# The House of Intrigue/Chapter 20
### CHAPTER TWENTY

I REALIZED, as I looked up and saw Wendy Washburn step into the room, that one of the biggest crosses a woman has to bear is to find herself unable to be indignant with a man when she wants to be indignant with him.
I had every reason to know there was a reckoning ahead for Wendy Washburn, a reckoning which would show him up in colors which he couldn't possibly be proud of. But even while I told myself that I ought to abhor him, I couldn't help feeling wordlessly and foolishly glad that he was safely back in that room.
As I glanced at him the first time, even in that uncertain light, I could see that he looked pale and tired and worried. But it wasn't until I glanced at him a second time that I saw he was carrying a black club-bag in his hand. And I knew, by the quietly triumphant light in his eye, that this bag wasn't empty.
Yet before any one there could change his position or speak to him Alicia Ledwidge had stepped to ​his side. She did so with a note of quiet authority which, for a moment, I was tempted to resent. But I had no way of knowing what happened between them as they talked together, low and earnestly. Once, and once only, he turned and stared at me. But he did so with a look of pale abstraction which convinced me that he was thinking of entirely different things. And I realized that things were continuing to shape themselves, that day, to make me feel much less superior than I had felt.
So I sat there, looking meekly around me. I realized, as I did so that we were a very interesting collection, on the whole. But I realized at the same time that I'd seen about enough of that collection, I was tired of them, from Copperhead Kate and her green snake's eyes to the little weasel in black and Pinky McClone in his sulphur-colored gloves. I was tired of wearing a compress of beefsteak on one eye. I was blue and lonesome, and felt pretty much like a dying duck in a thunderstorm. I was home-sick for something which I couldn't explain, even to myself, although a still voice somewhere under my fifth rib kept whispering there was a better place for beefsteak than over one's cheek-bone.
And it was Big Ben Locke's sonorous chest-tones that brought me suddenly out of myself.
​"D'you mean to say you got your stuff back?" he demanded of Wendy Washburn, staring at the club-bag.
My Hero-Man slowly moved his head up and down.
"But how'd you do it?" insisted the Lil' Old Bill-Pinkerton-of-The-East.
"I had the chance of grabbing Griswold, or the family junk, when Griswold passed the bag to a lady confederate of his."
"What confederate?" demanded Big Ben.
"She answers to the name of Third-Arm Annie. And I chose the junk!"
"That cat!" cried Copperhead Kate, with a quick note of jealousy in her voice. But I was paying little attention to Copperhead Kate's personal feelings, just then, for I was carefully watching Wendy Washburn's face, and Wendy Washburn was in turn carefully watching mine. For I knew, as plainly as though he had said it in so many words, that he had deliberately allowed Bud Griswold to make his get-away, when he might have done just the opposite, had he so chosen.
"And how'd you get Annie?" pursued the matter-of-fact Big Ben,
"I got her at the exact moment when she was ​trying to check the bag at the parcel-room in the Grand Central Station. It was a very clever dodge, and, I suppose, they had hit on it beforehand. But when I stepped up for the bag the woman simply melted away and lost herself in the crowd!"
"So he's ready to slough with that snake again!" Copperhead Kate venomously and audibly meditated. Like all other women, she clearly disapproved of rivals. But her meditations were cut short by a querulous question from one of the old weasels.
"You may have got your bag back," he quavered, "but what we want to know is: Where is that body?"
"Body?" echoed Wendy, not understanding the question.
It was the quiet-eyed Alicia Ledwidge who interposed at this point.
"He means the body of that poor maid, the girl called Margaret Hueffer," she pointed out to my Hero-Man. Then she turned to old Ezra Bartlett.
"That body was taken away by the undertaker, as happens with quite a number of bodies in this city," she calmly and prosaically explained to the two round-eyed old conspirators.
"Then why were we told to claim that this ​young—this young whipper-snapper of a girl here had killed her?" demanded irate old Brother Ezra.
"We'd better cut out this wrangling!" suggested Big Ben Locke, as he moved over toward where his two prisoners sat on the Louis-Seize sofa. He made a curt motion for them to get to their feet.
Wendy Washburn, at the same moment, stepped over closer to the chair, where I sat. I could not see the expression on his face, for I refused to look at him. But something about that expression, apparently, was distasteful to Copperhead Kate. For as she rose to her feet she emitted a loud and fearless hoot of derision. Then she swung about and faced me.
"It's just like you wax-doll ribs," she called out with a snort, "to freeze on to something worth about half a million!"
"Worth about half a million?" I repeated, being so wide of the mark for a moment that I thought she was still harping on the club-bag and the loot it held.
"What do you mean by that?" I asked her.
"I mean that guy there," she retorted, pointing straight at Wendy Washburn. "And you know what he's worth, or you wouldn't be workin' overtime ropin' it down!"
​I don't know whether I changed color or not. But I could feel a wave of blind rage sweep right through me, from top to toe, and I did my best to wither that woman with a look. If I wasn't altogether successful in this, it must have been because of the beefsteak bandage.
"Roping it down?" I repeated, feeling that my nerves were at last getting the better of me. "Well, the whole lot of you can take it from me that I'm going to get out of it now, and get out of it for good. For I say again that I'm tired of it, and tired of everybody in it. I'm tired of being carted around and being man-hauled and being made a catspaw of. I'm tired of being lied to. I'm tired of crooks and cowards, and if from this day, there's any way of getting through life without linking up with that breed, I'm going to find it!"
My voice was unsteady, and a little shrill from excitement, I suppose, but it didn't seem to have the electrifying effect I had looked for.
All it did, in fact, was to bring a sudden and quite unlooked-for exclamation from Wendy Washburn.
"Clear out of here, the whole pack of you!" he coolly commanded, "for I want to talk to this young lady!"
​There was a note of authority in his voice which I couldn't help resenting, just as there was a ring of triumph in it which I couldn't quite understand.
"Lady?" scoffed the departing Copperhead Kate, over her shoulder. But that open scorn of hers was cut short by the sharp tug on the wrist with which Pinky McClone favored her. I could afford to ignore the taunt. But I wasn't sorry to see her go.
I knew that Wendy Washburn was standing in front of me, waiting to speak. But I had no intention of looking up at him, for I could feel my under-lip trembling, and I didn't want him to find it out.
That silence lasted so long, however, that it began to seem silly to me. So I decided to break it.
"What do you want to talk to me about?" I demanded, though for the life of me I couldn't make it sound as stern as I wanted to make it sound.
"About the most important thing in all the world," was Wendy Washburn's perfectly solemn reply.
I looked up at him, at that. I couldn't help it, for I wanted to make sure of his meaning. And I noticed, as I looked at him, that he seemed suddenly different. He seemed to be taking his turn at appearing less superior, less sure of himself. But it wasn't ​this air of humility that disturbed me. It was the discovery that he looked tired and worn, a little old and drawn about the eyes. And that made me sorry for him, in spite of myself.
"What do you want?" I asked, trying to make the question as hard and curt as I was able.
"I want you to help me," was his answer. He spoke very quietly, but something about his voice started a pulse going on each side of my neck just above my coat-collar.
"But surely you heard me say that I was tired of people who are deceitful and crooked and cowardly," I reminded him, steeling my heart against that unfair spirit of humility with which he was trying to outflank my will before it could dig itself in.
"And you put me in with that class?" he quietly inquired.
"You put yourself In with that class," I reminded him, recalling the things that had come to me during those last two days of storm and stress.
"Listen to me," he said, with a return of his more authoritative tone, "you've just said you were sick and tired of dishonest people, of crooks, as you called them. Well, that's the one thing I've been wanting to do, I've been trying to do. You thought ​that you could only live by excitement—and I thought it would be easy to show you that this wasn't true, simply by—well, by giving you an overdose of it. Then things got muddled up, as you see they have. Whether I was right or wrong, I wanted to make you tired of all that other kind of life. I tried to make you tired of it. But I never dreamed these other things were going to happen to you!"
"Then you knew I was in Locke's office?" I asked him, compelling myself to calmness.
"Yes, I knew it—and I wanted you out of it," he meekly acknowledged.
"Why?"
"Because I wanted you to help me," he replied, after a moment's pause.
"At what?" I asked.
"At the most dangerous calling a man can possibly have—that of doing nothing!"
I was thinking of the girl above stairs; and the thought of her was like an asbestos curtain between us.
"It seems to me that you've been doing rather too much," I amended.
"Baddie," he pleaded, "don't be too hard on me!"
But there was too much to remember.
"And you knew, all along, that Bud Griswold ​wasn't what I had imagined him to be?" It was a hard question to ask, but I had to purge my soul of it.
"Yes, I found out certain things. And when he got his conviction, in Detroit, I was hoping that it would be giving you your chance."
"But why couldn't you have been open with me about it?" I demanded.
"I knew it was hopeless," he admitted. "And the way you feel about it now proves me more than ever right."
I was more afraid of his humility than of his masterfulness. I resented the way in which he seemed able to appeal to my sense of pity. For no woman can feel sorry for a man and hate him at the same time.
I stood up, with one hand on the back of my chair, though I hadn't intended to make the movement a dismissive one.
"I'm afraid I've been a trouble to you," I said, trying to give an imitation of the Sphinx on an autumn night, "almost as much trouble as that cousin of yours up-stairs!"
"Claire?" he said, with a troubled brow.
"She has told me of your intention to marry her," I went on, though the words didn't come easy.
​"And you believed that?"
"Why shouldn't I?"
He stood for a moment, silent and thoughtful.
"Did Claire also tell you that I was everything that was evil? That I was hard and cruel?"
"I think she did."
"And did you believe that?" he asked, reaching out for my hand.
I didn't want to seem afraid of him. So I had to look him honestly and openly in the eye.
"Did you believe that?" he repeated.
"No!" I finally replied. Yet it wasn't what I had intended answering.
"And are you going to believe those other foolish things of me?" he went on. He was much stronger than I was, so I had no way of keeping him from drawing me closer to him.
"Are you?" he repeated.
"No!" I said in a whisper, beginning to feel like a snow-man in a March rain-shower. He was no longer humble, by this time, but his old masterful self again.
"And do you hate me?" he demanded, taking me in his arms.
I tried to speak calmly, but I wasn't able to.
"No," I said, with a sob of surrender. And hav​ing only one eye, at the time, I had no way of knowing when Clarissa Rhinelander Bartlett walked majestically into the room and found my empty little head on the shoulder of her quite unabashed guardian-at-law. And I felt sorry for her. For she had lost her Hero-Man and I had found mine.
THE END