Cosmopolitan Book Corporation (continued 2)

"This," said Mrs. Carey, "is David Randall. He is twenty-nine years old; his father was for three terms congressman from Ohio. David is a broker; he was worth, the last time he looked at the ticker, four hundred and ninety thousand dollars. He plays a good game of golf and a poor game of tennis. He claims that he is a good shot, but he can't ride a horse. He can run a motor-car, but he doesn't know anything about a catboat."

"I could teach him that," laughed Clancy. Mrs. Carey's nonsense put her at her ease. And all fear of Randall had vanished before he had reached the table. How could he know anything of her and her connection with either Zenda or Beiner?

Randall held out a very large hand.

"You sail a boat, Miss—" He paused confusedly.

"Deane," said Clancy. She had thought, when she left Zenith, to have left forever behind her the name of Deane. Ladue was the name under which she had intended to climb the heights. "Yes, indeed, I can sail a boat."

"You'll teach me?" asked Randall.

Mrs. Carey laughed.

"Lovely weather for boating, David. Where do you do your sailing, Miss Deane?"

"Zenith Harbor. It's in Maine," said Clancy.

"But you don't live in Maine!" cried Randall.

Mrs. Carey laughed again.

"Don't be misled by his frank eyes and his general expression of innate nobility and manliness, Miss Deane. That agony in his voice, which has lured so many young girls to heartbreak, means nothing at all except that he probably had an Irish grandmother. He really isn't worried about your living in Maine. He feels that, no matter where you live, he can persuade you to move to New York. And I hope he can."

Her last five words were uttered with a cordiality that won Clancy's heart. And then she colored for having, even for the minutest fraction of a second, taken Mrs. Carey's words seriously. Was she, Clancy Deane, lacking in a sense of humor?

"Thank you," she said. Then, "I have an Irish grandfather myself," she added slyly.

Mrs. Carey's face assumed an expression of sorrow.

"Oh, David, David! When you picked up a lone and lorn young lady in your motor-car, mayhap you picked up revenge for a score of sad damsels who were happy till they met you." She smiled down at Clancy. "If the high gods of convention are wrathful at me, perhaps some other gods will forgive me. Anyway, I'm sure that David will. And perhaps, after you've had a cup of tea with me, you'll forgive me, too. For if you don't like David, you're sure to like me."

"I know that," said Clancy.

Indeed, she already liked Mrs. Carey. Perhaps the sight of the wedding-ring on Mrs. Carey's left hand made for part of the liking. Still, that was ridiculous. She hardly knew this Randall person.

"I leave you in better company, David," said Mrs. Carey. "No, my dear boy; I wouldn't be so cruel as to make you take me to the door. The car is outside. You stay here and improve upon the introduction that I, without a jealous bone in my body—well, without jealousy I have acquainted myself with Miss Deane, and then passed on the acquaintance to you." She lifted her slim hand. "No; I insist that you remain here." She smiled once more at Clancy. "Did you notice that I used the word 'insist'?" She leaned over and whispered. "To save my pride, my harsh and bitter pride, Miss Deane, don't forget to come to tea."

And then Clancy was left alone with Randall.

VII

For a moment, embarrassed silence fell upon them. At least, Clancy knew that she was embarrassed, and she felt, from the slowly rising color on Randall's face, that he was also what the girls in Zenith—and other places—term "fussed." And when he spoke, it was haltingly.

"I hope—of course, Miss Deane—Mrs. Carey was joking. She didn't mean that I—" He paused helplessly.

"She didn't mean that you were so—fatally attractive?" asked Clancy, with wicked innocence. After all, she was beautiful, twenty, and talking to a young man whom she had met under circumstances that to a Zenither filled many of the requirements of romance. She forgot, with the adaptable memory of youth, her troubles. Flirtation was not a habit with Clancy Deane. It was an art.

"Oh, now, Miss Deane!" protested Randall.

"Then you haven't beguiled as many girls as Mrs. Carey says?" persisted Clancy.

"Why, I don't know any girls!" blurted Randall.

"Not any? Impossible!" said Clancy. "Is there anything the matter with you?"

"Matter with me?" Randall stared at her.

"I mean, your eyesight is perfectly good?"

"I saw you," he said bluntly. It was Clancy's turn to color, and she did so magnificently. Randall saw his advantage. "The very minute I saw you," he said, "I knew—" He stopped. Clancy's chin had lifted a trifle.

"Yes," she said gently. "You knew?"

"That we'd meet again," he said bravely.

"I didn't know that brokers were romantic," she said.

"I'm not," he retorted.

She eyed him carefully.

"No; I don't think you are. Still, not to know any girls—and it isn't because you haven't seen any, either. Well, there must be something else wrong with you. What is it?"

Randall fumbled in his pocket and produced a leather cigarette-case. He opened it, looking at Clancy.

"Will you have one?" he asked.

She shook her head. He lighted the cigarette; the smoke seemed to restore his self-possession.

"I've been too busy to meet girls," he declared.

Clancy shrugged.

"You weren't busy night before last."

She was enjoying herself hugely. The night before last, when she had met men at Zenda's party at the Château de la Reine, and, later, at Zenda's home, she had been too awed by New York, too overcome by the reputations of the people that she had met to think of any of the men as men. But now she was talking to a young man whose eyes, almost from the moment that she had accosted him on Park Avenue, had shown a definite interest in her. Not the interest of any normal man in a pretty girl, but a personal interest, and interest in her, Clancy Deane, not merely in the face or figure of Clancy Deane.

Randall was the sort of man, Clancy felt (still without knowing that she felt it), in whom one could repose confidences without fear of betrayal or, what is worse, misunderstanding. All of which unconscious, or subconscious, analysis on Clancy's part accounted for her own feeling of superiority toward him. For she had that feeling. A friendly enough feeling, but one that inclined her toward poking fun at him.

"No," admitted Randall; "I was kind of lonesome, and—I saw you, and——"

Clancy took the wheel and steered the bark of conversation deftly away from herself.

"Mrs. Carey must know many girls," she said. "And she seemed quite an intimate friend of yours." Clancy had in her make-up the due proportion of cattishness.

"She is," answered Randall promptly. "That is, she's been extremely kind to me. But I haven't known her long. She returned from Europe last month and was interested in French securities. She bought them through my office, because an uncle of mine, who'd been on the boat with her, had mentioned my name. That's all."

The mention of Europe wakened some memory in Clancy.

"She's not the Mrs. Carey, is she? Not the artist who was decorated for bravery——"

Randall nodded.

"I guess she is, but you'd never think it from her talk. She never mentions it, or refers to her work——"

"Have you seen it?" asked Clancy.

"Her paintings? Oh, yes; I've been in her studio. The fact is"—and he colored—"I happened to be the right size, or shape, or something, for a male figure she wanted, and—well," he finished sheepishly, "I posed for her."

Clancy grinned.

"You've never been in the chorus of a musical comedy, have you?"

"No." Randall laughed. "And I won't unless you're in it."

It was a perfectly innocent remark, as vapid as the remarks made by young people in the process of getting acquainted always are. Yet, for a second, Clancy felt a cold chill round her heart. A glance at Randall assured her that there'd been no hidden meaning in the statement. Her own remark had inspired his response. But the mere casual connection of herself with any matter theatrical brought back the events of the past two days.

She beckoned to her waiter and asked for her check. Randall made an involuntary movement toward his pocket, then thought better of it. Clancy liked him for the perfectly natural movement, but liked him better because he halted it.

"You—I don't suppose—you'd care to go to the theater—or anything?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"I must go home," she declared.

"Well, I can, at least, take you up-town," he said,

"I don't live up-town. I live——"

"You've moved?"

"Yes," she answered. All the fears that for ten minutes had been shoved into the background now came back to her. To-morrow's papers might contain the statement that the supposed murderess of Morris Beiner had been traced to the Napoli, whence she had vanished. It wouldn't take a very keen brain to draw a connection between that vanished girl and the girl now talking with Randall.

"Well, I can take you to wherever you've moved," he announced cheerfully.

"I—I'd rather you wouldn't," said Clancy.

Randall's face reddened. He colored, Clancy thought, more easily and frequently than any man she'd known.

The waiter brought her change. She gave him fifteen cents, an exact ten per cent. of her bill, and rose. Then she bent over to pick up her evening paper. Randall forestalled her. He handed it to her, and his eyes lighted on the "want ad" columns.

"You aren't looking for work, are you?" he asked. "I mean—I don't want to be rude, but——"

"Well?" said Clancy coldly.

"I—if you happened to know stenography—do you?"

"Well?" she said again.

"I need a—stenographer," he blurted.

She eyed him.

"You move rapidly, don't you?"

"I'm fresh, you think? Well, I suppose it seems that way, but—I don't mean to be, Miss Deane. Only—well, my name and address are in the telephone-book. If you ever happened—to want to see me again—you could reach me easily."

"Thank you," said Clancy. "Good-night." For a moment, her fingers rested in his huge hand; then, with a little nod, she left the restaurant.

She did not look behind her as she walked down Fifth Avenue and across Washington Square. Randall was not the sort to spy upon her, no matter how anxious he was to know where she lived. And he was anxious—Clancy felt sure of that. She didn't know whether to be pleased or alarmed over that surety.

She felt annoyed with herself that she was even interested in Randall's attitude toward her. She had come to New York with a very definite purpose, and that purpose contemplated no man in its foreground. Entering Mrs. Gerand's lodging-house, she passed the telephone fastened against the wall in the front hall. It was the idlest curiosity, still—it wouldn't do any harm to know Randall's address. She looked it up in the telephone directory. He had offices in the Guaranty Building and lived in the Monarch apartment-house on Park Avenue.

She was more exhausted than she realized. Not even fear could keep her awake to-night, and fear did its utmost. For, alone in her room, she felt her helplessness. She had avoided the police for a day—but how much longer could she hope to do so?

In the morning, courage came to her again. She asked Mrs. Gerand for permission to look at the morning paper before she left the house. The Beiner mystery was given less space this morning than yesterday afternoon. The paper reported no new discoveries.

And there were no suspicious police-looking persons loitering outside Mrs. Gerand's house. Three rods from the front door and Clancy's confidence in her own ability to thwart the whole New York detective force had returned.

Mrs. Gerand had recommended that she breakfast in a restaurant on Sixth Avenue, praising the coffee and boiled eggs highly. Clancy found it without difficulty. It was a sort of bakery, lunch-room, and pastry shop.

Blown by a brisk wind, Clancy stopped before a mirror to readjust her hat and hair. In the mirror, she saw a friendly face smiling at her. She turned. At a marble-topped table sat Mrs. Carey. She beckoned for Clancy. Short of actual rudeness, there was nothing for Clancy to do but to accept the invitation.

"You look," Mrs. Carey greeted her, "as though you'd been out in your catboat already. Sit down with me. Jennie!" she called to a waitress. "Take Miss Deane's order."

Clancy let Mrs. Carey order for her. She envied the older woman's air of authority, her easiness of manner.

"New York hasn't corrupted you as yet, Miss Deane, has it? You keep Maine hours. Fancy meeting any one breakfasting at seven-thirty."

"But I've met you, and you're a New Yorker," said Clancy.

Mrs. Carey laughed.

"I have to work."

"So do I," said Clancy.

"Whereabouts? At what?" asked Mrs. Carey.

"I don't know," Clancy confessed. "I've made a list of firms that advertise for stenographers."

"'Stenographer?' With that skin? And those eyes? And your hair? Bless your heart, Miss Deane, you ought to go on the stage—or into the movies."

Clancy lowered her eyes to the grapefruit which the waitress had brought.

"I—don't think I'd care for either of those," she answered.

"Hm. Wouldn't care to do a little posing? Oh, of course not. No future in that—" Mrs. Carey's brows wrinkled. She broke a roll and buttered it. "Nothing," she said, "happens without good reason. I was alarmed about my cook this morning. Laid up in bed. I think it's—'flu,' though I hope not. Anyway, the doctor says it's not serious; she'll be well in a day or so. But I hated to go out for my breakfast instead of eating in bed. And I can't cook a thing!"

"No?" said Clancy. Into her tones crept frigidity. Mrs. Carey laughed suddenly.

"Bless your sweet heart, did you think I was offering you a place as cook? No; in my roundabout, verbose way, Miss Deane, I was explaining that my cook's illness was a matter for congratulation. It sent me outdoors, enabled me to meet you, and—after breakfast come over to my studio. Sally Henderson needs an assistant, and spoke to me the other day. You'll do."

"What sort of work is it?" asked Clancy timidly.

"Interior decorating—and renting apartments."

"But I—don't know anything about that sort of thing."

Mrs. Carey laughed.

"Neither does Sally. Her father died five years ago. He was a doctor. Lots of money, but spent it all. Sally had to do something. So she became an interior decorator. Don't argue with me, my dear. I intend to play Destiny for you. How are the buckwheat cakes?"

"Fine!" Clancy murmured from a full mouth.

VIII

Clancy's ideas of studios had been gained from the perusal of fiction. So the workmanlike appearance of the room on the top floor of Sophie Carey's house on Waverly Place was somewhat of a surprise to her.

Its roof was of glass, but curtains, cunningly manipulated by not too sightly cords, barred or invited the overhead light as the artist desired. The front was a series of huge windows, which were also protected by curtains. It faced the north.

About the room, faces to wall, were easels. Mrs. Carey turned one round until the light fell upon it.

It was a large canvas, which Clancy supposed was allegorical. Three figures stood out against a background of rolling smoke above a scene of desolation—a man, a woman, and a child, their garments torn and stained, but their faces smiling.

"Like it?" asked Mrs. Carey.

"Why—it's wonderful!" cried Clancy.

"I call it 'Hope,'" said Mrs. Carey.

Clancy stared at it. She got the painter's idea. The man and his wife and their child, looking smilingly forward into a future that— She turned to Mrs. Carey. She pointed to the foreground.

"Isn't there more—smoke—trouble—there?"

"There is—but they refuse to look at it. That, after all, is hope, isn't it, Miss Deane? Hope founded on sheer blindness never has seemed to me a particularly admirable quality. But hope founded on courage is worth while. You really like it?"

Clancy turned again to the picture. Suddenly she pointed to the figure of the man.

"Why, that's Mr. Randall!" she exclaimed.

"Yes. Of course, it isn't really a likeness. I didn't want that. I merely wanted the magnificence of his body. It is magnificent, isn't it? Such a splendid waist-line above such slender but strong thighs. Remarkable, in these days, when, outside of professional athletes, the man with a strong upper body usually has huge, ungraceful hips."

Mrs. Carey picked up a telephone as she spoke, and so did not observe the blush that stole over Clancy's face. Of course, artists, even women artists, spoke unconventionally, but to discuss in such detail the body of a man, known to both of them was not mere unconventionality—it was shocking. That is, it was shocking according to the standards of Zenith.

Clancy listened while her hostess spoke to some one whom she called "Sally," and who must be Miss Henderson.

"You said you wanted some one, Sally. Well, I have the some one. Prettiest thing you ever looked at.... The business? As much as you do, probably. What difference does it make? She's pretty. She's lovely. No man could refuse to rent an apartment or have his place done over if she asked him.... Right away. Miss Deane, her name is.... Not at all, old thing."

She hung up and turned beamingly to Clancy.

"Simple, isn't it? You are now, Miss Deane, an interior decorator. At least, within an hour you will be." She wrote rapidly upon the pad by the telephone. "Here's the address. You don't need a letter of introduction."

Dazed, Clancy took the slip of paper. She noted that the address written down was a number on East Forty-seventh Street. Little as she yet knew of the town's geography, she knew that Fifth Avenue was the great dividing-line. Therefore, any place east of it must be quite a distance from Times Square, which was two long blocks west of Fifth Avenue. She would be safe from recognition at Miss Sally Henderson's—probably. But she refused to think of probabilities.

"I don't know how to thank you, Mrs. Carey," she said.

Sophie Carey laughed carelessly.

"Don't try, my dear. Don't ever learn. The really successful person—and you're going to be a great success—never expresses gratitude. He—or she—accepts whatever comes along."

She crossed her knees and lighted a cigarette.

"I couldn't follow that philosophy," said Clancy. "I wouldn't want to."

"Why not?" demanded Sophie Carey.

"It doesn't seem—right," said Clancy. "Besides," she added hastily, "I'm not sure that I'll be a success."

Mrs. Carey stared at her.

"Why not?" she asked sharply. "God gives us brains; we use them. God gives us strength; we use it. God gives us good looks; why shouldn't we use them? As long as this is a man-ruled world, feminine good looks will assay higher than feminine brains. If you don't believe it, compare the incomes received by the greatest women novelists, artists, doctors, lawyers, with the incomes received by women who have no brains at all, but whose beauty makes them attractive in moving pictures or upon the stage. Beauty is an asset that mustn't be ignored, my dear Miss Deane. And you have it. Have it? Indeed you have! Didn't our hitherto immune David become infected with the virus of love the moment he saw you?"

Clancy looked prim.

"I'm sure," she said, almost rebukingly, "that Mr. Randall couldn't have done anything like that—so soon."

Mrs. Carey laughed.

"I'll forgive you because of your last two words, my dear. They prove that you're not the little prig that you sound. Why, you know that David is extremely interested. And you are interested yourself. Otherwise, you would not be jealous of me."

"Jealous?" Clancy was indignant.

Mrs. Carey smiled.

"That's what I said. When you recognized him in the painting— My dear, I'm too old for David. I'm thirty-one. Besides, I have a husband living. You need not worry."

She rose, and before Clancy could frame any reply, threw an arm about the girl's shoulders and led her from the studio. Descending the two flights of stairs to the street door, Clancy caught a glimpse of a lovely boudoir, and a drawing-room whose huge grand piano and subdued coloring of decoration lived up to her ideals of what society knew as correct. The studio on the top floor might be a workroom, but the rest of the house was a place that, merely to own, thought Clancy, was to be assured of happiness.

Indeed, after having left Mrs. Carey and boarding a cross-town car at Eighth Street, Clancy wondered that Mrs. Carey did not give the impression of complete happiness. She was famous, rich, sought-after, yet she seemed, to Clancy, dissatisfied. Probably, thought Clancy, some trouble with her husband. Surely it must be the fault of Mr. Carey, for no woman so sweet and generous as Sophie Carey could possibly be at fault.

For a moment, she had been indignant at Mrs. Carey's charge of jealousy. But the one salient characteristic of Clancy Deane was honesty. It was a characteristic that would bring to her unhappiness and happiness both. Just now, that honesty hurt her pride. For she had felt a certain restlessness, uneasiness, that had been indefinable until Mrs. Carey had named it. It had been jealousy. She had resented that this rich, beautiful, and famous woman should assume a slightly proprietary air toward David Randall. Clairvoyantly, Clancy knew that she would never really love Sophie Carey. Still, she would try to.

At Astor Place, she took the subway, riding, according to instructions that Mrs. Carey had given her, to the Grand Central Station. Here she alighted and, a block west, turned up Madison Avenue.

If it had not occurred to her before that one found one's way about most easily in New York, she would have learned it now. With its avenues running north and south, and its cross-streets running east and west, and with practically all of both, save in the far-down-town district, numbered, it was almost impossible for any one who could read Arabic numerals to become lost in this, the greatest city of the Western hemisphere.

She found the establishment of "Sally Henderson, Interior Decorator—Apartments," a few doors east of Madison Avenue.

A young gentleman, soft-voiced, cow-eyed, moved gracefully forward to greet her. The cut of his sleeves, as narrow as a woman's, and fitting at the shoulder with the same pucker, the appearance of the waist-line as snug as her own, made Clancy realize that the art of dressing men has reappeared in the world as pronouncedly as in the days when they wore gorgeous laces and silken breeches, and bejeweled-buckled shoes.

The young gentleman—Clancy later learned that he was named Guernsey, and pronounced it "Garnsey"—ushered her into an inner office. This room was furnished less primly than the outer office. The first room she had entered seemed, with its filing-cases and busy stenographer pounding away at a typewriter and its adding machine and maps upon the wall, a place of business. But this inner room seemed like a boudoir. Clancy discovered that the outer room was where persons who desired to rent apartments were taken care of; this inner room was the spot where those desirous of the services of an interior decorator were received.

Miss Sally Henderson sat at a table upon which were samples of wall-paper. She was tall, Clancy could tell, had what in Zenith would be termed a "skinny" figure, and her hair, of a stringy mud-color, was almost plastered, man-fashion, upon a narrow, high forehead. Upon her nose were perched a pair of glasses. Her lips, surprisingly, were well-formed, full, and red. It was the mouth of a sensuous, beauty-loving, passionate woman, and the rest of her was the masculinity of an old maid.

She smiled as Clancy approached.

"So Sophie sent you to my matrimonial bureau, eh?" she said. Clancy stared. "Oh, yes," Miss Henderson went on; "three girls have been married from this business in the last eight months. I think there's a curse on the place. Tell me—are you engaged, in love, or anything?" Clancy shook her head. "That's too bad," sighed Miss Henderson.

"Why?" asked Clancy.

"Oh, if you were already engaged, you'd not be husband-hunting the men who come apartment-hunting."

"I assure you that I'm not husband-hunting," said Clancy indignantly.

Miss Henderson shrugged.

"Of course you are, my dear. All of us are. Even myself. Though I've given it up lately. My peculiar style of beauty doesn't lure the men, I'm beginning to understand. Well, you can't help it if you're beautiful, can you? And I can't help it if one of my clients runs away with you. Just stay three months, and I'll give you, to start with, fifty dollars a week."

Clancy stared at her.

"You'll give me fifty a week—right now?"

"My dear, any musical-comedy manager would give you forty to stand in the front row. You could earn a trifle more than that by not being particular. I take it that you are particular. Should a particular girl earn less than the other kind? Is it common justice? It is not. Therefore, I will pay you fifty dollars a week. You ought to rent a hundred per cent. of the apartments you show. Also, every third client you deal with ought to be wheedled into having some interior decorating done. I can afford to pay you that."

Clancy gasped. Fifty dollars a week was not, of course, a tithe of what she'd expect to earn in the moving pictures, but it was a big salary to one who possessed about five dollars in the world.

"But you'll have to buy yourself some decent clothes," continued Miss Henderson. "That suit, if you'll pardon me, my dear, looks like the very devil. I have a dressmaker, unique thing— Oh, don't stare at the clothes I have on; I have to dress this way during office-hours. It makes me look business-like. But outside of business—it's different. You may trust my dressmaker. Cheaper—much cheaper, too. What do you know about interior decorating?" she asked suddenly.

"Nothing," Clancy confessed frankly.

"Excellent!" said Miss Henderson. "Interior decorators can design theatrically beautiful rooms, but not homes. How can they? Home is the expression of its owner. So the less you know the better."

Clancy drew in a long breath. Feebly, she comprehended that she was in the presence of a "character," a person unique in her experience. She was glad that she did not have to talk, that her new employer's verbosity covered up her own silence. She was grateful when, as Miss Henderson paused, the young man, Guernsey, entered.

"Mr. Grannis to see you, Miss Henderson," he said.

Miss Henderson shrugged petulantly. She looked at Clancy.

"Your first commission, Miss Deane," she said. "He wants to rent an apartment. He has oodles of money. Here is a list of places. Mr. Guernsey will order a car for you. You'll find the rental-rates on this card. God be with you, my child!"

She grinned, and Clancy started for the door. Her footsteps were faltering and her face white. Grannis was an unusual name. And Grannis had been one of the players in the Zenda poker game three nights ago!

IX

New as she was to New York, limited of observation and of ability to digest her observations and draw from them sane conclusions, Clancy realized that each business in the city was confined to certain restricted districts. For instance, Times Square was the center of the theatrical and night life of the city. A cursory glance at the women on Fifth Avenue near Forty-second Street was enough to make her pretty certain that this was the heart of the shopping-district. And, of course, all the reading world knew that the financial district was down-town.

This knowledge had contributed to her feeling of security. She was a single atom in a most enormous city. Even though the police, by reason of the card bearing Fanchon DeLisle's introduction of Clancy to Morris Beiner, might be investigating her, it seemed hardly probable to Clancy that any chance meeting would betray her. She thought that one could live years, decades in New York without meeting a single acquaintance. Until the police should get in touch with Fanchon DeLisle and discover that Florine Ladue and Clancy Deane were the same person, Clancy believed that she was comparatively safe.

But now, as she hesitated on the threshold of the outer office, it came to her with a shock that New York was a small place. Later on, she would learn that the whole world is a tiny hiding-place for a fugitive, but just now it seemed to her that fate was treating her most unkindly in bringing her into contact with Grannis to-day. But at the moment she could only blame fate, not realizing that, from the very nature of its geography, having so much north and south and so comparatively little east and west, all New York, practically, must, at some time during its working-day, be in the neighborhood of Times Square or the Grand Central Station, and that shrewd men, realizing this fact, have centered certain businesses, such as the retail-clothing trade, the jewelry and other luxury-merchandising, the hotels and theaters in these neighborhoods. The money may be made in other parts of the town, but it is spent here.

So, had Clancy but realized it, it was not at all unusual that, within the first hour of her employment by Sally Henderson, Grannis should enter the offices. He needed an apartment; Sally Henderson, catering to the class of persons who could afford expensive rentals, was naturally located in a district contiguous to other places where cost was not counted by the customer.

It was only by a tremendous effort of will that Clancy forced herself across the threshold.

But Grannis's sallow face did not change its expression as she entered. It so happened that he had a lot on his mind, of which the renting of an apartment was but a minor detail. And young Guernsey and the stenographer were not particularly observant; they merely saw that Miss Henderson's new employee seemed a bit timid.

"Miss Deane, this is Mr. Grannis," said Guernsey. "Miss Deane will show you several apartments," he added.

Grannis nodded absent-mindedly. He glanced at Clancy for a moment; then his eyes dropped. Clancy drew a long breath. Something seemed about to burst within her bosom. Relief is quite as violent in its physical effects as fear, though not so permanent. Then her pulse slowed down. But her eyes were filmily unseeing until they had entered the motor, a closed car, that Guernsey ordered.

Then they cleared. Unflattering as it might be to her vanity, it was nevertheless a fact that Grannis had no recollection of having met her before. It was natural enough, Clancy assured herself. She had simply been an extra person at a dance, at a poker-party. Further, in her coat suit and wearing a hat, she was not the same person that had accompanied Fay Marston three nights ago to the Château de la Reine.

Why, it was quite probable that even Zenda would not remember her if he saw her again. Then her throat seemed to thicken up a trifle. That was not so, because Morris Beiner had told her that not only had Zenda remembered her first name but had been able to describe her so accurately that Beiner had recognized her from the description.

But, at the moment, she had nothing to fear. She looked at the card Miss Henderson had given her. There were half a dozen addresses written on it. The rentals placed opposite them ranged from five to twelve hundred.

"How much did you wish to pay, Mr. Grannis?" she asked.

Grannis started as she spoke. He stared at her; his brows furrowed. Clancy felt herself growing pale. Then Grannis smiled.

"I meet so many people—oh, thousands, Miss Deane—that I'm always imagining that I've met my newest acquaintance before. I haven't met you, have I?"

The direct lie was something that Clancy abhorred, hardly ever in her life had she uttered one.

She compromised between the instinct for self-preservation and a rigid upbringing by shaking her head. He accepted the quasi-denial with a smile, then answered her question.

"Oh, six or eight hundred a month—something like that," he said carelessly.

Clancy smothered a gasp. Miss Henderson had told her nothing of the details of the business. That had been careless to an extreme of Miss Henderson. Yet Clancy supposed that Miss Henderson felt that, if an employee didn't have common sense, she wouldn't retain her. Still, not to have told Clancy that these rentals marked on this card were by the month, instead, as Clancy had assumed, by the year, was to have relied not merely on Clancy's possession of common sense but on her experience of New York. But Miss Henderson didn't know that Clancy had just come from the country. Probably sending Clancy out offhand in this fashion had been a test of Clancy's adaptability for the business. Well—and her chin stuck forward a bit—she'd show that she had that adaptability. If Grannis were willing to pay six or eight hundred dollars a month for an apartment, she'd rent him one.

She handed the card to Grannis.

"You're a busy man," she said. "Which address looks best to you?"

Grannis stared at her.

"I congratulate you, Miss Deane. Most women would have taken me to the least desirable first, tried to foist it upon me, then dragged me to another. This one."

He put his finger on the third apartment listed. The rental was eight hundred and fifty dollars a month, and opposite it were the words: "six months." Clancy interpreted this to mean that the tenant must sign a six months' lease. She said as much to Grannis, who merely nodded acquiescently.

Clancy had never been in a limousine in her life before. But she picked up the speaking-tube, which told its own purpose to her quick wit, and spoke to the chauffeur. The car moved toward Park Avenue, turned north, and stopped a dozen blocks above Forty-seventh Street.

One hour and a half later, Grannis left Miss Sally Henderson's offices. Behind him, Miss Henderson fingered a lease, signed by Grannis, and a check for eight hundred and fifty dollars, also signed by the moving-picture man.

"My dear," she said, "you're wonderful! You have passed the test."

"'Test?'" echoed Clancy innocently.

"I have only one," said Miss Henderson. "Results. You got them. How did you do it?"

Clancy shrugged carelessly.

"I don't know. I showed him the apartment. He liked it. That's all."

"You're engaged!" cried Miss Henderson.

"'Engaged?'"

"Yes—to work for me."

"But you engaged me before I went out with Mr. Grannis," said Clancy.

Miss Henderson smiled. Clancy discovered that those full lips could be as acidulous as they were sensuous.

"But not permanently, my dear. Oh, I may have talked about salaries and employing you and all that sort of thing, but—that was to give you confidence. If you'd failed in letting an apartment to Mr. Grannis—but you didn't, my dear." She turned to Guernsey. "If you had the pep of Miss Deane, Frank, you'd be running this business instead of working for me. Why don't you show some jazz?"

Guernsey shrugged.

"I'm not a pretty girl," he replied.

He left the office, and Miss Henderson looked Clancy over critically.

"Better call it a day, my dear, and run over to Forty-fifth Street and see my dressmaker. I'll 'phone her while you're on the way. Put yourself entirely in her hands, and I'll attend to the bill. Only—you promise to stay three months?"

"I promise," said Clancy.

Sally Henderson laughed.

"Then run along. Miss Conover. Jennie Conover. Number Sixty-three A West Forty-fifth. Take whatever she chooses for you. Good-by."

Clancy was crossing Fifth Avenue a moment later. She was as dazed as she'd been when Morris Beiner had made the engagement with Hildebloom, of the Rosebush studios. This amazing town, where some starved and others walked into fortune! This wondrous city that, when it smiled, smiled most wondrously, and, when it frowned, frowned most horrendously! But yesterday it had pursued her, threatened her with starvation, perhaps. The day before, it had promised her fame and fortune. To-day, it promised her, if neither fame nor fortune, at least more immediate money than she had ever earned in her life, and a chance for success that, while not dazzling, yet might be more permanent than anything that the stage could offer her.

She felt more safe, too, now that she had met one of the players in Zenda's poker game. Doubtless she could meet any of the rest of them, except Zenda himself, and escape recognition. The town no longer seemed small to her; it seemed vast again. It was quite improbable that she would ever again run across any of those few Broadwayites who knew her. At any rate, sufficient time would have elapsed for the real murderer of Morris Beiner to have been apprehended. Up to now, oddly enough, she had not devoted much thought to the possible identity of the murderer. She had been too greatly concerned with her own peril, with the new interests that despite the peril, were so engrossing. Her meeting with Randall, her acquaintance with Sophie Carey, her new position—these had occupied most of her thoughts of the last twenty-four hours. Before that, for eight hours or so, she had been concerned with her danger. That danger had revived momentarily this afternoon; it had died away almost immediately. But the only way to remove the cause of the danger was to discover the identity of the person who had killed Morris Beiner.

She drew a deep breath. She couldn't do any investigating, even if she knew how, without subjecting herself to great risk. Still— She refused to think about the matter. Which is exactly what youth always does; it will not face the disagreeable, the threatening. And who shall say that it is not more sensible in this than age, which, knowing life's inevitability of act and consequence, is without hope?

She entered the establishment of Jennie Conover with that thrill which comes to every woman at her modiste's or furrier's or jeweler's. Clothes may not make the man, but they may mar the woman. Clancy knew that her clothes marred her. Miss Sally Henderson, whose own garb was nothing wonderful, but who apparently knew the things that were deemed fashionable, had said for Clancy to trust entirely to the judgment of Miss Conover. Clancy would do so.

Care, that had hovered about her, now resting on her slim shoulders, now apparently flying far off, suddenly seemed to have left her for good and all. It was discarded even as she discarded her coat suit, petticoat, and waist before the appraising eyes of Miss Conover, the plump, good-humored dressmaker to whom Miss Henderson had sent her.

But she donned these undistinguished garments an hour later. Also, she donned Care, the lying jade who had seemed to leave her. For, walking measuredly up and down, as though prepared to wait forever for her reappearance, was Grannis, the man whom she had been so certain had not recognized her earlier to-day.

She hesitated a moment upon the stoop of the building that had once been a private residence, then a boarding-house, and was now remodeled into intimate shops and tiny apartments. But Grannis had seen her; flight would merely postpone the inevitable. Bravely she descended the short flight of steps, and, as Grannis approached, she forced a smile to her white lips.

He stopped a yard away from her, studying her carefully with eyes that she suddenly sensed were near-sighted. His sallow, lean countenance was wrinkled with puzzlement.

"Miss Deane," he said slowly, "you told me this afternoon that we had not met before."

Clancy had not said anything of the sort. She had simply evaded a question with a nod of the head. But now she merely shrugged her shoulders. It was an almost despairing little shrug, pathetic, yet with defiance in it, too. It expressed her mental attitude. She was despairing; also she was defiant.

Grannis studied her a moment longer. Then, abruptly, he said:

"I haven't the best memory in the world, Miss Deane, but—from the moment I heard your voice to-day, I've been sure that we've met before. I know where, now. In fact, I'd hardly left you when I remembered. And I waited outside Miss Henderson's office and followed you. Isn't there some place where we can go and talk?"

"You seem to be talking quite clearly here," said Clancy. She knew that her cheeks were white and that her voice trembled, but her eyes never left the eyes of Grannis.

The tall, thin moving-picture magnate shrugged his narrow shoulders. But his shrug was not like Clancy's. It was neither despairing, nor pathetic, nor defiant. It was careless.

"Just as you say, of course, Miss Deane. Only—there are pleasanter places than a police station. Don't you think so?"

Clancy gasped. She seemed to grow cold all over, then hot. Then she felt as if about to faint. She gripped herself with an effort that would have done credit to a woman ten years older.

"All right," she said. "Where shall we go?"

X

Grannis turned abruptly to the east. It would have been quite easy, Clancy thought, to slip away and lose herself in the crowd that swarmed upon Fifth Avenue. But she had common sense. She knew that ahead of every flight waits the moment of pause, and that when she paused, Grannis or Zenda or the police would catch up with her; And—she had no money. Unless she chose to starve, she must return to-morrow, or the next day to Miss Sally Henderson's office. There, Grannis would be waiting for her. Besides, he had already threatened, "Pleasanter places than a police station!"

A police station!

What courage she had mustered to meet Grannis' first words had evaporated as she followed him meekly up three steps and through the revolving door of a restaurant.

Within was a narrow hall, the further side of which was framed by glass windows that ran to the ceiling, and through which was visible a dining-room whose most conspicuous decorations were tubs of plants. At one end of the hall was a grill, and at the other end was another restaurant.

Grannis turned to a check-boy and surrendered his hat and coat. He threw a question at Clancy.

"Powder your nose?" He took it for granted that she would, and said: "I'll be up-stairs. Tea-room."

He sauntered toward an elevator without a glance at her. A maid showed Clancy to a dressing-room. She learned what she had not happened to discover at the Château de la Reine three nights ago—that every well-appointed New York restaurant has a complete supply of powder and puffs and rouge and whatever other cosmetics may be required.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She had never rouged in her life, considering it one of those acts the commission of which definitely establishes a woman as not being "good." So, even though her usually brilliant skin was pale with apprehension, she refused the maid's offer of artificial coloring. But she did use the powder.

Up-stairs she hesitated timidly on the threshold of the tea-room. An orchestra was playing, and a score of couples were dancing. This was Fifth Avenue, and a word overheard in the dressing-room had informed her that this restaurant was Ferroni's, one of the most famous, she believed, in the world. In her unsophistication—for Clancy was sophisticated only within certain definite limits; she could take care of herself in any conflict with a man, but would be, just now, helpless in the hands of a worldly woman—she supposed that Ferroni's patronage was drawn from the most exclusive of New York's society. Yet the people here seemed to be of about the same class as those who had been at the Château de la Reine on Monday night. They were just as noisy, just as quiet. The women were just as much painted, just as daring in the display of their limbs. They smoked when they weren't dancing.

Clancy would soon learn that the difference between Broadway and Fifth Avenue is something that puzzles students of New York, and that most students arrive at the conclusion that the only difference is that the Avenue has more money and has had it longer. Arriving at that truth, it is simple of comprehension that money makes society. There is a pleasant fiction, to which Clancy in her Maine rearing had given credence, that it takes generations to make that queer thing known as a "society" man or woman. She did not realize that all the breeding in the world will not make a cad anything but a cad, or a loose woman anything but a loose woman.

She had expected that persons who danced on Fifth Avenue would have round them some visible, easily discernible aura of gentility. For, of course, she thought that a "society man" must necessarily be a gentleman. But, so far as she could see, the only difference between this gathering and the gathering at Zenda's Broadway party was that the latter contained more beautiful women, and that the men had been better dancers.

The music suddenly stopped, and at that instant she saw Grannis sitting at a table across the room. Timidly she advanced toward him, but her timidity was in no wise due to her association with him. It was a shyness born of lack of confidence. She was certain that her shoes clattered upon the waxed floor and that every woman who noticed her smiled with amused contempt at her frock. These things, because Clancy was young, were of more importance than the impending interview with Grannis.

"That rouge becomes you," said Grannis brusquely, as she sat down in the chair beside him.

Clancy stared at him. She did not know that embarrassment had restored color to her cheeks.

"I never rouge," she replied curtly.

"Oh, well, don't get mad about it. I don't care a rap whether you do or don't," he said. "Only, you're looking prettier than a while ago." He eyed her closely. His near-sighted eyes took on an expression of personal interest. Heretofore, his expression had been impersonal. But now she felt that Grannis was conscious that she was a young girl, not bad to look upon. She resented it. Perhaps Grannis caught that resentment. He picked up a menu.

"Eat?" he asked.

He was a monosyllabic sort of person, Clancy decided, frugal of words. Something inside her bade her be cautious. Those who are frugal of speech force others to be wasteful, and Clancy, in so far as, in her chaotic mental state, she had arrived at any decision, had decided to commit herself as little as possible. If she was to be accused of the murder of Morris Beiner, the less she said the better.

But the one-word questions demanded an answer. She suddenly realized that excitement had temporarily made her forget hunger. But hunger forgotten is not hunger overcome. She hadn't eaten since breakfast. Yet, because of the social timidity that had made her walk mincingly across the room, she said she preferred that Grannis should order. Clancy was only four days away from Maine, where it is still not considered too well bred to declare that one is famished.

Fortunately, however, Grannis was hungry. He ordered sandwiches—several varieties—and a pot of tea. Then he looked at Clancy. She was experiencing various emotions to-day, many of them survivals of age-old instinct. Now she felt suddenly conscious that Grannis was dishonest.

"Dance?" Grannis asked. She shook her head. "Been in the city long?"

"Not very," she replied.

"Not living at the Napoli any more, eh?" She shook her head again. "Seen Fay to-day? Fay Marston?" Once more she shook her head. "Don't feel like talking, eh?" She shrugged. "Oh, well, there's no hurry. I can wait——"

She did not learn what Grannis would wait for, because the arrival of the waiter stopped Grannis's speech. She hoped that her face did not show her anxiety, not about his questioning, but about the food. The instinct that told her that Grannis was dishonest also told her that one need not fear greatly a dishonest person. She began, as the waiter arranged the service, to analyze Grannis's actions. If he knew of her visits to Beiner, why did he bring her here? Why didn't he denounce her to the police? The question answered itself. He knew nothing of those visits.

Her hands were steady as she reached for the tea-pot. She poured it with a grace that caught Grannis's attention.

"Wish to God that was something you could teach a woman who never had any real bringing-up. Trouble with pictures is the same trouble that's the matter with everything else in this world—the people in them. How can you teach a girl that ain't a lady to act like one? You could get money just for that way you handle that tea. Never thought of trying pictures, did you?"

"Not—seriously," said Clancy.

"Pretty good graft you got at Miss Henderson's, I suppose. Ike Weber steer you against it?"

Clancy bit into a sardine sandwich in a leisurely manner. She swallowed, then drank some tea. Then, in a careless tone, she replied:

"Mr. Weber never steered me against anything. I never met him until the night of Mr. Zenda's party. And I haven't seen him since."

"You'd stick to that—in a court-room?"

Clancy laughed. "I'll never have to, will I?"

Into Grannis's dull eyes crept admiration.

"Kid, I'm for you," he said. Clancy shrugged again. Although no one had ever commented on it, she knew that her shrug was a prettily provocative thing. "Don't care whether I'm for you or not, eh?"

Clancy stared at him. "You know," he said, "if I tipped off this Miss Henderson that Weber planted you with her so's you could steer suckers—wealthy folks that don't mind a little game—his way, how long do you think your graft would last?"

"You'd have to prove what you said, you know," Clancy reminded him.

"Kid, why haven't you been round to see Zenda?" he asked.

"Why should I go round to see him?"

Grannis's eyes took on a cunning look.

"Now you're talking business. We're getting down to cases. Listen, kid: You were scared of me a while ago. You've forgotten that. Why?" Clancy reached for another sandwich. She made no answer. "You're certainly there, kid!" exclaimed her companion. "No one is running a blazer on you, are they?"

"No one is fooling me, if that's what you mean," said Clancy.

"You've said it! Well, I won't try to bluff you, kid. I've found you. It's a lucky chance, and I don't deserve any credit for it, but—I found you—before Zenda did. Before Ike did, if it comes to that. And Ike's the guy that wants you. I been feeling you out, to find out where you stood. I know that Ike didn't plant you with Miss Henderson. I dunno how you got in there. All Fay knows of you is that you were living at the Napoli, and were going in the movies, she thought. But Fay's a blab-mouth, and Ike and I know what she told you—about her and Ike working together to gyp people in poker games. Well, Ike figures that, as long as you disappear, he should worry, but when I run into you to-day, I begin to wonder. Now I see that you're no boob. Well then, take a look at that!"

"That" was a bill. The denomination was the largest Clancy had ever seen on a piece of money. One thousand dollars! And Grannis placed it on the table by her plate.

"Slip it into your kick, kid. There's more where it came from. Put it away before the waiter sees it. Understand?" Clancy didn't understand, and her face showed it. "Weber is coming back to town," said Grannis. "He can't come back if there's real evidence against him. The only real evidence is what Fay Marston told you. Can you keep your mouth shut?"

Clancy stared at him. Grannis grinned. He entirely misunderstood her bewilderment. He rose suddenly, placing a five-dollar bill on the table.

"I'm in a hurry. That's for the tea. So long, kid." He walked away, leaving Clancy staring at the thousand-dollar bill.

XI

It was more difficult to leave Ferroni's than it had been to enter it. It was Clancy's first experience in a restaurant that, she assumed—and correctly enough—was a fashionable one. And it was not merely the paying of the obsequious waiter that flustered Clancy. She felt like a wallflower at a college dance. Conscious that her clothing was not modish, she had slipped timidly across the room to join Grannis. Now, having tipped the waiter, she must walk lonesomely across the room to the door, certain that everyone present was sneering inwardly at the girl whose cavalier had deserted her.

For Clancy was like most other girls—a mixture of timidity and conceit. She knew that she was beautiful; likewise, she knew that she was ugly. With a man along, admiration springing from his eyes—Clancy felt assured. Alone, running the gantlet of observation—she felt hobbledehoyish, deserted.

As a matter of fact, people were looking at her. Neither the cheap hat nor her demoded coiffure could hide the satiny luster of her black hair. Embarrassment lent added brilliance to her wonderful skin, and the awkwardness that self-consciousness always brings in its train could not rob her walk of its lissom grace. She almost ran the last few steps of her journey across the room, and seeing a flight of stairs directly before her, hastened down them, not waiting for the elevator.

She walked rapidly the few steps from the entrance to Ferroni's to Fifth Avenue, then turned south. The winter twilight, which is practically no twilight at all, had ended. The darkness brought security to Clancy. Also the chill air brought coolness to a forehead that had been flushed by youth's petty alarms.

It did more than that; it gave her perspective. She laughed, a somewhat cynical note in her mirth, which Zenith had never heard from the pretty lips of Clancy Deane. With a charge of murder in prospect, she had let herself be concerned over such matters as the fit of a skirt, the thickness of the soles of her shoes, the casual opinions of staring persons whom she probably would never see again, much less know.

She had placed Grannis's thousand-dollar bill in her pocketbook. She clasped the receptacle tightly as she crossed Forty-second Street, battling, upon the sidewalks and curbs, with the throng of commuters headed for the Grand Central Station. For a moment she was occupied in making her way through it, but another block down the avenue brought her to a backwater in the six-o'clock throng. She sauntered more slowly now, after the fashion of people who are engaged in thought.

Her instinct had been correct—Grannis was dishonest. His gift of a thousand dollars proved that. But why the gift? He knew, of course, that she was aware of his partnership with Zenda. His statement that he didn't want Zenda to know that he had seen her had been proof of his assumption of her knowledge of the partnership that existed between himself and the famous director. Then why did he dare do something that indicated disloyalty to his associate?

Why hadn't she made him take the money back? He had every right to assume that she was as dishonest as she seemed. She had permitted him to leave without protest. Further, with the five-dollar bill that he had put upon the table, she had paid the check. She made a mental note of the amount of the bill. Three dollars; and she had given the waiter fifty cents. One dollar and seventy-five cents, then—an exact half of the bill she owed to Grannis. She wouldn't let such a man buy her tea. Also, the change from the five-dollar bill, one dollar and a half. Three dollars and a quarter in all. Plus, of course, the thousand.

She felt tears, vexatious tears, in her eyes. She was in a mood when it would have been easy for her to slap a man's face. She had never done such a thing in her life—at least, not since a little child, and then it had been the face of a boy, not a man. But now, once again, minor things assumed the ascendency in her thoughts.

For even Grannis's attempt to bribe her—that was what it was—was a minor matter compared to the Beiner murder. She wondered what the evening papers would have to say further about that mystery.

A newsboy crying an extra at Thirty-fourth Street sold her a paper. She wanted to open it at once, but, somehow, she feared that reading a newspaper on a cold wintry evening would be most conspicuous on Fifth Avenue.

Even when she had secured a seat on a down-town 'bus, she was half afraid to open the paper. But, considering that practically everyone else in the vehicle was reading, she might safely open hers.

She found what she was looking for without difficulty. Her eyes were keen and the name "Beiner" leaped at her from an inside page. But the reporters had discovered nothing new to add to the morning account. A theory, half-heartedly advanced by the police, that possibly Beiner had killed himself was contradicted by the findings of the coroner, but if the police had any inkling as to the identity of the murderer, they had not confided in the reporters.

That was all. She began to feel justified in her course. To have gone to the police would have meant, even though the police had believed her story, scandal of the most hideous sort. She would have been compelled to tell that Beiner had embraced her, had tried to kiss, had— She remembered the look in the murdered man's eyes, and blushed hotly at the recollection. She would never have been able to hold her head up again. For she knew that the uncharitable world always says, when a man has insulted a woman, "Well, she must have done something herself to make him act that way."

But now she supposed, optimistically, that there must have been, in Beiner's desk, scores of letters and cards of introduction. Why on earth should she have worried herself by thinking that Fanchon DeLisle's card of introduction would have assumed any importance to the police? No matter what investigation the police set on foot, it would hardly be based on the fact that they had found Fanchon's card.

So then, as she had avoided discovery by the mere fact of not having gone to the police, and had thus avoided scandal, and as there was no prospect of discovery, she could congratulate herself on having shown good sense. That she had lost a matter of six hundred and fifty dollars, deposited in the Thespian Bank, was nothing. A good name is worth considerably more than that. Further, she might reasonably dare to withdraw that money—what of it she needed, at any rate—from the bank now. If the police had not by this time discovered the connection between Fanchon's card of introduction and the woman who had been observed upon the fire-escape of the Heberworth Building, they surely never would discover it.

The pocketbook in her hand no longer burned her. There was now no question about her returning Grannis's bribe. In fact, there never had been any question of this. But Clancy was one of those singularly honest persons who are given to self-analysis. Few of us are willing to do that, and still fewer are capable of doing it.

She wondered if it would not be best to do now what she should have done last Tuesday morning. If she went to Zenda and told him what Fay Marston had said to her, she would be doing Zenda a great favor. She was human. She could not keep from her thoughts the possibility of Zenda's returning that favor. And the only return of that favor for which she would ask, the only one that she'd accept, would be an opportunity in the films. The career which she had come to New York to adopt, and which rude chance had torn away from her, was capable of restoration now.

She had fled from Zenda's apartment because scandal had frightened her. The presence of a graver scandal had almost obliterated her fear of the first. She'd go to Zenda, tell him that his partner was deceiving him, plotting against him.

She could hardly wait to take off her coat when she reached her room in Mrs. Gerund's lodging-house. Using some of the note-paper that sold in Zenith as the last word in quiet luxury, she wrote to Zenda:

My dear Mr. Zenda: I was frightened Monday night at your apartment, and so I ran away. But to-day Mr. Grannis saw me and talked to me and gave me a thousand dollars. He said that Mr. Weber could not return to New York while there was any real evidence against him, and that, as I had been told by Miss Marston that she was really Mr. Weber's wife and that she helped him in his card-cheating, I must keep my mouth shut. He said that he didn't want you to know that he had met me. I think you ought to know that Mr. Grannis is on Mr. Weber's side, and if you wish me to, I will call and tell you all that I know.

Yours truly, Clancy Deane.

In the telephone book down-stairs, under "Zenda Films," she found the address of his office on West Forty-fifth Street, and addressed the letter there.

Then she wrote to Grannis. She enclosed the thousand-dollar bill that he had given her. Her letter was a model of simplicity.

My dear Mr. Grannis:

I think you made a mistake.

Yours truly, Clancy Deane.

She addressed the letter to Grannis in care of the Zenda Films and then sealed them both. As she applied the stamps to the envelopes, she wondered whether or not she should have signed her name in the Zenda letter, "Florine Ladue."

She had thoroughly convinced herself that she had nothing to fear from the use of that name. The frights of yesterday and to-day were vanished.

Still, she had dropped the name of "Florine Ladue" as suddenly as she had assumed it. Zenda would write or telephone for her. If she signed herself as "Florine Ladue," she'd have to tell Mrs. Gerand about her nom de théâtre. And Clancy was the kind that keeps its business closely to itself. She was, despite her Irish strain, distinctly a New England product in this respect—as canny as a Scotchman.

So it was as "Clancy Deane" that she sent the letters. She walked to the corner of Thompson Street, found a letter-box, and then returned to the lodging-house. Up-stairs again, she heard the clang of the telephone-bell below. Her door was open, and she heard Mrs. Gerand answering.

She heard her name called aloud. She leaped from the chair; her hand went to her bosom. Then she laughed. She'd given Miss Sally Henderson her address and Mrs. Gerand's 'phone-number to-day. She managed to still the tumultuous beating of her heart before she reached the telephone. Then she smiled at her alarms. It was Mrs. Carey.

"Do be a dear thing, Miss Deane," she said. "I'm giving an impromptu dance at the studio, and I want you to come over."

Clancy was delighted.

"What time?" she asked.

"Oh, come along over now and dine with me. My guests won't arrive until ten, but there's lots of fixing to be done, and you look just the sort of girl that would be good at that. Sally Henderson's been telling me what a wonder you are. Right away?"

"As soon as I can dress," said Clancy. Her step was as light as her heart as she ran up-stairs.

XII

On Monday night, Clancy had had her introduction to metropolitan night life. She didn't know, of course, what sort of party Sophie Carey would give. It probably would differ somewhat from Zenda's affair at the Château de la Reine. Probably—because Mrs. Carey was a painter of great distinction—there would be more of what Clancy chose to denominate as "society" present. Wherefore she knew that her gray foulard was distinctly not au fait.

Having hastily donned the gown, she scrutinized herself distastefully in the mirror, and was unhappy.

For a moment, she thought of telephoning Mrs. Carey and offering some hastily conceived excuse. Then she reflected. David Randall would perhaps be at the party. Clancy had had a unique experience as regards New York men thus far. They had proved inimical to her—all except Randall. He had shown, in the unsubtle masculine ways which are so legible to women, that he had conceived for her one of those sudden attachments that are flattering to feminine vanity. She wanted to see him. And she was honest enough to admit to herself that one of her reasons for wishing to see him had nothing to do with herself. She wanted to observe him with Sophie Carey, to watch his attitude toward her. For, vaguely, she had sensed that Sophie Carey was interested in young Randall. But she tried to put this idea, born of a strange jealousy that she hated to admit, away from her. Mrs. Carey had been an angel to her.

She shrugged. If they didn't like her, they could leave her. About her neck she fastened a thin gold chain, and carefully adjusted the little gold locket that contained a lock of her mother's hair, upon her bosom. She gave a last look at herself, picked up her cheap little blue coat, turned off the electric light, and ran lightly down-stairs.

Mrs. Gerand was in the front hall. Her sharp features softened as she viewed Clancy.

"Party?" she asked.

"Dinner—and dance," said Clancy.

Mrs. Gerand had come from the kitchen to answer the door-bell. She wore an apron, on which she now wiped her hands.

"It's snowing. You oughta have a taxi," she said.

Clancy's jaw dropped in dismay. Even including the change from the five-dollar bill that Grannis had left upon the table—she suddenly realized that she hadn't sent Grannis this money—she had only about seven dollars. Then her face brightened. She had convinced herself that on the morrow it would be perfectly safe to withdraw some of the funds that stood in the Thespian Bank to the credit of Florine Ladue.

And, anyway, it would have been poor economy to ruin the only pair of slippers fit for evening wear that she owned to save a taxi-fare. The snow was swirling through the street as Clancy ran down the steps to the waiting taxi-cab. It was, though she didn't know it, the beginning of a blizzard that was to give the winter of Nineteen-twenty a special prominence. In the cab Clancy wondered if the snow that had fallen upon her hair would melt and disarrange her coiffure. And when Mrs. Carey opened the door herself on Clancy's arrival at the studio-house in Waverly Place, she noticed the girl's hands patting the black mass and laughed.

"Don't bother about it, my dear," she advised. "I want to fix it for you myself after dinner."

She took Clancy's coat from her and hung it in a closet.

"Usually," she said, "I have a maid to attend to these things, but this is Thursday, and she's off for the day."

Clancy suddenly remembered Mrs. Carey's talk of the morning.

"But your cook——"

Mrs. Carey shrugged. They were shoulders well worth shrugging. And the blue gown that her hostess wore this evening revealed even more than the black gown of the Trevor last night.

"Still sick," laughed Mrs. Carey. "That's why I'm giving a party. I like to prove that I'm not dependent on my servants. And I'm not. Of course"—and she chuckled—"I'm dependent upon caterers and that sort of thing, but still—I deceive myself into thinking I'm independent. Self-deception is God's kindest gift to humanity."

She was even more beautiful than last night, Clancy thought. Then she felt a sudden sinking of the heart. If Sophie Carey, with her genius, her fame, her savoir-faire, her beauty, wanted David Randall— She shook her head in angry self-rebuke as she followed Mrs. Carey to the tiny dining-room.

Clancy had never seen such china or silver. And the dinner was, from grapefruit to coffee, quite the most delicious meal that Clancy had ever eaten. Her hostess hardly spoke throughout the dinner, and Clancy was ill at ease, thinking that Mrs. Carey's silence was due to her own inability to talk. The older woman read her thoughts.

"I'm frequently this way, Miss Deane," she laughed, as she poured coffee from a silver pot that was as exquisite in its simplicity of design as some ancient vase. "You mustn't blame yourself. Work went wrong to-day—it often does. I can't talk. I felt blue; so I telephoned half New York and invited it to dance with me to-night. And then I wanted company for dinner, and I picked on you, because my intimate friends won't permit me to be rude to them. And I knew you would. And I won't be any more. Have a cigarette?"

Clancy shook her head.

"I never smoke," she admitted.

"It's lost a lot of its fascination since it became proper," said Mrs. Carey. "However, I like it. It does me good. Drink? I didn't offer you a cocktail, because I ain't got none. I didn't believe it possible that prohibition would really come, and I was fooled. But I have some liqueurs?" Clancy shook her head. Mrs. Carey clapped her hands. "Don will adore you!" she cried. "He loves simplicity, primeval innocence—I hope you break his heart, Miss Deane."

"I hope so, too, if it will please you," smiled Clancy. "Who is Don?"

"My husband," said Mrs. Carey. "If I can't find some one new, fresh, for him to fall in love with, he'll be insisting on returning to me, and I can't have him around. I'm too busy."

Clancy gasped.

"You're joking, of course?"

Mrs. Carey's eyebrows lifted.

"Deed and deedy I'm not joking," she said. "I haven't seen Don for seven months. Last time, he promised me faithfully that he'd go to Reno and charge me with desertion or something like that. I thought he'd done it. I might have known better. He's been paying attentive court to a young lady on Broadway. He telephoned me this afternoon, demanding my sympathy because the young woman had eloped with her press-agent. He insisted on coming down here and letting me hold his hand and place cold cloths on his fevered brow." She laughed and rose from the table. "I'm going to saw him off on you, Miss Deane."

Clancy was like a peony. Mrs. Carey came round the table and threw an arm about her.

"Don't take me too seriously, Miss Deane. I talk and I talk, and when one talks too much, one talks too wildly. Sometimes, when I think upon the foolishness of youth— Don't you marry too soon, Miss Deane."

"I won't!" exclaimed Clancy.

Mrs. Carey laughed.

"Oh, but you will! But we won't argue about it." She stepped away a pace from Clancy. Her eyes narrowed as she stared. "I wonder," she said, "if you're a very—touchy—person."

Clancy hoped that she wasn't, and said so.

"Because," said Sophie Carey, "I've taken an—does it sound too patronizing? Well, no matter. I'm interested in you, Miss Deane. I want you to be a success. Will you let me dress you? Just for to-night? I have a yellow gown up-stairs. Let me see your feet."

Clancy surrendered to the mood of her hostess. She held out her gray-clad foot. Mrs. Carey nodded.

"The slipper will fit. Let's go up."

"Let's!" said Clancy excitedly.

Mrs. Carey's bedroom was furnished in a style that Clancy had never dreamed of. But the impression of the furnishings, the curtains and rugs and lacy pillows—this vanished before the display that the closet afforded. Gown after gown, filmy, almost intangible in their exquisite delicacy— She offered no objection as Sophie Carey unhooked her gray foulard. She slipped into the yellow-silk dress with her heart beating in wild excitement.

In the mirror, after yellow stockings and slippers to match, with bright rhinestone buckles, had been put on, she looked at herself. She blushed until her bosom, her back even, were stained. What would they think in Zenith? She turned, and, by the aid of a hand-mirror, saw her back. A V ran down almost to the waist-line.

"Satisfied?" asked Mrs. Carey.

Clancy ran to her hostess. She threw her arms round Sophie Carey's neck and kissed her. Mrs. Carey laughed.

"That kiss, my dear, is for yourself. But I thank you just the same."

Down-stairs, the door-bell tinkled.

"You'll have to answer it," said Mrs. Carey.

XIII

The opened door admitted more than David Randall. It let in a snowy gust that beat upon Clancy's bosom, rendering her more conscious than even a masculine presence could that the dress she wore was new to her experience. Randall was almost blown through the doorway. He turned and forced the door closed. Turning again, he recognized Clancy, who had retreated, a pink picture of embarrassment, to the foot of the staircase.

"Do I frighten you?" he asked dryly.

Clancy recovered the self-possession that never deserted her for long.

"No one does that," she retorted.

"I believe you," said Randall. His good-humored face wore a slightly pathetic expression. If no man is a hero to his valet, still less is he to the woman for whom he has conceived a sudden devotion which is as yet unreturned.

Clancy dropped him a courtesy.

"Thank you," she said, "for believing me."

He moved toward her, holding out his big hands. Clancy permitted them to envelop one of hers. Randall bowed over it. His face, when he lifted it, was red.

Blushes are as contagious as measles. Clancy was grateful for the cry from above.

"Miss Deane," called Sophie Carey, "who is it?"

"Mr. Randall," Clancy called back.

"Send him into the dining-room. Tell him that there are no cocktails, but Scotch and soda are on the sideboard. Come up, won't you? And tell David to answer the door-bell."

Clancy turned to Randall. His mouth sagged open the least bit. He looked disappointed.

"Don't mind," she whispered. "We'll have it by and by."

"Have what?" he asked blankly.

"The tête-à-tête you want." She laughed. Then she wheeled and ran up the stairs, leaving him staring after her, wondering if she were the sweetly simple country maiden that she had appeared last night, or a wise coquette.

Mrs. Carey, still in the bedroom, where she was, by twisting her lithe, luscious figure, managing to hook up her dress in the back, smiled at Clancy's entrance.

"Is he overwhelmed?" she asked.

Clancy grinned entrancingly. Then she became suddenly demure.

"He—liked me," she admitted.

"He would; they all would," said Mrs. Carey.

She managed the last hook as Clancy offered her aid. She glanced at herself in the mirror, wriggled until the blue frock set more evenly over the waist-line, then turned to Clancy.

"Your hair—I said I'd fix it. Come here," she commanded.

Meekly, Clancy obeyed.

Deftly, Mrs. Carey unfastened Clancy's hair. It was of a soft texture, hung softly to her hips, and seemed, despite its softness, to have an electric, flashing quality. Mrs. Carey's eyes lighted. She was, primarily, an artist. Which means that people were rarely individuals to her. They were subjects. Clancy was a subject now. And a satisfying subject, Mrs. Carey thought, for if the girl had been transformed by the low-cut evening gown, so, by the severe coiffure that her hostess rearranged, was she even more transformed. Mrs. Carey looked at her and shook her head.

"The baby stare went out of fashion on the day that the baby vampire came in," she said. "But you've achieved a combination, Miss Deane."

"Vampires" were not popular in Zenith. Clancy did not know whether to be shocked or pleased. She decided to be pleased.

The door-bell had rung several times during the process of fixing Clancy's hair, and from the down-stairs part of the house came occasional gleeful shouts. Now Mrs. Carey and Clancy descended. They entered the dining-room. A stout, bald gentleman, who, Clancy would learn later, was a Supreme Court judge, lifted a glass and toasted Mrs. Carey.

"Our lovely hostess. May her eyes always be dry, but her cellar never!"

Mrs. Carey laughed.

"You are committing a crime, Judge," she said.

"But not vandalism, Mrs. Carey," he retorted. "Some day, the seekers of evil where there is none are coming to this house. They are going to raid you, Mrs. Carey. And what liquor they find here they will pour into the gutters."

He beamed upon Clancy, set down his glass, and advanced to her.

"Little stranger," he said, "there are many wicked, wicked men in this room to-night. I don't know where Mrs. Carey finds them or why she associates with them. Let us go into a corner while I explain to you why you should know no one in this vile city but myself."

A portly, good-humored-looking woman, who seemed to be bursting from her corsage, tapped the judge on the shoulder.

"Tom, you behave," she said.

The judge sighed. He took Clancy's unresisting hand and lifted it to his lips. His wife, the portly woman, snatched Clancy's hand away.

"Don't pay any attention to him," she said. "He's really an old, old man approaching senility. I know, because I'm married to him. I myself, when a deluded young girl, decided to be a rich old man's darling instead of a poor young man's slave. It was a mistake," she whispered hoarsely. "Youth should never be tied to age."

The judge inflated his huge chest.

"Miss—Miss——"

"Miss Deane," said Sophie Carey; "Judge and Mrs. Walbrough."

Clancy, a bit fussed by the judge's heavy good humor, managed to bow.

"Ah—Miss Deane!" said the judge. "Well, Miss Deane, if you are as sensible as, despite your beauty, you seem to be, you will pay no attention to the maunderings of the woman who calls herself my wife. As a matter of fact, though she does not suspect it, I married her out of pity. She was much older than myself, and possessed a large fortune, which she did not know how to administer. And so I——"

Mrs. Walbrough took Clancy's hand. She pushed her husband away. And Clancy noticed that the hand that pushed lingered to caress. She suddenly adored the judge and loved his wife.

From up-stairs sounded now the barbaric strains of "Vamp."

Randall, who had been hovering near, rushed to her.

"The first dance? Please, Miss Deane!"

Mrs. Walbrough smiled.

"Don't forget to give one to Tom by and by," she said.

"Indeed I won't," promised Clancy.

She and Randall were the first couple to reach the studio. The easels had been removed, and chairs were lined against the walls. At the far end of the room, behind some hastily imported tubs of plants, was a negro orchestra of four men. Into the steps of the fox-trot Randall swung her.

He was not an extremely good dancer. That is, he knew few steps. But he had a sense of rhythm, the dancer's most valuable asset, and he was tall enough, so that their figures blended well. Clancy enjoyed the dance.

Before they had finished, the room was thronged. Mrs. Carey, Clancy decided, must be extremely popular. For Randall knew many of the guests, and their names were familiar, from newspaper reading, even to Clancy Deane, from far-off Zenith. She was extremely interested in seeing people who had been mere names to her. It was interesting to know that a man who drew what Clancy thought were the most beautiful girls in the world was an undistinguished-appearing bald man. It was thrilling to look at a multimillionaire, even though he wore a rather stupid grin on a rather stupid face; to see a great editor, a famous author, a woman whose name was known on two continents for her gorgeous entertainments, an ex-mayor of the city. A score of celebrities danced, laughed, and made merry. And Sophie Carey had managed to summon this crowd upon almost a moment's notice. She must be more than popular; she must be a power. And this popular power had chosen to befriend Clancy Deane, the undistinguished Clancy Deane, a nobody from Zenith, Maine!

Randall surrendered her, after the first dance, to Judge Walbrough. Like most fat men who can dance at all, he danced extremely well. And Clancy found his flowery compliments amusing.

Then Sophie Carey brought forward a young man of whose interested regard Clancy had been conscious for several minutes. He was good-looking, with a mouth whose firmness verged on stubbornness. His dinner jacket sat snugly upon broad shoulders. He wore glasses that did not entirely disguise the fact that his eyes were gray and keen. A most presentable young man, it was not his youth or good looks that compared favorably with Randall's similar qualities, that thrilled Clancy; it was the name that he bore—Vandervent.

"Our famous district attorney," Sophie Carey said, as she presented him. All America had read of the appointment of Philip Vandervent to an assistant district attorneyship. Scion of a family notable in financial and social annals, the fact that he had chosen to adopt the legal profession, instead of becoming the figurehead president of half a dozen trust companies, had been a newspaper sensation five years ago. And three months ago not a paper in the United States had failed to carry the news that he had been appointed an assistant to the district attorney of New York County.

Almost any girl would have been thrilled at meeting Philip Vandervent. And for Clancy Deane, from a little fishing-village in Maine, dancing with him was a distinction that she had never dreamed of achieving.

They slid easily into a one-step, and for one circuit of the room Vandervent said nothing. Then, suddenly, he remarked that she danced well, adding thereto his opinion that most girls didn't.

He spoke nervously; an upward glance confirmed Clancy in an amazing impression, an impression that, when she had observed him staring at her as she danced, she had put down to her own vanity. But now she decided that a Vandervent was as easily conquerable as a Randall. And the thought was extremely agreeable.

"I suppose," she said, "that the district attorney's office is an interesting place."

It was a banal remark, but his own nervousness confused her, and she must say something. So she said this desperately. Usually she was at home when flirtation began. But the Vandervent name awed her.

"Not very," he said. "Not unless one makes it interesting. That's what I've decided to do. I started something to-day that ought to be interesting. Very."

"What is it?" asked Clancy. "Or shouldn't I ask?"

Vandervent caught her eyes as he reversed. He looked swiftly away again.

"Oh, I wouldn't mind telling you," he said.

Clancy knew that Vandervent intended flirtation—in the way of all men, using exactly the same words, the same emphasis on the objective personal pronoun.

"I'd love to hear it," she said. And she cast him an upward glance that might have meant anything, but that really meant that Clancy Deane enjoyed flirtation.

"Difficulty in our office," said Vandervent jerkily, "is lack of cooperation with us by the police. Different political parties. Police lie down often. Doing it now on the Beiner murder."

"On what?" Clancy almost shrieked the question. Luckily, the negro musicians were blaring loudly. Vandervent didn't notice her excitement.

"The Beiner mystery," he repeated. "They don't usually lie down on a murder. Fact is, I don't really mean that now. But there's inefficiency. We're going to show them up."

"How?" asked Clancy. Her throat was dry; her lips seemed as though they were cracked.

"By catching the murderess," said Vandervent.

"'Murderess?'" All the fears that had departed from Clancy returned to her, magnified.

Vandervent enjoyed the effect of his speech.

"Yes; a woman did it. And we know her name."

"You do?" Once again the young man thought her excitement due to admiration.

"Yes. I'm taking personal charge of the case. Discovered a card of introduction to Beiner. Only one we could find in his desk. Right out on top, too, as though he'd just placed it there. Of course, we may be all wrong, but—we'll know better to-morrow."

"So soon?" asked Clancy. Her feet were leaden.

"I hope so. We've found out the company that the woman who gave the card of introduction is playing in. We've sent a wire to her asking her to tell us where we can find the woman, Florine Ladue."

"Are—are you sure?" asked Clancy.

"Sure of what? That the Ladue woman committed the murder? Well, no. But a woman escaped through the window of Beiner's office—you've read the case? Well, she ran down the fire-escape and then entered the Heberworth Building by another window. Why did she do it? We want to ask her that. Of course, this Ladue woman may not be the one, but if she isn't, she can easily prove it." The music ceased. "I say, I shouldn't talk so much. You understand that——"

"Oh, I sha'n't repeat it," said Clancy. She marveled at the calm, the lightness with which she spoke.

Repeat it? If Vandervent could only know the grimness of the humor in which she uttered the promise! If this young multimillionaire whom she had been captivating by her grace and beauty only knew that the woman whom he had sought had been in his arms these past ten minutes! In cynicism, she forgot alarm. But only for a moment. It came racing back to her.

And she'd written to Zenda! He'd look her up to-morrow. What a fool she'd been! Her face was haggard, almost old, as she surrendered herself to the arms of Randall.

XIV

Not nearly enough admiration has been granted by the male human to the most remarkable quality possessed by the human female—her ability to recuperate. Man worships the heroic virtues in man. But in woman he worships the intangible thing called charm, the fleeting thing called beauty. Man hates to concede that woman is his superior in anything, wherefore even that well-known ability of hers to endure suffering he brushes aside as inconsequential, giving credit to Mother Nature. Possibly Mother Nature does deserve the credit. Still, man has no quality that he has bestowed upon himself. Yet that does not prevent him from being proud of the physique that he inherited from his grandfather, the brain that he inherited from his father, or the wit that descended to him from some other ancestor.

So may women justly be proud of their recuperative powers. For these powers are more than physical. Thousands of years of child-bearing, of undergoing an agony that in each successive generation, because of corsets, because of silly notions of living, of too much work or too little work, has become more poignant, have had their effect upon the female character.

If the baby dies, father is prostrated. It is mother who attends to all the needful details, although her own sense of loss, of unbearable grief, is greater, perhaps, than her husband's. If father loses his job, he mopes in despair; it is mother who encourages him, who wears a smiling face, even though the problem of existence seems more unsolvable to her than to him.

It does not do to attribute this quality to women's histrionic ability. For the histrionism is due to the quality, not the obverse. It was not acting that made Clancy smile coquettishly up into Randall's lowering visage as he swept her away from Vandervent. It was courage—the sheerest sort of courage.

In the moment that Randall had come to claim her, her feet had suddenly become leaden, her eyes had been shifting, frightened. Yet they had not taken half a dozen steps before she was again the laughing heroine of the party. For that she had been! Even a novice such as Clancy Deane knew that more than courtesy to a hostess' protégée was behind the attentions of Judge Walbrough. And she was versed enough in masculine admiration to realize that Vandervent's interest had been genuinely roused. Flattery, success had made her eyes brilliant, her lips and cheeks redder, her step lighter. Danger threatened her, but cringing would not make the danger any less real. Therefore, why cringe? This, though she did not express it, even to herself, inspired her gayety.

The fact that Randall's brows were gathered together in a frown made her excitement—her pleasurable excitement—greater. Knowing that he had conceived a quick jealousy for Vandervent, she could not forbear asking, after the immemorial fashion of women who know what is the matter,

"What's the matter?"

And Randall, like a million or so youths before him, who have known that the questioner was well aware of the answer, said,

"You know well enough."

"No, I don't," said Clancy.

"Yes, you do, too," asserted Randall.

"Why"—and Clancy was wide-eyed—"how could I?"

Randall stared down at her. He had made a great discovery.

"You're a flirt," he declared bitterly.

He could feel Clancy stiffen in his arms. Her face, quickly averted, seemed to radiate chill, as an iceberg, though invisible, casts its cold atmosphere ahead. He had offended beyond hope of forgiveness. Wherefore, like the criminal who might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, he plunged into newer and greater offenses.

"Well, of course I'm not a multimillionaire, and I don't keep a press-agent to tell the world what a great man I am, like Vandervent, but still—" He paused, as though confronted by thoughts too terrible for utterance. Clancy sniffed.

"Running other men down doesn't run you up, Mr. Randall."

She felt, as soon as she had uttered the words, that they were unworthy of her. And because she felt that she had spoken in a common fashion, she became angry at Randall, who had led her to this—well, indiscretion.

"I didn't mean to do that, Miss Deane," he said hastily; "only, I—I'm sorry I spoke that way. Vandervent doesn't hire a press-agent—so far as I know. And he's a good citizen and an able man. I'm sorry, Miss Deane. I'm jealous!" he blurted.

Clancy grinned. She twisted her head until she met Randall's eyes again. For the moment, she had completely forgotten the deadly though unconscious threat behind Vandervent's words of a few moments ago.

"You mustn't be absurd, Mr. Randall," she said, with great severity.

"I don't mean to be," he answered, "but I can't help it. You promised me a tête-à-tête," he said plaintively.

"Did I?" She laughed. Randall reversed as she spoke, and she faced the door. Vandervent was eyeing her. Although his eyes were friendly, eager, she saw him, not as a partner in flirtation but as an officer of the law. Half a minute ago, engrossed in teasing Randall, she'd almost forgotten him. Back and forth, up and down—thus the Clancy spirits. She was, in certain emotional respects, far more Irish than American. She pressed Randall's left hand.

"Let's go down-stairs," she suggested.

She caught the look of disappointment in Vandervent's eyes as she passed him. For a moment, she hesitated. How simple it would be to exchange tête-à-tête partners, take Vandervent down-stairs, and, from the very beginning, tell him the amazing history of her half-week in New York! He liked her. Possibly his feeling toward her might grow into something warmer. Certainly, even though it remained merely liking, that was an emotion strong enough to justify her in throwing herself upon his mercy. And, of course, he'd believe her.

She wondered. She realized, as she had realized many times before in the past few days, and would realize again in the days to come, that the longer one delays in the frank course, the more difficult frankness becomes. Even if Vandervent did believe her, think of the position in which she would find herself! It came home to her that she liked the affair that she was attending to-night. It was more fun than any kind of work, she imagined—playing round with successful, fashionable, wealthy people. Scandal, if she emerged from it with her innocence proved, might not hurt her upon the stage or in the moving pictures, or even in Sally Henderson's esteem. But it would ruin her socially.

"A husband with the kale." That was what Fanchon DeLisle had said. No such husband could be won by a girl who had been the central figure of a murder trial. Clancy was the born gambler. It had taken the temperament of a gambler to leave Zenith; it had taken the temperament of a gambler to escape from the room that contained Beiner's dead body; it had taken the temperament of a gambler to decide, with less than seven dollars in the world, to brave the pursuit of the police, the wrath of Zenda, the loneliness of New York, rather than surrender to the police, conscious of her innocence.

A gambler! A chance-taker! Thus she had been created, and thus, in the fulfilment of her destiny, she would always be. The impulse to surrender, to throw herself upon Vandervent's mercy, passed as instantly as it had come. Yet, once out of the studio, she leaned heavily upon Randall's arm.

In the drawing-room, on the ground floor, Randall paused. Clancy withdrew her hand from his arm. They faced each other a bit awkwardly. Clancy always had courage when there were others present, but, when alone with a man, a certain shyness became visible. Also, although there had been boys in Zenith who had fancied themselves in love with her, she had always held herself high. She had not encouraged their attentions.

Randall was different. He was a grown man. And, after his confession of jealousy, it was silly for her not to take him seriously. He was not the flirtatious kind. He frightened her.

"You're worried," he stated surprisingly.

"'Worried?'" She tried to laugh, but something inside her seemed to warn her to beware.

"Yes—worried," repeated Randall. He came close to her. "Has Vandervent annoyed you? You were happy—you seemed to be—until you danced with him. Then——"

"Mr. Randall, you talk like a little boy," she said. "First, you want tête-à-têtes; then you are jealous; then you are sure that some one is annoying me——"