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No Clue! A Mystery Story

<h2>XVI</h2> <h3>THE BRIBE</h3> It was nine o'clock the following evening when Lucille Sloane, sure that she had entered the Walman unobserved, rang the bell of Mrs. Brace's apartment. Her body felt remarkably light and facile, as if she moved in a tenuous, half-real atmosphere. There were moments when she had the sensation of floating. Her brain worked with extraordinary rapidity. She was conscious of an unusually resourceful intelligence, and performed a series of mental gymnastics, framing in advance the sentences she would use in the interview confronting her. The constant thought at the back of her brain was that she would succeed; she would speak and act in such a way that Mrs. Brace would take the money. She was buoyed by a fierce determination to be repaid for all the suspense, all the agony of heart, that had weighed her down throughout this long, leaden-footed day—the past twenty-four hours unproductive of a single enlightening incident. Mrs. Brace opened the door and, with a scarcely perceptible nod of the head, motioned her into the living room. Neither of them spoke until they had seated themselves on the chairs by the window. Even then, the silence was prolonged, until Lucille realized that her tongue was dry and uncomfortably large for her mouth. An access of trembling shook her. She tried to smile and knew that her lips were twisting in a ghastly grin. Mrs. Brace moved slowly to and fro on the armless rocker, her swift, appraising eyes taking in her visitor's distress. The smooth face wore its customary, inexpressive calm. Lucille, striving desperately to arrive at some opinion of what the woman thought, saw that she might as well try to find emotion in a statue. "I—I," the girl finally attained a quick, flurried utterance, "want to thank you for—for having this—this talk with me." "What do you want to talk about, Miss Sloane?" The low, metallic voice was neither friendly nor hostile. It expressed, more than anything else, a sardonic, bullying self-sufficiency. It both angered and encouraged Lucille. She perceived the futility of polite, introductory phrases here; she could go straight to her purpose, be brutally frank. She gave Mrs. Brace a brilliant, disarming smile, a proclamation of fellowship. Her confidence was restored. "I'm sure we can talk sensibly together, Mrs. Brace," she explained, dissembling her indignation. "We can get down to business, at once." "What business?" inquired the older woman, with some of the manner Hastings had seen, an air of lying in wait. "I said, on the 'phone, it was something of advantage to you—didn't I?" "Yes; you said that." "And, of course, I want something from you." "Naturally." "I'll tell you what it is." Lucille spoke now with cool precision, as yet untouched by the horror she had expected to feel. "It's a matter of money." Mrs. Brace's tongue came out to the edge of the thin line of her lips. Her nostrils quivered, once, to the sharply indrawn breath. Her eyes were more furtive. "Money?" she echoed. "For what?" "There's no good of my making long explanations, Mrs. Brace," Lucille said. "I've read the newspapers, every line of them, about—our trouble. And I saw the references to your finances, your lack of money." "Yes?" Mrs. Brace's right hand lay on her lap; the thumb of it began to move against the forefinger rapidly, the motion a woman makes in feeling the texture of cloth—or the trick of a bank clerk separating paper money. "Yes. I read, also, what you said about the tragedy. Today I noticed that the only note of newness in the articles in the papers came from you—from your saying that 'in a few days, three or four at the outside'—that was your language, I'm quite sure—you'd produce evidence on which an arrest would be made. I've intelligence enough to see that the public's interest in you is so great, the sympathy for you is so great, that your threats—I mean, predictions, or opinions—colour everything that's written by the reporters. You see?" "Do I see what?" Despite her excellent pose of waiting with nothing more than a polite interest, Lucille saw in her a pronounced alteration. That was not so much in her face as in her body. Her limbs had a look of rigidity. "Don't you see what I mean?" Lucille insisted. "I see that you can make endless trouble for us—for all of us at Sloanehurst. You can make people believe Mr. Webster guilty, and that father and I are shielding him. People listen to what you say. They seem to be on your side." "Well?" "I wondered if you wouldn't stop your interviews—your accusations?" The younger woman's eagerness, evident now in the variety of her gestures and the rapid procession of pallour and flush across her cheeks, persuaded Mrs. Brace that Lucille was acting on an impulse of her own, not as an agent to carry out another's well designed scheme. The older woman, at that idea, felt safe. She asked: "And you want—what?" "I've come here to ask you to tell me all you know, or to be quiet altogether." "I'm afraid I don't understand—fully," returned Mrs. Brace, with an exaggerated bewilderment. "Tell all I know?" "That is, if you do know anything you haven't told!" Lucille urged her. "Oh, don't you see? I'm saying to you that I want to put an end to this dreadful suspense!" Mrs. Brace laughed disagreeably; her face was harder, less human. "You mean I'm amusing myself, exerting myself needlessly, as a matter of spite? Do you mean to tell me that?" "No! No!" Lucille denied, impatient with herself for lack of clearness. "I mean I'm sure you're attacking an innocent man. And I'm willing, I'm anxious—oh, I hope so much, Mrs. Brace—to make an agreement with you—a financial arrangement——" She paused the fractional part of a second on that; and, seeing that the other did not resent the term, she added: "to pay you to stop it. Isn't that clear?" "Yes; that's clear." "Understand me, please. What I ask is that you say nothing more to the reporters, the sheriff or the Washington police, that will have the effect of hounding them on against Mr. Webster. I want to eliminate from the situation all the influence you've exerted to make Mr. Crown believe Mr. Webster's guilty and my father's protecting him." "Let me think," Mrs. Brace said, coolly. Lucille exulted inwardly, "She'll do it! She'll do it!" The hard eyes dissected her eager face. The girl drew back in her chair, thinking now: "She suspects who sent me!" At last, the older woman spoke: "The detective, Hastings, would never have allowed you to come here, Miss Sloane.—Excuse my frankness," she interjected, with a smile she meant to be friendly; "but you're frank with me; we're not mincing matters; and I have to be careful.—He'd have warned you that your errand's practical confession of your knowledge of something incriminating Berne Webster. If you didn't suspect the man even more strongly than I do, you'd never have been driven to—this." She leaned the rocker back and crossed her knees, the movement throwing into high relief the hard lankness of her figure. She gazed at the wall, over Lucille's head, as she dealt with the possibilities that presented themselves to her analysis. Her manner was that of a certain gloating enjoyment, a thinly covered, semi-orderly greediness. "She's not even thinking of her daughter," Lucille thought, and went pale a moment. "She's as bad as Mr. Hastings said—worse!" "Then, too," Mrs. Brace continued, "your father discharged him last night." Lucille remembered the detective's misgivings about Jarvis; how else had this woman found that out? "And you've taken matters into your own hands.—Did your father send you here—to me?" "Why, no!" The other smiled slyly, the tip of her tongue again visible, her eyebrows high in interrogation. "Of course," she said; "you wouldn't tell me if he had. He would have warned you against that admission." "It's Mr. Webster about whom I am most concerned," Lucille reminded, sharpness in her vibrant young voice. "My father's being annoyed is merely incidental." "Oh, of course! Of course," Mrs. Brace grinned, with broad sarcasm. Lucille started. The meaning of that could not be misunderstood; she charged that the money was offered at Arthur Sloane's instigation and that the concern for Berne Webster was merely pretence. Mrs. Brace saw her anger, and placated it: "Don't mind me, Miss Sloane. A woman who's had to endure what I have—well, she doesn't always think clearly." "Perhaps not," Lucille assented; but she was aware of a sudden longing to be done with the degrading work. "Now that we understand each other, Mrs. Brace, what do you say?" Mrs. Brace thought again. "How much?" she asked at last, her lips thickening. "How much, Miss Sloane, do you think my silence is worth?" Lucille took a roll of bills from her handbag. The woman's chair slid forward, answering to the forward—leaning weight of her new posture. She was lightly rubbing her palms together, as, with head a little bowed, she stared at the money in the younger woman's hand. "I have here five hundred dollars," Lucille began. "What!" Mrs. Brace said that roughly; and, in violent anger, drew back, the legs of her chair grating on the floor. For a moment Lucille gazed at her, uncomprehending. "Oh!" she said, uncertainly. "You mean—it isn't enough?" "Enough!" Mrs. Brace's rage and disappointment grew, her lowered brows a straight line close down to her eyes. "But I could get more!" Lucille exclaimed, struggling with disgust. "This," she added, with ready invention, "can serve as a part payment, a promise of——" "Ah-h!" the older woman exclaimed. "That's different. I misunderstood." She put down the signals of her wrath, succeeding in that readjustment so promptly that Lucille stared at her in undisguised amazement. "You must pardon me, Miss Sloane. I thought you were making me the victim of your ridicule, some heartless joke." "Then, we can come to an agreement? That is, if this money is the first——" She broke the sentence. Mrs. Brace had put up her hand, and now held her head to one side, listening. There was a step clearly audible outside, in the main hall. The next moment the doorbell rang. They sat motionless. When the bell rang again, Mrs. Brace informed her with a look that she would not answer it. But the ringing continued, became a prolonged jangle. It got on Lucille's already strained nerves. "Suppose you slip into the bedroom," Mrs. Brace whispered. "Oh, no!" Lucille whispered back. She was weighed down by black premonition; she hoped Mrs. Brace would not open the door. The bell rang again. "You'll have to!" Mrs. Brace said at last. "I won't let anybody in. I have to answer it!" "You'll send them away—whoever it is—at once?" "At once. I don't want you seen here, any more than you want to be seen!" Lucille started toward the bedroom. At the first step she took, Mrs. Brace put a hand on her arm. "That money!" she demanded, in a low whisper. "I'll take it." "And do what I asked—stop attacking us?" "Yes. Yes!" Lucille gave her the money. There were no lights in the bedroom. Lucille, for fear of stumbling or making a noise, stood to one side of the door-frame, close to the wall. Mrs. Brace's footsteps stopped. There was the click of the opening door. Then, there came to Lucille the high-pitched, querulous voice which she had been afraid she would hear. It was her father's. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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