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The young man's nimble glance followed Granice's. "Sure of the number, are you?" he asked briskly. "Oh, yes it was 104." "Well, then, the new building has swallowed it up that's certain." He tilted his head back and surveyed the half-finished front of a brick and limestone flat-house that reared its flimsy elegance above a row of tottering tenements and stables. "Dead sure?" he repeated.
"Nothing in it?" Granice furiously interposed. "Absolutely nothing. If there is, why the deuce don't you bring me proofs? I know you've been talking to Peter Ascham, and to Denver, and to that little ferret McCarren of the Explorer. Have any of them been able to make out a case for you? No. Well, what am I to do?" Granice's lips began to tremble. "Why did you play me that trick?" "About Stell?
"Perhaps your friend he IS your friend? would glance over it or I could put the case in a few words if you have time?" Granice's voice shook like his hand. If this chance escaped him he felt that his last hope was gone. McCarren and the stranger looked at each other, and the former glanced at his watch. "I'm sorry we can't stay and talk it over now, Mr.
There's always a reason for wanting to get out of life the wonder is that we find so many for staying in!" Granice's heart grew light. "Then you DO believe me?" he faltered. "Believe that you're sick of the job? Yes. And that you haven't the nerve to pull the trigger? Oh, yes that's easy enough, too.
"Nothing in it?" Granice furiously interposed. "Absolutely nothing. If there is, why the deuce don't you bring me proofs? I know you've been talking to Peter Ascham, and to Denver, and to that little ferret McCarren of the Explorer. Have any of them been able to make out a case for you? No. Well, what am I to do?" Granice's lips began to tremble. "Why did you play me that trick?" "About Stell?
There is a play, I suppose? It's as safe to ask you that as to say to some men: 'How's the baby?" Denver laughed good-naturedly, and Granice thought how thick and heavy he had grown. It was evident, even to Granice's tortured nerves, that the words had not been uttered in malice and the fact gave him a new measure of his insignificance. Denver did not even know that he had been a failure!
"Well we may run Leffler down somewhere; I've seen harder jobs done," said McCarren, cheerfully noting down the name. As they walked back toward Sixth Avenue he added, in a less sanguine tone: "I'd undertake now to put the thing through if you could only put me on the track of that cyanide." Granice's heart sank. Yes there was the weak spot; he had felt it from the first!
Denver had to pass Granice's flat on the way to his own, and it became a habit, if he saw a light in the window, and Granice's shadow against the blind, to go in, smoke a pipe, and discuss the universe. "Well this is like old times a good old habit reversed." The editor smote his visitor genially on the shoulder. "Reminds me of the nights when I used to rout you out... How's the play, by the way?
All they wanted was a murderer the most improbable would have served. But your alibi was too confoundedly complete. And nothing you've told me has shaken it." Denver laid his cool hand over the other's burning fingers. "Look here, old fellow, go home and work up a better case then come in and submit it to the Investigator." THE perspiration was rolling off Granice's forehead.
Both were successful men, and success does not understand the subtle agony of failure. Granice cast about for another reason. "Why, I the thing haunts me... remorse, I suppose you'd call it..." Denver struck the ashes from his empty pipe. "Remorse? Bosh!" he said energetically. Granice's heart sank. "You don't believe in REMORSE?" "Not an atom: in the man of action.
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