CHAPTER XXVIII
Thatmorning Darcy received Lib Knox’s letter.
He was passing through a city where he had been in the habit of receiving mail, and he stopped to see if anything was in the box for him, and to pay his box rent and give it up. There he found the letter.
His face grew tender and stern as he read. Dear little brave Lib. Well he knew who the bad man with red hair must be, but how did Tyke ever find out Lib? Some deviltry somewhere. But one thing was certain, he must abandon his plans and go home to protect her. He would take Tyke out in the open somewhere and give him a lesson if necessary.
He glanced at the date on the letter and frowned. Already he had been in ignorance too long. There was time enough for any number of things to have happened to Lib, and well he knew that Tyke was a bad man. To the warning concerning his own welfare he paid no heed whatever, passing over Lib’s solicitude for him with a tender smile.
More alarmed than he cared to own even to himself, he studied up time-tables and took the first train that would make connections for Meadow Brook. He must tell Mason to look after Lib better. They were too careless with that child. As soon as his quest was over he must try and do something about Lib. She wasn’t being brought up in the right way. She wasn’t being taught right and wrong. She was too much on her own, just as he had been. That must all be changed.
So he boarded the train for home, and on the way he closed his eyes and tried to exercise his new power of prayer. What he was praying for was that he might find Joyce Radway, and as the train rumbled along he began to think to himself that perhaps, after all, he had been a fool. He had got interested in his quest as a quest and had not remembered that it might by this time be unnecessary. For aught he knew she might have reached home.
Still, there was Dan Peterson. Dan always knew about where to find him within a few days, and there had been no word from Dan all along the line.
He closed his eyes and tried to pray. He was just learning to pray, and since he had read the promises to those who prayed and believed, he had spent much time upon this one petition: “Oh God, help me to find Joyce and keep her safely.”
It was dark when Darcy reached Meadow Brook. He had come by a way of his own and had not seen any one he knew. He took the short cut across by the railroad and in at the back gate, and so entered the house from the kitchen door.
His sister was sitting by the diningroom table with her head upon her arms, crying in the dark. Lib was standing with her face flattened against the window-pane, the slow tears coursing down her cheeks. Darcy reached up and turned the light on, blinking at them wonderingly. His first startled thought was that Mase must be dead. He put out a hand gently and laid it on Ellen’s bowed head. Good, simple Ellen!
Ellen lifted her head and saw him and screamed, dropping her face down again upon her folded arms and breaking into renewed sobs. But Lib ran to him and threw her arms around his neck, burying her wet little face on his shoulder.
It was so he learned what had come to him, sitting in a diningroom chair beside his sister with his hand upon her bowed head and little Lib in his lap, her face against his breast, sobbing as her mother told the story brokenly. Mase, she said, was out trying to see a lawyer and find out what to do. But there wasn’t anything to do. Everybody said there wasn’t anything to do. The case was all against him.
Darcy took the blow straight with white, stern face and steady eyes. The hand that held little Lib’s did not tremble and his voice did not shake. The thing he was thinking was:
“Now I shall have to stop hunting for Joyce. Oh God, take care of Joyce!”
But he opened his lips and said: “Well, Ellen, don’t take it so hard! It’s all in the day’s work, and it’ll all come out in the wash. Anyhow, Ellen, I’ve found a new line. God isn’t forgetting any of us and you just put that away and think about it.”
Ellen sat up and wiped her eyes and stared at him. This was strange talk from Darcy, and yet it was like him. She broke out afresh with indignant tears that they should fasten a crime so heinous on this beloved brother. She was engulfed, overwhelmed by the shame and disgrace that had befallen them. She was old enough tohave remembered their gentle mother who always tried to keep them “respectable.”
“Never mind, Ellen, don’t cry any more. Give me a bite to eat and I’ll go out and see what can be done.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t go out!” cried Ellen, and little Lib gripped him fiercely. “You mustn’t! They’ll get you. They’re looking everywhere for you.”
“That’s all right,” said Darcy cheerfully. “I’ll help them. I’ll go and give myself up.”
And go he would in spite of all their efforts. He went away whistling down the street, just as he always did when he was at home. Whistling!
So first he went to the police headquarters and walked in as he had done many a time before, and they stared at him:
“I understand you’re looking for me?” he said, gravely with a new dignity about him they scarcely understood.
“Yes,” said the chief, embarrassedly, almost deferentially, for Darcy had been almost like one of themselves. “Yes.”
“Well. Here I am.”
They scarcely knew what to say to him. They treated him like a gentleman, a stranger. It cut him the way they went about it. They were not his friends any more. It seemed that they were afraid of him, as if they did not know how to take him. They had been prepared for rebellion, subterfuge. He gave none. He was his old grave self, with the old winning smile as he met them, his eyes upon them with the old question in them, the wistfulness.It disarmed them. They would have rather had to fight with him.
And by and by he asked to see Dan Peterson. He would find out if he had any friends left.
Joyce did not remember the Meadow Brook newspaper again after she had put it into her desk, for almost two weeks. It lay under a pile of copy books that were awaiting marks and she had been too busy to get at them. But one morning during study period she found time and drew them out and there was the newspaper. She took it out and was about to throw it in the waste basket, realizing how much out of date it must be. Then a longing overcame her to see some of the old familiar names again, and she slipped off the wrapper and decided to take just a moment to look it over before throwing it away.
It was well that the top of her desk was raised and that the eyes of her young pupils were occupied with their work, for the letters that met her gaze flaring across the top of the paper in the blackest of type made her gasp and turn white. They almost shouted at her as she read:
“BASEBALL IDOL IN TROUBLE!DARCY SHERWOOD WANTED ON CHARGE OF ABDUCTIONAND MURDER OF JOYCE RADWAYWho left her home in Meadow Brook one year ago andhas not been heard from since.”
“BASEBALL IDOL IN TROUBLE!
DARCY SHERWOOD WANTED ON CHARGE OF ABDUCTIONAND MURDER OF JOYCE RADWAY
Who left her home in Meadow Brook one year ago andhas not been heard from since.”
The article went on to state that there were eye-witnesses to the murder and burial of the girl who were willing to testify in the case. It was also rumored that Eugene Massey, the cousin of the murdered girl, had locatedthe grave and exhumed the body which had been identified by portions of clothing worn when Miss Radway left her home. Meantime, Darcy Sherwood had also mysteriously disappeared, some said to Canada, and a reward was offered for any knowledge of him; although it was also stated that the detectives had been right on his track for months, and could easily locate and produce him when he was needed.
For a moment Joyce thought she was going to faint. It went through her mind to wonder if Harrington had known what was in the paper when he gave it to her and took this way to let her know it. But she rejected the idea instantly. His manner had been too pleasant and altogether intimate for that. He was one who could never brook a thing like this publicity in an intimate friend. His life was too well ordered and conventional to make it possible to treat a girl just the same as ever if he knew anything like this had been connected with her name. Her next impulse was to hide the paper where no eye could ever see it. She folded it quickly into a thick square and stuffed it into her handbag. As she did so its date caught her eye, and her heart froze within her. It was more than two weeks back. What might not have happened in that time? Darcy in such awful trouble and she, the only one who could help him, chained to these children.