“Serious? Well, hardly ever!” the man chuckled. “Frightened? Frequently! But I am so appreciative of this opportunity to be alone with you that I could hardly quibble with fate to the extent of being frightened at the means which accomplished it.”
“Oh, I wonder what’s happened to—to everybody!” Sally began to shiver with sobs.
“To—David?” Van’s mocking voice came strangely out of the darkness. “Lucky David, wherever he is now, that your first thought should go to him. David and Sally! How do you like ‘play-acting,’ Sally Ford?”
CHAPTER XI
The terror which the menace of violent death had held for her now seemed a pallid, weak thing, beside the heart-stopping emotion which the New Yorker’s mocking, amused voice uttering her real name called into being. Her head jerked instinctively from the comfort of his arm. Squirming away from him, under the sodden blanket of canvas, she curled into a tight little ball of agony, her face cupped in her hands. “So that’s why you bothered me so!” she cried, her voice muffled by her fingers. “You’re a detective! You knew all the time! You were going to take me to jail! Oh, you—Oh! David, David!”
“Listen, you little idiot!” Van’s voice came sharply, bereft of its mocking note for once. “I’m not a detective! Good heavens! Do I look like one? I’ve always understood that they have enormous feet and wear derbies and talk out of the corner of their mouths.” Mockery was creeping back. “Did you think that a poor little tyke like you was worth sending to New York for a detective to bay at your heels like a bloodhound? I merely overheard the little Betsy’s keen penetration of your disguise. And I took the trouble to inquire casually of the governor this evening just who—if anybody—Sally Ford might be—”
“Then you gave me away—David and me!” she accused him, shuddering with sobs.
“Not at all. How it does pain me for you to persist in misunderstanding me! I gave nothing away—absolutely nothing! I merely found out that David Nash and Sally Ford are fugitives from justice, wanted on rather serious charges. After making the acquaintance of ‘Princess Lalla,’ I might add that I don’t believe a word of the silly story. Besides, I have your own word for it—” and he laughed—“that you are ‘not that kind of a girl.’ As a matter-of-fact—oh! We’re about to be rescued, Sally Ford! I hear the ‘heave-ho’ of stalwart black boys. And the storm is over except for a gentle, lady-like rain.”
It was not till he mentioned the blessed fact that Sally realized that the storm was indeed over. The only sound, besides the shouts of the “white hopes” engaging in raising the collapsed tent, was the patter of rain upon the canvas which still weighted down her small cold body, as wet as if she had been swimming.
Struggling to a sitting position under the already moving mass of canvas, the New Yorker cupped his hands about his mouth and shouted: “Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy!” In an aside to Sally he chuckled: “What does one shout under the circumstances—or rather, under the canvas of a collapsed tent?”