The car that was bearing Shirley Hollister through the lonely wooded
road at a breathless speed suddenly came to a halt in the rear of an
old house whose front faced on another road equally lonely. During the
brief time that they had been in the woods, the sky seemed to have
perceptibly darkened with the coming evening.
Shirley looked about her with increased fright. It was almost night
and here was her prison, far from town or human dwelling place. Even
the road was at some distance in front of the house, and there were
more woods on either side.
"This here is Secretary Baker's summer home," announced the man who had
done the talking, as he climbed out of the car and opened the door for
her. "You can just step in the back door and go through to the parlor;
the help's all out this afternoon. The Secretary'll be down presently.
He always takes a nap afternoons about this time. I'll tell him you've
come."
There seemed nothing to do but obey, and Shirley chose to let the farce
continue. Surely the man must know she was not a fool, but it was
better than open hostility. There was nothing to be gained by
informing him that she knew he was guying her.
"Oh, Jesus Christ, I trust myself to you!" she breathed in her heart as
she stepped across the leaf-strewn grass and looked about her,
wondering whether she should ever walk the earth again after she had
stepped into the dim tree-shrouded house. But why go in?
"I think I will remain out here," she said calmly, albeit her heart was
pounding away like a trip-hammer. "Please tell Mr. Baker to come to me
here. It is much pleasanter than in the house a day like this."
"Aw no! You won't neither! The Secretary don't receive in the open
air even in summer," drawled the man, and she noticed that he and the
driver straightened up and stepped closer to her, one on either side.
She gave one wild glance toward the open space. There was simply no
chance at all to run away even if she succeeded in eluding them at the
start by a quick, unexpected dash. They were alert athletic men, and
no telling how many more were hidden in the house.
"Oh, very well, of course, if it's a matter of etiquette!" said Shirley
pleasantly, determined to keep up the farce as long as possible.
A cold, dark air met the girl as she stepped within the creaking door
and looked about her. At her left was an old-fashioned kitchen, dusty
and cobwebby. A long, narrow hall led to the front of the house and
her guide pointed her toward a room on the right. There was something
hollow and eerie in the sound of their footsteps on the old oaken
floor. The room into which she was ushered was musty and dusty as the
rest. The floor was covered with an ancient ingrain carpet. The table
was covered with a magenta felt cover stamped with a vine of black
leaves and riddled with moth holes. The walls were hung with old
prints and steel engravings suspended by woollen cords and tassels.
The furniture was dilapidated. Everything was covered with dust, but
there were finger marks in the dust here and there that showed the
place had been recently visited. Through an open doorway an old square
piano was visible in what must be the parlor. The place seemed to
Shirley fairly teeming with memories of some family now departed. She
leaped to the quick conclusion that the house had been long deserted
and had only recently been entered and used as a rendezvous for illegal
conferences. It occurred to her that there might be an opportunity for
her to hide her precious papers somewhere safely if it came to it that
she must be searched. How about that piano? Could she slip some of
them between the keys? But it was hardly likely that there would be
opportunity for anything like that.
She felt strangely calm as she looked about upon her prison.
"H'm! He ain't come yet!" remarked her guide as he glanced into the
front room. "Well, you can set down. He won't be long now. Joe, you
jest look about a bit and see if you can find the Secretary, and tell
him the young lady is here."
The man flung himself full length on the carpet-covered couch and
looked at her with satisfaction.
"What train was that you said you must make? I'm afraid now you might
be going to be just a trifle late if he don't get a hustle on, but you
can't hurry a great man like that you know."
"Oh, it's no matter!" said Shirley coolly, looking around her with the
utmost innocence. "What a quaint old house! Has it been in the family
a long time?"
The man looked at her amusedly.
"You're a cute one!" he remarked affably. "I believe you're a pretty
good sport! You know perfectly well you're in my power and can't do a
turn to help yourself, yet you sail around here as calm as a queen!
You're some looker, too! Blamed if I'm not enjoying myself. I
wouldn't mind a kiss or two from those pretty lips----"
But Shirley had melted through the doorway into the other room and her
voice floated back with charming indifference as if she had not heard,
though she was ready to scream with loathing and fear of the man:
"Why, isn't this a delightful old piano? The keys are actually
mother-of-pearl. Isn't it odd? Would Mr. Baker mind if I played on
it?"
And before her astonished captor could get himself to the doorway she
had sat down on the rickety old hair-cloth stool and swept the keys
lightly. The old chords trembled and shivered as if awaking from a
tomb, and uttered forth a quavering, sweet sound like ancient memories.
The man was too much astonished to stop her, amused too, perhaps, and
interested. Her white fingers over the dusty pearls in the growing
dusk had a strange charm for the hardened reprobate, like the wonder of
a flower dropped into the foulness of a prison. Before he could
recover, he was startled again by her voice soaring out in the empty
echoing house:
Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood
From Thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Save me Lord and make me pure!
Perhaps those dim, gloomy walls had echoed before to the grand old
tune, but never could it have been sung in dire strait, or with more
earnest cry from a soul in distress. She had chosen the first words
that seemed to fit the chords she had struck, but every syllable was a
prayer to the God in whom she trusted. It may be the man felt the
power of her appeal as he stood rooted in the doorway and listened
while she sang through all the verses she could remember. But the last
trembling note was broken harshly by Joe's voice at the kitchen door in
sharp, rasping orders:
"Hist, there! Can that noise! Do you want to raise hell here? Wake
up, Sam! Get onto your job. Hennie's comin'."
"That's all right, Joe! Dry up! This is good Sunday School dope!
This won't rouse no suspicions. Go to the devil and mind your
business! I know what I'm about!"
Shirley was almost ready to cry, but she drew a deep breath and started
on another song:
Jesus, Lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high!
Hide me, oh, my Saviour hide,
Till the storm of life is past.
On through the time-worn words she sang, while the sin-hardened man
stood silently and listened. His eyes had gradually lost their leer
and grown soft and tender, as if some childhood memories of home and
mother and a time when he was innocent and good were looking out his
eyes, reminding him of what he once intended to be before he ate the
apple of wisdom and became as the gods and devils. Shirley gradually
became aware that she was holding her strange audience; and a power
beyond herself steadied her voice, and kept her fingers from trembling
on the old pearl keys, as she wandered on from song to song; perhaps
happening on the very ones,--who knows?--that this man, standing in the
dying twilight of the old gloomy house, had sung beside his mother's
hearth or in church during his childhood? Certain it is that he stood
there silent and listened for at least half an hour without an
interruption, while the light in the big room grew dimmer and dimmer
and all about the house seemed still as death in the intervals between
her voice. She was just beginning:
Abide with me,
Fast falls the eventide,
The darkness deepens,
Lord, with me abide!
When the man put his hand in his pocket and brought out a candle.
Scratching a match on his trousers, he lit the candle and set it
carefully on the piano, where its light fell flickering, wavering over
her worn young face; and who shall say that she was not a messenger
from another world to this man who had long trodden the downward path?
They were interrupted, however, before this song was finished by a
newcomer who entered like a shadow and stood at the end of the piano
looking wonderingly from Shirley to the man, when she glanced up. She
stopped, startled, for although he wore no brass buttons nor blue
clothes she was quite sure those were the same gray eyes that had
looked at her from the recess of the window in the Government office
that afternoon, perhaps the same boy who had come after her car and
sent her off on this long way into the wilderness.
The man Sam straightened up suddenly and looked about him half-ashamed
with an apologetic grin:
"Oh, you've come, have you, Hennie? Well, you been a long time about
it! But now I guess we'll get to work. Where's Joe? Out on the
watch? All right then, Miss, if you've no objection, we'll just take a
little vacation on the psalm singin' and turn our attention to worldly
things. I calculate you're sharp enough to know what we brought you
put here for? I acknowledge you can sing real well, and you sorta got
my goat for a while there with all that mourning bench tra-la, for you
certainly have got that holy dope down fine; but now the time's come
for business, and you needn't to think that because I can enjoy a
little sentiment now and then in a leisure moment that you can put
anything over on me, for it can't be did! I mean business and I've got
you in my power! We're ten miles from any settlement, and no neighbors
anywhere's about. Everybody moved away. So it won't do any good to
work any funny business on us. You can't get away. We're all armed,
and no one knows where you are! If you behave yourself and do as
you're told there won't be any trouble. We'll just transact our
business and then we'll have a bit of supper, and mebbe a few more
tunes--got any rag-time in your repitwar?--and then sometime after
midnight, when the moon's good and dark, we'll get you back to
civilization where you won't have no trouble in gettin' home. But if
you act up and get funny, why you know what to expect. There was a
young girl murdered once in this house and buried in the cellar and
ever since folks say it's hanted and they won't come near it. That's
the kind of a place we're in! So, now are you ready?"
Shirley sat cold and still. It seemed as if her life blood had
suddenly congealed in her veins and for a second she felt as if her
senses were going to desert her. Then the echo of her own song: "Hide
me, oh, my Saviour hide!" seemed to cry out from her soul silently and
she rallied once more and gained her self-control.
"Well, Miss," went on the man impressively, "I see you're ready for the
question, and you've got your nerve with you, too, I'll hand you that!
But I warn you it won't do no good! We brung you out here to get a
hold of that note-book you wrote in this morning, and we're goin' to
have it. We know that Mr. Barnard left it in your care. Hennie here
heard him say for you to keep it. So it won't be of any use for you to
lie about it."
"Of course!" said Shirley, standing up and reaching over for her
hand-bag, which she had laid on the piano beside her while she played.
"I understand perfectly. But I'd like to ask you a question, Mr.----?"
"Smith, or Jones, whichever you like to call it. Spit it out!"
"I suppose you are paid to bring me out here, Mr. Smith, and get my
property away from me?" she said gravely.
"Well, yes, we don't calculate to do it just for sweet charity."
"And _I_ am paid to look after my note-book, you see. It's a trust
that has been given me! I just _have_ to look after it. It's out of
the question for me to desert it!" Shirley spoke coolly and held her
little bag close in the firm grasp of her two hands. The man stared at
her and laughed. The boy Hennie fairly gaped in his astonishment. "A
girl with all that nerve!"
"Of course, I understand perfectly that you can murder me and bury me
down in the cellar beside that other girl that was murdered, and
perhaps no one will find it out for a while, and you can go on having a
good time on the money you will get for it. But the day will come when
you will have to answer for it! You know I didn't come here alone
to-day----!"
Both men looked startled and glanced uneasily into the shadows, as if
there might be someone lurking there.
"_God_ came with me and _He_ knows! He'll _make you remember_ some
day!"
The boy laughed out a nervous ha! ha! of relief, but the man seemed
held, fascinated by her look and words. There was silence for a second
while the girl held off the ruffian in the man by sheer force of her
strong personality. Then the boy laughed again, with a sneer in the
end of it, and the spell was broken. The leer came into the eyes of
the man again. The sneer of the boy had brought him to himself,--to
the self he had come to be.
"Nix on the sob-stuff, girlie!" he said gruffly. "It won't go down
with me! We're here for business and we've been delayed too long
already. Come now, will you hand out that note-book or will we have to
search you?" He took one stride across to where she stood and wrenched
the hand-bag from her grasp before she was aware of his intention. She
had not meant to give it up without a struggle, much as she loathed the
thought of one. She must make the matter last as long as possible, if
perchance God was sending help to her, and must contest every inch of
the way as far as lay in her power. Oh, had anyone picked up her
cards? Had the book with its message reached any friendly eye?
Frail and white and stern she stood with folded arms while they turned
out the contents of the little bag and scattered it over the piano,
searching with clumsy fingers among her dainty things.
The note-book she had rolled within her handkerchiefs and made it hard
to find. She feared lest her ruse would be discovered when they looked
it over. The boy was the one who clutched for the little book,
recognizing it as the one he had seen in the office that morning. The
man hung over his shoulder and peered in the candlelight, watching the
boy anxiously. It meant a good deal of money if they put this thing
through.
"Here it is!" said the boy, fluttering through the leaves and carefully
scrutinizing the short-hand characters. "Yes, that's the dope!"
He ran his eye down the pages, caught a word here and there,
technicalities of manufacture, the very items, of course, that he
wanted, if this had been the specifications for the Government order.
Shirley remembered with relief that none of the details were identical,
however, with the notes she carried in her shoes. The book-notes were
in fact descriptive of an entirely different article from that demanded
by the Government. The question was, would these people be wise enough
to discover that fact before she was out of their power or not?
Furtively she studied the boy. There was something keen and cunning
about his youthful face. He was thick-set, with blond hair and blue
eyes. He might be of German origin, though there was not a sign of
accent about his speech. He had the bull-dog chin, retreating forehead
and eagle nose of the Kaiser in embryo. Shirley saw all this as she
studied him furtively. That he was an expert in short-hand was proved
by the ease with which he read some of her obscure sentences,
translating rapidly here and there as he examined the book. Was he
well enough informed about the Government contract to realize that
these were not the notes she had taken in the office that morning? And
should he fail to recognize it, was there perhaps some one higher in
authority to whom they would be shown before she was released? She
shivered and set her weary toes tight with determination over the
little crinkling papers in her shoes. Somehow she would protect those
notes from being taken, even if she had to swallow them. There surely
would be a way to hide them if the need came.
Suddenly the tense strain under which she was holding herself was
broken by the man. He looked up with a grin, rubbing his hands with
evident self-gratulation and relief:
"That's all right, Girlie! That's the dope we want. Now we won't
trouble you any longer. We'll have supper. Hennie, you go get some of
that wood out in the shed and we'll have a fire on the hearth and make
some coffee!"
But Shirley, standing white and tense in the dim shadow of the room,
suddenly felt the place whirling about her, and the candle dancing afar
off. Her knees gave way beneath her and she dropped back to the piano
stool weakly, and covered her face with her hands, pressing hard on her
eyeballs; trying to keep her senses and stop this black dizziness that
threatened to submerge her consciousness. She must not faint--if this
was fainting. She must keep her senses and guard her precious shoes.
If one of those should fall off while she was unconscious all would be
undone.