The man looked up from the paper he was twisting for a fire and saw
Shirley's attitude of despair.
"Say, kid," he said, with a kind of gruff tenderness, "you don't need
to take it that a-way. I know it's tough luck to lose out when you
been so nervy and all, but you knew we had it over you from the start.
You hadn't a show. And say! Girlie! I tell you what! I'll make
Hennie sit down right now and copy 'em off for you, and you can put 'em
in your book again when you get back and nobody be the wiser. We'll
just take out the leaves. We gotta keep the original o' course, but
that won't make any beans for you. It won't take you no time to write
'em over again if he gives you a copy."
Somehow it penetrated through Shirley's tired consciousness that the
man was trying to be kind to her. He was pitying her and offering her
a way out of her supposed dilemma, offering to assist her in some of
his own kind of deception. The girl was touched even through all her
other crowding emotions and weariness. She lifted up her head with a
faint little smile.
"Thank you," she said, wearily, "but that wouldn't do me any good."
"Why not?" asked the man sharply. "Your boss would never know it got
out through you."
"But _I_ should know I had failed!" she said sadly. "If you had my
notes I should know that I had failed in my trust."
"It wouldn't be your fault. You couldn't have helped it!"
"Oh, yes, I could, and I ought. I shouldn't have let the driver turn
around. I should have got out of that car and waited at the station as
Mr. Barnard told me to do till he came. I had been warned and I ought
to have been on my guard. So you see it _was_ my fault."
She drooped her head forward and rested her chin dejectedly on the palm
of her hand, her elbow on her knee. The man stood looking at her for a
second in half-indignant astonishment.
"By golly!" he said at last. "You certainly are some nut! Well,
anyhow, buck up, and let's have some tea. Sorry I can't see my way
clear to help you out any further, being as we're sort of partners in
this job and you certainly have got some nerve for a girl, but you know
how it is. I guess I can't do no more'n I said. I got my honor to
think about, too. See? Hennie! Get a move on you. We ain't waitin'
all night fer eats. Bring in them things from the cupboard and let's
get to work."
Shirley declined to come to the table when at last the repast was
ready. She said she was not hungry. In fact, the smell or the
crackers and cheese and pickles and dried beef sickened her. She felt
too hysterical to try to eat, and besides she had a lingering feeling
that she must keep near that piano. If anything happened she had a
vague idea that she might somehow hide the precious notes within the
big old instrument.
The man frowned when she declined to come to supper, but a moment later
stumbled awkwardly across the room with a slopping cup of coffee and
set it down beside her.
"Buck up, girlie!" he growled. "Drink that and you'll feel better."
Shirley thanked him and tried to drink a few mouthfuls. Then the
thought occurred to her that it might be drugged, and she swallowed no
more. But she tried to look a bit brighter. If she must pass this
strange evening in the company of these rough men, it would not help
matters for her to give way to despair. So after toying with the
teaspoon a moment, she put the cup down and began to play soft airs on
the old piano again while the men ate and took a stealthy taste now and
then from a black bottle. She watched them furtively as she played,
marvelling at their softened expressions, remembering the old line:
"Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast," and wondering if
perhaps there were not really something in it. If she had not been in
such a terrifying situation she would really have enjoyed the character
study that this view of those two faces afforded her, as she sat in the
shadow playing softly while they ate with the flaring candle between
them.
"I like music with my meals!" suddenly chanted out the boy in an
interval. But the man growled in a low tone:
"Shut up! Ain't you got no manners?"
Shirley prolonged that meal as much as music could do it, for she had
no relish for a more intimate tête-a-tête with either of her
companions. When she saw them grow restless she began to sing again,
light little airs this time with catchy words; or old tender melodies
of home and mother and childhood. They were songs she had sung that
last night in the dear old barn when Sidney Graham and Elizabeth were
with them, and unconsciously her voice took on the wail of her heart
for all that dear past so far away from her now.
Suddenly, as the last tender note of a song died away Joe stumbled
breathlessly into the room. The boy Hennie slithered out of the room
like a serpent at his first word.
"Beat it!" he cried in a hoarse whisper. "Get a move on! All hell's
out after us! I bet they heard her singin'! Take her an' beat it!
I'll douse the fire an' out the candle."
He seized a full bucket of water and dashed it over the dying fire.
Shirley felt the other man grasp her arm in a fierce grip. Then Joe
snuffed out the candle with his broad thumb and finger and all was
pitch dark. She felt herself dragged across the floor regardless of
furniture in the way, stumbling, choking with fear, her one thought
that whatever happened she must not let her slippers get knocked off;
holding her feet in a tense strain with every muscle extended to keep
the shoes fastened on like a vise. She was haunted with a wild thought
of how she might have slipped under the piano and eluded her captor if
only the light had gone out one second sooner before he reached her
side. But it was too late to think of that now, and she was being
dragged along breathlessly, out the front door, perhaps, and down a
walk; no, it was amongst trees, for she almost ran into one. The man
swore at her, grasped her arm till he hurt her and she cried out.
"You shut up or I'll shoot you!" he said with an oath. He had lost all
his suavity and there was desperation in his voice. He kept turning
his head to look back and urging her on.
She tripped on a root and stumbled to her knees, bruising them
painfully, but her only thought was one of joy that her shoes had not
come off.
The man swore a fearful oath under his breath, then snatched her up and
began to run with her in his arms. It was then she heard Graham's
voice calling:
"Shirley! Where are you? I'm coming!"
She thought she was swooning or dreaming and that it was not really he,
for how could he possibly be here? But she cried out with a voice as
clear as a bell: "I'm here, Sidney, come quick!" In his efforts to
hush her voice, the man stumbled and fell with her in his arms. There
came other voices and forms through the night. She was gathered up in
strong, kind arms and held. The last thought she had before she sank
into unconsciousness was that God had not forgotten. He had been
remembering all the time and sent His help before it was too late; just
as she had known all along He must do, because He had promised to care
for His own, and she was one of His little ones.
When she came to herself again she was lying in Sidney Graham's arms
with her head against his shoulder feeling oh, so comfortable and
tired. There were two automobiles with powerful headlights standing
between the trees, and a lot of policemen in the shadowy background.
Her captor stood sullen against a tree with his hands and feet
shackled. Joe stood between two policemen with a rope bound about his
body spirally, and the boy Hennie, also bound, beside his fallen
bicycle, turned his ferret eyes from side to side as if he hoped even
yet to escape. Two other men with hawk-like faces that she had not
seen before were there also, manacled, and with eyes of smouldering
fires. Climbing excitedly out of one of the big cars came Mr. Barnard,
his usually immaculate pink face smutty and weary; his sparse white
hair rumpled giddily, and a worried pucker on his kind, prim face.
"Oh, my dear Miss Hollister! How unfortunate!" he exclaimed. "I do
hope you haven't suffered too much inconvenience!"
Shirley smiled up at him from her shoulder of refuge as from a dream.
It was all so amusing and impossible after what she had been through.
It couldn't be real.
"I assure you I am very much distressed on your account," went on Mr.
Barnard, politely and hurriedly, "and I hate to mention it at such a
time, but could you tell me whether the notes are safe? Did those
horrid men get anything away from you?"
A sudden flicker of triumph passed over the faces of the fettered man
and the boy, like a ripple over still water and died away into
unintelligence.
But Shirley's voice rippled forth in a glad, clear laugh, as she
answered joyously:
"Yes, Mr. Barnard, they got my note-book, but not the notes! They
thought the Tilman-Brooks notes were what they were after, but the real
notes are in my shoes. Won't you please get them out, for I'm afraid I
can't hold them on any longer, my feet ache so!"
It is a pity that Shirley was not in a position to see the look of
astonishment, followed by a twinkle of actual appreciation that came
over the face of the shackled man beside the tree as he listened. One
could almost fancy he was saying to himself: "The nervy little nut!
She put one over on me after all!"
It was also a pity that Shirley could not have got the full view of the
altogether precise and conventional Mr. Barnard kneeling before her on
the ground, removing carefully, with deep embarrassment and concern,
first one, then the other, of her little black pumps, extracting the
precious notes, counting over the pages and putting them ecstatically
into his pocket. No one of that group but Shirley could fully
appreciate the ludicrous picture he made.
"You are entirely sure that no one but yourself has seen these notes?"
he asked anxiously as if he hardly dared to believe the blessed truth.
"Entirely sure, Mr. Barnard!" said Shirley happily, "and now if you
wouldn't mind putting on my shoes again I can relieve Mr. Graham of the
necessity of carrying me any further."
"Oh, surely, surely!" said Mr. Barnard, quite fussed and getting down
laboriously again, his white forelock all tossed, and his forehead
perplexed over the unusual task. How did women get into such a little
trinket of a shoe, anyway?
"I assure you, Miss Hollister, our firm appreciates what you have done!
We shall not forget it. You will see, we shall not forget it!" he
puffed as he rose with beads of perspiration on his brow. "You have
done a great thing for Barnard and Clegg to-day!"
"She's done more than that!" said a burly policeman significantly
glancing around the group of sullen prisoners, as Graham put her upon
her feet beside him. "She's rounded up the whole gang for us, and
that's more than anybody else has been able to do yet! She oughtta get
a medal of some kind fer that!"
Then, with a dare-devil lift of his head and a gleam of something like
fun in his sullen eyes, the manacled man by the tree spoke out, looking
straight at Shirley, real admiration in his voice:
"I say, pard! I guess you're the winner! I'll hand you what's comin'
to you if I do lose. You certainly had your nerve!"
Shirley looked at him with a kind of compassion in her eyes.
"I'm sorry you have to be--there," she finished. "You were--as fine as
you could be to me under the circumstances, I suppose! I thank you for
that."
The man met her gaze for an instant, a flippant reply upon his lips,
but checked it and dropping his eyes, was silent. The whole little
company under the trees were hushed into silence before the miracle of
a girl's pure spirit, leaving its impress on a blackened soul.
Then, quietly, Graham led her away to his car with Barnard and the
detectives following. The prisoners were loaded into the other cars,
and hurried on the way to judgment.