Tears she would not shed blinded her. Her fingers fumbled with the fastening of the purse. The coins slid out and scattered on the floor. He picked them up, and the slamming of the door told her he was gone.
She no longer tried to hold her self-control. When it came back to her it came slowly, as skies clear after a storm. Her body was exhausted with sobs and her face was swollen and sodden, but she felt a great relief. The glare of sunlight on the drawn shades and the stifling heat told her that it was late in the afternoon. She undressed wearily, bathed her face with cool water and, lying down again, was engulfed in the pleasant darkness of sleep.
The next day and the next passed with a slowness that was like a deliberate refinement of cruelty. She felt that time itself was malicious, prolonging her suspense. The young salesmen shared it with her. They had telegraphed friends and families and were awaiting money with which to get out of town. One by one they were released and departed joyfully. Five days passed. Six. Seven.
She would have telegraphed to Clark & Hayward, but she had no money for the telegram. She would have found work if there had been any that she could do. The manager of the small telegraph-office was the only operator. In the little town there were a few stores, already supplied with clerks, a couple of boardinghouses on Whiskey Row, and scores of pretty little houses in which obviously no servants were employed. The local paper carried half a dozen “help wanted” advertisements for stenographers and cooks on the oil-leases. She did not know stenography, and she did not have the ability to cook for twenty or forty hungry men.
A bill in her box at the end of the week told her that her room was costing three dollars a day, and she dared not precipitate inquiry by asking for a cheaper one. She was appalled by the prices of the bill-of-fare, and ate sparingly, signing the checks, however, with a careless scrawl and a confident smile at the waitress.
She was coming from the dining-room on the evening of the seventh day when the manager of the hotel, somewhat embarrassed, asked her not to sign any more checks for meals. It was a new rule of the house, he said. She smiled at him, too, and agreed easily. “Why, certainly!” Altering her intention of going upstairs, she walked into the lobby and sat relaxed in a chair, glancing with an appearance of interest at a newspaper.
So it happened that she saw the item in the middle of the column, which at last gave her news of Bert.
Bert Kennedy Sought on Bad Check Charge
Charging Gilbert H. Kennedy, well-known along the city’s joy zones, with cashing a bogus check for a hundred dollars on the Metropolitan National Bank, Judge C. K. Washburne yesterday issued a warrant for the arrest of the young man on a felony charge. The police search for Kennedy and his young wife, a former candy-store girl, has so far proved fruitless. Interviewed at his residence in Los Angeles last night, former Judge G. H. Kennedy, father of the missing man, controller of the Central Trust Company until his indictment some years ago for mishandling its funds, denied knowledge of his son’s whereabouts, saying that he had not been on good terms with his son for several years.
After some time she was able to rise and walk quite steadily across the lobby. Her hand on the banister kept her from stumbling very much while she went upstairs. There was darkness in her room, and it covered her like a shield. She stood straight and still, one hand pressing against the wall.
It was Saturday night, and in the happy custom of the oil fields a block of the oiled street had been roped off for dancing. Already the musicians were tuning their instruments. Impatient drillers and tool-dressers, with their best girls, were cheering their efforts with bantering applause. The ropes were giving way before the pressure of the holiday crowd in a tumult of shouts and laughter.
Suddenly, with a rollicking swing, the band began to play. The tune rose gaily through the hot, still night, and beneath it ran a rustling undertone, the shuffling of many dancing feet. Below her window the pavement was a swirl of movement and color. Her body relaxed slowly, letting her down into a crumpled heap, and she lay against the windowsill with her face hidden in the circle of her arms.
XIII
Morning came like a change in an interminable delirium. Light poured in through the open window, and the smothering heat of the night gave way to the burning heat of the day. Helen sat up on the tumbled bed, pressing her palms against her forehead, and tried to think.
The realization of her own position did not rouse any emotion. Her mind stated the situation baldly and she looked at it with impersonal detachment. It seemed a curious fact that she should be in a hotel in the oil fields, without money, with no way of getting food, with no means of leaving the place, owing bills that she could not pay.
“Odd I’m not more excited,” she said, and in the same instant forgot about it.
The thought of Bert did not hurt her any more, either. She felt it as a blow on a spot numbed by an anesthetic. But slowly, out of the chaos in her brain, there emerged one thought. She must do something to help him.
She did not need to tell herself that he had not
