“He certainly had no right to go away that way without telling me where he saw Joyce,” declared Eugene angrily. “Now I suppose I shall have to go out and find him. The insolent sucker! He thought he had me in a hole. I won’t go after him. Let him go to the dogs. Probably he never saw Joyce at all. What difference does it make if he did? Serves her right if she gets in trouble. I’m not going to hunt him up that’s certain. I’ll get a detective. What’s he got to do with Joyce anyhow I’d like to know?”
“Then everybody’ll find out—” wailed Nannette.
“What’s the difference if they do? They’ll find out if she doesn’t come back at all, won’t they? You haven’t a brain cell working. You’re just like a woman—!”
“But Gene, why don’t you see that this man is the only clue you have to where she was last seen?”
“Well, what if he is? Do you think I’m going crawling to a man that entered my house that way—? Say! That’s an idea! I’ll have him arrested for house breaking. He came into my house against my express command. I told him we were retiring. I told him I would talk to him outside. But he just opened the door and walked in and said we would talk inside. I’ll call up the police and have him arrested before he gets home, that’s what I’ll do. Then we’ll tell him we’ll release him when he tells where Joyce is. Perhaps he’s got her kidnapped somewhere. Perhaps he knows more than he’s willing to tell—!”
But while they were discussing it Darcy Sherwood was striding over the meadows and vaulting the fences back of their house, till he reached the public highway along which Joyce had walked the evening before.
CHAPTER VI
When Joyce felt her wrists clasped in that iron grip in the darkness, and felt the hot breath of a man on her face, she was more frightened than she had ever been in her life. All the stories of horrors in the night, of hold-ups and bandits and kidnappings came to her mind as she struggled vainly for a moment in that vise-like grip. She tried to scream, though she knew she was too far away from houses to reach the ear of any people who lived about unless some one happened to be going along that road; and people did not go along that road at night unless they had to. It was lonely and desolate, and out of the way from the main highway, a quiet remote place for the dead. She had a quick feeling of thankfulness that Aunt Mary who had always been so careful for her safety, so anxious when she was out alone at night, was where she could not be alarmed; a quick wish that she could call to her. Then the thought of God came and her heart cried for help.
The flashlight sprung in her face sent her almost swooning. She was conscious that her senses were going from her, and that she must somehow prevent herself from going out this way in the dark, and then up through the billows of blackness that were surging to envelop her soul she heard her own name in startled, almost tender tone:
“Joyce!”