The Papered Door

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

 

THE PAPERED DOOR

Involving Action, Mystery, Sentiment.
Night Vigil at the Home of a Criminal

BY
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

THE small house was drafty. Air currents moved the curtains at the windows and billowed the cheap rug on the floor. The baby had had the croup; it had given her an excuse for being up, for the roaring kitchen fire and lights.

Early in the evening she had sent over to the doctor's for medicine. The drug store was closed, and a curious crowd had gathered in front of it. The doctor dispensed his own prescriptions and had sent back with the bottle a kindly note:

"Dear Molly: If we can do anything let us know. Would you like Ann to spend the night with you?"

The eight-year-old girl had trotted back with a message that she thought she could manage nicely. The thought of Ann's prying eyes made her shudder.

Then the quiet night had settled down on them. Some time after 11, moving about the room, she had glanced out of the window and had seen glowing in the darkness a lighted cigar.

She knew what it meant. The house was being watched.

By 1 o'clock the baby was breathing easier. A light snow was falling: frozen hard, it beat against the window panes with little, sharp cracklings. In the next room the eight-year-old girl was sound asleep, one arm thrown up over her head.

She went to the window and looked out again. The man across the street moved uneasily, hesitated, came over and signaled her to raise the window.

"How's the boy?" he called through the snow. She knew him then—Cooper, one of the county detectives.

"Better; the doctor's medicine has helped him."

He hesitated awkwardly. "You'd better go to bed," he said at last. "There is no use of two of us staying up. I guess he won't come back while I am hanging around."

"No," she replied wearily, "he won't come back, Mr. Cooper. That was the last word he said."

The detective coughed, cleared his throat, spat.

"We are all mighty sorry," he observed, using a carefully conversational tone. "These—these things happen now and then.”

"I expect you are right cold out there."

“Well, I am not warm." he replied cheerfully. "I am burning up considerable fuel, but it doesn’t seem to heat much." To show his case he lighted a fresh stogie. The match flare showed his good-humored face drawn and strained in spite of his tone.

"You wouldn't care to come in and warm your feet, would you?"

He hesitated. The village street was quiet. Owing to its semi-isolated position, he had commanded all approaches to the house from his vantage point across the street. Once inside— But then again—the house was small and lightly built: one could hear a footfall through it. A man ought to be able to thaw out now and then.

"I don't know but I will for a minute or two, Mrs. Carter," he assented, "if you'll unlock the door."

****

SHE came downstairs very soon, a shawl over her thin wrapper, and set a match to the fuel ready laid in the parlor stove before she admitted him.

She was a pretty, slender woman still in her twenties—an ultra-refined type of the village. Indeed, she had known better things than this thin clapboard house. She had taught school at the county seat before her marriage. The village had always resented her shy aloofness, the books on her parlor table. It had predicted calamity from the marriage, and now it had come.

The detective eyed her with appreciation as he drew up his chair to the fire and warmed his numb fingers.

"How did it happen, anyhow, Molly?" he said at last. He had known her for a long time. "Had he been drinking?"

"I don't exactly know myself." Her tone was dreary. "I had asked him not to carry a gun—but when you ask Jim not to do a thing, he wants to right off. It was over a woman."

The detective was uncomfortable. He had known about the woman, of course. Molly Carter went to the foot of the stairs and listened. All was still. The baby slept. So small was the house that she could hear his slightly stertorous breathing. The base burner was glowing now. She did not sit down again. She rolled her arms in her shawl and stood looking at the blaze.

"It was the girl at Heideger's. He's been hanging around her for quite a while. Jim was sociable, you know, and lately, with the baby and the house. I haven't had much time for him."

The detective nodded.

"And he went out, I suppose?"

"Well, you can hardly blame him. I guess here in the town they'll say I drove him to it. I have the reputation of thinking more of my children than I do of my husband. In the evenings I liked to read. Jim was no hand for reading."

****

IN her nine years in the village she had adopted many of its colloquialisms.

"From what I gather, because with everybody talking at once I got kind of mixed up. It seems that the clerk from the drug store walked into to Heideger's while Jim was there and had asked the girl what she meant by fooling around with a married man. Then he told Jim to come home because his baby was sick. I'd sent over this afternoon for some Ipecac. That was the start. The trouble came then.

“Then Jim came home," the detective prompted, "and after that what, Molly?"

"Then Jim came home,” she repeated in a spiritless voice, "and said he was in trouble and he would have to leave town. I gave him all the money I had and got his winter overcoat out. It smelled of moth balls, but there wasn't time to air it. He put it on and went."

"Moth balls!" he said. "That's what I've been smelling. You must have spilled them around."

There was no light in the room or he would have seen the woman grow paler and her hands clutch under her shawl.

For a the few moments there was silence in the parlor, save for the creak of the self-rocker in which the detective gently swung himself. He yawned and stretched out his legs.

"You don't mind if I smoke in here?"

"Jim smoked all over the house. Is the drug clerk badly hurt?"

The creaking or the self-rocker stopped. The detective looked hard at his stogie. "Yes, he's pretty bad," he said, after a moment. "He's—well, Molly, you will learn it soon enough anyhow—he's dead."

She sat down on one of the stiff plush chairs. Her jaws quivered nervously. She could scarcely articulate.

"Then it's murder?"

"I am afraid so."

He made an eager attempt to comfort her, bending forward.

"After all," he said, "something of this sort was bound to come sooner or later. If he gets away you are better without him. If he doesn't——" He threw out his hands. "He has never supported you. You have worked for him, haven't you, and borne his children? What have you had out of it? Try to be sensible. Things are pretty bad just now, but—they have been pretty bad for you for the last eight years. It's been drink and gambling and other women, and I am going to tell you the whole thing straight. There is no use cutting off a dog’s tail an inch at a time. He shot the girl, too. They are both dead. The sheriff is out with a posse, and there is a thousand dollars on his head."

****

THE real blow had fallen earlier, in that early dusk when Jim had come in, frantic, and told her part of the truth. She only winced now, went a little paler. With the increasing warmth of the room the odor of moth balls seemed to fill the house.

She was dizzy, rather. Holding to the back of her chair, she listened for the sick child above. He still slept.

"Two of them!" she said at last. "The drug clerk was a nice young man. We used to talk about books and articles in the magazines. And now—oh, my God!" She pulled herself together sharply. "It's a pity of the girl, too," she said, quietly. "She was young and the men made a fool of her. I guess she wasn't really bad."

The detective said nothing. He rose, hoisting himself slowly out of the low rocker.

"Well, back to work!" he said. "It's been mighty good of you, Molly. I am warmed through now." He yawned again. "The sister hasn't got out my flannels yet and I was nearly frozen. I wasn't expecting an all-night job."

He threw the end of his stogie into the stove, drew a revolver from his coat pocket and glanced at it, remembered suddenly that the action was hardly delicate, and thrust it back.

The woman's mind was working again—a subconscious intelligence that seemed to have been scheming all the while.

"I was thinking," she suggested, "that if I leave the latch off you could come in now and then and get warm. I can leave e cup of tea on he fender. Do you want milk in it?"

"Sugar, thank you, and no milk," he said. "You were always a thoughtful woman, Molly." There was something almost wistful in his voice. Mindful of the sleeping baby, he closed the door cautiously behind him as he went out.

Only the most casual search had been made of the house. Jim Carter had been seen after the tragedy to to go home and shortly after to drive fiercely out of town in his buckboard wagon headed for the mountains. No one in the village had tried to stop him. He was grim, white-lipped and armed.

The posse had found the buckboard eight miles away at 9 o'clock that night, the wagon wedged in a fence corner with a wheel off and the horse lame. There was every likelihood that Carter was in the hills.

It was Heideger, the hotel keeper, who had offered the reward. It was Heideger who had suggested that the house be watched. But it had been almost midnight when the detective took up his position across the street, and in the interval——

****

MOLLY CARTER went back to the kitchen and lighted the lamp. The room was stifling, but the fire in the range was low now. She put in a fresh piece of wood and set the kettle over it. Then, and not until then, did she go to the wall beside the range and put her lips to it.

“Can you breathe?" she said, cautiously. The reply came with astonishing clearness through the thin wall; even the sound of a body turning in a narrow space.

"I am making another air hole. Go out and see If any chips fall out."

"I can't, Jim. Chester Cooper is across the street. Did you hear what he said?"

"I heard," he said sullenly.

The plan had been his. He had thought it out when the horse had gone lame and he had had to work his roundabout way back home through the commencing storm. But the execution was hers, and the work was well done.

Beside the range there had been a small unlighted closet, with a flat wooden door that flitted close without a frame. Long ago the door had been papered to match the kitchen. It had been the work of only a few moments to take off the lock. After that he had gone inside and drawn the door to behind him, shutting out from her light, to her relief, his shaking hands and death-colored face. It was done and the paste almost dry before the sheriff's officer had made his cursory search. The child upstairs had been coughing hoarsely all the time. The little girl was up there, too, locked in. Half distracted, she had papered anew from the ceiling to the floor over the little door and built a fire in the range to dry the paste. In the lamplight the unfaded strips did not show against the old ones. Daylight would reveal them cruelly. If she could only keep the neighbors out! They knew the kitchen. Even at that she had gained a night.

She made the tea, crossing and recrossing the little room cautiously. When she came back from placing the cup on the fender of the parlor stove, the querulous voice was speaking from the other side of the partition: "What the devil do you mean by bringing him in here, anyhow?"

"I thought it looked as if I hadn't anything to hide, Jim. He'll never think you are here now I have left the latch off, so he can go in and out when he likes."

"Well, you'd better see about those ships. Wait until he comes in the next time and then slip out the back door.”

"The snow will cover them. Jim, there's a thousand dollars on you!"

“Well, why don't you sell me out? I haven’t been worth much to you living. A thousand dollars dead wouldn't be bad."

Her lip quivered, but she made no reply. That was what the detective had said.

"If I could get to the barn," he grumbled. "I could work around behind Shultz's fence and get to the railroad siding. Where is that fool standing?"

"He's just across. You can't get to the barn. Jim, is that sleeping stuff of yours bitter?"

He gathered the meaning in her tone and came close to the papered door.

"Would you notice it in a cup of tea?"

"I don't know. Not with sugar, maybe."

Have you got your knife?"

"Yes."

"I thought this way, Jim. If he comes in to get warm and goes to sleep by the fire, I will tap three times lightly. You'll be listening, will you? You won't go to sleep?"

"God in heaven! Do you think I am sleeping tonight?"

"Then listen. You can slip the blade around the door from the inside and cut the paper, can't you?"

"How do you know he is coming back?"

"He said he might. I think he will. What's that?"

She turned toward the rear of the house. A pair of peering eyes was staring at her from the window. She turned her back to them.

"Jim!" Almost a whisper, but he heard.

"What?"

"Mrs. Shultz is on the back porch."

****

WHEN she looked again, the eyes had gone, and her neighbor was trying the door. With a despairing gesture Molly blew out the lamp and opened the door.

"I’ve been in bed for three hours," explained the visitor, "and seems like I can't sleep with you so near and in trouble." She pushed herself through the half-opened door into the room.

"I'm sorry. I guess there's nothing any one can do to help."

"I could sit here by the stove. I can't sleep anyhow. It's a comfort when you're in trouble, to have some one about to lean on,"

There was a sort of goulish curiosity in her face, but there was real kindness also. She came close and lowered her voice.

"I thought you was talking to some one a minute ago."

"I was speaking to the detective. He was in. I'm making him a cup of tea."

If the curiosity faded from Mrs. Shultz's eyes the kindness also left them.

"Tea! I don't know that I'd care to make tea for a man who was waiting to hang Schultz or fill him full of lead!" She turned toward the door, hesitated. "I told Shultz I was going to stay. He locked the door after me. You wouldn't mind, would you, if I lay on your parlor sofa?"

SHE PLEADED WITH HIM, WENT DOWN ON HER KNEES, GREW HYSTERICAL AND HAD TO BE TAKEN IN HIS ARMS AND QUIETED.

Molly was a mild woman, but now she was desperate.

"I'm afraid I would mind," she said quietly. "This is a very sad night for me. I should like to be alone; absolutely alone."

The kitchen door closed with a bang. She was alone—with the papered door.

She ran up the stairs and brought down the sleeping powders in their pasteboard box. One she emptied swiftly into the teacup on the parlor fender. The box she put into the stove and waited until it was entirely consumed.

"I've fixed it, Jim. Listen for three raps. If he doesn't drink it, or the powder doesn't work——"

She broke down. She opened the front door and called across in a low voice:

"I've left your tea for you and the door is unlocked. Be sure to close it tight when you go out."

Then she went upstairs.

The baby slept soundly. She put out the lamp and, drawing her shawl close about her, sat down in a chair before the fire. She thought of many things; of the days when Cooper, across the street, had wished to marry her; of her husband; of the blond girl at Heideger's; of the papered-up closet in the kitchen and the man in it drilling madly for breath.

Her eyes fell on a small white object on the floor. That brought her back with a start. She made another painful excursion to the lower floor.

"He smelt the moth balls on your overcoat," she said to the wall. "I've got to hide it again. It's under the parlor sofa. Where'll I put it?"

"Hide it behind the wood on the back porch." The voice was muffled.

"Jim, have you got enough air?"

"Oh, I'll manage somehow."

The kitchen clock struck, a thin metallic ring. It was a very old clock, with flowers painted on the dial. It had marked in its time death and birth and giving in marriage. But never, perhaps, had it marked so tragic a night.

Two o'clock.

****

SHE went back to her chair and got listening. The blizzard had come now. Wind whipped the window sash and roared about the house corners. Beneath the ill-fitting frame a fine line of snow had sifted. She was painfully alive. Every sense ached with waiting.

More than once she mistook a slamming shutter for the closing of the front door, only to be disappointed. But it came an hour later, when the clock with the painted dial was striking 3. The bait of the unlatched door and the glow of the base burner through the parlor window had caught their victim.

Cooper had compromised with his conscience by making a careful round of the house. At one place he stopped. In a lull of the wind, it seemed to him that there was a curious, grinding sound. Then the gale rose again, caught his hat and sent him running and cursing. When he came back the noise, whatever it was, had ceased.

He stamped cautiously on the low porch and opened the door. A homely odor of tea met him. mixed with comforting warmth. He turned up the lamp and took off his overcoat. It was his best overcoat and shabby at that. If he had any luck and the storm drove Carter back, he'd be able to buy a new one. He dusted it off with his hands before hanging it over the back of the chair to dry. On one shoulder a few grains of sawdust caught his attention. He looked at them with speculation, but without suspicion. He had a sense of humor.

"Ha!" he said to himself. "Even the sky had gone in for adulteration. Sawdust in the snow!"

He smiled at the conceit and sipped the tea. It was not very good, but it was hot. Overhead he could hear the slow rocking of a chair.

“Poor child!” he said. "Poor little girl—all this for that —— skunk!"

He affected a further compromise with his sense of duty by getting up every few minutes and inspecting the street or tiptoeing through the kitchen and pulling open unexpectedly the back door. Always on these occasions he had his hand in his revolver pocket.

Three-thirty.

The storm had increased in violence. Already small drifts had piled in still corners. The glow of the base-burner was dull red. The rocking overhead had ceased.

Cooper yawned and stretched out his legs.

"Poor little girl!" he said "Poor li'l girl! And all for the sake—all for sake——"

He drew a deep breath and settled lower in the chair.

****

MOLLY CARTER be nt down from the top of the stairs and listened. The detective had come in and she had not heard him go out. It would not do to descend too stealthily for fear he were still awake. As an excuse she took down a bottle of the baby's to fill with milk.

Cooper was sound asleep in the parlor, his head dropped forward on his breast. There was a strong odor of drying wool as his overcoat steamed by the fire.

Still holding the bottle, she crept to the kitchen and tapped lightly three times on the papered door. There was no reply. Her heart almost stopped, leaped on again, raced wildly. She repeated the signal. Then, desperately, she put her lips to the wall.

"Jim!" she whispered.

There was absolute silence, save for the heavy breathing of the detective in the parlor. Madness seized Her. She crept along the tiny passage to the parlor door, and working with infinite caution, in spite of her frenzy, she closed it and locked it from the outside. Then back to the kitchen again, pulses hammering.

The bottle fell off the table and broke with a crash. For a moment she felt as if something in her had given away also But there came no outcry from the parlor, no heavy weight against the flimsy door.

She got her knife from the table drawer and cut relentlessly through the new paper strips. Then, with the edge of the blade, she worked the door open.

Jim half sat, half lay, in the bottom of the closet with closed eyes. Drink and fatigue had combined with stifling air. She reached in and shook him, but he moved under her hand without opening his eyes. With almost superhuman strength she dragged him out, laid him prone on the kitchen floor, brought snow and rubbed it over his face, slapped his wrists with it to restore his pulse—the village method.

He came to quickly, sat up and stared about him.

“Hush," she said, for fear he would speak. “Can you hear me, Jim? Do you know what I am saying?"

He nodded.

"Cooper is locked in the parlor, asleep. You can get away now. My God, don't close your eyes again. Listen! You can get away."

"Away from what?" he asked stupidly.

"Away from the police. Try to remember, Jim. You shot the clerk from the drug store and—the girl at Heideger's. The police are after you. There’s a thousand dollars on your head.”

That roused him. He struggled to his feet, reeled, caught the table.

"I remember. Well, I've got to get away. That's all. But I can't go—feeling like this. Get me—some whisky."

He needed it. She brought it to him, measured out. He grumbled at the quantity, but after he had had it his dull eyes cleared.

She had gone to listen at the parlor door. When she came back he was looking more himself. He was a handsome fellow, with heavy dark hair and dark eyes, a big man as he towered above her in the little kitchen. His face did not indicate his weakness. There are men like that, broken reeds swinging in the wind that yet manage to convey an impression of strength.

His wife brought the overcoat and held it out for him.

"By Shultz's fence you said, Jim, and then to the railroad. There's a slow freight goes through on toward morning, and if that doesn't stop, there's the milk train. And—Jim, let me hear about you now and then. Write to Aunt Sarah. Don't write here, and don't think once you get away that you are safe. A thousand dollars' reward will set everybody in the country looking."

He paused, the overcoat half on.

"A thousand dollars," he said slowly. "I see. When I'm gone, Molly, how are you going to make out?"

"I'll manage somehow; only go, Jim. Go!"

"I don't know about this going," he said after a moment. "They'll grab me somewhere. Somebody'll get that thousand. You'll manage somehow! What do you mean by 'somehow'? You'll get married again, maybe?"

"Oh. no; not that."

He cared a little then—in spite of the girl at Heideger's!

If he would only go! This thing for which she had schemed the whole night might fail now while he talked.

"You can't stay here," he said slowly. "You can't bring the children up where everybody knows about their father. They can't run any sort of a race with that handicap."

****

FOR answer she held out his overcoat. But he shook his head. Perhaps it was his one big moment. Perhaps it was only a reaction from his murderous mood of the afternoon. For now quite suddenly he put his arms around her.

"I am not worth it, Molly!" he burst out. "I am not worth a thousand dollars alive or dead, but if they're offering that for me, if you had it you could go out west somewhere and nobody would know about you. You could start the kids fresh. That's about the only thing I can do for you—give you a chance to get away and forget that you ever knew me."

She did not understand at first. When she did she broke into quiet sobbing. She knew his obstinacy; the dogged tenacity of the weak. Now when every second counted to have him refuse to go!

She pleaded with him. went down on her knees, grew hysterical finally, and had to be taken in his arms and quieted as he had not quieted her in years. And still there was no sound from the parlor.

"They'll get me somehow," he repeated over and over. "And I—I would like to feel that I had done one decent thing first. That red-eyed ferret in the parlor will get the money if you don't. For the children, Molly; they've got a right to ask to be started straight."

That was tho argument that moved her finally into a sort of acquiescence. There seemed nothing else for her to do. He even planned the thing for her. He would hide in the barn in the loft. The swift snow would soon fill the footprints, but in case she was anxious she could get up early and shovel a path where he had stepped.

When Cooper wakened she could say she thought the thing over, that she needed the money, that she would exchange her knowledge for the reward.

"Only you get a paper for it—get a paper from Heideger. He'll bluff it out if he can. He was stuck on the girl himself."

"Jim, did you—care for that girl so much?"

His face hardened. "I thought I did: for a—for a little while. She made a fool of me, and I—showed her! But all the time I loved you, Molly.”

He kissed her solemnly as she half lay in his arms and went toward the door.

"Good-bye and God bless you," he said. “And kiss the——"

He choked up at that and made his way out through the drifts on the porch to the little yard.

She closed the door and fastened it behind him. Then very carefully she unlocked the parlor door and opened it. Cooper was still in his chair, sunk a little lower perhaps and breathing heavily, the overturned teacup on the floor beside him.

She went back to the kitchen and filled a fresh bottle for the baby.

As before, it served as an excuse for her presence. With it on the table near at hand she trimmed carefully the rough-cut edges of the papered door. The inside of the closet was a clear betrayal. Still listening and walking softly, she got a dust brush and pan and swept up the bits of wood and sawdust from the floor. The bit she placed on the shelf, and, turning, pan and brush in hand, faced the detective in the doorway.

He made a quick dash toward the closet.

"What have you got there?" he demanded shortly.

But now, as through all the long night, her woman's wit saved her.

"Don't jump at me like that. I've broken one of the baby's bottles and I am just about to sweep it up."

****

SHE stooped and swept the broken glass on the pan. He stared into the empty closet.

"I'm sorry, Molly—I didn't mean to startle you. That tea and the heat of the stove put me to sleep. I've been half frozen. I guess it was the bottle breaking that wakened me. I thought you said you would go to bed."

"I couldn't sleep,” she evaded, "and about this time the baby always has to be fed."

She took the bottle of milk from the table and set it inside the tea-kettle to warm. Every vestige of suspicion had died from the man's eyes. He yawned again, stretched, compared the clock with his watch.

"It's been a long night," he said. "Me for the street again. Listen to that wind. I'm sorry for any one that's out in the mountains tonight."

He went into the parlor and putting on his overcoat stood awkwardly in the little hall.

She faced him, the child's bottle in her hand.

"I guess you know how I hate this Molly," he said. “I—I—this isn't the time for talk and there ain't any disloyalty in it, but I was pretty fond of you one time—I guess you know it, and—I am not the changing sort. I have never seen anybody else I liked the same way. It don't hurt a good woman to know a thing like that. Good night."

Before she went upstairs sh» took a final look out the back door. Already Jim's footprints were effectively erased by the wind. An unbroken sheet of white snow stretched to the barn. By morning, at this rate, the telltale marks would be buried six inches or more.

She blew out the kitchen lamp and went slowly up the stairs.

The baby cried hoarsely and she gave him his bottle, lying down on the bed beside him and taking his head on her arms. He dropped asleep there and she kept him close for comfort. And there, lying alone in the darkness with staring eyes, she fought her battle. She had nothing in the world but the cheap furniture in the house. Her own health was frail. It would be a year, perhaps, before she could leave the children to seek any kind of employment

****

THE deadly problem of the poor, inextricably mixed as it is, with every event of their lives, complicating birth, adding fresh trouble to death—the problem of money confronted her. Jim had been, in town parlance, "a poor provider," but at least she had managed. Now very soon she would not have that resource.

To get away from it all! She drew a long breath. From the disgrace, from the eyes of her neighbors, the gossip, the constant knowledge in every eye that met hers that her husband had intrigued with another woman and killed her. To start anew under another name and bring her children up in ignorance of the wretched past—that was one side.

But to earn it in this way—that was another. To sell out to the law! All her husband's weaknesses and brutalities failed from her mind. She saw him—with that pitiful memory of women which forgets all but the good in those they love—only as he had looked in the one great moment he was her hero—her lover; once again he was her hero—her lover: once again he held her in his arms. "I would like to feel that I have done one decent thing."

The battle waged back and forth. She no longer cried. There are some tragedies to which the relief of tears is denied.

Four o'clock.

She slipped the baby's head from her arm and got up. Cooper was still across the street, huddled against a house, stamping to keep warm and swinging his arms. In an hour the milk train would come in and wait on the siding for the express. That would have been Jim's chance. If he could get away, ho could start all over again and make good. He had it in him. He was a big man—bigger than the people in the village had ever realized. They had never appreciated him—that was the trouble. Why should she have a fresh start? It was Jim who needed it. She moaned and turned her face to the pillow.

Five o'clock.

Tho milk train whistling for the switch. It was still very dark. She crept to the window and looked out. It was a gray dawn with snow blowing like smoke through the trees. The cold was proving too much for Cooper. He was making his way cautiously across the street through the snow toward the house. Once in the parlor again, she could get to the barn. The freight waited on the siding ten minutes sometimes, and to-night. with the snow, it might be longer.

She leaped off the bed and hurried down the staircase, just before the front door opened to admit the detective, the kitchen door closed behind her. She was out in the storm.

She stumbled along, sometimes knee deep, holding up her thin cotton wrapper.

The barn door was open and she slipped in.

"Jim," she called. "Jim!"

She was standing at the foot of the loft ladder, all her heart in her voice.

"I can't do it, Jim. I can't sell you out, even for the children, Jim!"

There was no sound front above.

She climbed up, trembling. The loft was dark. She would not believe the silence, must creep around to each corner.

"I can't do it,” she said over and over. "I can't do it, Jim!" He was gone.

She fell her way down through the darkness and staggered to the door of the barn. Cooper was standing there, quietly waiting for her.

From the railroad came the whistle of the express as it raced through, and the slow jangle of the milk train as the engine took up the slack.

"He's gone, Molly." said the detective. "He went out by Shultz's at a quarter to 6. I guess he'll make his get-away." There was shame and something else in his eyes.

The freight gathered way. As they listened, it moved out on to the main track.

(Copyright. All rights reserved)