But her lips were trembling, and because the little shams of society are forgotten at times like this, I leaned over and patted her hand lightly, where it rested on the grass beside me.
“You must not say those things,” I expostulated. “Perhaps, after all, your friends - ”
“I had no friends on the train.” Her voice was hard again, her tone final. She drew her hand from under mine, not quickly, but decisively. A car was in sight, coming toward us. The steel finger of civilization, of propriety, of visiting cards and formal introductions was beckoning us in. Miss West put on her shoe.
We said little on the car. The few passengers stared at us frankly, and discussed the wreck, emphasizing its horrors. The girl did not seem to hear. Once she turned to me with the quick, unexpected movement that was one of her charms.
“I do not wish my mother to know I was in the accident:,” she said. “Will you please not tell Richey about having met me?”
I gave my promise, of course. Again, when we were almost into Baltimore, she asked to examine the gun- metal cigarette case, and sat silent with it in her hands, while I told of the early morning’s events on the Ontario.
“So you see,” I finished, “this grip, everything I have on, belongs to a fellow named Sullivan. He probably left the train before the wreck, - perhaps just after the murder.”
“And so - you think he committed the - the crime?” Her eyes; were on the cigarette case.
“Naturally,” I said. “A man doesn’t jump off a Pullman car in the middle of the night in another man’s clothes, unless he is trying to get away from something. Besides the dirk, there were the stains that you, saw. Why, I have the murdered man’s pocketbook in this valise at my feet. What does that look like?”
I colored when I saw the ghost of a smile hovering around the corners of her mouth. “That is,” I finished, “if you care to believe that I am innocent.”
The sustaining chain of her small gold bag gave way just then. She did not notice it. I picked it up and slid the trinket into my pocket for safekeeping, where I promptly forgot it. Afterwards I wished I had let it lie unnoticed on the floor of that dirty little suburban car, and even now, when I see a woman carelessly dangling a similar feminine trinket, I shudder involuntarily: there comes back to me the memory of a girl’s puzzled eyes under the brim of a flopping hat, the haunting suspicion of the sleepless nights that followed.
Just then I was determined that my companion should not stray back to the wreck, and to that end I was determinedly facetious.
“Do you know that it is Sunday?” she asked suddenly, “and that we are actually ragged?”
“Never mind that,” I retorted. “All Baltimore is divided on Sunday into three parts, those who rise up and go to church, those who rise up and read the newspapers, and those who don’t rise up. The first are somewhere between the creed and the sermon, and we need not worry about the others.”
“You treat me like a child,” she said almost pettishly. “Don’t try so hard to be cheerful. It - it is almost ghastly.”
After that I subsided like a pricked balloon, and the remainder of the ride was made in silence. The information that she would go to friends in the city was a shock: it meant an earlier separation than I had planned for. But my arm was beginning again. In putting her into a cab I struck it and gritted my teeth with the pain. It was probably for that reason that I forgot the gold bag.
She leaned forward and held out her hand. “I may not have another chance to thank you,” she said, “and I think I would better not try, anyhow. I cannot tell you how grateful I am.” I muttered something about the gratitude being mine: owing to the knock I was seeing two cabs, and two girls were holding out two hands.
“Remember,” they were both saying, “you have never met me, Mr. Blakeley. And - if you ever hear anything about me - that is not - pleasant, I want you to think the best you can of me. Will you?”
The two girls were one now, with little flashes of white light playing all around. “I - I’m afraid that I shall think too well for my own good,” I said unsteadily. And the cab drove on.
CHAPTER XI
THE NAME WAS SULLIVAN
I had my arm done up temporarily in Baltimore and took the next train home. I was pretty far gone when I stumbled out of a cab almost into the scandalized arms of Mrs. Klopton. In fifteen minutes I was in bed, with that good woman piling on blankets and blistering me in unprotected places with hot-water bottles. And in an hour I had a whiff of chloroform and Doctor Williams had set the broken bone.
I dropped asleep then, waking in the late twilight to a realization that I was at home again, without the papers that meant conviction for Andy Bronson, with a charge of murder hanging over my head, and with something more than an impression of the girl my best friend was in love with, a girl moreover who was almost as great an enigma as the crime itself.
“And I’m no hand at guessing riddles,” I groaned half aloud. Mrs. Klopton came over promptly and put a cold cloth on my forehead.
“Euphemia,” she said to some one outside the door, “telephone the doctor that he is still rambling, but that he has switched from green ribbons to riddles.”
“There’s nothing the matter with me, Mrs. Klopton,” I rebelled. “I was only thinking out loud. Confound that cloth: it’s trickling all over me!” I gave it a fling, and heard it land with a soggy thud on the floor.
“Thinking out loud is delirium,” Mrs. Klopton said imperturbably. “A fresh doth, Euphemia.”
This time she held it on with a firm pressure that I was too weak to resist. I expostulated feebly that I was drowning, which she also laid to my mental exaltation, and then I finally dropped into a damp sleep. It was probably midnight when I roused again. I had been dreaming of the wreck, and it was inexpressibly comforting to feel the stability of my bed, and to realize the equal stability of Mrs. Klopton, who sat, fully attired, by the night light, reading Science and Health.
“Does that book say anything about opening the windows on a hot night?” I suggested, when I had got my bearings.
