"You will excuse my going with you to your boarding-house," he said to Harcourt, who dropped behind to ask him some question. "I stayed there last night."
"You did?"
"Yes, sir, I did! You wouldn't suppose I would risk another Detour slip, would you?"
"Say! I want to find out some time how you found us."
"All right. After we get up to the Oakland I'll tell you."
It was several hours after the telegram was sent to Judge Kirtley before his answer was received. Much of the time was spent in earnest consultation in Miss Crosby's little parlor—and a part of it by Margaret in throes of anguish upstairs as she made plan after plan only to be brought up always at the last by the impossibility of eluding Smeltzer. A poignant recollection of Mammy Cely's "beating her head ag'in' a stone wall" rose before her. That was what she was doing.... Whichever way she turned there was the stone wall!... What must she do? What could she do?... Nothing. She was powerless. Richard De Jarnette had run her to earth at last.... She clenched her hands in impotent rage until the nails sank into the delicate flesh.
"If she goes," John Harcourt was saying to Mrs. Pennybacker downstairs, "I shall go with her." Bess looked startled. "It is time I am getting back anyway.... Oh, yes, I hope she will consent to go. It wouldn't do for her to risk prosecution on a criminal charge at the hands of a man like that."
"That is exactly the way I feel about it. I think I will go up and talk with her again."
Harcourt sauntered out doors to where Smeltzer quietly stood on guard. "Now, then," he said.
"I can't say that this affair redounds much to my glory," Smeltzer began, half quizzically, "except that I've got her. But—"