“Hasn’t Mr. Pell come in yet?” Carmel called to Tubal.
“Hain’t seen hide nor hair of him since last night.”
“Did he say anything about staying away?”
“Not a word. Mos’ likely he’s all het up learnin’ the Chinee language
backward, or suthin’, and clean forgot the’ _was_ sich a thing as a
paper.”
She thought it queer, but, so occupied was her mind with the
disclosures of Lancelot Bangs and with the events of last night, that
the fact of Evan Pell’s unexplained absence did not present itself to
her as a thing demanding immediate investigation.... She was wondering
what to do with the evidence in hand. Where to go for more was a
question easy to answer. She possessed a list of names, any one of
whom could be forced to testify, and nobody could tell which one of
them might assay some pure gold of fact which would lead her to her
destination. She had reached Deputy Jenney. The match box was damning,
yet it must be corroborated by other evidence.... Past Jenney the trail
did not lead. So far it was a blind alley, blocked by the bulk of the
newly appointed sheriff. In some manner she must go around or through
him to reach Abner Fownes.
But Abner Fownes was not a man to permit himself to be reached.
The county was his own now, held in the hollow of his hand. Its
law-enforcing machinery was his private property to turn on or to turn
off as his needs required. Suppose she did find evidence which would
touch him with the pitch of this affair? Who would make use of the
evidence? Who make the arrest?
Could she get to the sheriff’s office to lay before Jenney information
which would result in his imprisonment and in Abner Fownes’s
destruction? Suppose she went, as she must go, to the prosecuting
attorney. Suppose warrants were issued? What then? Jenney’s office must
make the service and the arrests.... It was more thinkable that the
sun would start suddenly to travel from west to east than that such
warrants should become efficacious.
She called Jared Whitefield on the telephone, desirous of his advice
and assistance in this emergency, but Jared, she was informed, had
gone away from town. He left suddenly after midnight, and had stated
no destination.... Carmel felt terribly alone. She felt a need for
Evan Pell--some one upon whom she could depend, some one to talk with,
to discuss this thing with. Whitefield was gone.... Perhaps Evan had
accompanied him. But why? She had a feeling Jared’s going away was in
some manner connected with the telegram she sent him from the capital.
But why had he taken Evan, and why had Evan left no word for her....
Her sensation was of one suddenly deserted by all the world. She felt
young, inadequate, frightened.
If pride had not held back her tears she would have cried. It would be
a wonderful comfort to cry--but a young woman engaged on a perilous
enterprise such as hers could not afford the weakness of tears.... If
only Evan Pell were there!
She was arrested by that thought, by the sharpness of her desire
for Evan’s presence. For the first time she perceived how important
was the position he had assumed in her affairs. She reviewed their
association from its inception, recalled how she had patronized him,
almost despised him. She had pitied him for his inadequacy, for his
dry pedantry.... Step by step she reviewed the changes which had taken
place in him, dating these changes from that brutal scene before her
door, when Jenney had beaten him to insensibility.... Her sympathy
had commenced there; admiration had dawned, for it had been given her
to see that a man who could conduct himself as Evan Pell conducted
himself on that day contained in himself the elements which made up a
man. Submerged they might have been, but they were present--and not too
deep below the surface. She saw again that unequal fight; perceived
the dauntlessness of the young man; the oaken heart of him which would
fight until it died, fearless, struggling with its last throb to reach
and tear down its enemy.
She saw now how he had struggled to perceive; how, led by her acid
tongue, he had perceived the futility of his life, and how he had
sought to alter it. His manner, his very appearance, had changed....
And he loved her! Never before had she given more than reluctant,
pitying thought to his love for her, but now it assumed other
proportions.... She was aware of wanting him--not as he wanted her--but
of wanting him near her, to lean upon, to feel the strength of him....
Until he returned she could do nothing!... It was strange that she, who
always had been so self-reliant, so sure, so ready to act by herself,
should require the upholding of another. She could not understand it,
fancied she had grown weak. She rather despised herself.... Yet it was
a fact. She did not strive to overthrow it. It was not to be assailed.
She could not go on until Evan Pell returned to help her!
It was an uneasy, unhappy day, crowded with apprehensions and
questionings.... With events impending, with peril darkening the
immediate future, she could do nothing but putter with detail. Yet she
welcomed the detail--it took her mind off herself and her problems.
Noon came, and then suppertime.... It was not her usual custom to
return to the office after supper, but to-night she did return--to wait
for Evan, though she did not admit it. He might come back, and she
wanted to be there to receive him.
To occupy her mind she took out the books of her concern and opened
them to study progress. The circulation book came first, and she opened
it at the last entried page. As she spread it before her an envelope
lay under her eyes, and upon its face, in Evan Pell’s handwriting, was
her name.
_Miss Carmel Lee!_
It was the first time she had ever seen her name in his handwriting,
and she gazed at it with a strange, stifled feeling in her breast....
A letter to her from Evan Pell, left in this place where she must find
it! She lifted it and held it in her fingers.... Why had he written?
Why left his message in this place? She drew a sudden breath of fright.
Could it be he had deserted her? Could it be he had found his position
unbearable and, ashamed to face her, had taken this means of telling
her?... She was overmastered by foreboding, feared to open the letter.
“I must open it,” she said to herself. “I must.”
She compelled her fingers to tear the flap and to withdraw the
letter--even to unfold it so that its contents were visible. Her eyes
saw Evan’s neat, flawless handwriting, but her mind seemed suddenly
numb, unable to make sense of the symbols set down upon the paper.
She shook her head as if to clear it of something damp and heavy and
obscuring, and forced herself to read.
“MY DEAR:” (The letter began, and she read over and over those two
intimate words)--“My dear: If you find this letter--if I have not
returned to take it from the place in which I have hidden it for you,
I am quite sure I shall not see you again. In view of this possibility
I am presuming to say good-by.” Even now, she saw, something of his
pedantic precision must creep in. It would not have crept in, she
felt sure, had he not been under some strong emotion, had he not felt
the necessity for concealing his emotion. “I have told you before,”
the letter continued, “that I love you. I have not told you how I have
come willingly, eagerly to love you. You, and you alone--the fact of
your existence, your loveliness--have made what I fancy are notable
changes in me. I even go so far as to imagine I might, with time and
persistence, become the sort of man who would be entitled to your
friendship, if nothing more. But, if this letter reaches your eyes,
that is, I fear, no longer possible. I think I have done as I should,
although I have practiced deception. When you remember I did this
because I loved you, I trust you will find it in your heart to forgive
me.
“To-day there came a note to you which I intercepted. It purported
to come from some disgruntled man, telling you how you could obtain
evidence against these liquor smugglers by going to the Lakeside Hotel.
I rather fancied it was not genuine, and was meant rather to induce
your presence than to betray confederates. On the other hand, it might
be authentic. I therefore urged you to make the journey upon which you
have just been engaged, and, because it seemed right to do so, I am
going to-night to test the authenticity of the letter.”
She saw, she understood!
“If it prove to be a lure, such as was used to the undoing of Sheriff
Churchill, there is some small chance I shall not return. Naturally
I shall observe every caution. But if precautions fail and I do not
return, you will find in a box in my room such evidence and information
as I have collected. It does not reach the man we wish to reach, but it
moves toward him. I hope you will be able to make use of it.”
He could write so stiltedly of making use of his work when he was,
open-eyed, going out to walk into the trap prepared for her!
“Therefore,” the letter concluded, “good-by. My going will mean little
to you; it means little to me, except the parting from you. If you find
time to think of me at all, I hope you will think of me as continuing
always to love you wherever it may be I have journeyed. Good-by.”
At the end he had signed his name.
She sat for a moment as though turned to stone. Her heart was dead, her
faculties benumbed.... He was dead! She had found and read the letter,
so he must be dead--vanished as Sheriff Churchill had vanished, never
to be seen again by mortal eye.... And for her! He had gone out calmly,
serenely, to face whatever might beset his path--for her. He had given
his life for her, to preserve her life!
She sat very still. Her cheeks were white and she was cold, cold as
death. No sound came from her compressed lips. Dead!... Evan Pell was
dead!
Then something not of her own consciousness, something deep within the
machinery of her soul, moved and controlled her. She acted, but not
as one acts of his own volition, rather as one acts in a mesmeric
trance.... Her impulse was to go to find him--to find him, to weep over
him ... to avenge him!
She snatched the receiver from its hook and telephoned Jared Whitefield
again. He would help. He would know what to do. But Jared Whitefield
had not returned.... She must act alone.
Calmly, like an automaton, she put on her hat, extinguished the lights,
locked the door, and walked up the street. The direction she took was
toward the Lakeside Hotel. She reached the fringe of the village which
bordered upon the black woods, but did not pause. Steadily, urged on by
some inexorable force, she continued down that gloomy avenue, between
woodland banks of inky blackness.... She neither hesitated nor paused
nor looked behind her.
Had she looked behind it may have been she would have seen the shadowy
figures of two men who followed, followed stealthily keeping always
a stated distance, drawing no nearer, flitting at the edge of the
blackness.