“Darcy Sherwood! Of course!” said Gene. “Where is he now? I’ll get out a warrant for arrest tonight.”
“Well, that’s the rub,” said Tyke uneasily. “You see he got away a few days back. He’s ben keepin’ close, and been away a lot, but he musta got onto it that we had him spotted fer he made tracks fer Canada. I follered him up there, but found he’d left, given a wrong address an’ all that. But he’s back somewheres in this neighborhood. I’m sure o’that. You jes’ wantta put it in the han’s of the p’lice an’ you’ll get yer party all right, all right! Better not tell who yer witnesses are till ya get him safe an’ sound in jail, though. He mighta got onto the fact of who we are an’ cleared out.”
Gene’s mind had run rapidly ahead of the visitor’s words. He was thinking fast what he had to do.
“We must dig up that grave and find the body,” he said, speaking rapidly. “You can locate it, of course.”
“Sure. We can locate her all right; but it ain’t no use diggin’ it up. Didn’t I tell ya that part? This other party, this fourth man I was speakin’ of fer a witness, he ain’t one of my bunch at all. He was just goin’ through the medder adjoinin’ next night after the burryin’ an’ he heard a sound of a spade and he steps to the hedge curious like to see who was diggin’ a grave that time o’ night, it was still kinda light, an’ he sees this feller diggin’ her up, an’ presently he takes up the big roll an’ carries it away in a car. Got scared likely. Thought somebody was onto him, an’ didn’t dast leave her there. My man went an’ looked in the hole after he was gone an’ there wasn’t nothin’ there but broken glass. After that we went too, an’ it’s all true just as he sez. So he’s got away with it all good an’ slick. He’s an awful slick feller. I knowed him back in France. I got an idea where he may have hid her though. There’s more’n one graveyard round these diggin’s.”
Late that night Eugene let Tyke out the back door, and he stole away into the mists like some creeping thing to hide. But Eugene walked the floor all night, his white face drawn and pinched, his eyes bloodshot and looking like hidden fires. There was something more than revenge working in Eugene Massey’s heart. There was conscience. One cannot have a mother like Mary Massey without having to suffer for it some time or other, if one has wandered away from her teachings.
And all night long Nan lay in her bed with wide-open eyes and tried to piece together the few words she had overheard from her perch on the back stairs, and make sense out of them—lay and dreaded the coming of the morning.
CHAPTER XXVII
One evening late in March Joyce was coming out from the Bible School on the way to her train. She had omitted the second class that evening because she had papers to correct when she got home and it would keep her up very late if she waited until the late train.
As she came into the street a gust of wind caught her hat and flung it along the pavement. She darted out after it, and after quite a race captured it, but not till several large drops of rain had fallen in her face. She turned to hurry toward the station. It was not a long walk, and she usually preferred to do it on foot rather than to wait for trolleys, which were few and far between on that side street. But it was all too evident that a storm was upon her. Dust and papers and litter were being blown along in the gutter, and the wind lifted in wild swoops and banged signs and shutters and any loose object in sight. People hurried to cover, umbrellas were raised and lowered quickly, or the wind seized them and turned them inside out. People in automobiles hurriedly fastened on side curtains, and the street was almost deserted in a trice.