The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин

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СКАЧАТЬ you think this young girl knows me, or that I know her, you are greatly mistaken. She is as much of a stranger to me as I am to her, and I take this opportunity of saying so. I hope my liberty and good name are not to be made dependent upon the word of a miserable waif like this.”

      “Your liberty and your good name will depend upon your innocence,” retorted Mr. Gryce, and said no more, feeling himself at a disadvantage before the imperturbability of this man and the silent, non-accusing attitude of this woman, from the shock of whose passions he had anticipated so much and obtained so little.

      Meantime they were moving rapidly towards Police Headquarters, and fearing that the sight of that place might alarm Miss Oliver more than was well for her, he strove again to rouse her by a kindly word or so. But it was useless. She evidently tried to pay attention and follow the words he used, but her thoughts were too busy over the one great subject that engrossed her.

      “A bad case!” murmured Mr. Van Burnam, and with the phrase seemed to dismiss all thought of her.

      “A bad case!” echoed Mr. Gryce, “but,” seeing how fast the look of resolution was replacing her previous aspect of frenzy, “one that will do mischief yet to the man who has deceived her.”

      The stopping of the carriage roused her. Looking up, she spoke for the first time.

      “I want a police officer,” she said.

      Mr. Gryce, with all his assurance restored, leaped to the ground and held out his hand.

      “I will take you into the presence of one,” said he; and she, without a glance at Mr. Van Burnam, whose knee she brushed in passing, leaped to the ground, and turned her face towards Police Headquarters.

Chapter XXXVII.

       “Two Weeks!”

       Table of Contents

      But before she was well in, her countenance changed.

      “No,” said she, “I want to think first. Give me time to think. I dare not say a word without thinking.”

      “Truth needs no consideration. If you wish to denounce this man——”

      Her look said she did.

      “Then now is the time.”

      She gave him a sharp glance; the first she had bestowed upon him since leaving Miss Althorpe’s.

      “You are no doctor,” she declared. “Are you a police-officer?”

      “I am a detective.”

      “Oh!” and she hesitated for a moment, shrinking from him with very natural distrust and aversion. “I have been in the toils then without knowing it; no wonder I am caught. But I am no criminal, sir; and if you are the one most in authority here, I beg the privilege of a few words with you before I am put into confinement.”

      “I will take you before the Superintendent,” said Mr. Gryce. “But do you wish to go alone? Shall not Mr. Van Burnam accompany you?”

      “Mr. Van Burnam?”

      “Is it not he you wish to denounce?”

      “I do not wish to denounce any one to-day.”

      “What do you wish?” asked Mr. Gryce.

      “Let me see the man who has power to hold me here or let me go, and I will tell him.”

      “Very well,” said Mr. Gryce, and led her into the presence of the Superintendent.

      She was at this moment quite a different person from what she had been in the carriage. All that was girlish in her aspect or appealing in her bearing had faded away, evidently forever, and left in its place something at once so desperate and so deadly, that she seemed not only a woman but one of a very determined and dangerous nature. Her manner, however, was quiet, and it was only in her eye that one could see how near she was to frenzy.

      She spoke before the Superintendent could address her.

      “Sir,” said she, “I have been brought here on account of a fearful crime I was unhappy enough to witness. I myself am innocent of that crime, but, so far as I know, there is no other person living save the guilty man who committed it, who can tell you how or why or by whom it was done. One man has been arrested for it and another has not. If you will give me two weeks of complete freedom, I will point out to you which is the veritable man of blood, and may Heaven have mercy on his soul!”

      “She is mad,” signified the Superintendent in by-play to Mr. Gryce.

      But the latter shook his head; she was not mad yet.

      “I know,” she continued, without a hint of the timidity which seemed natural to her under other circumstances, “that this must seem a presumptuous request from one like me, but it is only by granting it that you will ever be able to lay your hand on the murderer of Mrs. Van Burnam. For I will never speak if I cannot speak in my own way and at my own time. The agonies I have suffered must have some compensation. Otherwise I should die of horror and my grief.”

      “And how do you hope to gain compensation by this delay?” expostulated the Superintendent. “Would you not meet with more satisfaction in denouncing him here and now before he can pass another night in fancied security?”

      But she only repeated: “I have said two weeks, and two weeks I must have. Two weeks in which to come and go as I please. Two weeks!” And no argument they could advance succeeded in eliciting from her any other response or in altering in any way her air of quiet determination with its underlying suggestion of frenzy.

      Acknowledging their mutual defeat by a look, the Superintendent and detective drew off to one side, and something like the following conversation took place between them.

      “You think she’s sane?”

      “I do.”

      “And will remain so two weeks?”

      “If humored.”

      “You are sure she is implicated in this crime?”

      “She was a witness to it.”

      “And that she speaks the truth when she declares that she is the only person who can point out the criminal?”

      “Yes; that is, she is the only one who will do it. The attitude taken by the Van Burnams, especially by Howard just now in the presence of this girl, shows how little we have to expect from them.”

      “Yet you think they know as much as she does about it?”

      “I do not know what to think. For once I am baffled, Superintendent. Every passion which this woman possesses was roused by her unexpected meeting with Howard Van Burnam, and yet their indifference when confronted, as well as her present action, seems to argue a lack of connection between them which overthrows at once the theory of his guilt. Was it the sight СКАЧАТЬ