XXIII
DORIS
"A young girl named Doris Scott?"
The station-master looked somewhat sharply at the man he was addressing,and decided to give the direction asked.
"There is but one young girl in town of that name,"he declared,"and she lives in that little house you see just beyond the works.
But let me tell you,stranger,"he went on with some precipitation --But here he was called off,and Sweetwater lost the conclusion of his warning,if warning it was meant to be.This did not trouble the detective.He stood a moment,taking in the prospect;decided that the Works and the Works alone made the town,and started for the house which had been pointed out to him.His way lay through the chief business street,and greatly preoccupied by his errand,he gave but a passing glance to the rows on rows of workmen's dwellings stretching away to the left in seemingly endless perspective.Yet in that glance he certainly took in the fact hat the sidewalks were blocked with people and wondered if it were a holiday.If so,it must be an enforced one,for the faces showed little joy.Possibly a strike was on.The anxiety he everywhere saw pictured on young faces and old,argued some trouble;but if the trouble was that,why were all heads turned indifferently from the Works,and why were the Works themselves in full blast?
These questions he may have asked himself and he may not.His attention was entirely centred on the house he saw before him and on the possible developments awaiting him there.Nothing else mattered.Briskly he stepped out along the sandy road,and after a turn or two which led him quite away from the Works and its surrounding buildings,he came out upon the highway and this house.
It was a low and unpretentious one,and had but one distinguishing feature.The porch which hung well over the doorstep was unique in shape and gave an air of picturesqueness to an otherwise simple exterior;a picturesqueness which was much enhanced in its effect by the background of illimitable forest,which united the foreground of this pleasing picture with the great chain of hills which held the Works and town in its ample basin.
As he approached the doorstep,his mind involuntarily formed an anticipatory image of the child whose first stitches in embroidery were like a fairy's weaving to the strong man who worked in ore and possibly figured out bridges.That she would prove to be of the anemic type,common among working girls gifted with an imagination they have but scant opportunity to exercise,he had little doubt.
He was therefore greatly taken aback,when at his first step upon the porch,the door before him flew open and he beheld in the dark recess beyond a young woman of such bright and blooming beauty that he hardly noticed her expression of extreme anxiety,till she lifted her hand and laid an admonitory finger softly on her lip:
"Hush!she whispered,with an earnestness which roused him from his absorption and restored him to the full meaning of this encounter.
"There is sickness in the house and we are very anxious.Is your errand an important one?If not -"The faltering break in the fresh,young voice,the look she cast behind her into the darkened interior,were eloquent with the hope that he would recognise her impatience and pass on.
And so he might have done,-so he would have done under all ordinary circumstances.But if this was Doris -and he did not doubt the fact after the first moment of startled surprise -how dare he forego this opportunity of settling the question which had brought him here.
With a slight stammer but otherwise giving no evidence of the effect made upon him by the passionate intensity with which she had urged this plea,he assured her that his errand was important,but one so quickly told that it would delay her but a moment."But first,said he,with very natural caution,"let me make sure that it is to Miss Doris Scott I am speaking.My errand is to her and her only.
Without showing any surprise,perhaps too engrossed in her own thoughts to feel any,she answered with simple directness,"Yes,Iam Doris Scott.Whereupon he became his most persuasive self,and pulling out a folded paper from his pocket,opened it and held it before her,with these words:
"Then will you be so good as to glance at this letter and tell me if the person whose initials you will find at the bottom happens to be in town at the present moment?
In some astonishment now,she glanced down at the sheet thus boldly thrust before her,and recognising the 0and the B of a well-known signature,she flashed a look back at Sweetwater in which he read a confusion of emotions for which he was hardly prepared.
"Ah,thought he,"it's coming.In another moment I shall hear what will repay me for the trials and disappointments of all these months.
But the moment passed and he had heard nothing.Instead,she dropped her hands from the door-jamb and gave such unmistakable evidences of intended flight,that but one alternative remained to him;he became abrupt.
Thrusting the paper still nearer,he said,with an emphasis which could not fail of making an impression,"Read it.Read the whole letter.You will find your name there.This communication was addressed to Miss Challoner,but -"Oh,now she found words!With a low cry,she put out her hand in quick entreaty,begging him to desist and not speak that name on any pretext or for any purpose."He may rouse and hear,she explained,with another quick look behind her."The doctor says that this is the critical day.He may become conscious any minute.
