Within the Law Part 35

"In this room."

"Burke was here?" Mary's voice was suddenly cold, very dangerous. "What was he doing here?"

"Talking to my father."

The seemingly simple answer appeared the last straw to the girl's burden of frenzied suspicion. Her voice cut fiercely into the quiet of the room, imperious, savage.

"Joe, turn on that light! I want to see the face of every man in this room."

Something fatally significant in her voice set Garson a-leap to the switch, and, in the same second, the blaze of the chandelier flamed brilliantly over all. The others stood motionless, blinking in the sudden radiance--all save Griggs, who moved stealthily in that same moment, a little nearer the door into the pa.s.sage, which was nearest to him.

But Mary's next words came wholly as a surprise, seemingly totally irrelevant to this instant of crisis. Yet they rang a-throb with an hysterical anxiety.

"d.i.c.k," she cried, "what are those tapestries worth?" With the question, she pointed toward the draperies that shrouded the great octagonal window.

The young man was plainly astonished, disconcerted as well by the obtrusion of a sordid detail into the tragedy of the time.

"Why in the world do you----?" he began, impatiently.

Mary stamped her foot angrily in protest against the delay.

"Tell me--quick!" she commanded. The authority in her voice and manner was not to be gainsaid.

d.i.c.k yielded sullenly.

"Oh, two or three hundred dollars, I suppose," he answered. "Why?"

"Never mind that!" Mary exclaimed, violently. And now the girl's voice came stinging like a whiplash. In Garson's face, too, was growing fury, for in an instant of illumination he guessed something of the truth.

Mary's next question confirmed his raging suspicion.

"How long have you had them, d.i.c.k?"

By now, the young man himself sensed the fact that something mysteriously baneful lay behind the frantic questioning on this seemingly trivial theme.

"Ever since I can remember," he replied, promptly.

Mary's voice came then with an intonation that brought enlightenment not only to Garson's shrewd perceptions, but also to the heavier intelligences of Dacey and of Chicago Red.

"And they're not famous masterpieces which your father bought recently, from some dealer who smuggled them into this country?" So simple were the words of her inquiry, but under them beat something evil, deadly.

The young man laughed contemptuously.

"I should say not!" he declared indignantly, for he resented the implication against his father's honesty.

"It's a trick! Burke's done it!" Mary's words came with accusing vehemence.

There was another single step made by Griggs toward the door into the pa.s.sage.

Mary's eye caught the movement, and her lips soundlessly formed the name:

"Griggs!"

The man strove to carry off the situation, though he knew well that he stood in mortal peril. He came a little toward the girl who had accused him of treachery. He was very dapper in his evening clothes, with his rather handsome, well-groomed face set in lines of innocence.

"He's lying to you!" he cried forcibly, with a scornful gesture toward d.i.c.k Gilder. "I tell you, those tapestries are worth a million cold."

Mary's answer was virulent in its sudden burst of hate. For once, the music of her voice was lost in a discordant cry of detestation.

"You stool-pigeon! You did this for Burke!"

Griggs sought still to maintain his air of innocence, and he strove well, since he knew that he fought for his life against those whom he had outraged. As he spoke again, his tones were tremulous with sincerity--perhaps that tremulousness was born chiefly of fear, yet to the ear his words came stoutly enough for truth:

"I swear I didn't! I swear it!"

Mary regarded the protesting man with abhorrence. The perjured wretch shrank before the loathing in her eyes.

"You came to me yesterday," she said, with more of restraint in her voice now, but still with inexorable rancor. "You came to me to explain this plan. And you came from him--from Burke!"

"I swear I was on the level. I was tipped off to the story by a pal,"

Griggs declared, but at last the a.s.surance was gone out of his voice. He felt the hostility of those about him.

Garson broke in ferociously.

"It's a frame-up!" he said. His tones came in a deadened roar of wrath.

On the instant, aware that further subterfuge could be of no avail, Griggs swaggered defiance.

"And what if it is true?" he drawled, with a resumption of his aristocratic manner, while his eyes swept the group balefully. He plucked the police whistle from his waistcoat-pocket, and raised it to his lips.

He moved too slowly. In the same moment of his action, Garson had pulled the pistol from his pocket, had pressed the trigger. There came no spurt of flame. There was no sound--save perhaps a faint clicking noise. But the man with the whistle at his lips suddenly ceased movement, stood absolutely still for the s.p.a.ce of a breath. Then, he trembled horribly, and in the next instant crashed to the floor, where he lay rigid, dead.

"d.a.m.n you--I've got you!" Garson sneered through clenched teeth. His eyes were like b.a.l.l.s of fire. There was a frightful grin of triumph twisting his mouth in this minute of punishment.

In the first second of the tragedy, d.i.c.k had not understood. Indeed, he was still dazed by the suddenness of it all. But the falling of Griggs before the leveled weapon of the other man, there to lie in that ghastly immobility, made him to understand. He leaped toward Garson--would have wrenched the pistol from the other's grasp. In the struggle, it fell to the floor.

Before either could pick it up, there came an interruption. Even in the stress of this scene, Chicago Red had never relaxed his professional caution. A slight noise had caught his ear, he had stooped, listening.

Now, he straightened, and called his warning.

"Somebody's opening the front door!"

Garson forgot his weapon in this new alarm. He sprang to the octagonal window, even as d.i.c.k took possession of the pistol.

"The street's empty! We must jump for it!" His hate was forgotten now in an emotion still deeper, and he turned to Mary. His face was all gentleness again, where just before it had been evil incarnate, aflame with the l.u.s.t to destroy. "Come on, Mary," he cried.

Already Chicago Red had snapped off the lights of the chandelier, had sprung to the window, thrown open a panel of it, and had vanished into the night, with Dacey at his heels. As Garson would have called out to the girl again in mad anxiety for haste, he was interrupted by d.i.c.k:

"She couldn't make it, Garson," he declared coolly and resolutely. "You go. It'll be all right, you know. I'll take care of her!"

"If she's caught----!" There was an indescribable menace in the forger's half-uttered threat.