He turned to Mrs. Bybee, who nodded angrily.
“She told him she’d look after Sally, but he’d have to stand guard on the train. She didn’t say anything to him about the safe—just told him to patrol the train while she was gone. The safe is under a seat in our stateroom, and far as we knew, nobody knew where it was, except Sally here, who happened to come into the stateroom when my wife was counting a day’s receipts.”
“Please, Mr. Bybee,” Sally interrupted, memory struggling with the panic in her brain. “Someone else did know! Nita knew! When I left the stateroom that last day in Stanton I saw Nita disappearing into the women’s dressing room, and I thought she’d been listening. She—”
“Hold on a minute!” Bybee cut in sternly. “How do you know she’d been listening? Any proof?”
“Yes, sir!” Sally cried eagerly. “Mrs. Bybee had been telling me that she’d found out that Ford isn’t my real name, that the woman I always thought was my mother wasn’t really my mother at all. She said she guessed I—that my mother was ashamed I’d ever been born. And that same day Nita called me a—a bad name that means—” She could not go on. Sobs began to shake her small body again and her face was scarlet with shame.
“That’s right!” Gus, the barker, edged toward Bybee through the crowd. “I found Sally lighting into Nita for calling her that name. And Nita didn’t deny she’d done it. Reckon that proves she was eavesdropping, all right. And if she was listening in, too, she was probably peeping in, too, or heard Mrs. Bybee talking about the safe. Was the door open, ma’am?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Bybee snapped. “Yes, it may have been. It was awful hot. And I didn’t know anybody was on the train.”
“It was open a little way,” Sally cried. “I remember distinctly. Because I worried about whether Nita had overheard what Mrs. Bybee had been telling me. And there’s something else—something that happened that night, when David and I were walking.” Memory of that blessed hour in the moonlight brought tears to her eyes, but she dashed them away with the wrist which bore the marks of Mrs. Bybee’s rage.
“What was it, Sally?” Pop Bybee asked gently. “All we want is to get at the truth of this thing. Don’t be afraid to speak up.”
“I hate being a tattle-tale,” Sally whimpered. “I never told on anyone in all my life! But David and I were sitting under a tree, not talking, when we suddenly heard Nita’s voice. She couldn’t see us for the tree, but we peeped around the trunk of it and we saw Nita and a man walking awfully close together, and Nita was talking. We just heard a few words. She said: ‘No monkey business now, Steve. If you double-cross me I’ll cut your heart out! Fifty-fifty or nothing—’”