Terry did not come down for dinner. It was more
or less of a calamity, for the board was quite full
of early guests for the next day’s festivities.
Aunt Elizabeth shifted the burden of the entertainment
onto the capable shoulders of Vance, who could please
these Westerners when he chose. Tonight he decidedly
chose. Elizabeth had never see him in such high
spirits. He could flirt good-humoredly and openly
across the table at Nelly, or else turn and draw an
anecdote from Nelly’s father. He kept the
reins in his hands and drove the talk along so smoothly
that Elizabeth could sit in gloomy silence, unnoticed,
at the farther end of the table. Her mind was
up yonder in the room of Terry.
Something had happened, and it had come through that
long business envelope with the typewritten address
that seemed so harmless. One reading of the contents
had brought Terry out of his chair with an exclamation.
Then, without explanation of any sort, he had gone
to his room and stayed there. She would have
followed to find out what was the matter, but the
requirements of dinner and her guests kept her downstairs.
Immediately after dinner Vance, at a signal from her,
dexterously herded everyone into the living room and
distributed them in comfort around the big fireplace;
Elizabeth Cornish bolted straight for the room of Terence.
She knocked and tried the door. To her astonishment,
the knob turned, but the door did not open. She
heard the click and felt the jar of the bolt.
Terry had locked his door!
A little thing to make her heart fall, one would say,
but little things about Terry were great things to
Elizabeth. In twenty-four years he had never
locked his door. What could it mean?
It was a moment before she could call, and she waited
breathlessly. She was reassured by a quiet voice
that answered her: “Just a moment.
I’ll open.”
The tone was so matter-of-fact that her heart, with
one leap, came back to normal and tears of relief
misted her eyes for an instant. Perhaps he was
up here working out a surprise for the next day—he
was full of tricks and surprises. That was unquestionably
it. And he took so long in coming to the door
because he was hiding the thing he had been working
on. As for food, Wu Chi was his slave and would
have smuggled a tray up to him. Presently the
lock turned and the door opened.
She could not see his face distinctly at first, the
light was so strong behind him. Besides, she
was more occupied in looking for the tray of food
which would assure her that Terry was not suffering
from some mental crisis that had made him forget even
dinner. She found the tray, sure enough, but
the food had not been touched.
She turned on him with a new rush of alarm. And
all her fears were realized. Terry had been fighting
a hard battle and he was still fighting. About
his eyes there was the look, half-dull and half-hard,
that comes in the eyes of young people unused to pain.
A worried, tense, hungry face. He took her arm
and led her to the table. On it lay an article
clipped out of a magazine. She looked down at
it with unseeing eyes. The sheets were already
much crumbled. Terry turned them to a full-page
picture, and Elizabeth found herself looking down into
the face of Black Jack, proud, handsome, defiant.
