CHAPTER XXV
The man looked up from the paper he was twisting for a fire and sawShirley's attitude of despair.
"Say, kid," he said, with a kind of gruff tenderness, "you don't needto take it that a-way. I know it's tough luck to lose out when youbeen so nervy and all, but you knew we had it over you from the start.You hadn't a show. And say! Girlie! I tell you what! I'll makeHennie sit down right now and copy 'em off for you, and you can put 'emin your book again when you get back and nobody be the wiser. We'lljust take out the leaves. We gotta keep the original o' course, butthat won't make any beans for you. It won't take you no time to write'em over again if he gives you a copy."
Somehow it penetrated through Shirley's tired consciousness that theman was trying to be kind to her. He was pitying her and offering hera way out of her supposed dilemma, offering to assist her in some ofhis own kind of deception. The girl was touched even through all herother crowding emotions and weariness. She lifted up her head with afaint little smile.
"Thank you," she said, wearily, "but that wouldn't do me any good."
"Why not?" asked the man sharply. "Your boss would never know it gotout through you."
"But _I_ should know I had failed!" she said sadly. "If you had mynotes I should know that I had failed in my trust."
"It wouldn't be your fault. You couldn't have helped it!"
"Oh, yes, I could, and I ought. I shouldn't have let the driver turnaround. I should have got out of that car and waited at the station asMr. Barnard told me to do till he came. I had been warned and I oughtto have been on my guard. So you see it _was_ my fault."
She drooped her head forward and rested her chin dejectedly on the palmof her hand, her elbow on her knee. The man stood looking at her for asecond in half-indignant astonishment.
"By golly!" he said at last. "You certainly are some nut! Well,anyhow, buck up, and let's have some tea. Sorry I can't see my wayclear to help you out any further, being as we're sort of partners inthis job and you certainly have got some nerve for a girl, but you knowhow it is. I guess I can't do no more'n I said. I got my honor tothink about, too. See? Hennie! Get a move on you. We ain't waitin'all night fer eats. Bring in them things from the cupboard and let'sget to work."
Shirley declined to come to the table when at last the repast wasready. She said she was not hungry. In fact, the smell or thecrackers and cheese and pickles and dried beef sickened her. She felttoo hysterical to try to eat, and besides she had a lingering feelingthat she must keep near that piano. If anything happened she had avague idea that she might somehow hide the precious notes within thebig old instrument.
The man frowned when she declined to come to supper, but a moment laterstumbled awkwardly across the room with a slopping cup of coffee andset it down beside her.
"Buck up, girlie!" he growled. "Drink that and you'll feel better."
Shirley thanked him and tried to drink a few mouthfuls. Then thethought occurred to her that it might be drugged, and she swallowed nomore. But she tried to look a bit brighter. If she must pass thisstrange evening in the company of these rough men, it would not helpmatters for her to give way to despair. So after toying with theteaspoon a moment, she put the cup down and began to play soft airs onthe old piano again while the men ate and took a stealthy taste now andthen from a black bottle. She watched them furtively as she played,marvelling at their softened expressions, remembering the old line:
"Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast," and wondering ifperhaps there were not really something in it. If she had not been insuch a terrifying situation she would really have enjoyed the characterstudy that this view of those two faces afforded her, as she sat in theshadow playing softly while they ate with the flaring candle betweenthem.
"I like music with my meals!" suddenly chanted out the boy in aninterval. But the man growled in a low tone:
"Shut up! Ain't you got no manners?"
Shirley prolonged that meal as much as music could do it, for she hadno relish for a more intimate tete-a-tete with either of hercompanions. When she saw them grow restless she began to sing again,light little airs this time with catchy words; or old tender melodiesof home and mother and childhood. They were songs she had sung thatlast night in the dear old barn when Sidney Graham and Elizabeth werewith them, and unconsciously her voice took on the wail of her heartfor all that dear past so far away from her now.
Suddenly, as the last tender note of a song died away Joe stumbledbreathlessly into the room. The boy Hennie slithered out of the roomlike a serpent at his first word.
"Beat it!" he cried in a hoarse whisper. "Get a move on! All hell'sout after us! I bet they heard her singin'! Take her an' beat it!I'll douse the fire an' out the candle."
He seized a full bucket of water and dashed it over the dying fire.Shirley felt the other man grasp her arm in a fierce grip. Then Joesnuffed out the candle with his broad thumb and finger and all waspitch dark. She felt herself dragged across the floor regardless offurniture in the way, stumbling, choking with fear, her one thoughtthat whatever happened she must not let her slippers get knocked off;holding her feet in a tense strain with every muscle extended to keepthe shoes fastened on like a vise. She was haunted with a wild thoughtof how she might have slipped under the piano and eluded her captor ifonly the light had gone out one second sooner before he reached herside. But it was too late to think of that now, and she was beingdragged along breathlessly, out the front door, perhaps, and down awalk; no, it was amongst trees, for she almost ran into one. The manswore at her, grasped her arm till he hurt her and she cried out.
"You shut up or I'll shoot you!" he said with an oath. He had lost allhis suavity and there was desperation in his voice. He kept turninghis head to look back and urging her on.
She tripped on a root and stumbled to her knees, bruising thempainfully, but her only thought was one of joy that her shoes had notcome off.
The man swore a fearful oath under his breath, then snatched her up andbegan to run with her in his arms. It was then she heard Graham'svoice calling:
"Shirley! Where are you? I'm coming!"
She thought she was swooning or dreaming and that it was not really he,for how could he possibly be here? But she cried out with a voice asclear as a bell: "I'm here, Sidney, come quick!" In his efforts tohush her voice, the man stumbled and fell with her in his arms. Therecame other voices and forms through the night. She was gathered up instrong, kind arms and held. The last thought she had before she sankinto unconsciousness was that God had not forgotten. He had beenremembering all the time and sent His help before it was too late; justas she had known all along He must do, because He had promised to carefor His own, and she was one of His little ones.
When she came to herself again she was lying in Sidney Graham's armswith her head against his shoulder feeling oh, so comfortable andtired. There were two automobiles with powerful headlights standingbetween the trees, and a lot of policemen in the shadowy background.Her captor stood sullen against a tree with his hands and feetshackled. Joe stood between two policemen with a rope bound about hisbody spirally, and the boy Hennie, also bound, beside his fallenbicycle, turned his ferret eyes from side to side as if he hoped evenyet to escape. Two other men with hawk-like faces that she had notseen before were there also, manacled, and with eyes of smoulderingfires. Climbing excitedly out of one of the big cars came Mr. Barnard,his usually immaculate pink face smutty and weary; his sparse whitehair rumpled giddily, and a worried pucker on his kind, prim face.
"Oh, my dear Miss Hollister! How unfortunate!" he exclaimed. "I dohope you haven't suffered too much inconvenience!"
Shirley smiled up at him from her shoulder of refuge as from a dream.It was all so amusing and impossible after what she had been through.It couldn't be real.
"I assure you I am very much distressed on your account," went on Mr.Barnard, politely and hurriedly, "and I hate to mention it at such atime, but could you
tell me whether the notes are safe? Did thosehorrid men get anything away from you?"
A sudden flicker of triumph passed over the faces of the fettered manand the boy, like a ripple over still water and died away intounintelligence.
But Shirley's voice rippled forth in a glad, clear laugh, as sheanswered joyously:
"Yes, Mr. Barnard, they got my note-book, but not the notes! Theythought the Tilman-Brooks notes were what they were after, but the realnotes are in my shoes. Won't you please get them out, for I'm afraid Ican't hold them on any longer, my feet ache so!"
It is a pity that Shirley was not in a position to see the look ofastonishment, followed by a twinkle of actual appreciation that cameover the face of the shackled man beside the tree as he listened. Onecould almost fancy he was saying to himself: "The nervy little nut!She put one over on me after all!"
It was also a pity that Shirley could not have got the full view of thealtogether precise and conventional Mr. Barnard kneeling before her onthe ground, removing carefully, with deep embarrassment and concern,first one, then the other, of her little black pumps, extracting theprecious notes, counting over the pages and putting them ecstaticallyinto his pocket. No one of that group but Shirley could fullyappreciate the ludicrous picture he made.
"You are entirely sure that no one but yourself has seen these notes?"he asked anxiously as if he hardly dared to believe the blessed truth.
"Entirely sure, Mr. Barnard!" said Shirley happily, "and now if youwouldn't mind putting on my shoes again I can relieve Mr. Graham of thenecessity of carrying me any further."
"Oh, surely, surely!" said Mr. Barnard, quite fussed and getting downlaboriously again, his white forelock all tossed, and his foreheadperplexed over the unusual task. How did women get into such a littletrinket of a shoe, anyway?
"I assure you, Miss Hollister, our firm appreciates what you have done!We shall not forget it. You will see, we shall not forget it!" hepuffed as he rose with beads of perspiration on his brow. "You havedone a great thing for Barnard and Clegg to-day!"
"She's done more than that!" said a burly policeman significantlyglancing around the group of sullen prisoners, as Graham put her uponher feet beside him. "She's rounded up the whole gang for us, andthat's more than anybody else has been able to do yet! She oughtta geta medal of some kind fer that!"
Then, with a dare-devil lift of his head and a gleam of something likefun in his sullen eyes, the manacled man by the tree spoke out, lookingstraight at Shirley, real admiration in his voice:
"I say, pard! I guess you're the winner! I'll hand you what's comin'to you if I do lose. You certainly had your nerve!"
Shirley looked at him with a kind of compassion in her eyes.
"I'm sorry you have to be--there," she finished. "You were--as fine asyou could be to me under the circumstances, I suppose! I thank you forthat."
The man met her gaze for an instant, a flippant reply upon his lips,but checked it and dropping his eyes, was silent. The whole littlecompany under the trees were hushed into silence before the miracle ofa girl's pure spirit, leaving its impress on a blackened soul.
Then, quietly, Graham led her away to his car with Barnard and thedetectives following. The prisoners were loaded into the other cars,and hurried on the way to judgment.