Was there a car to follow her? A larger, more powerful, faster car?... She did not know. She glanced behind. There was nothing yet, no pursuing headlight. Carmel gripped the wheel and threw down the gas lever to its final notch.... Around corners, through puddles, over patches rutted by heavy wheels, she forced the little car. It rocked, skidded, threatened, but always righted itself and kept on its way.... She looked behind again.... Headlights!... By this time she must be half a mile or more from the hotel. It would be a good car which could make up that lead in the short distance to Gibeon.... Yet, as she looked back from time to time, the headlights drew closer and closer.... She could see straggling lights now—the fringe of the village.... Would they dare follow her into the town itself? She fancied not.... The bridge lay before her—and the pursuing car roared not a hundred yards behind. She swept across the river and sped down Main Street at a rate never witnessed before by that drowsy thoroughfare.... She was safe.... Before her was the Town Hall—lighted brightly.... She looked back. The pursuing car was not to be seen.
The town meeting! The citizens of Gibeon were there upon the town’s business. She brought the car to a stop before the door, leaped out, and ran up the stairs. The hall was crowded. On the platform stood the chairman of the town board.... Carmel was conscious of no embarrassment, only of the need for haste, of the necessity for finding help. She entered the room and made her way up the aisle to the platform. Without hesitating she mounted the steps, unconscious of the craning of necks, the whisperings, the curiosity her arrival was causing.
The chairman halted in his remarks. Carmel, in her excitement, ignored him, almost shouldered him aside.
“Men—men of Gibeon,” she said, “crime is being committed, perhaps murder is being done, at this minute.... What are you going to do?”
CHAPTER XXVI
THE hall was still. It was as if, by some necromancy of words, Carmel had turned to stone the town meeting of Gibeon. She looked down into faces which seemed to her white and strained. The faces waited. She had caught them by her words; gripped them. Something was about to happen. Every man in the room felt the imminence of grave events. The very air tingled with it as if waves of some vital force agitated the air and discharged themselves with such force as to be felt by physical touch.... It was Carmel Lee’s first public appearance, yet she was not frightened. Rather she was eager; words jostled with one another for the privilege of being uttered first. She paused, staring down into those faces.
“Men of Gibeon,” she said, and her little fist, clenched with knuckles showing white, lifted from her side and extended itself toward them, “Men of Gibeon, I have found the body of Sheriff Churchill.... He was murdered!...”
The faces seemed to move in unison as if they were painted upon a single canvas and the canvas had been suddenly jerked by an unseen hand. They became audible by an intake of the breath.
“I found him,” Carmel said, “close by the Lakeside Hotel.... Since yesterday I have been a prisoner in the Lakeside Hotel, I and Evan Pell.... I went to find him. I found Sheriff Churchill; I saw five great trucks unload in the hotel yard, and those trucks were carrying whisky from the other side of the border.... It was whisky, men of Gibeon, which killed Sheriff Churchill. It was the men who are trafficking in liquor who murdered him.... I know their names. I have seen them and been their prisoner.... At this moment Evan Pell, locked in a room of that unspeakable place, is in danger of his life. He is injured, cannot escape nor defend himself. Yet he made it possible for me to escape and to come to you for help....” Again she paused.
“I could not go to the law because the law does not belong to the people of Gibeon. It has been bought and paid for. It is owned by criminals and by murderers.... We have a new sheriff.... That man’s hands are red with the blood of the man whose place he fills.... So I have come to you, for there is no other law in Gibeon to-night than yourselves.”