“Put that book on the table.” He hesitated, meditating a spring through the doorway. “When I count three! One!...” With a muttered curse he took the code from the suit-case.
“Empty your pockets!”
There was no mistaking the expression in her eyes. He emptied his pockets.
“Now—go! Without the suit-case!”
“Barbara! You would haf me leave you! Like this!” Her face was colourless, in her eyes a brooding horror, a dazed consciousness of that motionless body on the floor behind the table.
“My people fought at Lexington and Concord—for principles dearer than life to them. You swore allegiance to those principles, to their flag. And you are—this! You’ve murdered our loyal friend—when he was giving a traitor a chance, at great personal risk! Go! Quickly!”
As the front door slammed she ran to the window, watched him down the block. A man who did such things might return later, catch her unarmed, secure the papers. Her brain worked automatically. There was no safe place to conceal them. They must be destroyed at once! Tearing the book to pieces, she piled the leaves upon the andirons in the fireplace with the other papers, then lighted the heap. When they were entirely destroyed a patter of footsteps echoed from the stairs; a little figure in pajamas came peeking around the portière. (A thrill of passionate thankfulness ran through her that he resembled her people, with no trace of the alien blood.)
“Mo-ther! What was that big noise?”
“Possibly some one’s automobile, dear—a blowout or a back-fire, you know.” She forced herself to speak quietly, standing so that he couldn’t look behind the table.
“Mo-ther, who was down here wiv you?”