CHAPTER IX—Continued
—8—
"He's single and very attractive, my dear. The entire village is trying to marry him. There is talk of the doctor's daughter, a common little thing."
When she had gone, Elinor, a little faint and dizzy, went out on the terrace. She realised that the barrier between Ward and herself was not only of his faith against her unbelief. There was the insurmountable gulf between his world and her world. She did not fit into hie life. Into his arms, perhaps; into his life—never.
Walter would try to get the money. She must get word to him somehow, for if the Bryant pearl was recovered and Boroday given his freedom, money would not be an immediate necessity.
She paced the terrace and tried to think it out. For Talbot to get back to the city, an hour; for the delivery of the special delivery, another hour. Then the police would have to come out by train or motor. With the best of luck, it would be four o'clock before the pearl could be recovered.
There were a dozen possibilities; the chief might be out of town; the pearl might be recovered from the box without his assistance. In that case he would not hold to his agreement with Boroday.
She tried to head Walter off, but she could not locate him. At none of his various haunts could she find him by telephone; he was not at the Dago's; at the taxicab office he was said to be laid off for the day. As the white clouds of the afternoon turned to flames in the basement, Elinor's face grew set and hard.
"I'm not blind. I'll get him for this!"
That was what he had said. He would go after the money that night, and there was murder in his heart.
Old Henriette, watching Elinor's set face, grew fretful. She squealed if a door slammed; brought food that Elinor could not eat, and finally, divining a crisis, tried stealthily by telephone to locate Talbot or Lethbridge and failed.
"You'd better eat s bite or two," she entreated.
Elinor's nerves, too, were on edge.
"I don't want it," she said.
"Just a little soup!"
"If you bring that tray here again I shall throw it out of the window."
Henriette was cheered. Elinor, whitelipped and speechless, was alarming. Elinor In one of her rare rages was reassuring.
By seven o'clock Elinor knew what she must do; go to Ward, tell him what »he feared, and how she knew. She was not craven, but her very soul was sick. She »ought about for some way to evade the issue or to postpone it. Finally »he »truck on one. On plain note paper she scrawled a little note in a feigned hand:
"An attempt will be made tonight to secure the fund raised at the morning service. Be advised and give it to someone else to keep overnight."
But she realized before she had finished it the uselessness of such an attempt. Ward would not transfer a danger.
The night had fallen. A line of cars from the country club was carrying town people and villagers home to the late dinners of the golf season. Groups of girls and men in summer garments, chatting gayly, passed under the wall of her garden. Down in the valley straggling lines of evening churchgoers moved decorously toward the church. A ragged child stood in the road below her garden and wept. Elinor ran down to him, and took him up in her arms. When she had soothed him she felt quieter. She went into the house and put on her hat. There was no message from Talbot, no word of Huff.
Evening service was over when she reached Saint Jude's. The la»t straggler had gone, and Ward was not in sight. She avoided the street lights. She felt quite sure that Walter was in the vicinity, his keen eyes missing nothing.
He had put his put his hand on her before she knew he was near.
"Worshiping again," he jeered.
"I have not been in the church." Her quick mind was scheming desperately ahead. "I have been alone this evening. When you did not come, I—"
He swung her around.
"You were looking for me?"
"I thought you might be here. You said last night—"
The memory of the night before stung him. He released her wrist.
"Walter, I am afraid! I tried to make you understand last night, but you wouldn't listen. If he were roused, he might be dangerous. Don't take chances: don't think, because he is a churchman—"
She was talking against time. She had her plan now.
"I can take care of myself," said Huff suddenly. But he kept his place beside her as she started back. Her solicitude was for him, then. She cared, after all. But it wouldn't do to unbend too much. Elinor had treated him with a high hand. His very pulse ached with her nearness, but he did not touch her.
He left her without even a hand-clasp.
"You might wish me luck."
"I wish you safety," she replied. He stood down in the road, and watched her shadowy figure threading its way along the garden paths. He had a wild impulse to run after her, to kneel in the earth at her feet and cry out for her old tenderness, for her wistful-eyed caresses. Then, into his suspicions young heart crept the vision of Elinor's face when he had planned his new coup.
"I shall warn him." she had said.
Huff's mouth was hard as he turned and walked down the hill.
CHAPTER X.
Into and through her garden Elinor walked quietly until she was safe from surveillance. Then she ran swiftly, ruthlessly across the flower beds, through the roses. The terrace was lighted. She avoided it, making a detour that led by a side entrance into old Hilary's library. For obvious reasons, old Hilary's private telephone was in a sound-proof closet.
Before Walter had taken a hundred watchful paces down the road she had Ward at the other end of the line. What with running and terror, she could hardly speak. Once, long ago, she had heard a discussion between Boroday and her father about the use of the telephone. Its substance was that when the transmitter is held to the chest a clear message may be sent, but with the effect of distance. She held the transmitter to her breast then, and it seemed to her that Ward must hear the throbbing of her heart.
"Hello, hello!" came his quick response.
No need to ask who it was. She knew every inflection of his voice.
"This is—a friend." Elinor panted, "I want to tell you something."
"Yes?" Very incisive now.
"Tonight—very soon—an attempt—"
"I Can Take Care of Myself"
She stopped. What was she doing? She, her father's daughter, the head of the band! By warning Ward she might be sending Walter to his death. A vision of old Hilary, gray-headed, keen-eyed, at this very telephone, flashed into her mind, old Hilary, whose religion had been of keeping the faith, not with his God. but with his men.
"Who are you?" The impatient voice was saying in her ears. "Are you sure you want me? This is Ward, of Saint Jude's."
Elinor quietly hung up the telephone transmitter, and stood in the darkness, her hands to her throat.
Old Henriette, ever watchful, came into the library beyond. Elinor could hear her wandering about, knew the moment when she discovered her wrap on a chair, heard her plaintive voice »peaking through a window to the empty terrace.
"Miss Elinor," she called. "Miss Elinor!"
Elinor let her go. When her shuffling footsteps had died away, Elinor took the receiver down again, and called the assistant rector's house. But this time she spoke directly into the transmitter.
"This is Elinor Kingston, Mr. Ward. I wonder if you are very tired tonight?"
"I? Tired? I'm never tired."
"Because I am thinking of asking you to come up. I—there are some things I want to talk about, questions that are troubling me. I know it is late, but—"
"I saw you at the early service. Of course I'll come up."
He had seen her then!
"I'll do my best," he was saying. "Of course, you know I may disappoint you. These questions, that come from within, must be answered in the same way. But I'm coming at once."
Elinor'» battle was only half fought, but she had a great sense of relief. Let him meet Walter on the way. So much the better. Let Huff know that Ward was out, and the offering presumably unguarded. He might hate the man, but no hope of a running fight with him would deter him from his main object, the money.
To save Ward, she was willing, even anxious, to let Walter succeed.
Women sometimes meet large crises with small vanities. But Elinor had no vanity. Without so much as a glance at the mirror she went out into the garden to listen for Ward's step on the road. She knew his walk already; the forceful, certain step of an energetic and purposeful man.
The illuminated dial on the steeple of the Baptist church showed something after ten when Ward finally came up the hill. The relief of seeing him unharmed sent Elinor down the terrace steps with both hands out. Before he could take them, Ward was obliged to stoop and deposit on the ground at her feet a small box that he carried.
"The morning collection," he said smiling, and took her hands in his.
Her quick alarm showed in her face.
"But you are reckless! To go about with so much money—"
Ward was following her up the steps.
"I dare say it is safer with me than any place else in the world. Did anyone ever hear of an assistant rector going about with a fortune in his hands?"
He followed her into the library and placed the box on the great table where old Hilary had been wont to divide the annual earnings of the band. Ward pointed to it with his humorous smile.
"Would anyone suspect," he said, "that in that box there is a stone parish house, a new church organ, and a children's playground?"
Then, glancing at her with keen eyes, he was struck by her pallor.
"You to ask me if I am tired!" he cried. "Why, you poor child, it is you who are worn out. Wouldn't it be better to have me come tomorrow and go over the things you—spoke about?"
"I think we had better talk about them now," said Elinor, desperately calm.
At a quarter before eleven that Sunday night, old Henriette, bent on her evening tusk of sending Elinor to bed, wandered into the library. She found Ward, his earnest face glowing, expounding the tenets of his faith from the edge of his chair; and Elinor lying back with her face drawn, watching the clock on the mantel.
Old Henriette, astounded, withdrew, not to sleep, but with the wakeful alertness of old age, to wander up and down the garden paths until such time as Elinor's visitor might leave.
Ward suddenly realized that he was making small headway. When at last he caught Elinor's eyes on the clock he flushed and rose.
"I've done it all very badly," he said. "I seem to wander all about and not get anywhere. You see it's all so real to me—"
Elinor had leaned back with closed eyes.
"It is all very terrible to me," she replied. "This God of vengeance—"
"This God of tenderness and mercy," Ward supplemented. "Don't you see what it all means? How terrible this life would be if this were all! Our little lives, full of jealousies and hatreds and crimes: I bringing that box, over there on the table, up here with me tonight, because I dare not trust it to my fellow men; I who could not sleep last night for thinking of you, who are all that is good and sweet and tender, up here alone in this great house, with God knows what danger lurking about."
Elinor had reached her limit. The band of her self-control snapped. She could not hold him much longer, and before he went he must know.
"When I sent for you." she said, "I had two reasons. I wanted to see you. Please!" he took a step toward her. "And I wanted to save you from something that I know of."