"Oh, it's not much more than a mile from the house. That's nothing."
They came to another fence with a barred opening, and climbing over found themselves in a road.
"What road is this?" asked Don.
"There's only the one road," Pen said. "It runs back from the house between the fields and on through the woods up the Neck." She hesitated painfully. "What time is it?"
The question brought back everything painful that they had put out of mind for awhile. Their hearts went down together. He threw the light on his watch.
"Half-past three," he said.
"Ah!" said Pen with a catch in her breath, "I dare not go any farther with you. It will be light in half an hour. Do you think you could carry everything the rest of the way?"
"Sure, as far as that goes. But ... but must you go?"
"I must! ... Listen! You are to keep along the road until it enters the woods. It dips into a hollow there and fords a small stream. You are to turn to the left there—to the left, remember, and ascend the stream, walking in the water. It has a firm sandy bottom, at least for a certain distance. As soon as you are out of sight of the road, better stop on the bank until it is light, so you won't mire yourself or step in a hole."
He put out his hand to her. "When will I see you again?"
"You are not listening! ... You must keep on up the stream until you come to a clearing on the right-hand side. Up at the top of the rise there used to be a negro cabin. But it burned down. Only the chimney is standing. Don't pitch your tent in the clearing. It would be too conspicuous. Conceal it in the brush across the stream. I can reach you there direct from the fields. If I can't find you I'll whistle like a whip-poor-will. And you answer."
"When will you come?"
"To-morrow night. Unless I am prevented."
"Oh! ... if you are prevented...!"
Pen laughed shakily. "Not much danger! They'll have to be very clever to keep me in!"
He clung to her hand. "Well ... I'm not going to complain," he muttered.
Pen clasped his hand in both of hers. "Oh, I know how hard it is! How hard!" she cried. "Try to be patient. It may not be for long!"
"It can not be for long," he muttered. "A man has his limits!"
"The search may drift away from Broome's Point," she said eagerly. "Anything may happen.... To-morrow night when I come I'll bring you some books."
"Books!" he exclaimed scornfully.
"Well, anyway at night we can wander around where we please."
"If you work all day you've got to have your sleep at night," he said doggedly.
"Sleep!" said Pen. "I've got all the rest of my life to sleep in!"
He was still clinging to her hand. "It's so hard to let you go," he murmured. "Could you ... Oh, I know I haven't any right to ask it ... in my position ..."
Pen hated his humility. She stamped her foot. "Any right! What's your position got to do with it?"
His head went up with a jerk. "Pen!" he cried.
Pen was plain panic-stricken. "Good-night!" she said, jerking her hand free. "The sky is getting light behind you!"
She all but ran down the road. Once she looked behind her. He was still standing there. If he had called her she would have had to go back, let the dawn break if it would. But he heavily shouldered his pack, and turned in the other direction.
At the breakfast table next morning Pen suddenly interrupted her father's endless, querulous complaints by saying: "Well, how about me?"
He stared. "Hey?" he said blankly.
"Do you suppose I'm enjoying the present situation? Stared at, spied upon, my house overrun with riff-raff! It's intolerable!"
"Of course! ... Of course!" he stammered. "That's just what's troubling me."
"I want to go away until it blows over," said Pen.
Pendleton looked scared. "But ... but would they allow you to?"
"Pooh!" said Pen. "That threat of arrest was just a bluff."
"Where would you go?"
"Oh ... anywhere."
"I haven't the money," he said plaintively.
"I'd pay my own."
That old look of suspicion flickered up in his eyes. "Where would you get it?"
"Well ... I could sell my sheep."
"Sell your sheep!" he echoed. "Why ... preposterous! Why the sheep are the best part of our capital!"
"My capital," corrected Pen.
"Certainly," he said stiffly. "But I'm your father I suppose. I have a right to prevent you doing anything so foolhardy. Just to gratify a momentary impulse. I forbid you to think of such a thing! Never speak of it again!"
"Oh, all right," said Pen, dropping the matter so quickly that a more perspicacious man might have guessed she had not dropped it at all. As a matter of fact as soon as breakfast was over she took theSun-paper to her room and looked up the quotations for sheep and lambs on the Baltimore market. Prices were low, but there was no help for it. She fell to studying ways and means.
Later she was moving about the house setting things to rights and always planning, planning, when she heard a musical deep-toned ship's whistle from the river—the whistle of a stranger in those waters. She ran to the front windows and beheld a big yacht coming in from the bay. She was as slim and sheer as a pickerel with a piratical rake to her masts and funnel. The morning sun showed up her mahogany upper-works as red as blood, and dazzlingly picked out her polished brasses. A beauty! An anchor was let go with a mighty rattling of chain, and the yacht slowly came about in the stream.
Pen knew by intuition that her coming had something to do with the matter that filled all their minds, but pride forbade her running out of the house to find out. With a great effort of will she kept on about her work, possessing her soul in what patience she could.
Bye and bye there was a rat-tat-tat on the seldom-used knocker on the front door. Opening it, Pen beheld a ship's officer in natty blue uniform and gold braid. He took off his cap and offered her a note.
It was addressed to herself. It was written on thick creamy paper embossed with a crest and the legend: "Yacht Alexandra." It was brief.
"Mr. Ernest Riever presents his compliments to Miss Pendleton Broome, and begs to know if it will be convenient for her to receive him this morning."
Pen's brain whirled. She lowered her eyes and gave herself five seconds to regain her balance. Finally the suspicion of a dimple appeared at the corner of her lips. She looked up.
"Please tell Mr. Riever that I shall be happy to see him at any time."
She went slowly upstairs to change her dress.
The sheep were saved!
Under the awning on the after deck of theAlexandra, Pen was reclining in a luxurious basket chair with her feet crossed on a rest in front of her. Her brow was clear, her lips smiling. To have seen her then, one would never have guessed that she had anything more on her mind than the deliciousness of luxury which she was experiencing for the first time in her life. As a matter of fact being a human, pretty girl she took to it like a cat to cream, but just the same there was a lot hidden behind her seeming open smile. She knew that she looked all right. Poor as they were, in Aunt Maria Pen possessed a laundress, one of a fast-disappearing race, and there was a bloom upon her simple gingham dress that matched the flower-like freshness of herself. It was mid-morning but Pen's undone chores troubled her not a bit.
TheAlexandrahad been lying inside Broome's Point for two days. On the first day Riever had lunched with the Broomes; yesterday he had returned their hospitality. Of the two Pen's food was undoubtedly better, being fresher than the millionaire's, but she had tasted with delight all the expensive things she had read about which never came to Southern Maryland: Caviare,petite marmite,paté de fois gras, hothouse grapes, marrons, etc. This morning Riever had insisted on having the Broomes to breakfast on the yacht.
A few feet from Pen the owner of it all was sitting on the wide divan that encircled the stern rail. Pendleton Broome sat beside him, and on the deck between the two men stood a little table bearing coffee cups and a box of such cigars as the elder man had never whiffed before even in dreams. Pendleton was holding forth to Riever in his usual style, while the millionaire listening politely, glanced at Pen out of the corners of his eyes.
The coming of Riever had changed the situation not a little. Riever moved like an unacknowledged monarch. The tale of his wealth compelled men's homage. In his presence all voices were prone to become silky and backs to bend. Riever like many another monarch despised this homage while he insisted on it. His more intimate creatures therefore were careful to cultivate an offhand, man-to-man air towards their master while they utterly subordinated their souls to his. This just suited him.
Well, Riever being what he was, he had only to drop a suggestion to Delehanty the chief detective to have all surveillance removed from over Pen's actions. She was now free to come and go as she chose. Of course nothing further had been said of the proposed warrant for her arrest. Delehanty had become as obsequious towards her as he had previously been arrogant.
A curious relation existed between Pen and the millionaire. From the first he had been most courteous, but in the beginning it had been dictated merely by motives of policy. He could see a little further than the clumsy Delehanty, that was all. Pen recognized in him an adversary infinitely more dangerous. But he had changed. The second time she saw him she became aware that she had a power over him. In short he was powerfully attracted. Pen marveled at it.Riever, who presumably had only to pick and choose from among the beauties of the world! But though she could not understand how it had come about, she rejoiced in her power, and had no scruples whatever against using it.
To anyone else beside Pen the explanation would have been obvious enough. It is all very well to buy yourself royally through a world of salable women, but it lays you open to a dangerous weakness. When you meet a woman who is obviously not for sale, you are apt to fall down before her most ignominiously. That was what had happened to Riever. Just because he was so rich Pen had instinctively adopted an independent air towards him that piqued him intolerably.Reallyindependent. Then there was that highly individual charm of hers. And her independence was not indifference. With all his experience Riever had never met a woman like Pen. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that a woman of Pen's spirit and transparent honesty had never before taken an interest in the ugly little man.
When she was with Riever it need hardly be said that Pen was not nearly so honest as she seemed. In fact she concealed herself behind her apparent frankness. That is the great advantage of having a naturally honest look. It enables you to lie so well when you have a real need of lying. Since Riever had arrived the two had been almost constantly together, and a sort of subtle duel going on between them. Pen's object was to encourage him without giving of herself. He was the first man she had ever set out to encourage. It was a sufficiently intoxicating experience for the man. Pen's blandishments were very different from the sort that Riever had been accustomed to.
As for Pen's father he had swallowed the lure of luxury, hook, bait and sinker. At this moment buttoned up to the neck in his old Prince Albert he seemed to be perspiring satisfaction. He had come into the sort of life that he regarded as his own. To see him stretch his arm over the stern rail and flick the ash off the expensive cigar with his little finger was a treat. Pendleton Broome was the sort of man who will always be flattered because he asked for it so plainly. It was Riever's cue to encourage him to the utmost. After his first meeting with the millionaire Pendleton had said to Pen:
"I find I have not rusted out in my solitude. I can still keep my end up with men of the world. Riever listens to me with the most respectful attention."
Pen had smiled to herself without answering.
More had passed between the two men than Pen was as yet aware of. She knew that Riever had promised to look into the matter of the Broome's Point railway, thus raising her father's hopes to the skies, but she did not know that Riever had actually purchased half a dozen lots adjacent to the proposed terminal and that the inside pocket of the old Prince Albert was at this moment crackling with greenbacks.
Pendleton was saying self-importantly: "The original grade of the railway issues from the gully yonder. The plan was to build a long dock straight out to deep water. But there's a shoal off the gully. My plan would be to have the tracks turn along the shore to a point below the house where they could build all the docks they wanted right into deep water."
Riever gave him only as much attention as was needed to keep him going. "But that would ruin the outlook from your house," he suggested idly.
"Oh, I shall not remain here after the railway comes," said Pendleton loftily. "I'd take an apartment in New York, and perhaps a house in Newport."
"Newport is not what it was," remarked Riever.
"Ah, the vulgar have taken possession I suppose," said Pendleton. "My father had a place there. My childish recollections of it are most pleasant."
"People are scattered all over the map nowadays," said Riever.
"That I presume is due to the introduction of the automobile," said Pendleton. He launched into a discussion of automobiles of which he knew nothing.
Riever listening gravely, sent a quizzical glance in Pen's direction. But Pen was not to be tempted into making common cause with him against her father. She looked blandly ahead of her.
Pendleton himself delivered them from boredom. He had observed Riever's interest in his daughter and was not without his hopes in that direction too. By and by he rose saying with a self-conscious air:
"... Er ... I have some important letters to get off this afternoon. If you'd be good enough to put me ashore, Riever. You needn't hurry, daughter."
Under other circumstances Pen would have been deeply affronted by his transparent ruse. But as has been said, in this affair she had no conscience. She allowed it to be seen that she had no intention of moving.
Riever made haste to summon the boat. Pendleton went down the ladder in his absurd three seasons' straw hat, bobbing his head and waving his hand airily. Towards the sailors his air of mingled condescension and goodfellowship was delicious.
Pen glanced at Riever through her lashes as he returned to her. The little man held himself stiffly in his blue yachting togs and walked with a suggestion of a strut. The greatest tailor in the world could not endow his meager frame with beauty or grace, but it was not to be denied that his wonderfully made clothes lent him a certain distinction.
He patted the cushions of that wonderful divan that encircled the stern. "Wouldn't you be more comfortable here?"
"Impossible!" drawled Pen.
"A cigarette?"
"Never learned how," she said. "I'll make my first trials in private."
"I'll send you a box."
He sat down and feasted his eyes on her openly.
He was no beauty. His face was a little reddened and roughened with incipient erysipelas. Don had said that he and Riever were of the same age, but the millionaire might have been of any age between twenty-five and forty-five; there was no look of youth about him. He was redeemed from insignificance by his assured habit of command. Yet his assurance did not go very deep. Pen had discovered that he might quite easily be put out of countenance, only nobody ever tried it. When he chose as at present, he could be most agreeable, but there was always a pained roll to his eyes, such as may be seen in the eyes of a bad-tempered horse, a look that boded no good to his underlings.
A curious thing was that in their endless conversations Don Counsell was never referred to but in the most casual manner. Each had a secret to guard here. Pen kept her secret better than the man did. Riever wished it to be supposed that he had just happened in at Broome's Point on his yacht. That his coming at this time had only the slightest connection with the pursuit of Don Counsell, Pen knew better of course. On every hand she gathered evidence that Riever was the head and front of the pursuit. Riever was the secret source of the hideous clamor raised against the man Pen knew to be innocent. Twenty times a day Riever gave himself away to her love-sharpened eyes—but it was not evidence!
Meanwhile they fenced with each other.
"You should not encourage Dad in his delusions," said Pen.
"You mean about the railway?" said Riever. "I could put it through with a nod of my head if I chose."
"But you won't," she said.
"How do you know I won't?"
"You are so clearly only humoring him."
"Good Heavens!" he said in mock dismay. "Do you undertake to read men?"
"I don't undertake it," said Pen. "You can't help seeing what you see."
"I could put it through," he said again, "if there was sufficient incentive."
"Of course," said Pen. And let the matter drop.
He was trying to make her beg for the railway. What most fascinated and provoked him in her was his inability to make her ask him for anything, or take anything from him. Everybody else in the world asked him for things one way or another.
He presently went on: "That's the trouble with life to a man like me: I have no particular incentive to do anything."
Pen refused to recognize his money. "Why haven't you the same incentive as other men?" she demanded to know.
"What are men's principal incentives?" he parried.
"Well, love, ambition, the desire to excel other men, I suppose."
"Yes, one could go far for love," he said with a sidelong look.
Pen without looking at him was aware of the look. She thought: "Men are funny! He's trying to make me philander with him in a crude way, and if I did he'd weary of me immediately!"
It was Riever's desire to shine in her eyes that frequently betrayed him. She was not impressed by his wealth; very well, he had to find some way of making himself out a remarkable figure. He presently said with a casual air:
"How about hate as an incentive?"
Pen pricked up her ears. She answered as casually as he: "I always thought of hate as destroying a man instead of nerving him to do things."
"Not at all," he said. "Hate will carry a man as far as love—or farther." His feelings got the better of him. He forgot his casual air. "There's more in hate than love!" he went on with glittering eyes. "Men get tired of loving, but never of hating. There's more pleasure in hate because you never can entirely possess your lover, but you can destroy your enemy! ... Do I horrify you?" he asked with a sudden harsh laugh.
"Not in the least," said Pen coolly. "Nothing of that sort horrifies me, though I might have to make believe to be horrified."
"Not with me," he said, showing his yellow teeth.
"It is comfortable not to have to make pretenses," Pen said. That was as near as she could come to philandering.
"I believe you'd make a good hater," he hazarded.
"Maybe," said Pen. "I've never had the experience like you."
An instinct of caution occurred to him. "Oh, you mustn't take me too literally," he said laughing. "I haven't anybody to hate at present. But I have the capacity."
It was too late. His glittering eyes had reminded Pen of Don's phrase: a poisonous look. It was precious evidence to her heart, but unfortunately not the sort of evidence she could take into court.
She was reluctant to drop the subject of hatred. "The Borgias were good haters," she hazarded. "I lately read a story which told how Alexander Borgia caused a bed to be made for his enemies. It was so arranged that when a body warmed it it killed like a hammer-stroke."
"A fanciful tale," said Riever. "All the killing poisons I ever heard of have to be introduced into the stomach, the blood or the lungs."
He spoke as one who knows, and Pen, wondering, pursued the subject with further questions. It was like tapping a hidden spring in the man. With a curious relish he described the action of various poisons on the human system.
"Cyanide is the neatest," he said. "There's your hammer-stroke."
Pen thought: "Has he tried that too? ... Collis Dongan was shot!"
She betrayed nothing in her face, but Riever suddenly, with an uneasy glance, was impelled to explain how he came by so much knowledge. "You see my hobby is raising fruit," he said. "My peaches have scores of enemies; suckers, chewers, fungi and bacilli. I have to study to keep ahead of them."
But he had been talking of the human system!
She couldn't appear to pin him down of course. She had to let him range where he would, contenting herself with giving the talk a little push this way or that when the opportunity offered. She encouraged him to talk of his childhood and youth, to which he was nothing loath. He unconsciously drew her a picture of a willful, jealous, destructive boy, a little monument of selfishness. There was a bad crack in his nature. He hated beauty, moral and physical, but particularly physical beauty. Pen marked the pained sneer with which his eyes followed the stalwart young steward who carried away the cups. Riever had to have handsome servants to maintain his position, but their comeliness was a perpetual reproach to him. No wonder he had hated Don Counsell from the first, Pen thought. She guessed darkly that Riever was the kind that pursues beautiful women only to hurt them.
He had been telling her with a laugh of the torments to which new boys were subjected in the fashionable school he had attended. One poor little wretch it appeared had been driven by his persecutors to the point of attempting suicide.
"Weren't you sorry then?" asked Pen.
"No!" he said. "I had to go through the mill when I came. It wasn't my fault that this kid had a soft streak in him. Besides conscience is only another name for weak-mindedness. I made up my mind early that I'd never be sorry for anything I did. A strong man laughs at conscience."
Pen thought: "Funny kind of strength!"
This was all very well but what good did it do her? They might talk for a month of mornings without her getting any further. And she had not a day to spare. How was she to get facts? The obvious thing would be to bribe his servants, to have his effects searched and so on. This was impossible for Pen. She was ready to despair of ever bridging the chasm between surmise and fact.
The motor-boat which had taken Pendleton ashore, had proceeded on to the Island for the mail. It was now to be seen returning. This was Riever's own private mail service. On the day of his coming, deciding that the regular mail was too slow, he had instituted a double automobile service between Absolom's Island and Baltimore. Twice a day by this means he received his letters and the New York papers, particularly the papers. Pen had already marked with what a curious eagerness he awaited the New York papers.
When the mail-bag was brought to him now he said after a momentary hesitation:
"Put it in the saloon."
Pen noted the eager roll of his eyes towards the bag. There was something in there that he desired to see even more than he wished to cultivate her company. With the idea of seeing the thing through, she said carelessly:
"May I see a New York paper?"
"Certainly," he said, and had the bag brought back. It was emptied out on the seat beside him. He handed Pen a paper.
She opened it and feigned to read. At first he made believe to ignore the balance of the contents of the bag, and sat there as if awaiting her pleasure. But he was uneasy. His feet moved; his hands twitched. Finally as Pen showed no signs of losing interest in her sheet, he picked up another paper and opened it with hands that trembled a little.
Pen found that she could not watch him from where she sat. He held his paper up between them. She lowered hers and rose. He was all attention.
"This hasn't got what I want?" she said. "May I see another?"
Without waiting for him to hand it to her she picked up another paper and seated herself on the divan with only the mail matter between them. From this point of vantage she could watch him very well without appearing to.
He glanced over his sheet and she over hers. "Glancing," however, does not convey the strained intentness with which he was searching the news columns. Pen observed at once that it was not the Counsell case that interested him. That still occupied the most prominent position on the first page but his eyes merely skated over it. It was something else he was looking for. He turned the page and his intent eyes traveled it column by column.
On the third page they came to a stop. Pen saw his grasp tighten on the paper until the edges of his thumb nails turned white. A little knot of muscle stood out on his jaw. Unfortunately Pen could not see his eyes, but from the extraordinary tenseness of his attitude she guessed the look in them. Whatever it was he read it was brief. He relaxed; a long breath escaped him. He let the paper fall and turned to Pen. There was a new brightness in his face. Certain lines of anxiety were smoothed out. Cynical satisfaction was writ large there. He all but laughed in his relief. He made no further pretense of reading the paper, but lit a fresh cigar and cocking it up between his lips puffed away like a man well pleased with the world.
As well as she could Pen had marked in her mind the spot on the third page where his glance had rested. It was the New YorkCourierhe was reading. She had to be careful not to betray her hand. She made believe to go on searching through the paper she had. Finally she let it fall.
"It's not here either," she said.
"What's that?" asked Riever comfortably.
"One of the New York papers has a fashion department they call 'A Daily Hint from Paris'. But I don't know which one it is."
"Can't say that I ever noticed it myself," said Riever grinning. "But try the Courier."
This was more than she had dared hope for. She took the paper from him in a hand that she forced to be steady. For awhile she turned the pages in the haphazard way that one searches through a strange newspaper. Riever meanwhile was sitting beside her regarding his cigar with half closed eyes, and making a little humming sound between his teeth. Clearly he was intent upon thoughts that were miles away from her.
Pen ventured to let her gaze rest on the third page. The make-up of that page, news and advertisements, was such that she had little difficulty in picking out what she was looking for. There was but the one short item of news near the bottom of the page in the middle column. This is what Pen read:
EAST-SIDE GANGSTER MISSING
"A girl who gave her name as Blanche Paglar of —— Elizabeth St., became hysterical at police headquarters this morning upon being informed by the police that there was no clue to the disappearance of Henry, alias Spike Talley, 24, same address. The girl had previously reported that Talley had been missing since the night of May 27th. She received scant sympathy from the police who told her that if the young man had met with foul play it was probably in the pursuit of his own nefarious occupations. Spike Talley was a leading member of the notorious Chick Murphy gang, and is suspected of complicity in half a dozen crimes of violence."
Pen turned a little giddy. Her heart pounded so that she thought Riever must hear it. Dared she credit what this story implied? Had she come upon the key to the whole mystery? Had she? Had she? She leaned back in the divan and held the paper up in front of her so that he could not see her face.
When her breast quieted down she sternly reminded herself that this was but slim evidence on which to build a case. She might be mistaken altogether. She might be merely reading into the item what she desired to find there. She determined to put it to the test. But she had to wait awhile before she dared trust her voice.
It was Riever who said at last coaxingly: "Put down the paper."
Pen did so. Her face was perfectly composed now. Her voice even as she said: "Here's a curious little story."
"What's that?" said Riever.
"A girl goes to the police for help in finding her lover. They laugh at her because he was a gangster."
For an instant Riever looked at her like an animal at bay, his teeth showing, his eyes senseless with terror. It was gone in a snap of the fingers, but it was enough.
"I guess that's common enough," he said with a laugh.
"What a situation for a story," said Pen.
"Oh yes, if you like that sort of story," he said, flicking the ash off his cigar.
Pen said to herself with a swelling breast: "I have made a beginning!" No need for her to secure the paper. Those names and that address were etched on her brain.
Riever's start of terror had been due to a reflex action of which he was scarcely conscious. He did not suspect that he had betrayed himself. He must have argued that it was impossible that Pen should connect him with that item in the paper. Her speaking of it could only have been a coincidence. So his satisfaction was undisturbed. They talked on about all sorts of things. But Pen was wild to get into action now.
Her opportunity came when one of Riever's men came to ask if he had any orders for the boat. It was returning to the Island to get the regular mail which arrived about noon.
Pen said to Riever: "This would be a good chance for me to get my shopping done. If I might..."
"Certainly," said Riever. "If you must. May I come too?"
This was awkward. It could not be evaded though. "It's your boat," said Pen, smiling.
"Yours for this trip."
"Charmed to have you," said Pen. "... But you can't look over my shoulder when I'm making my poor little purchases."
"I'll wait in the boat for you."
The slim mahogany tender which lay alongside had cost as much as many a well-to-do man's cruiser. Nothing like her had ever cleaved the waters of the Pocomico. She had the speed of a railway train. Pen was handed in to a little sheltered nook in the stern. Riever sank down beside her and they were off with a leap, throwing a wall of water back from either side of the bow.
But Pen was oblivious to their passage. Her glance was far withdrawn.
"What are you thinking about?" asked Riever.
"My shopping," she answered instantly. "It's quite a problem. There's so little to choose from in the Island stores."
"Wouldn't you like to go up to Baltimore for a day?" he asked.
This was what Pen had been angling for. "I might like it," she said, "but..." she finished with a shrug.
"Well, there are the cars running up and down empty every day. Why not go up Monday morning?"
"Monday is wash-day," said Pen.
"Tuesday, then."
Pen considered. "All right," she said. "I would like to go on Tuesday."
"That's settled then."
Pen saw from his look that he meant to come with her. That was to be expected. She must adjust her plans accordingly.
In three minutes they were at the wharf in front of the store. It was like magic. ThePee Beetook a good twenty minutes to do it. Pen stepped out, a sailor was sent up to the Post-office, and Riever remained in the boat, a target for curious stares. He hated to be stared at, and he presently gave the word for the tender to wait out in the stream.
The store was a rambling structure added to from time to time as business increased. The clerks were engaged in a continual marathon from one distant shelf to another. The three young men contended for the privilege of waiting on Pen, who was a prime favorite even with the touchy Island people who by turns resented and laughed at her father. Pen was entirely unaffected and friendly, quite unconscious of her own reserve. In short she kept alive a fine old tradition of gentility. She was "Pen" to the three youths and they were "George" and "Stanley" and "Roy" to her, yet a gulf separated them.
In order to keep up her role of shopper Pen was obliged to purchase a chip basket which she did not want, and a number of articles which she could use of course, but which she had not intended to get that morning. Her purpose in coming to the Island was to send off a letter. She could not write it in the post-office because the sailor from theAlexandrawas waiting there, so she bought paper and envelope in the store and wrote it on the counter.
She had been revolving the opening sentences on her way over. So concentrated was she upon her task that the bustle, the running to and fro in the store disturbed her not a whit. Through the open door she could see the mahogany tender floating out in the creek with Riever sitting in his place smoking one of the endless succession of cigars, and she knew she was safe from interruption in that direction.
"Dear Blanche Paglar:
"I read in the New YorkCourierthis morning of your search for Spike Talley. Perhaps I can give you a clue. I cannot hold out any hope to you that he is still alive, but anyway I suppose it would be a relief to you to learn the truth. But I don't want to deceive you. I am sure of nothing yet. I have only a suspicion. I thought if we could put what little I know with what you know we might clear up the whole thing."
Having written this much Pen paused and reread it with a frown. It sounded too cut and dried. She wished to win this unknown girl's heart. It was nothing to Pen at that moment that Blanche had loved a gangster and was perhaps herself a criminal. All Pen considered was that Blanche had lost her lover, and that Pen's own lover was in terrible danger. That made them sisters. She continued, from the heart:
"I am a girl like yourself. I understand much that was not written in the paper. Like yourself I love somebody who is threatened by a worse fate than that which I suppose may have overtaken your friend. And at the hands of the same man. We ought to be friends. We ought to help one another."
Pen's eyelids prickled as she wrote this. She forced down the emotion, and continued more soberly:
"I dare not write all I suspect to one who is still a stranger to me. Will you meet me in Baltimore on Tuesday at noon? I shall be waiting for you in front of the notion counter in Douglas' department store. Anybody will direct you to it. I don't know what you look like of course, but you may recognize me by a blue silk turban stitched with red. My hair and eyes are dark. You may take a good look at me before you make yourself known, and decide if I look like a person who can be trusted. Don't speak to me if I am not alone. Even if I am alone I may be watched, and it would be better for you to greet me like an old friend. I will enclose a post-office order for fifteen dollars to pay your fare to Baltimore and back."
Pen was afraid to put her name to this. She hated anonymity, and realized that it would raise a justifiable suspicion in the other girl's breast, but within the past few days the newspapers had made the name of Pendleton Broome almost as famous as that of Donald Counsell. How could she take the risk? Suppose her letter ended in the newspapers? She turned hot and cold at the thought. Even the post-mark Absolom's Island would give too much away. But she had to take that chance. She couldn't put down a false name either. She finally signed her letter: "Your Would-be Friend."
When she finally held her letter enclosed, and addressed in her hand, her heart failed her for a moment. "It will only arouse her suspicions," she thought. "She'll never come!" Pen steeled her resolution. "In that case I'll go to her!"
Pen got a blank check from one of the clerks, filled it out and cashed it. There went her chance of the new hat she needed so badly. Leaving her purchases in the store for the moment she went on up the road to the post-office. The store looked out over the waters of Back Creek. You went up a little rise and found yourself looking out over the river from the other side of the Island. The post-office stood on the corner where the road turned up-stream. It was only a couple of hundred yards from the store but outside the range of Riever's vision from the tender.
The mail bus had just arrived and a certain proportion of the Islanders were hanging about outside the little building, waiting for the distribution. During this interval the door was always locked but Pen enjoyed privileges there. She knocked, and the post-master, Sammy Cupples, seeing who it was, made haste to open.
She made out her application for the money-order at the little desk in the corner, and Sammy paused long enough in the work of distribution to issue it, so that it might get in that day's mail. The bus went back immediately. It would reach Baltimore some time before night, and the letter would be delivered in New York the first thing Monday morning. When it dropped into the mail-bag a tight hand was laid on Pen's heart for a moment and she would have given anything to have it back. But the die was cast.
Pen returned to the store. One of the youths carried her basket out on the wharf. The tender swept around in a graceful circle and came alongside. Riever stood up to hand Pen in. The Island boy's eyes goggled a little at the famous man. Riever looked his worst when he showed his yellow teeth in a loverly smile. Pen shuddered at him inwardly, thinking: "You would not be smiling if you knew what I had just done!"
As soon as the man came with the mail they sped back to Broome's Point.
It was night and Pen with her indomitable carriage was trudging along the road that led straight back between the fields. Under her arm was the inevitable grass bag. Chin up and back very straight there was always a sort of challenge in Pen's gait. As a child she had been just the same, one of those adorable little fighters who conceal a heart as tender as love itself. There was a photograph of her at the age of three with a look wistful, proud, and astonished at meanness. She still had that look.
A fantastic tangle of wild grape, trumpet vine, elder bush and sassafras completely hid the rail fences and hemmed her in on either hand, and an occasional pointed cedar or seedling cherry rose against the night sky. The middle of the road and the screen of leafage on one side were drenched with moonlight. The moon dangled in the sky like a hanging lamp: one could see into the depths beyond her.
Pen walked along with her face up to the moon in an attitude of surrender. Her face was haggard with emotion. All day she was obliged to wear a mask, to weigh every word she uttered. What a relief it was at last to let go, to let the moon have its way with her, to bathe in her silver stream. Relief in a sense but hardly pleasure, for when she let go she was so defenseless, so quivering that the stream of beauty hurt her. It enervated her so, she was terrified lest she might not be able to gird herself up again.
For she knew her respite was only momentary. She longed for and dreaded what awaited her at the end of her walk. She couldn't give herself up to Don as she could to the moon. She had to put on another mask for him. A mask of cheer. He was her charge that she had to watch over and care for and beguile into contentment. The fact that he hotly resented being a charge on her did not make her task any easier. They had been getting on each other's nerves a good deal.
Ever and anon as she walked, she glanced over her shoulder uneasily aware that a man could follow her quite close under the dark side of the green tangle, without her being aware.
At the corner of the last field on the left she vaulted over the low bars. Inside a figure rose into the moonlight and a voice whispered her name:
"Pen!"
She was horribly startled. "Drop down again!" she whispered sharply. "Don't come after me until I am half way across the field."
He obeyed sullenly. Pen walked on across the field with a sore heart. She had made him angry now. All day she lived for the moment of meeting and now it was spoiled.
She headed diagonally across the field to that point in the woods which was nearest his camp. She could walk but slowly because the ground was so rough, old corn land that had been allowed to go to grass with the hills unharrowed. She would not look back until she was nearly across. A man's figure was rising over the swell of the field behind her. Anxiety attacked her. Suppose it was not Don but somebody who had followed her down the road. What would Don do? She dreaded to hear the sounds of a struggle. Don could take care of himself of course, but it would be the end of their secret. So well had that secret been kept that not one of all the searchers at Broome's Point now suspected that Don was still on the estate.
Pen waited alongside the fence that bounded the far side of the field. It was Don, so her anxiety was relieved on that score. But he did not come to her. A few yards away he leaned back with his elbows on the top rail of the fence and gazed out across the moonlit field, making a perfect silhouette of masculine soreness.
"I brought you some supper," ventured Pen.
"Thanks," he said ungraciously.
"Won't you eat?"
"Not hungry, thanks."
"What's the matter?" she asked with a touch of defiance. She could not be meek, even with him.
"You spoke to me like a dog!" he burst out. "Down Fido!"
"I'm sorry," she murmured. "But you startled me so. You see I was thinking maybe someone was following me in the road."
"I just went a little way to meet you," he grumbled. "Nice welcome I got!"
Having said she was sorry, Pen could not humble herself further. She remained silent.
"I suppose you're thinking I'm a thankless beast," he went on presently.
"No," said Pen.
"Well I am!" he said. "I appreciate what you do for me. Good God, that's just the trouble. You heap favors on me! You've got me on the rack!"
They had been over this so often!
"Well, I'm sick of it, too," Pen burst out as bitterly as he. "You're always trying to make out that I do things for you just to make you feel inferior! I hate to be benevolent. I never am. But what else could I do under the circumstances? Or you? Why can't you take it for granted?"
"You mean you'd do as much for anybody?"
"Certainly."
This of course in his perfect inconsistency, hurt him worse than what had gone before. He dug his chin into his breast and relapsed into silence.
Pen yearned over him. She loved him so for his male roughness, his wrongheadedness, his school-boy pride. He was so absolutely different from herself, both weaker and stronger. It was circumstances which had given her the advantage over him; he was in a false position. She exulted in it a little however she might protest to the contrary. It is sweet to have the ascendancy, even in love. And she could dimly foresee other circumstances in which she would be most terribly at his mercy.
She made overtures. "I'm hungry," she said.
But the storm was still brewing in his breast. "A couple more days of this and I'll go clean off my head!" he said savagely.
"How about me?" said Pen.
"You don't have to squat under the bushes all day."
"I have other troubles."
"I have things to bear that you don't know anything about. I have never spoken of it."
Instantly Pen, who had been feeling so pleasantly sure of herself, turned hot with jealousy. There was some other woman out in the world. Of course there would be! He was tormented because he couldn't communicate with her. Because he couldn't assure her of his innocence. How could she find out about her for sure?
"If you'd tell me what it is," she said, schooling her voice, "perhaps I could help."
"Not in this matter," he said with a bitter little laugh.
Then she was miserably sure. Nevertheless she persisted, as the nightingale is supposed to press her breast against a thorn. "I've often wondered why you don't allow me to write to some of your best friends. Those you can trust I mean. The letters could be worded in such a way that they'd mean nothing if they fell into the wrong hands."
"I've no one to write to," he said.
Pen thought: "Of course he wouldn't trust another woman to write to her," and was exquisitely unhappy.
"Any news?" Don asked gloomily.
"No," said Pen. She had previously determined not to raise his hopes by telling him about Blanche Paglar until something had come of it.
There was a long silence between them, and Pen became wretcheder and wretcheder. When she could stand it no longer she put the bag down beside the fence and said in an offhand tone:
"Well ... I must be getting back ... I'll come again to-morrow night."
She started to walk away with her sedate air, but a little quicker perhaps than would suggest perfect calmness.
Before she had taken three steps he came after her. Pen broke into a run. He overtook her. Ah! if he had only taken her in his arms! But he only circled about her, spreading out his arms to bar her way.
"Pen,Pen, don't leave me!" he said imploringly. "That would be the last straw! ... Don't leave me to brood over my own hatefulness."
The pain in his voice arrested her. She forgot her own pain. As in a flash she had a clairvoyant glimpse of what he must be going through day after day, the resolute young man compelled to skulk in the woods, while his name was bandied about with the stigma of murder upon it.
"I'm a fool!" she said with a shaky little laugh. "To get sore ... I won't go."
"Oh, Pen, you're so good to me!" he groaned. "I'm a stubborn brute, Pen, I can't thank you properly. But Pen, I feel as if you were heaping a load on me that I'd never be able to struggle from under! But I ought not to feel that way, Pen."
Ever since he had got hold of that little name he could scarcely address five words to her without using it, and every time he spoke it he caressed it. Pen was reassured.
"Don't worry about how you ought to feel," she murmured. "Much better for us to quarrel than to make pretenses to each other. Besides a lot of that talk about doing things for people and earning their gratitude is false. A person has really no right to put another person under a debt of gratitude."
"The truth is, I'm afraid of you," he grumbled.
It was delicious to her to have him softened and faltering like this. "I'm afraid of you, too," she confessed. "How silly we both are!"
For a moment or two they were wildly and unreasonably happy, standing there in the bland moonlight close together but not touching. His face was in the shadow but Pen could feel his eyes stabbing her out of the dark. Her own went down. They were like reeds shaken in the same gust. In that moment Pen knew that whatever bonds might be upon him out in the world, he was hers. Still he did not speak; he did not draw her to him. In the end she had to wrench herself away from the magnetic attraction of his body, or else she must have flung herself into his arms.
"Let's walk," she said hurriedly. "We're safe enough in this out-of-the-way corner. You must need exercise. We'll circle round the field. Over in the corner there's a path leading down to an arm of Back creek where Dad keeps his boat in the winter."
Don came down to earth with a sigh. He had a curious way, when his thoughts annoyed him, of shaking his head like a dog, to clear it. Without saying anything he tied the jute bag to an overhanging branch out of reach of four-footed prowlers, and came along with Pen.
They kept to the fence line, silent for the most part. Their breasts were oppressed by moonlight, that high, pure medium which nevertheless stirs us so poignantly. The moon herself is all very well in her way, a lovely lamp in the dark, but one can stare at the moon all night without being transported. One must turn one's back on the moon to experience her magic. It is the strange light she casts on the face of our mother Earth, and Earth's smile under moonlight, soft, subtle and infinitely suggestive, that thrill us, that disquiet us, that unlock our spirits. On the one hand as they walked the field lay spread with a bloomy, gossamer coverlet of moonlight; on the other hand the swelling tree masses rose in rich velvety blackness under a lazulite sky.
Their two shadows soberly preceded them, always with a narrow space of moonlight between. Pen resented that little gap. She had forgotten about the supposed other woman, or if she remembered she no longer cared. She lived in the moment only; there was no more past, no future. She was in the grip of sensations that scarcely permitted her to breathe. Yet she had to conceal from him those sighs with which she sought to relieve her breast. Sometimes she fell behind a step just for the satisfaction of looking at him without his knowing, at the way his hair curled at the nape of his neck, at his flat, straight back, at the curious grace of his level walk. He was wearing an old pair of trousers and a shirt of khaki that she had brought him as being less conspicuous in the woods than his own white clothes. The thin garments betrayed his beauty to her.
The moon was high in the sky and their shadows were short at their feet. Pen beheld a curious thing. The dewy grass refracting the strong moonlight made a silvery nimbus around the heads of the two of them.
"Look!" she said with her shaky little laugh. "We've been canonized."
"Not me," he said. "They just let me walk under your halo."
Having circled round two sides of the field, they climbed over another pole gate and were swallowed up in the woods. Instantly the silence wrapped them as in a cloak, and the heavy air became charged with a curious significance. High over head they glimpsed the moon pacing with them over the tree-tops. She splashed the trunks fantastically, and occasionally lay down a bar of silver on the path, but for the most part the underworld was black, black, black; a crouching blackness that held its breath as if in preparation for a spring. The path was well-beaten but narrow. They had to walk in single file, Pen ahead.
"I'm glad you're here," murmured Pen.
"It's a fearsome sort of place," he said. "It was not like this the other night we walked through the woods."
"These woods have not been cut out," said Pen. "The old presences have never been disturbed."
Finally the path with a sharp turn brought them abruptly out under the open sky again. It was as if something had been lifted off their heads. They had come to a low bank at the head of a straight, narrow arm of water thrust into the heart of the pines. A great bird arose from below them and passed away like a shadow with a soft swishing of wings. The path ended in a shaky little wharf with a single plank laid upon it. They stepped gingerly out upon it hand in hand, and stood looking down the reach. The South wind passed high above their heads and the surface of the water was perfectly unruffled.
At the moment the moon was looking down the straight arm so squarely one might have said she had cleft the opening herself with her silver blade of light. Down at the end of the narrow arm they had the sense of a wider body of water running at right angles, a pearly, fairy-like strait. On the point which separated the two bodies of water stood a little white house gleaming wanly in the moonlight. In a window of the house, a curious note in that dreamy world of opal and pearl, shone an insistent yellow light.
"Surely real people can't live there," murmured Don.
"The worst kind, unfortunately," said Pen. "That's where the oystermen go to get drunk."
They retraced their steps up the bank. When they trod firm earth again, Pen repossessed herself of her hand.
"Where now?" asked Don.
"There's no place to go but back."
"Not yet," he pleaded. "Let's stay here awhile. There's plenty of time. There are no mosquitoes to-night."
An old skiff had been dragged up on top of the bank and turned over.
"Sit here," he urged.
Blaming herself for her weakness, she sat upon it with her hands in her lap. The moonlight was strong upon her. There was a wall of undergrowth at her back. Her face and hands stood out against it sharply. Don dropped to the ground at her feet.
"It's damp there," she objected.
"Can't see you when I sit beside you," he said. "I can from here. With only your face and hands showing out of your black dress you look like a spirit."
"A lost spirit!" she said with her little laugh.
"Oh Pen!" he said in distress. "Why should you be unhappy?"
"I hate the moon!" she said. "It makes a fool of me!"
His touch of sympathy unnerved her. That and the glamorous destructive light that would not let her breast be. The last of her defenses collapsed. In spite of herself the tears welled up in her eyes and brimmed over. She lowered her head to hide them, but he caught the sparkle of the drops as they fell. It electrified him. He scrambled to his knees.
"Pen! Pen!" he whispered brokenly.
She covered her face with her hands. He dragged them down, and crushed them under his own hands on her knees.
"Pen!" he gasped. "It breaks my heart to see you! What is the matter?"
She strained away from him. "Nothing!" she said crossly. "I'm not the sort that cries!"
"But you're crying now. I see your tears!"
"It's nothing. I'm just nervous. Don't notice me."
"Oh Pen, I love you so!" he groaned. "It kills me to see your tears!"
She looked at him with a kind of horror.
He dropped his head in her lap. "There it's out!" he groaned. "All evening I've been fighting against it. Every night I've been with you. I swore I wouldn't tell you. But here I am ... just like a baby. God knows I'll regret it to-morrow!"
"But why?" she gasped.
"Because it drives me wild to think of bringing unhappiness into your life. I'd sooner jump off the wharf yonder. It's unmanly to tell you now!"
"Blessed unmanliness!" whispered Pen, brooding over him.
Presently she jerked her head up as if she needed more air, more light. The moon shone in her wet face. It was transfigured.
He was still humbled over her knees. "This isn't the way I wanted to come to the woman I love," he said bitterly. "I've nothing to offer you ... less than nothing ..."
"Do you want to buy me or to love me," she murmured with soft reproach.
He scarcely heard her. "It is impossible for you to respect a man who is as dependent on you as a baby!"
Pen put her cheek in his hair. "Foolish one! What has respect to do with it?"
"You can only be sorry for me!"
Her hands turned over and found his face. "Foolish! Foolish! Foolish!" she murmured. "You must have got your idea of loving out of books! ... How selfish you are!"
He raised his head, struck by the word.
Her voice deepened. "Don't you understand how sweet it has been for me to work for you; to lie for you; to steal food out of the house? Why do you begrudge it to me? ... Oh, sometimes I could almost wish youhadcommitted a murder so I could go with you and be disgraced with you!"
"Pen! ... Pen!" he cried amazed and full of delight. Then added quaintly in a voice of reproof: "You're talking wildly!"
Pen laughed deep in her throat. She slipped off the boat to the ground beside him, where she could wreathe her arms about him, and hide her face on his shoulder.
"You're only a man," she murmured laughing and passionate. "What do you know about love? ... Ah, but only let me love you and I will be content!"
"You'll see whether I can love or not," he said, piqued.
"Keep telling me," she murmured. "My ears are starving for it!"
"I can't tell you to order," he grumbled, manlike. "It must come of itself."
But she knew from the timbre of his voice, from his arms, from the adoring droop of his head, and was content.
He held her a little away from him that he might see her better. Pen yielded up her soul to him through her eyes.
"Good God! how beautiful you are!" he whispered sharply.
Their lips came together. They achieved forgetfulness.
Even lovers must come back to earth. Pen drew away from him. "The dawn will surprise us," she murmured.
He consulted his watch. "Only half-past two."
"We must go."
"Oh, no! no!"
"Well, we must begin to go," she amended. "I can't leave you quickly."
She sat on the ground as Diana must have sat, her legs folded against her, her waist curving to preserve her equilibrium, both round arms up and her fingers busy with her hair.
"How beautiful you are so," he murmured. "Don't move!"
She laughed. "Help me up," she commanded, extending him her hands.
As he pulled her to her feet he was for enfolding her again, but she put her hands up between them. "Not now! I want to get away from you a little."
"Pen!" he cried reproachfully.
She laughed. "Dearest! I just mean you have numbed me ... I must get away from you in order to realize you."
"You soon have enough of me," he grumbled.
"Somebody must be the first to stop."
"But you do love me, don't you?"
"Not always in the same way."
"You do! You do! I know it now!"
"Then why worry? ... Come, it's a long way back. We can talk as we go."
"But wait a minute, Pen. No, I won't touch you if you don't want me to ... I want to tell you something. Oh, if I could only tell you right! ... What this wonderful thing means to me!"
"Sh! Dearest! It can't be told. It simply can't!"
"But I must try."
"You're not sorry then that you told me?"
"No, by God! I don't deserve this ... but I'm not sorry. That was just childish pride ... If you really are the better man of the two I might as well make up my mind to it!"
Pen laughed. "But I'm not! ... Oh, my tongue is quicker than yours. I can tangle you all up in words. But you have a simplicity! I sit at your feet!"
"Pen!"
"Come on, I shouldn't have told you that! ... Come on, I feel as light as air, now!" She whirled around and gave his elbows a little squeeze. "Isn't it blessed to be relieved of that horrible constraint that lay on us." She was off ahead again. "I can say whatever I like to you now without thinking ... I expect I'll shock you sometimes. I'm no lady!"
"I guess I can stand it," he said grinning.
Pen had a hundred questions to ask as they went. The most trifling details of his childhood were important to her.
"Have you any photographs of yourself as a child?" she asked eagerly. "How I should love them!"
"All ages," he said lightly. Suddenly his voice became embittered. "I suppose they're in the hands of the police."
"We'll get them back!" said Pen confidently.
He stopped in the path. "Good God, Pen!What is before us? I had forgotten it!"
"You are going to clear yourself."
"But if I shouldn't be able to?"
"Whatever happens to you, I share it," she said quickly.
"But I've got to take care of you!"
Ignoring this, she resumed her questions. Gradually she drew him back into a lighter mood.
"Haven't you any brothers and sisters, Don?"
"No, I was an only child."
"I, too. It's unnatural. I mean to have four."
He pulled her to him. "Oh, my Pen!" he said a little hoarsely. "My heart almost stops beating at the thought!"
She freed herself. "Bear!" she said. "I didn't invite you to assist me in bringing up my family!"
"You've got to have some assistance," he said wickedly.
She changed the subject. "I suppose you've been in love dozens of times," she said.
"Not like this. Flirtations."
"Oh, the last time is always the only time," she said mockingly.
"Well, how about yourself?" he parried.
"Not a flirtation!" said Pen ruefully. "Not the least little bit of a one. Only dreams."
"The men were afraid of you," said Don sagely. "It takes courage to make up to a girl like you."
"Conceit!" said Pen ... "Tell me about your flirtations."
"I forget," he said warily.
"Well, the first one. You couldn't forget that."
"No, I don't mean to tell you," he said coolly. He groped for his words. "You're the only woman who ever mattered a damn to me. If you don't know that now, you will know it ... And it isn't that I want to make myself out any better than I am. Pretty poor average sort ... But I won't tell you. I have a feeling that you're the sort to bedevil me into telling you things with a laugh, and then store them up and brood over them and magnify them."
Pen sent him a curious glance through her lashes. "Good gracious! You're cleverer than I thought!" she said in a tone divided between mockery and pique.
By the time they got out of the woods the moon had traveled a good bit towards the West. Now it almost hung over the taller splotch of black that marked the trees surrounding the big house.
Don said: "Every night as soon as it grows dark I come out of my hole and lean on the fence and watch the house and wonder what you are doing inside. Why is it I never see a light in any of the windows facing this way?"
"It just happens that none of those rooms are used," Pen said. "In the main house the back drawing-room and the guest room have windows facing this way, and in the kitchen wing there is the back kitchen and two servants' rooms upstairs.... After this every night I'll put a light in one of the servants' rooms to tell you all is well. And when it goes out you'll know I'm starting. And if it goes out and comes on again you'll know I'm prevented from coming."
"That would be bad news," he said.
"We might get up a regular code of signals," Pen went on. "Suppose there was danger, and I couldn't come to warn you. Suppose I wanted to tell you to change your camp."
"We'd have to fix on some spot beforehand so you would know where to find me."
"That's the difficulty. I don't know any place safer than this. What place would be safe if they took it into their heads to search the woods? ... There is a safe place though, that I have thought of."
"Where's that?"
"In the house itself."
"What!" he exclaimed.
"If I could once get you inside we could snap our fingers at them."
"How about the servants?"
"I wouldn't tell them. Aunt Maria never goes upstairs. I tend to the upstairs myself. The third floor of the house is never visited at all."
"Oh Pen, I couldn't!"
"Why not?" she demanded.
"To hide behind your skirts like that!"
"I thought you were going to drop that nonsense."
"It dies hard!" he groaned.
"Well, if you're so reluctant to come to my house where I could see you as much as I wanted," she said sorely, "I won't ask you unless I am forced to ... But if it should be necessary ... Listen! ... I'll put a light in each of the rooms over the kitchen. If you see two lights shining this way you are to hide all your things as well as you can, and come to the house."
"Where would I meet you?"
"I won't meet you outside. It would double the risk for the two of us to try to get into the house together. Listen! Make your way over the fields without going near the road. Give the negro cabin a wide berth. When you are abreast of the big house strike for the evergreen hedge that bounds that side of the grounds. You'll find a gap in it, broken by the wind. You know how the porch runs around three sides of the main building. At the end of the porch on that side there's a rough clump of mock orange bushes. Behind the bushes you'll find a way into the cellar. That's how I go and come. I'll be waiting for you in the cellar. Or if I'm not there wait till I come."