I saw her. I flung into the station, saw that
it was empty—empty, for she was not there.
Then I hurried back to the gates. She was there,
a familiar figure in blue, the very gown in which I
always thought of her, the one she had worn when,
Heaven help me—I had kissed her, at the
Carter farm. And she was not alone. Bending
over her, talking earnestly, with all his boyish heart
in his face, was Richey.
They did not see me, and I was glad of it. After
all, it had been McKnight’s game first.
I turned on my heel and made my way blindly out of
the station. Before I lost them I turned once
and looked toward them, standing apart from the crowd,
absorbed in each other. They were the only two
people on earth that I cared about, and I left them
there together. Then I went back miserably to
the office and awaited arrest.
ON TO RICHMOND
Strangely enough, I was not disturbed that day.
McKnight did not appear at all. I sat at my
desk and transacted routine business all afternoon,
working with feverish energy. Like a man on the
verge of a critical illness or a hazardous journey,
I cleared up my correspondence, paid bills until I
had writer’s cramp from signing checks, read
over my will, and paid up my life insurance, made
to the benefit of an elderly sister of my mother’s.
I no longer dreaded arrest. After that morning
in the station, I felt that anything would be a relief
from the tension. I went home with perfect openness,
courting the warrant that I knew was waiting, but
I was not molested. The delay puzzled me.
The early part of the evening was uneventful.
I read until late, with occasional lapses, when my
book lay at my elbow, and I smoked and thought.
Mrs. Klopton closed the house with ostentatious caution,
about eleven, and hung around waiting to enlarge on
the outrageousness of the police search. I did
not encourage her.
“One would think,” she concluded pompously,
one foot in the hall, “that you were something
you oughtn’t to be, Mr. Lawrence. They
acted as though you had committed a crime.”
“I’m not sure that I didn’t, Mrs.
Klopton,” I said wearily. “Somebody
did, the general verdict seems to point my way.”
She stared at me in speechless indignation.
Then she flounced out. She came back once to
say that the paper predicted cooler weather, and that
she had put a blanket on my bed, but, to her disappointment,
I refused to reopen the subject.
At half past eleven McKnight and Hotchkiss came in.
Richey has a habit of stopping his car in front of
the house and honking until some one comes out.
He has a code of signals with the horn, which I never
remember. Two long and a short blast mean, I
believe, “Send out a box of cigarettes,”
and six short blasts, which sound like a police call,
mean “Can you lend me some money?” To-night
I knew something was up, for he got out and rang the
door-bell like a Christian.
