“She loves you,” said his heart; “do not insult her by doubting it.” Yes, but women sometimes despise the man they love. What a weak, blind fool he had been!
He groaned aloud in unutterable anguish. Piercing, overpowering emotion caused him to tremble and shake as a man with the palsy. He threw himself on the floor of the cell by the prison cot and buried his face in his hands.
He remained thus for an hour. Then he rose and seated himself on the edge of the cot.
“After all,” he thought, “this, too, is weakness, and I must fight it. She has said that she loves me. Very well. I shall get out of this, and I have a lifetime to prove myself worthy of her. It is useless to waste time on vain regrets. Oh! She has given me strength. Every minute of my life belongs to her. And I said I didn’t want to lose my self-respect! If I ever regain it, it will be through her.”
Finally, after many hours of alternate despair and anxiety and resolution, he threw himself face downward on the cot, utterly exhausted, and slept.
We shall leave him there and return to Lila.
Her plan, swiftly conceived and perfectly executed, had worked admirably.
Her hiding place behind the curtain in the alcove exactly suited her purpose, for the curtain was flimsy and transparent, and, placed as it was between herself and the light, she was able to observe what took place in the room without any danger of being seen herself.
She had trusted to Knowlton’s wit, and he had not failed her. As soon as the detectives had rushed to the rear of the apartment in pursuit of him she had quietly stepped forth from her hiding place and gained the outer hall, closing the door softly behind her.
There she hesitated. Her first impulse was to descend at once to the street. But what if some one had been left on guard below? Was it not likely that she would be stopped and questioned; and the telltale parcel examined?
She stood for a few seconds trying to decide what to do; then, at the sound of returning footsteps in the room she had just left, fled in a sudden panic up the stairs to the landing above.
She realized the thousand dangers of her position. What if a detective had been sent up to guard the roof and should return and find her? What if some tenant of the house, entering or leaving, should question her? What if one of the detectives below should happen to ascend the stairs?
And yet, what could she do? Nothing. She must remain where she was and wait. To go either up or down might be fatal.
She tried to think of some way to get rid of the parcel, which weighed on her arm with all the heaviness of fear. She hated it as though it were a human being. Fantastic schemes raced into her brain.
Should she ring the bell of one of the apartments and hand in the parcel as though it were a delivery from some tradesman? Should she place it on the floor of the hall and set it afire?
Suddenly the street door opened two flights below, and she heard footsteps entering and ascending the stairs. She quivered with terror, and felt a wild impulse to rush madly down and hurl the parcel into the street.
Then, just in time to prevent her crying out, the footsteps halted on the landing below, and there came the sound of a key turning in a lock and a door opening and closing. Evidently the person who had entered had been the tenant on the same floor with Knowlton, across the hall. She sighed with unutterable relief.
Many minutes passed, and each seemed to Lila an hour. What could the detectives be doing? Why did they not go, since they could have found nothing? For she thought, in her ignorance, that by her removal of the counterfeit money she had saved Knowlton from arrest. Her ideas of the manner of procedure of the law and its minions were extremely hazy, as those of a young girl should be. She was soon to be undeceived.
She waited, it seemed to her, for years. She felt faint and dizzy from fatigue and anxiety, her body was limp and nerveless, and she was telling herself that she must soon succumb, when she heard a door open in the hall below. At last!
There were footsteps, and Knowlton’s voice came up to her:
“Is it necessary — must I wear these on the street?”
Then came the reply of the detective, and the sound of clinking steel, and steps descending the stairs, and the opening and closing of the street door.
Lila stood dumb with amazement. The meaning of what she had heard was clear to her: they had arrested him and were taking him to prison! But why? Was there something else of which she did not know? But she tossed that thought aside impatiently.
Knowlton had told her his story in detail, and she trusted him. But — prison! She shuddered with horror, and felt herself unable to stand, grasping at the baluster for support.
It was the necessity for action alone that sustained and roused her. To meet this new crisis she forgot her weakness of a moment before, and became again the courageous and daring woman she had been at the arrival of the detectives. She no longer hesitated or feared. She had something to do that must be done.
Holding the parcel tightly under her arm, she descended the stairs. As she passed through the hall in front of Knowlton’s rooms the detective who had been left behind to complete the search for evidence looked out at her through the open door. Her heart beat madly, but she forced herself not to hasten her step as she descended the first flight of stairs to the outer door.
Another moment and she was in the street — free.
She glanced to the right and left, uncertain which way to turn. What should she do with the parcel? She wondered why it seemed so difficult to get rid of the thing. Surely nothing could be simpler than to dispose of an ordinary-looking parcel, a foot square.
One could drop it in an ash can, or leave it on a bench in the park, or merely place it on a stoop — any stoop — anywhere. But somehow to do any of these things seemed fraught with horrible danger. She could have cried with exasperation at her hesitation over a difficulty apparently so simple.
Suddenly she remembered what Knowlton had said: “It is best to be safe, and I shall take it to the river.” Of course! Why had she not thought of it before?
She turned sharply, and as she turned noticed a man standing directly across the street gazing curiously at the house she had just left. At sight of him she started violently, and looked again. It was Sherman. There could be no doubt of it; the light from a streetlamp shone full on his face.
The spot where Lila was standing was comparatively dark, and as Sherman remained motionless she was convinced that she had not been recognized. But she was seized with terror, and, fearing every moment to hear his footsteps behind her, but not daring to look round, she turned and moved rapidly in the direction of the Hudson.
Ten minutes later she entered the ferry-house at the foot of West Twenty-third Street. A boat was in the slip and she boarded it and walked to the farther end.
She leaned on the rail, gazing toward the bay, as the boat glided away from the shore, and almost forgot her anxiety and her errand in contemplating the fairyland before her eyes.
The myriads of tiny twinkling lights with their background of mysterious half darkness, the skeletonlike forms of the massive buildings, barely revealed, and farther south, the towering outlines of the palaces of industry, were combined in a fantastic dream-picture of a modern monster.
Lila looked up, startled to find that the ferryboat had already reached the middle of the river. She glanced round to make sure she was not observed — there were few passengers on the boat — then quickly lifted the parcel over the rail and let it fall into the dark water below.
She could hardly realize that it was gone. Her arm was numb where it had been tightly pressed against the parcel, and it felt as though it still held its burden. She felt tired, and faint, and walked inside and seated herself.
When the boat arrived at the Jersey City slip she did not land. A half hour later she left it at Twenty-third Street. Another half hour and she was ascending the stairs to her room uptown.