“I don’t think so! He’s not that kind of a man.”
“Oh, you don’t think so!” said the count contemptuously. “You and your smooth young lawyers! Look here, Demeter, are you in love with that man?”
“Of course not!” said Demeter, her eyes flashing haughtily, “But if I were what business of yours would that be?”
“I would certainly make it my business,” he said with a meaningful look. “I don’t trust you as I used to do. I know you were dancing with him the other night.”
“Yes, and what for? To do the work you had set me to do. And you spoiled it all by cutting in. I had the stage set for a final scene that would have won my point, and then you had to cut in! I’m just disgusted with you!”
Suddenly Demeter leaned forward and took a picture from the little pile of papers that lay on the top of the box on the table between them.
“Let that alone!” said the count surlily. “Do you want to lose more valuable papers for me?”
“This is mine!” she said with dignity. “It is my picture. I certainly don’t want it to get into any scene in court. I know how to protect myself.”
“Oh, you do, do you, Demeter? We’ll see whether you do or not, I have the film of that picture, remember, and it wouldn’t do you any good to destroy that picture because I could easily print another as I printed that. But you can put that picture back in the box with the rest. I don’t intend to have that in your possession. I don’t trust you anymore, you know too much. That has my picture in it, too, and if you should try to turn traitor and tell what you know, I don’t intend you shall have any ammunition. Put it down!”
“No!” said Demeter, firmly.
“Yes!” said the man savagely. “As long as you have that incriminating paper in your possession I’m keeping that picture against you. If I get into trouble you’ll go along with me.”
“Wait!” said Demeter as he came near to take the picture by force. She reached over and picked up the telephone from its stand by her side.
“What are you going to do?” he demanded, seizing hold of her wrist and grinding its diamond bracelet into her white arm.
“Stop!” she said furiously. “You’re hurting my arm! I’ll get your paper for you if it’s to be had. I’m telephoning Alan Monteith. If he took it, I can make him give it up!”
“Oh, so you think maybe he took it, do you?”
“I just remember he had some paper in his hand, when he left. He may have carried it with him without knowing it. You see, you had just arrived and I was rather upset. I didn’t expect you so soon. You said you wouldn’t get here till seven.”
“Oh, and so you think your paragon may have made some mistake, do you? Or was it you that made the mistake on purpose? Look here, what are you two trying to put over on me, anyhow? You think you can make me believe that he took a paper by mistake, do you, as important a paper as that? Well, I’m not so dumb as you seem to think I am, and you’ll have some time getting by me, you’ll find out!”
Just then Alan answered the telephone.
“No! Don’t tell him I’ll be there! You little fool, you!” growled the man standing over Demeter. “Tell him I’m not here! Tell him I’m out of the city! You little fool, you!”
But Demeter had hung up.
“I couldn’t!” she said. “He hung up himself. He had a dinner party. They had just arrived. Come, we’ll have to go at once!”
“And you think I am going there? I? To a cunning lawyer’s house? The very most dangerous place in the world for me to go! Go yourself if you like, but I shall be far away by the time you arrive there! You little fool! You’ve done for me now. And yourself, too, incidentally. Give me that picture! I’ll have that anyway!”
“I won’t!” said Demeter, holding it tightly in both hands. “I’ll tear it in pieces if you try to get it away from me!”
“Oh, you will, will you?”
Demeter looked up defiantly and found she was looking into the eye of a sinister little automatic.
“Hand over that picture, and don’t open your mouth to scream. I’d just as soon shoot us both as not, anyway.”
Demeter saw the insane look in the man’s ugly eyes and handed over the picture, and just then the doorbell sounded clearly through the room! But the little gun remained pointed straight at her as the man spoke in a low warning voice.
“If that’s anyone after me, I haven’t been here in a week. Understand? Go out there to the door and tell them so, and don’t turn around and look back. Remember this gun can reach out to the hall door! Remember I shall be hearing every word you say! And dead women tell no tales!”
Demeter, with every bit of natural color drained from under the rouge in her cheeks, sat staring at that gun, and at a sign and further whisper from the man, rose and went to meet the maid who had answered the bell, conscious of the greatest fear that had ever come into her life.
It did not help matters that when she reached the hall of her apartment she came face-to-face with a great burly policeman. He was looking at her as if he did not care in the least that she was Demeter Cass, descendant of an old and respected family, possessed of a fine inheritance, dashing member of the smartest set of the city. He looked at her like primitive justice out to search her very heart and soul, and pierce asunder the joints and marrow of her being.
“I wantta see that count you have here,” he said, pinning her with his glance.
She heard herself repeating the words the count had just told her, but they were like water poured on the ground so far as any effect they had on the policeman was concerned. He just leered into her face.
“Now, look a here, lady, we know he’s here. We saw him come in. No use lying about it. We gotta find him!”
“He hasn’t been here for a week!” repeated Demeter like a robot. Feeling herself trembling from head to foot, wondering if she were going to fall, reeling and leaning against the wall.
The policeman strode past her, pushing her aside roughly, and she turned with all her senses whirling about dizzily and looked into the room she had just left, expecting to hear the report to that sinister little revolver, and to see a dead policeman lying on her lovely white velvet carpet with his head on the head of her great white bear rug.
But the room was empty!
The imposing figure of the count holding his little automatic had melted away. Even the box with its papers and photographs, nuggets of silver and sample of oil in a small tall bottle, were gone. There wasn’t a trace of the count or any of his belongings. And when they searched the place for him they found nothing. Not even a servant had seen him leave, not one would own he had been there. Demeter, too, though frightened almost to the breaking point, stuck sweetly to her story that she hadn’t seen the count for over a week. She went early to bed, knowing that the place was being watched, and lay awake planning how to escape from the net that seemed to have enclosed her.
So that was the reason that Demeter and her count did not appear at the door of Alan Monteith’s apartment shortly after his guests arrived to plant a thorn in Daryl Devereaux’s breast and spoil the beautiful evening for them all.
Chapter 19
Alan as he hung up the receiver and sprang to meet his guests had only time for a hurried committing of the whole matter to the new Master of his life by just a lifted heart and an upward look, and then he completely forgot about it and did not think of it again until they were well on their way to the meeting. Then he gave a passing thought to the wonder of having perplexities solved and difficulties avoided that had loomed so large. How marvelous it was that God, the great God, had time and thought for such little difficulties in the lives of His own! Whatever had been the reason, God had taken that trouble out of the way for the evening. Would all life be like that if he kept within the will of God? If he had the Presence constantly with him then it wasn’t far to the throne. One had only to call. It was wonderful!
The conference was a great experience. Somehow it had never entered Alan?
??s head that there were large groups of people like this who put God first, and loved His Word and His Work above all else. The Christians he had known before had been ordinary formal Christians, who went to church, sometimes twice on Sundays, gave to good causes, were respected in the community, and upheld all kinds of good works. That was all. He had never heard one of them mention the name of the Lord except in a most formal way. Their Christianity hadn’t been a very vital thing with them.
But these people radiated Christianity, and one knew from the very look on their happy faces that “they had been with Jesus.” And some of them didn’t look as if they had much else in this world to be happy about either, if one might judge by the plainness of their apparel.
Alan sat at the end of the pew and looked down the line of happy faces. Mother Devereaux next to Daryl, then Father, then Ruth, and Lance at the far end, and his heart suddenly swelled with happiness. Wistfully he watched them all. If they all could only be his family! Was there any hope? Or was this only a little bright spot that would soon pass and leave his lonely world drab again?
But no, that could never be. His life couldn’t be drab again with that Presence constantly near. He would never be alone again, even if these dear new friends had to go another way than his. They had at least introduced him to his Lord, and that was the greatest thing they could have done.
But it was a very happy evening, with Daryl by his side. The dearness of her grew in his heart. The nearness of her was precious. Her beautiful eyes looked up to his as she smiled in enjoyment over the meeting! Just to be holding one side of the hymnal with her seemed heavenly sweet to him. This one evening at least he was granted to enjoy her company. If never again through life at least he would have had this.
So they banished the thought of the Harolds and Demeters and just enjoyed the evening together. They would have enjoyed the meeting of course even if they hadn’t had each other. Equally perhaps they would have enjoyed each other without the meeting. To be enjoying it together seemed like a little heaven below.
For it was strange how Alan had been able to enter into this new atmosphere and breathe the air of joy in the Lord and feel that it was the fulfillment of all he had been longing for all his life. It came to him to wonder what some of his acquaintances at the Bennington dance would think of this meeting if they could be here. What would they think of him for enjoying such things as these better than all the hectic joys of the world in which they moved? And then he marveled at the change that could come to one on being born again. That was the explanation, he was born again, and old things were passed away!
He looked down at the sweet girl by his side and noted the light in her face, the eager interest with which she was listening to the message that was being spoken, and his heart thrilled anew to think that his interest in these things and hers were one. At least they had this in common, even if he might not hope for anything closer in this life, that they were both children of the heavenly Father, both born again into the household of God.
The last night before the guests went home to the farm Alan and Lance lay awake far into the small hours talking. Alan had many questions to ask which Lance could answer. Lance in turn marveled at the way the young Christian had grown in the few short days since he had been saved, all by himself as it were, with his Bible and his Lord. His heart thrilled anew with love for this man who had dropped into his life out of the midst of a storm.
“You don’t know what it is to me to have a friend like you!” he exclaimed suddenly in the middle of their talk. “I couldn’t love you more if you were my own brother!”
“Same here, Lance!” said Alan. “I feel as if God had been wonderfully good to me leading me to you, and setting a seal on our friendship by leading you to do that great thing for me, going that awful journey through the storm! I can never tell you just what it has meant to me to know a man would go as far for an utter stranger!”
“I thought it was great of you to be willing to go on in the face of that storm the way you did to keep your promise about that medicine,” said Lance. “I liked the look in your face when you said you’d staked your life on keeping your promise to that doctor. I knew I was yours till death when I heard you say that, and I knew I was a hundred percent for you, and was going with you even if it meant—well, whatever it meant to me also!”
They were still a long time after that, and then Alan spoke again.
“There is more to this than I have told you, Lance! I was at a turning point in my life in more ways than one. I was almost to the place where I was going to ask the wrong woman to marry me. I think I must have known all the time in the back of my mind that she was the wrong woman. But it was the way of the world and it was getting me. I was restless and hungry and there didn’t seem to be anything else to satisfy. I wasn’t sure she would, but I was almost persuaded to try. And then God stopped me.”
“Stopped you?”
“Yes, by letting me see your two girls, your sister and your Ruth. Just to see them in the pleasant intimacy of their home life for a few hours was enough to show me the contrast. If I had never seen them again I would have carried a vision of what a woman could be in a home and in a man’s life, a vision that I knew that other woman never could fulfill.”
Lance lay still for a minute, and then he said thoughtfully, “It wasn’t all on one side, brother. I think we have a lot to thank you for in helping to open the eyes of my sister. We were all kinds of worried about that poor fish who seemed to have charmed her. I don’t know how he ever managed it, though of course he is a good-looker in a showy way. But she was pretty well convinced, I think, that she was for him. And then the Lord sent you along to show what a real man could be. I’m sure that went a long way in making her see she might be making a mistake.”
“Oh,” said Alan hesitantly, “I don’t think I figured in that. She wasn’t even thinking about me. I was just an interruption. I think if anything could make her see, it would be the fellow himself.” Then he suddenly closed his lips. He mustn’t even tell her brother what he had overheard from the telephone.
“Look here, man,” said Lance earnestly, “she’d seen him before, and it hadn’t opened her eyes. No, I tell you it was having a real man in contrast to bring out what was wrong in him that changed her.”
“But how do you know she is changed?” asked Alan, hoping against hope.
“Well, I’m sure she is,” said the brother happily. “Surely you yourself saw how she refused to go with him. And then day before yesterday—! Oh, you don’t know about that, do you? You don’t know how nearly we got held up and didn’t get here, do you? Just when we were on the minute of starting, too.”
“No, what was that! I’m glad I didn’t know about it at the time. It certainly would have been an anxious minute for me.”
“Well, that was what it was for me for about five of them at least. I was so mad and worried I felt like wringing somebody’s neck. We were practically on the point to starting. I was out in the garage arranging the suitcases to make as much room as possible. Dad and Mother were doing the last things about shutting up the house, and Daryl even had her hat on when that bum pulled up at the door in a shining new car with two or three suitcases, come to stay the weekend apparently! Say, I was mad!”
“I should say!” said Alan, aghast at what might have happened.
“Well, first I thought I’d just go out there and tell him to go to thunder before Daryl ever saw him. But I knew it had to come to a showdown sooner or later, and perhaps it was just as well for it to happen right away, because I knew Dad and Mother were almost sick worrying about it, though they wouldn’t own it. So I waited about three minutes to give Daryl a chance to take a stand if she was going to, and then I backed out the car and honked the horn several times, just as if I didn’t know the chump was there; and in a minute I followed it up by opening the side door and calling to Daryl to hurry, that we were late starting already and Ruth would be waiting. After that I marched into the room to bear
d the lion in his den, and do you know that chump was daring to tell my sister that she ought to stay at home and entertain him because he had come all that way to see her! And after the way he had left the last time, too! He just ignored all his insults and sneers and expected to be taken right in and welcomed. Well, I’m glad to tell you that Daryl talked right up to him, just told him she was sorry to disappoint him but it couldn’t be helped, and she had to leave. And then after he was gone and we got started Mother asked her if she would rather have stayed, and Daryl told us plainly that she was done with him and had sent him on his way, said she was glad God had showed her in time or something like that. So I’m pretty well satisfied that she’s over that. If I had had to call that poor fish brother-in-law the rest of my life I don’t know how I could have stood it!”
“Well, that’s great!” said Alan, trying to keep the thrill out of his voice. “I felt that way about him, too, but of course I didn’t know him at all. It seemed to me that it was a dreadful mistake. Your sister is so lovely, and he seemed so—well, different! You’re sure he won’t come back again and try to win her over?”
“Oh, he may of course,” said Lance sadly, “but we’re all praying about it. I don’t think the Lord would let that happen! But we’re going to try to help her forget all we can, and I think this trip is going to do a great deal. Ruth says she told her last night that this conference was the greatest thing she’d ever had in her life, and you can see for yourself how much she has enjoyed being here. You’ve been a wonderful help, and I can’t help thanking God every time I pray that He sent you to us for a friend.”
“That’s great, brother!” said Alan fervently, and then lay awake a long time thrilling to the thought that perhaps now he might allow himself a chance to win Daryl for himself. The vision of what life would be with such a girl by his side was so breathtaking that he scarcely slept until morning began to dawn.