One of Delehanty's first measures was to have the big house watched. Even before Riever could have got back to the beach, Pen from her front window saw the little group come in by the drive, separate and lose themselves in the darkness. One came to the house. Pendleton let him in. By Mr. Delehanty's orders he was to keep watch inside the house all night. He was to remain in the hall of the second floor. Pendleton's outraged protests were in vain. The man brought a chair up from the dining-room, and planted it outside Pen's door. It was Keesing. Pen already had him down in her black books, a gaunt, red-haired young man, curiously eager to do spy work.
Pen locked her door, and paced up and down her room, raging. Her weariness was forgotten. Trapped! trapped! trapped! she felt with every footfall. To be sure the flat roof of the porch ran around outside her windows. It would be no great matter to slide down one of the porch posts to the ground. But they were certainly watching her windows from the outside, counting on being able to humiliate her no doubt.
Within the space of half an hour she nearly went out of her mind. Then there was a diversion. Once more the rat-tat-tat of the big knocker reverberated through the lofty halls, and Pendleton had to paddle down-stairs again. Pen listening with all her ears made out the rumble of Delehanty's voice. Some one else was speaking too.
Finally Delehanty raised his voice: "Keesing!"
"Yes sir?"
The detective clattered down the uncarpeted stairs, and Pen opened her door a crack. She heard her father coming up, and from a certain lightness in his step guessed that he was bringing what he considered to be good news.
Seeing her at her door he broke out: "It's all right, my dear. It's Mr. Riever and Mr. Delehanty. There's been a misunderstanding it seems. No intention of annoying us. They apologized most handsomely. The man is to be taken away. All the men are to be taken away."
Pen smiled scornfully. "Do they expect me to be taken in so easily?" she thought.
Pendleton went on: "Mr. Riever said if it would not be presuming too much, could he speak to you for a minute? Wants to apologize to you personally. Better go down, dear. God knows, this is no time for formality!"
It was on Pen's lips to refuse scornfully, but curiosity was strong within her. If she expected to get the better of these men she must know what they were up to. Perhaps they intended to arrest her. But in that case they would hardly have got up this comedy of sending the men up and taking them away again. Virtually she had been under arrest while Keesing sat at her door.
Declining the offer of her father's candle, Pen went down.
Riever alone was framed in the opening of the front door, the moonlight behind him. When Pen got close enough she saw Delehanty and Keesing waiting in the grass below the porch. Pen stopped a little more than arm's length from Riever. She couldn't see his face well.
"You needn't be afraid," he said in a voice smooth, yet a little truculent, too, a sort of hang-dog voice. "I just wanted to tell you that when I found Delehanty had had the house surrounded, and put a man inside I was sore. I made him call them off. I didn't want you to think I had a hand in it."
Pen was a little disconcerted, this was such a violent change from half an hour before. It was highly characteristic though of Riever to ignore everything that had gone before, characteristic of the spoiled child of any age.
"Much obliged," she said, trying to keep the note of irony out of her voice.
If he heard irony he did not betray it. "Well ... that's all I wanted to say. That I was sorry you were annoyed ... Will you shake hands on it?"
"Surely!" said Pen. She offered her hand with a mental reservation: "If you're deceiving me as I suspect, this doesn't count!"
She thought he would never have done fondling her hand. She ground her teeth and endured it.
"Well ... good-night," he said at last.
"Good-night," said Pen.
When he had taken two steps he stopped. "I said all his men," he said with a sly note creeping into his voice. "Watch and make sure."
Pen waited in the doorway. Riever stepping off the porch, spoke to Delehanty. Delehanty put a hand to his lips and blew a shrill whistle. Out of various shrubby corners of the grounds figures emerged and approached their chief. Like a scene in a melodrama Pen thought with curling lip. There were six of them. That was the number she had seen enter the grounds.
"Good-night," said Riever in a purring voice.
"Good-night, Miss," fawned Delehanty.
"Good-night, Miss," said Keesing, taking his tone from his betters.
"Good-night," said Pen clearly.
They all moved off in a body towards the gates.
Pen smiling scornfully, turned back up-stairs. "What sort of an imbecile do they take me for? ... Presently they'll come sneaking back... Expect me to lead them to him, do they?" Suddenly the quality of her smile changed. "Well why not do it? ... It's the best idea I've had yet..." She went into her room in a study.
The big house was laid out on the simplest of plans. As you entered the front door the two drawing-rooms were on the left of the central hall, and an immense dining-room on the right, with a pantry behind it as big as the living-room in many a cottage. In the rear extension were the kitchen and various offices. The second floor was divided into four great chambers of equal size and a smaller room over the entrance where Pen kept her sewing-machine. Her father slept in the room over the dining-room. It had a door into the room behind it, which was his study, work-shop and general receptacle. Pen had the other front room and it also communicated with the room behind it, which was called the guest chamber. The door between the two rooms was always supposed to be locked.
The second floor of the rear extension was on a lower level. That is to say you started down the big stairway and reached the rear rooms from the turn. The extension contained the famous bathroom long out of repair, various cupboards and store-rooms, and the two servants' rooms which looked to the rear. In the main block of the house there was a third story with four more big bedrooms, and above that again was the "cupalow."
Pendleton had gone back to bed. Pen got two lamps and flitted into the rear extension. Her father, accustomed to her peregrinations over the house at all hours, paid no attention, even if he heard. The two servants' rooms were not used, but each contained various articles of furniture. Pen lit her lamps and placed them far enough back from the windows so that the lamps themselves could not have been seen by anybody who might chance to look up from the yard below. Anyone who was not familiar with the house would naturally suppose that the two lighted windows were in the same room.
Pen calculated. "I told him to pack up his things and hide them before starting. That will take him say half an hour. It will take him twenty minutes to cross the fields. He can't get here in much less than an hour. I'll start in half an hour."
Returning to her own room, she dropped to her knees at one of the front windows, and peered over the sill. She strained her eyes to watch that part of the grounds that was within range. But the very mysteriousness of moonlight balked her. The moon was in the South throwing long shadows directly athwart the lawn. The trees and shrubs of the overgrown place offered scores of hiding-places. More than once she thought she saw dark spots that did not belong there, and shadows seemed to move. She could not be sure. For that matter she knew that men could come along the beach below and scramble up the honeysuckle vines. In this way they could surround the house without crossing the open space in front. She was morally certain the detectives had returned, but she could not spot them.
At the end of half an hour she dressed herself in her black dress and put on stout shoes. With a wildly beating heart she stole down stairs, and let herself softly out on the porch, leaving the door open. Here, for the benefit of anybody who might be watching her, she gave an imitation of one terrified and undecided; walking unevenly up and down, coming to the edge and peering out, running back in the house in a sudden panic, timorously venturing forth again. Finally she took to the shrubbery.
She ran to the gates, scuttling like a rabbit from clump to clump, her head continually over her shoulder. She wished to be followed, but she must not of course appear to wish to be followed. She wished to find out too, if she were followed, but she must at all costs keep her pursuers from guessing that she was on to them. It was very complicated.
At the gates she hesitated, turning her head this way and that. The question was which way should she lead them. Eventually she meant to take them to the little temple above the pond, but in the meantime she had half an hour to kill. From one of the ground floor windows of the cottage a beam of light was streaming out. Crouching over she ran across the intervening grass and peered over the sill. Surely if anybody were watching her this would seem like a natural act.
Riever and Delehanty were within the room. Delehanty had fallen asleep on a couch. Riever was pacing up and down. There was no strut in him now, he was not on parade. He moved with his more natural cat-like tread, but it was a cat with a load on his back. When he turned at the far end of the room and Pen saw his face, the features were composed enough, but in his eyes showed a wild, animal-like torment. But her soft heart was hard against him. Whatever he might be suffering it was only a tithe of what he owed. The swiftest of glances was sufficient for her. She dropped to the ground like a leaf, and creeping around the corner of the house, made for the road in front.
Running by fits and starts she went down the hill to the beach. She lingered in the shadow of a bush looking out. Nothing human stirred. There was a breeze from the Southeast and from the other side of the point came a murmur of waves on the beach. But within the scimitar curve of white sand the water was like a mirror. Three hundred yards offshore the Alexandra floated, huge and ghostly in the moonlight, all dark except for her riding-light. Out in the bay the red light on Poplar point flashed intermittently. Out of the vast, gray stillness that recurring spark had a dreadful significance—like blood.
Pen retraced her steps more slowly up the hill. If anyone had followed her so far, he would have to let her pass him now. He would be hidden somewhere alongside the road. The thought made her heart flutter. Though she had deliberately provoked it, there was a terrible excitement in being hunted. As she walked she kept her head fixed straight ahead, but her darting eyes searched among the bushes on her left. On the other side was a cut-bank which afforded no cover.
And then she saw one of them. There could be no mistaking it. In the darkest shadow under the branches, the suggestion of a crouching human figure still as death. She could even tell that he was holding his head down to keep his white face from betraying him. He was less than ten feet from her. It was terribly hard to keep her muscles in order as she passed, and just after she passed. But satisfaction was mixed with her terror. Her ruse had not failed.
Leaving the gates on her left she kept on around the turn of the road. Here she sought to play with them further by running again, running as hard as she could alongside the fence that bounded the vegetable garden. Looking over her shoulder she had glimpses of two pursuers, bent double in the road, and darting from shadow to shadow. She took them a quarter of a mile down the road and brought them back to the point where her own path struck off behind the cottage into the woods.
At this point she hesitated for a long time looking all around her like a person wishing to make finally sure that she was not followed. As long as she stood still nothing stirred of course. Suddenly she put her head down and ran like a deer for the woods. As soon as she was within cover she stopped and looked back. Her pursuers were startled into showing themselves openly on the path. Three of them. Pen ran on to the little temple and flung herself down to recover her breath and await developments. She sat within the little circle of pillars with an arm flung across the cool gravestone and her cheek pillowed on it. It was quite dark there.
But nothing happened. Nobody came plunging after her into the little opening. Not a sound was to be heard. The excitement of being chased died down, and a chill of apprehension struck to Pen's breast. What were they up to? They couldn't possibly see what she was doing in the little temple. Why didn't they find out then? The suspense became unbearable. Each minute was an age. She could have screamed aloud.
Then she heard a twig snap—not in the direction of the path by which she had come, but on the other side of the clearing. It instantly became clear to her what was happening, and her breast quieted down. She heard other whispers of sounds, the brush of leaves against a passing body, a released pebble rolling down the bank. Naturally if they thought Don was in there with her they had to take their precautions. They had sent for help maybe. Certainly they were now surrounding the place.
Then absolute silence fell again, and moment by moment her breast became tighter. It was worse now because she could feel the presences around her. Why didn't they do something? Suddenly a wicked little thought occurred to her. She smiled and at the same time shook with fear. She commenced to murmur half-audibly to herself. It was only a nursery rhyme, but she meant it to sound like conversation.
It worked. A dazzling white beam suddenly flashed in her face. Pen screamed and scrambled to her feet. She did not have to act that. But oh! it was a relief to have it over with. As she stood up other lights were thrown on her. She could see nothing for the shifting, blinding circles. Some were held on her, others ran all over the place like quicksilver, like scrambling little devils of light nosing in the corners. One even ran around under the dome as if it expected to find Don clinging there like a bat.
From behind one of the glares came Delehanty's growling voice: "Where is he?"
"Who?" said Pen. She was cool enough now.
"You know who I mean!" He checked on oath.
"I am alone here," said Pen.
"What did you come here for?"
"To pray," she said demurely.
"Hah!" He was hard put to it to control himself. "What place is this?"
"The tomb of my ancestors."
Somebody threw a line on the grave stone. The beautifully carved Gothic script was sharply outlined. A voice began to read:
"Here lies the body of Pendleton Broome, beloved son of Pendleton Broome and Mary Camalier. Who departed this life..."
"Shut up!" growled Delehanty. To Pen he said: "Look here, I want a straight answer. What are you doing here?"
"I always come here when I wish to be alone," said Pen with delicate emphasis.
"Hah! ... Mitchell!" He conferred with one of his men.
Pen still blinded by their lights could not see what was going on. A man edged around behind her. Delehanty who had put away his light was busy with something in his hands.
"Now!" he said abruptly.
Pen's arms were suddenly pinned to her sides. As she opened her mouth to protest Delehanty pressed his twisted handkerchief between her teeth. Pen struggled furiously, but it was pulled tight and knotted behind her head.
Delehanty growled to his men: "Get back in your places. She's evidently got a date with him here. He'll be here yet. If you let him slip through your fingers, by Gad! I'll have you all broken."
Pen hearing this, ceased to struggle, and smiled behind the gag. "Well ... let them!" she thought. "It's all to the good!"
Delehanty said to her: "March! young lady!"
Pen, just to keep up appearances, moaned behind the gag, and hung back.
Delehanty pushed her ahead of him in the path. "Get along back to the house with you!" he commanded.
Pen made no further objections.
He accompanied her back to the house. Reaching the porch he took off the gag.
"Thank you," said Pen demurely.
"Get inside," he said. "You won't be feeling so flip in the morning."
He strode back towards the gates. But there was no certainty in his carriage. He suspected he had been fooled. Pen all but laughed aloud.
Pen scampered across the porch, and into the house, closing and locking the door behind her. All her being hung on the agonizing question: was he there? She ran back through the hall into the kitchen. In the dark depths of the house her hands served her for eyes. She knew it so well. Her hand went unerringly to the knob of the door that gave on the cellar stairs. She ran down. At the foot of the stairs an agony of apprehension constricted her throat. She could not speak aloud.
"Don!" she gasped.
From out of the dark came the answering whisper: "Pen!"
In the ecstasy of relief that flooded her Pen lost her grip on reality for a moment. Her knees gave under her. She sank down in a heap on the earthen floor.
Don sought all around for her in the dark. "Pen! Pen!" he whispered urgently.
He stumbled against her. He gathered her up and held her against him. She clung around his neck in a sort of desperation. But the warmth of him, the ripple of muscle under his cotton shirt, the strong rise of his breast against hers all seemed to pour a new life into her. He was very real!
"Oh, my darling!" she whispered ... "Oh Heavens, what a day!"
"Something has happened?" he said.
In her relief she felt a little light-headed. "A few things!" she giggled.
"Tell me."
"I will. Let's get out of this hole."
"Is it safe?"
"My dear! ... Did you think I was going to store you among the potatoes?"
"I'll carry you up."
"No, I'm all right again. I must lead you."
She pulled him after her towards the stairs. She made no allowance for his unfamiliarity with the place, and he fell over the bottom step with a clatter. Don went rigid. Pen laughed as women do in the dark.
"Clumsy!" she whispered.
In the kitchen he asked for water. She led him to the pail, and held the dipper to his lips. They both drank like hard driven horses, and sighed with refreshment. Then she led him up the back stairs. At the top she left him for a moment while she blew out the lamps in the back rooms. When they got to the main upper hall, through the transom over Pendleton's door they heard a sound like a saw being drawn very slowly through rotten wood. It started Pen off again. She hastily pulled Don into her room, and closing her door, smothered her laughter in his neck. It started him going. They quivered and rocked with suppressed laughter. They finally sank down on a sofa weak, but immensely refreshed. There is nothing like laughter.
"What room is this?" whispered Don.
"My room."
"Oh, Pen!" he murmured on a deep note.
"Don't you like being here?"
He drew her hard against his side. "Oh Pen! ... I can't tell you how it makes me feel!"
"What more natural refuge could you have, dear?"
"But where are you going to keep me, Pen?" he asked.
"Right here."
He drew away from her. "Oh no, I couldn't let you."
She became angry immediately. "Why not? Is it because of the danger to my reputation? ... How perfectly silly under the circumstances!"
"It isn't only that," he muttered sullenly. "It's the same old thing. Hiding behind your skirts. I can't bear it. Why, suppose I were found here?"
All at once they seemed completely divided. "Oh, you make me so angry!" she said helplessly. "Thinking about what people would say? You think more of what people say than you do of me! What have you and I got to do with what people say?"
"You're not quite fair to me," he said.
The note of quiet stubbornness terrified her. Here was a force she could not gauge. "Oh, we must not quarrel!" she murmured with a catch in her breath ... "Oh, Don, I love you so!"
"Oh my Pen!" he murmured gathering her in his arms again.
There was a blessed peaceful interlude.
After awhile she murmured in a small voice: "Then you will stay here until we can think up something else?"
But the quiet stubbornness was unaltered. "I won't promise anything. I must be free to decide."
"But Don! After all the trouble I have had to get you here! You're in my castle, and I must know where I have you. Mustn't you let me decide for the time being?"
"That's just the rub," he said ruefully. "You're so bossy, Pen. If you had me here right under your thumb I wouldn't be able to call my soul my own."
Pen refused to see any humor in the situation. "Would it matter for a little while?"
"You wouldn't want a tame man!"
The ever-present fear leaped to her lips. "You're thinking of giving yourself up!"
"No," he said soberly. "I've changed my mind about that. Since I've been reading the papers. I'll keep them on the look until I see a chance to make a good fight."
Pen kissed him passionately. "Ah, that's a load off my breast!" she cried. "That's what kept me awake nights!"
"But I must be allowed to play my own hand," he insisted.
"All right, stubborn! ... Now listen, while I tell you everything that happened to-day."
On the sofa near the front windows, with her lips close to his ear she told him the story of Blanche Paglar. How sweet it was to feel in the pressure of his hand on hers how his excitement and his hope grew with the tale.
He would not let himself hope too far. When she had come to the end, he said cautiously: "Well, that's a beginning. But it's a wild scheme, Pen. You mustn't bank too much on it. Suppose you're right about Riever—it begins to look as if you were right.—No jury would take the testimony of a lot of gangsters against that of the famous millionaire. And all old Riever's powerful friends would rally round him. We're not out of the woods yet."
"I don't care so much about convicting Riever so long as we raise a sufficient doubt to make a jury afraid to convict you!"
"But it would be a point of honor with that gang to convict me, see? ... What happened after you got home?"
She told him that part somewhat toned down. She suppressed the fact of Riever's proposal.
Don said wisely: "I believe Riever's falling in love with you!"
Pen smiled and kissed him.
He laughed at her tale of how she had led the detectives into the woods, and left them there watching.
"But wait a minute," he said. "After awhile it will begin to percolate into their thick heads that they've been sold. They'll begin to put two and two together. They'll realize that you drew them away from the house on purpose ... Take it from me we'll have a visit from them before morning. You'd better let me go while the going's good!"
Pen clung to him. "No! No! Can't you stay with me an hour without beginning to fidget? ... They're going to comb the woods at dawn. Where could you go?"
"But they'll search the house first."
"No matter. I'm on my own ground here. I'm prepared for them.... Wait a minute!"
Leaving him, she unlocked the door into the back room, and disappeared for a few minutes. She returned through the other door.
"Where've you been?" he asked.
"Preparing a line of retreat," she said smiling.
"What time is it, Pen?"
"Not midnight yet. Things have been moving fast."
"You must be worn out, dear. Lie down and sleep. I'll keep watch."
"Silly! Do you think I could sleep with you in the room?"
"Then I'll go in the next room."
"No! What's an hour or two's sleep? ... Come and sit down again."
On the sofa near the windows she leaned back against him, her head in the hollow of his shoulder. He sunk his cheek in her hair.
"Pen, it's just a week to-day since we met. Isn't that strange?"
"What's time got to do with it? I knew the very first moment."
"I, too."
"Story-teller! The first look you gave me was not that kind at all?"
"What kind was it?"
"Oh, a kind of ... kind of sprightly look. Observe little bright-eyes!"
"Pen!"
She laughed delightedly.
"Well, it happened so soon afterwards it doesn't count."
"I wonder how it is to a man," she murmured dreamily. "With me ... well it was like hating you, you upset me so!"
"You made me a little sore, too. You were so bossy!"
"You always say that!"
It was his turn to chuckle in his throat.
"Dearest, I have a confession to make to you," she whispered. "Do you know, when I first read that story in the newspapers I was glad."
"Glad?"
"Yes, of course I knew that it wasn't true.... And I knew that I shouldn't lose you."
"Pen! ... You wouldn't have lost me anyway. I was thinking about it when you came down to the tent splashing through the water. I wasn't going."
"Oh Don how sweet that is to my ears! ... Sometimes I have felt that circumstances forced me on you."
"Nothing in it! You'd already got your hooks into me."
"What an expression!"
"You made goodness seem so charming!"
"I, good? ... If you knew!"
"I do know. I know exactly what I mean. There's so much disgusting hypocrisy in the world a fellow gets to think that the bad people are the only honest ones. You taught me better."
Pen turned and clung to him. A tear or two rolled down her cheeks. "Oh, my dear! ... It isn't true! ... But it comforts me so!"
Enfolded in happiness and delicious peace, they became sleepy in spite of themselves. Notwithstanding his sleepy protests, she drew herself away from him.
"Stretch out," she whispered. "I will sit on the stool beside you where I can look at you. I love so to look at you!"
"Pen! ... No! You sleep! ... I'll keep watch!"
But he sunk lower and lower. Soon he was gone. Pen sitting beside him could gaze her fill. The moon was coming in the front windows now. The direct rays did not fall on him, but there was light enough for her to see. All relaxed and helpless like that he seemed to belong to her more completely than he ever did awake—and stubborn. She could scarcely bear to look at him.
In the end she slept too with her cheek on his breast.
She was awakened, she knew not how long afterwards, by a sound. Even in the instant of waking she recognized the sound. It was the stealthy creak of the tin roof outside her window. At the touch of her hand on his cheek Don awoke all of a piece. He slipped noiselessly to the floor. They crept to the middle of the room.
With her lips at his ear she breathed: "There's a man on the porch roof."
"Did he look in?"
"I don't think so. He couldn't have seen you through the screen."
"If he tries to come in...?"
"Slip through the door behind you."
Don made to creep away from her. She laid a hand on his arm. "Wait!"
There was no further sound from the man outside.
"He's not coming in," Pen whispered. "He's out there to cut off your escape."
A tremendous rat-tat-tat resounded through the empty halls.
"I shouldn't have slept!" murmured Don.
"It's all right!" whispered Pen. "I intended you should stay here."
"I feel trapped within walls!"
"You are safest here!"
The knocking was imperiously repeated. Outside Pen's door they heard her father's agitated voice.
"Pen, are you there?"
"Yes, Dad," she said coolly.
"Stay where you are, my dear. I'll go down."
For the third time that night the worthy little man pattered down stairs in his bare feet.
Pen opened her door an inch. She heard her father's prudent inquiry through the closed door, and a gruff voice outside reply:
"Open the door!"
Pendleton remonstrated, and the voice, Delehanty's, was brutally raised:
"Open the door or I'll smash it in!"
She heard the key squeak in the lock. Pendleton's remonstrances were drowned in the sounds made by the entrance of a number of men. Pendleton's voice was raised in agonized tones. Delehanty said:
"We're going to search the house!"
Pen had the sense that her little father was trying to bar them out by main strength. Signing to Don to remain where he was, she hastened to the head of the stairs. She called down:
"Let them in, father. We have nothing to hide."
Returning to her room she locked the door. Her father came up stairs accompanied by a pair of shod feet. His voice at Pen's door was utterly bewildered.
"They insist on searching the house ... searching the house! At this hour!"
"Well, that's all right," said Pen.
"They say if you'll stay quietly in your room they'll leave that until last. There's a man out here on guard. Better dress, dear."
"I shall be all right," said Pen.
She turned and kissed Don with a smile on her lips. Her eyes shone with the light of battle.
He looked more dubious. "Is your way of retreat still open?" he whispered.
She nodded.
"Well then...?"
"Wait till they come up stairs."
She listened with her ear at the crack of the door. Vague sounds arose from below. She was tormented by her inability to hear exactly. Finally she motioned to Don to stand back out of any possible range of vision, and opening the door, she put her head around it.
Instantly a flash-light was thrown on her and a voice said:
"You can't come out, Miss."
"I don't want to come out," said Pen coolly. "I want to hear what's going on in my house."
Now her ear practised in that house, could follow their movements very well. They were in the cellar. They took no precautions for silence. They came stamping up the cellar stairs, and were to be heard in the kitchen and the outer kitchen. They spread through the main rooms of the house. Pen smiled to herself, hearing them move heavy objects of furniture, looking for hiding-places in the walls. Finally they started up the main stairway, but were diverted into the rear extension. Doors were opened and shut, furniture pulled about. As they started to move back towards the front, Pen closed her door.
"They're coming!" she breathed in Don's ear. "Now's the time!"
She took him to the door leading to the rear room. "Lock this door behind you and put the key in your pocket." She pointed to an open window in the corner of the room facing the rear. "There's your way out. The ironing-board is on the floor under the window. Stretch it across catty-cornered to the sash of the bathroom window. I pulled down the top sash ready for you. As you go, turn and close this window behind you. When you get in the bath-room pull the board after you. Don't touch that window. It squeaks. Wait in the bath-room with the door open. If you hear anybody coming that way slip down the back stairs and into the cellar. While you're in the bathroom watch this window. When they're through with this room I'll raise the window and leave it up. That's your signal to come back."
There was a peremptory knock on the door of Pen's room. The lovers pressed hands and parted. Slipping through the door, Don closed it noiselessly and turned the key.
"What is it?" Pen asked.
The voice of Delehanty brusquely replied: "Open the door, please."
Pen wanted all the time she could gain. "Is my father there?" she asked as if in doubt.
"Yes, my dear," said Pendleton quaveringly. "Please open."
"One moment!"
She turned down the covers of her bed, and rumpled them. Her ears were strained for sounds from the back, but she heard nothing. So much the better!
"You've had plenty of time to dress!" said Delehanty harshly.
She opened the door. There was a small crowd in the hall. One carried a brilliant acetylene lantern which filled the place with a strong white light and threw grotesque shadows upwards. All the detectives had their hats on; some were short, some tall. It was like a caricature in violent chiaroscuro. As for Pendleton, he had his pants pulled over his night-shirt and his bare feet looked piteous. A picture of ineffectiveness, he was still carrying a lighted candle in all that glare.
Without so much as by your leave Delehanty strode into the room with three of his men at his heels. The chief was chewing an extinct cigar which smelled vilely. Pen choked with rage. She bit her lips to keep back an outburst. Her father went to her, and squeezed her hand imploringly. The three men spread around the room like well-trained dogs. One could imagine them sniffing. They were armed with electric torches with which to illumine dark corners. Delehanty went direct to the door into the rear room and rattled it.
"What's behind here?" he demanded.
"Another bed room," said Pen. "The guest-room."
"Guest-room?" sneered Delehanty. "Where's the key?"
"The door has been locked for many years. I couldn't tell you."
"Well what's the door from that room into the hall doing locked?"
"Because I keep certain things of value in there. I don't want the servants to go in."
Pen's father must have wondered at this answer. But perhaps he was too confused to take in what she was saying. At any rate he kept quiet.
"Is that key lost too?" sneered Delehanty.
"No," said Pen calmly. "It's among the other keys on the rack in my sewing-room. My father will get it for you."
Pendleton trotted obediently away with his candle.
When he came back with it Delehanty's sleuths had completed their search of Pen's room. The whole party passed around through the hall to the door of the guest-room. The men showed excitement. They thought they had their man. Delehanty flung the door open and stepped back. He ordered his men to cast the light of their electric torches inside. This was to draw the fire of the supposed occupant. Pen's lip curled. Finally the men ventured across the threshold.
The acetylene lantern filled the great bare chamber with light. It was meagerly furnished, a gigantic bedroom set of the carved walnut period, the bed with an old-fashioned mosquito bar, an air-tight stove, an humble little rocking-chair. The great expanse of white wall was guiltless of paper or tint, and showed long fine cracks running in every direction like the map of a complicated river system. The floor was covered with matting.
Delehanty sniffed. "The air is fresh. There's been a window open in here."
Pen's heart contracted. "The room is aired every day," she said quickly.
Delehanty went to the window in the corner. The two windows at the side of the room were shuttered on the outside. He cast his light along the sill.
"There's no dust here," he said accusingly.
"There's no dust anywhere in my house," said Pen.
Delehanty commanded the window to be opened. The acetylene light was held outside. This was the crucial moment. Pen held her breath.
"What is there?" asked Delehanty.
"Eighteen or twenty foot drop, sir."
"Any gutter pipe or lightning rod?"
"No, sir."
"Close the window."
Pen breathed again.
The bare room offered but few places of concealment, under the bed, within the washstand, a shallow clothes closet in the wall. They even looked in the bureau drawers. Finally Delehanty with a grunt, moved towards the door. Pen's heart swelled big with triumph.
She glanced at Delehanty's cigar. "Would you mind leaving the window open?" she said cuttingly.
At a nod from the chief, one of the men flung up the sash. Pen felt a little quiver of inward laughter. There was something humorous in making the enemy transmit one's signals. All left the room and Pen locked the door. She handed the key to her father.
"Please put it where you got it."
Delehanty fixed her with an irascible, suspicious eye. "You come along with us the rest of the way, Miss. I want no trickery!"
Pen shrugged.
The search went on, that queer crew straggling through the rooms accompanied by their grotesque up-flung shadows. Through Pen's sewing-room and into Pendleton's bed-room. From thence they passed into the extraordinary room behind where he kept all his "Collections." He never threw anything away. Everything under the sun was to be found there. All around the walls were rickety, home-made tables heaped with his impedimenta.
All this occupied the searchers quite a while. They threw his stuff about regardless of his protests.
Finally there was the third story which Pen had long ago given up to dust and spiders and last of all the "cupalow" into which Keesing to Pen's amusement, ascended with drawn revolver.
In the end Delehanty stamped down-stairs in a villainous temper, his soft-footed sleuths at his heels.
At the front door Pendleton attempted to recover his dignity. "Now I trust you'll favor me with some explanation," he began.
"Ah! ask your daughter for the explanation!" snarled the detective. "Take my advice, and keep her home nights!"
They all went. Pendleton turned to Pen aghast.
"What did he mean by that?"
But Pen's heart was dancing. An irresponsible gale of laughter caught her up. She had a wicked impulse to see her father's bare feet twinkle. She caught his wrists (he still had the candle) and attempted to whirl him around.
"Oh joy! Oh joy! Oh joy!" she cried. "They're gone!"
"Pen! Have you gone crazy," he protested.
"Yes, it's the heat!"
"Be quiet! What did the man mean?"
"How do I know? A man will say anything when he's sore ... Come on back to bed."
She pulled him wildly to the foot of the stairs, Pendleton leaning back, and his bare feet slapping the floor absurdly. Pen laughed so she had to sit on the bottom step to recover.
"Your levity is very ill-timed!" he said severely.
That only made her laugh the more. "Come on! Come on!" she said, dragging him up-stairs.
At the door of his room she kissed him, and gave him a push inside. She flew across to her own room and let herself in.
"Don! Don!" she just breathed, holding out her hands.
There was no answer.
She flew to the door between the two rooms. It yielded to her hand. The key was in it. So he had come back. The window in the corner was still open. It was very dark in the back room. She felt all around for him, softly whispering his name. Her breast contracted with apprehension. She ran back into the front room to make a light.
As soon as the candle flame grew up she saw a piece of paper pinned to the wooden mantel. It looked like the fly leaf torn out of a book. There was a pencil scrawl upon it.
"Dearest: Writing in the dark. That was too near a thing. Can't let you take such risks. I'm off on my own. Don't worry. Love.
"D."