BURKE MAKES A PROMISE
Burke, dozing over the fire in his so-called office, was aroused from his dreams by the appearance of a vision. For a moment he blinked at it doubtfully. Then into his eyes came a dawning intelligence, slightly tinged with reproach.
Burke was an unimaginative man, who did not like to be jarred out of his routine. Already that day several unusual incidents had occurred; and though, like popular tales, they ended happily, they had been almost too great a stimulus to thought. Now here was another, in the form of a girl, young and beautiful, and apparently blown into his presence on the wings of the wild storm that was raging.
Somewhat uncertainly, Mr. Burke arose and approached the vision, which, standing at the threshold of his sanctum, thereupon addressed him in hurried but reassuring human tones.
"I've had a blow-out," the lady briefly announced. "Will you put on a 'spare,' please, and take a look at the other shoes?"
This service, she estimated, would take half an hour of the proprietor's time, if he moved with the customary deliberation of his class, and would, of course, make superfluous any explanation of her wait in the garage, and of her nervousness, if he happened to be sufficiently observant to notice that.
It was really fortunate that the blow-out had occurred. Surely within the half-hour Laurie would have rejoined her. If he did not, she frankly conceded to herself, she would go mad with suspense. There was a limit to what she could endure, and that limit had been reached. Thirty minutes more of patience and courage and seeming calm covered the last draft she could make on a nervous system already greatly overtaxed.
Burke drew his worn office chair close to the red-hot stove, and was mildly pained by the lady's failure to avail herself of the comfort thus offered. Instead, she threw off her big coat, and, drawing the chair to the corner farthest from the stove, seated herself there and with hands that shook took up the local newspaper which was the live wire between Burke and the outer world. Her intense desire for solitude was apparent even to his dull eye.
Burke sighed. In his humble way he was a gallant man, and it would have been pleasant to exchange a few remarks with this visitor from another sphere. Undoubtedly they would have found interests in common. This, it will be remembered, was January, 1917, three months before America's entry into the world war, and women able to drive motors were comparatively rare. Any girl who could drive a car in a storm like this, and through the drifts of country roads—Mr. Burke, having reluctantly removed himself from the lady's presence, was now beside her car, and at this point in his reflections he uttered an exclamation and his jaw dropped.
"It's the lad's car!" he ejaculated slowly, and for a moment stood staring at it. Then, still slowly, he nodded.
It was the lad's car, which, only a short time before, he himself had put in perfect order for a swift run to New York. Now this girl had it, but 'twas easy to see why. He had been wrong in his college-prank theory. Here was something more serious and much more interesting. Here was a love-affair. And, he handsomely conceded, it was going on between a pair of mates the like of which wasn't often seen. In her way the girl was as fine a looker as the boy, and that, Mr. Burke decided, was "going some, for them both."
As his meditations continued he was cursorily glancing at the tires, looking for the one that had sustained the blow-out. He was not greatly surprised to find every tire perfect. There had been plenty of mysteries in the lad's conduct, and this was merely another trifle to add to the list. Undoubtedly the lady had her reasons for insisting on a blow-out, and if she had, it was no affair of his. Also, the price for changing that tire would be a dollar, and Mr. Burke was always willing to pick up a dollar.
Whistling softly but sweetly, he removed a rear shoe, replaced it with one of the "spares" on the car's rack, and solemnly retested the others. The task, as Doris had expected, took him almost half an hour. When it was completed he lounged back to the lady and assured her that the car was again ready for service.
The lady hesitated. There was no sign of Laurie, and she dared not leave. Yet on what pretext could she linger? With the manner of one who has unlimited time at her disposal, she demanded her bill, a written one, and paid it. Then, checking herself on a casual journey toward the big coat, she showed a willingness to indulge in that exchange of friendly points of view for which Burke's heart had longed.
The exchange was not brilliant, but Burke made the most of it. No, he told her, they didn't often have storms as bad as this. One, several years ago, had blocked traffic for two days, but that was very unusual. He hoped the young lady knew the roads well. It wasn't easy driving when you couldn't see your hand before your face. He hoped she wasn't nervous about getting back; for now he had discovered that she was intensely nervous about something.
With a gallant effort at ease, the lady took up the theme of the storm and embroidered it in pretty colors and with much delicate fancy. When the pattern was getting somewhat confused, she suddenly asked a leading question.
"Which shoe blew out?"
Burke stared at her. He wished he knew what was expected of him. Did she want the truth, or didn't she? He realized that momentarily she was becoming more excited. He had not missed her frequent glances through the window, up the road, and he knew that for the past five minutes she had been listening for something wholly unconnected with his words. In reality Doris was in the grip of an almost unconquerable panic. What had happened? Why didn't Laurie come?
Burke decided to let her have the truth, or part of the truth. She'd get it anyway, if she examined the replaced "spare" on the car's rack.
"There wasn't no blow-out," he stated, defensively.
"There wasn't! What do you mean?"
He saw that she was first surprised, then startled, then, as some sudden reflection came to her, actually appalled.
"I mean that there wasn't no blow-out."
"No blow-out? Then—then—what did I hear?" She asked the question of Burke, and, as she asked it, recoiled suddenly, as if he had struck her.
"P'raps you got a back-fire," he suggested, reassuringly. "You come down the steep hill up there, didn't you?"
Doris pulled herself together, shrugged her shoulders, and resolutely smiled at him. She knew the difference between the sound of a blow-out and the back-firing of an irritated engine. But some abysmal instinct made her suddenly cautious, though with that same instinct her inner panic developed. What had she heard?
"I put on a 'spare,' anyway," Burke was saying. "The rear right looked a little weak, so I changed it."
He was tacitly explaining the bill he had submitted, but Doris did not hear him. What had she heard? Insistently the question repeated itself in her mind. She turned dizzily, and went back for the coat. As she did so she heard Burke's voice.
"Why—hel-lo!"
Even in that moment she observed its modulation. It had begun on a note of cheery surprise and ended on one of sharp concern. Turning, she saw Laurie.
He had nodded to Burke, and was obviously trying to speak naturally.
"What you been doin' to yerself?" he gasped
"All ready?" he asked.
The remark was addressed to them both, but he looked at neither. There was an instant of utter silence during which they took him in, Burke with insistent, goggling eyes, Doris with one quick glance, soul-searching and terror-filled. Burke spoke first.
"What you been doin' to yerself?" he gasped.
The question was inevitable. Laurie was hatless and disheveled. His coat was torn, and across one pallid cheek ran a deep cut, freshly bleeding.
"Fell," he said, tersely.
He was breathing hard, as if he had been running. He had not yet looked at Doris, but now he abruptly swung into the little office and emerged, bringing her coat. Without a word, he held it for her. In equal silence, she slipped into it. He retrieved the cap from the pile of discarded garments still lying on the office floor, put it on, and indicated the waiting car.
"Get in," he commanded.
She obeyed and he followed her, taking his place at the wheel.
"You're hurt," she almost whispered. "Shall I drive?"
"No—Burke!"
The word was like a pistol shot.
"Y-yessir!" Burke was stammering. In his excitement he was hardly conscious that another bill had found its way into his hand, but his hand had automatically reached for and closed on it.
"Keep your mouth shut."
"Y-yessir."
"Keep it shut till to-morrow morning. You haven't seen anything or anybody at all to-day. Understand?"
"Y-yessir."
"After to-night you can talk about me all you like. But you're to forget absolutely that you ever saw the lady. Is that clear?"
"Y-yessir!"
"Thank you. Good-by."
He started the car and swung it out into the storm. As it went Burke saw the girl catch the boy's arm and heard something that sounded partly like a cry and partly like a sob.
"Laurie!"
"H-ush!"
The car was tearing through the storm and drifts at fifty miles an hour, and this time it was headed down the road for New York.
Burke's eyes followed it, as far as he could see it, which was not far. Then he retreated to the "office," and, dropping heavily into his desk chair, stared unseeingly at a calendar on the wall.
"That lad's been up to somethin'," he muttered. "I wonder what my dooty is."
It was a long moment before he remembered to open his hand and look at the bill he was holding. As he did so his eyes widened. The bill was a large one. It amounted to much more than the combined value of the bills dropped into that willing palm during the day. Briskly and efficiently it solved the little problem connected with Mr. Burke's "dooty." With a quick look around him, he thrust it into his pocket.
"I ain't really seen nothin'," he muttered, "an' I ain't sure of nothin', anyhow."
"What has happened? Oh, Laurie, what has happened?"
For a time Laurie did not answer. Then she felt rather than saw his face turn toward her in the darkness.
"Doris."
"Yes."
"Will you do something for me?"
"Yes, Laurie, anything."
"Then don't speak till we reach New York. When we get to your studio I'll tell you everything. Will you do that?"
"But—Laurie—"
"Will—you—do—it?" The voice was not Laurie's. It was the harsh, grating voice of a man distraught.
"Yes, of course."
Silence settled upon them like a substance, a silence broken only by the roar of the storm and the crashing of wind-swept branches of the trees that lined the road. The car's powerful search-lights threw up in ghostly shapes the covered stumps and hedges they passed and the masses of snow that beat against them. Subconsciously the girl knew that this boy beside her, driving with the recklessness of a lost soul, was merely guessing at a road no one could have seen, but in that half-hour she had no thought for the hazards of the journey. Her panic had grown till it filled her soul.
She wanted to cry out, to shriek, but she dared not. The compelling soul in the rigid figure beside her held her silent. Her nerves began to play strange tricks. She became convinced that the whole experience was a nightmare, an incredible one from which she would wake if that terrible figure so close to her, and yet so far away, would help her. But it wouldn't. Perhaps it never would. The nightmare must go on and on. Soon all sense of being in a normal world had left her.
Once, in a frantic impulse of need of human contact, she laid her hand on the arm nearest her, over the wheel. The next instant she withdrew it with a shudder. For all the response she had found she might have touched a dead man. Something of the look of a dead man, too, was in the boy's face and eyes as he bent forward, motionless as a statue, his features like stone and his eyes as unhuman as polished agate, staring fixedly at the road before them.
A low-bending, ice-covered branch whipped her face and she shrieked, fancying it the touch of dead fingers. Several times huge shapes from the roadside seemed to spring at them, but their progress was too swift even for spectral shapes. Or was it?
It was on a stretch of road through the woods that the obsession in her mind took its final and most hideous form. Close behind them, and ringing in their ears, she fancied she heard a cry in the voice of Shaw. It was not Shaw's human voice. She would not have known it in a human world. It had passed through the great change; but it was recognizable, because she, too, had passed through some great change. Recognizable, too, was the sound of Shaw's running feet, though she had never heard them run, and though they were running so lightly on the top of the snow.
He was just behind them, she thought. If she turned she knew she would see him, not as she had known him, plump, sleek, living and loathsome, but stark, rigid, and ready for his grave, yet able to pursue; and the new, unearthly light of his bulging eyes seemed burning into her back.
She groaned, but the groan brought no response from the tense figure beside her. The only sounds were the howls of the wind, the frenzied protests of the tortured trees, and the fancied hail of a dead man, coming closer and closer.