Lawyers -- Fiction; Love stories; Mystery and detective stories; Political corruption -- Fiction
Fleming sat for a moment before he swayed forward. On that instant she
realized that there was some one else in the room--a man who took an
uncertain step or two forward into view, threw up his hands and
disappeared as silently as he had come. It was Schwartz. Then she saw
the door into the hall open, saw Wardrop come slowly in and close it,
watched his sickening realization of what had occurred; then a sudden
panic seized her. Arms seemed to stretch out from the darkness behind
her, to draw her into it. She tried to get away, to run, even to
scream--then she fainted. It was gray dawn when she recovered her senses
and got back to the hotel room she had taken under an assumed name.
By night she was quieter. She read the news of Fleming's death in the
papers, and she gloated over it. But there was more to be done; she was
only beginning. She meant to ruin Schwartz, to kill his credit, to fell
him with the club of public disfavor. Wardrop had told her that her
husband's letters were with other papers at the Monmouth Avenue house,
where he could not get them.
Fleming's body was taken home that day, Saturday, but she had gone too
far to stop. She wanted the papers before Lightfoot could get at them
and destroy the incriminating ones. That night she got into the Fleming
house, using the key she had taken. She ransacked the library, finding,
not the letters that Wardrop had said were there, but others, equally or
more incriminating, canceled notes, private accounts, that would have
ruined Schwartz for ever.
It was then that I saw the light and went down-stairs. My unlucky
stumble gave her warning enough to turn out the light. For the rest, the
chase through the back hall, the dining-room and the pantry, had
culminated in her escape up the back stairs, while I had fallen down the
dumb-waiter shaft. She had run into Bella on the upper floor, Bella, who
had almost fainted, and who knew her and kept her until morning, petting
her and soothing her, and finally getting her into a troubled sleep.
That day she realized that she was being followed. When Edith's
invitation came she accepted it at once, for the sake of losing herself
and her papers, until she was ready to use them. It had disconcerted her
to find Margery there, but she managed to get along. For several days
everything had gone well: she was getting stronger again, ready for the
second act of the play, prepared to blackmail Schwartz, and then expose
him. She would have killed him later, probably; she wanted her measure
full and running over, and so she would disgrace him first.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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