Mr. Solway descended from the train and walked briskly toward his car. The new chauffeur was standing there, stiff as a poker.
“Well, Moss!” he said. “Everything all right, eh?”
“Yes, thank you, sir,” said Ross.
“That’s it!” said Mr. Solway, with his vague kindliness. He got into the car, and Ross started off through the sleet and the dark. Mr. Solway made two or three observations about the weather, but his chauffeur answered “Yes, sir,” “That’s so, sir,” rather absent-mindedly. He was, to tell the truth, very much preoccupied with his own thoughts. He was wondering how a pond was dragged, and how long such a thing might take.
He had seen no one, spoken to no one, since he had left Donnelly at the police station and gone back to the garage alone. So he had had plenty of time to think.
He stopped the car before the house, Mr. Solway got out, and Ross drove on to the garage. There would be a little more time for thinking before he was summoned to dinner. He went upstairs and sat down, stretched out in a chair, staring before him. He was still wearing the peaked cap which had belonged to Wheeler; perhaps it was not a becoming cap, for his face looked grim and harsh beneath it.
He was not impatient, now, as that James Ross had been who had landed in New York three days ago. Indeed, he seemed almost inhumanly patient, as if he were willing to sit there forever. And that was how he felt. He had done his utmost; now he could only wait.
The sleet was rattling against the windows, and a great wind blew. It must be a wild night, out in the fields, where a lonely little pond lay. A bad night to be in that little cottage. A bad night, anywhere in the world, for a child who had nobody.
From his pocket he brought out a snapshot, and looked at it for a long time; then he tore it into fragments and let them flutter to the floor. He closed his eyes, then, but he was not asleep; the knuckles of his hand grasping the arm of the chair were white.
No; he wasn’t asleep. When the telephone rang in the garage, he got up at once and went downstairs to answer it.
“Dinner’s ready!” said Gracie’s voice. “Eddy come in yet?”
“Not yet,” answered Ross. “But—wait a minute!”
For he thought he heard some one at the door. He was standing with the receiver in his hand when the door slid open and Eddy came in.
“He’s just—” he began, turning back to the telephone, when Eddy sprang forward and caught his arm, and whispered: “Shut up! Sh-h-h!”
“Just about due,” said Ross to Gracie. Then he hung up the receiver and faced Eddy.
“Don’t tell ’em I’m here!” said Eddy. “I—I don’t want—I c-can’t stand any—jabbering. I—Oh, Gawd!”
At the end of his tether, Eddy was. His lips twitched, his face was distorted with his valiant effort after self-control. And it occurred to Ross that, for all his shrewdness and his worldly air, Eddy was not very old or very wise.
“What’s up, old man?” he asked.
“Tell me. You’d better get your dinner now.”
“Nope!” said Eddy. “I—can’t eat. I—I don’t want to talk.”
Ross waited for some time.
“Lissen here,” said Eddy, at last. “You—you seemed to like—that kid. You—you’ll look after her, won’t you?”
“Yes,” Ross answered.
He would have been surprised, and a little incredulous, if any one had called him tactful, yet few people could have handled Eddy better. He knew what the boy wanted; knew that he needed just this cool and steady tone, this incurious patience.
“Go and get her,” Eddy pleaded. “She’s down at the barber’s—near the movie theayter. Go and get her.”
“All right. I’ll have my dinner first, though. Want me to bring you something?”
“Nope!” said Eddy. “Lissen! I guess the cops are after me already.”
“You mean they’ve—found him?”
“Yep,” said Eddy. “They’ve found him. How did you know?”
Ross did not answer the question.
“Can’t you get away?” he asked.
“Not going to try,” said Eddy. “I—I’m too d-darn tired. I—I don’t care!” There was a hysterical rise in his voice, but he mastered it. “Let ’em come!”
“What have they got against you?”
“They’ve found him—in the pond—where I put him.”
“Who’s going to know that?”
“Oh, they’ll know, all right!” said Eddy. “They got ways of finding out things. They’ll know, and they’ll think it was me that—All right! Let ’em!”
“Then you’re not going to tell?”
Eddy looked at him.
“D’you think it—wasn’t me?”
“Yes,” Ross replied. “I think it wasn’t you, Eddy.”
There was a long silence between them.
“What d’you think I’d ought to do?” asked Eddy, almost in a whisper.
“Suppose we talk it over,” said Ross.
“Yes—but—I dunno who you are.”
“Well, let’s say I’m Ives.”
Eddy sprang back as if he had been struck.
“Ives!”
“Look here!” said Ross. “I’m going to tell you what I did.”
And, very bluntly, he told. Eddy listened to him in silence; it was a strange enough thing, but he showed no surprise.
“D’you think it’ll work?” he asked, when Ross had finished.
“I hope so. Anyhow, there’s a chance. Now, you better tell me the whole thing. There’s a lot that I don’t know—and I might make a bad mistake.”
The telephone rang again. It was Gracie, annoyed by this delay.
“I’ll come as soon as I can,” said Ross, severely. “But I’m working on the car, and I can’t leave off for a few minutes.”
He turned again to Eddy.
“Go ahead!” he said.
Eddy sat down on the step of the sedan, and Ross leaned back against the wall, his arms folded, his saturnine face shadowed by the peaked cap.
“Tuesday I went and got her—the kid, y’ know, and took her to the cottage.”
“Did you know about her before?”
“Sure I did! I knew when they got married—her and Ives—four years ago. She told me herself. You know the way she tells you things—crying an’ all.”
Ross did know.
“Well, I used to see Ives hanging around. He was a nice feller—but he didn’t have a cent. He was an actor. She was too young, anyway—eighteen—same age as me. I told her I’d tell Mr. Solway, and then she told me they’d got married. I felt pretty bad—on Mr. Solway’s account. But she—well, you know how she acts. Her mother’d left her some money she’s going to get when she’s twenty-five, if she don’t get married without her stepfather’s consent. Mrs. Solway had the right idea. She knew Amy, all right. Only, it didn’t work. Amy wanted to get married and have the money, too. That’s how she is. So she told me she was going to tell Mr. Solway when she was twenty-five. I know I’d ought to have told him then, but—I didn’t.”
Ross understood that.
“Mr. Solway went over to Europe that summer, and she and Mrs. Jones went somewheres out West, and Lily was born out there. And Ives, he took the kid, and she came back here. She used to see Ives pretty often for awhile—go into the city and meet him. Then she began talking about what a risk it was. That was because she’d met this Gayle Dexter. That made me sick! I said I’d tell Mr. Solway, but she said her and Ives was going to get divorced, an’ nobody’d ever know, and that I’d ruin her life and all. And I gave in—like a fool. Only, you see, I—I’ve known Amy all my life.”
“I see!” said Ross.
“Well, it seems Ives was beginning to get suspicious, when she didn’t see him no more. He kept writing; I used to get the letters for her—general delivery—an’ she kept stalling—and at last he said he was coming here to see her. Well, her and Mrs. Jones must have told him to come along. And Tuesday I met the kid and took her to that cottage. My idea, that was. I told Mrs. Jones about the place. I wish to Gawd I hadn’t.” He was silent for a moment. “Only, I thought it might—I was glad to do it, ’cause I thought maybe if Amy seen Ives and the kid, she’d—kinder change her mind. He come that afternoon, and seen Mrs. Jones. Well, I went there after work, and he told me Amy was coming to see him next morning. He was real pleased. He was—he was a—nice feller—”
Eddy’s mouth twitched again. “I wish—I’d known. Anyway, she wouldn’t go to see him. Jones tried to make her—said she’d got to have a talk with him—but Amy, she took on something fierce. Said she’d never see him again. Well, I guess he must of waited and waited, and in the afternoon he come here to the garage. I tried to argue with him and all, but it wouldn’t work. He started off for the house, and I telephoned over to Jones. An’ he went—he went out of that door—”
Eddy turned and stared at the door with an odd blank look. It was as if he saw something—which was not there.
“This very door,” he muttered. “My Gawd!”
“Yes,” said Ross, quietly. “He went to the house. And then?”
Eddy turned back with a shudder.
“I didn’t never think,” he said. “Wheeler’d left, then, so I drove the big car down to the station to meet Mr. Solway, and when I brung him home, you was there. Old Lady Jones tried to tip me off. I saw her trying to tell me something behind your back. I couldn’t make out what it was, but I knew there was something queer. I thought you was a detective Ives’d sent to see what was going on, ’cause he’d been saying he’d do that. I didn’t know, then— But next day Jones told me that—that Ives had—died. Said he’d fell down dead from a heart attack. And she said we’d got to get rid of him on the Q. T., for Amy’s sake. I—I thought I couldn’t—but I did. Fella I know lent me his Ford. I said I wanted to take a girl out. And, while you were out there on the lawn, I—I got him—out of Jones’s room.”
“Do you mean he’d been there all that time?”
“I guess so. She told me she been sitting up all night, trying to—to see if she could—do anything for him. But he— Anyway, Jones told me what to do, and I did it. I—you don’t know what it was like—going all that way—alone—with him. And I had to put stones in his pockets.” He looked at Ross with a sort of wonder.
“I can’t believe it now!” he cried. “It don’t seem true! I don’t know why—only Jones told me that if I didn’t, there’d be a inquest an’ all. And she said everyone’d think that Amy— It would all come out, she said, and Amy and Mr. Solway’d be in the newspapers and all. And she said he was dead, anyway. The pond couldn’t hurt him. I—”
He came closer to Ross, and laid a hand on his sleeve. “Lissen here!” he said. “D’you think that’s true—that he—just died?”
“There’s no use thinking about that—now,” said Ross.