A misshapen blot darkened the center of an open window, vanished with a thud of feet on the roof of the rear porch. Steve sprang to the window in time to see the burglar scramble up from the ground, where he had slid from the porch roof, and make for the low back fence. One of Steve’s legs was over the sill when the girl’s arms came around his neck.
“No, no!” she pleaded. “Don’t leave me! Let him go!”
“All right,” he said reluctantly, and then brightened.
He remembered the gun he had taken from the girl, got it out of his pocket as the fleeing shadow in the yard reached the fence; and as the shadow, one hand on the fence top, vaulted high over it, Steve squeezed the trigger. The revolver clicked. Again — another click. Six clicks, and the burglar was gone into the night.
Steve broke the revolver in the dark, and ran his fingers over the back of the cylinder — six empty chambers.
“Turn on the lights,” he said brusquely.
When the girl had obeyed, Steve stepped back into the room and looked first for his ebony stick. That in his hand, he faced the girl. Her eyes were jet-black with excitement and pale lines of strain were around her mouth. As they stood looking into each other’s eyes something of a bewilderment began to show through her fright. He turned away abruptly and gazed around the room.
The place had been ransacked thoroughly if not expertly. Drawers stood out, their contents strewn on the floor; the bed had been stripped of clothing, and pillows had been dumped out of their cases. Near the door a broken wall-light — the obstruction that had checked Steve’s stick — hung crookedly. In the center of the floor lay a gold watch and half a length of gold chain. He picked them up and held them out to the girl.
“Dr. MacPhail’s?”
She shook her head in denial before she took the watch, and then, examining it closely, she gave a little gasp. “It’s Mr. Rymer’s!”
“Rymer?” Steve repeated, and then he remembered. Rymer was the blind man who had been in the Finn’s lunchroom, and for whom Kamp had prophesied trouble.
“Yes! Oh, I know something has happened to him!”
She put a hand on Steve’s left arm.
“We’ve got to go see! He lives all alone, and if any harm has—”
She broke off, and looked down at the arm under her hand.
“Your arm! You’re hurt!”
“Not as bad as it looks,” Steve said. “That’s what brought me here. But it has stopped bleeding. Maybe by the time we get back from Rymer’s the doctor will be home.”
They left the house by the back door, and the girl led him through dark streets and across darker lots. Neither of them spoke during the five-minute walk. The girl hurried at a pace that left her little breath for conversation, and Steve was occupied with uncomfortable thinking.
The blind man’s cabin was dark when they reached it, but the front door was ajar. Steve knocked his stick against the frame, got no answer, and struck a match. Rymer lay on the floor, sprawled on his back, his arms outflung.
The cabin’s one room was topsy-turvy. Furniture lay in upended confusion, clothing was scattered here and there, and boards had been torn from the floor. The girl knelt beside the unconscious man while Steve hunted for a light. Presently he found an oil lamp that had escaped injury, and got it burning just as Rymer’s filmed eyes opened and he sat up. Steve righted an overthrown rocking-chair and, with the girl, assisted the blind man to it, where he sat panting. He had recognized the girl’s voice at once, and he smiled bravely in her direction.
“I’m all right, Nova,” he said; “not hurt a bit. Someone knocked at the door, and when I opened it I heard a swishing sound in my ear — and that was all I knew until I came to to find you here.”
He frowned with sudden anxiety, got to his feet, and moved across the room. Steve pulled a chair and an upset table from his path, and the blind man dropped on his knees in a corner, fumbling beneath the loosened floor boards. His hands came out empty, and he stood up with a tired droop to his shoulders. “Gone,” he said softly.
Steve remembered the watch then, took it from his pocket, and put it into one of the blind man’s hands.
“There was a burglar at our house,” the girl explained. “After he had gone we found that on the floor. This is Mr. Threefall.”
The blind man groped for Steve’s hand, pressed it, then his flexible fingers caressed the watch, his face lighting up happily.
“I’m glad,” he said, “to have this back — gladder than I can say. The money wasn’t so much — less than three hundred dollars. I’m not the Midas I’m said to be. But this watch was my father’s.”
He tucked it carefully into his vest, and then, as the girl started to straighten up the room, he remonstrated.
“You’d better run along home, Nova; it’s late, and I’m all right. I’ll go to bed now, and let the place go as it is until to-morrow.”
The girl demurred, but presently she and Steve were walking back to the MacPhails’ house, through the black streets; but they did not hurry now. They walked two blocks in silence, Steve looking ahead into dark space with glum thoughtfulness, the girl eyeing him covertly.
“What is the matter?” she asked abruptly.
Steve smiled pleasantly down at her.
“Nothing. Why?”
“There is,” she contradicted him. “You’re thinking of something unpleasant, something to do with me.”
He shook his head.
“That’s wrong, wrong on the face of it — they don’t go together.”
But she was not to be put off with compliments. “You’re... you’re—” She stood still in the dim street, searching for the right word.
“You’re on your guard — you don’t trust me — that’s what it is!”
Steve smiled again, but with narrowed eyes. This reading of his mind might have been intuitive, or it might have been something else.
He tried a little of the truth:
“Not distrustful — just wondering. You know you did give me an empty gun to go after the burglar with, and you know you wouldn’t let me chase him.”
Her eyes flashed, and she drew herself up to the last inch of her slender five feet.
“So you think—” she began indignantly. Then she drooped toward him, her hands fastening upon the lapels of his coat. “Please, please, Mr. Threefall, you’ve got to believe that I didn’t know the revolver was empty. It was Dr. MacPhail’s. I took it when I ran out of the house, never dreaming that it wasn’t loaded. And as for not letting you chase the burglar — I was afraid to be left alone again. I’m a little coward. I... I... Please believe in me, Mr. Threefall. Be friends with me. I need friends. I—”
Womanhood had dropped from her. She pleaded with the small white face of a child of twelve — a lonely, frightened child. And because his suspicions would not capitulate immediately to her appeal, Steve felt dumbly miserable, with an obscure shame in himself, as if he were lacking in some quality he should have had.
She went on talking, very softly, so that he had to bend his head to catch the words. She talked about herself, as a child would talk.
“It’s been terrible! I came here three months ago because there was a vacancy in the telegraph office. I was suddenly alone in the world, with very little money, and telegraphy was all I knew that could be capitalized. It’s been terrible here! The town — I can’t get accustomed to it. It’s so bleak. No children play in the streets. The people are different from those I’ve known — cruder, more brutal. Even the houses — street after street of them without curtains in the windows, without flowers. No grass in the yards, no trees.
“But I had to stay — there was nowhere else to go. I thought I could stay until I had saved a little money — enough to take me away. But saving money takes so long. Dr. MacPhail’s garden has been like a piece of paradise to me, If it hadn’t been for that I don’t think I could have — I’d have gone crazy! The doctor and his wife have been nice to me; some people have been nice to me, but most of them are people I can’t understand. And not all have been nice. At first it was awful. Men would say things, and women would say things, and when I was afraid of them they thought I was stuck up. Larry — Mr. Ormsby — saved me from that. He made them let me alone, and he persuaded the MacPhails to let me live with them. Mr. Rymer has helped me, too, given me courage; but I lose it again as soon as I’m away from the sight of his face and the sound of his voice.