"Where?" came the next question, still with that vital insistence.
"In this room."
"Burke was here?" Mary's voice was suddenly cold, very dangerous."What was he doing here?""Talking to my father."
The seemingly simple answer appeared the last straw to the girl's burden of frenzied suspicion.Her voice cut fiercely into the quiet of the room, imperious, savage.
"Joe, turn on that light! I want to see the face of every man in this room."Something fatally significant in her voice set Garson a-leap to the switch, and, in the same second, the blaze of the chandelier flamed brilliantly over all.The others stood motionless, blinking in the sudden radiance--all save Griggs, who moved stealthily in that same moment, a little nearer the door into the passage, which was nearest to him.
But Mary's next words came wholly as a surprise, seemingly totally irrelevant to this instant of crisis.Yet they rang a-throb with an hysterical anxiety.
"Dick," she cried, "what are those tapestries worth?" With the question, she pointed toward the draperies that shrouded the great octagonal window.
The young man was plainly astonished, disconcerted as well by the obtrusion of a sordid detail into the tragedy of the time.
"Why in the world do you----?" he began, impatiently.
Mary stamped her foot angrily in protest against the delay.
"Tell me--quick!" she commanded.The authority in her voice and manner was not to be gainsaid.
Dick yielded sullenly.
"Oh, two or three hundred dollars, I suppose," he answered.
"Why?"
"Never mind that!" Mary exclaimed, violently.And now the girl's voice came stinging like a whiplash.In Garson's face, too, was growing fury, for in an instant of illumination he guessed something of the truth.Mary's next question confirmed his raging suspicion.
"How long have you had them, Dick?"
By now, the young man himself sensed the fact that something mysteriously baneful lay behind the frantic questioning on this seemingly trivial theme.
"Ever since I can remember," he replied, promptly.
Mary's voice came then with an intonation that brought enlightenment not only to Garson's shrewd perceptions, but also to the heavier intelligences of Dacey and of Chicago Red.
"And they're not famous masterpieces which your father bought recently, from some dealer who smuggled them into this country?"So simple were the words of her inquiry, but under them beat something evil, deadly.
The young man laughed contemptuously.
"I should say not!" he declared indignantly, for he resented the implication against his father's honesty.
"It's a trick! Burke's done it!" Mary's words came with accusing vehemence.
There was another single step made by Griggs toward the door into the passage.
Mary's eye caught the movement, and her lips soundlessly formed the name:
"Griggs!"
The man strove to carry off the situation, though he knew well that he stood in mortal peril.He came a little toward the girl who had accused him of treachery.He was very dapper in his evening clothes, with his rather handsome, well-groomed face set in lines of innocence.
"He's lying to you!" he cried forcibly, with a scornful gesture toward Dick Gilder."I tell you, those tapestries are worth a million cold."Mary's answer was virulent in its sudden burst of hate.For once, the music of her voice was lost in a discordant cry of detestation.
