A Hoosier Chronicle Part 58

He did not speak until she was quite calm again. As a last resource he must shatter her fine loyalty by an appeal to her grat.i.tude.

"Rose, if some one you knew well--some one who had been the kindest of friends, and who had lent you a hand when you needed it most--were in danger, and I needed your help to protect--that person--would you tell me?"

Their eyes met; she looked away, and then, as she met his gaze again, her lips parted and the color deepened in her face.

"You don't mean--" she began.

"I mean that this is to help me protect a dear friend of yours and of mine. I shouldn't have told you this if it hadn't been necessary. It's as hard for me as it is for you, Rose. There's a great deal at stake.

Innocent people will suffer if I'm unable to manage this with full knowledge of all the facts. You think back, six years ago last spring, and tell me whether you have any knowledge, no matter how indefinite, as to where that letter was written."

"You say," she began haltingly, "there's a friend of mine that I could help if I knew anything about your letter? You'll have to tell me who it is."

"I'd rather not do that; I'd rather not mention any names, not even to you."

She was drying her eyes with her handkerchief. Her brows knit, she bent her head for an instant, and then stared at him in bewilderment and unbelief, and her lips trembled.

"You don't mean my friend--my beautiful one!--not the one who picked me up out of the dirt--" She choked and her slender frame shook--and then she smiled wanly and ended with the tears coursing down her cheeks. "My beautiful one, who took me home again and kissed me--she kissed me here!" She touched her forehead as though the act were part of some ritual, then covered her eyes.

"You don't mean"--she cried out suddenly,--"you don't mean it's that!"

"No; it's not that; far from _that_," replied Dan sadly, knowing what was in her mind.

He went out and closed the door upon her. He called Mrs. Owen on the telephone and told her he would be up immediately. Then he went back to Rose.

"It was like this, Mr. Harwood," said the girl, quite composed again. "I knew him--pretty well--you know the man I mean. After that Transportation Committee work I guess he thought he had to keep his hand on me. He's like that, you know. If he thinks anybody knows anything on him he watches them and keeps a tight grip on them, all right. You know that about him?"

Dan nodded. He saw how the web of circ.u.mstance had enmeshed him from the beginning. All the incidents of that chance visit to Fraserville to write the sketch of Ba.s.sett for the "Courier" lived in his memory.

Something had been said there about Madison College; and his connection with Fitch's office had been mentioned, and on the fears thus roused in Morton Ba.s.sett, he, Daniel Harwood, had reared a tottering superstructure of aims, hopes, ambitions, that threatened to overwhelm him! But now, as the first shock pa.s.sed, he saw all things clearly. He would save Sylvia even though Ba.s.sett must be saved first. If Thatcher could be silenced in no other way, he might have the senatorship; or Dan would go direct to Ba.s.sett and demand that he withdraw from the contest.

He was not afraid of Morton Ba.s.sett now.

"I had gone to work for that construction company in the Boordman where you found me. It was his idea to move me into your office--I guess you thought you picked me out; but he gave me a quiet tip to ask you for the job. Well, he'd been dropping into the construction office now and then to see me--you know the boss was never in town and I hadn't much to do.

He used to dictate letters--said he couldn't trust the public stenogs in the hotels; and one day he gave me that letter to copy. He had written it out in lead pencil beforehand, but seemed mighty anxious to get it just right. After I copied it he worked it over several times, before he got it to suit him. He said it was a little business he was attending to for a friend. We burnt up the discards in the little old grate in the office. He had brought some paper and envelopes along with him, and I remember he held a sheet up to the light to make sure it didn't have a watermark. He threw down a twenty-dollar gold piece and took the letter away with him. After I had moved into your office he spoke of that letter once: one day when you were out he asked me how much money had been mentioned in the letter."

"When was that, Rose?"

"A few days after the state convention when you shot the hot tacks into Thatcher. He had been at Waupegan, you remember."

Dan remembered. And he recalled also that Ba.s.sett had seen Sylvia at Mrs. Owen's the day following the convention, and it was not astonishing that the sight of her had reminded him of his offer to pay for her education. His own relation to the matter was clear enough now that Rose had yielded her secret.

Rose watched him as he drew on his overcoat and she handed him his hat and gloves. Her friend, "the beautiful one," would not suffer; she was confident of this, now that Harwood was fully armed to protect her.

"Keep after Ramsay by telephone until you find him. Tell him to come here and wait for me if it's all day. If you fail to catch him by telephone, go out and look for him and bring him here."

In a moment he was hurrying toward Mrs. Owen's.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

THE MAN OF SHADOWS

The dome was a great blot against the stars when, shortly after eight o'clock that evening, Sylvia entered the capitol.

All night, in the room she had occupied on that far day of her first visit to Mrs. Owen, Sylvia had pondered. It is not for us to know what pa.s.sed in that still chamber between her and her friend; but it was the way of both women to meet the truth squarely. They discussed facts impersonally, dispa.s.sionately, and what Sylvia had a.s.sumed, her old friend could not controvert. Not what others had done, not what others might do, but what course Sylvia should follow--this was the crux of the situation.

"I must think it out; I must think it out," Sylvia kept repeating. At last Mrs. Owen left her lying dressed on the bed, and all night Sylvia lay there in the dark. Toward morning she had slept, and later when Mrs.

Owen carried up her breakfast she did not refer to her trouble except to ask whether there was any news. Mrs. Owen understood and replied that there was nothing. Sylvia merely answered and said: "Then there is still time." What she meant by this her kind old friend did not know; but she had faith in her Sylvia. Dan came, but he saw Mrs. Owen only. Later Sylvia asked what he had said, and she merely nodded when Rose's story was repeated. Again she said: "Yes; there is still time."

Sylvia had kept her room all day, and Mrs. Owen had rigidly respected her wish to be alone. She voluntarily appeared at the evening meal and talked of irrelevant things: of her school work, of the sale of the house at Montgomery, of the projected school at Waupegan.

"I'm going out for a while," she said, after an hour in the little office. "I shan't be gone long, Aunt Sally; don't trouble about me. I have my key, you know."

When she had gone, Mrs. Owen called one of the colored men from the stable and gave him a line to Harwood, with a list of places where Dan might be found. Her message was contained in a single line:--

"Sylvia has left the house. Keep an eye out for her; she told me nothing."

Sylvia found consolation and courage in the cold night air; her old friends the stars, whose names she had learned before she knew her letters, did not leave her comfortless. They had unconsciously contributed to her gift for seeing life in long vistas. "When you are looking at the stars," Professor Kelton used to say, "you are not thinking of yourself." It was not of herself that Sylvia was thinking.

She prolonged her walk, gathering strength as the exercise warmed her blood, planning what she meant to do, even repeating to herself phrases she meant to use. So it happened that Mrs. Owen's messenger had found Dan at the State House and delivered the note, and that Dan, called from a prolonged conference with Ramsay, saw Sylvia's unmistakable figure as she reached the top of the stairway, watched her making inquiries of a lounger, saw men staring at her. It crossed his mind that she was seeking him, and he started toward her; but she had stopped again to question one of the idlers in the hall. He saw her knock at a door and knew it was Ba.s.sett's room--a room that for years had been set apart for the private councils of the senator from Fraser. As Sylvia knocked, several men came out, as though the interruption had terminated an interview. The unveiled face of the tall, dark girl called for a second glance; it was an odd place for a pretty young woman to be seeking Morton Ba.s.sett. They looked at each other and grinned.

A single lamp on a table in the middle of the high-ceilinged room shed a narrow circle of light that deepened the shadows of the walls. Ba.s.sett, standing by a window, was aware of a lighter step than was usual in this plotting chamber. He advanced toward the table with his hands in his pockets, waited till Sylvia was disclosed by the lamp, stopped abruptly, stared at her with eyes that seemed not to see her. Then he placed a chair for her, muttering:--

"I thought you would come."

It seemed to her that a sigh broke from him, hidden by the sc.r.a.ping of the chair across the bare floor. He crossed and recrossed the floor several times, as though now that she had come he had dismissed her from his thoughts. Then as he pa.s.sed near her with slow, heavy step she spoke.

"I came to talk to you, Mr. Ba.s.sett. Please turn on the other lights."

"Pardon me," he said; and she heard his fingers fumbling for the switch by the door. In a moment the room was flooded from the chandelier overhead, and he returned, and sat down by the table without looking at her.

"I shouldn't have come here, but I knew of no other way. It seemed best to see you to-night."

"It's all right," he replied indifferently.

He sat drooping, as though the light had in itself a weight that bore him down. His face was gray; his hands hung impotently from the arms of his chair. He still did not meet her eyes, which had taken in every line of his figure, the little details of his dress, even the inconspicuous pearl pin thrust through the loose ends of his tie. A man opened the door hurriedly and peered in: Ba.s.sett was wanted elsewhere, he said.

Without rising Ba.s.sett bade him wait outside. The man seemed to understand that he was to act as guard, and he began patroling the corridor. The sound of his steps on the tiles was plainly distinguishable as he pa.s.sed the door.

"It's all right now," Ba.s.sett explained. "No one will come in here."

He threw his arm over the back of his chair and bent upon Sylvia a glance of mingled curiosity and indifference.

"I understand," she said quietly, "that nothing has been done. It is not yet too late. The situation here is as it has been?"

"Yes; if you mean out _there_. They are waiting for me."

"I suppose Mr. Harwood is there, and Mr. Thatcher."