“You don't expect me to believe that. You have no case against me now.”
“I grant you that. And I can promise you that you won't be detained more than a few days at the outside. But this business has passed up out of my hands now. All I can do is to deliver you up, make my report, and set the machinery in motion for your release.”
Dick sat motionless, gazing into the shadows before him. “What right had you to let Pink go, then?”
“That was different.”
“How?—How?”
“Nobody ever looked on Harper as of any importance in the business.”
“That is no answer. You're holding me on a technicality. The importance of the man makes no difference when you are dealing in red tape.”
“See here, Smiley, don't you think you had better stop abusing me, and take a sensible view of it?”
As he spoke, they were crossing State Street, and the brighter light illuminated the interior of the carriage. For reply, Dick turned and looked at his custodian, looked him through and through with a gaze of profound contempt. Words were not necessary; Beveridge saw that Dick had fathomed his motives, Dick saw that he was understood. At the moment neither was thinking of the gloomy city that was closing in around them; for both saw the wide, free beach, the gleaming lake, the two long piers, the quaint little house on stilts, the upper balcony with its burden of forget-me-nots and geraniums and all the blossoms that Annie loved. And both had in their nostrils the refreshing smell of the east wind—made up of all the faint mingled odors of Lake Michigan—a little pine in it, a little fish in it, but, more than all, the health and strength and wholesome sweetness of the Lakes. And both were silent while the carriage rattled along, while they stepped out, crossed the walk, and entered a stone building with barred windows, while, with Beveridge on one side and a guard on the other, Dick walked to his cell.
Beveridge caught the half-past eight train for Lakeville the next morning, and walked straight down to the house on stilts. Annie was out on the lake, her mother said, looking at him, while she said it, and after, with doubtful, questioning eyes. So he sat down on the steps and looked out over the beach and the water. It was a fine warm day, with just breeze enough to ripple, the lake from shore to horizon, and set it sparkling in the sun. The sky was blue and white; and the cloud shadows here and there on the water took varied and varying colors—deep blue, yellow, sea-green. The shore-line dwindled off to the northward in long scallops, every line of the yellow beach cut out cleanly, every oak on the bluff outlined sharply. In truth, it was a glorious day—just the day Beveridge would have chosen had the choice been his—the day of days, on which he was to make the last arrangements in clinching his success, in assuring his future. Annie had gone out to the nets with her father. She was, at the moment, rowing him in. On other days Beveridge had sat here and watched her coming in from the nets, with a great box of whitefish aboard.