Entering, she removed her hat and coat and threw them on a chair. She was tired, dead tired, in brain and body. She wanted to think: she told herself she had so much to think about.
The face of her world had changed utterly in the past few hours. But thought was impossible. She felt only a dull, listless sense of despair.
She had gained love, but what had she lost? Everything else had been given up in exchange for it. But how she loved him!
But even that thought was torture. Her head seemed ready to burst. Tears would have been a relief, but they would not come.
She dropped into a chair by the window, and, pressing her hands tightly against her throbbing temples, gazed out unseeing at the night.
When the dawn came, eight hours later, she had not moved.
Chapter XIII
The End of the Day
When Billy Sherman had visited detective Barrett — the red-faced man with carroty hair — and had heard him say, “We will get Mr. Knowlton tonight,” he knew that the thing was as good as done. Detective Barrett was a man to be depended upon.
But Billy Sherman never depended upon anybody. He made the rather common mistake of judging humanity from the inside — of himself — and the result was that he had acquired a distorted opinion of human nature. His topsyturvy logic went something like this, though not exactly in this form: “I am a man. I am bad. Therefore, all men are bad.”
And there is more of that sort of reasoning in the world than we are willing to admit.
Sherman did not go so far as to distrust Detective Barrett, but he had an idea that he wanted to see the thing for himself. Accordingly, shortly after six o’clock in the evening he posted himself in a doorway opposite Knowlton’s rooms on Thirtieth Street.
He had been there but a few minutes when he was startled by the sight of Lila approaching and entering the house. This led to a long consideration of probabilities which ended in a grim smile. He thought: “If they get her, too, all the better. Barrett’s a good fellow, and I can do whatever I want with her.”
Soon a light appeared in the windows of Knowlton’s rooms. The shades were drawn, but the man in the street could see two shadows thrown on them as the occupants moved about inside.
Suddenly the two shadows melted into one, and Sherman found the thing no longer amusing. Cursing the detectives for their tardiness, he repaired to the corner for a bracer.
He soon returned and resumed his position in the doorway.
After another interminable wait he saw Detective Barrett arrive with his men, and with fierce exultation watched them enter.
Another wait — this time nearly an hour — before two of the detectives emerged with Knowlton. This puzzled Sherman. “Where the deuce is Lila?” he muttered. Then he reflected that the other detective was probably waiting with her for a conveyance.
And then, to his astonishment, he beheld Lila descending the stoop alone.
She was half a block away before he recovered his wits sufficiently to follow her.
On the ferryboat he mounted to the upper deck to escape observation, completely at a loss to account for Lila’s freedom, or for this night trip across the Hudson. Looking cautiously over the upper railing, he had observed her every movement as she stood almost directly beneath him.
And then, as he saw her lift the parcel and drop it in the river, he had comprehended all in a flash. Stifling the exclamation that rose to his lips, he shrank back from the rail, muttering an imprecation.
Somehow she had obtained possession of the evidence — the chief evidence — against Knowlton, and destroyed it! And he had calmly looked on, like a weak fool! Why had he not had sense enough to stop her when she had first left the house? These were the thoughts that whipped him into a frenzy of rage.
But Sherman was not the man to waste time crying over spilled milk. After all, he reflected, the damage was not irreparable, since his knowledge gave him a power over her that should prove irresistible. By the time the boat had returned to Twenty-third Street he was once more fiercely exultant.
But he took the precaution of following Lila uptown; nor was he satisfied until he saw her white face dimly outlined at her own window.
Then he turned, muttering: “I guess she’ll do no more mischief tonight.”
He was determined that he would not make a second mistake. The first thing was to make sure of Knowlton. Perhaps early in the morning — He glanced at his watch; it was a quarter past nine.
At the corner he turned into a saloon and telephoned the office of Detective Barrett, and, finding him in, made an appointment to call on him in three-quarters of an hour.
He was there five minutes ahead of time. The detective was alone in the office and opened the door himself in response to his visitor’s knock.
He was in ill humor.
“You’ve got us in a pretty mess,” he began, placing a chair for Sherman and seating himself at his desk. “We got Knowlton all right, but there wasn’t a scrap of stuff in the whole place. Unless we can dig up something, what he can do to us won’t be a little. That was a beautiful tip-off of yours — I don’t think. I don’t say it wasn’t on the square, but it looks like—”
Sherman cut him short.
“Wait a minute, Barrett. You shut your eyes and go to sleep, and then when you don’t see anything you blame it on me. The stuff was there, and it’s your own fault you didn’t get it.”
“Then you’d better go up there and show it to Corliss. He’s probably looking for it yet.”
“Oh, he won’t find it now.” Sherman leaned forward in his chair and held up a finger impressively. “When you went in that house Knowlton wasn’t alone. There was a woman in his rooms with him, and a big bundle of the queer. And you politely closed your eyes and let her walk out with it.”
The other stared at him.
“What sort of a game is this?” he demanded.
“This is straight,” said Sherman, “and I can prove it. I know who the woman was, and I know what she did with the stuff. What I can’t understand is how she ever got away.”
“Do you mean to say she was inside when we got there?”
Sherman nodded emphatically.
The detective looked puzzled:
“Then how in the name of—” He stopped short, while his face was suddenly filled with the light of understanding — and chagrin.
“Well, I’m jiggered,” he said finally. Then he explained Knowlton’s ruse — or rather Lila’s — to Sherman. “It’s an old trick,” he ended, “but we weren’t looking for it. We thought he was alone. But where did she go? What did she do with it? Who is she?”
“She took a ride on a ferryboat and dropped it in the middle of the Hudson.”
“Then it’s gone.”
“Thanks to you, yes.”
“But where did you get all this? Of course, she’s a—”
“Back up!” Sherman interrupted. “She’s a friend of mine.”
“She seems not exactly to hate Knowlton,” the detective observed dryly. “Who is she?”
Sherman winced.
“What does that matter? She knows enough to send him higher than a kite, and she’ll have to come through with it.”
The other became impatient.
“But who is she? We ought to get her tonight.”
There was a pause; then Sherman said slowly:
“You won’t get her at all.”
At the look of inquiry and surprise on the detective’s face he proceeded to explain:
“I told you she’s a friend of mine. Maybe it would be better to say I’m a friend of hers. Put it however you please, but she’s not to be locked up. Serve her as a witness, and she’ll give you all you need against Knowlton, and more, too.