I
Astir with questionings as to what might be behind his unexpected summons here, Clifford pushed the button. The door was opened by Mary Regan herself.
"Step into the sitting-room," was her brief and formal greeting.
Somehow, after her note, he had half expected a reception less cold than this, cold and short though that note had been. More at a loss than ever, he entered the familiar room where, over that strange week-end now but three days gone, he had held Joe Russell and Mary Regan and their poor dupe of a receiving teller and the suit-case crammed with an uncounted fortune of stolen bank-notes.
Mary Regan motioned him to a chair and herself sat down. Among the possibilities awakened by her note was that he might find this proud, wilful young woman in a softer and more humble mood. She must have read the very text of his thoughts, for her first words were a prompt answer to them.
"Do not think, Mr. Clifford, that my object in sending for you was to hear the confession of a penitent." Voice and manner were superbly composed, and set him far, far away.
The immediacy with which she had reversed their positions and taken the upper hand nonplussed him yet further. He who had arrested her, and by whose lenience alone she was now sitting before him a free woman, and who was here at her request, was being treated as though he were the one at fault and as though he were a presumptuous person to be snubbed into his place. The audacity of her!
"Your note gave me no hint of why you wished to see me," he managed to say.
"Mere curiosity--though strong, to be sure. What you did the other day, it naturally made me very curious."
"Curious? Why?"
"You will admit that your course was somewhat unusual for a police officer, even a discharged officer," she drawled, with a faint, derisive smile. "The Empire Security Bank, unknown to itself, had been robbed of two or three hundred thousand dollars. You had the three persons captured who had done the job: my uncle, the receiving teller, and myself, who would have made the story twice as big by adding the 'pretty girl' element beloved by newspapers. Our arrest would have made you sensationally famous, and would have restored you to your lost position. And yet you managed the affair so that Mr. Jerrold replaced the stolen money in the bank and resumed his accustomed place without any one being the wiser about the robbery--and you let Uncle Joe and me go free. Such action isn't the usual course pursued by the police. Can you blame me for taking a trifling interest in why you did it?"
She certainly was amazing! But of what might not that pride and mockery and audacity be the mask? Three days before, for an instant, he had thought he had glimpsed a soul behind it.
Should he answer her? He wasn't certain, even if he did explain, that she could possibly comprehend his point of view. But skeptic and cynic though she might be, he would give her the chance.
"Your uncle has been what he is for over thirty years and may never be anything different," he began. "But that young teller who actually robbed the bank, he was not by nature a criminal. And I do not believe you are either. it's your training. You and Jerrold are both very young. To have arrested you two would have meant the ruin of your lives. I could not accept personal triumph at such a cost. I believe"--and here he was repeating what he had said in his own defense when reporting to Commissioner Thorne his handling of the robbery--" I believe it is a bigger thing, even for a police official, to save a person from becoming a criminal than it is to jail him after he has become one."
"Ah, so your motive was to reform me? You thought I might be rescued and made into a better woman?"
Her sarcasm made Clifford flush.
"I came here at your invitation, Miss Regan, and I did not come here to moralize or preach. But you state my motive and opinion with marvelous precision."
"Thanks for your solicitude"--very caustically. "Your explanation is very ingenious. It has only one slight defect. It leaves me as curious as before."
"Why?"
"Because I do not believe it."
Stung by her cool gibes, Clifford trembled with an exasperated impulse to retort with physical chastisement. That impulse he checked, and while he was groping for phrases with which he might strike back, down the hallway a key slid into the Yale lock.
"Your uncle?" he inquired.
"Uncle Joe sailed yesterday on a business trip to Rio Janeiro. My brother has the only other key."
"Slant-Face Regan? I beg pardon--that's the way we know him."
"Yes. Jim drops in sometimes."
Steps came down the hall. Clifford lowered his voice to a whisper.