Рекс Стаут - Her Forbidden Knight

Then he finished:

“The result, gentlemen, can be easier shown than told. Here it is.”

He drew forth from a pocket of the overcoat a stack of bills and tossed them on the table, crying:

“There she is, boys! Thirty-five nice, crisp hundreds on one spin of the wheel!”

Then and there was pandemonium. They shouted and danced about, and clapped Driscoll on the back till he sought a corner for refuge, and spread the bills over the table to gloat over, and generally raised the devil. Dumain was sitting down at the piano to play a triumphal march when Dougherty suddenly rushed over to him and clasped his shoulder.

“Did you notice that number?” he asked excitedly.

The little Frenchman looked up at Dougherty.

“What number?”

“The one that Driscoll played on the wheel.”

“Yes — thirty-two. Why?”

“Sure,” said Dougherty. “Number thirty-two. Don’t you remember? — you was down there this afternoon. That’s the number of Knowlton’s cell in the Tombs!”

When Lila reached the lobby of the Lamartine at nine o’clock on the following morning she found the Erring Knights already assembled in their corner.

For a moment she forgot everything else in her surprise; she had thought that nothing less than the end of the world could possibly have roused these gentlemen of leisure from their beds at so early an hour.

Dougherty hastened over to her desk and demanded to know why she had left her room.

“Why not?” Lila smiled. “I feel all right, really. And, anyway, I had rather be down here than up there alone. Did you see him?”

The ex-prizefighter grunted an affirmative and proceeded to give her a detailed account of his conversation with Knowlton on the previous morning. He ended by saying that they had engaged a lawyer, and that the sinews of war in the sum of three thousand dollars had been entrusted to Dumain as treasurer.

“But Mr. Dougherty,” Lila exclaimed, “we can’t possibly use that! I thought — you see, I have saved a little—”

Dougherty interrupted her:

“Now see here. We’re doing this, and you’ve got to let us alone. Anyway, it’s not really costing us a cent. I won’t explain how, but you can take my word for it.

“Everything’s all right, and you don’t need to worry, and for Heaven’s sake don’t begin any of that stuff about you won’t take this and you won’t take that. If we’re going to help you we’ve got to help you. What did you think I meant yesterday morning — that I was going to carry a note to Knowlton and then go home and sit down with my fingers crossed?”

Whereupon, giving her no time to answer, Dougherty turned and rejoined the others across the lobby.

This was the beginning of a campaign which lasted a little over a month.

The duties of the Erring Knights were varied and arduous. Each morning one of them conducted Lila to the hotel, and took her home each evening, this escort being necessitated by the fact that Sherman had twice accosted her on the street. He had also called at her home, but there was no necessity for a male guardian there. Mrs. Amanda Berry was a legion in herself.

Dougherty was the official messenger between the Lamartine and the Tombs. At first Lila had insisted on going to see Knowlton herself, but he had begged her to spare him this final humiliation.

The prisoner wrote:

I long to see you; you know it; but it is enough to have the picture of this place imprinted on my own memory — I can’t bear that you should see me here.

Whatever your imagination shows you it cannot be as dreadful as the reality. If I obtain my freedom I shall not feel that I have cheated justice. Heaven knows I could not pay more dearly for my crime than I have already paid.

Knowlton stubbornly refused to allow his lawyer to procure his release on bail. The lawyer said he was quixotic; Dougherty used a stronger and commoner term, but they could not change his decision. He gave no reasons, but they understood; and the lawyer, who was at least as scrupulous as the average of his profession, declared to Dumain that for the first time in ten years’ practise he was defending a guilty man with a clear conscience.

As for the case itself, it appeared to be by no means simple. The fact that they had no knowledge of the evidence held by the prosecution made them uneasy, and they bent their efforts mainly to attempts to discover its nature.

There was no danger, they found, from Red Tim, who had got away safely the night before Knowlton’s arrest. And he was the only one of the gang whom Knowlton had ever seen or dealt with.

The evidence which the lawyer feared most was that concerning any specific operations, and in relation to the wallet which Knowlton had missed the day following the fight in Dumain’s rooms. Knowlton suspected Sherman, but thought it possible that he had lost it on the street.

“Well,” said the attorney, “the best we can say is that we’re on our guard. We must keep our wits about us and fight it out in the courtroom. We won’t know much about what they know before the day of the trial. It’s a fight in the dark for us; but remember, they have to furnish the proof.”

Dougherty was openly optimistic. After winning a one to thirty-five shot on the number of Knowlton’s cell — he had recited the tale to the prisoner with great gusto — he refused to believe that their efforts could possibly culminate in anything short of glorious victory.

“Think of it; just think of it,” he would say to Knowlton in a tone which partook of awe. “He drew the blooming number out of his hat — that was the first shot. Then he plays it single, and wins — that was the second. Why, we can’t lose. We’ll beat ’em both ways from the middle.”

“Thanks, old man; I hope so,” Knowlton would reply.

Thus three weeks passed by and found them marking time, waiting for the day of the trial. Dougherty spent the better part of two days seeking for Sherman, but without success. They had heard nothing from him, save the times he had accosted Lila on the street, nor seen him since the morning in Lila’s room.

“He’s surely round somewhere,” said Dougherty to Dumain as they met in the lobby one morning. “In fact, I know he’s in town, because he’s still got that room on Thirty-fourth Street. But I can’t get in, and I can’t get him either going or coming.”

The little Frenchman shrugged his shoulders and glanced across the lobby where Lila sat at her desk talking to a man who had just approached — probably a customer.

“Bah! Let heem alone. So long as he ees not bother Mees Williams that ees all we want.”

“It’s not all I want,” said Dougherty. “I want to punch his face, and I will. He’s a low-down, dirty—”

He was interrupted by a call:

“Mr. Dumain!”

The voice was Lila’s. They turned. She was standing in front of her desk, her face very white, holding in her hand a sheet of printed paper. Dumain hurried over to her, gave one look at the paper which she thrust at him with a trembling hand, and called to Dougherty.

The ex-prizefighter crossed the lobby:

“What is it?”

“Look!” Dumain held the paper before him. “A what you call eet — subpoena — for Mees Williams! Mon Dieu! Eet is all up!”

“Shut up,” growled Dougherty, taking the subpoena. “Do you want the whole lobby to know about it? You get excited too easy.”

“But what am I to do?” faltered Lila.

“Be a sport. Don’t let ’em floor you with a little thing like this. They want you for a witness, do they? It’s a good job. I’d advise you to take it.”

Lila gazed at him, amazed at his levity concerning what appeared to her to be the destruction of all their plans.