“Yes. It is late.” He drew
in his breath as if he had something more to say,
but the impulse passed. “Well, good night,”
he said from the doorway.
“Good night, old man.”
The next moment the outer door slammed and I heard
the engine of the Cannonball throbbing in the street.
Then the quiet settled down around me again, and
there in the lamplight I dreamed dreams. I was
going to see her.
Suddenly the idea of being shut away, even temporarily,
from so great and wonderful a world became intolerable.
The possibility of arrest before I could get to Richmond
was hideous, the night without end.
I made my escape the next morning through the stable
back of the house, and then, by devious dark and winding
ways, to the office. There, after a conference
with Blobs, whose features fairly jerked with excitement,
I double-locked the door of my private office and
finished off some imperative work. By ten o’clock
I was free, and for the twentieth time I consulted
my train schedule. At five minutes after ten,
with McKnight not yet in sight, Blobs knocked at the
door, the double rap we had agreed upon, and on being
admitted slipped in and quietly closed the door behind
him. His eyes were glistening with excitement,
and a purple dab of typewriter ink gave him a peculiarly
villainous and stealthy expression.
“They’re here,” he said, “two
of ’em, and that crazy Stuart wasn’t on,
and said you were somewhere in the building.”
A door slammed outside, followed by steps on the uncarpeted
outer office.
“This way,” said Blobs, in a husky undertone,
and, darting into a lavatory, threw open a door that
I had always supposed locked. Thence into a back
hall piled high with boxes and past the presses of
a bookbindery to the freight elevator.
Greatly to Blobs’ disappointment, there was
no pursuit. I was exhilarated but out of breath
when we emerged into an alleyway, and the sharp daylight
shone on Blobs’ excited face.
“Great sport, isn’t it?” I panted,
dropping a dollar into his palm, inked to correspond
with his face. “Regular walk-away in the
hundred-yard dash.”
“Gimme two dollars more and I’ll drop
’em down the elevator shaft,” he suggested
ferociously. I left him there with his blood-thirsty
schemes, and started for the station. I had a
tendency to look behind me now and then, but I reached
the station unnoticed. The afternoon was hot,
the train rolled slowly along, stopping to pant at
sweltering stations, from whose roofs the heat rose
in waves. But I noticed these things objectively,
not subjectively, for at the end of the journey was
a girl with blue eyes and dark brown hair, hair that
could—had I not seen it?—hang
loose in bewitching tangles or be twisted into little
coils of delight.
THE SEA, THE SAND, THE STARS
I telephoned as soon as I reached my hotel, and I
had not known how much I had hoped from seeing her
until I learned that she was out of town. I
hung up the receiver, almost dizzy with disappointment,
and it was fully five minutes before I thought of calling
up again and asking if she was within telephone reach.
It seemed she was down on the bay staying with the
Samuel Forbeses.
