"Do you imagine that we can get away now, in broad daylight?" She seemed dazed by the suggestion.

"Why not? You want to get out of here, don't you?"

"Yes—I—of course I do!"

"You don't seem very sure of it."

Laurie was smiling down at her with his hands still in his pockets, but there was an expression in his eyes she had never seen there before, an expression keen, cold, almost but not quite suspicious.

"Yes, but—you don't understand. Shaw has other men on watch, two of them."

"Where?"

"In the grounds. One in the front and the other in the back."

The new-comer mentally digested this unwelcome information.

"If we wait till it's dark," said the girl, "we'll have a better chance."

"Unless Shaw gets back in the meantime." He was still watching her with that new look in his eyes. Then, briskly, he returned to his interest in the doorlock.

"In any case," he casually remarked, "we don't want to be jailed here."

She said no more, but sat watching him as he worked, deftly and silently. In little more than the time he had predicted he opened the door and held it wide.

"Any time you would like to pass out," he invited, then checked himself and vanished in the dimness of the hall. The girl left behind heard the sounds of running feet, of a sharp scuffle, of a few words spoken in a high, excited voice. Then Laurie reentered the room, pushing the secretary before him. At present the youth looked anything but meek. His blond hair was on end, his tie was under one ear, his pale eyes were bright with anger, and he moved spasmodically, propelled by jerks from behind.

"I don't like this young man," said Laurie, conversationally. "I never have. So I'm going to put him where for a few hours he can't annoy us. Is there a good roomy closet on this floor? If there is, kindly lead us to it."

"Say, hold on!" cried the blond youth, in outraged tones. "I'm sick of this."

"Shut up." Laurie shook him gently. "And cheer up. You're going to have a change. Lead on, please."

Thus urged, and further impelled, the secretary obediently led the way to a closet at the far end of the upper hall. It was fairly commodious, and full of garments hanging on pegs and smelling oppressively of camphor. It afforded an electric-light fixture, and Laurie, switching on the light, emphasized this advantage to the reluctant new occupant, who unwisely put up a brief and losing fight on its threshold.

"You may read if you like," Laurie affably suggested, when this had been suppressed. "I'll bring you some magazines. You may even smoke. Mr. Shaw and I always treat our prisoners with the utmost courtesy. You don't smoke? Excellent! Safer for the closet, and a fine stand for a worthy young man to take. Now, I'll get the magazines for you."

He did so, and the blond secretary accepted them with a black scowl.

"I'm afraid," observed Laurie regretfully, "he has an ungrateful nature."

He locked the door on the infuriated youth, pocketed the key, and faced Doris, who had followed the brief procession. The little encounter had restored his poise.

"What next?" he asked, placidly.

Her reply was in the nature of a shock.

"I'd like to have you wash up."

He raised his eyebrows.

"And spoil my admirable disguise? However, if you insist, I suppose I can get most of the effect again with ashes, if I have to. Where's a bath-room?"

She indicated a door, and returned to her room. He made his ablutions slowly and very thoughtfully. There were elements in this new twist of the situation which did not tally with any of his former hypotheses. Doris, too, was doing some thinking on her own account. When he returned to the sitting-room she wore the air of one who has pondered deeply and has come to a conclusion.

"What do your friends call you?" she abruptly asked.

"All kinds of things," admitted the young man. "I wouldn't dare to repeat some of them." Under the thoughtful regard of her red-brown eyes his manner changed. "My sister calls me Laurie," he added soberly.

"May I?"

"By all means, if you'll promise not to be a sister to me."

"Then—Laurie—"

"I like that," he interrupted.

"So do I. Laurie—I—I'm going to tell you something."

He waited, watching her; and under the renewed friendliness of his black eyes she stopped and flushed, her own eyes dropping before his. As if to gain time she changed her position in the chair where she sat, and leaned forward, an elbow on its arm, her chin in one hand, her gaze on the fire. His perception sharpened to the knowledge that something important was coming, and that it was something she was afraid to tell. She had keyed herself up to it, but the slightest false move on his part might check the revelation. Therefore, though every impulse in him responded to her first intimate use of his name, he dropped negligently into the chair facing hers, tenderly embraced his knees with both arms, and answered with just the right accent of casual interest and interrogation.

"Yes?" he said.

"Please smoke." Again she was playing for time. "And—and don't look at me," she added, almost harshly. "I—I think I can get it out better if you don't."

His answer was to swing his chair around beside hers, facing the blazing logs, and to take out his case and light a cigarette.

"I'm going to tell you everything," she said in a low tone.

"I'm glad of that."

"I'm going to do it," she went on slowly, "for two reasons. The first is that—that you've lost faith in me."

This brought his eyes around to hers in a quick glance. "You're wrong about that."

She shook her head. "Oh, no, I'm not. You showed it almost from the moment you came, and there was an instant when you thought that my suggestion to wait till dark to get away meant a—a sort of ambush."

He made no reply to this, and she said urgently, "Didn't you? Come, now. Confess."

He reflected for a moment.

"The idea did cross my mind," he admitted, at last. "But it didn't linger. For one reason, it was impossible to reconcile it with Shaw's desire to keep me out of the way. That, and this, are hard to understand. But no harder to understand," he went on, "than that you should willingly come here and yet send for me, and then quite obviously delay our leaving after I get here."

Again her eyes dropped before his brilliant, steady glance.

"I know," she muttered, almost inaudibly. "It's all—horrible. It's infinitely worse than you suspect. And that's why I'm going to tell you the truth, big as the cost may be to me."

"Wait a minute," he interrupted. "Let's get this straight. You're telling me, aren't you, that any revelation you make now will react on you. Is that it?"

"Yes."

"You will be the chief sufferer by it?"

"Yes."

"Will it help you any to have me understand? Will it straighten out the trouble you're in?"

She considered her answer.

"The only help it will give me will be to know that you do understand," she said at last; "to know that—that—you're not suspecting things about me."

"And it will make things hard for you, otherwise, to have me know?" he persisted.

"Yes." This time her answer was prompt. "It will end everything I am trying to do, and destroy what I have already done."

Laurie threw his half-burned cigarette into the fire, as if to lend greater emphasis to his next words.

"That settles it," he announced. "I won't listen to you."

She turned to look at him.

"But you must," she faltered. "I'm all ready to tell you. I've been working myself up to it ever since you came."

"I know. I've watched the process, and I won't have another word." He lit a second cigarette, drew in a mouthful of smoke, and sent it forth again in a series of widening rings. "Your conversation is extremely uninteresting," he explained; "and look at the setting we've got for something romantic and worth while. This cozy room, this roaring fire,"—he interrupted himself to glance through the nearest window—"a ripping old snow-storm outside, that's getting worse every minute, and the exhilarating sense that though we're prisoners, we've already taken two perfectly good prisoners of our own; what more could one ask to make an afternoon in the country really pleasant?"

He stopped, for she was crying again, and the sight, which had taxed his strength an hour earlier, overtaxed it now. She overwhelmed him like a breaker. He rose, and going close to her, knelt beside her chair.

"Doris," he begged, brokenly. "Don't, don't cry! I can't tell you how it makes me feel. I—I can stand anything but that." He seized her hands and tried to pull them away from her face. "Look at me," he urged. "I've got all sorts of things to say to you, but I won't say them now. This isn't the time or the place. But one thing, at least, I want you to know. I do trust you. I trust you absolutely. And whatever happens, whatever all this incredible tangle may mean, I shall always trust you."

She wiped her eyes and looked into his, more serious in that moment than she had ever seen them.

"I will stop," she promised, with a little catch in her voice. "But please don't think I'm a hysterical fool. I'm not crying because I'm frightened, but because—because—Laurie, you're so splendid!"

For a moment his hands tightened almost convulsively on hers. In the next instant he rose to his feet, walked to the fireplace, and with an arm on the mantel, stood partly turned away from her, looking into the fire. He dared not look at her. In that moment he was passionately calling on the new self-control which had been born during the past year; and, at his call, it again awoke in him, ready for its work. This, he had just truly said to Doris, was not the time nor the place to tell her what was in his heart. Only a cad would take advantage of such an opportunity. He had said enough, perhaps too much. He drew a deep breath and was himself.

"I told you you'd find all sorts of unexpected virtues in me," he lightly announced; and it was the familiar Laurie who smiled down at her. "There are dozens more you don't dream of. I'll reveal them to you guardedly. They're rather overwhelming."

She smiled vaguely at his chatter, but it was plain that she was following her own thoughts.

"The most wonderful thing about you," she said, "is that through this whole experience, you've never, for one single instant, been 'heroic.' You're not the kind to 'emote'!"

"Great Scott!" gasped Laurie, startled. "I should hope not!"

He could look at her now, and he did, his heart filled with the satisfying beauty of her. She was still leaning forward a little in the low chair, with her hands unconventionally clasped around one knee, and her eyes staring into the fire. A painter, he reflected, would go mad over the picture she made; and why not? He himself was going mad over it, was even a little light-headed.

She wore again the gown she had worn the first day he saw her, and the memory of that poignant hour intensified the emotion of this one. Taking her in, from the superb masses of hair on her small head to the glittering buckles on her low house-shoes, Laurie knew at last that whoever and whatever this girl might be, she was the one whose companionship through life his hungry heart demanded. He loved her. He would trust her, blindly if he must, but whatever happened fully and for all time.

There had been a long silence after his last words, but when she spoke it was as if there had been no interval between his chatter and her response.

"Almost any other man would have been 'heroic,'" she went on. "Almost any other man would have been excited and emotional at times, and then would have been exacting and difficult and rebellious over all the mystery, and the fact that I couldn't explain. I've set that pace myself," she confessed. "I haven't always been able to take things quietly and—and philosophically. The wonderful thing about you is that you've never been overwhelmed by any situation we've been in together. You've never even seemed to take them very seriously. And yet, when it came to a 'show-down,' as Shaw says, you've been right there, always."

He made no answer to this. His mind was caught and held by the phrase "as Shaw says." So she and Shaw had talked him over! He recalled the silver-framed photograph of her on Shaw's mantel, the photograph whose presence had made him see red; and a queer little chill went down his spine at this reminder of their strange and unexplained association. Then, resolutely, he again summoned his will and his faith, and became conscious that she was still speaking.

"You're the kind," she said, "that in the French Revolution, if you had been a victim of it, would have gone to the guillotine with a smile and a jest, and would have seen in the experience only a new adventure."

At that, he shook his head.

"I don't know," he said slowly, and with the seriousness he had shown her once or twice before. "Death is a rather important thing. I've been thinking about it a good deal lately."

"You have!" In her astonishment, she straightened in her chair. "Why?"

"Well," he hesitated, "I haven't spoken about it much, but—the truth is, I'm taking the European war more seriously than I have seemed to. I think America will swing into the fight in a month or two more; I really don't see how we can keep out any longer. And I've made up my mind to volunteer as soon as we declare war."

"Oh, Laurie!"

That was all she said, but it was enough. Again he turned away from her and looked into the fire.

"I want to talk to you about it sometime," he went on. "Not now, of course. I'm going in for the aviation end. That's my game."

"Yes, it would be," she corroborated, almost inaudibly.

"I've been thinking about it a lot," he repeated. There was an intense, unexpected relief in this confidence, which he had made to no one else but Bangs, and to him in only a casual phrase or two. "That's one reason why it has been hard for me to get down to work on a new play, as Bangs and Epstein have been hounding me to do. I was afraid I couldn't keep my mind on it. All I can think of, besides you—" he hesitated, then went on rather self-consciously—"are those fellows over there and the tremendous job they're doing. I want to help. I'm going to help. But I'm not going into it with any illusions about military bands and pretty uniforms and grand-stand plays. It's the biggest job in the world to-day, and it's got to be done. But what I see in it in the meantime are blood and filth and stench and suffering and horror and a limitless, stoical endurance. And—well, I know I'm going. But I can't quite see myself coming home."

Save for his revelation on the morning they met, this was the longest personal confidence Laurence Devon had ever made to another human being except his sister Barbara. At its end, as she could not speak, he watched her for a moment in silence, already half regretting what he had said. Then she rose with a fiercely abrupt movement, and going to the window stood looking at the storm. He followed her and stood beside her.

"Laurie," she said suddenly.

"Yes?"

"I can't stand it."

"Can't stand it?"

He repeated her words almost absently. His eyes were on a stocky figure moving among the trees below. It kept in constant motion and, he observed with pleasure, it occasionally stamped its feet and swung its arms as if suffering from the cold.

"I can't stand this situation."

"Then we must clear it up for you." He spoke reassuringly, his eyes still on the active figure. "Is that one of our keepers, down there?"

She nodded.

"He has instructions to watch the front entrance and windows. There's another man watching the rear."

"He didn't watch very closely," he reminded her. "See how easily I got in." He studied the moving figure. "Doris," he said slowly, "I'd bet a thousand dollars against one doughnut that if I walked out of the house and up to that fellow, he'd run like a rabbit. I don't know why I think so, but I do."

She shook her head.

"Oh, no, he wouldn't!"

"What makes you think he wouldn't?"

"Because I heard Shaw give him his orders for just that contingency."

Her companion took this in silence.

"May I ask what they were?" he said at last.

"No, I can't tell you."

"I hope he hasn't a nice little bottle of chloroform in his overcoat pocket, or vitriol," murmured Laurie, reflectively. "By the way," he turned to her with quickened interest, "something tells me it's long after lunch-time. Is there any reason why we shouldn't eat?"

She smiled.

"None whatever. The ice-box contains all the things a well regulated ice-box is supposed to hold. I overheard Shaw and his secretary discussing their supplies."

"Good! Then we'll release Mother Fagin long enough to let her cook some of them."

He strolled to the bedroom door. On a chair facing it the woman sat and gazed at him with her fierce eyes.

"Would you like a little exercise?" he politely inquired. There was no change of expression in the hostile face. "Because if you would," he went on, "and if you'll give me your word not to cry out, give any kind of alarm or signal, or start anything whatever, I'll take that bandage off your mouth, and let you cook lunch for us and for yourself."

The fierce eyes set, then wavered. He waited patiently. At last the head nodded, and he expeditiously untied the bandage.

"The very best you've got, please," he instructed. "And I hope you can cook. If you can't, I'll have to do it myself. I'm rather gifted that way."

"I can cook," avowed the old woman, sullenly.

"Good work! Then go on your joyous way. But if you feel an impulse to invite into your kitchen any of the gentlemen out in the grounds, or to release the secretary, restrain it. They wouldn't like it in here. They wouldn't like it at all."

A strange grimace twisted the woman's sardonic features. He interpreted it rightly.

"I'm glad you agree with me," he said. "Now, brook-trout, please, and broiled chickens, and early strawberries and clotted cream."

She looked at him with a return of the stoic expression that was her habitual one.

"We ain't got any of those things," she declared.

"We ain't?" Her guest was pained. "What have we got?"

"We got ham and eggs and lettuce and milk and coffee and squash pie."

He sighed.

"They will do," he said resignedly. "Do you think you could have them ready in five minutes?"

The luncheon was a cheerful meal, for Laurie made it so. When it was finished he went to the kitchen window, opened it, and carefully arranged several hot ham sandwiches in a row.

"For the birdies," he explained. "For the cold little birdies out in the grounds."

He even chirped invitingly to the "birdies," but these latter, throughout his visit, showed a coy reluctance to approach the house. He caught another odd grimace on the features of the old woman, who was now washing the dishes.

"We won't confine you to any one room this afternoon," he told her. "Wander where your heart leads you. But remember, you're on parole. Like ourselves, you must forego all communication with the glad outer world. And leave the secretary where he is, unless you want him hurt."

"This storm will be a good thing for us," he mentioned to Doris, when they had returned to the up-stairs sitting-room. "It will be dark soon after four, and the snow will cover our footsteps. But I'm inclined to think," he added, reflectively, "that before we start I'd better go out and truss up those two birds in the grounds."

She showed an immediate apprehension.

"No, no! you mustn't think of that!" she cried. "Promise me you won't."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"As you wish, of course. But if they interfere when we're getting started, surely you'll let me rock them to sleep, won't you?"

"I—I don't know. Something may happen! Oh, I wish you hadn't come!" She was clearly in a panic, a genuine one. It seemed equally clear that her nerves, under the recent strain put upon them, were in a bad way. All this was Shaw's work, and as he realized it Laurie's expression changed so suddenly that the girl cried out: "What is it? What's the matter?"

He answered, still under the influence of the feeling that had shaken him.

"I was just thinking of our friend Bertie and of a little bill he's running up against the future. Sooner or later, and I rather think it will be sooner, Bertie's going to pay that bill."

She did not move, but gave him a look that made him thoughtful. It was an odd, sidelong look, frightened, yet watchful. He remembered that once or twice before she had given him such a look. More than anything else that had happened, this glance chilled him. It was not thus that the woman he loved should look at him.

Suddenly he heard her gasp, and the next instant the silence of the room was broken by another voice, a voice of concentrated rage with a snarl running through it.

"So you're here, are you?" it jerked. "By God, I'm sick of you and of your damned interference!"

He turned. Shaw was standing just inside the door. But he was not the sleek, familiar, torpid figure of recent encounter. He seemed mad clean through, fighting mad. His jaws were set; his sleek head and heavy shoulders were thrust forward as if he were ready to spring, and his protuberant eyes had lost their haze and held a new and unpleasant light.

But, angry though he appeared, Herbert Ransome Shaw was taking no chances in this encounter with his undesired guest. Behind him shone the now smug countenance of the blond secretary, and on each side he was flanked by another man. Powerful fellows these two seemed, evidently Italian laborers, gazing at the scene uncomprehendingly, but ready for any work their master set them. In stupefaction, Laurie stared at the tableau, while eight eyes unwinkingly stared back at him. Then he nodded.

"Well, Bertie," he said pleasantly, "you're outdoing even yourself in the size of this delegation. Four to one. Quite some odds." His voice changed. "You contemptible coward! Why don't you take me on alone? Have you got your chloroform cone?"

The complexion of Shaw, red with cold, darkened to an apoplectic purple.

"You'll soon find out what we've got," he barked, "and what's coming to you. Now, are you going to put up a fight against four, or will you go quietly?"

"I think," said Laurie thoughtfully, "I'd rather go quietly. But just where is it I'm going?"

"You'll soon know." Shaw was carrying a coil of rope, light but strong, and now he tossed it to one of the Italians.

"Tie him up," he curtly ordered.

"Oh, no," said Laurie, backing a step. "Tut, tut! I wouldn't advise that. I really wouldn't. It would be one of those rash acts you read about."

Something in his voice checked the forward stride of the Italian with the rope. He hesitated, glancing at Shaw. With a gesture, the latter ordered the two men through the door.

"Wait just outside," he directed. He turned to Laurie. "Out you go!" he ordered brusquely.

Laurie hesitated, glancing at Doris, but he could not meet her eye. At the window, with her back to the room, she stared out at the storm. Even in that moment her attitude stunned him. Also, he felt an unconquerable aversion to anything in the nature of a struggle before her. Perhaps, once outside the room, he could take on those ruffians, together or in turn.

Without another word, he crossed the threshold into the hall. Before him hurried the two Italians. Behind him crowded Shaw and the secretary. He walked forward perhaps six strides. Then, as the side railing of the stairway rose beside him, he saw his opportunity. He struck out right and left with all his strength, flooring one of the Italians and sending the second helpless against the wall. In the next instant he had leaped over the slender rail of the stairway, landed half-way down the stairs, and made a jump for the front door.

As he had expected, the door was locked. Shaw, if he had entered that way, had not been too hurried to attend to this little detail. Laurie had just time to brace his back against it when the four men were upon him.

The ten minutes that followed were among the most interesting of young Devon's life. He had always liked a good fight, and this episode in the great dim hall brought out all that was bloodthirsty and primitive in him. For in the room above was Doris, and these men, whoever they were, stood in the way of her freedom and happiness.

If he could have taken them on one by one he could have snapped their necks in turn, and he would have done so without compunction. As it was, with four leaping at him simultaneously, he called on all his reserve strength, his skill in boxing, and the strategy of his foot-ball days.

His first blow sent the blond secretary to the floor, where he lay motionless. After that it was hard to distinguish where blows fell. What Devon wanted and was striving to reach was the throat of Shaw, but the slippery thing eluded him.

He fought on with hands and feet, even drawing, against these odds, on the savate he had learned in Paris. Blood flowed from his nose, his ear and his lip. Shaw's face was bleeding, too, and soon one of the Italians had joined the meek young secretary in his slumbers on the floor. Then Laurie felt his head agonizingly twisted backward, heard the creak of a rusty bolt, and, in the next instant, was hurled headlong through the suddenly opened door, to the snow-covered veranda.

As he pulled himself up, crouching for a return spring, Shaw, disheveled and breathless on the threshold, jerkily addressed him.

"Try it again if you like, you young devil," he panted, "but remember one thing: the next time you won't get off so easily."

The door slammed, and again the bolt shot into place. Laurie listened. No sound whatever came from the inner hall. The old house was again apparently dead, after its moments of fierce life. He slowly descended the steps, and, bracing himself against the nearest tree, stared at the house, still gasping from the effects of the struggle.

He was out of it, but he had left Doris behind. The fact sickened him. So did the ignominy of his departure. He was not even to be followed. His absence was all the gang desired. His impulse was to force the door and again face the four of them. But he realized that he could accomplish nothing against such odds, and certainly, as a prisoner in the house, trussed up with Shaw's infernal rope, he would be of no use to either Doris or himself. He decided to return to the garage and get his car and the weapon he had left there. Then, if the four still wanted to fight, he would show them something that might take the spirit out of them.

Having arrived at this sane conclusion, he turned away from the silent house, and, hatless and coatless as he was, hurriedly made his way through the heavy snow-drifts toward the public road.



CHAPTER XV

MR. SHAW DECIDES TO TALK

At the garage he found Burke faithful to his trust and with an alert eye out for more five-dollar bills. The proprietor temporarily lost sight of these, however, in his sudden and vivid interest in the new patron's appearance.

Laurie answered his questions with a word that definitely checked the further development of curiosity. Then, huddling over the stove, and warming his icy, soaked feet, he curtly outlined his intentions. He was going to change back into his own clothes, he explained, and he would want his car at five o'clock sharp. This, he intimated, would give Burke a little more than half an hour in which to get his mental processes started again and to have the car ready.

Burke whistled inaudibly. Obviously the joke the lad had played had not panned out to the young man's taste. Burke was sorry for that. His experience had been that with these young "rounders" generosity went hand in hand with success and its attendant exhilaration; and that when depression set in, as it obviously had done in this instance, a sudden paralysis numbed the open palm.

However, even granting that this was so, he had already been largely overpaid for anything he had done or might still be expected to do. He nodded his response to the young man's instructions, and though he was not a subtle person, he succeeded in conveying at the same time a sense of his sympathy with the natural annoyance of a high-spirited practical joker whose joke had plainly miscarried. Ordinarily his attitude would have amused Devon, but Laurie was far from his sense of humor just now. Still whistling softly, Burke departed, to make a final inspection of the car, leaving Laurie the sole occupant of the cramped and railed-in corner that represented the private office.

That young man was in the grip of a characteristic Devon rage, and as he rapidly got back into his own clothing his fury mounted until the blood pounded at his temples. He dared not let himself sum up the case against Shaw, though the manner in which he had been kicked out savored strongly of contempt. Evidently Shaw didn't care where he was, so long as he was outside of the house.

Neither dared he sum up the case against Doris, though he could not for a moment banish from his mind the picture of her as she had stood with her back to him and his four assailants. Why had she stood thus? Because she was indifferent to any fate that befell him? Or because she was numbed by her own misery? Crowding forward with these questions was a sick fear for her, alone in that sinister house with four thugs and an old hag whose sole human quality seemed to be a sardonic sense of humor exercised at his, Laurie's, expense.

What might happen to her? What might be happening even now? And what assurance had he that even if he again succeeded in entering the house, a very remote possibility, he could accomplish anything against Shaw and his companions? Oh, if only he had waited and brought Rodney with him! Together, he felt, the two of them could have met and overcome a regiment of men like Shaw and his secretary.

A wild impulse came to him to take Burke with him in his second effort, but an appraising look at that seedy individual checked it. He was convinced that Burke could neither fight nor keep his mouth shut. Owing to his promise to Doris, police help, of course, was out of the question. No, he must go back alone. But this time there would be no semi-ignominious departure. He would either bring Doris away, or he would remain there with her. And if Shaw wanted trouble, he'd get it, and it would be the real thing.

That afternoon, on his first visit to The Cedars, his new instinct of caution had made him leave behind him the little revolver he had brought. He knew his own hot temperament too well to risk carrying it, and he had an arrogant faith in his own physical strength which, as a rule, had been justified. Now, however, he retrieved the weapon, and with a sudden tightening of the lips dropped it into his overcoat pocket.

When he was dressed he went out to look over his car. Burke, who was evidently fascinated by the slender racer, rose from an admiring inspection of the engine as its owner approached.

"She's ready any minute now," he reported. "She's had gas, oil, and air, and I've put on the chains. Thought you'd want 'em, in this storm."

Laurie nodded and glanced out at the window. The storm had developed into a blizzard. His optimism, somewhat numbed in the past hour, reasserted itself to suggest that nature was helping him to meet the odds against him in the old house down the road. He glanced at his watch. It was not yet quite five, but certainly there was darkness enough for his purposes. He could safely take the car into the side wood road near The Cedars, and leave it there among the trees until he needed it. He handed Burke his final offering, the size of which wholly dispelled that philosopher's pessimistic forebodings. Jumping into his car, he backed it out into the storm.

"Hey, there! what about these clo'es?" demanded Burke, indicating with a thumb the abandoned heap of garments in the office.

"Eat 'em," briefly advised the occupant of the disappearing car. Burke shook his head. Garage men are used to hectic human types and strange happenings, but this particular type and incident were new to Burke. He was also interested in the discovery that the young fella wasn't going to New York, now that his joke was played. He was going straight up the road, in the wrong direction, and driving like the devil. Well, anyway, Burke had made a tidy bit on that joke, whatever it was. Gazing affectionately at the latest crisp bill, he thought of his wife and the seventh, and nobly decided to forgive them both.

Laurie, his hot head cooled by the storm that beat against him, raced through the gathering darkness. He had the road to himself. In weather like this no one was abroad who could stay at home. He turned off into the country road, already deep in snow-drifts, and swept on, through the little wood whose leafless birches now looked unfamiliar, even spectral, in the increasing gloom. Save for the soft purr of his engine, his progress made no sound. He drove as far as he dared, then stopped the car off the road, in a clear space among the trees, and continued his way on foot. He must leave the car there, and take the chance of having it discovered. In the storm and darkness that chance seemed very remote.

He plunged on toward the house, knee-deep, now, in the drifts that swept across the narrow road. Soon the building was visible in its somber setting, and as he stared at its dim outlines his heart leaped. In the right-hand corner, on the second floor, a light showed faintly through drawn shades. The sight filled him with an overwhelming relief. Until he saw it, he had not realized how great his inner panic had been. He stopped, drew a deep breath, and stood staring up at it.

The rest of the house looked black and uninhabited, but somewhere within it, he was sure, Shaw and the blond secretary watched and waited. To the Italians he gave no thought. He was convinced that neither of them cared to come alone to close quarters with him; and this conviction was so strong that the prompt retreat of the fellow with the rope had not surprised him, either at the moment or in retrospect, though both men had fought well under Shaw's eyes. If the Italians were again on guard in the grounds, it would be his job to choke them off before they could warn Shaw of his presence. Warning Shaw, he hoped, was about all they were good for.

His plan, fully made, was very simple. He had no intention of risking another encounter if it could be avoided. His purpose was to get Doris out of that house, back to New York, and in Louise Ordway's care with the least possible difficulty and delay. That done, he could take up his little affair with Shaw. Even against the blond secretary he felt no personal rancor. The youth with the pursuing eyes and the chloroform was merely a wretched pawn in Shaw's game.

In Shaw's game! The phrase stuck, burning into his consciousness like the vitriol he believed the beast would use if he dared. What was Shaw's game? Why was he so smugly sure of it? And why, oh, why, why, was Doris seemingly numb to its danger, yet anxious for his help? For the first time he gave definite shape to a reflection that for hours had been trying to catch his attention, and from which he had restively turned. It was this:

When those four men, headed by Shaw, had entered that upper room, Doris had not been surprised. She had expected them. Moreover, she had not been really afraid. Instead, she had worn a look of flaming anger and of sudden resolution. She had stepped forward as if to speak. Her very lips had been parted for speech. Then, Shaw had looked at her, and slowly she had turned away and stood staring out at the window, her back to the room and its tableau. In short, with one glance of his veiled, protruding eyes, Shaw had conquered her, and Laurie himself had seen, what no one could have made him believe, her instantaneous and complete submission.

It was this revelation which had added the smoke barrage of doubt to the situation, clouding his faculties and temporarily stifling his faith. In the face of this, how could he still trust? Yet he had promised to trust, to believe, "whatever happened." Those had been his own words, and she had wept and told him he was "wonderful"!

The deep breath he had drawn ended in a sigh. He was fighting more than one storm, and in this instant he felt an indescribable weariness of soul and body. But not for a second did he hesitate in the course he had decided on. Later, when Doris was safe, perhaps things would clear up. For the moment there was one thing, and one alone, to be done.

The trees around the house made the approach under their cover a fairly easy one. However, he moved slowly, missing no precaution. He hardly believed the zeal of the Italians would keep them out in the storm, but they might have rigged up some sort of shelter, or, more probably, they might be doing sentry-work at some of those dark windows.

Clinging close to the trees, he skirted the house, then approached it from the rear, and slipped along the side of the building, hugging the wall. As he noiselessly moved he listened, but no sound came from inside. When he reached the front right wing he stopped, and, looking up, verified his swift impressions of the afternoon.

A wide veranda swung around the front and side of this wing, supported by substantial pillars, up any one of which he knew he could climb like a cat. The roof of the veranda opened on the low French front windows of the up-stairs sitting-room. There was no question that within a few moments he himself could enter that sitting-room.

The real question, and again he carefully considered it, was how, once in the room, he could get the girl out of it. She could not climb railings and slide down pillars. There was a window on the rear end of the wing, above what plainly served in summer-time as a veranda dining-room. This end of the veranda was glassed in, and over it a trellis afforded a support for frozen vines that now shivered in the storm. If he could get Doris out at that window, he might be able to get her down to the ground with the help of the trellis. But from what room did the window open, and how much of the upper hall would they have to traverse before reaching it? Not much, he fancied.

Again he looked around, and listened. There was no sound or motion, save those caused by the storm. The next instant he was climbing the pillar toward the dimly lighted window. The ascent was not so easy as he had pictured it. To his chagrin, he made several unsuccessful efforts before he finally drew himself over the top of the veranda roof, and, lying flat in the snow, slowly recovered the breath exhausted by his efforts.

Lying thus, and stretching out an arm, he could almost touch the nearest window with his fingers, almost, but not quite. Still lying flat, he dragged himself a yard farther. His head was now in line with the window, but the close-drawn shade shut out all but the suggestion of the inner light. He hesitated a moment, then, very cautiously, tapped on the frosty pane.

There was no response. He tapped again, and then a third time, twice in succession and more compellingly. This time he thought he heard a movement in the room, but he was not sure.

He waited a moment, then softly signaled again. There was no question now about the movement in the room. He heard it distinctly, heard it approach the window, heard it cease, then saw the curtain slowly drawn. The face of Doris looked out, at first vaguely, as if she had fancied the noise some manifestation of the storm. But in the next instant she glanced down, saw him, and obviously checked an exclamation. In another moment she had opened the window, and without straightening up he had slipped across the sill.

Neither spoke. Laurie was looking about the room, reassuringly empty, save for those two. He closed the window, drew the shade, and became conscious that she held his hand and was drawing him urgently toward the fire. At the same time she answered his unasked question.

"They're all down in the kitchen, I think. Listen!"

She opened the door leading to the hall, and, going out, leaned over the stair-rail.

"Yes, they're still there," she reported when she came back. "All but one of the Italians. They're eating now, and after that I think they're planning to leave."

"Where's the hag?"

"Waiting on them."

She spoke detachedly, almost dully. As in the morning, she was not surprised; but to-night there was in her manner a suggestion of repressed excitement which it had not held before.

"Have you a heavy coat?" he asked her.

"Yes."

"Get it and put it on, quick. Don't waste any time." He indicated the buckled house-shoes she still wore. "And put on some real shoes, if you have them."

Without replying, she disappeared. He followed her into the bedroom in which, during the hours of his presence that afternoon, the hag had found uneasy asylum. He indicated a door.

"Where does that lead?"

"Into a bath-room."

"There's a back window over the veranda. What room does that mean?"

"A bedroom off the hall."

"Good!"

She followed his thought. "But I don't think we can risk that. One of the Italians is patrolling the hall. That's why they haven't locked the door. I caught a glimpse of him just now, coming toward the foot of the stairs."

He stared at her frowningly, then, walking to the bed, stripped it with an arm-swing and seized the sheets.

"Then it's simply a question of lowering you from the front," he cried, curtly. "I'll lower you as far as I can, and we'll have to risk a drop of a few feet. Snow's safe."

As he spoke, he was hurriedly tearing and roping the sheets. "Used to do this at school when I was a kid," he explained. "Quite like old times. Now get on the coat and shoes, please."

She needed the reminder. She was staring at this visitor, who had the face of the man she knew and the voice and manner of a stranger. All trace of young Devon's debonair indifference was gone. He had the cold eyes and set jaw of a determined man, busy at some task which would assuredly be done, but his air of detachment equaled her own.

When she was ready, and still with his new air of businesslike concentration on the job in hand, he adjusted the linen ropes, and after a preliminary survey of the grounds, led her through the window and out on the veranda roof. Here he briefly told her what to do, suiting action to words with entire efficiency, and assuming her unquestioning obedience as a matter of course.

The lowering was not the simple exercise he had expected, any more than the upward climb had been. Light as she was, it was clear that her unsupported weight would be a heavy drag upon a body resting insecurely on a slippery roof with nothing more substantial than snow and ice to cling to. But eventually she was down, a little shaken but unhurt, and he was beside her.

"Now, let's see how fast you can run," he suggested; and for the first time his whispered voice held a ring of the youth she knew. "Shaw's watchers may suddenly begin to watch, or even to see something."

She responded to his changed tone with an uncontrollable gasp of relief, which he attributed to excitement.

"Don't worry. All right now, I think," he said, with an immediate return to curtness. It steadied her as no other attitude on his part could have done.

"Can you drive a Pierce Arrow?" he asked, as they plunged ahead through the snow-drifts.

"Yes."

"That's fine. That's great. I was afraid you couldn't." This was Laurie again. He went on urgently. "If we're stopped or separated, do exactly as I say. Don't lose an instant. Rush to my car. It's over there, among the trees. See?—there at the right. It's turned toward the road." He indicated the spot. "Get in, go to the left at the first turn, drive full speed to a garage a quarter of a mile down the main road. No matter what happens, don't stop till you reach it. Go into the garage, and wait half an hour for me. If I'm not there then, drive on to New York and go to this address." He gave her a penciled slip he had prepared. "Mrs. Ordway is a good friend of mine. She'll take you in and look after you. Will you do that?"

"Yes." The word was so low that he had to bend his head to catch it. His voice softened still more.

"Don't worry. It will be all right. Only, some way, I can't believe that Shaw is letting us off as easily as this."

She stumbled, but he caught her. For a moment he supported her, and in that moment, under the sense of her nearness and dearness and helplessness, the hardness of the past hour disappeared. He did not understand her. Perhaps he would never understand her. But whatever she was, she was all right.

Half leading, half carrying her, he got her to the car and into it. He had actually raised one foot to follow her when something stirred in the shadows near them, and the familiar, squat figure of Shaw stepped forth.

Though in his sudden appearance he had followed the dramatic instinct that seemed so strong in him, he had wholly lost the effect of unleashed fury he had worn in the afternoon. He was even smiling with an affectation of good-humored tolerance. He had the air of a man who, with the game in his hands, can afford to be patient and affable.

"Oh, come now," he said easily, "don't leave us quite so soon! Since you've come back for another visit, we've decided to keep you a while. You know, I warned you of that."

Laurie made a sign to Doris, which she instantly obeyed. Even before the indolent voice had finished speaking, she was at the wheel and the car had started. Shaw, springing forward with goggling eyes and dropped jaw, found his way blocked by a man as new to him as he had been to Doris, a Laurence Devon who all in an instant had taken on the black rage he himself had dropped. In the hands of this stranger was a revolver which neatly covered Shaw's plump chest. Before this apparition, Shaw backed away precipitately.

"Stand exactly where you are." Devon's voice was very quiet, but there was a quality in it which added to the icy chill of the night. "I know you're not alone, but if any of your pals shows himself, I'll shoot him dead. If you move or utter one word, or cry out, I'll kill you. Do you understand?"

Shaw did understand. The look in his protruding eyes proved that. Those eyes shifted wildly, turning this way and that, as if in search of the help which lurked among those spectral trees. He himself stood as motionless as one of them, and as he stood he moistened his thin lips with the tip of a trembling tongue.

"Now," said Laurie, "I'm going to have the truth. I'm going to have it all, and I'm going to have it quick. If you don't tell it, I'll kill you. Probably I shall kill you anyway. But first you will answer two questions. What power have you got over Miss Mayo? And what are you trying to do?"

Shaw hesitated. Again his protruding eyes turned wildly to the right and left, as if in search of help. Still holding the revolver in his right hand, Laurie slowly reached out his left and seized the other's throat in the grip of his powerful young fingers.

"Keep still," he warned, as the other started to raise his hands. "You think the game isn't up, but it is. Now talk, and talk quick."

He tightened his grip on the thick, slippery throat. "I'm enjoying this," he rasped. "If you were anything but the snake you are, I'd give you a fighting chance. But a creature that uses chloroform and hires three thugs to help him in his dirty jobs—"

He increased the pressure on the thick neck. Shaw's face began to purple. His eyes bulged horribly. He choked, and with the act gave up.

"Hold on," he gurgled. "Listen."

The pressure on his throat slightly relaxed. With eyes closed, he collapsed against the nearest tree-trunk. Laurie followed him, expecting some treacherous move; but all the fight seemed out of the serpent. He was clutching at his coat and collar as if not yet able to breathe.

"I've had enough of this," he finally gasped out. "I'll tell you everything."

Even as he spoke, Laurie observed that one of the clutching, clawing hands had apparently got hold of what it was seeking.

* * * * *

Doris, feeling her way through the blackness of the storm on the unfamiliar country road, heard above the wind the sound of a sharp explosion which she thought meant a blown-out tire. She did not stop. Before her, only a short distance away, was the garage to which she was hastening and where she was to wait for Laurie. To go on meant to take a chance, but she had been ordered not to stop. There was a certain exhilaration in obeying that order. Crouched over the wheel, with head bent, and guessing at the turns she could not see, she pressed on through the storm.



CHAPTER XVI

BURKE MAKES A PROMISE

Burke, dozing over the fire in his so-called office, was aroused from his dreams by the appearance of a vision. For a moment he blinked at it doubtfully. Then into his eyes came a dawning intelligence, slightly tinged with reproach.

Burke was an unimaginative man, who did not like to be jarred out of his routine. Already that day several unusual incidents had occurred; and though, like popular tales, they ended happily, they had been almost too great a stimulus to thought. Now here was another, in the form of a girl, young and beautiful, and apparently blown into his presence on the wings of the wild storm that was raging.

Somewhat uncertainly, Mr. Burke arose and approached the vision, which, standing at the threshold of his sanctum, thereupon addressed him in hurried but reassuring human tones.

"I've had a blow-out," the lady briefly announced. "Will you put on a 'spare,' please, and take a look at the other shoes?"

This service, she estimated, would take half an hour of the proprietor's time, if he moved with the customary deliberation of his class, and would, of course, make superfluous any explanation of her wait in the garage, and of her nervousness, if he happened to be sufficiently observant to notice that.

It was really fortunate that the blow-out had occurred. Surely within the half-hour Laurie would have rejoined her. If he did not, she frankly conceded to herself, she would go mad with suspense. There was a limit to what she could endure, and that limit had been reached. Thirty minutes more of patience and courage and seeming calm covered the last draft she could make on a nervous system already greatly overtaxed.

Burke drew his worn office chair close to the red-hot stove, and was mildly pained by the lady's failure to avail herself of the comfort thus offered. Instead, she threw off her big coat, and, drawing the chair to the corner farthest from the stove, seated herself there and with hands that shook took up the local newspaper which was the live wire between Burke and the outer world. Her intense desire for solitude was apparent even to his dull eye.

Burke sighed. In his humble way he was a gallant man, and it would have been pleasant to exchange a few remarks with this visitor from another sphere. Undoubtedly they would have found interests in common. This, it will be remembered, was January, 1917, three months before America's entry into the world war, and women able to drive motors were comparatively rare. Any girl who could drive a car in a storm like this, and through the drifts of country roads—Mr. Burke, having reluctantly removed himself from the lady's presence, was now beside her car, and at this point in his reflections he uttered an exclamation and his jaw dropped.

"It's the lad's car!" he ejaculated slowly, and for a moment stood staring at it. Then, still slowly, he nodded.

It was the lad's car, which, only a short time before, he himself had put in perfect order for a swift run to New York. Now this girl had it, but 'twas easy to see why. He had been wrong in his college-prank theory. Here was something more serious and much more interesting. Here was a love-affair. And, he handsomely conceded, it was going on between a pair of mates the like of which wasn't often seen. In her way the girl was as fine a looker as the boy, and that, Mr. Burke decided, was "going some, for them both."

As his meditations continued he was cursorily glancing at the tires, looking for the one that had sustained the blow-out. He was not greatly surprised to find every tire perfect. There had been plenty of mysteries in the lad's conduct, and this was merely another trifle to add to the list. Undoubtedly the lady had her reasons for insisting on a blow-out, and if she had, it was no affair of his. Also, the price for changing that tire would be a dollar, and Mr. Burke was always willing to pick up a dollar.

Whistling softly but sweetly, he removed a rear shoe, replaced it with one of the "spares" on the car's rack, and solemnly retested the others. The task, as Doris had expected, took him almost half an hour. When it was completed he lounged back to the lady and assured her that the car was again ready for service.

The lady hesitated. There was no sign of Laurie, and she dared not leave. Yet on what pretext could she linger? With the manner of one who has unlimited time at her disposal, she demanded her bill, a written one, and paid it. Then, checking herself on a casual journey toward the big coat, she showed a willingness to indulge in that exchange of friendly points of view for which Burke's heart had longed.

The exchange was not brilliant, but Burke made the most of it. No, he told her, they didn't often have storms as bad as this. One, several years ago, had blocked traffic for two days, but that was very unusual. He hoped the young lady knew the roads well. It wasn't easy driving when you couldn't see your hand before your face. He hoped she wasn't nervous about getting back; for now he had discovered that she was intensely nervous about something.

With a gallant effort at ease, the lady took up the theme of the storm and embroidered it in pretty colors and with much delicate fancy. When the pattern was getting somewhat confused, she suddenly asked a leading question.

"Which shoe blew out?"

Burke stared at her. He wished he knew what was expected of him. Did she want the truth, or didn't she? He realized that momentarily she was becoming more excited. He had not missed her frequent glances through the window, up the road, and he knew that for the past five minutes she had been listening for something wholly unconnected with his words. In reality Doris was in the grip of an almost unconquerable panic. What had happened? Why didn't Laurie come?

Burke decided to let her have the truth, or part of the truth. She'd get it anyway, if she examined the replaced "spare" on the car's rack.

"There wasn't no blow-out," he stated, defensively.

"There wasn't! What do you mean?"

He saw that she was first surprised, then startled, then, as some sudden reflection came to her, actually appalled.

"I mean that there wasn't no blow-out."

"No blow-out? Then—then—what did I hear?" She asked the question of Burke, and, as she asked it, recoiled suddenly, as if he had struck her.

"P'raps you got a back-fire," he suggested, reassuringly. "You come down the steep hill up there, didn't you?"

Doris pulled herself together, shrugged her shoulders, and resolutely smiled at him. She knew the difference between the sound of a blow-out and the back-firing of an irritated engine. But some abysmal instinct made her suddenly cautious, though with that same instinct her inner panic developed. What had she heard?

"I put on a 'spare,' anyway," Burke was saying. "The rear right looked a little weak, so I changed it."

He was tacitly explaining the bill he had submitted, but Doris did not hear him. What had she heard? Insistently the question repeated itself in her mind. She turned dizzily, and went back for the coat. As she did so she heard Burke's voice.

"Why—hel-lo!"

Even in that moment she observed its modulation. It had begun on a note of cheery surprise and ended on one of sharp concern. Turning, she saw Laurie.

He had nodded to Burke, and was obviously trying to speak naturally.

"All ready?" he asked.

The remark was addressed to them both, but he looked at neither. There was an instant of utter silence during which they took him in, Burke with insistent, goggling eyes, Doris with one quick glance, soul-searching and terror-filled. Burke spoke first.

"What you been doin' to yerself?" he gasped.

The question was inevitable. Laurie was hatless and disheveled. His coat was torn, and across one pallid cheek ran a deep cut, freshly bleeding.

"Fell," he said, tersely.

He was breathing hard, as if he had been running. He had not yet looked at Doris, but now he abruptly swung into the little office and emerged, bringing her coat. Without a word, he held it for her. In equal silence, she slipped into it. He retrieved the cap from the pile of discarded garments still lying on the office floor, put it on, and indicated the waiting car.

"Get in," he commanded.

She obeyed and he followed her, taking his place at the wheel.

"You're hurt," she almost whispered. "Shall I drive?"



"No—Burke!"

The word was like a pistol shot.

"Y-yessir!" Burke was stammering. In his excitement he was hardly conscious that another bill had found its way into his hand, but his hand had automatically reached for and closed on it.

"Keep your mouth shut."

"Y-yessir."

"Keep it shut till to-morrow morning. You haven't seen anything or anybody at all to-day. Understand?"

"Y-yessir."

"After to-night you can talk about me all you like. But you're to forget absolutely that you ever saw the lady. Is that clear?"

"Y-yessir!"

"Thank you. Good-by."

He started the car and swung it out into the storm. As it went Burke saw the girl catch the boy's arm and heard something that sounded partly like a cry and partly like a sob.

"Laurie!"

"H-ush!"

The car was tearing through the storm and drifts at fifty miles an hour, and this time it was headed down the road for New York.

Burke's eyes followed it, as far as he could see it, which was not far. Then he retreated to the "office," and, dropping heavily into his desk chair, stared unseeingly at a calendar on the wall.

"That lad's been up to somethin'," he muttered. "I wonder what my dooty is."

It was a long moment before he remembered to open his hand and look at the bill he was holding. As he did so his eyes widened. The bill was a large one. It amounted to much more than the combined value of the bills dropped into that willing palm during the day. Briskly and efficiently it solved the little problem connected with Mr. Burke's "dooty." With a quick look around him, he thrust it into his pocket.

"I ain't really seen nothin'," he muttered, "an' I ain't sure of nothin', anyhow."

* * * * *

"What has happened? Oh, Laurie, what has happened?"

For a time Laurie did not answer. Then she felt rather than saw his face turn toward her in the darkness.

"Doris."

"Yes."

"Will you do something for me?"

"Yes, Laurie, anything."

"Then don't speak till we reach New York. When we get to your studio I'll tell you everything. Will you do that?"

"But—Laurie—"

"Will—you—do—it?" The voice was not Laurie's. It was the harsh, grating voice of a man distraught.

"Yes, of course."

Silence settled upon them like a substance, a silence broken only by the roar of the storm and the crashing of wind-swept branches of the trees that lined the road. The car's powerful search-lights threw up in ghostly shapes the covered stumps and hedges they passed and the masses of snow that beat against them. Subconsciously the girl knew that this boy beside her, driving with the recklessness of a lost soul, was merely guessing at a road no one could have seen, but in that half-hour she had no thought for the hazards of the journey. Her panic had grown till it filled her soul.

She wanted to cry out, to shriek, but she dared not. The compelling soul in the rigid figure beside her held her silent. Her nerves began to play strange tricks. She became convinced that the whole experience was a nightmare, an incredible one from which she would wake if that terrible figure so close to her, and yet so far away, would help her. But it wouldn't. Perhaps it never would. The nightmare must go on and on. Soon all sense of being in a normal world had left her.

Once, in a frantic impulse of need of human contact, she laid her hand on the arm nearest her, over the wheel. The next instant she withdrew it with a shudder. For all the response she had found she might have touched a dead man. Something of the look of a dead man, too, was in the boy's face and eyes as he bent forward, motionless as a statue, his features like stone and his eyes as unhuman as polished agate, staring fixedly at the road before them.

A low-bending, ice-covered branch whipped her face and she shrieked, fancying it the touch of dead fingers. Several times huge shapes from the roadside seemed to spring at them, but their progress was too swift even for spectral shapes. Or was it?

It was on a stretch of road through the woods that the obsession in her mind took its final and most hideous form. Close behind them, and ringing in their ears, she fancied she heard a cry in the voice of Shaw. It was not Shaw's human voice. She would not have known it in a human world. It had passed through the great change; but it was recognizable, because she, too, had passed through some great change. Recognizable, too, was the sound of Shaw's running feet, though she had never heard them run, and though they were running so lightly on the top of the snow.

He was just behind them, she thought. If she turned she knew she would see him, not as she had known him, plump, sleek, living and loathsome, but stark, rigid, and ready for his grave, yet able to pursue; and the new, unearthly light of his bulging eyes seemed burning into her back.

She groaned, but the groan brought no response from the tense figure beside her. The only sounds were the howls of the wind, the frenzied protests of the tortured trees, and the fancied hail of a dead man, coming closer and closer.



CHAPTER XVII

LAURIE MAKES A CONFESSION

The lights of Long Island City greeted them with reassuring winks through the snow. Seeing these, Doris drew a deep breath. She had let her nerves run away with her, she subconsciously felt. Now, rising from the depths of her panic to a realization of contact with a living world, as they crossed the bridge to Manhattan, seeing hurrying men and women about her, hearing the blasts of motor horns and the voices of motor drivers, she fiercely assured herself that she had been an hysterical fool.

In the first moments of reaction she even experienced a sense of personal injury and almost of resentment toward her companion. He had put her through the most horrible half-hour of her life. It seemed that no service he had rendered could compensate her for such suffering. On the other hand, he had brought her safely back to New York, as he had promised to do. Surely, it was not for her to cavil at the manner in which he had done it. Something, of course, had happened, probably a racking fight between the two men. Laurie was exhausted, and was showing it; that was all.

With their arrival at her studio, his manner did not change. He assisted her from the car, punctiliously escorted her to the elevator, and left her there.

"I have some telephoning to do," he explained. "I shall not leave the building, and I expect to be with you again in about fifteen minutes. With your permission, I am asking my two partners to meet me in your studio, Rodney Bangs and Jacob Epstein. What I have to tell must be told to all three of you, and"—his voice caught in a queer fashion—"it is a thing I don't want to tell more than once. I think I can get them right away. They'll probably be in their rooms, dressing for dinner. May they come here?"

"Of course."

Her panic was returning. His appearance in the lighted hall was nothing short of terrifying, and not the least uncanny feature was his own utter unconsciousness of or indifference to it.

"Thanks. Then I'll wait for them down here, and bring them up to your studio when they come."

He left her with that, and Henry, the night elevator man, who went on duty at six o'clock, indifferently swung the lever and started his car upward.

In the studio, with her door shut against the world, Doris again resolutely took herself and her nerves in hand. She summoned endless explanations of Laurie's manner and appearance, explanations which, however, turn and twist them as she would, always left something unexplained.

There was, she realized, a strong probability that he had forced the truth from Shaw. But even the truth would not make Laurie look and act like that. Or would it? She tried to believe it would. Anything would be better than the thing she feared. She set her teeth; then, springing from the chair into which she had dropped, she turned on the studio lights and busied herself with preparations for her visitors. She simply dared not let her thoughts run on.

Five minutes passed—ten—fifteen—twenty. Save during the half-hour of that return journey from Sea Cliff, she had never known such dragging, horror-filled moments. A dozen times she fancied she heard the elevator stop at her floor, and the sound of voices and footsteps approach. A dozen times she went to her windows and wildly gazed out on the storm. As she stared, she prayed. It was the same prayer, over and over.

"Dear God, please don't let it be that way!" The aspiration was the nearest she dared come to putting into words the terror that shook her heart.

The second fifteen minutes were almost up when she really heard the elevator stop. Quick footsteps approached her door, but there were no voices. The three men, if they were coming, were coming in utter silence. Before they had time to rap she had opened the door and stood back to let them enter. As they passed her she looked into their faces, and as she looked the familiar sense of panic, now immeasurably intensified, again seized her in its grip.

Laurie, usually the most punctilious of men, made on this occasion an omission extraordinary for him. He did not present his partners to their hostess. But not one of the three noticed that omission. Rodney Bangs, pale but carrying himself with a palpable effort at control, shouldered his way into the room in his characteristic fashion, as if he were meeting and hurling back a foot-ball rush. Epstein, breathless and obviously greatly excited, actually stumbled over the threshold in his unseeing haste. Laurie, slowly following the two, alone wore some resemblance to a normal manner. He was very serious but quite calm.

He took off his coat, methodically folded it, and laid it on a near-by chair. To the brain back of each of the three pairs of eyes watching him, the same thought came. He had something appalling to tell them, and, cool as he seemed, he dared not tell it. He was playing for time. The strain of even the brief delay was too much for Epstein's endurance. High-strung, his nerves on edge, almost before Laurie had turned he sputtered forth questions like bullets from a machine-gun.

"Vell! vell!" he demanded, "vot's it all about? Vot's it mean? Over the telephone you say you got to see us this minute. You say you got into trouble, big trouble. Vell, vot trouble? Vot is it?"

Laurie looked at him, and something in the look almost spiked the big gun. But Epstein was a man of action, and, notwithstanding his nervousness, a man of some nerve. The expression in the boy's black eyes had stunned him, but with only an instant's hesitation he finished what he had meant to say.

"I guess it ain't nothing ve can't fix up," he jerked out, trying to speak with his usual assurance. "I guess ve fix it up all right."

Laurie shook his head. None of the thirty minutes he had spent on the ground floor had been devoted to improving his appearance. His black curly hair, usually as shining as satin, was rough, matted, dirty. Across his left cheek the sinister cut still ran, raw, angry-looking, freshly irritated by the ice-laden wind.

"Sit down," he said, wearily. All the life had gone out of his voice. It had an uncanny effect of monotony, as if pitched on two flat notes. To those three, who knew so well the rich beauty of his speaking tones, this change in them was almost more alarming than the change in his looks.

They sat down, as he had directed, but not an eye in the room moved from his face. Epstein, still wearing his hat and heavy coat, had dropped into the big chair by the reading-lamp and was nervously gnawing his under lip. Bangs had mechanically tossed his hat toward a corner as he came in. He took a chair as mechanically, and sat very still, his back to the window, his eyes trying vainly to meet his friend's. Doris had moved to the upper corner of the couch, where she crouched, elbows on knees, chin on hands, staring at a spot on the floor. Though in the group, she seemed alone, and felt alone.

Walking over to the mantel, Laurie rested an elbow heavily upon it, and for the first time looked squarely from one to the other of his friends. As he looked, he tried to speak. They saw the effort and its failure, and understood both. With a gesture of hopelessness, he turned his back toward them, and stood with sagging muscles and eyes fixed on the empty grate. Epstein's nerves snapped.

"For God's sake, Devon," he begged, "cut out the vaits! Tell us vot you got on your chest, and tell it quick."

Laurie turned and once more met his eyes. Under the look Epstein's oblique eyes shifted.

"I'm going to," Laurie said quietly and still in those new, flat tones. "That's why I've brought you here. But—it's a hard job. You see,"—his voice again lost its steadiness—"I've got to hurt you—all of you—most awfully. And—and that's the hardest part of this business for me."

Doris, now staring up at him, told herself that she could not endure another moment of this tension. She dared not glance at either of the others, but she heard Epstein's heavy breathing and the creak of Rodney Bangs's chair as he suddenly changed his position. Again it was Epstein who spoke, his voice rising on a shriller note.

"Vell! vell! Get it out! I s'pose you done something. Vot you done?"

For the first time Laurie's eyes met those of Doris. The look was so charged with meaning that she sat up under it as if she had received a shock. Yet she was not sure she understood it. Did he want her to help him? She did not know. She only knew now that the thing she had feared was here, and that if she did not speak out something in her head would snap.

"He killed Herbert Shaw," she almost whispered.

For a long moment there was utter silence in the room, through which the words just spoken seemed to scurry like living things, anxious to be out and away. Laurie, his eyes on the girl, showed no change in his position, though a spasm crossed his face. Epstein, putting up one fat hand, feebly beat the air with it as if trying to push back something that was approaching him, something intangible but terrible. Bangs alone seemed at last to have taken in the full meaning of the curt announcement. As if it had galvanized him into movement, he sprang to his feet and, head down, charged the situation.

"What the devil is she talking about?" he cried out. "Laurie! What does she mean?"

"She told you." Laurie spoke as quietly as before, but without looking up.

"You—mean—it's—true?"

Rodney still spoke in a loud, aggressive voice, as if trying to awaken himself and the others from a nightmare.

"Take it in," muttered Laurie. "Pull yourselves up to it. I had to."

An uncontrollable shudder ran over him. As if his nerve had suddenly given way, he dropped his head on his bent arm. For another interval Bangs stood staring at him in a stupefaction through which a slow tremor ran.

"I—I can't take it in," he stammered at last.

"I know. That's the way I felt."

Laurie spoke without raising his head. Bangs, watching him, saw him shudder again, saw that his legs were giving under him, and that he was literally holding to the mantel for support. The sight steadied his own nerves. He pushed his chair forward, and with an arm across the other's shoulder, forced him down into it.

"Then, in God's name, why are we wasting time here?" he suddenly demanded. "Your car's outside. I'll drive you—anywhere. We'll get out of the country. We'll travel at night and lie low in the daytime. Pull yourself together, old man." Urgently, he grasped the other's shoulder. "We've got things to do."

Laurie shook his head. He tried to smile. There was something horrible in the resulting grimace of his twisted mouth.

"There were only two things to do," he said doggedly. "One was to tell you three. I've done that. The other was to tell the district attorney. I've done that, too."

Bangs recoiled, as if from a physical blow. Epstein, who had slightly roused himself at the prospect of action, sank back into a stunned, goggling silence.

"You've told him!" gasped Rodney, when he could speak.

"Yes." Laurie was pulling himself together. "We're friends, you know, Perkins and I," he went on, more naturally. "I've seen a good deal of him lately. He will make it as easy as he can. He has taken my parole. I've got—till morning." He let them take that in. Then, very simply, he added, "I have promised to be in my rooms at eight o'clock."

Under this, like a tree-trunk that goes down with the final stroke of the ax, Rodney Bangs collapsed.

"My God!" he muttered. "My—God!" He fell into the nearest chair and sat there, his head in his shaking hands.

As if the collapse of his friend were a call to his own strength, Laurie suddenly sat up and took himself in hand.

"Now, listen," he said. "Let's take this sensibly. We've got to thresh out the situation, and here's our last chance. I want to make one thing clear. Shaw was pure vermin. There's no place for his sort in a decent world, and I have no more regret over—over exterminating him than I would have over killing a snake. Later, Miss Mayo will tell you why."

Under the effect of the clear, dispassionate voice, almost natural again, Epstein began to revive.

"It was self-defense," he croaked, eagerly. He caught at the idea as if it were a life-line, and obviously began to drag himself out of a pit with its help. "It was self-defense," he repeated. "You vas fighting, I s'pose. That lets you out."

"No," Laurie dully explained, "he wasn't armed. I thought he was. I thought he was drawing some weapon. He had used chloroform on me once before. I was mistaken. But no jury will believe that, of course."

His voice changed and flatted again. His young figure seemed to give in the chair, as if its muscles sagged under a new burden. For a moment he sat silent.

"We may as well face all the facts," he went on, at last. "The one thing I won't endure is the horror of a trial."

"But you'll get off," choked Epstein. "It's self-defense—it's—it's—"

"Or a brain storm, or temporary insanity!" Laurie interrupted. "No, old chap, that isn't good enough. No padded cell for me! And I'm not going to have my name dragged through the courts, and the case figuring in the newspapers for months. I've got a reason I think you will all admit is a good one." Again his voice changed. "That would break my sister's heart," he ended brokenly.

At the words Bangs uttered an odd sound, half a gasp and half a groan. Epstein, again in his pit of wretchedness, caught it.

"Now you see the job ve done!" he muttered. "Now you see how ve looked after him, like she told us to!"

Bangs paid no attention to him.

"What are you going to do?" he heavily asked Laurie.

"I'll tell you, on one condition—that you give me your word, all three of you, not to try in any way to interfere or to prevent it. You couldn't, anyway, so don't make the blunder of trying. You know what I'm up against. There's only one way out."

He looked at them in turn. Doris and Epstein merely stared back, with the effect of not taking in what he was saying. But Bangs recoiled.

"No, by God!" he cried. "No! No!"

Laurie went on as if he had not spoken.

"I promised Perkins to be in my rooms at eight o'clock to-morrow morning," he muttered, and they had to strain their ears to catch the words. "I did not promise to be—alive."

This time it was Doris who gasped out something that none of them heard. For a moment Laurie sat silent in his chair, watching her with a strange intentness. Then, in turn, his black eyes went to the faces of Bangs and Epstein. Huddled in the big chair he occupied, the manager sat looking straight before him, his eyes set in agony, his jaw dropped. He had the aspect of a man about to have a stroke. Bangs sat leaning forward, staring at the floor. The remaining color had left his face. He appeared to have wholly forgotten the presence of others in the room. He was muttering something to himself, the same thing over and over and over: "And it's all up to us. It's—all—up—to us."

For an interval which none of the three ever forgot, Laurie watched the tableau. Then, rising briskly, he ostentatiously stretched himself, and in loud, cheerful tones answered Rodney's steady babble.

"Yes, old chap, it's all up to you," he said. "So what do you think of this as a climax for the play?"

Grinning down at his pal, he waited for a reply. It did not come. Epstein was still unable to speak or move. Doris seemed to have heard the words without taking them in. But at last Bangs rose slowly, groped his way to his chum as if through a fog, and catching him by the shoulders looked wildly into his eyes.

"You mean—you mean," he stuttered at last, "that—that—this—was—all—a—hoax?"

"Of course it was," Laurie admitted, in his gayest voice. "It was the climax of the hoax you have played on me. An hour ago Shaw confessed to me how you three arranged this whole plot of Miss Mayo's adventure, so that I should be kept out of mischief and should think I was having an adventure myself. I thought a little excitement was due you in return. How do you like my climax, anyhow? Pretty fair, I call it."

He stopped short. Rodney had loosened his grip on his shoulders and stumbled to a chair. Now, his arm on its back and his head on his arm, his body shook with the relentless convulsion of a complete nervous collapse. Epstein had produced a handkerchief and was feebly wiping his forehead. Doris seemed to have ceased to breathe. Laurie walked over to her, took her hands, and drew them away from her face. Even yet, she seemed not to understand.

"I'm sorry," he said, very gently. "I've given you three an awful jolt. But I think you will all admit that there was something coming to you. You've put me through a pretty bad week. I decided you could endure half an hour of reprisal."

None of the three answered. None of the three could. But, in the incandescent moments that followed, the face of Epstein brightened slowly, like a moon emerging from black clouds. Bangs alone, who had best borne the situation up till now, was unable to meet the reaction. In the silence of the little studio he wept on, openly and gulpingly and unrestrainedly, as he had not wept since he was a little boy.



CHAPTER XVIII

A LITTLE LOOK FORWARD

"So Shaw told you!" muttered Epstein a few moments later.

"You bet he did!" Laurie blithely corroborated. "He had to, to save his skin. But he was pretty game, I'll give him credit for that. I had to fire one shot past his head to convince him that I meant business. Besides, as I've said, I thought he was reaching for something. I suppose I was a little nervous. Anyway, we clenched again, and—well—I'd have killed him, I guess, if he hadn't spoken."

He smiled reminiscently. All three were tactfully ignoring Bangs, who had walked over to the window and by the exercise of all his will-power was now getting his nerves under control.

"Shaw didn't do the tale justice, he hadn't time to," Laurie continued, "and I was in such a hurry to get back to Miss Mayo that I didn't ask for many details. But on the way to the garage it occurred to me that I had a chance for a come-back that would keep you three from feeling too smug and happy over the way I had gulped down your little plot. So I planned it, and I rather think," he added complacently, "that I put it over."

"Put it over!" groaned Epstein. "Mein Gott, I should think you did put it over! You took twenty years off my life, young man; that's von sure thing."

He spoke with feeling, and his appearance bore out his words. Even in these moments of immense relief he looked years older than when he entered the room.

"You'll revive." Laurie turned to Rodney, who was now facing them. "All right, old man?"

"I guess so," gulped Rodney. There was no self-consciousness in his manner. He had passed through blazing hell in the last twenty minutes, and he did not care who knew it.

"Then," urged Laurie, seeking to divert him, "you may give me the details Shaw had to skip. How the dickens did you happen to start this frame-up, anyhow?"

"How much did Shaw tell you?" Rodney tried to speak naturally.

"That the whole adventure was a plant you and Epstein had fixed up to keep me out of mischief," Laurie repeated, patiently. "He explained that you had engaged a company to put it over, headed by Miss Mayo, who is a friend of Mrs. Ordway, and who has a burning ambition to go on the stage. He said you promised her that if she made a success of it, she was to have the leading role in our next play. That's about all he told me."

He did not look at Doris as he spoke, and she observed the omission, though she dared not look at him. Also, she caught the coldness of his rich young voice. She hid her face in her hands.

"That's all I know," ended Laurie. "But I want to know some more. Whose bright little idea was this, in the first place?"

"Mrs. Ordway's."

"Louise's!" Unconsciously Laurie's face softened.

"Yes. I went to see her one day," Bangs explained, "and I mentioned that we couldn't get any work out of you till you'd had the adventure you were insisting on. Mrs. Ordway said, 'Well, why don't you give him an adventure?' That," confessed Rodney, "started me off."

"Obviously," corroborated his friend. "So it was Louise's idea. Poor Louise! I hope she got some fun out of it."

"You bet she did!" corroborated Bangs, eagerly. "I kept her posted every day. She said it was more fun than a play, and that it was keeping her alive."

"Humph! Well, go on. Tell me how it started." Laurie was smiling. If the little episode just ended had been, as it were, a bobolink singing to Louise Ordway during her final days on earth, it was not he who would find fault with the bird or with those who had set it singing.

"The day we saw the caretaker in the window across the park," continued Rodney, "and I realized how interested you were, it occurred to me that we'd engage that studio and put Miss Mayo into it. Miss Mayo lives in Richmond, Virginia, and she had been making a big hit in amateur theatricals. She wanted to get on the legitimate stage, as Shaw told you; so Mrs. Ordway suggested that Epstein and I try her out—"

"Never mind all that!" interrupted Laurie. "Perhaps later Miss Mayo will tell me about it herself."

Bangs accepted the snub without resentment.

"Epstein thought it was a corking idea," he went on, "especially as we expected to try out some of the scenes I have in mind for the new play. But the only one you let us really get over was the suicide scene in the first act. You balled up everything else we attempted," he ended with a sigh.

Laurie smiled happily.

"Were your elevator boys in on the secret?" he asked Doris.

"No, of course not."

"Now, what I meant to do was this—" Rodney spoke briskly. He was recovering poise with extraordinary rapidity. His color was returning, his brown eyes were again full of life. And, as always when his thoughts were on his work, he was utterly oblivious to any other interest. "The second act was to be—"

He stopped and stared. Epstein had risen, had ponderously approached him, and had resolutely grasped him by one ear.

"Rodney," said the manager, with ostentatious subtlety, "you don't know it, but you got a date up-town in five minutes."

His voice and manner enlightened the obtuse Mr. Bangs.

"Oh, er—yes," stammered that youth, confusedly, and reluctantly got to his feet.

"Wait a minute," said Laurie. "Before you fellows go, there's one more little matter we've got to straighten out." They turned to him, and at the expression of utter devotion on the two faces the sternness left young Devon's eyes. "I was pretty mad about this business for a few minutes after Shaw explained it," he went on. "You folks didn't have much mercy, you know. You fooled me to the top of my bent. But now I feel that we've at least broken even."

"Even! Mein Gott!" repeated Epstein with a groan. "You've taken ten years—"

"You've got back ten already," the young man blithely reminded him. "That's fine! As I say, we're even. But from this time on, one thing must be definitely understood: Henceforth I'm not in leading-strings of any kind, however kindly they are put on me. If this association is to continue, there must be no more practical jokes, no more supervision, no more interference with me or my affairs. Is that agreed?"

"You bet it is!" corroborated Epstein. Again he wiped his brow. "I can't stand the pace you fellas set," he admitted.

Bangs nodded. "That's agreed. You're too good a boomerang for little Rodney."

"For my part," continued Laurie, "I promise to get to work on the new play, beginning next Monday."

"You will!" the two men almost shouted.

"I will. I've got to stand by Louise for the next two or three months, and we'll write the play while I'm doing it. Then, whether America enters the war this spring or not, I'm going to France. But we'll talk over all that later. Are you off?"

He ushered them to the door.

"And it's all right, boy?" Epstein asked wistfully. "You know how vell ve meant. You ain't got no hard feelings about this?"

"Not one." Laurie wrung his hand. Then, with an arm across Rodney's shoulders, he gave him a bearish hug. "I'll see you a little later," he promised.

Rodney suddenly looked self-conscious.

"Perhaps then you'll give me a chance to tell you some news," he suggested, with a mixture of triumph and embarrassment. Epstein's knowing grin enlightened Laurie.

"Sonya?" he asked eagerly.

"Yep. Great, isn't it?"

Laurie stared at him.

"By Jove, you have been busy!" he conceded. "Between manufacturing a frame-up for me, and winning a wife, you must have put in a fairly full week even for you." His arm tightened round his chum's shoulders. "I'm delighted, old man," he ended, seriously. "Sonya is the salt of the earth. Tell her she has my blessing."

When he reentered the room he found Doris standing in its center, waiting for him. Something in her pose reminded him of their first moments together in that familiar setting. She had carried off the original scene very well. Indeed, she had carried off very well most of the scenes she had been given.

"You'll be a big hit in the new play," he cheerfully remarked, as he came toward her.

"Laurie—" Her voice trembled. "You have forgiven the others. Can't you forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive," he quietly told her. "You saw a chance and you took it. In the same conditions, I suppose any other girl would have done the same thing. It's quite all right, and I wish you the best luck in the world. We'll try to make the new play worthy of you."

He held out his hand, but she shrank away from it.

"You're not going to forgive me!" she cried. "And—I don't blame you!"

She walked away from him, and, sinking into the chair Epstein had so recently vacated, sat bending forward, her elbow resting on its broad arm, her chin in her hand. It was the pose he knew so well and had loved so much.

"I don't blame you," she repeated. "What I was doing was—horrible. I knew it all the time, and I tried to get out of it the second day. But they wouldn't let me."

She waited, but he did not speak.

"Can't you understand?" she went on. "I've hated it from the start. I've hated deceiving you. You see—I—I didn't know you when I began. I thought it was just a good joke and awfully interesting. Then, when I met you, and you were so stunning, always, I felt like a beast. I told them I simply couldn't go on, but they coaxed and begged, and told me what it would mean to you as well as to me— They made a big point of that."

He took his favorite position by the mantel and watched her as she talked.

"Don't feel that way," he said at last. "You were playing for big stakes. You were justified in everything you said and did."

"I hated it," she repeated, ignoring the interruption. "And to-day, this afternoon, I tried to tell you everything. Don't you remember?"

"Yes, I remember." He spoke as he would to a child, kindly and soothingly. "Don't worry about it any more," he said. "You'll forget all this when we begin rehearsing."

She sprang to her feet.

"I don't want the play!" she cried passionately. "I wouldn't appear in it now under any conditions. I don't want to go on the stage. It was just a notion, an impulse. I've lost it, all of it, forever. I'm going back home, to my own people and my—own Virginia, to—to try to forget all this. I'm going to-morrow."

"You're excited," said Laurie, soothingly. He took her hands and held them. "I've put you through a bad half-hour. You understand, of course, that I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been made to realize that your whole thought, throughout this experiment, has been of the play, and only of the play."

She drew back and looked at him.

"What do you mean?"

"Why—" It was hard to explain, but he blundered on. "I mean that, for a little time, I was fool enough to hope that—that—some day you might care for me. For of course you know, you've known all along—that I—love you. But when I got the truth—"

"You haven't got the truth." She was interrupting him, but her face had flashed into flame. "You haven't had it for one second; but you're going to get it now. I'm not going to let our lives be wrecked by any silly misunderstanding."

She stopped, then rushed on.

"Oh, Laurie, can't you see? The only truth that counts between us is that I—I—adore you! I have from the very first—almost from the day you came here—Oh, it's dreadful of you to make me say all this!"

She was sobbing now, in his arms. For a long moment he held her very close and in utter silence. Like Bangs, but in a different way, he was feeling the effects of a tremendous reaction.

"You'll make a man of me, Doris," he said brokenly, when he could speak. "I'm not afraid to let you risk the effort. And when I come back from France—"

"When you come back from France you'll come back to your wife," she told him steadily. "If you're going, I'll marry you before you go. Then I'll wait and pray, and pray and wait, till you come again. And you will come back to me," she whispered. "Something makes me sure of it."

"I'll come back," he promised. "Now, for the first time, I am sure of that, too."

Four hours later Mr. Laurence Devon, lingeringly bidding good night to the lady of his heart, was surprised by a final confidence.

"Laurie," said Doris, holding him fast by, one button as they stood together on the threshold of the little studio, "do you know my real reason for giving up my ambition to go on the stage?"

"Yes. Me," said young Mr. Devon promptly and brilliantly. "But you needn't do it. I'm not going to be the ball-and-chain type of husband."

"I know. But there are reasons within the reason." She twisted the button thoughtfully. "It's because you're the real actor in the family. When I remember what you did to the three of us in that murder scene, and so quietly and naturally, without any heroics—"

She broke off. "There are seven million things about you that I love," she ended, "but the one I think I love the best of all is this: even in your biggest moments, Laurie darling, you never, never 'emote'!"



CHAPTER XIX

"WHAT ABOUT LAURIE?"

From the New York Sun, January 7, 1919:—

"Among the patients on the hospital ship Comfort, which arrived yesterday with nine hundred wounded soldiers on board, was Captain Laurence Devon, of the American Flying Forces in France.

"Captain Devon was seriously injured in a combat with two German planes, which occurred only forty-eight hours before the signing of the armistice. He brought down both machines and though his own plane was on fire and he was badly wounded, he succeeded in reaching the American lines. He has since been in the base hospital at C——, but is now convalescent.

"Captain Devon is an American 'ace,' with eleven air victories officially to his credit. He was awarded the French Croix de Guerre and the American Distinguished Service Medal for extraordinary heroism on August 9, 1918, when he went to the assistance of a French aviator who was fighting four Fokker planes. In the combat the four German machines were downed and their pilots killed. The Frenchman was badly hurt but eventually recovered.

"Captain Devon is well known in American social and professional life. He is the only son of the late Horace Devon, of Devondale, Ohio, and the brother-in-law of Robert J. Warren, of New York. Before the war he was a successful playwright. Just before sailing for France last year, he married Miss Doris Mayo, daughter of the late General Frederick Mayo, of Richmond, Virginia. On reaching his New York home to-day he will see for the first time his infant son, Rodney Jacob Devon."



* * * * *



Transcriber's note:

Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.

THE END