Daphne Deane (22 page)

"Yes, thank you, Don," said Daphne, her lips white and stiff with the sudden shock. And then looking up at him with the horror of it all still in her eyes: "Who--who--
did
it, Don? Do they know?"

"Well, they aren't sure yet, of course, but I heard one of the cops talking to another while we were waiting for the stretcher. He said they'd found part of a counterfeiting machine in the cellar, and they believe it belongs to the outfit the federal government's been trying to trace for the last six months. An outfit that has been operating out west somewhere and suddenly disappeared from there when they almost had their fingers on them. It seems there's been a lot of counterfeit money passing around, and they couldn't trace it. It's so good it's hard to tell, and these hotshots had covered their tracks so well that the police just couldn't catch them. It seems their stuff, great heavy machines, just disappeared in the night, as if they were wiped off the face of the earth."

"Oh, Don!" said Daphne, sudden comprehension in her eyes. "I've been hearing such strange noises over there almost every night lately--"

"Same here! Daffy, did you hear those, too? Shucks! I hoped you didn't. I didn't want you ta worry."

"Oh, Don, I almost told you about it once, but then I thought you might laugh at me for seeing and hearing things. We ought to have let the police know."

"You mean you heard that truck sliding into the drive over there about three a.m. and then slipping down the hill like a thief afterward? Sure I heard it, and a couple of times I got up and went out to investigate, but the trouble was, I was always too late. They were just slipping away when I arrived on the scene. I guess I should have reported it, but I couldn't find any definite evidence and I thought they'd take me for a fool."

"Oh, Don! You might have been shot, too!" said Daphne, sudden tears in her eyes. "But, did they catch the men? There were more than one, I'm sure, for just before the shot I saw a light in the open cellar door, and I distinctly saw two figures carrying something between them. That must have been a part of their machinery. Did they get away? I couldn't tell, for I had to call you when I heard the groan, and when I got back to the window the truck was slipping away in the dark."

"They got away," said Donald grimly. "But they didn't get all the machinery. There's a lot of it. Some of their counterfeit money, too, they said, but they haven't had time to see everything yet. What gets me is how they got all that stuff here and into that cellar without our getting onto it sooner."

"It can't have been there long," said Daphne, "because Keith Morrell went down to the cellar and looked all around the day he was here."

"He
did
?" said Donald. "Well, that's something the police should know."

"But how was it the police were there at all?" asked the girl, standing by the kitchen table to steady herself, trying to control the trembling that had seized her.

"Why, they said two or three phone calls came, I guess yours was one, and then Miss Lynd gave them information about a man jumping on a truck that went by her house."

"She did!" said Daphne. "Poor Miss Lynd! I'm afraid she'll be sick, staying awake at night so much, and all this excitement. But listen, there's somebody at the front door."

"That'll be the surgeon. I'll go." Don hurried away, and Daphne dropped down in a chair for a minute putting her head down on her arms on the kitchen table. She felt dizzy and sick. It seemed as if she could not face this thing that had happened. Keith Morrell shot, and perhaps dying, here in their house! She felt as if all the foundations of the earth were broken up.

She brushed the tears fiercely away and got up. The coffee had begun to bubble in the percolator. She must attend to that and try to forget what was going on upstairs.

She busied herself getting cups and arranging the table for the doctors when they should need it, and all the time her heart was heavy like lead. She must not,
must
not give way like this. It wasn't seemly. The young man who lay dying upstairs was nothing, absolutely nothing to her, and she should have no interest in him beyond the kindly interest one neighbor would have in another. Yet she could not get away from the bright memory of his face that day he spent with her, washing curtains and rambling through his old home. She could not forget the touch of his hand over hers down in the sun-warmed earth of the garden.

Beverly stole down and came shivering to her arms. The little girl was frightened and could not go back to sleep. She had been startled from deep slumber and was filled with terror over the fragments she had caught here and there.

"Who is it, sister? Is it a gangster that was shot? And did the police shoot him? And will he perhaps wake up and shoot us all?" she asked with wide eyes of horror.

Daphne gathered her into her arms, commanding a smile of comfort that she was far from feeling.

"No, dear. It was not a gangster that was shot. It was our friend Mr. Morrell. There were some bad men in his cellar. They had a machine there to make counterfeit money and try to cheat people, and when they heard him trying to get into his house they shot him and ran away. We think that was the way it happened. We don't know everything about it yet. But you needn't be afraid of any gangsters coming here. They ran away as fast as they could. They were afraid of the policemen."

"Do you mean it was our Mr. Morrell got shotted?" asked the little girl, curling down, shuddering into her sister's arms.

"Yes," said Daphne sadly, "
our
Mr. Morrell." It somehow gave her a bit of comfort to say it that way.

"Will he die?"

"We don't know anything about it yet, dearie. We'll have to wait till the doctors are done examining him."

Then came Don's voice calling guardedly down the back stairs: "Daphne, Mother wants you up here quick! She wants you to get a roll of linen cloth for her."

"Run quick, and get into bed, dearie," Daphne whispered to the little girl, and then she went swiftly to do her mother's bidding, glad that she might be of a little service in this trying time.

Meantime through the night, the dark truck had forgotten its stealthy ways and was speeding at a thunderous pace, turning sharp corners, trying to lose itself in a labyrinth of devious back roads. And three miles behind a posse of motorcycles was storming after it, sending scouts out at every byroad.

Back in Rosedale word had gone out everywhere, and all the main highways were watched. The radio was doing its part, too, to draw the net about the escaping criminals. Even in the black truck the word was being voiced, so that the men who drove it desperately were aware of every move against them, except insomuch as the directions to officers and scouting cars could be given in code.

"Car number forty-seven proceed to seventy-two; forty-nine, watch for black truck, no lights, no license plates--"

"Gem, you get out that third license plate, Californy, an' hitch her on the back," growled the thickset man with a gun who sat alert beside the driver. "No, you can't have no light, and you can't stop. You gotta hang her on while we're goin'. Guess you druther do that little act than be a dead man, wouldn't ya? Don't be a baby! Kits, you put the other plate on the front somehow."

On they went farther and farther from Rosedale, with yet more widening circles of followers hot upon their heels. The great piece of machine, which they had managed to get away with in their hasty exit from the cellar refuge, kept rumbling and rattling grimly.

"There they come!" warned the man at the back, straightening up from his dangerous task. "Lights thick as berries! Be here in five minutes. Better duck somewhere quick."

"Drive in this woods, Bunny!" said the chief.

" 'Thout any lights? You can't do that!"

"Sure you can. Climb a tree, anything, and make it snappy! Then we duck behind the press and shoot 'em up as they come. That'll give us a chance to get by the highway, an' then they can't catch us no matter how. We'll shift to Lonnie's truck an' go on like lords, with a truck load o' hay, see? Get over the border by daybreak inta Canada."

"We can't make it!"

"Who says can't?" And the cold steel of a gun touched the temple of the objector and brought forth a nervous laugh.

"All cars District 459 surround Gleason's woods!" came the order from the radio, turned as low as possible.

The chief started.

"We gotta get outta here! That's too many."

"We can't!" said the driver. "There's three motorcycles on the only road."

"We gotta give up the ship!"

"Go on foot? Get taken in cold blood?
Not me!
"

"Yes,
you
!
Start!
" And a cold steel rod touched the back of the man's neck.

"Remember! No squealing! Even if yer taken, keep mum! You'll get yours if you squeal!"

The sound of their hurried footsteps died away among the trees, but the forgotten radio went on: "--all cars! Calling all cars--"

"There's the truck," pointed out one officer holding up his flashlight, "but the birds have flown. Get busy, men!"

That was a night not ever to be forgotten by those who lived through it. The anxious hours dragged by unnoticed as those in the Deane household waited, breathless, watching the faces of the doctors, and the nurse who soon arrived.

Daphne, unable to lie down and sleep when there was no longer anything she could do to help, made her mother go and rest, soothed her excited little sister until she slept, and then went and sat in a low window seat in the partly darkened upper hall and waited. Don, she knew, was sitting at the foot of the stairs in the hall, ready for orders if he should be needed. Ranse had curled up in the hammock on the porch, unwilling to admit his youth and need of sleep. Daphne as she sat there those endless hours was thinking. This was no ordinary accident of a stranger. This young man was a part of themselves, made so by their mother's pleasant stories. He had grown dear to them all without ever having been known to them. And even the hearts of the younger brother and sister were full of sorrow and anxiety on his account. There was something very lovely, even in their sorrow, about being allowed to minister to him in his need. Even if he were not to live, there would be a satisfaction in having had him here and having been able to give him every possible chance for life.

Another doctor and an assistant were telephoned for, and arrived. Don brought them upstairs, and they went silently into the sickroom. Later Daphne took them to her brother's room to change into their white garb. The surgeon was going to operate, they told Daphne, and she caught her breath in sudden fear. It was his only hope, they told her.

There followed a pitiless time of waiting, broken by the telephone. Mrs. Gassner wanted to know just what had happened. Daphne told her that she could not talk now, the doctors were there. She would give her news in the morning. She hung up indignantly. Mrs. Gassner, with her ferret eyes, wanting to know all the gossip even in the middle of the night!

Don came upstairs in answer to a call, with a powerful electric bulb the doctors wanted. When he came out of the room again he came over to Daphne.

"Better go to bed, sister," he said gently, as if he were older than she. "I'll call you if you're needed."

She shook her head.

"I couldn't," she said decidedly. "I'm all right here. How does he seem?"

"Just the same," said the boy. "Unconscious, I guess. He just lies there perfectly still, his eyes shut. Or, perhaps they've given him some drug. I don't know. They're going to operate right now."

"I know," said Daphne. "The young doctor told me. There wouldn't be anybody we ought to wire, would there? I wish Father were here. Maybe Mother knows of some relative, but I hate to waken her. She can't bear much excitement."

"No," said Don. "Don't waken her. We couldn't wait for any relative to be found anyway. The surgeon says the operation is his only hope. And anyway, nobody could love him more than we do."

"No," said Daphne slowly, "unless--"

"Unless what?" asked Don sharply, almost antagonistically.

"Unless there might be someone--someone who--is
engaged
to him or something."

Don uttered a low sound of protest.

"We don't know there is, and we don't have to worry about that!" he said almost fiercely. "He's ours tonight, anyway, and we'll do the best we can for him. You'd better go and pray, Daphne."

"I am!" said Daphne, quietly lifting sweet eyes. "I'd like to think that you are praying, too, Don."

"Okay!" said Donald embarrassedly. "That goes without saying." And he left her and went noiselessly down the stairs.

Morning dawned at last, a strange cheery morning outside with little birds splitting their throats and breaking the awful silence that had reigned in the waiting household all night. And you couldn't do a thing about it! Daphne softly closed the window up in the hall, they yelled so loud out in the apple tree almost at the window sill. It seemed somehow as if she ought to go out under the tree and explain to those birds that a loved one was hovering on the borders of death, and wouldn't they please cancel their concert for the morning or at least go and sing in some other apple tree? But the little birds sang right on.

It was a lovely colorful morning with rags of coral glory tattered about the sky and a golden brim to the world. The air was fresh as if it had been washed and there had been no such thing as night and dread and crime stalking abroad.

Daphne went into her own room to put cold water on her forehead and eyes, and looking out across the Morrell garden a sudden horror shook her to think of all that had gone on in that sweet fragrant place. It did not seem possible that it had all happened. And yet there was the penetrative odor of ether filling the house, and there was that closed door, from which came only low monosyllables occasionally. Oh, would the suspense never end?

At last she heard the door open softly, and a young intern came out smiling. He saw her hovering near and smiled importantly.