In the studio, with her door shut against the world, Doris again resolutely took herself and her nerves in hand. She summoned endless explanations of Laurie"s manner and appearance, explanations which, however, turn and twist them as she would, always left something unexplained.
There was, she realized, a strong probability that he had forced the truth from Shaw. But even the truth would not make Laurie look and act like that. Or would it? She tried to believe it would. Anything would be better than the thing she feared. She set her teeth; then, springing from the chair into which she had dropped, she turned on the studio lights and busied herself with preparations for her visitors. She simply dared not let her thoughts run on.
Five minutes pa.s.sed--ten--fifteen--twenty. Save during the half-hour of that return journey from Sea Cliff, she had never known such dragging, horror-filled moments. A dozen times she fancied she heard the elevator stop at her floor, and the sound of voices and footsteps approach. A dozen times she went to her windows and wildly gazed out on the storm.
As she stared, she prayed. It was the same prayer, over and over.
"Dear G.o.d, please don"t let it be that way!" The aspiration was the nearest she dared come to putting into words the terror that shook her heart.
The second fifteen minutes were almost up when she really heard the elevator stop. Quick footsteps approached her door, but there were no voices. The three men, if they were coming, were coming in utter silence. Before they had time to rap she had opened the door and stood back to let them enter. As they pa.s.sed her she looked into their faces, and as she looked the familiar sense of panic, now immeasurably intensified, again seized her in its grip.
Laurie, usually the most punctilious of men, made on this occasion an omission extraordinary for him. He did not present his partners to their hostess. But not one of the three noticed that omission. Rodney Bangs, pale but carrying himself with a palpable effort at control, shouldered his way into the room in his characteristic fashion, as if he were meeting and hurling back a foot-ball rush. Epstein, breathless and obviously greatly excited, actually stumbled over the threshold in his unseeing haste. Laurie, slowly following the two, alone wore some resemblance to a normal manner. He was very serious but quite calm.
He took off his coat, methodically folded it, and laid it on a near-by chair. To the brain back of each of the three pairs of eyes watching him, the same thought came. He had something appalling to tell them, and, cool as he seemed, he dared not tell it. He was playing for time.
The strain of even the brief delay was too much for Epstein"s endurance. High-strung, his nerves on edge, almost before Laurie had turned he sputtered forth questions like bullets from a machine-gun.
"Vell! vell!" he demanded, "vot"s it all about? Vot"s it mean? Over the telephone you say you got to see us this minute. You say you got into trouble, big trouble. Vell, vot trouble? Vot is it?"
Laurie looked at him, and something in the look almost spiked the big gun. But Epstein was a man of action, and, notwithstanding his nervousness, a man of some nerve. The expression in the boy"s black eyes had stunned him, but with only an instant"s hesitation he finished what he had meant to say.
"I guess it ain"t nothing ve can"t fix up," he jerked out, trying to speak with his usual a.s.surance. "I guess ve fix it up all right."
Laurie shook his head. None of the thirty minutes he had spent on the ground floor had been devoted to improving his appearance. His black curly hair, usually as shining as satin, was rough, matted, dirty.
Across his left cheek the sinister cut still ran, raw, angry-looking, freshly irritated by the ice-laden wind.
"Sit down," he said, wearily. All the life had gone out of his voice. It had an uncanny effect of monotony, as if pitched on two flat notes. To those three, who knew so well the rich beauty of his speaking tones, this change in them was almost more alarming than the change in his looks.
They sat down, as he had directed, but not an eye in the room moved from his face. Epstein, still wearing his hat and heavy coat, had dropped into the big chair by the reading-lamp and was nervously gnawing his under lip. Bangs had mechanically tossed his hat toward a corner as he came in. He took a chair as mechanically, and sat very still, his back to the window, his eyes trying vainly to meet his friend"s. Doris had moved to the upper corner of the couch, where she crouched, elbows on knees, chin on hands, staring at a spot on the floor. Though in the group, she seemed alone, and felt alone.
Walking over to the mantel, Laurie rested an elbow heavily upon it, and for the first time looked squarely from one to the other of his friends.
As he looked, he tried to speak. They saw the effort and its failure, and understood both. With a gesture of hopelessness, he turned his back toward them, and stood with sagging muscles and eyes fixed on the empty grate. Epstein"s nerves snapped.
"For G.o.d"s sake, Devon," he begged, "cut out the vaits! Tell us vot you got on your chest, and tell it quick."
Laurie turned and once more met his eyes. Under the look Epstein"s oblique eyes shifted.
"I"m going to," Laurie said quietly and still in those new, flat tones.
"That"s why I"ve brought you here. But--it"s a hard job. You see,"--his voice again lost its steadiness--"I"ve got to hurt you--all of you--most awfully. And--and that"s the hardest part of this business for me."
Doris, now staring up at him, told herself that she could not endure another moment of this tension. She dared not glance at either of the others, but she heard Epstein"s heavy breathing and the creak of Rodney Bangs"s chair as he suddenly changed his position. Again it was Epstein who spoke, his voice rising on a shriller note.
"Vell! vell! Get it out! I s"pose you done something. Vot you done?"
For the first time Laurie"s eyes met those of Doris. The look was so charged with meaning that she sat up under it as if she had received a shock. Yet she was not sure she understood it. Did he want her to help him? She did not know. She only knew now that the thing she had feared was here, and that if she did not speak out something in her head would snap.
"He killed Herbert Shaw," she almost whispered.
For a long moment there was utter silence in the room, through which the words just spoken seemed to scurry like living things, anxious to be out and away. Laurie, his eyes on the girl, showed no change in his position, though a spasm crossed his face. Epstein, putting up one fat hand, feebly beat the air with it as if trying to push back something that was approaching him, something intangible but terrible. Bangs alone seemed at last to have taken in the full meaning of the curt announcement. As if it had galvanized him into movement, he sprang to his feet and, head down, charged the situation.
"What the devil is she talking about?" he cried out. "Laurie! What does she mean?"
"She told you." Laurie spoke as quietly as before, but without looking up.
"You--mean--it"s--true?"
Rodney still spoke in a loud, aggressive voice, as if trying to awaken himself and the others from a nightmare.
"Take it in," muttered Laurie. "Pull yourselves up to it. I had to."
An uncontrollable shudder ran over him. As if his nerve had suddenly given way, he dropped his head on his bent arm. For another interval Bangs stood staring at him in a stupefaction through which a slow tremor ran.
"I--I _can"t_ take it in," he stammered at last.
"I know. That"s the way I felt."
Laurie spoke without raising his head. Bangs, watching him, saw him shudder again, saw that his legs were giving under him, and that he was literally holding to the mantel for support. The sight steadied his own nerves. He pushed his chair forward, and with an arm across the other"s shoulder, forced him down into it.
"Then, in G.o.d"s name, why are we wasting time here?" he suddenly demanded. "Your car"s outside. I"ll drive you--anywhere. We"ll get out of the country. We"ll travel at night and lie low in the daytime. Pull yourself together, old man." Urgently, he grasped the other"s shoulder.
"We"ve got things to do."
Laurie shook his head. He tried to smile. There was something horrible in the resulting grimace of his twisted mouth.
"There were only two things to do," he said doggedly. "One was to tell you three. I"ve done that. The other was to tell the district attorney.
I"ve done that, too."
Bangs recoiled, as if from a physical blow. Epstein, who had slightly roused himself at the prospect of action, sank back into a stunned, goggling silence.
"You"ve told him!" gasped Rodney, when he could speak.
"Yes." Laurie was pulling himself together. "We"re friends, you know, Perkins and I," he went on, more naturally. "I"ve seen a good deal of him lately. He will make it as easy as he can. He has taken my parole.
I"ve got--till morning." He let them take that in. Then, very simply, he added, "I have promised to be in my rooms at eight o"clock."
Under this, like a tree-trunk that goes down with the final stroke of the ax, Rodney Bangs collapsed.
"My G.o.d!" he muttered. "My--G.o.d!" He fell into the nearest chair and sat there, his head in his shaking hands.
As if the collapse of his friend were a call to his own strength, Laurie suddenly sat up and took himself in hand.
"Now, listen," he said. "Let"s take this sensibly. We"ve got to thresh out the situation, and here"s our last chance. I want to make one thing clear. Shaw was pure vermin. There"s no place for his sort in a decent world, and I have no more regret over--over exterminating him than I would have over killing a snake. Later, Miss Mayo will tell you why."
Under the effect of the clear, dispa.s.sionate voice, almost natural again, Epstein began to revive.
"It was self-defense," he croaked, eagerly. He caught at the idea as if it were a life-line, and obviously began to drag himself out of a pit with its help. "It was self-defense," he repeated. "You vas fighting, I s"pose. That lets you out."
"No," Laurie dully explained, "he wasn"t armed. I thought he was. I thought he was drawing some weapon. He had used chloroform on me once before. I was mistaken. But no jury will believe that, of course."
His voice changed and flatted again. His young figure seemed to give in the chair, as if its muscles sagged under a new burden. For a moment he sat silent.
"We may as well face all the facts," he went on, at last. "The one thing I won"t endure is the horror of a trial."