The Blind Goddess. Arthur Cheney Train

your hands off me! Even if the jury did acquit this feller, he stole seventy-two dollars, didn’t he? I can have him arrested for that, and I’m goin’ to. There’s some justice left!”

      “Justice! Bah!” roared White. “You baldheaded baboon!—Try it!”

      “I will see that the money is repaid!” said Moira coldly. “Mr. Renig, here is my address. Come and see me if you need any more help. May I speak to you outside, Mr. Dillon?”

      She nodded to the reporters and to Mr. Dollar, and turned confidently to Hugh—a self-possessed young person with a well-developed histrionic sense.

      The court-room was already nearly empty. The “nut” who wanted to speak to the judge for a moment had followed him up-stairs, and the decorous drunk had been officially awakened and cast out. The only spectator left was the woman in chinchilla, who had crept nearer and nearer as the little scene inside the rail was being enacted. Now, as Captain Lynch held open the gate for Moira to pass out of the enclosure, the woman swayed toward her with an almost imperceptible forward movement of her hands.

      “Go over and wait for me at the office, Paul,” directed Dillon, following the girl into the lobby. In spite of what he regarded as her ostentatious largesse his heart was still hardened against her. Nevertheless, this did not exclude a certain curiosity as to what she might prove to be like on further acquaintance. She was quite different from any girl he had ever met before. Neither of them noticed the woman who was lurking in the shadow between the outer and inner doors.

      “Won’t you drive uptown with me, Mr. Dillon? I want to talk to you.”

      To Hugh it was an astounding suggestion. What could she want of him? Was she worried about the case, perhaps?

      “About Renig?”

      “Yes—partly.”

      “What do you want to know about him?” he asked, without moving further.

      She gave a gesture of impatience.

      “I can’t talk to you here. I—I’ve got an appointment uptown.”

      He looked at her, frowning. She could not be peremptory with him, whatever prerogatives might be accorded to her by others.

      “I have one myself at my office, Miss Devens. I’m sorry.”

      An angry gleam came into her eyes.

      “Perhaps you’ll take me to my motor, then?”

      “Delighted.”

      From the shadow the woman in the chinchilla boa watched them disappear down the stairs. The voice of O’Hara at her elbow startled her so that she almost screamed.

      “Look here, Mrs. Clayton! I want to be as friendly to you as I can, but this isn’t treating us fair. If I told Mr. Devens he’d cancel his contract with you.”

      She had shrunk away from him and stood with her handkerchief to her lips, whimpering.

      “I know I shouldn’t have come. But money isn’t everything. Sometimes I feel as if I’d go mad unless I could touch her hand. But I won’t do it again. I promise you, Mr. O’Hara.”

      “Well, see that you don’t.”

      He lifted his square derby hat and stalked by her into the court-room.

      “Hold on a minute, Jerry!” he called to the janitor, who was turning off the lights. “Got to find my bag.” His eye caught the Blind Goddess. “Why the devil don’t you clean up that picture? It’s that dirty you couldn’t hardly tell it was a woman—let alone Justice.”

      The janitor suspended his labours, put his head sideways, and examined the picture critically.

      “Is that Justice?” he inquired. “That’s one on me! I always thought it was supposed to be the Goddess of Liberty.”

      Hugh and Moira, their footsteps lisping upon the marble flags, crossed the great hall of the rotunda, whose corridors rose tier on tier into a vast obscurity like the balconies of an empty opera-house. A chauffeur, warming himself within the revolving doors of the Lafayette Street entrance, hurried out ahead of them to a gleaming cabriolet, where he stood at attention, one hand on the door-handle, with a mink robe draped over his right arm. They paused beside him.

      “I wonder if you appreciate the drama of your life!” said Moira. “I suppose you don’t. People never do. You work in the midst of a Comédie Humaine—you run the gamut of the emotions every hour in the day.”

      To the west, up Franklin Street, beyond Broadway, the sky was a riot of gold, scarlet, and saffron. Behind them the black bulk of the Tombs rose like a grim stage donjon against a back-drop of pale blue sprinkled with gold dust. A motorized hook-and-ladder, clanging an intermittent warning, backed snorting into the engine-house on the corner, like a fire-breathing Fafner retreating into his cavern.

      Moira put one foot on the running-board, then glanced over her shoulder. He had made no accompanying movement. The wind flipped her boa against his cheek.

      “Come along!” she urged.

      “Sorry,” he answered, still distrustful, “but I have to go to the office. I’ve no end of work to do.”

      She replaced her foot on the sidewalk and faced him.

      “But I want you to ride uptown with me—escort me home!”

      “Look here!” he said suddenly and not altogether gently, “I’d like to know what this is all about! Suppose I do ride uptown with you—what then!”

      “Get in and I’ll tell you!—Don’t be a goose!” And she gave a little chuckling laugh—tantalizing, irresistible. For some reason the acuteness of his resentment against her softened.

      “Oh, all right, then!” he protested, getting into the car and sinking into the seat beside her. There was no harm in seeing what she was up to.

      “You act as if you thought I were trying to kidnap you!” she declared as they glided off. “Most men would feel complimented.”

      “Would they?”

      “Aren’t you pleased that I want to make friends with you?” she demanded provocatively. “Don’t you want to be friends?”

      He looked ahead through the plate glass. He had no intention of letting himself be vamped, but, on the other hand, he did not wish to misjudge her. Anyhow, she was worth being frank with.

      “Look here, Miss Devens!” he said. “I have no idea of what you really want of me, but, to be frank with you, I can’t say I think much of your coming down the way you did this afternoon, as if the place were a zoo and you wanted to look at the animals!”

      “But I am planning to do work in the Tombs, and I wanted to learn all about everything—so as to be of more service.”

      “Service!”

      “Yes—why not?”

      “Good God!” he exclaimed. “What possible service do you think a girl like yourself could be to anybody in the Tombs?”

      She looked at him for a moment as if doubtful whether or not to resent his remark. Then she laughed.

      “You are frank!—Why couldn’t I—why couldn’t anybody—be of service to an unfortunate prisoner?”

      “Because the trouble isn’t in the Tombs. That’s the last act of the tragedy. You’ve got to start earlier—with the prologue. When a fellow gets into jail he needs a lawyer, not a social-service worker. He doesn’t want perfumery, or flowers, or eclairs, or a Bible. He wants somebody to fight for him.”

      They were passing Police Headquarters. A platoon of officers was just descending the steps.

      “And fight like hell!” he growled through his teeth.

      “Good!” she echoed.