she thought, had she seen a man who inspired her with a more comfortable sense of leadership. She saw he was not pleased at Lydia's sudden departure.
He was not. He was furious at her. His feelings about her had flickered up and down like a flame. The vision of her going over her house alone, her hair down her back and a revolver in her hand, alone—except for Morson tagging on behind—moved him with a sense of her courage; and not only her courage but her lack of self-consciousness about it. She had spoken as if anyone would have done the same. Her hardness toward the criminal had repelled him, and when he went upstairs to interview Evans a new sensation waited for him.
The robbery had not released Evans from her regular duties. She had just finished packing Lydia's things for the visit to the Emmonses, and the bedroom where she had been detained had the disheveled look of a room which had just been packed and dressed in. The bed had not been made, though its pink silk cover had been smoothed over it to allow for the folding of dresses on it. Lydia's slippers—pink mules with an edging of fur—were kicked off beside it. Long trails of tissue paper were on the floor. O'Bannon saw it all with an eye trained to observe. He saw the book of verses on the table beside her bed, the picture of the good-looking young man on her dressing table. He smelled in the air the perfume of violets, a scent which his sense remembered as having lingered in her hair. All this he took in almost before he saw the pale, black-clad criminal standing vacantly in the midst of the disorder.
"Sit down," he said.
He spoke neither kindly nor commandingly, but as if to speak were the same thing as to accomplish. Evans sat down.
It was a curious picture of Lydia that emerged from the story she finally told him—a figure kind and generous and careless and cruel, and, it seemed to him above everything else, stupid, blind about life, the lives of those about her.
Evans had a lover, a young English footman who had served a term for stealing and just lately got out with an advanced case of tuberculosis. Evans, who had remained adamant to temptation when everything was going well with him, fell at the sight of his ill health. She had attempted, lonely and inefficient as she was, to do the trick by herself. It was Lydia's irritation over Evans' regret at the loss of the bracelet that had apparently decided the girl.
"If she was so glad to be relieved of the things I thought I'd help her a bit," she said bitterly.
What seemed to O'Bannon so incomprehensible was that Lydia shouldn't have known that the girl was in some sort of trouble. The sight of the room made him vividly aware of the intimacy of daily detail that any maid has in regard to her mistress—two women, and one going through hell.
He said to Miss Bennett after they had gone downstairs again: "Didn't Miss Thorne suspect that something was going wrong with the girl?"
Miss Bennett liked the district attorney so much that she felt a strong temptation, under the mask of discussing the case, to pour out to him all her troubles—the inevitable troubles of those whose lives were bound up with Lydia's. But her standards of good manners were too rigorous to allow her to yield.
"No, I'm afraid we didn't guess," she answered. "But now that we do know, is there anything we can do for the poor thing?"
"Not just now," he answered. "The case is clear against her. But when it comes to sentencing her you could do something. Anything Miss Thorne said in her favor would be taken into consideration by the judge."
"Tell me just what it is you want her to say," answered Miss Bennett, eager to help.
"It isn't what I want," O'Bannon replied with some irritation. "My duty is to present the case against her for the state. I'm telling what Miss Thorne can do if she feels that there are extenuating circumstances; if, for instance, she thinks that she herself has been careless about her valuables."
"She will, I'm sure," said Miss Bennett with more conviction than she felt, "because, between you and me, Mr. O'Bannon, she is careless. She lost a beautiful little bracelet the other—but when you're as young and lovely and rich as she is"
She was interrupted by the district attorney's rather curt good-by.
"Do you want to drive back with me, sheriff?"
The sheriff did, and jumping in he murmured as they drove down the road: "She is all that. She's easy to look at all right. She's handsome, and yet not—not what I should call womanly. Look out at the turn. There's a hole as you get into the main road."
"Yes, I know about it," said O'Bannon.