"It's all right, son," he told Cy in a heavy voice. "She's goin' to live."
Cy's arms, his back and shoulders, felt cramped and numb from holding Crystal. Crystal slowly stood up. Bob was motionless, his mouth open. And then, from behind the curtains, rose the shrill ringing of the telephone.
"You shut up!" H.M. took it out on somebody by turning round and bellowing towards the phone.
"I'm not goin' to answer "
But Dr. Jacobs, it seemed, had already answered. The doctor appeared from beyond the curtains.
"It's for you, Sir Henry," he said. "It seems to be the District Attorney. Speaking from Maralarch."
"Byles, hey? And what does the reptile want with me?"
The dark-complexioned Dr. Jacobs, who had won an almost hopeless case against aconite, was himself under a strain.
"So far as I can gather," Dr. Jacobs answered, "he wants to put you in jail. I think you should speak to him."
The doctor came out from behind the curtains, dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief. Cy took the wrist watch out of his pocket, finding with stupefaction that it was just five minutes past three. Slowly, like a tiger, H.M approached the curtains and the telephone.
Byles's voice sprang out of the receiver.
"Now listen!" said the District Attorney, with a cold and deadly jump.
"You listen!" H.M. bellowed back. Then he wavered. "Looky here, Gil. There's been some pretty nasty business here tonight The old man's not just exactly in the mood for sword crossin' now. Ever since we heard Fred Manning was dead..."
There was so long a pause that you might have wondered if the line had gone dead.
"Manning?" repeated Byles, in a startled and suspicious tone. "What are you talking about? Manning's not dead."
This time the pause was at H.M.'s end of the line.
"Manning's not dead?" he yelled.
From the studio there was a wooden rattle as of a picture canvas dropped. Someone, probably Crystal, cried out.
"When we got here," said Byles, "the maid told us what Dr. Willard said. Manning's out of danger. Hell have a bad time, congestion and fever, but hell be up in a month. If anybody's been worried..."
H.M.'s gaze travelled slowly down to the figure on the bed, now covered to the chin with a blanket
And here, it must be confessed, the old sinner was a little moved. H.M. stretched out his hand-he would have died rather than let anyone see it— and patted the shoulder of the unconscious woman.
"That's good news," he said to the telephone. "That's downright good news."
Whereupon, clapping his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, his shout to those outside the curtain indicated he hadn't believed a word of it.
"Didn't I tell you," he called, "that fool Stuffy was always gettin' messages mixed up?"
But the telephone was now coldly raving.
"And what," demanded Byles, "are you doing there at three o'clock in the morning?"
"Well, what are you doin' there at three o'clock in the morning?"
"I drove out here," Byles told him with loving murderousness, "for the pleasure of waking you up out of bed. I couldn't resist it. I want to tell you just how long I can keep you in jail."
H.M. half closed one eye.
"So you think you can chuck me in the cooler, hey?"
"At the present moment," said Byles, "I am nursing my wrath to keep it warm. I am getting all my dockets in order."
H.M. griped the phone, slowly lowered it as though he were bending over a prostrate enemy and holding the tatter's throat with one hand. But his hat fell off, somewhat marring the gladiatorial gesture.
"I warn you, Gill If you..."
"Also at the present moment," the cold voice pursued, 'you are in the apartment of the. real Irene Stanley." The voice changed. "Brother, what I'm going to do to you!" Again it changed. "Now get out here to Maralarch immediately!"
"Wait a minute! Has something else happened?"
"Happened?" groaned Byles. "Oh, my God! Now you get out here to Maralarch immediately!"
17
It was still pitch dark when the big yellow car left New York, with Jean—aroused, but now in happy sleep—in the rumble seat. Bob had stayed with his mother.
Cy drove, with Crystal in the middle, and H.M. outside. They had stopped only to buy a bundle of early morning papers, which they threw into the rumble seat The tall lamps gleamed along the West Side Highway; the river had only a scent and breath of morning.
Perhaps not ten words were spoken. But happiness, because of Manning and his wife in this world again, filled that car. And there was more.
Round the spectacles of Sir Henry Merrivale, indicating that he did not feel altogether tired or sleepy, hovered a certain evil anticipation. This same look, though in no sense evil, gave a faraway expression, as of a peak in Darien, to the face of Cy Norton. Crystal slept, her head on Cy's shoulder.
The car hummed on.
When they turned off Denford Avenue into Elm Road, at Maralarch, the sky was a faint ghostly grey. Outlines of trees were becoming trees. It was chilly, with a dampness of summer dew. In that stillness, the car seemed to roar as Cy swung it past the facade of the long white house, and into the driveway at the side.
Two sets of windows were lighted, one set on the left of the front door, and one on the right H.M. glanced towards the library.
"He's there, son."
"He is," agreed Cy. "Maybe with handcuffs."
In the long library, with its windows both front and back, District Attorney Gilbert Byles was waiting.
Byles showed no sign of fatigue or disorder. His arched skull, from which the black hair was receding, his watchful dark eyes and slight twisted smile, his face broadening at the jaw and then tapering almost to a point, all gave him the air of a patient Mephistopheles.
"Jean's still dead on her feet," Crystal called from the doorway. "Shall I put her to bed and then make some coffee?"
"An admirable idea, Miss Manning," Byles told her, and bowed suavely. "Do that, by all means."
Byles was standing against a wall of old books. Just behind the District Attorney's elbow, Cy noticed a gap in Lea's two-volume History of the Spanish Inquisition.
The second was in Byles's hands, and he was idly turning the pages.
"I’ve been looking," he explained, "for a few tips here. But I'm afraid they wouldn't be legal." And he sighed.
This behavior, especially considering the thin blue-gorged veins in Byles's temples, deceived nobody. He was a man who at any moment would let out a yell and jump all over the room.
"As for you, Sir Henry..."
"LO, Gil," said H.M., with surprising meekness.
"Sit down!" said Byles.
While Cy Norton deposited newspapers in another chair, H.M. seated himself, stuck his feet up on the table, produced and lit a stogy, at which he sniffed ghoulishly.
"We will begin," said Byles, fingering the Spanish Inquisition, with your behavior in the subway on Monday afternoon."
"Hadn't we better begin," struck in a new voice, "with something else?"
Cy jumped slightly.
He had not seen over there, by another book wall, the stocky well-dressed figure in the tapestry chair. It was Howard Betterton, his face serene and his pince-nez twinkling, also showing no fatigue or mussed clothes.
"Mr. Betterton," said Byles, with the blue veins standing out in his head, "well begin as I say. And don't tell me I'm in Westchester County. What I have to say concerns the city of New York."
"As you like," shrugged the other lawyer.