“You!” she repeated, horror-stricken. And then I produced the purse and held it out on my palm. “I should have sent it to you before, I suppose, but, as you know, I have been laid up since the wreck.”
We both saw McKnight at the same moment. He had pulled the curtains aside and was standing looking out at us. The tableau of give and take was unmistakable; the gold purse, her outstretched hand, my own attitude. It was over in a second; then he came out and lounged on the balcony railing.
“They’re mad at me in there,” he said airily, “so I came out. I suppose the reason they call it bridge is because so many people get cross over it.”
The heat broke up the card group soon after, and they all came out for the night breeze. I had no more words alone with Alison.
I went back to the Incubator for the night. We said almost nothing on the way home; there was a constraint between us for the first time that I could remember. It was too early for bed, and so we smoked in the living-room and tried to talk of trivial things. After a time even those failed, and we sat silent. It was McKnight who finally broached the subject.
“And so she wasn’t at Seal Harbor at all.”
“No.”
“Do you know where she was, Lollie?”
“Somewhere near Cresson.”
“And that was the purse - her purse - with the broken necklace in it?”
“Yes, it was. You understand, don’t you, Rich, that, having given her my word, I couldn’t tell you?”
“I understand a lot of things,” he said, without bitterness.
We sat for some time and smoked. Then Richey got up and stretched himself. “I’m off to bed, old man,” he said. “Need any help with that game arm of yours?”
“No, thanks,” I returned.
I heard him go into his room and lock the door. It was a bad hour for me. The first shadow between us, and the shadow of a girl at that.
CHAPTER XVII
AT THE FARMHOUSE AGAIN
McKnight is always a sympathizer with the early worm. It was late when he appeared. Perhaps, like myself, he had not slept well. But he was apparently cheerful enough, and he made a better breakfast than I did. It was one o’clock before we got to Baltimore. After a half hour’s wait we took a local for M-, the station near which the cinematograph picture had been taken.
We passed the scene of the wreck, McKnight with curiosity, I with a sickening sense of horror. Back in the fields was the little farmhouse where Alison West and I had intended getting coffee, and winding away from the track, maple trees shading it on each side, was the lane where we had stopped to rest, and where I had - it seemed presumption beyond belief now - where I had tried to comfort her by patting her hand.
We got out at M-, a small place with two or three houses and a general store. The station was a one-roomed affair, with a railed-off place at the end, where a scale, a telegraph instrument and a chair constituted the entire furnishing.
The station agent was a young man with a shrewd face. He stopped hammering a piece of wood over a hole in the floor to ask where we wanted to go.
“We’re not going,” said McKnight, “we’re coming. Have a cigar?”
The agent took it with an inquiring glance, first at it and then at us.
“We want to ask you a few questions,” began McKnight, perching himself on the railing and kicking the chair forward for me. “Or, rather, this gentleman does.”
“Wait a minute,” said the agent, glancing through the window. “There’s a hen in that crate choking herself to death.”
He was back in a minute, and took up his position near a sawdust-filled box that did duty as a cuspidor.
“Now fire away,” he said.
“In the first place,” I began, “do you remember the day the Washington Flier was wrecked below here?”
“Do I!” he said. “Did Jonah remember the whale?”
“Were you on the platform here when the first section passed?”
“I was.”
“Do you recall seeing a man hanging to the platform of the last car?”
“There was no one hanging there when she passed here,” he said with conviction. “I watched her out of sight.”
“Did you see anything that morning of a man about my size, carrying a small grip, and wearing dark clothes and a derby hat?” I asked eagerly.
McKnight was trying to look unconcerned, but I was frankly anxious. It was clear that the man had jumped somewhere in the mile of track just beyond.
“Well, yes, I did.” The agent cleared his throat. “When the smash came the operator at MX sent word along the wire, both ways. I got it here, and I was pretty near crazy, though I knew it wasn’t any fault of mine.
“I was standing on the track looking down, for I couldn’t leave the office, when a young fellow with light hair
