The girl wrenched at the handle, and I noticed by the creaking of the bureau how strong, in spite of her slenderness, she was. The lock would not yield, and she turned imperiously to me. "Don't waste a moment, but smash that drawer in!"
"It is a beautiful piece of maple, and why do you wish to destroy it?" I said, and, for she had a high spirit, fancied Lucille Haldane came near stamping one little foot impatiently.
"Can you not do the first thing I ask you without asking questions?" she said.
There was nothing more to be said, and stooping for the poker, I whirled it around my head. One end of the bar doubled on itself, but the front of the drawer crushed in, and when I had wrenched out the fragments, Lucille drew forth the book.
"I know what my father promised, and there is Miss Redmond to consider. She has suffered too much already," she said, tearing out whole pages in hot hurry. "Sergeant Mackay is much less foolish than I once heard you call him, and I have no doubt suspects something of this. Can't you see that he could force us to give the papers up? I am going to burn them."
"That at least you shall not do," I said, taking them from her with as much gentleness as possible, but by superior force, and then positively quailed before the anger and astonishment in the girl's face.
"You are still so afraid of Lane that you would risk bringing fresh sorrow on that poor girl in order to protect yourself?" she said, with biting scorn.
"No," I answered stolidly, without pausing for reflection. "I only wish to declare it was I who destroyed this evidence, if there is any trouble over the affair."
I tore the book to pieces and rammed the fragments deep among the burning logs as I spoke, and when this was accomplished I did not look up until Lucille Haldane called me by name. Gentle as she could be, I had a wholesome respect for her wrath.
"I deserved it," she said, with a bewitching deepening of the crimson in her cheeks and a shining in her eyes. "You will forgive me. I had not time to think."