The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 52
THE minutes passed and then suddenly, sharply, there arose a loud uproar, the sound of angry knocking and a hand rattling the big outer door. Krylenko sat up white and still. Neither of them moved. The knocking continued, punctuated now by shouts.
"It's the police!" said Lily, and stood up. "Come with me. Bring the bowl . . . the bandages!"
Krylenko stood by helplessly. It was Lily who arranged everything with a sudden clairvoyance which seemed to have overtaken her at the instant of the knocking. She turned the brocade cushions so that the bloody side was concealed and, gathering up the bandages, she led the way through the hall into the corridor where an hour earlier Hennery and the mulatto woman had crouched in fascinated terror. At last she turned into a store room piled high with boxes. Here she led him to a great box in the corner where she halted.
"I'll hide you here," she said. "They'll never find you. It is full of books." And together, with flying hands, they emptied the box. Krylenko climbed in and assumed a crouching position. He was buried beneath the books which Lily hurled into the box in bunches of three or four, in armfuls. At last he lay completely hidden beneath a great heap of yellow backed novels. . . the novels of Paul Marguerite, Marcel Prévost, Paul Bourget, Collette Willy . . . the novels that Julia Shane had "skimmed" and cast aside, the novels which to her covenanting blood l'amour made so tiresome.
As Lily ran through the corridor the knocking increased in violence, punctuated by shouts of "Hello, in there!" and "Open the door," uttered in a gruff bass voice. As she ran she wrapped the kimono high about her throat, and as she passed the carved chest she picked up the tiny pearl handled pistol. Then she turned the key quickly and opened the door, standing with the pistol in one hand and the yellow backed Les Anges Gardiens in the other.
Outside on the snow covered piazza stood a half dozen men in the uniforms of the constabulary. At the apparition of the beautiful woman in the doorway they remained for an instant silent, startled.
"What is it you want?" she asked.
One of the men, a burly fellow with a brutal jaw stepped forward. "We want to search the house. We're looking for a man."
"What man?" asked Lily.
"Never mind," came the gruff answer. "You wouldn't know him. He's nothing to you. His name is Krylenko."
"There's no one in the house but me and the servants." Her voice trembled a little before the menacing group on the piazza.
"That's all right," said the man. "We're going to see for ourselves. We saw him come in here."
He began to edge his way slowly toward the open door and as he moved the pearl handled pistol raised slowly, menacingly, in an even tempo with his slow insolent advance.
"You cannot come in," said Lily in a slow, firm voice. The pistol was level now with the heart of the intruder. "I've told you there is no one here. You might, it seems to me, take the word of a lady. I've been here all the evening and I would know. . . ." She raised the yellow backed novel in a brief little gesture. "I've been reading. There is no one here but myself."
The man growled. "That's all right but we want to look for ourselves." There was a painful pause. "We're going to have a look," he added with determination.
When Lily spoke again there was a new note in her voice, a sudden timbre of determination, a hint of unreasonable, angry, feminine stubborness which appeared to awe the intruder.
"Oh, no, you're not," she said. "It is my house. You have no right to enter it. You have no warrant. It is mine. You cannot enter it." And then, as if by an afterthought she added, "Even my sister is not here. I don't know this Krylenko. I never saw him."
The man, it seemed, was baffled. If the woman in the doorway had been the wife of a workman, a simple Italian or Slovak, he undoubtedly would have brushed her aside, shot her if necessary, trampled her under foot the way his comrades had trampled to death the old Polish woman in Halsted street at the foot of the drive. But the woman in the doorway was a lady. She was not a poor foreigner. She was more American than himself. Behind her in the shadows gleamed dully a silver mounted mirror, a chandelier of sparkling crystal. Her fine, beautiful body was clad in a garment of black and silver. On her fingers glittered rings. All these things meant wealth, and wealth meant power. The man, after all, had only the soul of a policeman, a soul at once bullying and servile. For him these symbols might spell ruin. Besides, the woman was hysterically stubborn, strangely unafraid . . . so unafraid that her courage carried a hint of suspicious origin. He did not brush her aside nor did he shoot her.
"It's no use," she said. "If you return with a warrant, all right. I can do nothing. For the present, it is my house."
The man turned away and began a low conversation with his companions. He had a sheepish air, and as he talked the door was closed suddenly and locked, shutting him out in the darkness, leaving him no choice in the matter. For a time the little group of men conversed angrily, and presently they went away in defeat down the long drive.
So Lily had placed herself on the side of the strikers . . . against the Town, against the Mills. She stood now with all her family, with Irene, with the dead Ju ulia Shane, with Hattie Tolliver and her savage umbrella.