CHAPTER XXI
“HASN’T Mr. Pell come in yet?” Carmel called to Tubal.
“Hain’t seen hide nor hair of him since last night.”
“Did he say anything about staying away?”
“Not a word. Mos’ likely he’s all het up learnin’ the Chinee language backward, or suthin’, and clean forgot the’wassich a thing as a paper.”
She thought it queer, but, so occupied was her mind with the disclosures of Lancelot Bangs and with the events of last night, that the fact of Evan Pell’s unexplained absence did not present itself to her as a thing demanding immediate investigation.... She was wondering what to do with the evidence in hand. Where to go for more was a question easy to answer. She possessed a list of names, any one of whom could be forced to testify, and nobody could tell which one of them might assay some pure gold of fact which would lead her to her destination. She had reached Deputy Jenney. The match box was damning, yet it must be corroborated by other evidence.... Past Jenney the trail did not lead. So far it was a blind alley, blocked by the bulk of the newly appointed sheriff. In some manner she must go around or through him to reach Abner Fownes.
But Abner Fownes was not a man to permit himself to be reached. The county was his own now, held in the hollow of his hand. Its law-enforcing machinery was his private property to turn on or to turn off as his needs required. Suppose she did find evidence which would touch him with the pitch of this affair? Who would make use of the evidence? Who make the arrest?
Could she get to the sheriff’s office to lay before Jenney information which would result in his imprisonment and in Abner Fownes’s destruction? Suppose she went, as she must go, to the prosecuting attorney. Suppose warrants were issued? What then? Jenney’s office must make the service and the arrests.... It was more thinkable that the sun would start suddenly to travel from west to east than that such warrants should become efficacious.
She called Jared Whitefield on the telephone, desirous of his advice and assistance in this emergency, but Jared, she was informed, had gone away from town. He left suddenly after midnight, and had stated no destination.... Carmel felt terribly alone. She felt a need for Evan Pell—some one upon whom she could depend, some one to talk with, to discuss this thing with. Whitefield was gone.... Perhaps Evan had accompanied him. But why? She had a feeling Jared’s going away was in some manner connected with the telegram she sent him from the capital. But why had he taken Evan, and why had Evan left no word for her.... Her sensation wasof one suddenly deserted by all the world. She felt young, inadequate, frightened.
If pride had not held back her tears she would have cried. It would be a wonderful comfort to cry—but a young woman engaged on a perilous enterprise such as hers could not afford the weakness of tears.... If only Evan Pell were there!
She was arrested by that thought, by the sharpness of her desire for Evan’s presence. For the first time she perceived how important was the position he had assumed in her affairs. She reviewed their association from its inception, recalled how she had patronized him, almost despised him. She had pitied him for his inadequacy, for his dry pedantry.... Step by step she reviewed the changes which had taken place in him, dating these changes from that brutal scene before her door, when Jenney had beaten him to insensibility.... Her sympathy had commenced there; admiration had dawned, for it had been given her to see that a man who could conduct himself as Evan Pell conducted himself on that day contained in himself the elements which made up a man. Submerged they might have been, but they were present—and not too deep below the surface. She saw again that unequal fight; perceived the dauntlessness of the young man; the oaken heart of him which would fight until it died, fearless, struggling with its last throb to reach and tear down its enemy.
She saw now how he had struggled to perceive; how, led by her acid tongue, he had perceived the futility of his life, and how he had sought to alterit. His manner, his very appearance, had changed.... And he loved her! Never before had she given more than reluctant, pitying thought to his love for her, but now it assumed other proportions.... She was aware of wanting him—not as he wanted her—but of wanting him near her, to lean upon, to feel the strength of him....
Until he returned she could do nothing!... It was strange that she, who always had been so self-reliant, so sure, so ready to act by herself, should require the upholding of another. She could not understand it, fancied she had grown weak. She rather despised herself.... Yet it was a fact. She did not strive to overthrow it. It was not to be assailed. She could not go on until Evan Pell returned to help her!
It was an uneasy, unhappy day, crowded with apprehensions and questionings.... With events impending, with peril darkening the immediate future, she could do nothing but putter with detail. Yet she welcomed the detail—it took her mind off herself and her problems.
Noon came, and then suppertime.... It was not her usual custom to return to the office after supper, but to-night she did return—to wait for Evan, though she did not admit it. He might come back, and she wanted to be there to receive him.
To occupy her mind she took out the books of her concern and opened them to study progress. The circulation book came first, and she opened it at the last entried page. As she spread it before her anenvelope lay under her eyes, and upon its face, in Evan Pell’s handwriting, was her name.
Miss Carmel Lee!
It was the first time she had ever seen her name in his handwriting, and she gazed at it with a strange, stifled feeling in her breast.... A letter to her from Evan Pell, left in this place where she must find it! She lifted it and held it in her fingers.... Why had he written? Why left his message in this place? She drew a sudden breath of fright. Could it be he had deserted her? Could it be he had found his position unbearable and, ashamed to face her, had taken this means of telling her?... She was overmastered by foreboding, feared to open the letter.
“I must open it,” she said to herself. “I must.”
She compelled her fingers to tear the flap and to withdraw the letter—even to unfold it so that its contents were visible. Her eyes saw Evan’s neat, flawless handwriting, but her mind seemed suddenly numb, unable to make sense of the symbols set down upon the paper. She shook her head as if to clear it of something damp and heavy and obscuring, and forced herself to read.
“My Dear:” (The letter began, and she read over and over those two intimate words)—“My dear: If you find this letter—if I have not returned to take it from the place in which I have hidden it for you, I am quite sure I shall not see you again. In view of this possibility I am presuming to say good-by.” Even now, she saw, something of his pedantic precision must creep in. It would not have crept in,she felt sure, had he not been under some strong emotion, had he not felt the necessity for concealing his emotion. “I have told you before,” the letter continued, “that I love you. I have not told you how I have come willingly, eagerly to love you. You, and you alone—the fact of your existence, your loveliness—have made what I fancy are notable changes in me. I even go so far as to imagine I might, with time and persistence, become the sort of man who would be entitled to your friendship, if nothing more. But, if this letter reaches your eyes, that is, I fear, no longer possible. I think I have done as I should, although I have practiced deception. When you remember I did this because I loved you, I trust you will find it in your heart to forgive me.
“To-day there came a note to you which I intercepted. It purported to come from some disgruntled man, telling you how you could obtain evidence against these liquor smugglers by going to the Lakeside Hotel. I rather fancied it was not genuine, and was meant rather to induce your presence than to betray confederates. On the other hand, it might be authentic. I therefore urged you to make the journey upon which you have just been engaged, and, because it seemed right to do so, I am going to-night to test the authenticity of the letter.”
She saw, she understood!
“If it prove to be a lure, such as was used to the undoing of Sheriff Churchill, there is some small chance I shall not return. Naturally I shall observe every caution. But if precautions fail and I do notreturn, you will find in a box in my room such evidence and information as I have collected. It does not reach the man we wish to reach, but it moves toward him. I hope you will be able to make use of it.”
He could write so stiltedly of making use of his work when he was, open-eyed, going out to walk into the trap prepared for her!
“Therefore,” the letter concluded, “good-by. My going will mean little to you; it means little to me, except the parting from you. If you find time to think of me at all, I hope you will think of me as continuing always to love you wherever it may be I have journeyed. Good-by.”
At the end he had signed his name.
She sat for a moment as though turned to stone. Her heart was dead, her faculties benumbed.... He was dead! She had found and read the letter, so he must be dead—vanished as Sheriff Churchill had vanished, never to be seen again by mortal eye.... And for her! He had gone out calmly, serenely, to face whatever might beset his path—for her. He had given his life for her, to preserve her life!
She sat very still. Her cheeks were white and she was cold, cold as death. No sound came from her compressed lips. Dead!... Evan Pell was dead!
Then something not of her own consciousness, something deep within the machinery of her soul, moved and controlled her. She acted, but not as one acts of his own volition, rather as one acts in a mesmerictrance.... Her impulse was to go to find him—to find him, to weep over him ... to avenge him!
She snatched the receiver from its hook and telephoned Jared Whitefield again. He would help. He would know what to do. But Jared Whitefield had not returned.... She must act alone.
Calmly, like an automaton, she put on her hat, extinguished the lights, locked the door, and walked up the street. The direction she took was toward the Lakeside Hotel. She reached the fringe of the village which bordered upon the black woods, but did not pause. Steadily, urged on by some inexorable force, she continued down that gloomy avenue, between woodland banks of inky blackness.... She neither hesitated nor paused nor looked behind her.
Had she looked behind it may have been she would have seen the shadowy figures of two men who followed, followed stealthily keeping always a stated distance, drawing no nearer, flitting at the edge of the blackness.