That morning Darcy received Lib Knox’s letter.
He was passing through a city where he had been in the habit of
receiving mail, and he stopped to see if anything was in the box for
him, and to pay his box rent and give it up. There he found the letter.
His face grew tender and stern as he read. Dear little brave Lib. Well
he knew who the bad man with red hair must be, but how did Tyke ever
find out Lib? Some deviltry somewhere. But one thing was certain, he
must abandon his plans and go home to protect her. He would take Tyke
out in the open somewhere and give him a lesson if necessary.
He glanced at the date on the letter and frowned. Already he had been
in ignorance too long. There was time enough for any number of things
to have happened to Lib, and well he knew that Tyke was a bad man.
To the warning concerning his own welfare he paid no heed whatever,
passing over Lib’s solicitude for him with a tender smile.
More alarmed than he cared to own even to himself, he studied up
time-tables and took the first train that would make connections for
Meadow Brook. He must tell Mason to look after Lib better. They were
too careless with that child. As soon as his quest was over he must try
and do something about Lib. She wasn’t being brought up in the right
way. She wasn’t being taught right and wrong. She was too much on her
own, just as he had been. That must all be changed.
So he boarded the train for home, and on the way he closed his eyes
and tried to exercise his new power of prayer. What he was praying for
was that he might find Joyce Radway, and as the train rumbled along he
began to think to himself that perhaps, after all, he had been a fool.
He had got interested in his quest as a quest and had not remembered
that it might by this time be unnecessary. For aught he knew she might
have reached home.
Still, there was Dan Peterson. Dan always knew about where to find him
within a few days, and there had been no word from Dan all along the
line.
He closed his eyes and tried to pray. He was just learning to pray, and
since he had read the promises to those who prayed and believed, he had
spent much time upon this one petition: “Oh God, help me to find Joyce
and keep her safely.”
* * * * *
It was dark when Darcy reached Meadow Brook. He had come by a way of
his own and had not seen any one he knew. He took the short cut across
by the railroad and in at the back gate, and so entered the house from
the kitchen door.
His sister was sitting by the diningroom table with her head upon her
arms, crying in the dark. Lib was standing with her face flattened
against the window-pane, the slow tears coursing down her cheeks. Darcy
reached up and turned the light on, blinking at them wonderingly. His
first startled thought was that Mase must be dead. He put out a hand
gently and laid it on Ellen’s bowed head. Good, simple Ellen!
Ellen lifted her head and saw him and screamed, dropping her face down
again upon her folded arms and breaking into renewed sobs. But Lib ran
to him and threw her arms around his neck, burying her wet little face
on his shoulder.
It was so he learned what had come to him, sitting in a diningroom
chair beside his sister with his hand upon her bowed head and little
Lib in his lap, her face against his breast, sobbing as her mother told
the story brokenly. Mase, she said, was out trying to see a lawyer and
find out what to do. But there wasn’t anything to do. Everybody said
there wasn’t anything to do. The case was all against him.
Darcy took the blow straight with white, stern face and steady eyes.
The hand that held little Lib’s did not tremble and his voice did not
shake. The thing he was thinking was:
“Now I shall have to stop hunting for Joyce. Oh God, take care of
Joyce!”
But he opened his lips and said: “Well, Ellen, don’t take it so hard!
It’s all in the day’s work, and it’ll all come out in the wash. Anyhow,
Ellen, I’ve found a new line. God isn’t forgetting any of us and you
just put that away and think about it.”
Ellen sat up and wiped her eyes and stared at him. This was strange
talk from Darcy, and yet it was like him. She broke out afresh with
indignant tears that they should fasten a crime so heinous on this
beloved brother. She was engulfed, overwhelmed by the shame and
disgrace that had befallen them. She was old enough to have remembered
their gentle mother who always tried to keep them “respectable.”
“Never mind, Ellen, don’t cry any more. Give me a bite to eat and I’ll
go out and see what can be done.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t go out!” cried Ellen, and little Lib gripped him
fiercely. “You mustn’t! They’ll get you. They’re looking everywhere for
you.”
“That’s all right,” said Darcy cheerfully. “I’ll help them. I’ll go and
give myself up.”
And go he would in spite of all their efforts. He went away whistling
down the street, just as he always did when he was at home. Whistling!
So first he went to the police headquarters and walked in as he had
done many a time before, and they stared at him:
“I understand you’re looking for me?” he said, gravely with a new
dignity about him they scarcely understood.
“Yes,” said the chief, embarrassedly, almost deferentially, for Darcy
had been almost like one of themselves. “Yes.”
“Well. Here I am.”
They scarcely knew what to say to him. They treated him like a
gentleman, a stranger. It cut him the way they went about it. They
were not his friends any more. It seemed that they were afraid of him,
as if they did not know how to take him. They had been prepared for
rebellion, subterfuge. He gave none. He was his old grave self, with
the old winning smile as he met them, his eyes upon them with the old
question in them, the wistfulness. It disarmed them. They would have
rather had to fight with him.
And by and by he asked to see Dan Peterson. He would find out if he had
any friends left.
* * * * *
Joyce did not remember the Meadow Brook newspaper again after she had
put it into her desk, for almost two weeks. It lay under a pile of copy
books that were awaiting marks and she had been too busy to get at
them. But one morning during study period she found time and drew them
out and there was the newspaper. She took it out and was about to throw
it in the waste basket, realizing how much out of date it must be. Then
a longing overcame her to see some of the old familiar names again, and
she slipped off the wrapper and decided to take just a moment to look
it over before throwing it away.
It was well that the top of her desk was raised and that the eyes of
her young pupils were occupied with their work, for the letters that
met her gaze flaring across the top of the paper in the blackest of
type made her gasp and turn white. They almost shouted at her as she
read:
“BASEBALL IDOL IN TROUBLE!
DARCY SHERWOOD WANTED ON CHARGE OF ABDUCTION AND MURDER OF JOYCE
RADWAY
Who left her home in Meadow Brook one year ago and has not been heard
from since.”
The article went on to state that there were eye-witnesses to the
murder and burial of the girl who were willing to testify in the case.
It was also rumored that Eugene Massey, the cousin of the murdered
girl, had located the grave and exhumed the body which had been
identified by portions of clothing worn when Miss Radway left her home.
Meantime, Darcy Sherwood had also mysteriously disappeared, some said
to Canada, and a reward was offered for any knowledge of him; although
it was also stated that the detectives had been right on his track for
months, and could easily locate and produce him when he was needed.
For a moment Joyce thought she was going to faint. It went through her
mind to wonder if Harrington had known what was in the paper when he
gave it to her and took this way to let her know it. But she rejected
the idea instantly. His manner had been too pleasant and altogether
intimate for that. He was one who could never brook a thing like this
publicity in an intimate friend. His life was too well ordered and
conventional to make it possible to treat a girl just the same as ever
if he knew anything like this had been connected with her name. Her
next impulse was to hide the paper where no eye could ever see it. She
folded it quickly into a thick square and stuffed it into her handbag.
As she did so its date caught her eye, and her heart froze within her.
It was more than two weeks back. What might not have happened in that
time? Darcy in such awful trouble and she, the only one who could help
him, chained to these children.