Part 33 (1/2)
”Well?”
”I wondered if you wouldn't stop your interviews--your accusations?”
The younger woman's eagerness, evident now in the variety of her gestures and the rapid procession of pallour and flush across her cheeks, persuaded Mrs. Brace that Lucille was acting on an impulse of her own, not as an agent to carry out another's well designed scheme.
The older woman, at that idea, felt safe. She asked:
”And you want--what?”
”I've come here to ask you to tell me all you know, or to be quiet altogether.”
”I'm afraid I don't understand--fully,” returned Mrs. Brace, with an exaggerated bewilderment. ”Tell all I know?”
”That is, if you do know anything you haven't told!” Lucille urged her.
”Oh, don't you see? I'm saying to you that I want to put an end to this dreadful suspense!”
Mrs. Brace laughed disagreeably; her face was harder, less human. ”You mean I'm amusing myself, exerting myself needlessly, as a matter of spite? Do you mean to tell me that?”
”No! No!” Lucille denied, impatient with herself for lack of clearness.
”I mean I'm sure you're attacking an innocent man. And I'm willing, I'm anxious--oh, I hope so much, Mrs. Brace--to make an agreement with you--a financial arrangement----” She paused the fractional part of a second on that; and, seeing that the other did not resent the term, she added: ”to pay you to stop it. Isn't that clear?”
”Yes; that's clear.”
”Understand me, please. What I ask is that you say nothing more to the reporters, the sheriff or the Was.h.i.+ngton police, that will have the effect of hounding them on against Mr. Webster. I want to eliminate from the situation all the influence you've exerted to make Mr. Crown believe Mr. Webster's guilty and my father's protecting him.”
”Let me think,” Mrs. Brace said, coolly.
Lucille exulted inwardly, ”She'll do it! She'll do it!” The hard eyes dissected her eager face. The girl drew back in her chair, thinking now: ”She suspects who sent me!”
At last, the older woman spoke:
”The detective, Hastings, would never have allowed you to come here, Miss Sloane.--Excuse my frankness,” she interjected, with a smile she meant to be friendly; ”but you're frank with me; we're not mincing matters; and I have to be careful.--He'd have warned you that your errand's practical confession of your knowledge of something incriminating Berne Webster. If you didn't suspect the man even more strongly than I do, you'd never have been driven to--this.”
She leaned the rocker back and crossed her knees, the movement throwing into high relief the hard lankness of her figure. She gazed at the wall, over Lucille's head, as she dealt with the possibilities that presented themselves to her a.n.a.lysis. Her manner was that of a certain gloating enjoyment, a thinly covered, semi-orderly greediness.
”She's not even thinking of her daughter,” Lucille thought, and went pale a moment. ”She's as bad as Mr. Hastings said--worse!”
”Then, too,” Mrs. Brace continued, ”your father discharged him last night.”
Lucille remembered the detective's misgivings about Jarvis; how else had this woman found that out?
”And you've taken matters into your own hands.--Did your father send you here--to me?”
”Why, no!”
The other smiled slyly, the tip of her tongue again visible, her eyebrows high in interrogation. ”Of course,” she said; ”you wouldn't tell me if he had. He would have warned you against that admission.”
”It's Mr. Webster about whom I am most concerned,” Lucille reminded, sharpness in her vibrant young voice. ”My father's being annoyed is merely incidental.”
”Oh, of course! Of course,” Mrs. Brace grinned, with broad sarcasm.