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 The rain had degenerated into a casual drizzle and the wind had withdrawn into the higher areas.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