Instead of entering his own lodgings, he crossed the road, and paused at the Brunells’ gate. Something forlorn and desolate in the atmosphere of the little home seemed to clutch at his heart, and on a swift impulse he strode up the path, ascended the steps of the porch and peered in the window of the living-room. Everything in the usually orderly room was topsy-turvy, and everywhere there was evidence of hurried flight. From where he stood the desk––her desk––was plainly visible, its ransacked drawers pulled open, the floor before it strewn with torn and scattered papers. Its top was bare, amid the surrounding litter, and even his photograph which he had recently given her, and which usually stood there in the little frame she had made for it with her own hands, was gone.
A chill settled about his heart. Had Brunell been captured, and police detectives searched the house, his picture could hold no interest for them. Had the old forger fled alone, he would not have taken so insignificant an object from among all his household goods and chattels. Emily alone would have paused to save the photograph of the man she loved from the wreckage of her home; Emily, too, had gone!
Scarcely knowing what he was doing, and caring less, Morrow rushed across the street, and descended upon Mrs. Quinlan, his landlady, at her post in the kitchen.
“What’s happened to the Brunells?” he demanded breathlessly.
“Land’s sakes, but you scared me, Mr. Morrow!” Mrs. Quinlan turned from the stove with a hurried start, and wiped her plump, steaming face on her apron. “I should like to know what’s happened myself. All I do know is that they’ve gone bag and baggage––or as much of it as they could carry with them––and never; a word to a soul except what Emily ran across to say to me.”
“What was it?” he fairly shouted at her. But there were few interests in Mrs. Quinlan’s humdrum existence, and seldom did she have an exciting incident to relate and an eager audience to hang upon her words. She sat down ponderously and prepared to make the most of the present occasion.
“I thought it was funny to see a man goin’ into their yard at five o’clock this mornin’, but my tooth was so bad I forgot all about him and it never come into my mind again until I seen them goin’ away. I sleep in the room just over yours, you know, Mr. Morrow, an’ my tooth ached so bad I couldn’t sleep. It was five by my clock when I got up to come down here an’ get some hot vinegar, an’ I don’t know what made me look out my winder, but I did. I seen a man come running down the lane, keepin’ well in the shaders, an’ looking back as if he was afraid he was bein’ chased, for all the world like a thief. While I looked, he turned in the Brunells’ yard an’ instead of knocking on the door, he began throwin’ pebbles up at the old man’s bedroom winder. Pretty soon it opened and Mr. Brunell looked out. Then he come down quick an’ met the man at the front door. They talked a minute, an’ the feller handed over somethin’ that showed white in the light of the street 191 lamp, like a piece of paper. Mr. Brunell shut the door an’ the man ran off the way he had come. I come down an’ got my hot vinegar an’ when I got back to my room I seen there were lights in Mr. Brunell’s room an’ Emily’s, an’ one in the livin’-room, too, but my tooth was jumpin’ so I went straight to bed. About half an hour after you’d left for business I was shakin’ a rug out of the front sittin’-room winder, when Emily come runnin’ across the street.
“‘Oh, Mrs. Quinlan!’ she calls to me, an’ I see she’d been cryin’. ‘Mrs. Quinlan, we’re goin’ away!’
“‘For good?’ I asked.