Dangerous Days Part 75

He put a hand out into the darkness, and finding her, tried to draw her to him. She struggled, and he released her. All at once she knew that he was weak with fright. The bravado had died out of him. The face she had touched was covered with a clammy sweat.

"I wish to G.o.d Herman would come."

"What d' you want with him?"

"Have you got any whisky?"

"You've had enough of that stuff."

Some one was walking along the street outside. She felt that he was listening, crouched ready to run; but the steps went on.

"Look here, Anna," he said, when he had pulled himself together again.

"I'm going to get out of this. I'm going away."

"All right. You can go for all of me."

"D'you mean to say you've been asleep all night? You didn't hear anything?"

"Hear what?"

He laughed.

"You'll know soon enough." Then he told her, hurriedly, that he was going away. He'd come back to get her to promise to follow him. He wasn't going to stay here and--

"And what?"

"And be drafted," he finished, rather lamely.

"Gus has a friend in a town on the Mexican border," he said. "He's got maps of the country to Mexico City, and the Germans there fix you up all right. I'll get rich down there and some day I'll send for you? What's that?"

He darted to the window, faintly outlined by a distant street-lamp.

Three men were standing quietly outside the gate, and a fourth was already in the garden, silently moving toward the house. She felt Rudolph brush by her, and the trembling hand he laid on her arm.

"Now lie!" he whispered fiercely. "You haven't seen me. I haven't been here to-night."

Then he was gone. She ran to the window. The other three men were coming in, moving watchfully and slowly, and Rudolph was at Katie's window, cursing. If she was a prisoner, so was Rudolph. He realized that instantly, and she heard him breaking out the sash with a chair. At the sound the three figures broke into a run, and she heard the sash give way. Almost instantly there was firing. The first shot was close, and she knew it was Rudolph firing from the window. Some wild design of braining him from behind with a chair flashed into her desperate mind, but when she had felt her way into Katie's room he had gone. The garden below was quiet, but there was yelling and the crackling of underbrush from the hill-side. Then a scattering of shots again, and silence. The yard was empty.

The hill paid but moderate attention to shots. They were usually merely pyrotechnic, and indicated rejoicing rather than death. But here and there she heard a window raised, and then lowered again. The hill had gone back to bed. Anna went into her room and dressed. For the first time it had occurred to her that she might be held by the police, and the thought was unbearable. It was when she was making her escape that she found a prostrate figure in the yard, and knew that one of Rudolph's shots had gone home. She could not go away and leave that, not unless--A terrible hatred of Herman and Rudolph and all their kind suddenly swept over her. She would not run away. She would stay and tell all the terrible truth. It was her big moment, and she rose to it. She would see it through. What was her own safety to letting this band of murderers escape? And all that in the few seconds it took to reach the fallen figure. It was only when she was very close that she saw it was moving.

"Tell Dunbar he went to the left," a voice was saying. "The left!

They'll lose him yet."

"Joey!"

"h.e.l.lo," said Joey's voice. He considered that he was speaking very loud, but it was hardly more than a whisper. "That wasn't your father, was it? The old boy couldn't jump and run like that."

"Are you hurt?"

He coughed a little, a gurgling cough that rather startled himself. But he was determined to be a man.

"No. I just lay down here for a nap. Who was it that jumped?"

"My cousin Rudolph. Do you think I can help you into the house?"

"I'll walk there myself in a minute. Unless your cousin Rudolph--" His head dropped back on her arm. "I feel sort of all in." His voice trailed off.

"Joey!"

"Lemme alone," he muttered. "I'm the first casualty in the American army! I--" He made a desperate effort to speak in a man's voice, but the higher boyish notes of sixteen conquered. "They certainly gave us h.e.l.l to-night. But we're going to build again; me and--Clayton Spen--"

All at once he was very still. Anna spoke to him and, that failing, gave him a frantic little shake. But Joey had gone to another partners.h.i.+p beyond the stars.

CHAPTER XLIV

The immediate outstanding result of the holocaust at the munitions works was the end of Natalie's dominion aver Graham. She never quite forgave him the violence with which he threw off her shackles.

"If I'd been half a man I'd have been over there long ago," he said, standing before her, tall and young and flushed. "I'd have learned my job by now, and I'd be worth something, now I'm needed."

"And broken my heart."

"Hearts don't break that way, mother."

"Well, you say you are going now. I should think you'd be satisfied.

There's plenty of time for you to get the glory you want."

"Glory! I don't want any glory. And as for plenty of time--that's exactly what there isn't."

During the next few days she preserved an obstinate silence on the subject. She knew he had been admitted to one of the officers'

training-camps, and that he was making rather helpless and puzzled purchases. Going into his room she would find a dressing-case of khaki leather, perhaps, or flannel s.h.i.+rts of the same indeterminate hue. She would shed futile tears over them, and order them put out of sight. But she never offered to a.s.sist him.

Graham was older, in many ways. He no longer ran up and down the stairs whistling, and he sought every opportunity to be with his father. They spent long hours together in the library, when, after a crowded day, filled with the thousand, problems of reconstructions, Clayton smoked a great deal, talked a little, rather shame-facedly after the manner of men, of personal responsibility in the war, and quietly watched the man who was Graham.

Out of those quiet hours, with Natalie at the theater or reading up-stairs in bed, Clayton got the greatest comfort of his life. He would neither look back nor peer anxiously ahead.

The past, with its tragedy, was gone. The future might hold even worse things. But just now he would live each day as it came, working to the utmost, and giving his evenings to his boy. The nights were the worst.

He was not sleeping well, and in those long hours of quiet he tried to rebuild his life along stronger, sterner lines. Love could have no place in it, but there was work left. He was strong and he was still young.

The country should have every ounce of energy in him. He would re-build the plant, on bigger lines than before, and when that was done, he would build again. The best he could do was not enough.

He scarcely noticed Natalie's withdrawal from Graham and himself. When she was around he was his old punctilious self, gravely kind, more than ever considerate. Beside his failure to her, her own failure to him faded into insignificance. She was as she was, and through no fault of hers. But he was what he had made himself.

Once or twice he had felt an overwhelming remorse toward her, and on one such occasion he had made a useless effort to break down the barrier of her long silence.

"Don't go up-stairs, Natalie," he had begged. "I am not very amusing, I know, but--I'll try my best. I'll promise not to touch on anything disagreeable." He had been standing in the hail, looking up at her on the stair-case, and he smiled. There was pleading behind the smile, an inarticulate feeling that between them there might at least be friends.h.i.+p.

"You are never disagreeable," she had said, looking down with hostile eyes. "You are quite perfect."