“Hah—awful! Took the heart right out of her. If you ever saw a girl in love it was she—bound up in him. Everything ready, the wedding day set, the trousseau made.” Tears rose in her eyes and she dove into her tight bodice for a handkerchief. “Never to be worn, Mr. Shine—that’s life.”
Shine gave forth sympathetic murmurs and Mrs. Cornell, dabbing at her eyes, furnished data between the dabs:
“Two men drinking too much and then a fight, and before anybody knew, murder! If there hadn’t been a brass candlestick near Jim Dallas’ hand it would never have happened. Honest to God, Mr. Shine, there was nothing evil in that young man. But the Parkinson family are camped on his trail. The evil’s in them, if you ask me, with their rewards and detectives.”
“I wonder if she knows where he is.”
“I guess there’s more than one wondering that,” the lady murmured.
“Terribly hard position for her if she does know—or if she doesn’t.”
Shine looked at the page’s figure on the rock. She carried the thing stamped on her face. He had noticed it particularly where he had taken the photographs of her in the living-room. They were time exposures with his small camera, attempts to catch her fragile prettiness in artistic combinations of light and shade. Once or twice the mask had been dropped and he had seen the drooping lines, the weariness, and something like fear on the delicate features.
For a space they smoked in silence. Round the corner of the house the tall figure of Stokes strolled into view. He looked at the seated girls, then turned and glanced behind him with a quick and furtive sweep of the eyes. At the sight of them he nodded, walked down to the wharf and dropped on a bench.
Shine lowered his voice:
“What’s the matter with him?”