“Of course,” she said. “But the books are gone. There’s the point. Very valuable ones, unluckily.”
(“The most valuable,” Mr. Lorburn interjected, his eyes still closed.)
“Think, Vance; when you left last Saturday night, didn’t you forget to shut this window?” She pointed to the window near which she stood.
The definiteness of the question cleared Vance’s mind.
“No, I didn’t. I fastened all the shutters and windows before I left.”
She paused, and he saw a look of uncertainty in her face. “Think again, please. On Sunday morning this one was found open, and the shutter had been unhooked from the inside. Someone must have got in after you left, and taken the books, for they’re really gone. We’ve hunted everywhere.”
Vance repeated: “I fastened all the shutters; I’m sure I did. And I locked the front door.” He stopped, and then remembered that when he left the house Lorburn Spear had been with him. “Ask your brother; I guess he’ll remember.”
As he spoke, there came back to him the sensation he had experienced as he waited in the dusk of the hall for Lorry Spear, who had gone back to the library to find his cigarette case. He had been a long time finding it, and while Vance waited he had heard that mysterious sound somewhere in the distance: a sound like a window opening or a shutter swinging loose. He had thought of Laura Lou’s childish fears, smiled them away, and nevertheless turned back to see. …
“My brother? Yes, I know he was with you,” Miss Spear said, almost irritably. Her face looked expressionless, cold. “He says it was you who attended to closing the house.”
“Well, doesn’t he say I closed everything?”
“He says he doesn’t remember.” She paused, and then began, in a hasty authoritative tone: “Someone must have broken in. Someone has taken the books. Try to remember what happened when you were leaving—try again, Vance,” she urged, more gently.
Mr. Lorburn still sat with closed eyes, and the gasping fishlike expression. He murmured again: “I ought not to have let myself be drawn into this—” and then was silent.
Vance looked resolutely at Miss Spear. Her eyes wavered, as if trying to escape from him; then they bathed him in a fluid caress. The caress poured over him, enveloping, persuading. The words were on his lips: “But after we left the library your brother went back to it alone—while he was there I heard a window opened … or thought I did. …” Thought you did?
But only thought, her smile whispered back, silencing him. How can you suggest (it said) … and anyhow, what use would it be? Don’t you see that I can’t let you touch my brother? Vance felt himself subdued and mastered. … He couldn’t hurt her … he couldn’t. He had the sense of being shut in with her in a hidden circle of understanding and connivance.
“Of course a burglar broke in somehow and stole the books,” he heard her begin again with renewed energy. “Come, Cousin Tom; why should we stay any longer? It’s just upsetting you. … This is a job for the police.”
She held out her hand to Vance. “I’m sorry—but I had to ask you to come.”
He said of course she had to … he understood; but the only thing he really understood was that she had bound him fast in a net of unspoken pledges. As they reached the door she turned back. “We’ll see you again soon—at Eaglewood? Promise. …”
But he had given her his last promise. “I don’t know. I’m going to New York. … Maybe I’ll have to go back home. …”
Mr. Lorburn had descended the steps and was walking unsteadily along the drive. Miss Spear looked at Vance. “Yes, go,” she said quickly, “but come back someday.” Her face was sunned over with relief; for a moment she reminded him of the girl of the mountaintop. “Don’t forget me,” she said, and pressed his hand. She unlocked the gate and sprang into the car after Mr. Lorburn. Vance watched them drive away. Then he walked slowly down the lane without once looking back at the old house. He felt sick at heart, diminished and ashamed, as he had at Crampton the day he had seen his grandfather prowling by the river.
XIV
Vance Weston had started from Euphoria with two hundred dollars; and to what was left of that sum there was added the money Mrs. Tracy had thrust back at him as they started. After he had sat for a while in the train, dazed from the shock of his last hour at the Willows, he remembered that henceforth he must subsist on the balance of his funds, and he drew the money out and counted it. He had bought a ten-dollar wristwatch for Upton in New York, the day they went to the ball game, and a rainbow-coloured scarf for Laura Lou, to console her for not coming; the scarf, he thought, had cost about three-seventy-five. On the eve of their ill-fated expedition he had lent ten dollars to Lorburn Spear; and at the ball game, and afterward at the Crans’, had stood drinks, soft and hard, a good many times. He remembered also that the fellows, with a lot of laughing and joking, had clubbed together to buy the Cran girls a new watchdog; and good watchdogs, it appeared, came pretty high. Still, it gave him an unpleasant shock of surprise to find that he had only ninety-two dollars left, including the money returned by Mrs. Tracy. He could not recall where the rest had gone; his memory of what had happened at the Crans’ was too vague.
Ninety dollars would have carried him a long way at Euphoria. In New York he didn’t know how far it would go—much less, assuredly. And he didn’t even know where to turn when he got out of the train, where to find a lodging for the night. In the car there were people who could no doubt have told
