Рекс Стаут - Her Forbidden Knight

Dumain paused, glanced at his audience with the assurance of a man who holds a high trump, and continued:

“All zis we all know. Well. Today I take Knowlton here to my rooms where ees hees trunk I brought. But he needs something — we go out. I stop in zee Lamartine to wait for heem — I go to zee telegraph desk, I go to zee cigar stand, I go to zee front desk, and Geebson call me and say, ‘Telegram here for a man named John Norton. Do you know heem, Dumain?’

“I say, ‘Yes, I will take eet to heem,’ and he give eet to me, and I open eet and read eet to make sure. What I theenk, eet ees for Knowlton. Right. Here eet ees.”

He took a yellow telegraph form from his pocket and waved it in the air. It was extra size — the telegram was a long one.

They shouted, “Read it!”

But Dumain tossed it to Knowlton, who, after reading it through, let it fall from his hands to the table and turned a white face to Lila.

“What is it?” Lila faltered.

Dougherty snatched up the telegram and read it aloud:

“Mr. John Norton, Hotel Lamartine, New York. Alma Sherman has confessed all. I was a fool not to believe you, but come home. Her brother got the money. They have wired to the New York police. Come home at once. Letter follows, but don’t wait for it. Wire me immediately.

“Oh!” cried Lila. “And now... and now—”

In the confusion that followed, while the others applauded and shouted and clapped Knowlton on the back, Dougherty had to place his mouth close to her ear to make her hear:

“And now what?” he demanded.

“And now,” Lila answered, “he — he doesn’t need me, after all.”

The ex-prizefighter sprang to his feet.

“Ha!” he cried in a tone of thunder. “Silence! Shut up, you! Knowlton, do you know what your wife is saying? She says that now you won’t need her!”

Another moment and Knowlton was at her side, holding her in his arms.

“Lila! Dear little girl! We shall go home — home — together. Darling! Not need you? Look at me!”

For the next five minutes the Erring Knights and Lawyer Siegel were occupied in the next room, chased thereto by Dougherty, who commanded them to make as much noise as possible.

Presently Knowlton’s voice came:

“Come back here! What are you doing in there? I say, Dumain! Dougherty!”

They came through the door backward, in single file, and Lila was forced to laugh in spite of herself.

“That’s better,” said Dougherty approvingly. “This is an occasion of joy, Mrs. Knowlton. No tears allowed.”

Lila smiled at him.

“But say!” put in Driscoll, as he lit a cigarette — Lila had long since commanded them to smoke — “do you know what? That’s what they took Sherman for at the courtroom!”

“They didn’t waste any time,” Booth observed.

“Oh, I know how he knew that,” Lila was saying to Knowlton and Dumain, who had expressed their wonder at his father’s knowledge of his address. “It was Mr. Sherman who told him.”

“Sherman!” they exclaimed.

“Yes,” Lila asserted.

Then she told them of the telegram Sherman had sent to the president of the Warton National Bank concerning John Norton, and Dumain and Knowlton hastened to inform the others of the fact that they owed the receipt of the telegram to the enemy himself, thereby doubling their joyous hilarity.

Then they surrounded Knowlton and demanded a speech. He protested; they insisted. He appealed to Lila for assistance; she commanded him to do his duty.

There was no escape; he motioned them to be seated, and began:

“Boys, I know this is no time to be serious — for you. You’re having a good time. But you’ve asked me to talk, and to tell the truth, I’m glad of the chance to relieve my mind. If you don’t like what I say it’s your own fault. I know you’re good sports, but there are one or two things I have to speak about.

“First, money. You’ve spent about sixteen hundred dollars on my defense, and you’ve given me a thousand for a stake. There’s been nothing said about it — you’ve turned it over to me without a word — but I want you to know that the first thing I’ll do when I get home — when we get home — is to send you a check for the twenty-six hundred. Now, don’t think I’m refusing a favor; it isn’t that. The Lord knows I’ve accepted enough favors from you without your insisting on that one, too.”

“Oh, of course, if you’re rolling in wealth—” put in Driscoll.

“Then that’s settled. I’m not going to try to thank you; if I talked all night I couldn’t make it strong enough. Lila and I are going out West where they like to say you find nothing but good, clean Americans, and I’ve always thought the boast was justified; but wherever we go, and whoever we see, we’ll never meet as good men, or as straight sports, or as true friends as the Erring Knights.

“Here’s to you, boys! God bless you!” Knowlton’s voice was trembling so that he could scarcely speak, and his eyes shone with tears as he drained the glass and threw it on the floor, where it broke in a thousand fragments.

The following afternoon the bride and groom were escorted to Grand Central Station by the Erring Knights. And there they received their reward if they had felt they needed any. For after Knowlton had shaken hands with each of them and arranged for a grand reunion when he and his wife should next visit New York, as they stood lined up at the entrance to the trackway, Lila approached Dougherty, who happened to be first, with a farewell on her lips.

He held out his hand. She ignored it, and, stretching on tiptoe, placed a hearty uncompromising kiss on his either cheek! And before he could recover she had passed on to Dumain and repeated the operation, and then to the remaining three.

In another moment she was walking down the platform by the side of the train with her arm through that of her husband, preceded by two porters loaded with bags and suitcases and flowers and candy; and every now and then she turned to look back at the Erring Knights, who were waving their handkerchiefs frantically in unrestrained and triumphant glee. And then, throwing a last kiss from the car platform, while Knowlton waved his hat, they disappeared inside, and a minute later the train pulled out.

It happened, by a curious coincidence, that that train held two sets of passengers for the little town of Warton, Ohio.

In a day-coach, seated side by side, were two men. The face of one, dark and evil looking, wore lines of sleeplessness and despair and fear. The other, a small, heavy-set man with a ruddy countenance, was seated next the aisle, and had an appearance of watchfulness as he kept one eye on his companion while he scanned the columns of a newspaper with the other. William Sherman was going home to pay.

But a few feet away, in a Pullman, sat the man he had tried to ruin and the girl he had tried to wrong.

They were looking at each other, they felt, almost for the first time. Between them, on the seat, their hands were closely clasped together.

Thus they sat for many minutes, silent, while the train passed through the city, crossed to the west, and started on its journey northward along the banks of the glorious Hudson.

“Dearest,” said the man in a caressing tone.

The girl pressed his hand tighter and sighed happily.

“They’re good fellows,” the man continued, “every one of them. And to think what we owe them! Everything — everything.”

“Yes,” said the girl, “everything. We must never forget them.”

But the truth was, as was clearly apparent from the tone of her voice and the melting of her eyes into his, that she had forgotten them already!