Coming Through the Rye

  Cold with anxiety and trembling so that she could scarcely move, Romayne slipped out of bed to her bureau, where she had pinned the check to her pincushion. She groped for her purse. There was a five-dollar bill and some change in it. She emptied it into his hands mutely, and, with her robe wrapped around her, opened the door and went out to the hall, calling downstairs as her brother had bade her. It was all dark in the upper hall, and she scarcely knew when her brother slid by her to the bathroom door. Her heart seemed almost smothering her as she tried to conduct a reasonable conversation with the officer.

  “No, ma’am,” he was saying, “there ain’t no one around. I just was stepping up through the halls to make sure all was right. I do it regular every little while. Yes, I did think I heard a noise, but I reckon it was only a rat. They sound awful human, and, you know, these here old houses always has ’em. No, ma’am, don’t you worry, lady. I stay awake all night, and I’ll look after the house. It’s my job.”

  Romayne thanked him in a small, shaking voice and crept back to her room, feeling like a criminal herself. To think she had had to descend to deception to help her brother! Oh, had it come to this? And was it right, what he was doing? Wasn’t it cowardly to get out of facing the law? And what was that he had said about a double? She ought to have asked him more, only he had stopped her mouth, and she had been only half-awake. Had she been a party to something dishonorable, helping him to escape? Yet how could she detain her own brother to face a possible charge of murder? Oh, how complicated and awful life was getting to be! The simple rules of right and wrong by which she had been brought up seemed not to apply at all anymore. Nothing was as it ought to be, and the people you thought you could depend upon had failed. It was as if the foundations of the earth were shaken and she was tottering with them.

  She crept shivering into her bed and tried to go over the whole experience sanely, but the more she recalled everything, word by word, the more disturbed she was, and when she finally came to the end and realized that there had not been a single word of loving or kindness to her beyond that cold-blooded suggestion that she leave their dying father and escape from it all into another land, the tears smarted into her eyes, and a sharp pain darted through her heart. Lawrence was gone! Her only dependence gone far away, without leaving any address, and without even a good-bye kiss!

  The tears came in a flood then and relieved the terrible pressure on her heart. She felt so alone and utterly desolate.

  “Oh God!” she cried. “I’ve nobody but You! Won’t You please help me somehow?”

  Sleep was driven utterly from her. She found herself listening to every sound in the house and on the street. She wondered if Lawrence had succeeded in getting safely out of the bathroom window. There was a bay window out from the dining room, to the roof of which he might possibly manage to drop, although it would be a dangerous feat even in the daytime. How had he possibly managed it in the dark? Of course, Lawrence had always been a great climber, but as she continued to think about it, her flesh grew cold with horror. Perhaps even now he was lying unconscious on the brick-paved court below. She wanted to fly down and see, or at least to go to the bathroom window and look down to be sure he was safely out, but she dared not attract the attention of the officer again. He would surely think something unusual had happened and perhaps begin an investigation that would put Lawrence in jeopardy. Anyhow, Lawrence was her brother, and perhaps he was doing the right thing somehow. Only if it was right, why did he have to come to her so secretly?

  Morning brought relief of one kind in that she could go openly to the window and look down. And glad she was that she had gone before anyone was astir, for there she saw a heavy rope fastened firmly to the leg of the radiator and going out the open window. Lawrence had not hesitated to leave behind embarrassing evidence for her to erase. With a quick gasp she locked the bathroom door and looked out the window, half expecting to see a huddled form lying below. But to her relief there was nothing but the rope dangling ten or twelve feet from the ground. Lawrence had managed the difficult ascent by way of the dining room bay window, likely, but he had come prepared with a rope for descent. Well, she must get rid of that rope at once. It was in full sight of the upper part of the dining room window. If the officer should chance that way, he could not fail to see it.

  She pulled it in quickly, hand over hand, and soon had it coiled on the bathroom floor. The difficult task was to untie the complex knot that fastened the other end to the radiator.

  She worked and tugged with her frail fingers. The rope was heavy, and the time was short, for at any moment now the nurse would be coming down the hall to get water for her father. She must have the rope hidden before she came. She dared not go back to her room for scissors or knife lest the nurse come in while she was gone.

  Frantically she looked for some implement to help her and at last discovered a nail file on the shelf of the medicine closet. It was not large nor strong, but it had a stout little handle, and she managed at last to insert it into the knot and so loosen it up. Little by little, such a very little that it scarcely seemed any at all, the stubborn rope yielded. Her fingers smarted and burned and rubbed into blisters, but she finally got the knot untied. It seemed to her when it finally yielded the last inch and she pulled it free from the radiator that she must sink down and cry for relief, but she did not. Instead she gathered it quickly into the smallest coil she could manage and, enveloping it under her robe, hurried with it to her room, hiding it far back in the depths of her closet behind some big hatboxes, and dropping a big cloak carelessly over the whole as if it had fallen from the hook. Nobody would probably go to her closet in search of a rope, of course, but it made her feel easier to hide it utterly.

  Her next act was to dress hurriedly and rush downstairs to examine the ground under the window to make sure there were no footprints nor anything else dropped that might look suspicious. She also went out to the ash barrel with some papers and gave a careful furtive look in the yard and the alley where Lawrence must have climbed the fence. Then she came back to her room and sat down to think. She felt like breaking down utterly and weeping, but she knew she must be strong and brave, not a crybaby. Whether or not Lawrence had done right, even whether or not she had done right in helping him, was not any longer the question. Lawrence was gone! She had herself and her father to look out for, and she must not go to pieces.

  The nurse was sorry for her that morning as she went about her little daily household duties and came and went in the sickroom, with great dark circles under her eyes and a deep look of sadness around her firm-set mouth.

  A special delivery letter reached her midway of the morning. She set her teeth in her trembling underlip and took it up to her own room. Always now when anything new happened, even the most commonplace things, there was that clutch of terror at her heart. She knew this letter was from Lawrence even though the handwriting was disguised. What could he have to say now? How her heart hungered for just one loving word from him.

  She tore it open hurriedly and read:

  Dear Kid:

  Sorry I upset you so last night, but it couldn’t be helped. I had to beat it so quick I forgot the most important thing. You must find out the answer to my questions somehow or other! Read them out loud to him even if he doesn’t waken. It may rouse him. I must know what happened that last morning at the meeting. It means everything to me. Keep reading them every time you go to the room when nobody’s around. Don’t let anybody hear you, and don’t tell! Make up some way he can signal yes or no to you; tell him to close his eyes if it’s yes. You fix it, Kid; I’m depending on you! It may mean a whole lot of money to us. Get it on your mind so you ‘re ready any minute to ask him if he should become conscious.

  When you get any answer at all, send it at once special delivery to Kearney Krupper, Van Dyme Building, Room 66. Don’t delay! It’s the only way I can get back into things. If the answer is what I think it is, I’ve got my enemies by the throat, so don’t you fail me, Kid! br />
  Tough luck you’ve got to weather this all alone, but I guess we’ll sight blue sky again sometime. Keep a stiff upper lip. So long. As ever.

  There was no name signed, and when she had read it slowly through twice, she dropped upon her knees beside the bed and hid her face in the pillow.

  She did not cry. She just lay there trying to get strength to face the hard facts. Lawrence was engaged in trying to save himself at the expense of their father. Yes, and at her expense, too. He did not seem to care what became of her nor how hard things were for her. No endearing epithets, no tenderness, no thoughtfulness. Just that hard, cold expression, “tough luck,” which might have been the solace of the slums. How could he be her brother and write like that? Not a word about their father, not an expression of anxiety about either of them!

  Of course he was in a terrible situation himself, and for the time that might have effaced all other emotions. She had never been in prison or in danger of her life. She could not tell how she might act under similar circumstances; and, of course, perhaps he was taking all these gentler things for granted. Yet she could not hide the fact from her inmost soul that Lawrence was thinking of no one but himself, and that he had laid upon her a command that she could not fulfill.

  Never could she go into the sickroom and bombard her father’s stricken consciousness with matters of business. Not even if she could call him back would she use such things to do it. If he were getting well again and strong enough to bear references to matters that obviously had been the cause of his trouble, there might come a time when she could tell him about it all, but not in his present condition; no, not even to save Lawrence! There was something innately basic about her decision that made it seem final. She knew that this was right.

  But Lawrence’s letter had given her another idea.

  When she stayed in the room alone with her father again, she would read aloud to him those words from the Bible. She would give him a hope out of his living death. If her words could reach his dull ears and his submerged consciousness at all, they should be words of forgiveness and life. She reasoned that her father, if he were conscious at all of his situation, must be troubled that he had done wrong. His whole life had been spent in an atmosphere where wrongdoing meant a cutting off from eternal happiness. She could not think of her father as being content to be a wrongdoer, a law-breaker. If he really had done the thing that they were charging him with, then he must feel condemned in his soul. That, and that alone, must be the important thing now for her to do, to let him know that she believed he could be forgiven for what he had done, and to remind him that God had promised to forgive if one would ask.

  With such a purpose in her heart, she took her little Bible that afternoon and went to sit with her father while the nurse slept. As soon as the nurse was gone to her room and all was quiet, she began in a gentle voice, very low but clear: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.”

  Over and over again she read it, with a pause between, speaking distinctly, saying it each time as if it were a new sentence. For who could tell which time it would reach the deadened brain and stir the heart?

  She had repeated it over and over again perhaps for an hour to the motionless figure upon the bed, when suddenly the sick man’s eyes opened, as they had done once before, and he looked at her as out of the dark, hungrily, eagerly, a great longing in his look.

  Romayne’s heart almost stood still, but somehow she controlled her voice and went steadily on in a conversational tone as if she were telling him something they both knew was true, reminding him, reassuring him, with a smile of comfort on her lips.

  “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.”

  Suddenly there came other verses as if they were sent to reinforce this one, verses she had not thought of for years, that she must have learned at her mother’s knee.

  “He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

  “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

  “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”

  “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

  “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”

  “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.”

  “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

  The eyes in the twisted face upon the pillow were bright with a kind of light of comprehension. They seemed to be hanging on her every word, or so it seemed to her.

  Romayne marveled that somehow strength came to keep her voice steady and give her words to speak. It was wonderful. How was it that all those verses spoke themselves through her lips for the need of the soul in agony? It was as if God Himself were speaking through her. And there seemed to have come a change upon the face of the sick man—a softened look, an eagerness, not so stricken, not so twisted as before. She arose and stood beside the bed, and his eyes distinctly followed her.

  The door opened suddenly, quietly, and the nurse stood beside them. The sick man’s eyes looked at the nurse and went blank and shut as if a door had been closed. One looking at him could scarcely realize that his eyes had been open but an instant before.

  The nurse put out a practiced finger on the pulse, and said, “Ummmmh! You better let him rest now!”

  And Romayne went out of the room and dropped upon her knees beside her bed.

  Chapter 14

  The next day there was a big raid in the city, and more than seventy-five thousand dollars’ worth of bonded liquor was seized in an apartment house on one of the finest streets.

  A few minutes later Evan Sherwood was shot in the left shoulder as he was crossing an alleyway not far from the scene of the raid, and was carried to his rooms in a serious condition. The bullet, which was evidently intended for his heart, passed through the fleshy part of the left arm and lodged under the shoulder blade, and the best surgeon’s skill in the city was summoned to remove it.

  Meantime the assassin escaped, and the city was agog with excitement. Wireless messages were sent to the white-winged yacht that carried Judge Freeman and his gang, and the cabin was rife with speculations and plans. Here was another man, it appeared, with whom they could gladly dispense. Evan Sherwood had given them more trouble than all the rest of the city’s population put together. He was absolutely fearless and absolutely unbribable. He seemed to be gifted with uncanny powers and could scent out a plot as fast as it was hatched. He was never off his job, never seemed to rest nor play, and apparently had no family or close attachments whom they could kidnap or otherwise strike him through. The gang had been driven to sea to get out of his way, and now, just when they had hoped that things were quieting down and they might return, here had happened this double blow. The biggest enterprise they had, which had been bringing in goodly returns daily, was revealed to the light of day and their henchmen scattering like rats from a burning building. It was disgusting. It was unbearable! And now this damnable young upstart had gotten himself shot like a hero and was in the limelight more than ever. If he would only die of his wounds and get out of their way finally, they might go home and bring flowers and attend his funeral, even sympathize with anybody who pretended to care about him, if afterward they might get to work to repair the damage he had done to their fortunes. But if he got well, he would be more than ever a hero, and folks who had smiled at the dramaticall
y inclined leader of a lot of fanatics would begin to admire and then to follow. Oh, Judge Freeman and his gang knew men, and they understood what an advantage it would be to them if Evan Sherwood were to die.

  There were other people who understood that also. There was a mean little rat of a saloonkeeper, whose place had been among the first raided, who went so far as to offer his services as nurse that he might make sure that Evan Sherwood did not live. But that was a thing that would never have come out if Chris Hollister hadn’t happened to be hidden, for purposes of his own, behind the fence of the dirty junkyard where the saloonkeeper and two of his cronies hatched out the idea. But, of course, the League was not doing things with its eyes shut, and no strange man with an eye and a jaw such as the would-be nurse owned would have gotten within a hundred yards of their beloved hero.

  Besides all this, Aunt Patty was on guard, doubly alive to dangers both from without and within, Aunt Patty, who had nursed Evan through chickenpox and scarlet fever and whooping cough, and then in later years through typhoid fever and pneumonia, and no one, neither friend nor foe, need hope to get by Aunt Patty.

  So the saloonkeeper slept in the jail that night along with his two cronies, thanks to Chris, and the town was out hotfoot after the man who had shot Evan Sherwood. The newsboys were calling special editions of the paper, and Romayne, going out sadly to mail a letter, wondered what it was all about, and why people cared to read papers and gloat over other people’s troubles. She had enough of her own without reading about others, and how did it happen that her family had not been shouted about in the streets? Poor child! Little she knew how much they had been! But she had mercifully been spared all that. At the next corner the newsboy yelled it in her very ear: “All about the shooting! Evan Sherwood shot!”