And there was no one I could talk to about it, no one to tell me how hideously absurd it was, no one to give me a slap and tell me there are tons of fine gold chains made every year, or to point out the long arm of coincidence!
With my one useful hand I fumbled the things back into the bag and thrust it deep out of sight among the pillows. Then I lay back in a cold perspiration. What connection had Alison West with this crime? Why had she stared so at the gun-metal cigarette case that morning on the train? What had alarmed her so at the farmhouse? What had she taken back to the gate? Why did she wish she had not escaped from the wreck? And last, in Heaven’s name, how did a part of her necklace become torn off and covered with blood?
Downstairs McKnight was still at the telephone, and amusing himself with Mrs. Klopton in the interval of waiting.
“Why did he come home in a gray suit, when he went away in a blue?” he repeated. “Well, wrecks are queer things, Mrs. Klopton. The suit may have turned gray with fright. Or perhaps wrecks do as queer stunts as lightning. Friend of mine once was struck by lightning; he and the caddy had taken refuge under a tree. After the flash, when they recovered consciousness, there was my friend in the caddy’s clothes, and the caddy in his. And as my friend was a large man and the caddy a very small boy - ”
McKnight’s story was interrupted by the indignant slam of the dining-room door. He was obliged to wait some time, and even his eternal cheerfulness was ebbing when he finally got the hospital.
“Is Doctor Van Kirk there?” he asked. “Not there? Well, can you tell me how the patient is whom Doctor Williams, from Washington, operated on last night? Well, I’m glad of that. Is she conscious? Do you happen to know her name? Yes, I’ll hold the line.” There was a long pause, then McKnight’s voice:
“Hello - yes. Thank you very much. Good-by.”
He came upstairs, two steps at a time.
“Look here,” he said, bursting into the room, “there may be something in your theory, after all. The woman’s name - it may be a coincidence, but it’s curious - her name is Sullivan.”
“What did I tell you?” I said, sitting up suddenly in bed. “She’s probably a sister of that scoundrel in lower seven, and she was afraid of what he might do.”
“Well, I’ll go there some day soon. She’s not conscious yet. In the meantime, the only thing I can do is to keep an eye, through a detective, on the people who try to approach Bronson. We’ll have the case continued, anyhow, in the hope that the stolen notes will sooner or later turn up.”
“Confound this arm,” I said, paying for my energy with some excruciating throbs. “There’s so much to be looked after, and here I am, bandaged, splinted, and generally useless. It’s a beastly shame.”
“Don’t forget that I am here,” said McKnight pompously. “And another thing, when you feel this way just remember there are two less desirable places where you might be. One is jail, and the other is - ” He strummed on an imaginary harp, with devotional eyes.
But McKnight’s light-heartedness jarred on me that morning. I lay and frowned under my helplessness. When by chance I touched the little gold bag, it seemed to scorch my fingers. Richey, finding me unresponsive, left to keep his luncheon engagement with Alison West. As he clattered down the stairs, I turned my back to the morning sunshine and abandoned myself to misery. By what strain on her frayed nerves was Alison West keeping up, I wondered? Under the circumstances, would I dare to return the bag? Knowing that I had it, would she hate me for my knowledge? Or had I exaggerated the importance of the necklace, and in that case had she forgotten me already?
But McKnight had not gone, after all. I heard him coming back, his voice preceding him, and I groaned with irritation.
“Wake up!” he called. “Somebody’s sent you a lot of flowers. Please hold the box, Mrs. Klopton; I’m going out to be run down by an automobile.”
I roused to feeble interest. My brother’s wife is punctilious about such things; all the new babies in the family have silver rattles, and all the sick people flowers.
McKnight pulled up an armful of roses, and held them out to me.
“Wonder who they’re from?” he said, fumbling in the box for a card. “There’s no name - yes, here’s one.”
He held it up and read it with exasperating slowness.
“‘Best wishes for an early recovery. A COMPANION IN MISFORTUNE.’
“Well, what do you know about that!” he exclaimed. “That’s something you didn’t tell me, Lollie.”
“It was hardly worth mentioning,” I said mendaciously, with my heart beating until I could hear it. She had not forgotten, after all.
McKnight took a bud and fastened it in his buttonhole. I’m afraid I was not especially pleasant about it. They were her roses, and anyhow, they were meant for me. Richey left very soon, with an irritating final grin at the box.
“Good-by, sir woman-hater,” he jeered at me from the door.
So he wore one of the roses she had sent me, to luncheon with her, and I lay back among my pillows and tried to remember that it was his game, anyhow, and that I wasn’t even drawing cards. To remember that, and to forget the broken necklace under my head!
CHAPTER XIII
FADED ROSES
I was in the house for a week. Much of that time I spent in composing and destroying letters of thanks to Miss West, and in growling at the doctor. McKnight dropped in daily, but he was less cheerful than usual. Now and then I caught him eying me as if he had something to say, but whatever it was he kept it to himself. Once during the week he went to Baltimore and saw the woman in the hospital there. From the description I had little difficulty in recognizing the young woman who had been with the murdered man in Pittsburg. But she was still unconscious. An elderly aunt had appeared, a gaunt person in black, who sat around like a buzzard on a fence, according to McKnight, and wept, in a mixed figure, into a damp handkerchief.
On the last day of my imprisonment he stopped in to thrash out a case that was coming up in court the next day, and to play a game of double solitaire with me.
“Who won the ball game?” I asked.
“We were licked. Ask me something pleasant. Oh, by the way, Bronson’s out to-day.”
“I’m glad I’m not on his bond,” I said pessimistically. “He’ll clear out.”
Not he.” McKnight pounced on my ace. “He’s no fool. Don’t you suppose he knows you took those notes to Pittsburg? The papers were full of it. And he knows you escaped with your life and a broken arm from the wreck. What do we do next? The Commonwealth continues the case. A deaf man on a dark night would know those notes are missing.”
“Don’t play so fast,” I remonstrated. “I have only one arm to your two. Who is trailing Bronson? Did you try to get Johnson?”
“I asked for him, but he had some work on hand.”
“The murder’s evidently a dead issue,” I reflected. “No, I’m not joking. The wreck destroyed all the evidence. But I’m firmly convinced those notes will be offered, either to us or to Bronson very soon. Johnson’s a blackguard, but he’s a good detective. He could make his fortune as a game dog. What’s he doing?”
McKnight put down his cards, and rising, went to the window. As he held the curtain back his customary grin looked a little forced.
“To tell you the truth, Lollie,” he said, “for the last two days he has been watching a well-known Washington attorney named Lawrence Blakeley. He’s across the street now.”
It took a moment for me to grasp what he meant.
“Why, it’s ridiculous,” I asserted. “What would they trail me for? Go over and tell Johnson to get out of there, or I’ll pot at him with my revolver.”