Part 7

“I suppose so,” said Ross, casually. It was difficult for him to conceal his delight. Donnelly was evidently at a loss; he couldn’t believe ill of that girl with her careless smile. He thought she was too young, too light-hearted. The very fact of her ignoring Ross’s warning had done this for her. If she had understood, if across her smiling face had come that look Ross had seen, that look of terror and dismay, Donnelly would not have thought her too young.

“He’s not sure now!” thought Ross. “He’s not sure. She has a chance now. If I can only think of something.”

He could not think of anything useful now, but he felt sure that he would, later on. There was a chance now. Donnelly was only human; he, like other men, could be deluded.

They left the garage and walked back to the waiting taxi.

“What about a little lunch first?” suggested Donnelly.

“All right!” said Ross.

So they stopped at a restaurant in the town, and sent away the cab. They sat down facing each other across a small table. Ross was hungry, and Donnelly, too, ate with hearty appetite, but he did not talk. He was thoughtful, and, Ross believed, somewhat downcast.

“Getting up a new theory,” said the young man to himself. “Perhaps I can help him.”

The vague outline of a plan was assembling in his mind, but he could not quite discern it yet. It seemed to him plain that Donnelly had nothing but suspicions; that he had no definite facts as to any connection between Ives and Amy Solway. He had thought she was the woman to whom that letter was addressed; but since he had seen her, he doubted. Very well; he must be kept in doubt.

When they had finished lunch, they went round the corner to a garage, and took another taxi. Ross settled himself back comfortably, and filled and lighted his new pipe; a good time to break it in, he thought. Donnelly brought out a big cigar, which he kept in the corner of his mouth while he talked a little upon the subject of tobacco. The cab grew thick with smoke, and Ross opened the window beside him. The rain blew in, but he did not mind that.

They came to the cottage along the lane which took them directly to its front gate. There it stood, forlorn and shabby, the shutters closed, the neglected garden a dripping tangle. They went up the steps; Donnelly knocked, but there was no answer. He pushed open the door, and they went in. He called out: “Is there anybody here?”

But Ross knew then that the house was empty. The very air proclaimed it.

“My luck’s in!” he thought, elated.

XVII

“Nice, cheerful little place!” observed Donnelly, looking about him.

Ross said nothing. He had not even dared hope for such a stroke of luck as that Eddy and the little girl should be gone, yet the silence in this dim, damp, little house troubled him. Where and why had they gone?

“We’ll just take a look around,” said Donnelly.

He opened a door beside him, revealing a dark and empty room. He flashed an electric torch across it; nothing there but the bare floor and the four walls. He closed the door and went along the passage, and opened the door of the next room. The shutter was broken here, and one of the window panes, and the rain was blowing in, making a pool on the floor that gleamed darkly when the flash light touched it.

That door, too, he closed, with a sort of polite caution, as if he didn’t want to disturb any one. Then he looked into the room at the end of the passage. This was evidently the kitchen, for there was a sink there, and a built-in dresser. He turned on the taps; no water.

“Now we’ll just take a look upstairs,” he said, in a subdued tone.

He mounted the stairs with remarkable lightness for so heavy a man; but Ross took no such precaution. Indeed, he wanted to make a noise. He did not like the silence in this house.

Donnelly opened the door facing the stairs. One shutter had been thrown back, and the room was filled with the gray light of the rainy afternoon. And, lying on the floor, Ross saw a white flannel rabbit.

It lay there, quite alone, its one pink glass eye staring up at the ceiling, and round its middle was a bedraggled bit of blue ribbon which Ross remembered very well.

“Now, what’s this?” said Donnelly.

He picked up the rabbit, frowning a little; he turned it this way and that, he fingered its sash. And, to Ross, there was something grotesque and almost horrible in the sight of the burly fellow with a cigar in one corner of his mouth, and an intent frown on his red face, holding that rabbit.

“It’s a clew, isn’t it?” he inquired, with mock respect.

Donnelly glanced at him quickly. Then he put the rabbit into the pocket of his overcoat, from which its long ears protruded ludicrously.

“Come on!” he said.

The next door was locked, and here Donnelly displayed his professional talents. Before Ross could quite see what he was at, he had taken something from his pocket; he bent forward, and almost at once the lock clicked, and he opened the door.

It seemed to Ross that nothing could have been more eloquent of crime, of shameful secrecy and misery, than that room. There was a wretched little makeshift bed against one wall, made up of burlap bags and a ragged portiére; there was a box on which stood a lantern, an empty corned beef tin, and a crushed and sodden packet of cigarettes. There was nothing else.

With a leaden heart, he looked at Donnelly, and saw him very grave.

“Come on!” he said, again.

And they went on, into every corner of that house that was so empty and yet so filled with questions. They found nothing more. Some one had been here, and some one had gone; that was all.

Donnelly led the way back to the room where that some one had been.

“Now we’ll see if we can find some more clews here,” he said. “Like the fellows in the story books.”

He took up the packet of cigarettes and went over to the window with it. But, instead of examining the object in his hand, his glance was arrested by something outside, and he stood staring straight before him so long that Ross came up beside him, to see for himself.

From this upper window there was an unexpectedly wide vista of empty fields, still white with snow, and houses tiny in the distance, and a belt of woodland, dark against the gray sky; all deserted and desolate in the steady fall of sleet. What else?

Directly before the house was the road, where the taxi waited, the driver inside. Across the road the land ran downhill in a steep slope, washed bare of any trace of snow, and at its foot was a pond, a somber little sheet of water, shivering under the downpour. But there was nobody in sight, nothing stirred. What else? What was Donnelly looking at?

“I think—” said Donnelly. “I guess I’ll just go out and mooch around a little before it gets dark. Just to get the lay of the land. _You_ don’t want to come—in this weather. You just wait here. I won’t keep you long.”

Ross did want to go with him, everywhere, and to see everything that he saw, but he judged it unwise to say so. He stood where he was, listening to the other’s footsteps quietly descending; he heard the front door close softly, and a moment later he saw Donnelly come out into the road and cross it, with a wave of his hand toward the taxi driver, and begin to descend the steep slope toward the pond.

“What’s he going there for?” thought Ross. “What does he think—”

Before he had finished the question, the answer sprang up in his mind. Donnelly had not found Ives in the cottage, so he was going to look for him down there. Suppose he found him?

“No!” thought Ross. “It’s—impossible. I—I’m losing my nerve.”

To tell the truth, he was badly shaken. He was ready to credit Donnelly with superhuman powers, to believe that he could see things invisible to other persons, that he could, simply by looking out of the window, trace the whole course of a crime.

“I’ve got to do something,” he thought. “Now is my chance. I can give him the slip now.”

But he was a good seven or eight miles from “Day’s End.” Well, why couldn’t he hurry down, jump into the taxi, and order the driver to set off at once? Long before Donnelly could find any way of escape from this desolate region, he could get back to the house and warn Amy. And, in doing so, he would certainly antagonize Donnelly, and confirm any suspicions he might already have.

“No,” he thought. “He’s not sure about Amy now. And I don’t believe he’s got anything against me. I can’t afford to run away. He hasn’t found anything yet that definitely connects Amy with the—the case.”

But when he did?

Donnelly had reached the bottom of the slope now, and was sauntering along the edge of the pond, hands in his pockets. He had in nowise the air of a sleuth hot upon a scent, but to Ross his leisurely progress suggested an alarming confidence. He knew—what didn’t he know? And Ross, the guilty one, knew nothing at all. In angry desperation, he turned away from the window.

“All right!” he said, aloud. “I’ll have a look for clews myself!”

And, without the slightest difficulty, he found all the clews he wanted.

The makeshift bed was the only place in the room where anything could be hidden; he lifted up the portiére that lay over the bags, and there he found a shabby pocketbook in which were the papers of the missing Martin Ives.

Everything was there—everything one could want. There was a savings bank book, there were two or three letters, and there was a little snapshot of Amy, on the back of which was written: “To Marty—so that he won’t forget.”

Ross looked at that photograph for a long time. He was not expert enough to recognize that the costume was somewhat outmoded, but he did know that this picture had been taken some time ago, because Amy was so different. It showed her standing on a beach, with the wind blowing her hair and her skirts, her head a little thrown back, and on her face the jolliest smile—a regular schoolgirl grin.

It hurt him, the sight of that laughing, dimpled, little ghost from the past. He remembered her as he had seen her today, still smiling, still lovely, but so changed. She was reckless now, haunted now, even in her most careless moments.

He opened the top letter; it bore the date of last Monday, but no address. It read:

Dear Mr. Ives:

Amy has asked me to reply to your letter of a month ago. I scarcely need to tell you how greatly it distressed her. If you should come to the house publicly now, everything she has tried to do would be ruined. She had hoped that you would wait patiently, but as you refuse to do so, she has consented to see you.

She wants to see Lily as well, and, although there is a great deal of risk in this, if you will follow my directions, I think we can manage. Telephone to the nurse with whom the child is boarding to bring her to the station at Greenwich by the train leaving New York at 7.20 A.M. on Tuesday and Eddy will meet her there. You can take an early afternoon train to Stamford. Take a taxi there and go up the Post Road to Bonnifer Lane, a little past the Raven Inn. There is a new church being built on the corner. Turn down here, and stop at the first house, about half a mile from the main road. You will find the little girl there, and I shall be there, waiting for you, between three and five, and we can make arrangements for you to see Amy.

Remember, Mr. Ives, that Amy trusts you to do _nothing_ until you have seen her.

Respectfully yours, Amanda Jones.

Ross folded up the letter. Yes; nobody could ask for a much better clew. He took out another letter, but before opening it, he glanced out of the window. And he saw Donnelly coming back.

He put the wallet into his pocket, and went to the head of the stairs. A great lassitude had come upon him; he felt physically exhausted. His doubt—and his hope—were ended now.

Donnelly came in quietly, and advanced to the foot of the stairs. It was not possible to read his face by that dim light, but his voice was very grave.

“Come on!” he said.

“Find anything?” asked Ross.

Donnelly was silent for a moment.

“I’ve finished,” he said, at last.

“What—” began Ross.

“I’ve finished,” Donnelly repeated, almost gently. “It’s up to the police now. We’ll have that pond dragged.”

Ross, too, was silent for a moment.

“All right!” he said. “I’ll just get my hat.”

He turned back into the room; Donnelly waited for him below. In a few minutes Ross joined him, and they got into the cab.

XVIII

Mr. Solway descended from the train and walked briskly toward his car. The new chauffeur was standing there, stiff as a poker.

“Well, Moss!” he said. “Everything all right, eh?”

“Yes, thank you, sir,” said Ross.

“That’s it!” said Mr. Solway, with his vague kindliness. He got into the car, and Ross started off through the sleet and the dark. Mr. Solway made two or three observations about the weather, but his chauffeur answered “Yes, sir,” “That’s so, sir,” rather absent-mindedly. He was, to tell the truth, very much preoccupied with his own thoughts. He was wondering how a pond was dragged, and how long such a thing might take.

He had seen no one, spoken to no one, since he had left Donnelly at the police station and gone back to the garage alone. So he had had plenty of time to think.

He stopped the car before the house, Mr. Solway got out, and Ross drove on to the garage. There would be a little more time for thinking before he was summoned to dinner. He went upstairs and sat down, stretched out in a chair, staring before him. He was still wearing the peaked cap which had belonged to Wheeler; perhaps it was not a becoming cap, for his face looked grim and harsh beneath it.

He was not impatient, now, as that James Ross had been who had landed in New York three days ago. Indeed, he seemed almost inhumanly patient, as if he were willing to sit there forever. And that was how he felt. He had done his utmost; now he could only wait.

The sleet was rattling against the windows, and a great wind blew. It must be a wild night, out in the fields, where a lonely little pond lay. A bad night to be in that little cottage. A bad night, anywhere in the world, for a child who had nobody.

From his pocket he brought out a snapshot, and looked at it for a long time; then he tore it into fragments and let them flutter to the floor. He closed his eyes, then, but he was not asleep; the knuckles of his hand grasping the arm of the chair were white.

No; he wasn’t asleep. When the telephone rang in the garage, he got up at once and went downstairs to answer it.

“Dinner’s ready!” said Gracie’s voice. “Eddy come in yet?”

“Not yet,” answered Ross. “But—wait a minute!”

For he thought he heard some one at the door. He was standing with the receiver in his hand when the door slid open and Eddy came in.

“He’s just—” he began, turning back to the telephone, when Eddy sprang forward and caught his arm, and whispered: “Shut up! Sh-h-h!”

“Just about due,” said Ross to Gracie. Then he hung up the receiver and faced Eddy.

“Don’t tell ’em I’m here!” said Eddy. “I—I don’t want—I c-can’t stand any—jabbering. I—Oh, Gawd!”

At the end of his tether, Eddy was. His lips twitched, his face was distorted with his valiant effort after self-control. And it occurred to Ross that, for all his shrewdness and his worldly air, Eddy was not very old or very wise.

“What’s up, old man?” he asked.

“Tell me. You’d better get your dinner now.”

“Nope!” said Eddy. “I—can’t eat. I—I don’t want to talk.”

Ross waited for some time.

“Lissen here,” said Eddy, at last. “You—you seemed to like—that kid. You—you’ll look after her, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Ross answered.

He would have been surprised, and a little incredulous, if any one had called him tactful, yet few people could have handled Eddy better. He knew what the boy wanted; knew that he needed just this cool and steady tone, this incurious patience.

“Go and get her,” Eddy pleaded. “She’s down at the barber’s—near the movie theayter. Go and get her.”

“All right. I’ll have my dinner first, though. Want me to bring you something?”

“Nope!” said Eddy. “Lissen! I guess the cops are after me already.”

“You mean they’ve—found him?”

“Yep,” said Eddy. “They’ve found him. How did you know?”

Ross did not answer the question.

“Can’t you get away?” he asked.

“Not going to try,” said Eddy. “I—I’m too d-darn tired. I—I _don’t care_!” There was a hysterical rise in his voice, but he mastered it. “Let ’em come!”

“What have they got against you?”

“They’ve found him—in the pond—where I put him.”

“Who’s going to know that?”

“Oh, they’ll know, all right!” said Eddy. “They got ways of finding out things. They’ll know, and they’ll think it was me that—All right! Let ’em!”

“Then you’re not going to tell?”

Eddy looked at him.

“D’you think it—wasn’t me?”

“Yes,” Ross replied. “I think it wasn’t you, Eddy.”

There was a long silence between them.

“What d’you think I’d ought to do?” asked Eddy, almost in a whisper.

“Suppose we talk it over,” said Ross.

“Yes—but—_I_ dunno who you are.”

“Well, let’s say I’m Ives.”

Eddy sprang back as if he had been struck.

“_Ives!_”

“Look here!” said Ross. “I’m going to tell you what I did.”

And, very bluntly, he told. Eddy listened to him in silence; it was a strange enough thing, but he showed no surprise.

“D’you think it’ll work?” he asked, when Ross had finished.

“I hope so. Anyhow, there’s a chance. Now, you better tell me the whole thing. There’s a lot that I don’t know—and I might make a bad mistake.”

The telephone rang again. It was Gracie, annoyed by this delay.

“I’ll come as soon as I can,” said Ross, severely. “But I’m working on the car, and I can’t leave off for a few minutes.”

He turned again to Eddy.

“Go ahead!” he said.

Eddy sat down on the step of the sedan, and Ross leaned back against the wall, his arms folded, his saturnine face shadowed by the peaked cap.

“Tuesday I went and got her—the kid, y’ know, and took her to the cottage.”

“Did you know about her before?”

“Sure I did! I knew when they got married—her and Ives—four years ago. She told me herself. You know the way she tells you things—crying an’ all.”

Ross did know.

“Well, I used to see Ives hanging around. He was a nice feller—but he didn’t have a cent. He was an actor. She was too young, anyway—eighteen—same age as me. I told her I’d tell Mr. Solway, and then she told me they’d got married. I felt pretty bad—on Mr. Solway’s account. But she—well, you know how she acts. Her mother’d left her some money she’s going to get when she’s twenty-five, if she don’t get married without her stepfather’s consent. Mrs. Solway had the right idea. She knew Amy, all right. Only, it didn’t work. Amy wanted to get married and have the money, too. That’s how she is. So she told me she was going to tell Mr. Solway when she was twenty-five. I know I’d ought to have told him then, but—I didn’t.”

Ross understood that.

“Mr. Solway went over to Europe that summer, and she and Mrs. Jones went somewheres out West, and Lily was born out there. And Ives, he took the kid, and she came back here. She used to see Ives pretty often for awhile—go into the city and meet him. Then she began talking about what a risk it was. That was because she’d met this Gayle Dexter. That made me sick! I said I’d tell Mr. Solway, but she said her and Ives was going to get divorced, an’ nobody’d ever know, and that I’d ruin her life and all. And I gave in—like a fool. Only, you see, I—I’ve known Amy all my life.”

“I see!” said Ross.

“Well, it seems Ives was beginning to get suspicious, when she didn’t see him no more. He kept writing; I used to get the letters for her—general delivery—an’ she kept stalling—and at last he said he was coming here to see her. Well, her and Mrs. Jones must have told him to come along. And Tuesday I met the kid and took her to that cottage. My idea, that was. I told Mrs. Jones about the place. I wish to Gawd I hadn’t.” He was silent for a moment. “Only, I thought it might—I was glad to do it, ’cause I thought maybe if Amy seen Ives and the kid, she’d—kinder change her mind. He come that afternoon, and seen Mrs. Jones. Well, I went there after work, and he told me Amy was coming to see him next morning. He was real pleased. He was—he was a—nice feller—”

Eddy’s mouth twitched again. “I wish—I’d known. Anyway, she wouldn’t go to see him. Jones tried to make her—said she’d got to have a talk with him—but Amy, she took on something fierce. Said she’d never see him again. Well, I guess he must of waited and waited, and in the afternoon he come here to the garage. I tried to argue with him and all, but it wouldn’t work. He started off for the house, and I telephoned over to Jones. An’ he went—he went out of that door—”

Eddy turned and stared at the door with an odd blank look. It was as if he saw something—which was not there.

“This very door,” he muttered. “My Gawd!”

“Yes,” said Ross, quietly. “He went to the house. And then?”

Eddy turned back with a shudder.

“I didn’t never think,” he said. “Wheeler’d left, then, so I drove the big car down to the station to meet Mr. Solway, and when I brung him home, you was there. Old Lady Jones tried to tip me off. I saw her trying to tell me something behind your back. I couldn’t make out what it was, but I knew there was something queer. I thought you was a detective Ives’d sent to see what was going on, ’cause he’d been saying he’d do that. I didn’t know, then— But next day Jones told me that—that Ives had—died. Said he’d fell down dead from a heart attack. And she said we’d got to get rid of him on the Q. T., for Amy’s sake. I—I thought I couldn’t—but I did. Fella I know lent me his Ford. I said I wanted to take a girl out. And, while you were out there on the lawn, I—I got him—out of Jones’s room.”

“Do you mean he’d been there all that time?”

“I guess so. She told me she been sitting up all night, trying to—to see if she could—do anything for him. But he— Anyway, Jones told me what to do, and I did it. I—you don’t know what it was like—going all that way—alone—with him. And I had to put stones in his pockets.” He looked at Ross with a sort of wonder.

“I can’t believe it now!” he cried. “It don’t seem true! I don’t know _why_—only Jones told me that if I didn’t, there’d be a inquest an’ all. And she said everyone’d think that Amy— It would all come out, she said, and Amy and Mr. Solway’d be in the newspapers and all. And she said he was dead, anyway. The pond couldn’t hurt _him_. I—”

He came closer to Ross, and laid a hand on his sleeve. “Lissen here!” he said. “D’you think that’s true—that he—just died?”

“There’s no use thinking about that—now,” said Ross.

XIX

Ross could feel sorry enough for Eddy, for his ghastly trip to the pond, for all the dread and misery that lay upon his soul. He was sorry for Ives, although his sufferings were at an end. He pitied Mr. Solway, in his ignorance of all this. He was sorry, in his own way, for Amy. But, above all creatures in this world, he pitied that little child.

Eddy told him about her. When Ives had gone to “Day’s End,” he had left the child with the obliging barber in town, and she had been there all that night and the next day, until Mrs. Jones had sent Eddy after her.

“She said it would start people talking, if the kid stayed there, and she told me to take her back to the cottage and leave her till she made some plans. But I couldn’t do that. The way I felt last night, I didn’t care. I’d rather have seen the whole thing go to smash than leave the kid alone there all night. That’s why I brung her here. And this morning—I couldn’t stay there—in that house. It kind of gave me the creeps. So I took her back to the barber’s.” He paused.

“Jones don’t care about the kid,” he added. “She don’t care about anything on earth but Amy. Lissen here! I know she’s old and all, but I think—maybe she—I just wonder if the old girl had the nerve?”