MACARTNEY HEARS A NOISE: AND I FIND FOUR DEAD MEN
We must have stood silent for a good three minutes. I think I was furious because Paulette did not speak to me. I said, "You're not to go—you're never to go and meet Hutton again, as long as you live!" And for the first time I saw my dream girl flinch from me.
"What?" she gasped so low I could hardly hear. "You know that? What am I going to do? My God, what am I going to do?"
"You're coming back into the shack with me!" We were on the blind side of the house for Marcia and Dudley, but we were in plain view from Charliet's window, and I was not going to have even a cook look out and see Paulette talking to a man in the middle of the night. Her despair cut me; I had never seen her anything but valiant before, and I had a lump in my throat. But I spoke roughly enough. "I didn't know the whole of things till to-night, but now I do, you'll have to trust me. Can't you see I mean to do all I can to help you—and Dudley?" If it were tough to have to add Dudley I did it. But I felt her start furiously.
"Dudley?" she repeated almost scornfully. "Nobody can help Dudley but me—and there's only one way! Mr. Stretton, I promise you I'll never ask again, but—for God's sake let me go to meet Dick Hutton to-night!"
"Not blindly," said I brutally. "If you tell me why, perhaps—but we can't talk here. If you'll come into the house and trust me about what you want to do, I may let you go—just this once—if I think it's the right way!"
"I've only half an hour before it's too late—for any way!" But she turned under the hand I had never lifted from her arm.
I led her noiselessly into the office. I was afraid of the living room. Marcia might come back to it for a book or something. No one but Dudley ever went near the office, and he was safely dead to the world, judging from the horn of whisky he had gone to bed on. The place was freezing, for the inside sash was up, leaving only the double window between us and the night; and it was black-dark too, with the moon on the other side of the house. But there were more things than love to talk about in the dark,—to a dream girl you would give your soul to call your own, and know you never will. And I began bluntly, "You've never had any reason to distrust me. I've helped you——"
"Three times," sharply. "I know. I've been—grateful."
It was four, counting to-night when I had warned her to hide her signature from Macartney; but I was not picking at trifles. I said: "Well, I've trusted you, too! I knew the first night I came back here that you were meeting some man secretly, in the dark. But it was none of my business and I held my tongue about it; then, and when you met him again—when it was my business."