Held to Answer: A Novel

by Peter Clark MacFarlane

In the excitement of the moment when Hampstead had brought in the money that saved him from being a defaulter, and in the disconcerting presence of J.M. and Parma, when he wanted to be alone with his benefactor, and especially with the more disconcerting instruction to go out and look after the transfers, he had, for the time being, forgotten the key. Now it was not to be found.

Rollie stood nonplussed first, and then aghast. His guilty conscience instantly suggested that some one had seen or suspected his visit to the vault and what had occurred there. This idea brought a rush of blood to the head. He was dizzy and had almost an attack of vertigo. Yet with a few clearing minutes of thought, the explanation leaped plainly into mind. Doctor Hampstead had taken the key. In the interval while Rollie was at the teller's window, he must have seen it lying there upon the desk, recognized it by the red rubber band, and having been assured that the key had served its purpose, had done the perfectly natural thing of dropping it in his pocket, and thinking no more of it.

Where was the minister now? Until Rollie could find him and get the key, he could make no confession to Miss Dounay.

CHAPTER XXVI

UNEXPECTEDLY EASY

Following his instincts rather than any rule of sense, Rollie hurried out upon the street, posted himself upon a conspicuous corner, and for several minutes indulged the wildly improbable hope that he might spy the minister passing in the throng. When a little reflection had convinced him that this was time wasted, he made a hasty inventory of near-by places where his benefactor might have gone, and even went so far as to hurriedly visit two of them, threading the tables of the Forum Café, where sometimes Hampstead ate his luncheon, and scanning the chairs in the St. Albans barber shop, where from time to time the dominie's tawny fleece was shorn.

But by this time a new probability forced itself into the distracted young man's consciousness. This was that the minister had gone to pay his sympathetic respects to Miss Dounay and condole with her over her loss. Rollie was so near the Dounay apartment that to go upstairs and inquire if the minister were there would have been easy, but the peculiar circumstances made it difficult. Indeed only to recall how near he was to that fearsome lair of the tigress threw him into cold shivers and made him fly to the safer vantage ground of the telephone upon his own desk at the bank. But even merely to inquire for the Reverend John Hampstead from there was hard. In his nervous state, depleted by gloomy forebodings and now unfortified by the possession of the diamonds, Rollie felt utterly unequal to even a long-distance contact with that high-powered personality. All the morning he had been in terror lest she herself should call him up. All the morning he had known that in his character as an interested friend he should have telephoned to her. Now, the moment she recognized his voice, he would be taxed with this breach! What was he to say? Why, that he had not telephoned because he was intending to call in at the first moment he could get away from the bank, and that he would be up very soon now. She would be sarcastic, but the explanation would positively have to do. Besides, he had to locate the minister! and so, struggling to command a tone of indifference, he gave the St. Albans number.

Of course Julie or the secretary would answer, anyway. But evidently Miss Dounay, in her highly aroused mental state, was keeping an ear upon the telephone bell, for it was her own animated note that rasped at him through the instrument. It appeared, mercifully, that she did not recognize his voice,—a fact which at first relieved him, but on later reflection, at the conclusion of the incident, shook his remaining self-confidence still further to pieces, for it showed how completely out of hand he had allowed himself to get.

When, moreover, Rollie launched his timid inquiry if the Reverend John Hampstead was there, he got a negative so sharp that the receiver seemed to bite his ear. He broke the connection hastily and sat eyeing the telephone apprehensively, expecting the mouthpiece to open like a solemn eye, scan him inquiringly, and report to Miss Dounay. When it did not, he shrugged his shoulders and elongated his neck to get rid of that noose-like feeling which had just come upon him from nowhere. He had not killed anybody. What was the noose for, then? But this reflection got a most disagreeable answer: "It would kill your mother to know you are an embezzler and a thief. You would then be her murderer." Again he shrugged himself free of the distasteful sensation. "Buck up, Burbeck," he commanded himself, "or you are done for." Once more he grabbed the telephone, and this time more determinedly, for in the midst of his misery one really first-class inspiration had come to him: this was to communicate with the county jail. The minister was really much more likely to have friends in the county jail than in the St. Albans; and it was a safe wager that he went there more frequently. Rollie knew the jailer well.

"Hello—Sam," he called. "This is Rollie. Has Doctor Hampstead been there this morning?"