The Girl Who Had No God/Part 4
THE YOUNG CLERGYMAN SURPRISES ELINOR WHILE SHE
IS DOING HER SHARE in A DARING COUN-
TRY CLUB ROBBERY
Synopsis—For years old Hilary Kingston lived with his daughter, Elinor, in a beautiful home on a hill in the suburban village of Woffingham. The neighbors knew nothing about the establishment, except that the father was quite wealthy, and the daughter very good looking and gentle. In reality Kingston was head of an anarchist band, composed of Huff, Boroday, Talbot and Lethbridge, that robbed the rich and gave to the poor and oppressed. One day Old Hilary was shot dead, and the course of life changed abruptly for bis daughter. The Rev. Mr. Ward, a young bachelor, began to take an uncommon interest in Elinor. Young Walter Huff of the gang confessed his love for her and she accepted it.
CHAPTER IV—Continued
—4—
The police were still active. So insistent was Boroday on caution that all of September went by without so much as a plan of campaign. Talbot played golf and established friendly relations that might be invaluable later. Huff, under protest, retained the taxicab work.
"It's a dog's life," he said. "They're not after me now. Give me something else to do, or else let me take a vocation."
But they kept him at work.
Huff fell into the way of seeing Elinor once or twice a week. Talbot took him out, picking him up on the edge of town after dusk, on his way in his car to a dance or dinner at the country club, and taking him back the same way.
And the hoy's infatuation for Elinor grew and thrived on those late summer meetings. Her sweetness and elusiveness maddened him. Sometimes he thought her never so far from him as when she was in his arms.
"Do you love me?" he would demand hoarsely.
"I think so. I know I want you to love me."
And he had to be content with this.
On the evenings when she was alone Elinor sat in her arbor and watched the road up the hill. Ward had called twice, and each time she had been out on the long rambles she took almost daily. After his second visit, she stayed in the house for days, expecting him. But he did not come again.
She was not in love with Ward, just as she was not in love with Walter Huff. But the clergyman represented, in her strange and lonely life, something new and different. He typified all that she had never known. He was the priest, rather than the man to her at first. The time was coming when he would be man only, and after that—
Late in September Boroday was arrested. The arrest came as a shock to the band. As a matter of fact the police could prove nothing, but the chief had a long talk with the Russian. It was the Agrarian affair, of course. The chief bud recognized him. But so firmly had old Hilary's respectability been rooted in the public mind that the chief connected Boroday only casually with him.
"You know that I cannot prove this thing on you," he said, "but you know also perfectly well that I can fix you to the tune of about ten years."
"Perfectly correct in both instances," said Boroday. "You cannot prove anything and you can send me up. What is it you want?"
"I want the members of that band of yours," said the chief. "And I want your headquarters. You people have been playing hell in this county long enough; the newspapers are laughing at us. Sooner or litter, we'll get you and get you all. Make it sooner and we'll let you off easy."
"How much time will you give me?"
The chief offered twenty-four hours and Boroday took it. At the end of that time he reported.
"I guess I'll take what's coming to me," he said. "You can fix it any way you like."
It was a bitter disappointment to the police.
CHAPTER V.
Boroday had used his day's freedom to warn the band and to make plans for regaining his freedom. Of money he had none. What he had made under old Hilary's leadership had gone back to Russia, dollar for dollar. He had financed part of the Kiev defense of the Jews, had saved Prince Ovarsky from Siberia. There were other things.
Money would save Boroday. And there was practically no money.
By unanimous consent they kept the news of his arrest from Elinor.
It was Talbot who planned the country club coup. The Russian was in jail then, on a trumped-up charge. Old Hilary dead and Boroday in jail—there was no one to advise caution.
"Boroday ill!" Elinor exclaimed. They were accounting for his absence from her Saturday-night dinner. "Why, then he should be here, where he can be cared for."
"We told him that." Lethbridge was always readiest with his tongue. "But he's not sick enough to need much, and he's deucedly disagreeable when he's laid up."
Elinor was a little hurt.
In the arbor, ofter dinner, they planned the robbery. Where old Hilary would have taken a month to think and plan, they took minutes. There was a ball at the club that night, the last of the waning country-club season. The entrance to the grounds was a mile from the clubhouse—two iron gates standing open between pillars, and dense shrubbery all about. Talbot would wreck his car there, driving into one of the gates. That would require each departing car to slow down, probably to atop.
The arrangement was that Talbot walk up to the club, and establish an alibi and his innocence by telephoning to a city garage for help. Tho rest was left to Huff and Lethbridge. A quarter of a mile away across the golf links, they would have a car in which to make their getaway.
Lethbridge was only lukewarm.
"We'll get a lot of jewelry," he objected. "What we need is money."
But Talbot was sure the loot would include money.
It was rather cleverly planned. From the vault Huff brought up a fine chain studded with spikes. Stretched across the road outside the entrance, it meant that every ear passing over it would limp along on flat tires. It meant time to the bandits.
Huff and Lethbridge, who had left their car in a thicket over the hill, went first. Talbot followed soon, in his gray car.
"Good luck, boys," said Elinor in echo of her father, from her garden, and went back into the house to watch the clock. At one, or a little sooner—the summer dances were early ones—she was to be in her garden again. The loot would he thrown over the wall.
She was there much earlier, hands cold. lips shaking with nervousness. Always old Hilary had done these things. She was profoundly frightened.
Ward, walking rapidly home from the club, saw her there, a little after midnight. There was a young moon, and at first he thought he must be mistaken. Then, when he was sure of her, he ran up the shallow steps. The gladness that was over him rang out in his deep voice.
"So now I have your secret," he said gaily. "Like all the other fairies, you are only to be seen in the moonlight!"
"In the daylight," said Elinor, trying to smile, "I frequent the woodlands, and miss my most agreeable visitor—my only visitor." She corrected herself.
Her hand was ice in his.
"You are cold!"
"Really, no."
There was a minute's pause. They had no common ground between them. Ward, who dreamed of her eyes, and took long walks up the hill in the mere hope of seeing her in her garden, found himself dumb, now that he stood before her. He had meant to be most impersonal, to run in, say a cheery "good night" to her, and be off. But face to face, with the dark house looming over them, he plunged into the thing nearest his heart.
"Are you still so—alone?"
"There are the servants."
"I—I think of you often. One of my windows faces this way. and I can see a light burning very late."
"I read at night. I do not sleep well. But you—you are up late, also."
"Ah!" He bent a little toward her in his eagerness. "You know that? You know my window?"
"Yes. I watch it very often."
it was well for Walter Huff, crouched in the shrubbery at the country club, eyes glittering, automatic revolver in hand, that he did not hear the thrill in Ward's voice that night in Elinor's garden, or her soft reply.
Many things cried for utterance in Ward; his pitiful sense of the girl's loneliness, a yearning desire to comfort her, to be near her—even more that magic night, a mad longing to hold out his arms and coax her into them, as one might coax some shy creature of the woods.
But Elinor was suddenly aloof and distant again. At any time now a car would come wildly down the hill, and toss at her feet its defiance of law and ownership. What had she and this man before her in common? The thrill was in his voice now, but how quickly it would turn to loathing when he knew! She put out her cold hand, and he took it.
"I am going in now. Good night, and thank you for stopping."
Ward found himself dismissed, and, rather dazed, went down the steps to the road. But one thing he carried with him down the hill that night:
"I watch your window very often."
The reverend Mr. Ward left his light on all of that night, so fearful was he that she might look for it, and not find it.
And while it burned, under the very shadow of Saint Jude's once more the vault in the basement room at the hall swung open to Elinor's practiced fingers.
The village rang with the news of the outrage the next day. No one had been hurt, but jewels of large value had been taken.
To Huff and the others, the raid had been practically a failure. There had been less than a thousand dollars in money—not enough to begin negotiations for Boroday's freedom. it began to look as though the dangerous business concerning some of Elinor's jewels would have to be resorted to. Lethbridge was willing to undertake it, trying London first and then Paris.
"And This Country Club Affair?" Asked Elinor
Elinor offered all the diamonds. If she must keep a part, she would keep the pearls. Talbot sorted out the stones to be sold, but left them with her for safety. She had never cared for her jewels. They were not half so lovely as her flowers—and she parted from them without a pang. But there was one pink pear-shaped pearl that had come in the night before, that she would have rather liked to wear.
On Monday afternoon Ward called on Elinor. The memory of that short meeting in the garden had been with him ever since. There was a new light in his eyes, but she greeted him demurely, although she flushed with pleasure.
"Not in a woodland, for once," she said. "And all my fairylike attributes faded in the daylight!"
"Isn't it rather rash?" he asked gravely—"this risking the daylight?"
"I am here because I hoped you would come to see me." It was Ward's turn to flush.
"You said you were lonely, I thought—"
"I am alone, but not as lonely as you think. There is plenty to do. I have my garden, and I make up little bouquets for the school children. You should see how they love them. Some days I have a dozen clamoring in the road under the arbor."
Ward was charmed. He had a quick vision of Elinor, eyes dancing and soft hair blowing, bending out of her arbor window and dropping her quaint sweet Williams and marguerites, mignonette and garden roses, down to the children.
She led the way to the terrace, where Henriette was setting the tea-table.
"Nevertheless.," Ward said suddenly, "I am not at all sure I like your living here alone. It doesn't seem safe."
"Safe?"
"Perhaps I am unwise to alarm you. But this outrage at the country club—"
"Ah!" sold Elinor, and bent toward him.
"There is no longer any question that a band of desperadoes is terrorizing the county; an organized band of considerable intelligence. They get their information from the inside. This last outrage shows it. No one is safe."
"And this country club affair?" asked Elinor, watching Ward intently.