Free Two Flights Up by Mary Roberts Rinehart Page A

before was lost in pity. He had stolen, and he had not only spent; he had hidden away a part of that stolen wealth in that very house. He was dying and he had made no attempt at restitution. But he was dying; he could not live long.
    And then suddenly there came to her mind her mother’s face, on the day she came home from the penitentiary; and later on, her suppressed excitement, the times when she had sat like someone who nursed a secret, the haste as to the wedding and the trousseau.
    Suppose on that visit of hers he had told her? Suppose she had not happened on the suitcase but had known it was there? Suppose he had wanted to make restitution, to come back clean, and had told her; and out of her dire need her mother—
    She sat up suddenly. The doorbell was furiously ringing.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    J AMES COX WAS ENORMOUSLY proud of his stock. He liked, when he was not busy, to run his hand down over his tidy shelves and to realize that he could tell its very quality by touch. And when he opened up the blue wrappers from his best tablecloths it was as though he gained a vicarious splendour from their quality.
    “Wonderful piece of work, this,” he would say. “Grace any table! Make any sort of food taste good, eh?”
    He was completely out of patience with the new vogue for doilies, although he had to sell them. The nearest thing he had ever come to a quarrel with Margaret was on that very question. He came home one evening to find the table set with small bits of linen, scalloped by her own busy hands, little islands of white in a shining sea of imitation mahogany.
    “What’s this you’ve got on the table?”
    “Don’t you like them?”
    “Oh, they’re all right,” he said grudgingly. …” He didn’t like to hurt her. “But if you ask me, give me honest food on an honest linen cloth.”
    “Then off they go!” said Margaret, shamelessly and spinelessly loving. “I don’t care for them myself. I just thought—”
    Honest linen! Honest everything. That was James Cox.
    On the day, then, that Warrington had carried the suitcase to Margaret, James was behind his counter. They had opened up a new shipment in the stockroom, and huge baskets were still being trundled along the aisles.
    He was in a state of suppressed excitement, as he was always when new stock came in, and so he did not notice that he was being quickly observed from a near-by counter. Nor was his feeling when he was summoned to the manager’s office other than one of irritation at being interrupted. He never saw the light-stepping, rather stout man who followed him there and unceremoniously entered after him.
    The office was empty. James, hearing the door close behind him, turned and confronted this gentleman.
    “Your name Cox?” said the stranger.
    “Yes.”
    “Live at Number Eleven, Aurelia Apartments?”
    James suddenly stopped breathing. Something had happened to Margaret!
    “I do,” he stammered. “I live there. What’s wrong? For God’s sake, what’s the matter?”
    “Don’t get excited, Mr. Cox. Sit down. I only want to ask you some questions.”
    “My wife—”
    “She’s all right, so far as I know. Mr. Cox, you are related to a family named Bayne, I believe, on Kelsey Street?”
    Mr. Cox had recovered, and now he stiffened.
    “Only by marriage. My wife is Mrs. Bayne’s sister.”
    “But you are on pretty friendly terms with the family?”
    “Never been in the house,” said Mr. Cox, unflaggingly honest. “They don’t like me, and I don’t like them. The girl’s all right,” he added conscientiously.
    “Do you know a young man named Warrington who has a room there?”
    “Never saw him but once,” said James. But he looked self-conscious, as well he might, recalling that amazing evening; and the detective saw it.
    “But your wife knows him? Rather, well?”
    “Look here,” said Mr. Cox, “I don’t know what it’s all about, and I don’t give a damn. But I want my wife’s name left out of this,