Nevertheless, she was determined to persist. How, with what material, she did not know. She grew stubborn under opposition, and resolved that no issue of the Free Press should appear in which the thing should not be followed up.
Evan Pell got up from his place and went out without a word. Presently she heard Tubal banging about, preparatory to going home, and then she was alone. She did not like the feeling of aloneness. The thing had worn upon her more than she realized, and her nerve ends jangled. She was conscious of a rising discomfort of mind, which resolved itself into apprehension as dusk fell and shadows filtered in to flood the corners of the room with blackness. Her mind persisted in thinking of Sheriff Churchill, of the suddenness, the completeness of his disappearing. He had stepped to his door—and from that instant the world had lost him to sight. The mystery of it, the cruel efficiency of it, caused her to shudder. If they—they—dared lay hands upon the chief official of the county, what would cause them to hesitate to deal with her in like manner?
She got up hastily, put away her work, and locked the office. It was not until she was in the well-lighted office of the hotel that a feeling of security came to her again. Then she laughed at herself, but the laughter was a pretense and she knew it to be pretense.... Suddenly she thought of Evan Pell. What of him? If there were danger, was not his danger greater than hers? Already he was the victim of more than a threat.
Her appetite for supper was far from robust and she was glad of the quiet and security of her room. There she endeavored to read, and so passed away the hours until her watch told her it was an hour from midnight. She laid down her book, with a mind to retiring, when there came a rush of footsteps in the corridor without and a pounding upon her door.
“Lady! Lady!... Lemme in! Lemme in, quick!... It’s Simmy.”
She snatched open the door, and Simmy, face splotched with ink as it had been hours before, plunged into the room.
“They’re comin’!” he said, so excitedly he could scarcely articulate. “They’re comin’ with sledge hammers! Quick! They’re dum nigh there.”
She heard herself speak as though it were another individual. As for herself, she was singularly calm, even cool. It had come—the emergency. What was it? What did it bring to her?
“Who is coming with sledge hammers?” she asked.
“Mebby a dozen of ’em—drunk and staggerin’.”