“I see,” he said, and his dry, rather toneless voice revealed no emotion whatever. “This is interesting. Who are you and where are you going?”
His tones were coldly remorseless. His arm was like a band of steel. Rebellion died and fear grew in the captive. Now she was trembling. But he was forced to admire her courage, for when she replied she looked at him unflinchingly.
“My name is Adair—Mrs. Adair—and I belong to the staff of the Abbot Donegal. I have been working late, and although I know there is some absurd order for no one to leave, I simply must go. It’s ridiculous, and I won’t submit to it. I insist upon being allowed to go home.”
“Where is your home?”
“That can be no business of yours!” flared the prisoner, her eyes now flashing furiously. “If you like, call the abbot. He will vouch for what I say.”
Mark Hepburn’s square chin protruded from the upturned collar of his coat; his deep-set eyes never faltered in their regard.
“That can come later if necessary,” he said; “but first——”
“But first, I shall freeze to death,” said the girl indignantly.
“But first, what have you got in the satchel?”
“Private papers of Abbot Donegal’s. I am working on them at home.”
“In that case, give them to me.”
“I won’t! You have no right whatever to interfere with me. I have asked you to get in touch with the abbot.”
Without relaxing his grip on his prisoner, Hepburn suddenly snatched the satchel, pulling the loop down over her little gloved hand and thrusting the satchel under his arm.
“I don’t want to be harsh,” he said, “but my job at the moment is more important than yours. This will be returned to you in an hour or less. Lieutenant Johnson will drive you home.”
He began to lead her towards the spot where he knew the Secret Service cars were parked. He had determined to raise a minor hell with the said Lieutenant Johnson for omitting to post a man at this point, for as chief of staff to Federal Agent 56 he was personally responsible. He was by no means sure of himself. The girl embraced by his arm was the first really disturbing element which had ever crashed into his Puritan life; she was too lovely to be real: the teaching of long-ago ancestors prompted that she was an instrument of the devil.
Reluctantly she submitted; for ten, twelve, fifteen paces. Then suddenly resisted, dragging at his arm.
“Please, please for God’s sake, listen to me!”
He pulled up. They were alone in that blinding blizzard, although ten or twelve men were posted at points around the Tower of the Holy Thorn. A freak of the storm cast an awning of snow from the lighted windows, down to the spot upon which they stood, and in that dim reflected light Mark Hepburn saw the bewitching face uplifted to him.
She was smiling, this Mrs. Adair who belonged to Abbot Donegal’s staff; a tremulous, pathetic smile, a smile which in happier hours had been one of exquisite but surely innocent coquetry. Now it told of bravely hidden tears.
Despite all his stoicism, Mark Hepburn’s heart pulsed more rapidly. Some men, he thought, many, maybe, had worshipped those lips, dreamed of that beckoning smile . . . perhaps lost everything for it.
This woman was a revelation; to Mark Hepburn, a discovery. He was suspicious of the Irish. For this reason he had never wholly believed in the sincerity of Patrick Donegal. And Mrs. Adair was enveloped in that mystical halo which haunts yet protects the Celts. He did not believe in this mysticism, but he was not immune from its insidious charm. He hated hurting her, he found himself thinking of her as a beautiful, helpless moth torn by the wind from some green dell where fairies still hid in the bushes and the four-leaved shamrock grew.
He felt suddenly glad about, and not ashamed of, “Green Lilies”. Mrs. Adair, for one magical moment, had enabled him to recapture that long-lost mood. It was very odd, out there in the blizzard, with his radical distrust of pretty women and of all that belonged to Rome. . . .
It was this last thought—Rome—that steadied him. Here was some black plot against the Constitution. . . .
“I don’t ask you, I
Hepburn did not look at her. His Quaker ancestors rallied around him. He squared his grim jaw.
“Lieutenant Johnson will drive you home,” he said coldly, “and will bring you your satchel immediately I am satisfied that its contents are what you say they are.”
In the amber-lighted room, where the man with that wonderful mathematical brow sat at work upon the bust of a sinister Chinaman, one of the seven telephones buzzed. He laid down the modelling tool with which he had been working and took up the instrument. He listened.
“This is Number 12,” said a woman’s voice, “speaking from Base 8. In accordance with orders I managed to escape from the Tower of the Holy Thorn. Unfortunately I was captured by a federal agent—name unknown—at the moment that I reached the ground. I was taken under escort of a Lieutenant Johnson towards an address which I invented at random. A Z-car was covering me. Heavy snow gave me a chance. I managed to spring out and get to the Z-car. I regret that the federal agent secured the satchel containing the manuscript. There’s nothing more to report. Standing by here awaiting orders.”
The sculptor replaced the receiver and resumed his task. Twice again he was interrupted, listening to a report from California and to another from New York. He made no notes. He never replied. He merely went on with his seemingless endless task; for he was eternally smearing out the work which he had done, now an ear, now a curve of the brow, and patiently remodelling.
A bell rang, the light went out, and in the darkness that unforgettable, guttural voice spoke:
