No Clue Part 33

"Well?"

"I wondered if you wouldn't stop your interviews--your accusations?"

The younger woman's eagerness, evident now in the variety of her gestures and the rapid procession of pallour and flush across her cheeks, persuaded Mrs. Brace that Lucille was acting on an impulse of her own, not as an agent to carry out another's well designed scheme.

The older woman, at that idea, felt safe. She asked:

"And you want--what?"

"I've come here to ask you to tell me all you know, or to be quiet altogether."

"I'm afraid I don't understand--fully," returned Mrs. Brace, with an exaggerated bewilderment. "Tell all I know?"

"That is, if you do know anything you haven't told!" Lucille urged her.

"Oh, don't you see? I'm saying to you that I want to put an end to this dreadful suspense!"

Mrs. Brace laughed disagreeably; her face was harder, less human. "You mean I'm amusing myself, exerting myself needlessly, as a matter of spite? Do you mean to tell me that?"

"No! No!" Lucille denied, impatient with herself for lack of clearness.

"I mean I'm sure you're attacking an innocent man. And I'm willing, I'm anxious--oh, I hope so much, Mrs. Brace--to make an agreement with you--a financial arrangement----" She paused the fractional part of a second on that; and, seeing that the other did not resent the term, she added: "to pay you to stop it. Isn't that clear?"

"Yes; that's clear."

"Understand me, please. What I ask is that you say nothing more to the reporters, the sheriff or the Was.h.i.+ngton police, that will have the effect of hounding them on against Mr. Webster. I want to eliminate from the situation all the influence you've exerted to make Mr. Crown believe Mr. Webster's guilty and my father's protecting him."

"Let me think," Mrs. Brace said, coolly.

Lucille exulted inwardly, "She'll do it! She'll do it!" The hard eyes dissected her eager face. The girl drew back in her chair, thinking now: "She suspects who sent me!"

At last, the older woman spoke:

"The detective, Hastings, would never have allowed you to come here, Miss Sloane.--Excuse my frankness," she interjected, with a smile she meant to be friendly; "but you're frank with me; we're not mincing matters; and I have to be careful.--He'd have warned you that your errand's practical confession of your knowledge of something incriminating Berne Webster. If you didn't suspect the man even more strongly than I do, you'd never have been driven to--this."

She leaned the rocker back and crossed her knees, the movement throwing into high relief the hard lankness of her figure. She gazed at the wall, over Lucille's head, as she dealt with the possibilities that presented themselves to her a.n.a.lysis. Her manner was that of a certain gloating enjoyment, a thinly covered, semi-orderly greediness.

"She's not even thinking of her daughter," Lucille thought, and went pale a moment. "She's as bad as Mr. Hastings said--worse!"

"Then, too," Mrs. Brace continued, "your father discharged him last night."

Lucille remembered the detective's misgivings about Jarvis; how else had this woman found that out?

"And you've taken matters into your own hands.--Did your father send you here--to me?"

"Why, no!"

The other smiled slyly, the tip of her tongue again visible, her eyebrows high in interrogation. "Of course," she said; "you wouldn't tell me if he had. He would have warned you against that admission."

"It's Mr. Webster about whom I am most concerned," Lucille reminded, sharpness in her vibrant young voice. "My father's being annoyed is merely incidental."

"Oh, of course! Of course," Mrs. Brace grinned, with broad sarcasm.

Lucille started. The meaning of that could not be misunderstood; she charged that the money was offered at Arthur Sloane's instigation and that the concern for Berne Webster was merely pretence.

Mrs. Brace saw her anger, and placated it:

"Don't mind me, Miss Sloane. A woman who's had to endure what I have--well, she doesn't always think clearly."

"Perhaps not," Lucille a.s.sented; but she was aware of a sudden longing to be done with the degrading work. "Now that we understand each other, Mrs. Brace, what do you say?"

Mrs. Brace thought again.

"How much?" she asked at last, her lips thickening. "How much, Miss Sloane, do you think my silence is worth?"

Lucille took a roll of bills from her handbag. The woman's chair slid forward, answering to the forward--leaning weight of her new posture.

She was lightly rubbing her palms together, as, with head a little bowed, she stared at the money in the younger woman's hand.

"I have here five hundred dollars," Lucille began.

"What!"

Mrs. Brace said that roughly; and, in violent anger, drew back, the legs of her chair grating on the floor.

For a moment Lucille gazed at her, uncomprehending.

"Oh!" she said, uncertainly. "You mean--it isn't enough?"

"Enough!" Mrs. Brace's rage and disappointment grew, her lowered brows a straight line close down to her eyes.

"But I could get more!" Lucille exclaimed, struggling with disgust.

"This," she added, with ready invention, "can serve as a part payment, a promise of----"

"Ah-h!" the older woman exclaimed. "That's different. I misunderstood."

She put down the signals of her wrath, succeeding in that readjustment so promptly that Lucille stared at her in undisguised amazement.

"You must pardon me, Miss Sloane. I thought you were making me the victim of your ridicule, some heartless joke."

"Then, we can come to an agreement? That is, if this money is the first----"

She broke the sentence. Mrs. Brace had put up her hand, and now held her head to one side, listening.

There was a step clearly audible outside, in the main hall. The next moment the doorbell rang. They sat motionless. When the bell rang again, Mrs. Brace informed her with a look that she would not answer it.

But the ringing continued, became a prolonged jangle. It got on Lucille's already strained nerves.

"Suppose you slip into the bedroom," Mrs. Brace whispered.

"Oh, no!" Lucille whispered back.

She was weighed down by black premonition; she hoped Mrs. Brace would not open the door.