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Page 55
He broke off suddenly, but did not remove his eyes from hers. It was
she who turned away, pretending to find it necessary to adjust the
window-curtain. It was impossible to sit quietly while he looked at
her that way, his eyes all without warning filling with a look for any
girl to read a look of glowing admiration, almost a look of pure
love-making. Norton sighed and again his head moved restlessly on his
pillow.
"I've had time to think here of late," he said after a little. "More
time to think than I've ever had before in my life. About everything;
myself and Jim Galloway and you. . . . I have decided to send word to
the district attorney to let Galloway go," he added, again watching
her. "I am not going to appear against him and there's no case if I
don't."
"But . . ." she began, wondering.
"There are no buts about it. Suppose I can get him convicted, which I
doubt; he'd get a light sentence, would appeal, at most would be out of
the way a couple of years or so. And then it would all be to do over
again. No; I want him out in the open, where he can go as far as he
wants to go. And then . . ."
She saw how his body stiffened as he braced himself with his feet
against the foot-board.
"We won't talk shop," she said gently. "It isn't good for you. Don't
think about such things any more than you have to."
"I've got to think about something," he said impatiently. "Can I think
about you?"
"Why not?" she answered as lightly as she had spoken before.
"Maybe that isn't good for me either," he answered.
"Nonsense. It's always good for us to think about our friends."
His eyes wandered from hers, rested a moment upon the little table near
his bedhead and came back to her, narrowing a little.
"Will you set a chair against that window-shade?" he asked. "The light
at the side hurts my eyes."
It was a natural request and she turned naturally to do what he asked.
But, even with her back turned, she knew that he had reached out
swiftly for something that lay on the table, that he had thrust it out
of sight under his pillow.
Mrs. Engle returned and Virginia, staying another minute, said good-by.
As she went out she glanced down at the table. In her room she asked
herself what it was that he had snatched and hidden. It seemed a
strange thing to do and the question perplexed her; while she attached
no importance to it, it was there like a pebble in one's shoe, refusing
to be ignored.
That night, just as she was going to sleep, she knew. Out of a half
doze she had visualized the table with its couple of bottles, a
withering rose, a scrap of note-paper, a fountain pen. The pen . . .
it was Patten's . . . had evidently leaked and had been wiped
carelessly upon the sheet of paper, left lying with the paper half
wrapped around it. She had noted carelessly a few scrawled words in
Patten's slovenly hand. And she knew that it had been removed while
she turned her back, removed by a hand which, in its haste, had slipped
the pen with it under the pillow.
She went to sleep incensed with herself that she gave the matter
another thought. But she kept asking herself what it was that Patten
had written that Roderick Norton did not want her to read.
CHAPTER XIV
A FREE MAN
"I am a free man, if you please." The sheriff stood in the hotel
doorway, looking down upon her as she sat in her favorite veranda
chair. "I have given my keeper his fee and sent him away. May I watch
you while you read?"
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