“I’ll see to that. She can’t get out of it. Anyway, if you arrested her, what would happen? You couldn’t make them testify against each other, and they’d both get off.”
“But as soon as we serve her she’ll beat it,” the other objected.
“Leave that to me. Of course, I’ve got a personal interest in this, and you ought to consider it. I don’t have to remind you—”
“No,” the detective interrupted hastily, “you don’t. I have a memory, Billy.”
“Well, then it’s up to you.”
The detective finally capitulated and agreed to do as Sherman wished. Sherman gave him Lila’s name and address, and advised him to postpone serving the subpoena as long as possible.
“I want to prepare her for it,” he explained as the detective accompanied him to the door. “I’ll see her first thing in the morning. If possible, we want to prevent Knowlton from knowing that she is to appear against him, and I think I can manage it. You’ll hear from me tomorrow. Going uptown?”
The other replied that he had work to do in the office that would keep him till midnight, and wished him good night.
Sherman was well satisfied with the day’s work. With Knowlton in the Tombs and Lila completely in his power, he felt that there was nothing left to be desired. As he sat in an uptown subway local he reviewed his position with the eye of a general, and, discovering no possible loophole for the enemy, sighed with satisfaction.
At Twenty-third Street he left the train and made his way to the lobby of the Lamartine.
He was led there more by force of habit than by any particular purpose. At first he had thought of going to see Lila at once, but had decided that it would serve his ends better to allow her to have a night for reflection over the day’s events. She would be less able to resist his demands.
It was but little past ten o’clock, and he found the lobby almost deserted. Night at the Lamartine began late and ended early — in the morning.
One or two nondescripts loitered about the entrance inside, the hotel clerk yawned behind his desk, and the weary-looking female who took Miss Hughes’s place during the hours of darkness was drumming on the counter with her fingers, chewing gum, and reading a newspaper, thus exercising three different sets of muscles at the same time.
Sherman approached her:
“Have any of the boys been in?”
She looked up from her newspaper and regarded him chillingly:
“Huh?”
It was this young girl’s habit never to understand questions addressed to her till they had been repeated at least once. It argued a superiority over the questioner; an indifference to common and sublunary affairs.
She condescended finally to inform Sherman that Driscoll and Booth had been seen in the lobby some two hours before. While talking she contrived somehow to lose not a single stroke on the gum.
Sherman wandered about for half an hour, tried to find someone to take a cue at billiards without success, and had about decided to go home when Dumain and Dougherty entered arm-in-arm.
Dumain called to Sherman, and the three proceeded to the bar. Sherman ordered a whisky, Dougherty a gin rickey, and Dumain an absinth frappé. This is for the benefit of those who judge a man by what he drinks. You see what it amounts to.
The ex-prizefighter was a little ill at ease. He felt that he had treated Sherman a little shabbily by breaking his promise not to speak to Knowlton till the following day; perhaps, after all, he thought, Sherman had acted in good faith.
“I suppose you called off your sleuth,” he observed.
Sherman looked up quickly.
“What? Oh, yes. I saw him this afternoon. Good thing, too. He was costing me more than a prima donna. Fill ’em up, bartender.”
“Then it’s all right to speak to Knowlton now?”
“As far as I’m concerned, yes.”
“The reason I wanted to know,” Dougherty hesitated, “is because I already spoke to him. It wasn’t because I wanted to put anything over on you — don’t think that. He came in here about noon, and it was too good a chance to pass up.
“Besides, Miss Williams was going out with him, and I had to head him off somehow. I was a little uneasy about it, but since you say it’s all right, I’ll forget it. And, thank Heaven, we’ve seen the last of Knowlton. By this time he’s probably so far away from little old New York you couldn’t see him with a telescope from the top of the Singer Building.”
“Well, you didn’t do any harm.” Sherman was picking up his change on the bar.
“Eet was best,” put in Dumain. “Zee sooner zee bettaire. He was a quiet scoundrel. You should have seen heem when Dougherty told heem! He had not a word. He walked out wiz a frown.”
Each man lifted his glass in silence. Each had his own thoughts.
“I’m a little worried about Miss Williams,” said Dougherty presently. “I wonder what she thought when she saw him walk out without speaking to her? Knowlton asked me to tell her, but I didn’t have the nerve. I think they had a date to go to lunch. And all afternoon she kept watching for him. I saw her.”
“She’ll soon forget him,” said Sherman.
“I doubt it,” declared Dougherty. “You know yourself he was different from us. And from the way she looked this afternoon — I doubt it.”
“Bah!” Dumain snapped his fingers. “She care not zat much for heem. If she did would she not have been — ah, grief — distrait — when she hear he was a what you call eet counterfeiter?”
There was a sudden pause, while Dougherty turned and gazed at Dumain keenly.
“When did you tell her?” he demanded finally.
Dumain was silent, while his face reddened in confusion, and Sherman raised his hand to his mouth to conceal a smile.
“When did you tell her?” repeated the ex-prizefighter, more sternly than before.
“Tonight,” Dumain stammered. “You see, Knowlton had left so sudden, and I thought she ought to know. You see—”
“Yes, I see!” Dougherty roared. “You’re a darn Frenchman. That’s what you are; you’re a darn’ Frenchman! You can’t keep your mouth shut. You ought to be muzzled. If you wasn’t such a human shrimp I’d — Bartender, for the love of Mike, give us a drink.”
He drained a highball with two prodigious gulps.
Dumain took courage.
“But eet was best. She had to know sometime. So tell her at once, zat is what I theenk. Zen I tell her.”
“What did she say?” Dougherty demanded.
“Nozzing.” The little Frenchman shrugged his shoulders expressively. “I tell you she care leetle for heem. She lifted her eyes upward in surprise” — he rolled his own toward heaven — “and say, ‘Has he gone?’ like zat. Zen she say good night like any other time and went home.”
Dougherty grunted in disbelief.
Sherman had for some minutes been meditating on the question whether he should tell his companions what he knew — or, rather, what he had done. It would be in the nature of a triumph over them, but would it not be dangerous? He reflected, and could not resist the temptation.
He took up Dumain’s last words:
“And what makes you think she went home?”
The others stared at him — a stare that plainly meant:
“Where else should she go?”
“You evidently don’t know the lady very well,” Sherman continued. “You think she’s as innocent as she looks. She went straight from here to Knowlton’s rooms, and she seemed to know pretty well how to get there. You can guess as well as I can what she went after. And how many times—”
He stopped suddenly, though not of his own volition. The compelling cause was Dougherty’s fingers about his throat, in a grip of steel.
Dumain had hurriedly stepped aside, and the bartender was loudly expostulating in a tone of alarm, while three or four men who were standing at the bar a few feet away looked on with pleasurable expectations. They knew Dougherty.