When the landlady had left, the girl stood staring dully at the black traveling bag that she had brought from the closet and placed on her bed; but she did not see the bag or the few pieces of lingerie that she had taken from her dresser drawers. She saw only the sweet face of her mother, and the dear smile that had always shone there to soothe each childish trouble—the smile that had lighted the girl’s dark days, even after she had left home.
For a long time she stood there thinking—trying to realize what it would mean to her if the worst should come. It could make no difference, she realized, except that it might perhaps save her mother from a still greater sorrow. It was the girl who was dead, though the mother did not guess it; she had been dead for many months. This hollow, shaking husk was not Shannon Burke—it was not the thing that the mother had loved. It was almost a sacrilege to take it up there into the clean country and flaunt it in the face of so sacred a thing as mother love.
The girl stepped quickly to a writing desk, and, drawing a key from her vanity case, unlocked it. She took from it a case containing a hypodermic syringe and a few small phials; then she crossed the hall to the bathroom. When she came back, she looked rested and less nervous. She returned the things to the desk, locked it, and ran downstairs.
“I will be back in a few minutes,” she called to the landlady. “I shall have to arrange a few things to-night with a friend.”
She went directly to the Vista del Paso bungalow. Crumb was surprised and not a little startled as he heard her key in the door. He had a sudden vision of Allen returning, and he went white; but when he saw who it was he was no less surprised, for the girl had never before returned after leaving for the night.
“My gracious!” he exclaimed. “Look who’s here!”
She did not return his smile.
“I found a telegram at home,” she said, “that necessitates my going away for a few days. I came over to tell you, and to get a little snow to last me until I come back. Where I am going they don’t have it, I imagine.”
He looked at her through narrowed, suspicious lids.
“You’re going to quit me!” he cried accusingly. “That’s why you went out with Allen! You can’t get away with it. I’ll never let you go. Do you hear me? I’ll never let you go!”