The Case of the Mysterious Moll Read online

  “It—it is bad,” replied Margaret in a low voice. “For if—if it had been good, I’d have been notified somehow—that is, Matron, you would have—long before this, and—”

  “Now, now, I told you why that would be quite impossible—with the warden himself not on the premises at the moment to take a direct call from the governor. And—but all right—good or bad, Annister—this particular interview can only be five minutes. Do you fully understand that?”

  “Five minutes?” Margaret’s hand swept to her heart. “Oh surely, Matron, you won’t hold me to—” She stopped. Such hopes as she had concerning the outcome of Yerxa’s interview had been burning so low that their flame was well nigh invisible—but they had been at least burning; now the faint glow that had emanated from that burning seemed to die down—to cease. “Oh surely,” Margaret begged, “you—you don’t mean that, do you—Matron? If her news is bad? And because of it I can have only a few hours to live? Surely you–”

  “Now stop that!” ordered O’John, sternly and peremp­torily. “The point is, Annister, that instructions are instructions. Regardless of what news she brings. So all right, then, I’m going to let your friend in the minute she comes. You may be entirely alone with her. And you needn’t fear that anything either of you says will be listened to by that device in back of you. I shall, of course, have to click in once or twice during the interview—and listen for a mere second or so—just to see that everything is going along in here on—well—even keel and all; but the speaker-circuit won’t be kept open, as I shall assure your friend. Only remember—remember now—news good or news bad—five minutes only?”

  “But oh,” Margaret cried, that invisible and practically non-existent flame of hope rising suddenly within her, “if—if by some chance she has good news, then—then I wouldn’t want her to remain with me even five seconds. I would want her to fly—to fly with it to the warden’s office—to tell him that he’s not—he’s not to—to—to—” Margaret passed a hand over her forehead.

  And now Big Bella O’John, in front of her, was speaking.

  “We’ll let the future determine all those things,” the matron was saying firmly. Now she felt for her keys; found them there at her waist. Half turned away. “All right, then.” And turning clear about this time, she proceeded across the floor to where that great round grey circle hung curiously poised as though a section of the wall itself had been neatly and firmly punched through by a giant thumb, and maneuvered herself through the opening, and was gone.

  And now, alone again with herself, as she had been for many hours now, Margaret moved wearily over to the broad window and, lining her eyes up with two openings in the iron webbing, gazed forth over the dreary scene the view gave on to: a blank desolate court-like yardlet, no wider than the death chamber itself—since its high containing side walls were nothing more than extensions of the walls of the death chamber—and with almost no depth, since the farther wall that cut it off from everything lay but twelve scant feet or so off from the window, and was so inordinately high that it cut off all the rest of the prison—all, that is, but the clock on the far tower of the administration building, the gold hands of which, seen from here, marked the passing of the hours for those within.

  Again Margaret passed a hand wearily over her forehead. How long now? How long before Yerxa would come—no!—for Yerxa would come. But if her news were bad—how many hours now—before—before—

  Fascinated, Margaret swung her eyes again to that gold-handed tower clock, lighted up by the morning sun. Twelve minutes to eleven in the morning. Six more hours. Six hours and twelve minutes. Unless, perchance, dear God, Yerxa had won—a miracle had happened—in which—

  But since Margaret had moved to the window, something had happened in the corridor outside. The arrival, no less—of someone. Someone who—

  The advance news thereof was being heralded by two separate sounds—first, the rattle of the bolt being unleashed in the door; then, in turn, the click of the speaking-device—followed, almost immediately, by the news itself—in O’John’s voice, on the speaker.

  “All right, Annister—Mrs. Indergaard is here. Go right in that door, Mrs. Indergaard.”

  And as Margaret, catching her breath sharply, her hand flying once again to her heart, swung clear around and about, the better to watch that great circular door, which already had opened, she realized helplessly that now, this moment, her Destiny was being written; that now she was to see—perhaps for the last and final time in her life—her dearest and truest friend.

  Her body almost rigid with suspense, her heart scarcely beating within her, Margaret stood exactly where she was, the better to read instantly, with her own feverish eyes, the story which, she realized well, would be told fully by Yerxa’s own frank and honest countenance, as the latter entered this chamber—of death.

  Tensely, biting her lips now to keep from screaming at the top of her voice, Margaret waited—to learn her fate!

  CHAPTER II

  True Friend

  The woman who was now stepping over the partly exposed circular threshold into the room itself was a blonde woman of about 38—though with blondeness and youth rapidly fading. She was dressed in a neat grey suit, and had a bit of niching around her neck to conceal where lines were beginning to show. Her hat was a French-like little black affair with a few violets on it. Her face was white, strained, her blue eyes full of pain. As the door drew firmly to behind her, and the sound of its bolt rattled from it, she stared about the chamber, her lips falling partly open at what she saw. And as her eyes fell on the black orifices in the wall, which told their own horrid story, she raised a hand to her own heart. At which Margaret, halfway across that room, shook her own head.

  For she knew!

  Knew absolutely, in those seconds, that the tidings being brought to her were hopeless. Knew it with such swiftness and certitude that of a sudden, as by a miracle, all desire to scream fell away from her—all her struggle with her fate ceased—she knew only that she was with her friend. Her own dear, dear, understanding friend. And that the pattern of her life was identical with what it had been all morning.

  But now Yerxa Indergaard had torn her eyes off that sight that had so pained her; and she was sweeping across the floor. As one who realized she had a great and difficult task before her. Margaret impulsively ran forward to greet her, too.

  Now they were together. Yerxa’s arms were around Margaret, fiercely, protectingly.

  “Oh, darling,” she said, “you’ve—you’ve been living a thousand deaths, haven’t you, while I’ve been waiting—holding—that appointment?”

  “In many ways, Yerxa, yes,” returned Margaret quietly, and with a calm that surprised even her. “And in other ways—not at all. For I felt sure there was no—and that’s it—isn’t it? No results?”

  She withdrew herself gently from those protecting arms. And with gravely watching eyes, awaited the answer.

  Yerxa but wet her lips. Moisture came to her eyes.

  “Yes,” Margaret said, ever so calmly, “the news is bad—as bad as it can be. He wouldn’t—maybe—even listen to you?”

  Actual tears came to Yerxa Indergaard’s eyes now. And she managed to answer.

  “Yes, Margaret—I failed. Failed completely! But not—not because he wouldn’t see me. For he did see me. Heard all I had to say. And that is the terrible part. Because despite it all, he—he was obdurate. Absolutely obdurate. His answer on both commutation and reprieve was no!”

  Margaret braced herself with a deep breath, reached out and gently took Yerxa’s hand.

  “Come over with me, Yerxa,” she said quietly, “to that outswung bunk in the corner. You’re pretty unnerved, too.”

  Yerxa was unnerved. She allowed herself to be guided over to that chain-swung pallet, far from window. Sank weakly down on it. Margaret dropped down by the other’s side.

  “I—I should not even have hoped,” was her bitter comment, her eyes unseeingly on the floor in front of her.

  “Oh, but you had a right,” Yerxa returned fiercely, having turned and faced Margaret as the latter had been speaking. “You did—oh, you did! And now that hope is gone from you, I—I don’t know what will happen to you, Margaret—”

  “Now, now,” comforted Margaret, who in like manner had turned to face her friend, and who even put out her hand and gave the other’s arm a reassuring squeeze, “just don’t you worry, darling. Please. Just don’t! For now that I know I’ve lost—and the awful suspense is over—I’m calm and at peace. Downright relieved, Yerxa. And as for—for later on today—don’t worry about that either. They’ve given me a drug—by hypodermic injection—and because of that drug, Yerxa, I feel no fear whatsoever of what’s coming—at least not very much—only a—a sort of terrible sadness, that’s all, that I’m not to go all the way down that beautiful road with you—and others.” She shook her head slowly. Went resolutely on. “But of—of fear and horror, Yerxa, I have none—really! I can’t even exactly grasp what’s coming—no matter how hard I try—for when I try it—it all goes blank. Oh, I can’t explain it very well, darling, but they even say that the—the drug will continue to break up slowly in my blood stream over the hours to come, and that I will feel even less terror—less sadness, too, no doubt—than I do now, as I get closer to that hour when the gas—” Fiercely, Margaret shook her head. The older woman made not the slightest effort to stem the flow of Margaret’s words, as one realizing that to talk was the one thing that Margaret needed most in the world at this moment. “Strange, Yerxa,” Margaret was now saying helplessly. “I seem, right now, when talking about gas—the hour—and all—to have been repeating words I’ve heard somewhere—somewhere out there in the prison—only the words just don’t any more seem to make pictu
res that I can see, and I—but I’ve only been trying,” she broke off, “to refer to that hour when I just don’t go on any more—though I do so want to go on—that moment when I cease to be myself and—” Margaret gave it all up. “But just don’t—oh, don’t, my dear, true and best friend, worry at the—the critical hour. I shan’t be suffering—for because of the drug, I’ll have no pain, nor fear, nor horror, nor panic. Promise me now, darling, you’ll not worry and torture yourself—when there’s no justification for all that, darling?”

  Though Yerxa Indergaard had listened faithfully to this long speech, making not the slightest effort to interrupt, she had, nevertheless, near its end, brought forth a wisp of lace-edged handkerchief, and was now wiping her eyes. Was plainly trying to make a valiant effort to be brave,

  “I—I am sorry,” she murmured, “that I am being so weak, when you are—so brave. Sorry, Margaret.”

  As she had spoken, a loud click from the direction of the speaking and listening device announced that it had been momentarily turned on from the outside, even as the death-watch matron had warned that it might be.

  “That’s the girl!” Margaret replied, ignoring the click, and reaching out and giving the arm whose hand wielded the wisp of handkerchief a friendly squeeze. “You had grief enough—without all this being wished on you, too! If you must grieve, Yerxa—” Here a second loud click betrayed that O’John was satisfied that things were going properly in here; that the circuit had gone dead. “If you must grieve,” Margaret repeated, “just think of that real pal you lost—a year ago—yes, your husband—and not this recent friend—just be brave,” Margaret broke off, “and have always with you the belief, Yerxa, that I did not do that awful thing. Some day, Yerxa, you, and everybody else, will know for a certainty—I know you will!—that I was innocent.”

  Tears sprang again to Yerxa Indergaard’s blue eyes. “And that—that,” she half choked, “will be a fine time! When it is too late to bring back my frie—”

  “Life is like that, Yerxa,” declared Margaret, not in the least bitterly. “Always the wrong cards are held in the hand at the wrong time. But come now,” she broke off, “tell me the facts of your interview. Did you have any trouble in getting in to see him?”

  “None other,” replied Yerxa quietly, “than what I had already had—and overcome—when I saw you early this morning.”

  “It was good of your political friend,” acknowledged Margaret, “to pull those wires. Even if it has come to noth—” And she shook her head wearily. “But what was his attitude, Yerxa?”

  “Hard, Margaret. Or—or rather—should I say—im­movable? The attitude of a man whose own convictions are not by any means the only factors that determine his decis—but what does it matter, dear one, since it. came to nothing?”

  “I know,” admitted Margaret. “I know that it doesn’t matter an iota now. But I guess I’m starved for things of that outside world—will remain starved till there’s—there’s no more me—and then—” She stopped.

  The other woman, plainly warned by the nature of those peculiar observations, made haste to say something.

  “But he heard me through, of course.”

  “Well, what was his argument, Yerxa, for refusing commu­tation? And reprieve? Oh, I know what your argument was, Yerxa. You—you had none, but to say beautiful and fine and sweet things about me. But what was his—argument?”

  Yerxa Indergaard was regretfully silent. As one wonder­ing how much she could tell this girl who had now but a half-dozen hours of life left.

  “His chief argument, Margaret,” she said finally in a low voice, “happens to be one—that he doesn’t voice. It was vouchsafed me privately by the politician who got me the audience. It—well, you see, dear, within this last year, three women who were palpably guilty of murder got off with either acquittal or—or short sentence. And—” She stopped. “Suppose, darling, we don’t go on with this?”

  “No, Yerxa,” insisted Margaret. “I must go on. For I want—no, have to know.”

  “Why, dear child?” the other woman begged, won­deringly. “Why—at this time?”

  “Because, Yerxa,” said Margaret truthfully, “the more hopeless my case is—rather, I mean—has been—the less pain I feel now. Really! The thing that really hurts now is to know that I had a chance—a chance of sons—but failed to realize on it.”

  Yerxa Indergaard regarded her thoughtfully. Then spoke. “Well, since that’s the situation, darling,” were her bitter words, “God knows I can allay some of your pain! Margaret, my dear one, you had no chance whatsoever with Governor Chanrode Bayliss. For in the face of the three acquittals and short-sentence cases I spoke of last year—Bayliss was hopelessly on—on a spot. For the people of Nevada City are resenting it—that Nevada City is being said, all over the country, to be—so lawless. To interfere in both the court’s and jury’s findings now, in your case—when the Supreme Court itself has ruled the trial to have been without error, and when he is re-running for the office of governor—”

  “Would be political suicide?” nodded Margaret.

  “Yes, Margaret. Political suicide, no less. But—but all this isn’t the whole picture, darling. The governor—the governor has his own convictions about the case. He really seemed, Margaret, not so hard as—as implacably just. Just in his own eyes, that is. He pointed out that if the evenly mixed jury had not convicted you on that very first ballot—and decreed your penalty on the second—he might have had—as he put it—some slim, slender, infinitesimal chance to—to interfere. But on the—the basis he outlined—he had—he claimed—none.

  Margaret was silent. “No,” she repeated tonelessly, “he had none. Of course! That terrible jury—those twelve pairs of eyes that looked at me so unfriendly—I can never forget them any more, indeed, than I can forget the 13th pair, which—”

  “13th pair? Darling! A jury with—”

  “Oh, no, no, no, Yerxa.” Margaret hastened to explain, desperately anxious not to be thought, in her last and final hours, to be one whose sanity had fled. “My—my wits aren’t wandering, my dear, dear friend. Oh, believe me. For I—I meant the pair of eyes of that beautiful blonde woman—a woman, Yerxa, in her late thirties, truly beautiful and aristocratic-looking—yet, oh so hard—so hard. She peered at me on the street the 1st day of my freedom—the day before I was arr—yes, before—you know? It was the day the papers had just come out, saying that ‘Gorilla’ Svenson was reported a suicide. She had just bought one—was reading it with the most skeptical smile, curling her lips like a woman who knew the story to be false—a rumor. Like, Yerxa, a woman who had just talked on the phone to the man reported dead, and knew that. But then she looked up, as I came along, her eyes fell on me, she peered at me, and then, as—as though recognizing me—though God knows I knew her not at all, Yerxa—she leered at me venomously, so venomously. And now—now I go to my death with the memory of that veno—”

  “Oh, my dear—my dear one—don’t dwell on such a distressing memory. And—and a senseless one, too. Oh, you mustn’t. She but smiled—at the newsstory—if she did—because of simple satisfaction that a very bad civic character had erased himself. And she but peered at you—leered at you, as you say—with the false defiant triumph of an older woman who saw, passing her on the street, youth, and real beauty that didn’t come out of a cosmetic—”

  “But oh,” Margaret wailed, thinking back on that uncanny day, “her—her leer was different. For she was more beautiful than I ever will—that is, would have ever been. Or ever have been. Yet, stylishly dressed as she was, and beautiful, she looked like a gangster’s moll.”

  “And if she were, dear child—what? How many of such there must be in a gang-ridden city like this. Now don’t—oh, don’t go ou—ah—away from us, thinking desolately about a woman who peered and—and leered at—come now—ask me what you must want to ask. About my interview with Governor Bayliss. Or anything!”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” Margaret passed a hand over her forehead. “I was saying—yes, about those 12 awful pairs of eyes on that jury, that looked at me so—well, does the governor know, Yerxa—that the foreman of that jury—Mrs. Celia Mirick—had lost a husband—shot to death, years ago, by a young woman he was in love with?”