He did not come toward her; did not move from his place, and then she
saw that he stood only by clinging to the back of a chair.... He leaned
forward and stared at her through eyes drawn by pain.
“You’re hurt!... They’ve hurt you!” she cried.
“My ankle only,” he said. “Sprained, I fancy.” Then, “What are you
doing here?” He spoke almost petulantly as one would speak to a naughty
child who turns up in some embarrassing spot.
“I--I found your letter,” she said.
“My letter?... Ah yes, my letter.... Then I--I brought you into this
trap.”
“No.... Evan, it was a fine thing you did. For me. You--have come to
_this_ for me.”
“It was an exceedingly unintelligent thing--writing that letter.”
“Listen, Evan.... As long as I live I shall be glad you wrote it. I
am glad, glad ... to know there is a man capable of--of sacrificing
and--maybe dying for----”
“Nonsense!” said Evan. “It was a trap, of course. And I thought my
mental caliber was rather larger than that of these people. Very
humiliating.” He frowned at her. “Why did you have to come?”
“You ask that?”
“I most certainly do ask it. You had no business to come. Wasn’t my
failure to return a sufficient warning?... Why did you take this
foolish risk?”
“You don’t know?”
“I want to know,” he said with the severity of a schoolmaster
cross-questioning a refractory pupil.
“Must I tell?”
“You must.” Carmel was almost able to see the humor of it. A pathetic
shadow of a smile lighted her face.
“I didn’t want to--to tell it this way,” she said. “I----”
“Will you be so good as to give me a direct answer? Why did you come
rushing here--headlong--when you knew perfectly well----” He paused and
his severe eyes accused her.
She moved a step closer; her hands fluttered up from her side and
dropped again; she bit her lip. “Because,” she said, in the lowest of
voices, “I love you--and--and where you were I--wanted to be.”
The chair which supported Evan tipped forward and clattered again into
place. He stared at her as if she were some very strange laboratory
specimen indeed, and then said in his most insistently didactic voice,
punctuating his words with a waggling forefinger, “You don’t mean to
stand there--and to tell _me_--that you love _me_!”
Carmel gave a little laugh.
“Don’t you want me to?”
“That,” he said, “is beside the question.... You ... _you_ ... love
_me_?”
She nodded.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “You couldn’t. Nobody could.... I’ve
been studying this--er--matter of love, and I am assured of my complete
unfitness to arouse such an emotion.”
Her heart misgave her. “Evan--you--you love me?”
“I do,” he said, emphatically. “Most assuredly I do, but----”
“Then it’s all right,” she said.
“It’s not all right.... I don’t in the least believe you--er--
reciprocate my feeling for you.... You are--er--deceiving me for some
reason.”
“Evan--please--oh----” Her lips quivered and her voice became tearful.
“You--you’re making it--terribly hard. Girls don’t usually have to--to
argue with men to--to make them believe they love them.... You--you’re
hurting me.”
“I--er--have no intention of doing so. In fact I--I would not hurt
you for--anything in the world.... As a matter of--of fact, I want
to--prevent you from being hurt....” At this point he bogged down, the
wheels of his conversation mired, and progress ceased.
“Then,” demanded Carmel, “why do you make me do it?”
“Do what?”
“Propose to you, Evan Pell. It’s not my place. I have to do all the
courting.... If you--you want me, why don’t you say so--and--and ask
me to marry you?”
“You--you’d marry _me_?”
“I don’t know.... Not--I won’t say another word until you’ve asked
me--as--as a man should.”
He drew a deep breath and, bending forward, searched her face with
hungry eyes. What he saw must have satisfied him, given him confidence,
for he threw back his shoulders. “I can’t come to you,” he said,
gently. “I want to come to you. I want to be close to you, and to
tell you how I love you--how my love for you has changed my life....
I--my manner--it was because I couldn’t believe--because the idea
that you--you could ever see anything in me to--to admire--was so
new. I never believed you--could.... I--was satisfied to love you.
But--Carmel--if you can--if some miracle has made you care for a poor
creature like me--I shall--Oh, my dear!--it will make a new world,
a wonderful and beautiful world.... I--I can’t come to you. Will
you--come to me?”
She drew closer slowly, almost reluctantly, and stood before him. His
grave, starving eyes looked long into hers.
“My--my dear!” he said, huskily, and kneeling upon the chair with his
sound leg--in order to release his arms for more essential purposes, he
held them out to her....
“Your arms are strong,” she said presently. “I had no idea.... You are
very strong.”
“I--exercise with a rowing machine,” he said.... And then: “Now we
must think.... I didn’t much care--before. Now I have something to live
for.”
His words brought Carmel back to the realities, to the prison room in
which they were locked, and to the men below stairs who had made them
prisoners for their sinister purposes.
“I have found Sheriff Churchill,” she said.
“His body?”
She nodded. “And this house is full of contraband liquor. Five big
trucks--loaded....”
“All of which is useless information to us here.”
“What--do you think they will do with us?”
Evan turned away his head and made no answer.
Carmel clutched his arm. “Oh, they wouldn’t.... They couldn’t.... Not
now. Nothing can happen to us now.”
“At any rate,” he said, gravely, “we have this. It is something.”
“But I want more. I want happiness--alive with you.... Oh, we must do
something--something.”
“Sit down,” he said. “Please--er--be calm. I will see what is to be
done.”
He sank into the chair, and she sat close beside him, clinging to his
hand. Neither spoke.... At the sound of footsteps in the hall outside
their heads lifted and their eyes fastened upon the door. A key grated
in the lock and the door swung inward, permitting Peewee Bangs to
enter. He stood grinning at them--the grin distorting his pinched,
hunchback’s face.
“Well,” he said, “here you be--both of ye. How d’ye like the
accommodations?”
Peewee evidently came to talk, not to be talked to, for he did not wait
for an answer.
“Folks that go meddlin’ in other folkses’ business ought to be more
careful,” he said. “But numbers hain’t.... Now you was gittin’ to be
a dummed nuisance. We’ve talked about you consid’able.... And say, we
fixed it so’s you hain’t goin’ to be missed for a day or so. Uh huh.
Had a feller telephone from the capital sayin’ you was back there on
business.”
“What--are you going to do with us?” Carmel asked.
“Nothin’ painful--quite likely. If you was to turn up missin’ that ’u’d
make too many missin’ folks.... So you hain’t a-goin’ to. Nope. We
calc’late on havin’ you found--public like. Sure thing. Sheriff’s goin’
to find ye.”
“Sheriff Jenney?”
“That’s him.... We’re goin’ to kind of arrange this room a little--like
you ’n’ that teacher feller’d been havin’ a nice leetle party here.
Understand?... Plenty to drink and sich.” He drew his head back upon
his distorted shoulders and looked up at them with eyes in which burned
the fire of pure malice. Carmel turned away from him to determine from
Evan’s face if he understood Bangs’s meaning. It was clear he did not.
“Don’t git the idea, eh?” Peewee asked, with evident enjoyment. “Wa-al,
since we got a good sheriff and one that kin be depended on, things is
different here. He’s all for upholdin’ the law, and he aims to make an
example out of me.”
“Sheriff Jenney make an example of _you_!” Carmel exclaimed.
“Funny, hain’t it? But that’s the notion. You bet you.... Goin’ to
kind of raid my hotel, like you might say, and git evidence ag’in’ me.
Dunno’s he’ll find much. More’n likely he won’t.... But he’ll find
you two folks--he’ll come rampagin’ in here and find you together as
cozy as bugs in a rug.” Peewee stopped to laugh with keen enjoyment of
the humorous situation he described. “He’ll find you folks here, and
he’ll find how you been together to-night and all day to-morrer.... And
plenty of refreshments a-layin’ around handy. Reg’lar party.”
“You mean Sheriff Jenney will come to this hotel--officially--and find
Mr. Pell and myself in this room?”
“That’s the ticket.”
“Why--why--he’d have to let us go.”
“Sooner or later,” said Peewee. “Fust he’d take you to the jail and
lock you up--disorderly persons or some sich charge. Drinkin’ and
carousin’ in my hotel!... Course he’ll have to let you go--sometime.
Maybe after the jedge gives you thirty days in the calaboose.”
“Um!... I think I comprehend,” said Evan, slowly. “I--In fact, I am
sure I comprehend.... Sheriff Jenney did not originate this plan, I am
sure.... Nor yourself. It required a certain modicum of intelligence.”
“’Tain’t no matter who thought it up--it’s thought,” said Peewee, “and
when the town of Gibeon comes to know all the facts--why, I don’t
figger you two’ll be in a position to do nobody much harm.... Folks
hain’t apt to believe you like you was the Bible. Kind of hidebound,
them Gibeon people. Sh’u’dn’t be s’prised if they give you a ride out
of town on a rail.”
“Nobody would believe it. We would tell everyone how we came to be
here.” This from Carmel.
“We’re willin’ to take that chance,” grinned Peewee. “Seems like a
certain party’s got a grudge ag’in’ you, miss, and he allus pays off
his grudges.”
“As he paid off Sheriff Churchill,” said Carmel.
“Killin’,” said Peewee, sententiously, “is quick. This here’ll last you
a lifetime. You’ll allus be knowed as the gal that was arrested with a
man in the Lakeside Hotel....”
He turned on his heel and walked to the door; there he paused to grin
at them maliciously before he disappeared, locking the door after him
with elaborate care.
“They--nobody would believe,” said Carmel.
“I am afraid, indeed, I may say I am certain, everybody would believe,”
said Evan. “I have seen the reactions of Gibeon to affairs of this
sort. Gibeon loves to believe the worst.”
“Then----”
“We would have to go away,” said Evan, gravely.
“But--but the story would follow us.”
“Such stories always follow.”
Carmel studied his face. It was Evan Pell’s face, but for the first
time she saw how different it was from the pedant’s face, the
schoolmaster’s face, he had worn when first she met him. The spectacles
were gone; the dissatisfied, supercilious expression was gone, and, in
its place, she perceived something stronger, infinitely more desirable.
She saw strength, courage, sympathy, understanding. She saw what gave
her hope even in this, her blackest hour. If the worst came to the
worst she had found a man upon whom to rely, a man who would stand by
her to the end and uphold her and protect her and love her.
Yet--she closed her eyes to shut out the imagined scenes--to be branded
as a woman who could accompany a man to such a resort as the Lakeside,
and to remain with him there for days and nights--carousing!... She
knew how she regarded women who were guilty of such sordid affairs.
Other women would look at her as she looked at them, would draw away
their skirts when she passed, would peer at her with hard, hostile,
sneering eyes.... That would be her life thenceforward--the life of
an outcast, of a woman detected in sin.... It would be horrible,
unspeakably horrible--unbearable. She had valued herself so highly,
had, without giving it conscious thought, felt herself to be so removed
from such affairs as quite to dwell upon a planet where they could not
exist. She had been proud without knowing she was proud.... It had not
been so much a sensation of purity, a consciousness of purity, as a
sureness in herself, a certainty that evil could not approach her....
And now....
“Evan--Evan--I am frightened,” she said.
“If only you had not come,” he answered.
“But I am here--I am glad I am here--with you.”
He stretched out his hand toward her and she laid her hand in the clasp
of his fingers.
“We have until to-morrow night,” he said. “Twenty-four hours.”
“But----”
“Empires have fallen in twenty-four hours.”
“Maybe--some one will come to look for us.”
He shook his head. “They will have taken care of that.”
“Then you--think there is no chance.”
“I---- Carmel dear, the chance is slight. I must admit the chance is
slight. But with twenty-four hours.... If----” His eyes traveled about
the skimpily furnished room, searching for something, searching for it
vainly. “If I could walk,” he said. “I’m--almost helpless.”
She went to him, trembling, the horror of the future eating into her
as if it were an acid-coated mantle. “I--I won’t be able to live,” she
said.
He did not answer, for his eyes were fixed on the door which led, not
into the hall, but into an adjoining bedroom. They rested upon its
white doorknob as if hypnotized.
“Will you help me to that door?” he asked. “I’ll push the chair along.
You--can you keep me from falling?”
Slowly, not without twinges of hot pain in his injured ankle, they
reached the door. Evan felt in his pocket for his penknife, and with
it set about loosening the screw which held the knob in place. Twice
he broke the blade of his knife, but at last he managed the thing. The
white doorknob rested in his hand.
“There,” he said, “that is something.”
“What?... I don’t understand.”
He sat in the chair, removed the shoe from his sound foot and then the
sock. He did this slowly, methodically, and as methodically replaced
the shoe on his sockless foot. Then he lifted from the floor the
stocking and dropped into it the doorknob. It fitted snugly into the
toe.
“Er--I have read of such things,” he said. He grasped the sock by the
top and whirled it about his head. “Mechanics,” said he, “teach us that
a blow delivered with such an implement is many times more efficacious
than a blow delivered with the--er--solid object held directly in the
hand....”