Mr. Solway descended from the train and walked briskly toward his car.
The new chauffeur was standing there, stiff as a poker.
“Well, Moss!” he said. “Everything all right, eh?”
“Yes, thank you, sir,” said Ross.
“That’s it!” said Mr. Solway, with his vague kindliness. He got into
the car, and Ross started off through the sleet and the dark. Mr.
Solway made two or three observations about the weather, but his
chauffeur answered “Yes, sir,” “That’s so, sir,” rather
absent-mindedly. He was, to tell the truth, very much preoccupied with
his own thoughts. He was wondering how a pond was dragged, and how
long such a thing might take.
He had seen no one, spoken to no one, since he had left Donnelly at
the police station and gone back to the garage alone. So he had had
plenty of time to think.
He stopped the car before the house, Mr. Solway got out, and Ross
drove on to the garage. There would be a little more time for thinking
before he was summoned to dinner. He went upstairs and sat down,
stretched out in a chair, staring before him. He was still wearing the
peaked cap which had belonged to Wheeler; perhaps it was not a
becoming cap, for his face looked grim and harsh beneath it.
He was not impatient, now, as that James Ross had been who had landed
in New York three days ago. Indeed, he seemed almost inhumanly
patient, as if he were willing to sit there forever. And that was how
he felt. He had done his utmost; now he could only wait.
The sleet was rattling against the windows, and a great wind blew. It
must be a wild night, out in the fields, where a lonely little pond
lay. A bad night to be in that little cottage. A bad night, anywhere
in the world, for a child who had nobody.
From his pocket he brought out a snapshot, and looked at it for a long
time; then he tore it into fragments and let them flutter to the
floor. He closed his eyes, then, but he was not asleep; the knuckles
of his hand grasping the arm of the chair were white.
No; he wasn’t asleep. When the telephone rang in the garage, he got up
at once and went downstairs to answer it.
“Dinner’s ready!” said Gracie’s voice. “Eddy come in yet?”
“Not yet,” answered Ross. “But—wait a minute!”
For he thought he heard some one at the door. He was standing with the
receiver in his hand when the door slid open and Eddy came in.
“He’s just—” he began, turning back to the telephone, when Eddy sprang
forward and caught his arm, and whispered: “Shut up! Sh-h-h!”
“Just about due,” said Ross to Gracie. Then he hung up the receiver
and faced Eddy.
“Don’t tell ’em I’m here!” said Eddy. “I—I don’t want—I c-can’t stand
any—jabbering. I—Oh, Gawd!”
At the end of his tether, Eddy was. His lips twitched, his face was
distorted with his valiant effort after self-control. And it occurred
to Ross that, for all his shrewdness and his worldly air, Eddy was not
very old or very wise.
“What’s up, old man?” he asked.
“Tell me. You’d better get your dinner now.”
“Nope!” said Eddy. “I—can’t eat. I—I don’t want to talk.”
Ross waited for some time.
“Lissen here,” said Eddy, at last. “You—you seemed to like—that kid.
You—you’ll look after her, won’t you?”
“Yes,” Ross answered.
He would have been surprised, and a little incredulous, if any one had
called him tactful, yet few people could have handled Eddy better. He
knew what the boy wanted; knew that he needed just this cool and
steady tone, this incurious patience.
“Go and get her,” Eddy pleaded. “She’s down at the barber’s—near the
movie theayter. Go and get her.”
“All right. I’ll have my dinner first, though. Want me to bring you
something?”
“Nope!” said Eddy. “Lissen! I guess the cops are after me already.”
“You mean they’ve—found him?”
“Yep,” said Eddy. “They’ve found him. How did you know?”
Ross did not answer the question.
“Can’t you get away?” he asked.
“Not going to try,” said Eddy. “I—I’m too d-darn tired. I—I _don’t
care_!” There was a hysterical rise in his voice, but he mastered it.
“Let ’em come!”
“What have they got against you?”
“They’ve found him—in the pond—where I put him.”
“Who’s going to know that?”
“Oh, they’ll know, all right!” said Eddy. “They got ways of finding
out things. They’ll know, and they’ll think it was me that—All right!
Let ’em!”
“Then you’re not going to tell?”
Eddy looked at him.
“D’you think it—wasn’t me?”
“Yes,” Ross replied. “I think it wasn’t you, Eddy.”
There was a long silence between them.
“What d’you think I’d ought to do?” asked Eddy, almost in a whisper.
“Suppose we talk it over,” said Ross.
“Yes—but—_I_ dunno who you are.”
“Well, let’s say I’m Ives.”
Eddy sprang back as if he had been struck.
“_Ives!_”
“Look here!” said Ross. “I’m going to tell you what I did.”
And, very bluntly, he told. Eddy listened to him in silence; it was a
strange enough thing, but he showed no surprise.
“D’you think it’ll work?” he asked, when Ross had finished.
“I hope so. Anyhow, there’s a chance. Now, you better tell me the
whole thing. There’s a lot that I don’t know—and I might make a bad
mistake.”
The telephone rang again. It was Gracie, annoyed by this delay.
“I’ll come as soon as I can,” said Ross, severely. “But I’m working on
the car, and I can’t leave off for a few minutes.”
He turned again to Eddy.
“Go ahead!” he said.
Eddy sat down on the step of the sedan, and Ross leaned back against
the wall, his arms folded, his saturnine face shadowed by the peaked
cap.
“Tuesday I went and got her—the kid, y’ know, and took her to the
cottage.”
“Did you know about her before?”
“Sure I did! I knew when they got married—her and Ives—four years ago.
She told me herself. You know the way she tells you things—crying an’
all.”
Ross did know.
“Well, I used to see Ives hanging around. He was a nice feller—but he
didn’t have a cent. He was an actor. She was too young,
anyway—eighteen—same age as me. I told her I’d tell Mr. Solway, and
then she told me they’d got married. I felt pretty bad—on Mr. Solway’s
account. But she—well, you know how she acts. Her mother’d left her
some money she’s going to get when she’s twenty-five, if she don’t get
married without her stepfather’s consent. Mrs. Solway had the right
idea. She knew Amy, all right. Only, it didn’t work. Amy wanted to get
married and have the money, too. That’s how she is. So she told me she
was going to tell Mr. Solway when she was twenty-five. I know I’d
ought to have told him then, but—I didn’t.”
Ross understood that.
“Mr. Solway went over to Europe that summer, and she and Mrs. Jones
went somewheres out West, and Lily was born out there. And Ives, he
took the kid, and she came back here. She used to see Ives pretty
often for awhile—go into the city and meet him. Then she began talking
about what a risk it was. That was because she’d met this Gayle
Dexter. That made me sick! I said I’d tell Mr. Solway, but she said
her and Ives was going to get divorced, an’ nobody’d ever know, and
that I’d ruin her life and all. And I gave in—like a fool. Only, you
see, I—I’ve known Amy all my life.”
“I see!” said Ross.
“Well, it seems Ives was beginning to get suspicious, when she didn’t
see him no more. He kept writing; I used to get the letters for
her—general delivery—an’ she kept stalling—and at last he said he was
coming here to see her. Well, her and Mrs. Jones must have told him to
come along. And Tuesday I met the kid and took her to that cottage. My
idea, that was. I told Mrs. Jones about the place. I wish to Gawd I
hadn’t.” He was silent for a moment. “Only, I thought it might—I was
glad to do it, ’cause I thought maybe if Amy seen Ives and the kid,
she’d—kinder change her mind. He come that afternoon, and seen Mrs.
Jones. Well, I went there after work, and he told me Amy was coming to
see him next morning. He was real pleased. He was—he was a—nice
feller—”
Eddy’s mouth twitched again. “I wish—I’d known. Anyway, she wouldn’t
go to see him. Jones tried to make her—said she’d got to have a talk
with him—but Amy, she took on something fierce. Said she’d never see
him again. Well, I guess he must of waited and waited, and in the
afternoon he come here to the garage. I tried to argue with him and
all, but it wouldn’t work. He started off for the house, and I
telephoned over to Jones. An’ he went—he went out of that door—”
Eddy turned and stared at the door with an odd blank look. It was as
if he saw something—which was not there.
“This very door,” he muttered. “My Gawd!”
“Yes,” said Ross, quietly. “He went to the house. And then?”
Eddy turned back with a shudder.
“I didn’t never think,” he said. “Wheeler’d left, then, so I drove the
big car down to the station to meet Mr. Solway, and when I brung him
home, you was there. Old Lady Jones tried to tip me off. I saw her
trying to tell me something behind your back. I couldn’t make out what
it was, but I knew there was something queer. I thought you was a
detective Ives’d sent to see what was going on, ’cause he’d been
saying he’d do that. I didn’t know, then— But next day Jones told me
that—that Ives had—died. Said he’d fell down dead from a heart attack.
And she said we’d got to get rid of him on the Q. T., for Amy’s sake.
I—I thought I couldn’t—but I did. Fella I know lent me his Ford. I
said I wanted to take a girl out. And, while you were out there on the
lawn, I—I got him—out of Jones’s room.”
“Do you mean he’d been there all that time?”
“I guess so. She told me she been sitting up all night, trying to—to
see if she could—do anything for him. But he— Anyway, Jones told me
what to do, and I did it. I—you don’t know what it was like—going all
that way—alone—with him. And I had to put stones in his pockets.” He
looked at Ross with a sort of wonder.
“I can’t believe it now!” he cried. “It don’t seem true! I don’t know
_why_—only Jones told me that if I didn’t, there’d be a inquest an’
all. And she said everyone’d think that Amy— It would all come out,
she said, and Amy and Mr. Solway’d be in the newspapers and all. And
she said he was dead, anyway. The pond couldn’t hurt _him_. I—”
He came closer to Ross, and laid a hand on his sleeve. “Lissen here!”
he said. “D’you think that’s true—that he—just died?”
“There’s no use thinking about that—now,” said Ross.