“There are detectives watching Marshall; we saw one to-day at the hotel. If the jury disagrees—and the lawyers think they will—they will arrest him.”
I thought it probable. There was nothing I could say. McWhirter made an effort to reassure her.
“It wouldn’t be a hanging matter, anyhow,” he said. “There’s a lot against him, but hardly a jury in the country would hang a man for something he did, if he could prove he was delirious the next day.” She paled at this dubious comfort, but it struck her sense of humor, too, for she threw me a fleeting smile.
“I was to ask you to do something,” she said. “None of us can, for we are being watched. I was probably followed here. The Ella is still in the river, with only a watchman on board. We want you to go there to-night, if you can.”
“To the Ella?”
She was feeling in her pocketbook, and now she held out to me an envelope addressed in a sprawling hand to Mr. Turner at his hotel.
“Am I to open it?”
“Please.”
I unfolded a sheet of ruled note-paper of the most ordinary variety. It had been opened and laid flat, and on it, in black ink, was a crude drawing of the deck of the Ella, as one would look down on it from aloft. Here and there were small crosses in red ink, and, overlying it all from bow to stern, a red axe. Around the border, not written, but printed in childish letters, were the words: “NOT YET. HA, HA.” In a corner was a drawing of a gallows, or what passes in the everyday mind for a gallows, and in the opposite corner an open book.
“You see,” she said, “it was mailed downtown late this afternoon. The hotel got it at seven o’clock. Marshall wanted to get a detective, but I thought of you. I knew—you knew the boat, and then—you had said—”