Dangerous Days Part 56

"I don't think I had better, Anna."

"The landlady doesn't object. There isn't any parlor. All the girls have their callers in their rooms."

"I have to go out to-night," he said evasively. "I'll come some other time."

As he started away he glanced back at her. She was standing in the doorway, eying him wistfully, a lonely and depressed little figure. He was tempted to throw discretion to the wind and go back. But he did not.

On the day when Clayton had broached the subject of offering their output to the government at only a banker's profit, Anna called him up at his new office in the munition plant.

He was rather annoyed. His new secretary was sitting across the desk, and it was difficult to make his responses noncommittal.

"Graham!"

"Yes."

"Is anybody there? Can you talk?"

"Not very well."

"Then listen; I'll talk. I want to see you."

"I'm busy all day. Sorry."

"Listen, Graham, I must see you. I've something to tell you."

"All right, go ahead."

"It's about Rudolph. I was out looking for a position yesterday and I met him."

"Yes?"

He looked up. Miss Peterson was absently scribbling on the cover of her book, and listening intently.

"He was terrible, Graham. He accused me of all sorts of things, about you."

He almost groaned aloud over the predicament he was in. It began to look serious.

"Suppose I pick you up and we have dinner somewhere?"

"At the same corner?"

"Yes."

He was very irritable all morning. He felt as though a net was closing in around him, and his actual innocence made him the more miserable.

Miss Peterson found him very difficult that day, and shed tears in her little room before she went to lunch.

Anna herself was difficult that evening. Her landlady's son had given up a good job and enlisted. Everybody was going. She supposed Graham would go next, and she'd be left alone.

"I don't know. I'd like to."

"Oh, you'll go, all right. And you'll forget I ever existed." She made an effort. "You're right, of course. I'm only looking ahead. If anything happens to you, I'll kill myself."

The idea interested her. She began to dramatize herself, a forlorn figure, driven from home, and deserted by her lover. She saw herself lying in the cottage, stately and mysterious, while the hill girls went in and out, and whispered.

"I'll kill myself," she repeated.

"Nothing will happen to me, Anna, dear."

"I don't know why I care so. I'm nothing to you."

"That's not so."

"If you cared, you'd have come up the other night. You left me alone in that lonesome hole. It's h.e.l.l, that place. All smells and whispering and dirt."

"Now listen to me, Anna. You're tired, or you wouldn't say that. You know I'm fond of you. But I've got you into trouble enough. I'm not--for G.o.d's sake don't tempt me, Anna."

She looked at him half scornfully.

"Tempt you!" Then she gave a little scream. Graham following her eyes looked through the window near them.

"Rudolph!" she whimpered. And began to weep out of pure terror.

But Graham saw n.o.body. To soothe her, however, he went outside and looked about. There were half a dozen cars, a group of chauffeurs, but no Rudolph. He went hack to her, to find her sitting, pale and tense, her hands clenched together.

"They'll pay you out some way," she said. "I know them. They'll never believe the truth. That was Rudolph, all right. He'll think we're living together. He'd never believe anything else."

"Do you think he followed you the other day?"

"I gave him the shake, in the crowd."

"Then I don't see why you're worrying. We're just where we were before, aren't we?"

"You don't know them. I do. They'll be up to something."

She was excited and anxious, and with the c.o.c.ktail he ordered for her she grew reckless.

"I'm just hung around your neck like a stone," she lamented. "You don't care a rap for me; I know it. You're just sorry for me."

Her eyes filled again, and Graham rose, with an impatient movement.

"Let's get out of this," he said roughly. "The whole place is staring at you."

But on the road the fact that she had been weeping for him made him relent. He put an arm around her and drew her to him.

"Don't cry, honey," he said. "It makes me unhappy to see you miserable."

He kissed her. And they clung together, finding a little comfort in the contact of warm young bodies.

He went up to her room that night. He was more anxious as to Rudolph than he cared to admit, but he went up, treading softly on stairs that creaked with every step. He had no coherent thoughts. He wanted companions.h.i.+p rather than love. He was hungry for what she gave him, the touch of her hands about his neck, the sense of his manhood that shone from her faithful eyes, the admiration and unstinting love she offered him.