CHAPTER XVII
CARMEL walked back rapidly, but her pace did not interfere with the activities of her mind. She had many things to reflect upon, and not the least of these was a sudden realization that Evan Bartholomew Pell had, of a sudden, as it were, taken command. It was he, rather than herself, who had risen to the emergency. He had seen the necessities of the situation. He had comprehended the situation itself as she had never done. While she had been obeying impulse he had been acting intelligently. It was true he seemed to have little tangible evidence to work upon, but, somehow, she felt he would be able to find it. The amazing thing was that, without effort, without seeming to do so, he had moved her into secondary place. He had told her what to do, and she had done it without question.... Evan was a surprising person, a person of submerged potentialities. She wondered just what kind of man he would be if he ever came to himself and came into his own personality. In addition to which, Carmel, like all other women, could not but give careful consideration to a man who had declared his love for her.
Then there was Jared Whitefield to appraise. She liked him, but found herself somewhat in awe ofhis granite impassivity. She felt he had looked through and through her, while she had not been able to penetrate the surface of him. She had talked; he had listened. He had made his decision, and wholly without reference to herself, or to what she had said to him. But, on the other hand, he seemed to have washed his hands of the responsibility for his appointment as sheriff. If it could be managed—well and good. He would serve. But that seemed to be all. He offered no assistance, no suggestion. He had said “Yes” and walked out of the boundaries of the matter.
Jared Whitefield was a personality, of that she was certain. He was a man to impress men, a man to rule, a man never to be overlooked.... Why, she wondered, had he remained inactive in Gibeon. Apparently he had rested like a block of granite beside a busy thoroughfare, negligent of the bustle of passing traffic. What, she wondered, did Gibeon think of Jared. How would he appeal to Gibeon as its candidate for sheriff?
She reached the office and found Evan Pell waiting for her.
“Well?” he said.
“I’ve found the man, and he has agreed to serve.”
“What man?”
“Jared Whitefield.”
He nodded, almost as if he had known it from the beginning. It irritated her.
“You’re not surprised at all,” she said sharply.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because it would have required colossal stupidity to choose any other man—and you are not stupid.”
She looked at Evan with curiosity, and he sustained her gaze. He was changed. She saw that he had been changing through the days and weeks, gradually, but now he seemed to have made some great stride and reached a destination. He did not look the same. His face was no longer the face of an egoistic pedant. It was not alone the laying aside of his great, round spectacles. The thing lay rather in his expression and in his bearing. He seemed more human. He seemed larger.... She was embarrassed.
“The petition,” she said. “I must have that.”
“Signatures would be easy to get. There are a hundred men who would sign any petition with Jared Whitefield’s name on it. Men of standing. But to approach one man who would go to Abner Fownes with the story—well——” he shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t suppose one man in a hundred realizes what is going on under the surface in Gibeon.”
“We must take the risk.”
“I’ll prepare the petitions and have Tubal print them—at once.”
She sat down at her desk and wrote a moment, then got up and walked with steady steps into the composing room. Evan Pell stood looking after her with a queer expression; it was a look of loneliness,of yearning, of self-distrust, of humility. He was thinking about Evan Pell and of what a failure he had made in the handling of his life. He was considering how little he knew, he who had fancied himself of the wisest. He weighed the value of book knowledge against the value of heart knowledge, and found himself poverty-stricken.... It seemed so hopeless now to turn himself into the sort of man he wanted to be; the sort of man he had come to comprehend it was worth his while to be.
“I never would have found it out,” he said to himself, “if I had not loved her.”
The door opened stealthily and a barefoot urchin entered whose clothing consisted of trousers many sizes too large and a shirt so dirty and torn as not to resemble a garment at all. He glared at Evan and snarled:
“Where’s she?”
“Where’s who?” said Pell.
“The editin’ woman.”
“What do you want of her?”
“None of your business.... Hey, leggo of me, damn you! I’ll bite ye! Leggo!”
Pell had the child by the nape of the neck and held him so he could not escape. He noticed a paper crumpled in one grimy hand and forced the fingers open. It fell to the floor, and as he reached for it the boy wriggled free and darted out to the sidewalk, where he grimaced horribly and twiddled his fingers at his nose. “Ya-aaa-ah!” he squealed, and fled down the street.
Pell smoothed out the paper and read, in cramped, printed letters.
They hain’t treated me square and I’m getting even. They’re fetching it in to-night. Truckloads. You can git evidence at the Lakeside. Eleven o’clock.
They hain’t treated me square and I’m getting even. They’re fetching it in to-night. Truckloads. You can git evidence at the Lakeside. Eleven o’clock.
That was all, no signature, nothing to indicate the identity of the writer. Evan folded the paper and thrust it into his vest pocket. He looked through the door of the composing room and frowned. The line of his mouth was straight and narrow. Eleven o’clock, at the Lakeside Hotel!... Queerly enough, the thought flashed into his mind. What drew Sheriff Churchill out of his house on the night of his disappearance?... Evan passed through the swinging gate and sat down at his table just as Carmel re-entered the room.
“Who was in?” she asked.
“Nobody,” said Evan Pell. “Just a kid asking for blotters.”
She would go to the Lakeside Hotel. It was not in her character to do otherwise. She would go, she would place herself in peril. Had the note come into her hands, he had no doubt she would have concealed it and have gone alone.... Well, she did not receive it. She would not go. That much was sure.
Carmel spoke. “There goes Abner Fownes,” she said, and, turning, he saw the well-known equipage with the coachman on the front seat and Fownes, pompous, making a public spectacle for the benefit of an admiring public, bolt upright in the rear seat.
“He’s going some place,” said Carmel. “See. He has a bag.”
“Yes,” said Pell. He remembered that Fownes had been absent from Gibeon on the night Churchill had disappeared. “Yes, he’s going some place.”
They watched the equipage until it disappeared, making the turn toward the railroad station.
“Tubal will have the petitions in ten minutes,” she said. “How will we go about getting signatures?”
“I don’t think that matters,” he said, absently.
“What?”
“I—I beg your pardon.... Er—signatures. Of course. Signatures.”
“What ails you, Mr. Pell. Of course, signatures. We weren’t speaking of potatoes.”
His manner was strange, she thought. He seemed a trifle pale. Was he ill?... No, he said, he was not ill, he was afraid he had been a trifle absent-minded. Carmel eyed him sharply. The thing did not look like absent-mindedness to her.
He arose and went to the telephone. “Give me the station, please,” he said, and then waited. “Is this the station? This is theFree Press.... Yes.... No news? Um!... Just saw Mr. Fownes going past with a bag. Thought he might be going away. We like to print something when people go away.... Bought his ticket?... To the capital, eh?... Thank you.” He hung up the receiver, and there was a look of profound relief on his face. This was surprising to Carmel. Why he should be relieved by learning Fowneswas on his way to the capital was beyond her comprehension.
“Miss Lee,” he said, “there will be no time to get signers to a petition.”
“Why?”
“Because you must start at once for the capital.”
“But the train is leaving. It will be gone before I can get to the depot.”
“Abner Fownes is going to see the Governor,” he said. “There can be but one reason for it. He has decided he needs a sheriff. He’s gone.... It is a six-hour trip by rail, with the change at Litchfield.”
“What of it?”
“By automobile one can make it in five hours—or less.”
“But——”
“If you will go to your hotel, please, and dress and pack a bag, I will have a car waiting for you here.”
She frowned. This was giving orders with a vengeance.
“I’m still owner of this paper,” she said.
“Please, Miss Lee,” he said, and there was humility, pleading in his voice. “Don’t be unreasonable now. This must be done. Nobody can do it but you. Please, please make haste.”
She did not want to obey. It was her desire to rebel, to put him once for all in his old subordinate place, but she found herself on her feet in obedience. He compelled her. He had power to force her obedience. She was amazed, angered.
“I shan’t——” she began, in a final effort to mutiny.
“Miss Lee,” he said, gravely, gently, and she was touched and perplexed by the gentleness of his voice, “you have spoken to me of service, of forgetting oneself to be of service to others.... Please forget yourself now. You are not doing this for me or for yourself.... It is necessary.... I beg of you to make haste.”
There could be no refusal. She passed through the gate and found herself walking with rapid, almost unladylike strides, to the hotel. Up the stairs she rushed and into her room. In five minutes she was redressed in a gray tailored suit. Then she set about packing her bag, and, singularly enough, the first thing she put into it was an evening gown, the gown which she had worn but once, and that to the final ball at the time of her graduation. Why she included this dress she could not have said, unless feminine vanity were at work—a hope that an opportunity to wear it might present itself.
In fifteen minutes she re-entered theFree Pressoffice. A touring car stood at the door, with a young man, strange to her, behind the wheel.
“I’m ready,” she said to Evan Pell.
“Thank you,” he said, quietly. Then: “Don’t let anything prevent you from coming to the Governor. You will know what to say. See him before Abner Fownes gets his ear ... and ... and come back safely.” His voice dropped, became very low and yearning, as he spoke these final words. “Come backsafely—and—try not to think of me as—harshly as you have done.”
“I—have never thought of you harshly,” she said, affected by his manner.
He smiled. “I am very glad I have loved you,” he said. “Will you please remember I said that, and that it came from my heart.... It is the one fine thing which has come into my life.... It might have changed me—made me more as you would—less the man you have criticized.”
“Why, Mr. Pell!... You speak as if I were never to see you again. I shan’t be gone more than a day.”
He smiled, and there came a day not far distant when she remembered that smile, when it haunted her, accused her—and gave her a strange happiness.
“One never knows,” he said, and held out his hand. She placed her hand in his, and then he performed an act so out of tune with Evan Pell, pedant and egoist, that Carmel gasped. He lifted her hand to his lips. The gesture was not artificial, not funny. There was a grave dignity, a sincerity in the act which made it seem quite the right thing to have done. “Good-by,” he said. “You are very lovely.... Please make haste....”
He helped her into the car, and she turned. “Mr. Pell——” she said, but he was gone, had returned to the office and was invisible.
“Ready, miss?” the driver asked.
“You know where you are to go?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Whose car is this?”
“Mr. Whitefield’s,” said the driver, as he threw in his gear and the machine moved up the street.
Carmel’s mind was not on the car, nor on its destination, nor upon her errand. It was upon Bartholomew Pell.... Could she have seen him seated before his table, could she have read his thoughts, have comprehended the expression of happiness upon his face, she would have thought even more urgently of him.... For he was saying to himself: “Thank God she’s out of it. She’s safe. I’ve done that much, anyhow.”
He drew the mysterious note from his pocket and studied it attentively. “She would have gone,” he said, “so I shall go.... Doubtless it is a trap of some sort—but it may not be.... And she is safe—she is safe.”