How thankful she was now that she had at last written and posted that long-deferred letter to the agent. Here, surely, was a clue to be followed—she had quite forgotten, in the first whirlwind of her distress, the second letter which reached her in the Twenty-seventh Street lodgings, but pinned her faith to the fact that her own note concerning the appointment “near East Orange” was in existence.
Perhaps her sweetheart was already rushing over every road in the place and making exhaustive inquiries about her. It was possible that he had passed Gateway House more than once. He might have seen amid the trees the tall chimneys of the very jail against whose iron bars her spirit was fluttering in fearful hope. Oh, why was she not endowed with that power she had read of, whose fortunate possessors could leap time and space in their astral subconsciousness and make known their thoughts and wishes to those dear to them?
She even smiled at the conceit that a true wireless telegraphy did exist between Carshaw and herself. Daily, nightly, she thought of him and he of her. But their alphabet was lacking; they could utter only the thrilling language of love, which is not bound by such earthly things as signs and symbols.
Yet was she utterly confident, and her demeanor rendered Rachel Craik more and more suspicious. Since the girl had scornfully disowned her kinship, the elder woman had not made further protest on that score. She frankly behaved as a wardress in a prison, and Winifred as frankly accepted the rôle of prisoner. There remained Mick the Wolf. Under the circumstances, no doctor or professional nurse could be brought to attend his injured arm. The broken limb had of course been properly set after the accident, but it required skilled dressing daily, and this Winifred undertook. She had no real knowledge of the subject, but her willingness to help, joined to the instruction given by the man himself, achieved her object.
It was well-nigh impossible for this rough, callous rogue, brought in contact with such a girl for the first time in his life, to resist her influence. She did not know it, but gradually she was winning him to her side. He swore at her as the cause of his suffering, yet found himself regretting even the passive part he was taking in her imprisonment.
On the very Sunday evening that Voles and Fowle were concocting their vile and mysterious scheme, Mick the Wolf, their trusted associate, partner of Voles in many a desperate enterprise in other lands, was sitting in an armchair up-stairs listening to Winifred reading from a book she had found in her bedroom. It was some simple story of love and adventure, and certainly its author had never dreamed that his exciting situations would be perused under conditions as dramatic as any pictured in the novel.
“It’s a queer thing,” said the man after a pause, when Winifred stopped to light a lamp, “but nobody pipin’ us just now ’ud think we was what we are.”
She laughed at the involved sentence. “I don’t think you are half so bad as you think you are, Mr. Grey,” she said softly. “For my part, I am happy in the belief that my friends will not desert me.”
“Lookut here,” he said with gruff sympathy, “why don’t you pull with your people instead of ag’in’ ’em. I know what I’m talkin’ about. This yer Voles—but, steady! Mebbe I best shut up.”