The Big-Town Round-Up Part 41

What is it?"

"I think Clary knows something. My notion is that he was at Maddock's and that he's in a blue funk for fear he'll be found and named as an accessory. I'm going to find out all he can tell me."

"But--"

She looked at her father directly, a deep meaning in the lovely eyes.

A little tremor ran through her body. "Dad, I'm going to save Clay.

That's the only thing that counts."

Her words were an appeal, a challenge. They told him that her heart belonged to the friend in prison, and they carried him back somehow to the hour when the nurse first laid her, a tiny baby, in his arms.

His heart was very tender to her. "Whatever you say, sweetheart."

CHAPTER x.x.x

BEE MAKES A MORNING CALL

Their chauffeur broke the speed laws getting them to the apartment house for bachelors where Bromfield lived.

His valet for once was caught off guard when he opened the door to them. Beatrice was inside before he could quite make up his mind how best to meet this frontal attack.

"We came to see Mr. Bromfield," she said.

"Sorry, Miss. He's really quite ill. The doctor says--"

"I'm Miss Whitford. We're engaged to be married. It's very important that I see him."

"Yes, Miss, I know."

The man was perfectly well aware that his master wanted of all things to avoid a meeting with her. For some reason or other, Bromfield was in a state of collapse this morning the valet could not understand.

The man's business was to protect him until he had recovered. But he could not flatly turn his master's fiancee out of the apartment. His eye turned to Whitford and found no help there. He fell back on the usual device of servants.

"I don't really think he can see you, Miss. The doctor has specially told me to guard against any excitement. But I'll ask Mr. Bromfield if--if he feels up to it."

The valet pa.s.sed into what was evidently a bedroom and closed the door behind him. There was a faint murmur of voices.

"I'm going in now," Beatrice announced abruptly to her father.

She moved forward quickly, before Whitford could stop her, whipped open the door, and stepped into the room. Her father followed her reluctantly.

Clarendon, in a frogged dressing-gown, lay propped up by pillows.

Beside the bed was a tray, upon which was a decanter of whiskey and a siphon of soda. His figure seemed to have fallen together and his seamed face was that of an old man. But it was the eyes that held her.

They were full of stark terror. The look in them took the girl's breath. They told her that he had undergone some great shock.

He s.h.i.+vered at sight of her.

"What is it, Clary?" she cried, moving toward him. "Tell me--tell me all about it."

"I--I'm ill." He quaked it from a burning throat.

"You were all right, yesterday. Why are you ill now?"

He groaned unhappily.

"You're going to tell me everything--everything."

His fascinated, frightened eyes clung to this straight, slim girl whose look stabbed into him and shook his soul. Why had she come to trouble him this morning while he was cowering in fear of the men who would break in to drag him away to prison?

"Nothing to tell," he got out with a gulp.

"Oh, yes, you have. Are you ill because of what happened at Maddock's?"

He tried to pull himself together, to stop the chattering of his teeth.

"N-nonsense, my dear. I'm done up completely. Delighted to see you and all that, but--Won't you go home?" His appealing eyes pa.s.sed to Whitford. "Can't you take her away?"

"No, I won't go home--and he can't take me away." Her resolution was hard as steel. It seemed to crowd inexorably upon the s.h.i.+vering wretch in the frogged gown. "What is it you're so afraid to tell me, Clarendon?"

He quailed at her thrust. "What--what do you mean?"

She knew now, beyond any question or doubt, that he had been present when "Slim" Jim Collins had been killed. He had seen a man's life snuffed out, was still trembling for fear he might be called in as a party to the crime.

"You'd better tell me before it's too late. How did you and Clay Lindsay come to go to that den?"

"We went out to--to see the town."

"But why to that place? Are you in the habit of going there?"

He shuddered. "Never was there before. I had a card. Some one gave it to me. So we went in for a few minutes--to see what it was like.

The police raided the place." He dropped his sentences reluctantly, as though they were being forced from him in pain.

"Well?"

"Everybody tried to escape. The lights went out. I found a back door and got away. Then I came home."

"What about Clay?"

Bromfield told the truth. "I didn't see him after the lights went out, except for a moment. He was running at the man with the gun."

"You saw the gun?"

He nodded, moistened his dry lips with the tip of his tongue.

"And the--the shooting? Did you see that?"

Twice the words he tried to say faded on his lips. At last he managed a "No."