It was a natural request and she turned naturally to do what he asked. But, even with her back turned, she knew that he had reached out swiftly for something that lay on the table, that he had thrust it out of sight under his pillow.
Mrs. Engle returned and Virginia, staying another minute, said good-by. As she went out she glanced down at the table. In her room she asked herself what it was that he had snatched and hidden. It seemed a strange thing to do and the question perplexed her; while she attached no importance to it, it was there like a pebble in one's shoe, refusing to be ignored.
That night, just as she was going to sleep, she knew. Out of a half doze she had visualized the table with its couple of bottles, a withering rose, a scrap of note-paper, a fountain pen. The pen . . . it was Patten's . . . had evidently leaked and had been wiped carelessly upon the sheet of paper, left lying with the paper half wrapped around it. She had noted carelessly a few scrawled words in Patten's slovenly hand. And she knew that it had been removed while she turned her back, removed by a hand which, in its haste, had slipped the pen with it under the pillow.
She went to sleep incensed with herself that she gave the matter another thought. But she kept asking herself what it was that Patten had written that Roderick Norton did not want her to read.
CHAPTER XIV
A FREE MAN
"I am a free man, if you please." The sheriff stood in the hotel doorway, looking down upon her as she sat in her favorite veranda chair. "I have given my keeper his fee and sent him away. May I watch you while you read?"
Virginia closed her book upon her knee and gave him a smile by way of welcome. He looked unusually tall as he stood in the broad, low entrance; his ten days of sickness and inactivity had made him gaunt and haggard.
"I shouldn't be reading in this light, anyway," she said. "I hadn't noticed that the sun was down. It is good to be what you call free again, isn't it?"