A Trap
We had got into the sedan, by that time, and were riding along the
Victory Highway. I declare to goodness, a sound that was pretty much
like a ripple of giggles went tittering around. It did us good, every
last one of us. It was antiseptic, as laughs so often are. Just as I
was thinking how much more wholesome everything felt, since I had
shaken hands with Miss MacDonald, Danny, who was riding in the front
seat beside John, spoiled it all by emitting a shriek; it was not a
very loud one, but it was thick with horror and repulsion.
John talked to her for a minute or two in a low voice, and then
explained, over his shoulder to us, that he had told her about “that
man” being on the ranch.
“Uncle Sam,” Danny pleaded, “do I have to see him?”
“Well, Danny,” Sam apologized, “I’m right down sorry about it; but,
you see, he is staying on the place. We’ll keep him out of your way as
much as we can.”
“Why can’t he stay, if he has to stay at all, down at the outfit’s
quarters?” Danny asked.
“We’ll see what Miss MacDonald says. I kind of thought, maybe, she’d
like to have him where she could keep an eye on him. I kind of wanted,
myself, to keep an eye on him.”
Danny put her head on John’s shoulder and began to cry; weak, choking
little sobs that hurt like having to watch a sick baby.
“Poor little thing,” Miss MacDonald said to me, her voice lowered and
rich with sympathy.
I thought she would ask me what the trouble was, and who the man was
that was causing it. Instead, still speaking low, to me, she said, “So
often I get completely at odds with my profession. And then I hear
some woman crying like that, or something else as heartbreaking comes
to me, and I know that I am justified. Not because I shall discover
this criminal. That won’t help this little girl, greatly; but because
I am one of an army that is fighting crime.”
I didn’t say it, but I felt like telling her that she seemed like a
whole army herself—an army with banners.
I leaned forward and tried to sooth Danny; told her that we would all
do what we could to keep him away from her, and to make it easy for
her.
“It can’t be made easy,” she answered. “You can’t keep him away from
me. I won’t see him, I tell you. I’ve been so homesick—and now to come
home to this. I can’t see him. I won’t——”
Miss MacDonald, who the minute before, had seemed all pity for Danny,
began, suddenly, to talk right through and over her sobs, to Sam; to
talk in rather a loud voice about stock raising, paying no more
attention to Danny’s troubles than she paid to the humming of the
motor.
I sat and sulked and nursed my disappointment. If I had been a
man—which praise the Lord I am not—it would have been a case of love
at first sight with me toward Lynn MacDonald. But now I told myself
bitterly that I had been a fool to expect real womanly sympathy and
kindness from a person in her profession. Ferreting out criminals
would make anyone as hard as nails. I was right, in a way. That was
not the last time I was to see her turn, suddenly, from a sympathetic
woman into a crime analyst. It was sort of a pity, though, that I had
to see that side of her so soon; so long before I could begin to
understand it.
Not until Danny had quieted down, and had turned to us with stammered
apologies and attempted explanations, did Miss MacDonald ask, “Who is
this man?”
“Dreadful as it must seem to you,” Danny answered, “he is my father.
But he has brought sorrow, and fear and trouble to my mother, and to
my sister, and to me, whenever he came near us. He is a wicked man.”
“Wouldn’t it be possible,” Miss MacDonald turned to Sam, “to have
someone go ahead of us to the house, and ask him to keep to his own
room, this evening?”
“Well——” Sam hesitated. “But Danny will have to meet him, sooner or
later.”
“Better later, in this case, I should say. She will be rested
to-morrow. Possibly, too, it would be easier for her if their first
meeting could be in private. Shouldn’t you rather see him alone, just
at first, Miss Canneziano?”
“Oh, no!” Danny exclaimed. “I hope I need never see him alone.
Please—don’t any of you ever leave me alone with him, not for a
minute, if you can help it.”
For all the fuss she had made about it, I will say that Danny did very
well when we all went into the house and she saw Canneziano, standing
over by the east windows, smoking a cigarette.
“What-ho, Dan,” he said, smiling his smooth, smirking smile at her.
“You are looking seedy. Bad times around here, lately.”
She didn’t go near him. She edged closer to John; but she answered,
looking at him straight and lifting her chin in a pretty, dignified
way she had, “Very, very bad times indeed.” She and John walked
through the room to the stairway, and up the steps, and out of sight.
Canneziano stood watching them, a dark, ugly look on his face.
“There’s filial affection for you,” he said. And then, with a half
laugh, as he lit another cigarette, and shook the flame from the
match, “The girl is a fool.”