XVI
RECESSIONAL
"Hm, hrumm!" Thus Hickey, the inopportunely ubiquitous, lumbering hastily in from the other office and checking, in an extreme of embarrassment, in the middle of the floor.
Maitland glanced over his shoulder, and, subduing a desire to flay the man alive, released the girl's hand.
"I say, Hickey," he observed, carefully suppressing every vestige of emotion, "will you lend me a hand here? Bring a chair, please, and a glass of water."
The detective stumbled over his feet and brought the chair at the risk of his neck. Then he went away and returned with the water. In the meantime the girl, silently enough for all that her eyes were speaking, with Maitland's assistance arose and seated herself.
"You will have to stay here a few minutes," he told her, "until—er"
"I understand," she told him in a choking tone.
Hickey awkwardly handed her the glass. She sipped mechanically.
"I have a cab below," continued Maitland. "And I'll try to arrange it so that we can get out of the building without having to force a way through the crowd."
She thanked him with a glance.
"There's th' freight elevator," suggested Hickey helpfully.
"Thank you. … Is there anything I can do for you, anything you wish?" continued Maitland to the girl, standing between her and the detective.
She lifted her face to his and shook her head, very gently. "No," she breathed through trembling lips. "You—you've been" But there was a sob in her throat, and she hung her head again.
"Not a word," ordered Maitland. "Sit here for a few minutes, if you can, drink the water and—ah—fix up your hat, you know," (damn Hickey! Why the devil did the fellow insist on hanging round so!) "and I will go and make arrangements."
"Th-thank you," whispered the small voice shakily.
Maitland hesitated a moment, then turned upon Hickey in sudden exasperation. His manner was enough; even the obtuse detective could not ignore it. Maitland had no need to speak.
"I'm sorry, sir," he said, standing his ground manfully but with a trace more of respect in his manner than had theretofore characterized it, "but there's uh gentleman—uh—your fren' Bannerman's outside 'nd wants tuh speak tuh yeh."
"Tell him to"
"Excuse me. He says he's gottuh see yeh. If yeh don't come out, he'll come after yeh. I thought yeh'd ruther"
"That's kindly thought of," Maitland relented. "I'll be there in a minute," he added meaningly.
Hickey took an impassive face to the doorway, where, whether or not with design, he stood precisely upon the threshold, filling it with his burly shoulders. Maitland bent again over the girl, and took her hand.
"Dearest," he said gently, "please don't run away from me again."
Her eyes were brimming, and he read his answer in them. Quickly—it was no time to harry her emotions further; but so much he had felt he must say—he brushed her hand with his lips and joined Hickey. Thrusting the detective gently into the outer room, with a not unfriendly hand upon his shoulder, Maitland closed the door.
"Now, see here," he said quietly and firmly, "you must help me arrange to get this lady away without her becoming identified with the case, Hickey. I'm in a position to say a good word for you in the right place; she had positively nothing to do with Anisty," (this, so far as he could tell, was as black a lie as he had ever manufactured under the lash of necessity), "and—there's a wad in it for the boys who help me out."
"Well. …" The detective shifted from one foot to the other, eying him intently. "I guess we can fix it,—freight elevator 'nd side entrance. Yeh have the cab waitin', 'nd"
"I'll go with the lady, you understand, and assume all responsibility. You can come round at your convenience and arrange the details with me, at my rooms, since you will be so kind."
"I dunno." Hickey licked his lips, watching with a somber eye the preparations being made for the removal of Anisty's body. "I'd 've give a farm if I could 've caught that son of a gun alive!" he added at apparent random, and vindictively. "All right. Yeh be responsible for th' lady, if she's wanted, will yeh?"
"Positively."
"I gottuh have her name 'nd add-ress."
"Is that essential?"
"Sure. Gottuh protect myself 'n case anythin' turns up. Yeh oughttuh know that."
"I—don't want it to come out," Maitland hesitated, trying to invent a plausible lie.
"Well, any one can see how you feel about it."
Maitland drew a long breath and anticipated rashly. "It's Mrs. Maitland," he told the man with a tremor.
Hickey nodded, unimpressed. "Uh-huh. I knowed that all along," he replied. "But seein' as yeh didn't want it talked about. …" And, apparently heedless of Maitland's startled and suspicious stare: "If yeh're goin' to see yer fren', yeh better get a wiggle on. He won't last long."
"Who? Bannerman? What the deuce do you mean?"
"He's the feller I plugged in the elevator, that's all. Put a hole through his lungs. They took him into an office on the twenty-first floor, right opp'site the shaft."
"But what in Heaven's name has he to do with this ghastly mess?"
Hickey turned a shrewd eye upon Maitland. "I guess he can tell yeh better'n me."
With a smothered exclamation, Maitland hurried away, still incredulous and impressed with a belief, firmer with every minute, that the wounded man had been wrongly identified.
He found him as Hickey had said he would, sobbing out his life, supine upon the couch of an office which the janitor had opened to afford him a place to die in. Maitland had to force a way through a crowded doorway, where the night-watchman was holding forth in aggrieved incoherence on the cruel treatment he had suffered at the hands of the lawbreakers. A phrase came to Maitland's ears as he shouldered through the group.
".… grabbed me an' trun me outer the cage, inter the hall, an' then the shootin' begins, an' I jumps down-stairs t' the sixteent' floor. …"
Bannerman opened dull eyes as Maitland entered, and smiled faintly.
"Ah-h, Maitland," he gasped; "thought you'd … come."
Racked with sorrow, nothing guessing of the career that had brought the lawyer to this pass, Maitland slipped into a chair by the head of the couch and closed his hand over Bannerman's chubby, icy fingers.
"Poor, poor old chap!" he said brokenly. "How in Heaven"
But at Bannerman's look the words died on his lips. The lawyer moved restlessly. "Don't pity me," he said in a low tone. "This is what I might have … expected, I suppose … man of Anisty's stamp … desperate character … it's all right, Dan, my just due. …"
"I don't understand, of course," faltered Maitland.
Bannerman lay still a moment, then continued: "I know you don't. That's why I sent for you. … 'Member that night at the Primordial? When the deuce was it? I … can't think straight long at a time. … That night I dined with you and touched you up about the jewels? We had a bully salad, you know, and I spoke about the Graeme affair. …"
"Yes, yes."
"Well … I've been up to that game for years. I'd find out where the plunder was, and … Anisty always divided square. … I used to advise him. … Of course you won't understand,—you've never wanted for a dollar in your life. …"
Maitland said nothing. But his hand remained upon the dying man's.
"This would never have happened if … Anisty hadn't been impatient. He was hard to handle, sometimes. I wasn't sure, you know, about the jewels; I only said I thought they were at Greenfields. Then I undertook to find out from you, but he was restive, and without saying anything to me went down to Greenfields on his own hook—just to have a look around, he said. And so … so the fat was in the fire."
"Don't talk any more, Bannerman," Maitland tried to soothe him. "You'll pull through this all right, and— You need never have gone to such lengths. If you'd come to me"
The ghost of a sardonic smile flitted, incongruously, across the dying man's waxen, cherubic features.
"Oh, hell," he said; "you wouldn't understand. Perhaps you weren't born with the right crook in your nature,—or the wrong one. Perhaps it's because you can't see the fun in playing the game. It's that that counts."
He compressed his lips, and after a moment spoke again. "You never did have the true sportsman's love of the game for its own sake. You're like most of the rest of the crowd—content with mighty cheap virtue, Dan. … I don't know that I'd choose just this kind of a wind-up, but it's been fun while it lasted. Good-by, old man."
He did not speak again, but lay with closed eyes.
Five minutes later Maitland rose and unclasped the cold fingers from about his own. With a heavy sigh he turned away.
At the door Hickey was awaiting him. "Yer lady," he said, as soon as they had drawn apart from the crowd, "is waitin' for yeh in the cab down-stairs. She was gettin' a bit highsteerical 'nd I thought I'd better get her away. … Oh, she's waitin' all right!" he added, alarmed by Maitland's expression.
But Maitland had left him abruptly; and now, as he ran down flight after echoing flight of marble stairs, there rested cold fear in his heart. In the room he had just quitted, a man whom he had called friend and looked upon with affectionate regard, had died a self-confessed and unrepentant liar and thief.
If now he were to find the girl another time vanished,—if this had been but a ruse of hers finally to elude him,—if all men were without honor, all women faithless,—if he had indeed placed the love of his life, the only love that he had ever known, unworthily,—if she cared so little who had seemed to care much . . .