CHAPTER III
Back in his office, Banneker sent out the necessary wires, and learned from westward that it might be twelve hours before the break in the track near Stanwood could be fixed up. Then he settled down to his report.
Like his earlier telegram, the report was a little masterpiece of concise information. Not a word in it that was not dry, exact, meaningful. This was the more to the writer’s credit in that his brain was seething with impressions, luminous with pictures, aflash with odds and ends of minor but significant things heard and seen and felt. It was his first inner view of tragedy and of the reactions of the human creature, brave or stupid or merely absurd, to a crisis. For all of this he had an outlet of expression.
Taking from the wall a file marked “Letters. Private"-it was 5 S 0027, and one of his most used purchases—he extracted some sheets of a special paper and, sitting at his desk, wrote and wrote and wrote, absorbedly, painstakingly, happily. Wind swept the outer world into a vortex of wild rain; the room boomed and trembled with the reverberations of thunder. Twice the telegraph instrument broke in on him; but these matters claimed only the outer shell; the soul of the man was concerned with committing its impressions of other souls to the secrecy of white paper, destined to personal and inviolable archives.
Some one entered the waiting-room. There was a tap on his door. Raising his head impatiently, Banneker saw, through the window already dimming with the gathering dusk, a large roan horse, droopy and disconsolate in the downpour. He jumped up and threw open his retreat. A tall woman, slipping out of a streaming poncho, entered. The simplicity, verging upon coarseness, of her dress detracted nothing from her distinction of bearing.
“Is there trouble on the line?” she asked in a voice of peculiar clarity.
“Bad trouble, Miss Camilla,” answered Banneker. He pushed forward a chair, but she shook her head. “A loosened rock smashed into Number Three in the Cut. Eight dead, and a lot more in bad shape. They’ve got doctors and nurses from Stanwood. But the track’s out below. And from what I get on the wire”—he nodded toward the east—“it’ll be out above before long.”
“I’d better go up there,” said she. Her lips grew bloodless as she spoke and there was a look of effort and pain in her face.
“No; I don’t think so. But if you’ll go over to the town and see that Torrey gets his place cleaned up a bit, I suppose some of the passengers will be coming in pretty soon.”
She made a quick gesture of repulsion. “Women can’t go to Torrey’s,” she said. “It’s too filthy. Besides—I’ll take in the women, if there aren’t too many and I can pick up a buckboard in Manzanita.”
He nodded. “That’ll be better, if any come in. Give me their names, won’t you? I have to keep track of them, you know.”
The manner of the two was that of familiars, of friends, though there was a touch of deference in Banneker’s bearing, too subtly personal to be attributed to his official status. He went out to adjust the visitor’s poncho, and, swinging her leg across the Mexican saddle of her horse with the mechanical ease of one habituated to this mode of travel, she was off.
Again the agent returned to his unofficial task and was instantly submerged in it. Impatiently he interrupted himself to light the lamps and at once resumed his pen. An emphatic knock at his door only caused him to shake his head. The summons was repeated. With a sigh Banneker gathered the written sheets, enclosed them in 5 S 0027, and restored that receptacle to its place. Meantime the knocking continued impatiently, presently pointed by a deep—
“Any one inside there?”
“Yes,” said Banneker, opening to face the bulky old man who had cared for the wounded. “What’s wanted?”
Uninvited, and with an assured air, the visitor stepped in.
“I am Horace Vanney,” he announced.
Banneker waited.
“Do you know my name?”
“No.”
In no wise discountenanced by the matter-of-fact negative, Mr. Vanney, still unsolicited, took a chair. “You would if you read the newspapers,” he observed.
“I do.”
“The New York papers,” pursued the other, benignly explanatory. “It doesn’t matter. I came in to say that I shall make it my business to report your energy and efficiency to your superiors.”
“Thank you,” said Banneker politely.
“And I can assure you that my commendation will carry weight. Weight, sir.”
The agent accepted this with a nod, obviously unimpressed. In fact, Mr. Vanney suspected with annoyance, he was listening not so much to these encouraging statements as to some unidentified noise outside. The agent raised the window and addressed some one who had approached through the steady drive of the rain. A gauntleted hand thrust through the window a slip of paper which he took. As he moved, a ray of light from the lamp, unblocked by his shoulder, fell upon the face of the person in the darkness, illuminating it to the astounded eyes of Mr. Horace Vanney.
“Two of them are going home with me,” said a voice. “Will you send these wires to the addresses?”
“All right,” replied Banneker, “and thank you. Good-night.”
“Who was that?” barked Mr. Vanney, half rising.
“A friend of mine.”
“I would swear to that face.” He seemed quite excited. “I would swear to it anywhere. It is unforgettable. That was Camilla Van Arsdale. Was she in the wreck?”
“No.”
“Don’t tell me that it wasn’t she! Don’t try to tell me, for I won’t believe it.”
“I’m not trying to tell you anything,” Banneker pointed out.
“True; you’re not. You’re close-mouthed enough. But—Camilla Van Arsdale! Incredible! Does she live here?”
“Here or hereabouts.”
“You must give me the address. I must surely go and see her.”
“Are you a friend of Miss Van Arsdale?”
“I could hardly say so much. A friend of her family, rather. She would remember me, I am sure. And, in any case, she would know my name. Where did you say she lived?”
“I don’t think I said.”
“Mystery-making!” The big man’s gruffness had a suggestion of amusement in it. “But of course it would be simple enough to find out from town.”
“See here, Mr. Vanney, Miss Van Arsdale is still something of an invalid—”
“After all these years,” interposed the other, in the tone of one who ruminates upon a marvel.
“—and I happen to know that it isn’t well for—that is, she doesn’t care to see strangers, particularly from New York.”
The old man stared. “Are you a gentleman?” he asked with abrupt surprise.
“A gentleman?” repeated Banneker, taken aback.
“I beg your pardon,” said the visitor earnestly. “I meant no offense. You are doubtless quite right. As for any intrusion, I assure you there will be none.”
Banneker nodded, and with that nod dismissed the subject quite as effectually as Mr. Horace Vanney himself could have done. “Did you attend all the injured?” he asked.
“All the serious ones, I think.”
“Was there a young girl among them, dark and good-looking, whose name began—”
“The one my addle-brained young nephew has been pestering me about? Miss I. O. W.?”
“Yes. He reported her to me.”
“I handled no such case that I recall. Now, as to your own helpfulness, I wish to make clear that I appreciate it.”
Mr. Vanney launched into a flowery tribute of the after-dinner variety, leaning forward to rest a hand upon Banneker’s desk as he spoke. When the speech was over and the hand withdrawn, something remained among the strewn papers. Banneker regarded it with interest. It showed a blotch of yellow upon green and a capital C. Picking it up, he looked from it to its giver.
“A little tribute,” said that gentleman: “a slight recognition of your services.” His manner suggested that hundred-dollar bills were inconsiderable trifles, hardly requiring the acknowledgment of thanks.
In this case the bill did not secure such acknowledgment.
“You don’t owe me anything,” stated the agent. “I can’t take this!”
“What! Pride? Tut-tut.”
“Why not?” asked Banneker.
Finding no immediate and appropriate answer to this simple question, Mr. Vanney stared.
“The company pays me. There’s no reason why you should pay me. If anything, I ought to pay you for what you did at the wreck. But I’m not proposing to. Of course I’m putting in my report a statement about your help.”
Mr. Vanney’s cheek flushed. Was this composed young hireling making sport of him?
“Tut-tut!” he said again, this time with obvious intent to chide in his manner. “If I see fit to signify my appreciation—remember, I am old enough to be your father.”
“Then you ought to have better judgment,” returned Banneker with such candor and good-humor that the visitor was fairly discomfited.
An embarrassing silence—embarrassing, that is, to the older man; the younger seemed not to feel it—was happily interrupted by the advent of the lily-clad messenger.
Hastily retrieving his yellow-back, which he subjected to some furtive and occult manipulations, Mr. Vanney, after a few words, took his departure.
Banneker invited the newcomer to take the chair thus vacated. As he did so he brushed something to the floor and picked it up.
“Hello! What’s this? Looks like a hundred-bucker. Yours?” He held out the bill.
Banneker shook his head. “Your uncle left it.”
“It isn’t a habit of his,” replied the other.
“Give it to him for me, will you?”
“Certainly. Any message?”
“No.”
The newcomer grinned. “I see,” he said. “He’ll be bored when he gets this back. He isn’t a bad old bird, but he don’t savvy some things. So you turned him down, did you?”
“Yes.”
“Did he offer you a job and a chance to make your way in the world in one of his banks, beginning at ten-per?”
“No.”
“He will to-morrow.”
“I doubt it.”
The other gave a thought to the bill. “Perhaps you’re right. He likes em meek and obedient. He’d make a woolly lamb out of you. Most fellows would jump at the chance.”
“I won’t.”
“My name’s Herbert Cressey.” He handed the agent a card. “Philadelphia is my home, but my New York address is on there, too. Ever get East?”
“I’ve been to Chicago.”
“Chicago?” The other stared. “What’s that got to do with—Oh, I see. You’ll be coming to New York one of these days, though.”
“Maybe.”
“Sure as a gun. A chap that can handle a situation like you handled the wreck isn’t going to stick in a little sand-heap like this.”
“It suits me here.”
“No! Does it? I’d think you’d die of it. Well, when you do get East look me up, will you? I mean it; I’d like to see you.”
“All right.”
“And if there’s anything I can do for you any time, drop me a line.”
The sumptuous ripple and gleam of the young man’s faultless coat, registered upon Banneker’s subconscious memory as it had fallen at his feet, recalled itself to him.
“What store do you buy your clothes at?”
“Store?” Cressey did not smile. “I don’t buy ’em at a store. I have ’em made by a tailor. Mertoun, 505 Fifth Avenue.”
“Would he make me a suit?”
“Why, yes. I’ll give you a card to him and you go in there when you’re in New York and pick out what you want.”
“Oh! He wouldn’t make them and send them out here to me? Sears-Roebuck do, if you send your measure. They’re in Chicago.”
“I never had any duds built in Chicago, so I don’t know them. But I shouldn’t think Mertoun would want to fit a man he’d never seen. They like to do things right, at Mertoun’s. Ought to, too; they stick you enough for it.”
“How much?”
“Not much short of a hundred for a sack suit.”
Banneker was amazed. The choicest “made-to-measure” in his Universal Guide, “Snappy, fashionable, and up to the minute,” came to less than half of that.
His admiring eye fell upon his visitor’s bow-tie, faultless and underanged throughout the vicissitudes of that arduous day, and he yearned to know whether it was “made-up” or self-confected. Sears-Roebuck were severely impartial as between one practice and the other, offering a wide range in each variety. He inquired.
“Oh, tied it myself, of course,” returned Cressey. “Nobody wears the ready-made kind. It’s no trick to do it. I’ll show you, any time.”
They fell into friendly talk about the wreck.
It was ten-thirty when Banneker finished his much-interrupted writing. Going out to the portable house, he lighted an oil-stove and proceeded to make a molasses pie. He was due for a busy day on the morrow and might not find time to take the mile walk to the hotel for dinner, as was his general habit. With the store of canned goods derived from the mail-order catalogue, he could always make shift to live. Besides, he was young enough to relish keenly molasses pie and the manufacture of it. Having concluded his cookery in strict accordance with the rules set forth in the guide to this art, he laid it out on the sill to cool over night.
Tired though he was, his brain was too busy for immediate sleep. He returned to his den, drew out a book and began to read with absorption. That in which he now sought release and distraction was not the magnum opus of Messrs. Sears-Roebuck, but the work of a less practical and popular writer, being in fact the “Eve of St. Agnes,” by John Keats. Soothed and dreamy, he put out the lights, climbed to his living quarters above the office, and fell asleep. It was then eleven-thirty and his official day had terminated five hours earlier.
At one o’clock he arose and patiently descended the stairs again. Some one was hammering on the door. He opened without inquiry, which was not the part of wisdom in that country and at that hour. His pocket-flash gleamed on a thin young man in a black-rubber coat who, with head and hands retracted as far as possible from the pouring rain, resembled a disconsolate turtle with an insufficient carapace.
“I’m Gardner, of the Angelica City Herald,” explained the untimely visitor.
Banneker was surprised. That a reporter should come all the way from the metropolis of the Southwest to his wreck—he had already established proprietary interest in it—was gratifying. Furthermore, for reasons of his own, he was glad to see a journalist. He took him in and lighted up the office.
“Had to get a horse and ride to Manzanita to interview old Vanney and a couple of other big guys from the East. My first story’s on the wire,” explained the newcomer offhand. “I want some local-color stuff for my second day follow-up.”
“It must be hard to do that,” said Banneker interestedly, “when you haven’t seen any of it yourself.”
“Patchwork and imagination,” returned the other wearily. “That’s what I get special rates for. Now, if I’d had your chance, right there on the spot, with the whole stage-setting around one—Lordy! How a fellow could write that!”
“Not so easy,” murmured the agent. “You get confused. It’s a sort of blur, and when you come to put it down, little things that aren’t really important come up to the surface—”
“Put it down?” queried the other with a quick look. “Oh, I see. Your report for the company.”
“Well, I wasn’t thinking of that.”
“Do you write other things?” asked the reporter carelessly.
“Oh, just foolery.” The tone invited—at least it did not discourage—further inquiry. Mr. Gardner was bored. Amateurs who “occasionally write” were the bane of him who, having a signature of his own in the leading local paper, represented to the aspiring mind the gilded and lofty peaks of the unattainable. However he must play this youth as a source of material.
“Ever try for the papers?”
“Not yet. I’ve thought maybe I might get a chance sometime as a sort of local correspondent around here,” was the diffident reply.
Gardner repressed a grin. Manzanita would hardly qualify as a news center. Diplomacy prompted him to state vaguely that there was always a chance for good stuff locally.
“On a big story like this,” he added, “of course there’d be nothing doing except for the special man sent out to cover it.”
“No. Well, I didn’t write my—what I wrote, with any idea of getting it printed.”
The newspaper man sighed wearily, sighed like a child and lied like a man of duty. “I’d like to see it.”
Without a trace of hesitation or self-consciousness Banneker said, “All right,” and, taking his composition from its docket, motioned the other to the light. Mr. Gardner finished and turned the first sheet before making any observation. Then he bent a queer look upon Banneker and grunted:
“What do you call this stuff, anyway?”
“Just putting down what I saw.”
Gardner read on. “What about this, about a Pullman sleeper ‘elegant as a hotel bar and rigid as a church pew’? Where do you get that?”
Banneker looked startled. “I don’t know. It just struck me that is the way a Pullman is.”
“Well, it is,” admitted the visitor, and continued to read. “And this guy with the smashed finger that kept threatening to ‘soom’; is that right?”
“Of course it’s right. You don’t think I’d make it up! That reminds me of something.” And he entered a memo to see the litigious-minded complainant again, for these are the cases which often turn up in the courts with claims for fifty-thousand-dollar damages and heartrending details of all-but-mortal internal injuries.
Silence held the reader until he had concluded the seventh and last sheet. Not looking at Banneker, he said:
“So that’s your notion of reporting the wreck of the swellest train that crosses the continent, is it?”
“It doesn’t pretend to be a report,” disclaimed the writer. “It’s pretty bad, is it?”
“It’s rotten!” Gardner paused. “From a news-desk point of view. Any copy-reader would chuck it. Unless I happened to sign it,” he added. “Then they’d cuss it out and let it pass, and the dear old pin-head public would eat it up.”
“If it’s of any use to you—”
“Not so, my boy, not so! I might pinch your wad if you left it around loose, or even your last cigarette, but not your stuff. Let me take it along, though; it may give me some ideas. I’ll return it. Now, where can I get a bed in the town?”
“Nowhere. Everything’s filled. But I can give you a hammock out in my shack.”
“That’s better. I’ll take it. Thanks.”
Banneker kept his guest awake beyond the limits of decent hospitality, asking him questions.
The reporter, constantly more interested in this unexpected find of a real personality in an out-of-the-way minor station of the high desert, meditated a character study of “the hero of the wreck,” but could not quite contrive any peg whereon to hang the wreath of heroism. By his own modest account, Banneker had been competent but wholly unpicturesque, though the characters in his sketch, rude and unformed though it was, stood out clearly. As to his own personal history, the agent was unresponsive. At length the guest, apologizing for untimely weariness, it being then 3.15 A.M., yawned his way to the portable shack.
He slept heavily, except for a brief period when the rain let up. In the morning—which term seasoned newspaper men apply to twelve noon and the hour or two thereafter—he inquired of Banneker, “Any tramps around here?”
“No,” answered the agent, “Not often. There were a pair yesterday morning, but they went on.”
“Some one was fussing around the place about first light. I was too sleepy to get up. I yipped and they beat it. I don’t think they got inside.”
Banneker investigated. Nothing was missing from within the shack. But outside he made a distressing discovery.
His molasses pie was gone.
CHAPTER IV
“To accomplish a dessert as simple and inexpensive as it is tasty,” prescribes The Complete Manual of Cookery, p. 48, “take one cup of thick molasses—” But why should I infringe a copyright when the culinary reader may acquire the whole range of kitchen lore by expending eighty-nine cents plus postage on 39 T 337? Banneker had faithfully followed the prescribed instructions. The result had certainly been simple and inexpensive; presumably it would have proven tasty. He regretted and resented the rape of the pie. What aroused greater concern, however, was the presence of thieves. In the soft ground near the window he found some rather small footprints which suggested that it was the younger of the two hoboes who had committed the depredation.
Theorizing, however, was not the order of his day. Routine and extra-routine claimed all his time. There was his supplementary report to make out; the marooned travelers in Manzanita to be looked after and their bitter complaints to be listened to; consultations over the wire as to the condition and probabilities of the roadbed, for the floods had come again; and in and out of it all, the busy, weary, indefatigable Gardner, giving to the agent as much information as he asked from him. When their final lists were compared, Banneker noticed that there was no name with the initials I.O.W. on Gardner’s. He thought of mentioning the clue, but decided that it was of too little definiteness and importance. The news value of mystery, enhanced by youth and beauty, which the veriest cub who had ever smelled printer’s ink would have appreciated, was a sealed book to him.
Not until late that afternoon did a rescue train limp cautiously along an improvised track to set the interrupted travelers on their way. Gardner went on it, leaving an address and an invitation to “keep in touch.” Mr. Vanney took his departure with a few benign and well-chosen words of farewell, accompanied by the assurance that he would “make it his special purpose to commend,” and so on. His nephew, Herbert Cressey, the lily-clad messenger, stopped at the station to shake hands and grin rather vacantly, and adjure Banneker, whom he addressed as “old chap,” to be sure and look him up in the East; he’d be glad to see him any time. Banneker believed that he meant it. He promised to do so, though without particular interest. With the others departed Miss Camilla Van Arsdale’s two emergency guests, one of them the rather splendid young woman who had helped with the wounded. They invaded Banneker’s office with supplementary telegrams and talked about their hostess with that freedom which women of the world use before dogs or uniformed officials.
“What a woman!” said the amateur nurse.
“And what a house!” supplemented the other, a faded and lined middle-aged wife who had just sent a reassuring and very long wire to a husband in Pittsburgh.
“Very much the châtelaine; grande dame and that sort of thing,” pursued the other. “One might almost think her English.”
“No.” The other shook her head positively. “Old American. As old and as good as her name. You wouldn’t flatter her by guessing her to be anything else. I dare say she would consider the average British aristocrat a little shoddy and loud.”
“So they are when they come over here. But what on earth is her type doing out here, buried with a one-eyed, half-breed manservant?”
“And a concert grand piano. Don’t forget that. She tunes it herself, too. Did you notice the tools? A possible romance. You’ve quite a nose for such things, Sue. Couldn’t you get anything out of her?”
“It’s much too good a nose to put in the crack of a door,” retorted the pretty woman. “I shouldn’t care to lay myself open to being snubbed by her. It might be painful.”
“It probably would.” The Pittsburgher turned to Banneker with a change of tone, implying that he could not have taken any possible heed of what went before. “Has Miss Van Arsdale lived here long, do you know?”
The agent looked at her intently for a moment before replying: “Longer than I have.” He transferred his gaze to the pretty woman. “You two were her guests, weren’t you?” he asked.
The visitors glanced at each other, half amused, half aghast. The tone and implication of the question had been too significant to be misunderstood. “Well, of all extraordinary—” began one of them under her breath; and the other said more loudly, “I really beg—” and then she, too, broke off.
They went out. “Châtelaine and knightly defender,” commented the younger one in the refuge of the outer office. “Have we been dumped off a train into the midst of the Middle Ages? Where do you get station-agents like that?”
“The one at our suburban station chews tobacco and says ‘Marm’ through his nose.”
Banneker emerged, seeking the conductor of the special with a message.
“He is rather a beautiful young thing, isn’t he?” she added.
Returning, he helped them on the train with their hand-luggage. When the bustle and confusion of dispatching an extra were over, he sat down to think. But not of Miss Camilla Van Arsdale. That was an old story, though its chapters were few, and none of them as potentially eventful as this intrusion of Vanneys and female chatterers.
It was the molasses pie that stuck in his mind. There was no time to make another. Further, the thought of depredators hanging about disturbed him. That shack of his was full of Aladdin treasures, delivered by the summoned genii of the Great Book. Though it was secured by Little Guardian locks and fortified with the Scarem Buzz alarm, he did not feel sure of it. He decided to sleep there that night with his .45-caliber Sure-shot revolver. Let them come again; he’d give ’em a lesson! On second thought, he rebaited the window-ledge with a can of Special Juicy Apricot Preserve. At ten o’clock he turned in, determined to sleep lightly, and immediately plunged into fathomless depths of unconsciousness, lulled by a singing wind and the drone of the rain.
A light, flashing across his eyes, awakened him. For a moment he lay, dazed, confused by the gentle and unfamiliar oscillations of his hammock. Another flicker of light and a rumble of thunder brought him to his full senses. The rain had degenerated into a casual drizzle and the wind had withdrawn into the higher areas. He heard some one moving outside.
Very quietly he reached out to the stand at his elbow, got his revolver and his flashlight, and slipped to the floor. The malefactor without was approaching the window. Another flash of lightning would have revealed much to Banneker had he not been crouching close under the sill, on the inside, so that the radiance of his light, when he found the button, should not expose him to a straight shot.
A hand fumbled at the open window. Finger on trigger, Banneker held up his flashlight in his left hand and irradiated the spot. He saw the hand, groping, and on one of its fingers something which returned a more brilliant gleam than the electric ray. In his crass amazement, the agent straightened up, a full mark for murder, staring at a diamond-and-ruby ring set upon a short, delicate finger.
No sound came from outside. But the hand became instantly tense. It fell upon the sill and clutched it so hard that the knuckles stood out, white, strained and garish. Banneker’s own strong hand descended upon the wrist. A voice said softly and tremulously:
“Please!”
The appeal went straight to Banneker’s heart and quivered there, like a soft flame, like music heard in an unrealizable dream.
“Who are you?” he asked, and the voice said:
“Don’t hurt me.”
“Why should I?” returned Banneker stupidly.
“Some one did,” said the voice.
“Who?” he demanded fiercely.
“Won’t you let me go?” pleaded the voice.
In the shock of his discovery he had released the flash-lever so that this colloquy passed in darkness. Now he pressed it. A girlish figure was revealed, one protective arm thrown across the eyes.
“Don’t strike me,” said the girl again, and again Banneker’s heart was shaken within him by such tremors as the crisis of some deadly fear might cause.
“You needn’t be afraid,” he stammered.
“I’ve never been afraid before,” she said, hanging her weight away from him. “Won’t you let me go?”
His grip relaxed slightly, then tightened again. “Where to?”
“I don’t know,” said the appealing voice mournfully.
An inspiration came to Banneker. “Are you afraid of me?” he asked quietly.
“Of every thing. Of the night.”
He pressed the flash into her hand, turning the light upon himself. “Look,” he said.
It seemed to him that she could not fail to read in his face the profound and ardent wish to help her; to comfort and assure an uneasy and frightened spirit wandering in the night.
He heard a little, soft sigh. “I don’t know you,” said the voice. “Do I?”
“No,” he answered soothingly as if to a child. “I’m the station-agent here. You must come in out of the wet.”
“Very well.”
He tossed an overcoat on over his pajamas, ran to the door and swung it open. The tiny ray of light advanced, hesitated, advanced again. She walked into the shack, and immediately the rain burst again upon the outer world. Banneker’s fleeting impression was of a vivid but dimmed beauty. He pushed forward a chair, found a blanket for her feet, lighted the “Quick-heater” oil-stove on which he did his cooking. She followed him with her eyes, deeply glowing but vague and troubled.
“This is not a station,” she said.
“No. It’s my shack. Are you cold?”
“Not very.” She shivered a little.
“You say that some one hurt you?”
“Yes. They struck me. It made my head feel queer.”
A murderous fury surged into his brain. His hand twitched toward his revolver.
“The hoboes,” he whispered under his breath. “But they didn’t rob you,” he said aloud, looking at the jeweled hand.
“No. I don’t think so. I ran away.”
“Where was it?”
“On the train.”
Enlightenment burst upon him. “You’re sure—” he began. Then, “Tell me all you can about it.”
“I don’t remember anything. I was in my stateroom in the car. The door was open. Some one must have come in and struck me. Here.” She put her left hand tenderly to her head.
Banneker, leaning over her, only half suppressed a cry. Back of the temple rose a great, puffed, leaden-blue wale.
“Sit still,” he said. “I’ll fix it.”
While he busied himself heating water, getting out clean bandages and gauze, she leaned back with half-closed eyes in which there was neither fear nor wonder nor curiosity: only a still content. Banneker washed the wound very carefully.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
“My head feels queer. Inside.”
“I think the hair ought to be cut away around the place. Right here. It’s quite raw.”
It was glorious hair. Not black, as Cressey had described it in his hasty sketch of the unknown I.O.W.; too alive with gleams and glints of luster for that. Nor were her eyes black, but rather of a deep-hued, clouded hazel, showing troubled shadows between their dark-lashed, heavy lids. Yet Banneker made no doubt but that this was the missing girl of Cressey’s inquiry.
“May I?” he said.
“Cut my hair?” she asked. “Oh, no!”
“Just a little, in one place. I think I can do it so that it won’t show. There’s so much of it.”
“Please,” she answered, yielding.
He was deft. She sat quiet and soothed under his ministerings. Completed, the bandage looked not too unworkmanlike, and was cool and comforting to the hot throb of the wound.
“Our doctor went back on the train, worse luck!” he said.
“I don’t want any other doctor,” she murmured. “I’d rather have you.”
“But I’m not a doctor.”
“No,” she acquiesced. “Who are you? Did you tell me? You are one of the passengers, aren’t you?”
“I’m the station-agent at Manzanita.”
For a moment she looked at him wonderingly. “Are you? I don’t seem to understand. My head is very queer.”
“Don’t try to. Here’s some tea and crackers.”
“I’m starved,” she said.
With subtle stirrings of delight, he watched her eat the bit that he had prepared for her while heating the water. But he was wise enough to know that she must not have much while the extent of her injury was still undetermined.
“Are you wet?” he inquired.
She nodded. “I haven’t been dry since the flood.”
“I have a room with a real stove in it over the station. I’ll build a fire, and you must take off your wet things and go to bed and sleep. If you need anything you can hammer on the floor.”
“But you—”
“I’ll be in my office, below. I’m on night duty to-night,” said he, tactfully fabricating.
“Very well. You’re awfully kind.”
He adjusted the oil-stove, threw a warmed blanket over her feet, and hurried to his room to build the promised fire. When he came back she smiled.
“You are good to me! It’s stupid of me—my head is so queer—did you say you were—”
“The station-agent. My name is Banneker. I’m responsible to the company for your safety and comfort. You’re not to worry about it, nor think about it, nor ask any questions.”
“No,” she agreed, and rose.
He threw the blanket around her shoulders. At the protective touch she slipped her hand through his arm. So they went out into the night.
Mounting the stairs, she stumbled, and for a moment he felt the firm, warm pressure of her body against him. It shook him strangely.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. And, a moment later, “Good-night, and thank you.”
Taking the hand which she held out, he returned her good-night. The door closed. He turned away and was halfway down the flight when a sudden thought recalled him. He tapped on the door.
“What is it?” asked the serene music of the voice.
“I don’t want to bother you, but there’s just one thing I forgot. Please give me your name.”
“What for?” returned the voice doubtfully.
“I must report it to the company.”
“Must you?” The voice seemed to be vaguely troubled. “To-night?”
“Don’t give a thought to it,” he said. “To-morrow will do just as well. I’m sorry to have troubled you.”
“Good-night,” she said again.
“Can’t remember her own name!” thought Banneker, moved and pitiful.
Darkness and quiet were grateful to him as he entered the office. By sense of direction he found his chair, and sank into it. Overhead he could hear the soft sound of her feet moving about the room, his room. Quiet succeeded. Banneker, leagues removed from sleep, or the hope of it, despite his bodily weariness, followed the spirit of wonder through starlit and sunlit realms of dream.
The telegraph-receiver clicked. Not his call. But it brought him back to actualities. He lighted his lamp and brought down the letter-file from which had been extracted the description of the wreck for Gardner of the Angelica City Herald.
Drawing out the special paper, he looked at the heading and smiled. “Letters to Nobody.” He took a fresh sheet and began to write. Through the night he wrote and dreamed and dozed and wrote again. When a sound of song, faint and sweet and imminent, roused him to lift his sleep-bowed head from the desk upon which it had sunk, the gray, soiled light of a stormy morning was in his eyes. The last words he had written were:
“The breast of the world rises and falls with your breathing.”
Banneker was twenty-four years old, and had the untainted soul of a boy of sixteen.