"I tell you I don't like it. I didn't want to do it. It was Alden's idea—would have it that way. Frankly I don't make it out, but maybe, being on the spot, he knows best."
"There's something here," she said, "that we can't understand—maybe something big. It isn't fair to Jim."
The inspector looked up slyly.
"Jim," he said, "can take care of himself if anybody can. Seems to me you're pretty anxious. Sure you haven't anything to tell me about you and him? If you had, I might make a place for him watching these ten-cent lunch joints to see that customers didn't carry away the hardware and crockery. Then all the danger you'd have to worry about would be that he might eat the food."
But Nora failed to smile. She glanced away, shaking her head.
"I've nothing to tell you, father," she answered. "Nothing now. I don't know. Honestly I don't know. I only know I've been through one such experience, and if anything happened to Jim that I could help, I'd never forgive myself."
CHAPTER VIII
THROUGH THE DARK
The night had gathered swiftly behind a curtain of rain. Garth, glancing out the window of the train, saw that darkness was already close upon a somber and resentful world. Pines, hemlocks, and birches stretched limitlessly. The rain clung to their drooping branches like tears, so that they expressed an attitude of mourning which their color clothed convincingly. The roaring of the train was subdued, as if it hesitated to disturb the oppressive silence through which it passed.