Rose O'Paradise Part 72

Jinnie thought quickly. What friends? She had no friends just then, and because she knew she was dependent upon him for her very life, she listened in despair as he threw a truth at her.

"The only friends you have're out of business! Lafe Grandoken will be electrocuted for murder----"

The hateful thing he had just said and the insistence in it maddened her. She covered her face with her hands and uttered a low cry.

"And Theodore King is in the hospital," went on Morse, mercilessly.

"It'll do no good for you to remember him."

She was too normally alive not to express the loving heart outraged within her.

"I shall love him as long as I live," she s.h.i.+vered between her fingers.

"h.e.l.l of a lot of good it'll do you," grunted the man coa.r.s.ely.

Keen anxiety empowered her to raise an anguished face.

"You want my money----" she hesitated. "Well, you can have it.... You want it, don't you?"

Her girlish helplessness made Morse feel that he was without heart or dignity, but he thought of his little boy and of how this girl was keeping from him the means to inst.i.tute a search for the child, and his desire for vengeance kindled to glowing fires of hate. He remembered that, steadily of late, he had grown to detest the whole child-world because of his own sorrow, and nodded acquiescence, supplementing the nod with a harsh:

"And, by G.o.d, I'm going to have it, too!"

"Then let me go back to Lafe's shop. I'll give you every cent I have.... I won't even ask for a dollar."

It took some time for Morse to digest this idea; then he slowly shook his head.

"You wouldn't be allowed to give me what would be mine----"

"If I die," breathed Jinnie, shocked. She had read his thought and blurted it forth.

"Yes, if you die. But I haven't any desire to kill you.... I have another way."

"What way? Oh, tell me!"

"Not now," drawled Morse. "Later perhaps."

The man contemplated the tips of his boots a minute. Then he looked at her, the meditative expression still in his eyes.

"To save your friends," he said at length, "you've got to do what I want you to."

"You mean--to save Lafe?" gasped Jinnie, eagerly.

Morse gave a negative gesture.

"No, not him. The cobbler's got to go. _He knows too much about me._"

Jinnie thought of Lafe, who loved and helped everybody within helping distance, of his wonderful faith and patience, of the day they had arrested him, and his last words.

She could not plan for herself nor think of her danger, only of the cobbler, her friend,----the man who had taken her, a little forlorn fugitive, when she had possessed no home of her own--he who had taught her about the angels and the tenderness of Jesus. From her uncle's last statement she had received an impression that he knew who had fired those shots. He could have Lafe released if he would. She would beg for the cobbler's life, beg as she had never begged before.

"Please, please, listen," she implored, throwing out her hands. "You must! You must! Lafe's always been so good. Won't you let him live?...

I'll tell him about your wanting the money.... You shall have it! I'll make any promise for him you want me to, and he'll keep it.... He didn't kill Maudlin Bates, and I believe you know who did."

Morse lowered his lids until his eyes looked like grey slits across his face.

"Supposing I do," he taunted. "As I've said, Grandoken knows too much about me. He won't be the first one I've put out of my way."

He said this emphatically; he would teach her he was not to be thwarted; that when he desired anything, Heaven and earth, figuratively speaking, would have to move. He frowned darkly at her as Jinnie cut in swiftly:

"You killed my father. He told me you did."

Morse flicked an ash from a cigar he had lighted, and his eyes grew hard, like rocks in a cold, gray dawn.

"So you know all my little indiscretions, eh?" he gritted. "Then don't you see I can't give you--your liberty?"

Liberty! What did he mean by taking her liberty away? She asked him with beating heart.

"Just this, my dear child," he advanced mockingly. "There are places where people're taken care of and--the world thinks them dead. In fact, your father had a taste of what I can do. Only he happened to----"

"Did you put him somewhere?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Same kind of a place I'm going to put you----" He hesitated a moment and ended, "A mad house!"

"Did you let him come home to me?"

"Not I. d.a.m.n the careless keepers! He skipped out one day, and I didn't know until he'd a good start of me. I followed as soon as possible, but you were gone. Now--now--then, to find _such_ a place for you!"

Jinnie's imagination called up the loathsome thing he mentioned and terrified her to numbness. At that moment she understood what her father had written in that sealed letter to Lafe Grandoken.

But she couldn't allow her mind to dwell upon his threat against herself.

"What'd you mean when you said I could save my friends?"

"You're fond of Mrs. Grandoken, aren't you?"

Jinnie nodded, trying to swallow a lump in her throat.

"And--and there's a--a--blind child too--who could be hurt easily."

Jinnie's living world reeled before her eyes. During this speech she had lost every vestige of color. She sprang toward him and her fingers went blue-white from the force of her grip on his arm.

"Oh, you couldn't, you wouldn't hurt poor little Bobbie?" she cried hysterically. "He can't see and he's sick, terribly ill all the time.

I'll do anything you say--anything to help 'em."