"The main thing," said Charlie, who had turned a shade paler during this matter-of-fact, cold-blooded analysis, "is to keep Alix Crown from falling into his clutches. He's a bad egg, that feller is, and he's made up his mind to win her by fair means or foul."
"Well, if she falls for him after reading that lawyer's letter and when she hears what I believe to be the truth about that heroic episode the other night,—why, she ought to get what's coming to her, that's all I have to say," said Mr. Gilfillan flatly. "I've discovered one thing, Mr. Webster. If a woman makes up her mind to marry a man, hell-fire and brimstone can't stop her. The older I get and the more I see of women, the more I am convinced that vice is its own reward. I guess we'd better stroll down to the river and see what's doing."
"I've been thinking," said Charlie as they walked along, "that if Thane wasn't in the British Army and wasn't in our army, then he must be a slacker and wanted by the government for—"
"Nothing doing on that line. You forget he was crippled long before the war. He couldn't get by a medical board. They'd turn him down in a second. If he was in this country at the time of the draft, he would have had no trouble getting an exemption. What I can't understand is why he, a New Yorker, should be hiding out here in the jungles of Indiana. There's something queer about that, my friend."
"Kind of fishy," said Charlie darkly. Then upon reflection, he added with considerable vehemence: "Damn him!"
Already half a dozen rowboats were out in the stream, with men peering over the sides into the deep, slow-moving water. Burk's Ferry did a thriving business. It plied back and forth from one "road-cut" to the other, crowded with foot passengers, all of whom studied the water intently. Men, women and children tramped close to the edge of both banks. People spoke in subdued voices; an atmosphere of the deepest solemnity hung over the scene.
The sky itself was overcast; a raw wind moaned through the trees, sighing a requiem. The drab, silent river went placidly, mockingly on its way down to the sea, telling no tales: if Rosabel Vick was rolling, gliding along the bottom, gently urged by the current, the grim waters covered well the secret.
The word went from lip to lip that motor-boats were on the way down from the city, with police officers and grappling-hooks and men experienced in the gruesome business of "dragging." The boss of the railway construction gang at Hawkins, where the new bridge was being built, had started for Windomville with a quantity of dynamite to be exploded on the bottom of the river in the hope and expectation of bringing the body to the surface.