CHAPTER XIVPRISONERS IN THE DARK
Orme’s hand still held her skirt.
“Girl!” he whispered.
“Yes. Are you hurt?”
Her voice came to him softly with all its solicitude and sympathy. She knelt, to help him if need be, and her warm, supple hand rested gently on his forehead. He could have remained for a long time as he was, content with her touch, but his good sense told him that their safety demanded action.
“Not hurt at all,” he said, and as she withdrew her hand, he arose. “Alcatrante caught me off guard,” he explained.
“Yes, I saw him. There wasn’t time to warn you.”
“He has been dogging me for an hour,” Orme continued. “I felt as though he were sitting on my shoulders, like an Old Man of the Sea.”
“I know him of old,” she replied. “He is never to be trusted.”
“But you—how did you happen to be here, in the Rookery?”
“In the hope of finding you.”
“Finding me?”
“I called up the Père Marquette about five minutes ago, and the clerk said that you had just been talking to him on the wire, but that he didn’t know where you were. Then I remembered that you knew the Wallinghams, and I came to Tom’s office to see if he had any idea where you were. I was on my way when I passed you in the elevator.”
“Tom and Bessie are at Glenview,” explained Orme.
“Yes, the girl at the inquiry-desk told me. She went to get her hat to leave for the night, and I slipped into this chamber to wait for you.”
“And here we are,” Orme laughed—“papers and all. But I wish it weren’t so dark.”
Orme hunted his pockets for a match. He found just one.
“I don’t suppose, Girl, that you happen to have such a thing as a match.”
She laughed lightly. “I’m sorry—no.”
“I have only one,” he said. “I’m going to strike it, so that we can get our bearings.”
He scratched the match on his sole. The first precious moment of light he permitted himself to look at her, fixing her face in his mind as though he were never to see it again. It rejoiced him to find that in that instant her eyes also turned to his.
The interchange of looks was hard for him to break. Only half the match was gone before he turned from her, but in that time he had asked and answered so many unspoken questions—questions which at the moment were still little more than hopes and yearnings. His heart was beating rapidly. If she had doubted him, she did not doubt him now. If she had not understood his feeling for her, she must understand it now. And the look in her own eyes—could he question that it was more than friendly? But the necessity of making the most of the light forced him to forget for the moment the tender presence of the girl who filled his heart. He therefore employed himself with a quick study of their surroundings.
The chamber was about ten feet square, and lined smoothly with white tiling. It was designed to show the sanitary construction of the Wallingham refrigerator. Orme remembered how Tomhad explained it all to him on a previous visit to Chicago.
This was merely a storage chamber. There was no connection with an ice-chamber, and there were none of the hooks and shelves which would make it complete for its purpose. The only appliance was the thermometer, the coils of which were fitted in flush with the tiling, near the door, and protected by a close metal grating. As for the door itself, its outline was a fine seam. There was a handle.
As the match burned close to his fingers, Orme pulled out his watch. It was twenty-nine minutes past five.
Darkness again.
Orme groped his way to the door and tugged at the handle. The door would not open; built with air-tight nicety, it did not budge in the least.
This was as Orme had expected. He knew that Alcatrante would have shot the bolt. He knew, too, that Alcatrante would be waiting in the corridor, to assure himself that the last clerk left the office without freeing the prisoner—that all the lights were out and the office locked for the night.Then he would depart, exulting that the papers could not be delivered; and in the morning Orme would be released.
But had Alcatrante realized that the chamber was air-tight? Surely he had not known that the girl was already there. The air that might barely suffice to keep one alive until relief came would not suffice for two.
There was not the least opening to admit of ventilation. Even the places where, in a practical refrigerator, connection would be made with the ice-chamber, were blocked up; for that matter, they were on that side of the chamber which was built close into the corner of the office.
Orme drove his heel against the wall. The tiles did not break. Then he stepped back toward the middle of the chamber.
“Where are you, Girl?” he asked.
“Here,” she answered, very near him.
He reached out and found her hand, and she did not withdraw it from his clasp.
“The rascal has locked us in,” he said. “I’m afraid we shall have a long wait.”
“Will it do any good to shout?”
“No one could hear us through these walls.No, there’s nothing to do but remain quiet. But you needn’t stand, Girl.”
He led her to the wall. Removing his coat, he folded it and placed it on the floor for a cushion, and she seated herself upon it. He remained standing near by.
“The papers,” he said, “are in that coat you are sitting on.”
He laughed, with a consciousness of the grim and terrible humor of their situation—which he hoped she had not yet realized. Here they were, the hard-sought papers in their possession, yet they were helpless even to save their own lives.
“I wish youwouldshout,” she said.
“Very well,” he said, and going over to the door, he called out several times with the full power of his lungs. The sound, pent in that narrow room, fairly crashed in their ears, but there was no answer from without.
“Don’t do it again,” she said at last. Then she sighed. “Oh, the irony of it!” she exclaimed.
“I know.” He laughed. “But don’t give up, Girl. We’ll deliver those papers yet.”
“I will not give up,” she said, gravely. “But tell me, how did you get the papers?”
Orme began the story of the afternoon’s adventures.
“Why don’t you sit down?” she asked.
“Why”—he stammered—“I——”
He had been so conscious of his feeling toward her, so conscious of the fact that the one woman in all the world was locked in here alone with him, that since he arranged her seat he had not trusted himself to be near her. And she did not seem to understand.
She wished him to sit beside her, not knowing that he felt the almost overpowering impulse to take her in his arms and crush her close to him. That desire would have been more easily controlled, had he not begun to believe that she in some degree returned his feeling for her. If they escaped from this black prison, he would rest happy in the faith that her affection for him, now, as he supposed so largely friendly, would ripen into a glorious and compelling love. But it would not be right for him to presume—to take advantage of a moment in which she might think that she cared for him more than she actually did. Then, too, he already foresaw vaguely the possible necessity for an act which would make itbest that she should not hold him too dear. So long he stood silent that she spoke again.
“Do sit down,” she said. “I will give you part of your coat.”
There was a tremulous note in her laugh, but as he seated himself, she spoke with great seriousness. “When two persons understand each other as well as you and I,” she said, “and are as near death as you and I, they need not be embarrassed by conventions.”
“We never have been very conventional with each other,” he replied, shakily. Her shoulder was against his. He could hear her breathing.
“Now tell me the rest of the story.”
“First I must change your notion that we are near death.”
He could feel that she was looking at him in the blackness. “Don’t you think I know?” she whispered. “They will not find us until to-morrow. There isn’t enough air to last. I have known it from the first.”
“Someone will open the door,” he replied. “We may have to stay here quite a while, but——”
“No, my friend. There is no likelihood thatit will be opened. The clerks are leaving for the night.”
He was silent.
“So finish the story,” she went on.
“Finish the story!” That was all that he could do.
“Finish the story!” His story and hers—only just begun, and now to end there in the dark.
But with a calmness as great as her own, he proceeded to tell all that had happened to him since he boarded the electric-car at Evanston and saw Maku sitting within. She pressed his hand gently when he described the trick by which the Japanese had brought the pursuit to an end. She laughed when he came to his meeting with the detective in his apartment. The episode with Madame Alia he passed over lightly, for part of it rankled now. Not that he blamed himself foolishly but he wished that it had not happened.
“That woman did a fine thing,” said the girl.
He went on to describe his efforts to get free from Alcatrante.
“And you were under the table in Arima’s room,” she exclaimed, when he had finished.
“I was there; but I couldn’t see you, Girl. And you seemed to doubt me.”
“To doubt you?”
“Don’t you remember? You said that no American had the papers; but you added, unless——”
“Unless Walsh, the burglar, had played a trick on Poritol and held the true papers back. I went straight from Arima’s to the jail and had another talk with Walsh. He convinced me that he knew nothing at all about the papers. He seemed to think that they were letters which Poritol wanted for his own purposes.”
“Then, you did not doubt me.” Glad relief was in his voice.
“I have never doubted you,” she said, simply.
There was silence. Only their breathing and the ticking of Orme’s watch broke the stillness.
“I don’t believe that Alcatrante knew that this place was unventilated,” she remarked at last.
“No; and he didn’t know that you were here.”
“He thinks that you will be released in the morning, and that you will think it wiser to make no charges. What do you suppose his conscience will say when he learns——”
“Girl, I simply can’t believe that there is no hope for us.”
“What possible chance is there?” Her voice was steady. “The clerks must all have gone by this time. We can’t make ourselves heard.”
“Still, I feel as though I should be fighting with the door.”
“You can’t open it.”
“But some one of the clerks going out may have seen that it was bolted. Wouldn’t he have pushed the bolt back? I’m going to see.”
He groped to the door and tugged at the handle. The door, for all the effect his effort had on it, might have been a section of solid wall.
“Come back,” she called.
He felt his way until his foot touched the coat. As he let himself down beside her, his hand brushed over her hair, and unconsciously she leaned toward him. He felt the pressure of her shoulder against his side, and the touch sent a thrill through him. He leaned back against the wall and stared into the blackness with eyes that saw only visions of the happiness that might have been.
“We mustn’t make any effort to break out,”she said. “It is useless. And every time we move about and tug at the door, it makes us breathe that much faster.”
“Yes,” he sighed, “I suppose we can only sit here and wait.”
“Do you know,” she said softly, “I am wondering why our situation does not seem more terrible to me. It should, shouldn’t it?”
“I hardly think so,” he replied.
“The relative importance of our worldly affairs,” she went on dreamily, “appears to change when one sees that they are all to stop at once. They recede into the background of the mind. What counts then is, oh, I don’t want to think of it! My father—he——” Her shoulders shook for a moment under the stress of sudden grief, but she quickly regained her control. “There, now,” she whispered, “I won’t do that.”
For a time they sat in silence. His own whirling thoughts were of a sort that he could not fathom; they possessed him completely, they destroyed, seemingly, all power of analysis, they made him dumb; and they were tangled inextricably in the blended impressions of possession and loss.
“But you,” she said at last, “is your father living?”
“No,” he replied.
“And your mother?” she faltered.
“She has been dead many years. And I have no brothers or sisters.”
“My mother died when I was a little child,” she mused. “Death seemed to me much more awful then than it does now.”
“It is always more awful to those who are left than to those who go,” he said. “But don’t think of that yet.”
“Wemustthink of it,” she insisted.
He did not answer.
“You don’t wish to die, do you?” she demanded.
“No; and I don’t wish you to die. Try to take a different view, Girl. We really have a chance of getting out.”
“How?”
“Someone may come.”
“Not at all likely,” she sighed.
“But a chance is a chance, Girl, dear.”
“Oh!” she cried, suddenly. “To think that I have brought you to this! That what youthought would be a little favor to me has brought you to death.”
She began to sob convulsively.
It was as though for the first time she realized her responsibility for his life; as though her confidence in her complete understanding of him had disappeared and he was again a stranger to her—a stranger whom she had coolly led to the edge of life with her.
“Don’t, Girl—don’t!” he commanded.
Her self-blame was terrible to him. But she could not check her grief, and finally, hardly knowing what he did, he put his arm around her and drew her closer to him. Her tear-wet cheek touched his. She had removed her hat, and her hair brushed his forehead.
“Girl, Girl!” he whispered, “don’t you know?—Don’t you understand? If chance had not kept us together, I would have followed you until I won you. From the moment I saw you, I have had no thought that was not bound up with you.”
“But think what I have done to you!” she sobbed. “I never realized that there was this danger. And you—you have your own friends, your interests. Oh, I——”
“My interests are all here—with you,” he answered. “It is I who am to blame. I should have known what Alcatrante would do.”
“You couldn’t know. There was no way——”
“I sent you up here to wait for me. Then, when he and I came in, I turned my back on him, like a blind fool.”
“No, no,” she protested.
“After all,” he said, “it was, perhaps, something that neither you nor I could foresee. No one is to blame. Isn’t that the best view to take of it?”
Her cheek moved against his as she inclined her head.
“It may be selfish in me,” he went on, “but I can’t feel unhappy—now.”
Her sobs had ceased, and she buried her face in his shoulder.
“I love you, Girl,” he said, brokenly. “I don’t expect you to care so much for me—yet. But I must tell you what I feel. There isn’t—there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, Girl—and be happy doing it.”
She did not speak, and for a long time they sat in silence. Many emotions were racingthrough him. His happiness was almost a pain, for it came to him in this extremity when there was no hope ahead. She had not yielded herself, but she had not resisted his embrace; even now her head was on his shoulder. Indeed, he had given her no chance to confess what she might feel for him.
Nor would he give her that chance. No, it was better that her love for him—he knew now that in her heart she must love him—it was better that it should not be crystallized by definite expression. For he had thought of a way by which she, at least, might be saved. With the faint possibility of rescue for them both, he hesitated to take the step. And yet every moment he was using that much more of the air that might keep her alive through the night.
It would be only right to wait until he was reasonably sure that all the clerks in the office had gone. That time could not be long now. But already the air was beginning to seem close; it was not so easy to breathe as it had been.
Gently putting her from him, he said: “The air will last longer if we lie down. The heart does not need so much blood, then.”
She did not answer, but moved from her seat on his folded coat, and he took it and arranged it as a pillow and, finding her hand, showed her where it was. He heard the rustle of her clothing as she adjusted herself on the floor. She clung to his hand, while he still sat beside her.
“Now,” he said, cheerfully, “I am going to find out what time it is, by breaking the crystal of my watch. I’ve seen blind men tell the time by feeling the dial.”
His watch was an old hunting-case which had belonged to his father. He opened it and cracked the crystal with his pocket-knife. As nearly as he could determine by the sense of touch, it was seven o’clock. Bessie Wallingham would be wondering by this time why he had broken an engagement with her for the second time that day.
“There is one thing more to do,” he said. “It is seven o’clock; I don’t know how much longer we shall be able to breathe easily, and I am going to write a note which will explain matters to the persons who find us—if we should not happen to be able to tell them.”
Laboriously he penciled on the back of an old envelope the explanation of their presence there,making a complete and careful charge against Alcatrante. He laid the message on the floor.
On second thought, he picked it up again and put it in his pocket, for if by any chance they should be rescued, he might forget it. In that event its discovery would possibly bring an exposure of facts which the girl and her father would not care to have disclosed.
A faint whisper from the girl.
“What is it?” he asked, bending tenderly for her answer.
“You must lie down, too.”
He began to move away, as if to obey her.
“No,” she whispered—“here. I want you near me.”
Slowly he reclined and laid his head on the coat. Her warm breath was on his face. He felt for her hand, and found it, and it held tightly to his.
His own mind was still torn with doubts as to the best course. Should he put himself out of the way that she might live? The sacrifice might prove unnecessary. Rescue might come when it was too late for him, yet not too late, if he did not hurry his own end. And if she truly loved him and knew that she loved him, such an act on hispart would leave her a terrible grief which time would hardly cure.
He tried to analyze their situation more clearly, to throw new light on his duty. The clerks must all have gone by now. There would be a visit or two from a night watchman, perhaps, but there was scarcely one chance in a hundred that he would unbolt the door.
The air was vitiating rapidly; they could not both live through the night. But—if she loved him as he loved her, she would be happier to die with him than to live at the cost of his life.
He pictured for himself again that last look of her face: its beauty, its strength, its sweet sympathy. He seemed to see the stray wisp of hair that had found its way down upon her cheek. Her perfect lips—how well he remembered!—were the unopened buds of pure womanly passion.
After all, whether she loved him or not, there would still be much in life for her.
Time would cure her sorrow. There would be many claims upon her, and she would sooner or later resume her normal activities.
Slowly he disengaged his hand from her clingingfingers. In his other hand he still held his pocket-knife. To open a vein in his wrist would take but a moment. His life would well away, there on the tiles.
She would think he was asleep; and then she herself would drift away into unconsciousness which would be broken only after the door was opened in the morning.
Bah! His mind cleared in a flash. What a fool he was! Need he doubt her for an instant? Need he question what she would do when she found that he was dead? And she would know it quickly. This living pulsing girl beside him loved him! She had told him in every way except in words. In life and in death they belonged to each other.
They were one forever. They still lived, and while they lived they must hope. And if hope failed, there still would be love.
His pent-up emotions broke restraint. With unthinking swiftness, he threw his arm over her and drew her tight to him. His lips found hers in a long kiss—clung in ecstasy for another, and another.
Her arms went about his neck. He felt asthough her soul had passed from her lips to his own.
“My lover!” she whispered. “I think I have always cared.”
“O, Girl, Girl!” He could utter no more.
With a faint sigh she said: “I am glad it is to be together.” She sat up, still holding his hand. “If it need be at all,” she added, a new firmness in her voice.
“If it need be at all!” Orme searched his mind again for some promise of escape from this prison which had been so suddenly glorified for them. The smooth, unbreakable walls; the thin seam of the door; the thermometer. Why had he not thought of it before? The thermometer!
With an exclamation, he leaped to his feet.
“What is it?” she cried.
“A chance! A small chance—but still a chance!”
He found his way to the handle of the door, which his first attempt at escape had taught him was not connected with the outer knob. Then he located the covering which protected the coils of the thermometer.
Striking with his heel, he tried to break themetal grating. It would not yield. Again and again he threw his weight into the blows, but without effect.
At last he remembered his pocket-knife. Thrusting one end of it through the grating, he prodded at the glass coils within. There was a tinkling sound. He had succeeded.
He groped his way back to the girl and seated himself beside her. With the confession of their love, a new hope had sprung up in them. They might still be freed, and, though the air was becoming stifling, neither of them believed that a joy as great as theirs could be born to live but a few hours.
For the hundredth time he was saying: “I can’t believe that we have known each other only one day.”
“And even now,” she mused, “you don’t know my name. Do you want me to tell you?”
“Not until you are ready.”
“Then wait. It will all come in due form. Someone will say, ‘Mr. Orme, Miss——.’”
“The name doesn’t matter,” said Orme. “To me you will always be just—Girl.”
The joyous moments rushed by. She had creptclose to him again, and with her head on his shoulder, was saying: “There is so much for us to tell each other.”
“There seems to be only one thing to say now.” He kissed her tenderly.
“Oh, but there is much more.”
“Where shall we begin?” asked Orme.
“Well, to be matter-of-fact, do you live in Chicago?”
“No, dear. I live in New York.”
“I didn’t even know that,” she whispered, “And about me. Our family home has been in one of the suburbs here since I was a small girl. For several years I was sent East to school, and after that I went abroad with some friends. And since then——”
“It can’t be so very long,” he whispered, “though you speak as though it were decades.”
“It is six years. Since then my father and I have spent our winters in the East, coming back home for the summers. Just think how much you are learning about me!”
Orme lifted her hand to his lips.
Suddenly the room filled with a light which to their expanded pupils seemed bright as the sun.The door had been opened and an electric light in the reception-hall shone in. Framed in the doorway was the outline of a man.
Orme shouted joyfully and jumped to his feet.
“Why—what——?” the man began.
Orme helped the girl up, and together they went to the outer light. For a moment they could do nothing but breathe, so good the fresh air of the reception-room seemed to them. Then, looking at the man again, Orme saw that it was the clerk to whom Alcatrante had made his accusation two hours before.
“How did you come to be in there?” the clerk demanded.
Orme hesitated; then he decided to make no charges. “I got rid of that crazy fellow who was following me around,” he said, “and I came back, and this young lady and I went in to examine your refrigerator. The door was ajar, and someone pushed it shut and locked it. We should have smothered if you had not come.”
“It was the merest chance,” said the clerk. “My work kept me late. As I was leaving, I happened to glance at the thermometer dial here. It registered below freezing. I couldn’t understandthat, for there is no ice in the refrigerator, so I opened the door to see.”
“I broke the coil,” explained Orme, “in the hope that the night watchman might be interested in the dial.”
“Well,” said the clerk, drawing a long breath, “you had a close shave. There isn’t any night watchman—at least not in this office. If I had balanced my books on time to-day, you two would have stayed where you were until to-morrow morning.”
“I will come in to-morrow to see Mr. Wallingham and explain everything. I will pay for a new thermometer, too, if he will let me.”
“I don’t think he will let you do that,” said the clerk. “He will be grateful that nothing worse happened.”
“Yes, I believe he will,” replied Orme.
He glanced at the clock. It was a quarter after seven. Going back into the chamber which, had been the scene of both their danger and their happiness, he got his coat and the girl’s hat. The parchment papers crackled in his pocket as he put the coat on. The girl, meantime, adjusted her hat.
“Say,” said the clerk, holding the outer door open for them to pass through, “was that fellow’s story about your holding notes of ours—was there anything in it?”
“Absolutely untrue,” replied Orme.
“He must have had you confused with somebody else.”
“He must have.” Orme held out his hand. “Many thanks to you for saving our lives.”
Then Orme and the girl made their way to the elevator.
CHAPTER XVFROM THE DEVIL TO THE DEEP SEA
“How shall we go?” asked Orme, as they descended to the street level.
“By train. There is no other convenient way, since my car is at home.” She looked at him doubtfully, and added, “but they will be watching the railroad stations.”
He nodded. “A motor would be safer—if we can get one.” He gave her hand a secret pressure while the elevator-boy was opening the door for them, and as she passed before him she flashed upon him a look so filled with love and trust that the sudden thrill of his happiness almost stifled him.
At the La Salle Street entrance Orme had a fleeting glimpse of the watching Alcatrante. The South American, after one astonished stare, darted away in the dusk. He would follow them, of course, but Orme decided to say nothing about him to the girl.
“I must telephone,” she said suddenly, stoppingas if to turn back into the building. “Father will be very anxious.”
“The booths in the building must be closed,” he said. “We’d better try a drug store.”
Accordingly they made their way to the nearest, and the girl went to the booth. The door was shut for a long time.
While he was waiting, Orme glanced through the brilliant window. In the light of an electric lamp across the street he discerned faintly a motionless figure; without hesitation he crossed the pavement, recognizing Alcatrante more clearly as he left the dazzle of the store.
The minister did not budge. His face, as Orme approached, was cold and expressionless.
“Senhor,” exclaimed Orme, “does your trade include murder?”
“Not at all. Why do you ask, Mr. Orme?”
“Because only a lucky intervention has saved you from the murder of a young lady and myself.”
“You are exaggerating, my dear sir.” Alcatrante laughed.
“Is it your custom to lock people into air-tight chambers?”
“Air-tight?” Alcatrante was clearly disconcerted. “I did not suppose that it was air-tight. Also, I did not dream that the young lady was there. But this game is a serious game, Mr. Orme. You do not appear to understand. When one is working for his country, many strange things are justified.”
“Even murder?”
“Even murder—sometimes.”
Orme had an inspiration. “Thank you for the truth, Senhor,” he said. “I, too, am working for my country. If you continue to follow us, I shall assume that you have murder in your mind, and I shall act accordingly.”
Alcatrante smiled coolly.
“This is fair warning,” continued Orme.
He glanced to the drug store and saw the girl coming out of the telephone-booth. Hastening across the street, he met her at the door.
“If father had had any idea of such complications when we came West,” she said, “there would have been plenty of men near by to help us. As it is, we shall have to act alone. It is not a matter for detectives—or for the police, I—I almost wish it were,” she faltered.
Orme wondered again whether this father could have realized what dangers the girl was encountering. But, as if divining his sudden anger against the man who could let his daughter run such risks, she added: “He doesn’t know, of course, the details of our adventures. I have permitted him to think that it is simply a matter of searching.”
“And now he is reassured.”
“Yes. Oh, you have no idea yet how important it is.”
“You were a long time in the booth,” he said.
A mysterious smile flittered across her face. “I thought of another person I wished to talk to. That person was hard to get.”
“Long distance?”
“It proved necessary to use long distance.”
Then she caught a glimpse of the figure across the street. “There’s Mr. Alcatrante,” she exclaimed.
“Yes, I have just had a talk with him.”
Her face showed concern.
“Don’t let him worry you, dear,” he added. “He will try to balk us. We must expect that. But I think I can take care of him.”
“I believe it,” she said, softly.
He wondered whether she could guess how relentlessly he was planning to deal with Alcatrante. Would she justify the course he had in mind? As to her attitude, he felt doubtful. Perhaps she did not agree with the South American that murder was sometimes necessary in the service of one’s country.
Moreover, while Alcatrante was undoubtedly serving the interest of his country, Orme had no real certainty that he himself was in a similar position. He had every reason to infer that the papers were of importance to the United States Government, but after all he could only go by inference. The affairs of some private corporation in the United States might have a serious bearing on problems in South America and the Far East. He decided to sound the girl for information that would be more definite.
But first the question as to their next move must be answered.
“Do you know where we can get a motor?” he said.
“No”—she prolonged the word doubtfully. “We may have to take a motor-cab.”
“It would be safer than the railroad or the electric line.” Then he asked with great seriousness “Girl, dear, I don’t know much about the meaning and value of these papers in my pocket, and I don’t care to know any more than you choose to tell me. But let me know just this much: Are they as important to you as they are to our enemies? Have you really been justified in the risks you have run?”
“You have seen how far Alcatrante and the Japanese have been willing to go,” she replied, gravely. “I am sure that they would not hesitate to kill us, if it seemed necessary to them in their effort to get possession of the papers. Now, my dear, they are even much more important to my father.”
“In his business interests?”
“Much more than that.”
They were walking along the glimmering cañon of La Salle Street, which was now almost deserted in the dusk. A motor-car swept slowly around the corner ahead and came toward them. It had but one occupant, a chauffeur, apparently. He wore a dust-coat, a cap, and goggles which seemed to be too large for him.
Regardless of Alcatrante, who was following them, Orme hailed the chauffeur. “Will you take a fare?” he called.
The man stopped his car and after a moment of what Orme interpreted as indecision, nodded slowly.
“How much by the hour?” asked Orme.
The chauffeur held up the ten fingers of his two hands.
Orme looked at the girl. He hadn’t that much money with him.
“If I only had time to cash a check,” he said.
“All right,” she whispered. “I have plenty.”
They got into the tonneau, and the girl, leaning forward, said: “Take the Lake Shore Drive and Sheridan Road to Evanston.”
Again the chauffeur nodded, without turning toward them.
“He doesn’t waste many words,” whispered the girl to Orme.
While the car was turning Orme noted that Alcatrante had stopped short and was watching them. It was some reason for surprise that he was not hunting for a motor in which to follow.
Perhaps his plans were so completely balkedthat he was giving up altogether. No, that would not be like Alcatrante. Orme now realized that in all likelihood the minister had foreseen some such circumstance and had made plans accordingly.
He was more and more inclined to believe that Alcatrante had but half expected to keep him long imprisoned in Wallingham’s office. Then what had been the purpose underlying the trick? Probably the intention was to make Orme prisoner for as long a period as possible and, in any event, to gain time enough to communicate with Poritol and the Japanese and whatever other persons might be helping in the struggle to regain the papers. The probabilities were that Alcatrante had been using the last two hours to get in touch with his friends.
And now those friends would be informed promptly that Orme and the girl were setting out by motor. This analysis apparently accounted for Alcatrante’s nonchalance. Orme and the girl seemed to be escaping, but in truth, if they approached their destination at all, they must run into the ambuscade of other enemies. Then the nearer the goal, the greater the danger.
As the motor slid smoothly northward on LaSalle Street, Orme looked back. Alcatrante had made no move. The last glimpse that Orme had of him showed that slight but sinister figure alone on the sidewalk of the deserted business street.
They crossed the Clark Street bridge. “Keep on out North Clark Street until you can cross over to Lincoln Park,” said Orme to the chauffeur.
The only indication that the order had been heard was a bending forward of the bowed figure on the front seat.
Orme explained to the girl. “It will be better not to take the Lake Shore Drive. They may be watching the Père Marquette.”
“You are right,” she said. “As a precaution, we’d better not pass the hotel.”
“How surprised I was to find you waiting for me there last evening,” mused Orme—“and how glad!”
“I never called on a man before,” she laughed.
“I had made up my mind only a little while before,” he continued, “to stay in Chicago till I found you.”
“I’m afraid that would not have been easy.” She returned the pressure of his hand, which hadfound hers. “If it hadn’t been for those papers, we might never have met.”
“We were bound to meet—you and I,” he said. “I have been waiting all my life just for you.”
“But even now you don’t know who I am. I may be a—a political adventuress—or a woman detective—or——”
“You may be,” he said, “but you are the woman I love. Your name—your business, if you have one—those things don’t matter. I know you, and I love you.”
She leaned closer to him. “Dear,” she whispered impulsively, “I am going to tell you everything—who I am, and about the papers——”
“Wait!” He held his hand before her mouth. “Don’t tell me now. Do as you planned to do. Be simply ‘Girl’ to me for a while longer.”
She moved closer to him. Their errand, the danger, were for the time forgotten, and the motor hummed along with a burden of happiness.
“You haven’t looked at the papers yet,” said Orme, after a time. They were turning east toward Lincoln Park.
“Do I need to?”
“Perhaps not. I took them from the envelopewhich you saw at Arima’s. But here they are. I did not look at them, of course.”
He drew the parchments from within his coat and placed them in her hand.
While she examined them, he looked straight ahead, that he might not see. He could hear them crackle as she unfolded them—could hear her sigh of content.
And then something occurred that disquieted him to a degree which seemed unwarranted. The chauffeur suddenly turned around and glanced swiftly through his goggles at the girl and the papers. The action was, perhaps, natural; but there was an assured expectancy in the way he turned—Orme did not like it. Moreover, there was something alarmingly familiar in the manner of the movement.
Somewhere Orme had seen a man move his body like that. But before his suspicions could take form, the chauffeur had turned again.
The girl handed the papers back to Orme. “These are the right papers,” she said. “Oh, my dear, if you only knew how much they mean.”
He held them for a moment in his hand. Then, after returning them to his pocket with as littlenoise as possible, he caught the girl’s eye and, with a significant glance toward the chauffeur, said in a distinct voice:
“I will slip them under the seat cushion. They will be safer there.”
Did the chauffeur lean farther back, as if to hear better? or was the slight movement a false record by Orme’s imagination?
Orme decided to be on the safe side, so he slipped under the cushion of the extra seat another mining prospectus which he had in his pocket, placing it in such a way that the end of the paper protruded. Then he put his lips close to the girl’s ear and whispered:
“Don’t be alarmed, but tell me, does our chauffeur remind you of anyone?”
She studied the stolid back in front of them. The ill-fitting dust-coat masked the outline of the figure; the cap was so low on the head that the ears were covered.
“No,” she said, at last, “I think not.”
With that, Orme sought to reassure himself.
They were in Lincoln Park now. Over this same route Orme and the girl had ridden less than twenty-four hours before. To him the period seemed like a year. Then he had been plunginginto mysteries unknown with the ideal of his dreams; now he was moving among secrets partly understood, with the woman of his life—loving her and knowing that she loved him.
One short day had brought all this to pass. He had heard it said that Love and Time are enemies. The falseness of the saying was clear to him in the light of his own experience. Love and Time are not enemies; they are strangers to each other.
On they went northward. To Orme the streets through which they passed were now vaguely familiar, yet he could hardly believe his eyes when they swung around on to the Lake Front at Evanston, along the broad ribbon of Sheridan Road.
But there was the dark mysterious surface of Lake Michigan at their right. Beyond the broad beach, he could see the line of breakwaters, and at their left the electric street lights threw their beams into the blackness of little parks and shrubby lawns.
The car swept to the left, past the university campus.
“Do you remember?” asked the girl, in a low voice, pressing his arm. Then, “Don’t!” shewhispered. “Someone will see!” for he had drawn her face to his.
They came to the corner of Chicago Avenue and Sheridan Road, where they had halted the night before in their search for the hidden papers. “We’d better give him further directions,” said the girl.
But the chauffeur turned north at the corner and put on more speed.
“He’s taking the right direction,” she laughed. “Perhaps his idea is to follow Sheridan Road till we tell him to turn.”
“I don’t quite like it,” said Orme, thoughtfully. “He’s a bit too sure of what he’s doing.”
The girl hesitated. “Itisfunny,” she exclaimed. “And he’s going faster, too.” She leaned forward and called up to the chauffeur: “Stop at this corner.”
He did not seem to hear. She repeated the order in a louder voice, but the only answer was another burst of speed.
Then Orme reached up and touched the chauffeur’s shoulder. “Stop the car!” he cried.
The chauffeur did not obey. He did not even turn his head.
Orme and the girl looked at each other. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“I’m afraid I am beginning to,” Orme replied. “He will not stop until we are where he wishes us to be.”
“We can’t get out,” she exclaimed.
“No. And if I pull him out of the seat, the car will be ditched.” He puzzled vainly to hit on a method of action, and meantime the moments sped.
They passed the university grounds quickly. Orme retained an impression of occasional massive buildings at the right, including the dome of an observatory, and at the left the lighted windows of dwellings.
He saw, too, the tower of a lighthouse, a dark foundation supporting a changing light above; and then the road turned sharply to the left and, after a few hundred yards, curved again to the north.
Suddenly the chauffeur slowed down. On either side were groves of trees. Ahead were the lights of an approaching motor.
Orme was still at a loss, and the girl was awaiting some decision from him. When the chauffeurat last turned and spoke—three short words—Orme realized too late the situation he and the girl were in.
“We stop now,” said the chauffeur.
And the girl, with a horrified gasp, exclaimed: “Maku!”
Yes, it was the Japanese.
Calmly he put on the brakes and brought the car to a standstill by the roadside; then, removing his goggles, turned to Orme and the girl and smiled an unscrutable smile. There was an ugly bruise on his forehead, where Orme had struck him with the wrench.
But quick though Maku was, he was not quick enough to see a motion which Orme had made immediately after the moment of recognition—a motion which had even escaped the notice of the girl. Perhaps it accounted for the coolness with which Orme met his enemy’s eyes.