The statement was made without spirit, as one of simple, provable fact.

And for all her memories of Bel's misconduct, Lucinda believed.

Wearily the woman began to pull about her shoulders a wrinkled, sleazy wrap.

"Guess I'd better be going," she said with eyes averted. "Thank you for being so kind. I'm glad Mr. Druce wasn't much hurt, and I wish you'd tell him I'm sorry for everything. I didn't mean to do it, but I just went crazy when I saw you and Lynn together, and him making love to you.

I don't remember much about what happened, but I guess it must've been pretty awful for you, and I'm sorry."

Continuing to avoid Lucinda's eyes, she plucked at her cloak once more and moved toward the door; but faltered on finding that Lucinda stood in her way and didn't offer to budge. "I'd better go," she iterated uneasily.

"Where?"

"I don't know." Nelly wagged a head of desolate uncertainty. "There isn't any place I can think of now, they wouldn't find me. Only ... I'm sorry about Lynn, and I'm not going to suffer any more on his account unless I have to. So it's up to me to be on my way."

"Wait a minute, please." Remaining between the girl and the door, Lucinda pursued: "I want to know how you got in here. How did you get back to the hotel so quickly?"

"From Beverly Hills, you mean? Oh, I had luck and caught a trolley without having to wait. They make pretty good time, you know. And then, when I got here ... I wanted to go up to my room and get some money....

I was afraid to come in the front way, I thought maybe they'd telephoned or something, so I tried the side door. They don't lock that till about nine o'clock. And just as I came in, I noticed the chambermaid unlocking this door, and it come over me like a flash you'd probably be coming home pretty soon, and I was worried about Mr. Druce; so I slipped in while she was in your bedroom, and hid behind that chair there till she went out again."

"But what if they've locked the side door since? It must be after nine now. You won't be able to leave except by way of the office."

"I guess I'll have to take my chances...." She bent upon Lucinda a look of flickering defiance. "Anyhow, what do you care?"

"I don't like to think of your being caught."

"Why?"

"I don't know, unless it's because I think you've been punished enough already. You'd better wait and rest for a while, at least till the house quiets down. And perhaps we can think of some way.... Don't you think you'd better trust me?"

For another instant suspicious eyes searched Lucinda's, then with a half-nod the girl wilted into a chair. "All right," she acquiesced with the pa.s.sivity of a child chastened by terror--"just's you say, Mrs.

Druce. Only, I don't see why you're being so good to me."

Lucinda had no answer to that. Her motive was not more obscure to that muddled mind than to her own. Unless, of course, it had to do with that enduring image of the bird storm-beaten, weary of wing and bewildered by the dark, risking the debatable mercy of mankind in its stark necessity....

She stood pitiful, contemplating the creature who huddled in the chair, shivering, whimpering a little, gnawing her knuckles, with the dazed eyes of an animal hunted to its last gasp seeking to probe the fearful ambiguity of the future. A murderess by intention, whom the word of any moment might prove a murderess in fact.... And one couldn't condemn or reproach her, one couldn't shrink from her because of the crime that stained her hands, one couldn't even win one's own consent to send her out to chance the retribution she had invited.

Incomprehensible the alchemy of the human heart! Lucinda was making up her mind to help a sinner circ.u.mvent justice....

"Tell me something," she said, with no more preface: "You've been calling me Mrs. Druce. How did you learn that was my name? Did Mr. Druce tell you?"

Only the hand of the girl moved in a sign of dissent, and her lips to shape the words: "It was Lynn told me."

"Lynn!"

"Mr. Druce never said as much as a word about you. I don't believe he knows I know now. I thought he didn't want me to know, so I never let on; but of course I did know, all along."

"Lynn told you when----?"

"That time you found me on the floor, you know. I guess I ought to apologize for the way I treated you, but I was all upset, I hated you on account of what Lynn had told you about me and all."

"I don't think I blame you--now."

"You wouldn't 've, then, if you'd been through what I'd been through that afternoon.... Lynn didn't let me know he was coming, or send his name in or anything, he just walked in through the window while I was getting dressed to go out. He said I'd got to clear out, go back home, where I come from in the East. He said if I didn't I'd spoil everything for him, if you ever found out about me you wouldn't have any more to do with him, and then where'd be his chance of getting in with New York society people like you trained with. He took out a hundred dollars and put it on the bureau and said I'd got to take it and go home and he'd send me fifty dollars every week. I said I wouldn't, and he said I would if he had to ship me East on a stretcher. I forget what I said then, but I was pretty wild, I guess, and he hit me, and I don't remember anything after that, except waking up to find Lynn gone and you taking care of me."

She jumped in the chair, cried out shrilly, and clapped a hand over her heart when the telephone sounded a peremptory call. Lucinda, answering, heard the voice of her chauffeur: he had called up Mr. Summerlad's, somebody there had told him Miss Lee had gone home already and wouldn't want him again that night, and he wanted to make sure that was all right.

"Yes, Ben," Lucinda a.s.sented, "it's quite all right. I left that word for you, but ... just a minute ... I may change my mind."

"It'll be all right with me, Miss Lee, if you want to go out again."

"Yes, Ben, I know; and thank you. But if I decide to use the car again tonight, I'll drive it myself--alone, you understand. If you wouldn't mind bringing it to the side door of the hotel in about an hour and leaving it there.... No; don't wait for me, I may be delayed; just leave the car and go home. I'll take it to the garage when I'm through with it."

When Lucinda hung up she found Nelly slewed round in the chair and watching with darkly doubting eyes, to which she responded, with a slight smile: "That was inspiration. While Ben was talking, it occurred to me, the only possible way for you to escape would be in somebody's car. So I've arranged to let you steal mine. You can leave it wherever you think it safe to get aboard a train. You can drive, of course?"

Nelly nodded. "Then if you'll come into my bedroom, you can lie down and rest while I find you a change of clothes. I'm afraid, if the police get a description of you dressed as you are, you wouldn't have much chance...."

Before she could surmise or move to defeat the girl's intention, Nelly had caught one of her hands and was weeping and slavering over it.

"You're so sweet and good to me!" she sobbed. "I can't make out what makes you so kind!"

"I think," Lucinda said, with gaze remote--"I think _I_ am beginning to understand...."

XLI

In an interlude of difficulty to beggar all believing, response to Lucinda's forbearance all at once swept like a great wind over those treacherous emotional shallows, kicking up their still unsettled dregs of hysteria, storming in wild squalls of grat.i.tude, remorse and shame, driving sh.o.r.eward that frail, crank pleasure-craft which was the soul of Nelly Marquis, leaving it at the last stranded in a slough of self-pity and abas.e.m.e.nt, where it rested in maudlin wreckage, weeping, lamenting, calling out upon its shabby G.o.ds for that they had forsaken it.

Early in this scene Lucinda made shift to get the woman, half-leading, half-dragging her, into the bedchamber where the seizure might spend itself unheard by pa.s.sers in the public corridor. But for a tedious while after she had persuaded her to lie down she made no headway toward stemming her transports; and sitting on the side of the bed, suffering Nelly to cling to her hands, seeking to pacify her whenever in a lull she could make words tell, learned enough from her maunderings to sicken one with the very thought of love.

As if what had been had left her in need of this last disenchantment!...

Sheer persistence in the end proved tranquillizing, the woman ceased to toss and writhe continually, her communications became more lucid. But she wouldn't hear of being left alone for a nap, she wouldn't release Lucinda's hands, she wouldn't heed suggestions that it might perhaps be well for her to get up and change to the clothing which Lucinda had provided. Time enough for that, she argued, when Mr. Druce had been and gone. Maybe Lynn hadn't been as much hurt as Lucinda believed. If he hadn't, he could be depended upon to move heaven and earth to save his fair name in the esteem of picture fans from the odium that must attach to it should the news get out that he had been shot up by a discarded wife. Anyway, they couldn't tell anything for certain till Mr. Druce had kept his promise to report the surgeon's verdict.

Besides, if it came to the worst, if it turned out that Nelly would have to cut and run for it, the later the hour at which she left the hotel the better, the fewer people there would be about to see her go....

It had been agreed that it would never do for Lucinda to ask for the key to the side door. But if she chose to stroll out through the lobby, accompanied by a young woman well cloaked, the chances were that the latter would pa.s.s unquestioned as some friend who had dropped in to spend the evening with her.

"But are you quite sure you feel strong and well enough to drive the car yourself?" Lucinda mis...o...b..ed for perhaps the hundredth time, though for the first openly.

The woman on the bed gave her hand a small jerk of petulance. "Don't you worry your head about me, Mrs. Druce," she insisted. "I'll be all right.

I can drive any make of car there is, and I know all the roads out of Los Angeles like a book. Why, when me and Lynn was living together, we didn't hardly ever have any use for a chauffeur."

"Where will you go, then?"

"Up North, I guess, by the Coastal Highway. I can make Santa Barbara by morning easy. But I don't know, maybe I might go right through to Frisco. That's where I want to get, you know. It ought to be easy to lie low in a town like Frisco. Anyhow, wherever I decide, I'll shoot you a wire first thing, telling you where I left the car. I only wish I didn't have to take it, somehow it don't seem right. But there! maybe I won't have to.... And unless I do, there wouldn't be any sense in my leaving all my clothes here and everything, would there? What time is it now? A person would think Mr. Druce wouldn't be much longer, wouldn't they? I suppose you wouldn't want to call up Lynn's house and ask...."

"I'd rather not."