Part 11 (1/2)

”I'm no fool, Mr. Weir; I think of other things besides dressing my hair and using a powder puff. I can sometimes put two and two together--when I see the 'twos' clearly. Now, tell me why Mr. Sorenson talked as he did, for I must have my eyes clear.”

”Ask me anything but that, Miss Hosmer.”

He sat distressed and uneasy at her prolonged muteness. Suddenly she questioned quietly:

”Are those two men the enemies you spoke of?”

”It will save me embarra.s.sment if I go,” he remarked, starting to rise. ”I don't want you to hate me, you know, and still I can't say anything.”

Her grasp pulled him imperatively back.

”You shall not go yet.”

”Then I can only continue to decline making answers. I frankly say that I regret having uttered a word of explanation.”

”I don't regret it. And I intend to keep questioning you, however rude you may think me. I must know,” she cried impetuously, ”and I shall know! Mr. Sorenson is one of the men you referred to, or he would never seek to direct suspicion at you. I saw the look on your face, sir, as he spoke. But why should you two be enemies! You come here a stranger to San Mateo, or have you been here before sometime? Did you know him before?”

Again he could feel her eyes straining at him.

”It seems mad to think of him and Mr. Burkhardt, and perhaps others, hiring some one to shoot you down from a dark doorway. It is utterly mad--crazy. But why should they want to convict you, in the crowd's opinion at least, of murdering the man. It would not be just trouble about the dam--oh, no. But I can't see through it at all. Why won't you tell me? You can trust me--and I want to help you as well as help myself. You certainly don't hold against me my silly nonsense and unkind words of the day you brought me home from the ford.”

”I didn't think them silly; they delighted me,” he responded. ”I hadn't had anything happen to me so refres.h.i.+ng in years.”

”We must be friends. Something tells me they're going to make you trouble over this shooting, and you'll need friends.”

”Something tells me you're right in both respects,” he laughed.

”And friends must stick together.”

”That's what they should do.”

In the dusk of the vine-clad, flower-scented place where they sat he experienced the subtle power of this intimacy. Not a soul stirred in the empty moonlit street before the house. No sounds disturbed the warm peace of the night. In this secluded spot only there ran the murmur of their voices.

”I could never stand by and see any man unjustly accused and defamed if I knew he was innocent, without lifting up my word in defense,” she proceeded. ”But let me ask if on your side you're treating me fairly?”

Weir could have groaned.

”You have a n.o.ble spirit, Miss Hosmer. You're more courageous and kind than any girl I've ever known. Would you have me reveal what my best judgment tells me should remain untold?”

”But what of me? Would you keep it to yourself if my future happiness might turn on it?”

The appeal in her words shook Steele's heart.

”How does this business affect your happiness? How?” he asked, in perplexity.

Now it was her turn to hesitate. Why should she pause, indeed, before telling to this man what every one else knew. Yet hesitate she did, from a feeling she could but partly a.n.a.lyze. Of her fiance she had already had disturbing secret doubts that had increased of late: doubts of his habits, his character and the genuineness of his love; so that it was with a little eddy of dissatisfaction and shame that she admitted the relations.h.i.+p. More she questioned her own love as an actual thing. In a startling way, too, this silent, forceful man, so deadly in earnest and so earnestly deadly, so terrible in some aspects, seemed at the instant to dwarf the other in stature and power as if the latter were a plump manikin.

Perhaps at the last minute she had a s.h.i.+ver of dread at what might issue from the engineer's lips in the way of facts if he took her at her word and told her what she had demanded to know. Did she want to know? Suppose she let the affair rest where it was and went forward to the future in the comfortable a.s.surance of ignorance.