In the Bishop's Carriage Part 26

"Till?"

"Till later I was told."

"Who told you?"

"Her husband."

He threw down his pencil.

"Look here, this is no lark, young woman, and you needn't trouble yourself to weave any more fairy tales. Mr. Ramsay is in a--he's very ill. His own wife hasn't seen him since that night, so you see you're lying uselessly."

"Really!" So Edward didn't go back to Mrs. Gates' that night. Tut!

tut! After his telephone message, too!

"Now, a.s.suming your innocence of the theft, Miss Olden, what is your theory; how do you account for the presence of that purse in your flat?"

"Now, you've hit the part of it that really puzzles me. How do you account for it; what is your theory?"

He got to his feet, pus.h.i.+ng his chair back sharply.

"My theory, if you want to know it, is that you stole the purse; that your friend Obermuller believes you did; that you got away with the three hundred, or hid it away, and--"

"And what a stupid thief I must be, then, to leave the empty purse under my lounge!"

"How do you know it was empty?" he demanded sharply.

"You said so... Well, you gave me to understand that it was, then.

What difference does it make? It would be a still stupider thief who'd leave a full purse instead of an empty one under his own lounge."

"Yes; and you're not stupid, Miss Olden."

"Thank you. I'm sorry I can't say as much for you."

I couldn't help it. He was such a stupid. The idea of telling me that Fred Obermuller believed me guilty! The idea of thinking me such a fool as to believe that! Such men as that make criminals. They're so fat-witted you positively ache--they so tempt you to pull the wool over their eyes. O Mag, if the Lord had only made men cleverer, there'd be fewer Nancy Oldens.

The Chief blew a blast at his speaking-tube that made his purple cheeks seem about to burst. My shoulders shook as I watched him, he was so wrathy.

And I was still laughing when I followed the detective out into the waiting-room, where Obermuller was pacing the floor. At the sight of my smiling face he came rus.h.i.+ng to me.

"Nance!" he cried.

"Orders are, Morris," came in a bellow from the Chief at his door, "that no further communication be allowed between the prisoner and--"

Phew! All the pertness leaked out of me. Oh, Mag, I don't like that word. It stings--it binds--it cuts.

I don't know what I looked like then; I wasn't thinking of me. I was watching Obermuller's face. It seemed to grow old and thin and haggard before my eyes, as the blood drained out of it. He turned with an exclamation to the Chief and--

And just then there came a long ring at the telephone.

Why did I stand there? O Mag, when you're on your way to the place I was bound for, when you know that before you'll set foot in this same bright little room again, the hounds in half a dozen cities will have scratched clean every hiding-place you've had, when your every act will be known and--and--oh, then, you wait, Mag, you wait for anything--anything in the world; even a telephone call that may only be bringing in another wretch like yourself; bound, like yourself, for the Tombs.

The Chief himself went to answer it.

"Yes--what?" he growled. "Well, tell Long Distance to get busy.

What's that? St. Francis--that's the jag ward, isn't it? Who is it?

Who? Ramsay!"

I caught Obermuller's hand.

"I don't hear you," the Chief roared. "Oh--yes? Yes, we've got the thief, but the money--no, we haven't got the money. The deuce you say!

Took it yourself? Out of your wife's purse--yes.... Yes. But we've got the--What? Don't remember where you--"

"Steady, Nance," whispered Obermuller, grabbing my other hand.

I tried to stand steady, but everything swayed and I couldn't hear the rest of what the Chief was saying, though all my life seemed condensed into a listening. But I did hear when he jammed the receiver on the hook and faced us.

"Well, they've got the money. Ramsay took the purse himself, thinking it wasn't safe there under the spread where any servant might be tempted who chanced to uncover it. You'll admit the thing looked shady. The reason Mrs. Ramsay didn't know of it is because the old man's just come to his senses in a hospital and been notified that the purse was missing."

"I want to apologize to you, Chief," I mumbled.

"For thinking me stupid? Oh, we were both--"

"No, for thinking me not stupid. I am stupid--stupid--stupid. The old fellow I told you about, Mr. O., and the way I telephoned him out of the flat that night--it was--"

"Ramsay!"

I nodded, and then crumbled to the floor.

It was then that they sent for you, Mag.

Why didn't I tell it straight at the first, you dear old Mag? Because I didn't know the straight of it, then, myself. I was so heavy-witted I never once thought of Edward. He must have taken the bills out of the purse and then crammed them in his pocket while he was waiting there on the lounge and I was pretending to telephone and--

But it's best as it is--oh, so best! Think, Mag! Two people who knew her--who knew her, mind--believed in Nancy Olden, in spite of appearances: Obermuller, while we were in the thick of it, and; you, you dear girl, while I was telling you of it.

XII.

When Obermuller sent for me I thought he wanted to see me about that play he's writing in which I'm to star--when the pigs begin to fly.

Funniest thing in the world about that man, Mag. He knows he can't get bookings for any play on earth; that if he did they'd be canceled and any old excuse thrown at him, as soon as Tausig heard of it and could put on the screws. He knows that there isn't an unwatched hole in theatrical America through which he can crawl and pull me and the play in after him. And yet he just can't let go working on it. He loves it, Mag; he loves it as Molly loved that child of hers that kept her nursing it all the years of its life, and left her feeling that the world had been robbed of everything there was for a woman to do when it died.

Obermuller has told me all the plot. In fact, he's worked it out on me. I know it as it is, as he wanted it to be, and as it's going to be. He tells me he's built it up about me; that it will fit me as never a comedy fitted a player yet, and that we'll make such a hit--the play and I together--that ...

And then he remembers that there's no chance; not the ghost of one; and he falls to swearing at the Trust.

"Don't you think, Mr. O.," I said, as he began again when I came into his office, "that it might be as well to quit cursing the Syndicate till you've got something new to say or something different to rail about? It seems to me a man's likely to get daffy if he keeps harping on--"