* * * * *
The bus station at Bayport was also the railway depot. Vaguely Norman
remembered the loosely planked platform and packed cinders on the track
side. The station building was dark, but there were several cars and
a lone local cab drawn up, and there were some men standing around
talking in low voices, and a couple of soldiers going back to camp.
He had time to scent the salt air, with its faint and not unpleasant
trace of fishiness. Then the bus pulled in.
Several passengers stepped down, looking around to spot the people
waiting for them.
Tansy was the third. She was staring straight ahead. She was carrying
the pigskin suitcase.
"Tansy!" he said.
She did not look at him. He noted a black stain on her right hand, and
remembered the spilled ink on his study table. Odd that it should still
be there.
"Tansy!" he said. "Tansy!"
She walked straight past him, so close that her sleeve brushed his.
"Tansy, what's the matter with you?"
He had turned and hurried after her. She was heading for the local cab.
He was conscious of a silence, and curious unfriendly glances. It made
him angry.
She did not slacken her pace. He grabbed her elbow and pulled her
around. He heard a remonstratory murmur behind him, and realized that a
couple of the men were closing in.
"Tansy, stop acting this way! Tansy!"
Her face looked frozen. She stared past him without a hint of
recognition in her eyes.
That infuriated him. He did not pause to think. Accumulated tensions
prodded him into an explosion. He grabbed both elbows and shook her.
She still looked past him, completely aloof--a perfect picture of an
aristocratic woman enduring brutality. If she had yelled and fought
him, the men might not have interfered.
He was jerked back.
"Lay off her!"
"Who do you think you are, anyway?"
She stood there, with maddening composure. He noticed a scrap of paper
flutter out of her hand. Then her eyes met his and for one terrible
moment--but one moment only--he saw rise up behind her a shaggy black
form twice her height, with hulking shoulders, out-stretched massive
hands, and dully glowing eyes.
Only a moment, though. Then she turned away. But he fancied that a
great shadow followed hers. Then they swung him around and he could no
longer see her.
* * * * *
In a queer sort of daze--for the kind of fear he had just experienced
mixes badly with any other emotion--he listened to them jabber at him.
"I ought to take a crack at you," he finally heard someone say.
"All right," he replied in a flat voice. "They're holding my hands."
He heard Alec's voice. "Say, what's going on here?" Alec sounded
cautious, but not unfriendly, as if he were thinking, "The guy's my
fare, but I don't know anything about him."
One of the soldiers spoke. "Where's the lady? She doesn't seem to be
making any complaint."
"Yeah, where is she?"
"She got in Jake's cab and drove off," someone volunteered.
"Maybe he had a good reason for what he did," said the soldier.
Norman felt the attitude of the crowd change.
One of the men holding him retorted, "Nobody's got a right to treat a
lady that way." But the other one slackened his grip and asked Norman,
"How about it? Did you have a reason for doing that?"
"I did. But it's my business."