“Dear me, no,” answered her voice in meek and plaintive alarm. Then she laughed a little.
“She is lying—lying—lying,” thought the wounded man, languidly, as he lay there, bleeding in the darkened room, not twelve paces away from her, where the room was stained and blotched and pooled with blood.
“H’m! Folks downstairs said they heard a pistol-shot up here somewhere!”
“Yes, I know; that was the transom blew shut,” she answered glibly. “It nearly frightened the wits out of me, too!” She opened the door wide. “But won’t you come in, and make sure?”
The officer looked up at the transom, wagged his head three times sagely, glanced at the lines of the girl’s figure with open and undisguised admiration, and said it wasn’t worth while. Then he tried to pierce the veil that still hung from her hat and about her smiling face. Then he turned and sauntered off down the stairs, tapping the baluster with his night-stick as he went. Then Durkin tried to struggle to his feet, was stung with a second fierce stab of pain, fell back drowsily, and remembered no more.
Frances waited, pantingly, against the doorpost. She listened there for a second or two, and then crept inside and closed the door after her.
“Thank God!” she gasped fervently, as she tore off her hat and veil once more. “Thank God!”
Then, being only a woman, and weak and hungry and tired, and tried beyond her endurance, she took three evading, half-staggering steps toward Durkin, and fell in a faint over his feet.
The door opened and closed softly; and a figure with an ashen face, blotched with claret-color, slunk into the silent room. Night had closed in by this time, so having listened for a reassuring second or two, he groped slowly across the bare floor. His trembling hand felt a woman’s skirt. Exploring carefully upward, he felt her limp arm, and her face and hair.
Then he came to the figure he was in search of. He ripped open the wet and soggy coat with a deft little pull at the buttons, and thrust a great hungry hand down into the inside breast pocket. The exploring fat fingers found what they were in search of, and held the carefully banded packet up to the uncertain light of the window.