CHAPTER IV
GARTH BUYS A BOUTONNIERE
Garth wondered if relief would ever come. He was afraid that the slip offrayed white paper must have gone astray. Otherwise, it seemed to him,it would have brought help even before he had sounded his shrill alarm.
He glanced at Nora. She had placed her hand on his arm. She gazed at theopen door.
"I thought I heard--"
Then Garth heard, too--a tramping in the house, a struggle outside thedoor, a voice whose roar betrayed excitement and triumph.
"Where's Garth?"
The door filled with men in uniform.
Nora covered her face with her hands and turned away. With a start Garthgrasped the reason. Planning vaguely, he arose and leaned over theprostrate figure of George. The man breathed. The wound was in theshoulder and appeared of little real consequence. He straightened tofind the inspector standing over him with a look of pleasure. It hurtGarth to think of that expression's vanishing for one of unbelief andrevolt.
"This fellow will stand his trial," he said.
He added gently:
"For the murder of Joe Kridel. It was here, you know."
The inspector puffed.
"Garth, I'm proud of you."
His eye caught the figure of Nora, crouched against the safe. His voicegrew hard and business-like.
"Bring that woman here."
Slim, bound and at the door, laughed.
Garth grasped the inspector's arm.
"Don't," he said. "Don't bother about her. Let her go."
But the inspector strode to the safe, raised Nora, and drew her handsfrom her face.
He gasped and leaned heavily against the divan. All at once he appearedold.
Garth sprang to his side. He knew the inspector must not speak now.
"I'll tell you," he cried. "You have to thank Nora as much as me."
He glanced at the girl.
"That is, we put it over together. It was a winning combination, but wedidn't have the nerve to put you wise."
The color rushed back to Nora's cheeks, but the inspector's face did notalter. He looked doubtfully from one to the other. At last he seemed togather his emotions in a volley of wrath for Garth.
"You dragged a woman in this! You ought to be horsewhipped. Dragging mydaughter into this hell!"
Garth took the girl's hand.
"Cheer up, chief," he said, "because if you and she would only let meI'd drag her into a lot worse than that."
He turned to her anxiously. There were tears in her eyes. He questionedif they had sprung from pity for him. She touched his hand. He lookedaway, for the quick pressure expressed only thanks, and a friendshiptroubled by his persistence.
* * * * * *
During the next few days Garth saw little of Nora, meeting her only onceor twice by chance in her father's office. He was not inclined, indeed,to urge a more intimate opportunity. He had let her see rather too muchof his heart, and he shrank from an appearance of seeking advantage fromher gratitude.
That gratitude existed abundantly, and the inspector shared it. Theaffair of the gray mask had altered a good deal for Garth. It had placedhim all at once apart from his fellows in the bureau. The newspaperpublicity, which, unlike most of his kind, he would have preferred toavoid, had swept his reputation far beyond the boundaries of his owncity. He acknowledged a benefit in that. Such notoriety might deter thedesire for revenge of any of the friends of Slim and George who remainedat large.
A very real danger for Nora and himself lay there. It created, too, atie that the inspector visualized with an increasing friendliness andconfidence.
"If Slim and George go to the chair," the big man said on one of thosemornings when Garth had stumbled into Nora in the office, "you two areprobably safe enough. With those birds salted away the weaker brothersaren't likely to take any wild chances, at least until the thing hasbeen pretty well forgotten."
Apprehension clouded his sleepy eyes.
"But, young people, if Slim and George escaped conviction or managed agetaway, I'd look for a new first-class detective, and--"
He took Nora's hand and studied her face, whose dark beauty remainedunafraid.
"I guess I'd need another daughter, which I couldn't very well have."
He laughed brusquely.
"Slim and George are tight enough now, so why borrow trouble."
Garth saw the foreboding of his chief's eyes turn to curiosity, a triflegroping.
"Wish you'd kept out of it, daughter."
"Don't scold," she laughed. "You did enough of that the other night."
"I'm not," he grumbled, "I'm only wondering where you got the nerve, andthe brains."
"Some from you, father."
"Not as much as all that. I guess your mother gave you a little that wehum-drum New Yorkers don't quite understand."
"If," Garth said, "anything develops, you'll have to send Nora away."
"If there's time," the inspector agreed.
He turned back to his papers, shaking his head.
It is, perhaps, as well, when one fears, that the march of routinebrings new and destructive demands. It was only a few days afterwardsthat Garth and Nora were involved in events that drove their minds forthe time from the threat, which they should never have quite lost sightof. Yet the Elmford murder didn't leave room in one's mind for muchelse.
On the afternoon before that tragedy Garth, leaving headquarters, madean unaccustomed purchase. Not long ago such affectation would haveappealed to his sturdy, straightforward mind of a detective as trivial,possibly unmasculine. He reddened as he handed his ten cents to theshapeless Italian woman whose fingers about his coat lapel wereconfusingly deft. He had no illusions as to the source of this foppishprompting. The inspector had called him in and told him that Nora wouldwelcome him at the flat for dinner that evening. The event appeared amilestone on the amorous path he sought to explore hand in hand with thegirl. He realized his desired destination was not yet in view, but suchprogress required a deviation from the familiar--some peculiarconcession to its significance. So he turned away from the cheapsidewalk stand, wearing, for the first time in his life, a flower in hisbutton hole--a rose of doubtful future and unaristocratic lineage.
* * * * * *
Before following Garth with his blushing decoration it is serviceable toknow what happened at Elmford.