The Seventh Noon Part 24

He handed them to her and she unfolded the first page of the uppermost paper. He found himself confronting a picture of himself as he had stood, the centre of an admiring crowd, in front of the big machine which had so nearly killed Bobby.

He shared the first page with the latest guesses concerning the Riverside robberies.

"Well," he stammered, "I 'd forgotten all about that!"

"Forgotten such an act! You don't half realize what a hero you are.

Listen to the headlines, 'Heroic Rescue,' 'Young Lawyer Gives Remarkable Exhibition of Nerve,' 'The Name of Lawyer Donaldson Mentioned for Carnegie Medal,' 'Bravest Deed of the Year,' 'Faced Death Unflinchingly.'"

And the pitiful feature of it was that he must sit and listen to this undeserved praise from her lips. That, knowing deep in his heart his own unworthiness, he must face her and see her respond to those things as though he really had been worthy. He, who had done the act under oath, was receiving the reward of a man who would have done it with no false stimulus. He, who had been unconsciously braced to it by the fact that he had so little to lose, was receiving the praise due only a man who risks all the happiness of a long life. He had faced death after flinching from life. He was sick of his hypocrisy; he would be frank with himself. He would be frank with her; he had a right to it this once. He pressed down the paper she was reading.

"Don't repeat it," he commanded. "It is n't true! It's all wrong!"

"What do you mean?"

"That it's all a lie!"

"But here 's your picture. And _that 's_ you."

"Oh, the naked facts are true. But the rest about,--" it was hard to do this with her eyes upon him, "the rest about being a hero--about nerve and bravery. It's rot! It is n't so!"

She threw back her head, resting it upon the top of her chair, and laughed gently. The color had come back into her cheeks and even the dark below her eyes seemed to fade.

"Of course," she returned, "you would n't be a truly hero if you knew you were one."

"But I know I 'm not."

"Of course and so you are!"

The impulse was strong within him to pour out to her the whole bitter story. Better to stand shorn and true before her than garbed in such false colors as these. But as before, he realized that her own welfare forbade even this relief.

The nurse approached with a cheery smile, but with an unmistakable air of authority.

"You will pardon me," she interrupted, "but we must keep Miss Arsdale as quiet as possible. I think she ought to try to sleep a little now."

Sorry as he was to go, Donaldson was relieved to know that he was leaving her in such good hands.

The ringing of the front door-bell startled her. She shrank back in her chair. The nurse was at her side instantly.

"You had better leave at once," she whispered to Donaldson.

"It's only the new cook," he answered.

He went downstairs and ushered her in, and led her to the kitchen.

"The place is yours," he said, waving his hands about the room, "and all you 've got to do is to cook quickly and properly whatever order is sent down to you. Get that?"

The woman nodded, but glanced suspiciously about the deserted quarters.

The place looked as when first opened in the Fall, after the return from the summer vacation.

"The family," Donaldson went on to explain, "consists of three. If you succeed in satisfying this group I 'll give you an extra ten at the end of the week."

"I 'll do it, sor."

She looked as though she was able.

"Anything more you want to know?"

"The rist of the help, sor,--"

"You 're all of it," he answered briefly.

Before leaving the house he did one thing more to allay his fears. He called up a private detective bureau and ordered them to keep watch of the house night and day until further notice. They were to keep their eyes open for any slightly deranged person who might seek an entrance.

In the event of capturing him, they were to take him into the house and put him to bed, remaining at his side until he, Donaldson, arrived.

Then he ordered his cab to the restaurant of Wun Chung.

CHAPTER XV

_The Derelict_

Chung had news for him; he had not yet found Arsdale, but his men reported that yesterday the boy had been concealed at Hop Tung's, where Saul had first suspected him to be. The evil-eyed proprietor had hidden him, half in terror of Arsdale himself and half through l.u.s.t of his money. Finally, however, fearing for the young man's sanity he had thrown him out upon the street. It would go hard with the yellow rat, Chung declared, for such treachery as this to the Lieutenant.

"It may go hard with all of you," replied Donaldson significantly.

"But you 've another chance yet; the boy is back here somewhere. Find him within twenty-four hours and I'll help you with Saul."

"He clome black?" exclaimed Chung.

"Sometime early this morning."

If the boy was in the neighborhood, Chung a.s.serted eagerly, he would find him within an hour or hang the cursed-of-his-ancestors, Tung, by his pigtail from his own window.

"Which is better than being locked up in jail. Are you children,"

Donaldson exploded, "that you can be duped like that?"

Chung appeared worried. But his slant eyes contracted until scarcely more than the eye-lashes were revealed. However inactive he may have been up to now, Donaldson knew that an end had come to his sluggishness. When Chung left the room there was determination in every wrinkle of his loose embroidered blouse.

So there were some nooks in Chinatown, mused Donaldson, that even Saul did not know. The longer he sat there, the more indignant he became at the treachery of this moon-faced traitor who was indirectly responsible for the nightmare through which the girl had pa.s.sed. Yet, as he realized, no more responsible than he himself. He had been a thousand times more unfaithful to the girl than Tung had been to Saul.

Chung returned with a brew of his finest tea. He was loquacious. He tried one subject after another, interjecting protestations of his friendship for Saul. Donaldson heard nothing but the even voice and the sibilant dialect. He seemed chained to that one torturing picture.

Even the prospect of finding the boy and so ending the suspense which had battered Miss Arsdale's nerves for so long brought little relief.

He never could be needed again as he had been needed then. He might even have been able to detain Arsdale and so have avoided this present crisis. He felt all the pangs of an honest sentry who, asleep at his post, awakes to the fact that the enemy has slipped by him in the night.

It was well within the hour when Chung's lieutenant glided in with a message that brought a suave smile to the face of his master.

"Allee light," he announced, beaming upon Donaldson. "Gellelum dlownslairs."