A sudden loud rapping at the door, however, startled us all out of our tempest of pain into a common alertness. I glanced at the huddled form of Randolph, at the still quivering figure of Alicia.
"I'll see who it is!" I muttered, moving toward the hall. Alicia stood for a moment irresolute, and then ran out behind me and disappeared in the darkened dining room.
"What," it flashed through my mind as I unlocked the door, "what if Pendleton was caught—the father of Laura's children, snatched like the thief he was, in his flight?"
And I felt the prickling sensation of sweat against my clothes as I swung open the door.
The mounted policeman, Halloran, was looming in the doorway. He was clutching by the arm a hulking figure in a shabby top coat, a man, a man panting like a beast, who was shrinkingly, miserably averting his face from the light.
"I saw this man running away from your house just now," began Halloran briskly. "Mighty suspicious, he looked—running away this hour of the night. Picked him up—to see if they was anything wrong."
I peered at the indistinct features of the man.
It was the dissipated ashen-white, almost leprous face of Pendleton.
With an incredible swiftness I felt my mental machinery working. Something must be done. All hate of him and all fear of him vanished from my mind before a faint lucid beam of a sort of indolent humor.
"That you, Jim?" I queried, peering more closely. "Hello, Jim!" I greeted him in a jocund undertone, bringing my voice round, with a great effort, to a pitch of naturalness.