The Girl and The Bill Part 33

In a casual way he folded his arms. He could now put his hand into his inside coat-pocket and the motion would hardly be noticed.

For a moment he stood as though waiting for someone to appear at the inquiry-window. Though Alcatrante was watching him closely, Orme continued to act as if he were the only person in the room.

And now the dial of the big thermometer in the outer wall of the refrigerator appeared to catch his eye, and he strolled over to it. This placed him almost in the open doorway. Apparently his eyes were on the dial, but in reality he was glancing sidewise into the chamber of the refrigerator. He glimpsed a moving figure in there--heard a faint rustling. Thrusting his hand into the inside of his coat, he was about to take out the precious papers to pa.s.s them in to her.

Then he received a violent push from behind. He plunged forward, tripped with one foot on the sill of the refrigerator doorway, and went in headlong, sprawling on the tiled floor. His clutching hand caught the fold of a woman's skirt. Then, though he remained conscious, everything suddenly turned black.

Bewildered as he was, several seconds pa.s.sed before he realized that the ma.s.sive door had been closed--that he and the girl were prisoners.

CHAPTER XIV

PRISONERS IN THE DARK

Orme's hand still held her skirt.

"Girl!" he whispered.

"Yes. Are you hurt?"

Her voice came to him softly with all its solicitude and sympathy. She knelt, to help him if need be, and her warm, supple hand rested gently on his forehead. He could have remained for a long time as he was, content with her touch, but his good sense told him that their safety demanded action.

"Not hurt at all," he said, and as she withdrew her hand, he arose.

"Alcatrante caught me off guard," he explained.

"Yes, I saw him. There wasn't time to warn you."

"He has been d.o.g.g.i.ng me for an hour," Orme continued. "I felt as though he were sitting on my shoulders, like an Old Man of the Sea."

"I know him of old," she replied. "He is never to be trusted."

"But you--how did you happen to be here, in the Rookery?"

"In the hope of finding you."

"Finding me?"

"I called up the Pere Marquette about five minutes ago, and the clerk said that you had just been talking to him on the wire, but that he didn't know where you were. Then I remembered that you knew the Wallinghams, and I came to Tom's office to see if he had any idea where you were. I was on my way when I pa.s.sed you in the elevator."

"Tom and Bessie are at Glenview," explained Orme.

"Yes, the girl at the inquiry-desk told me. She went to get her hat to leave for the night, and I slipped into this chamber to wait for you."

"And here we are," Orme laughed--"papers and all. But I wish it weren't so dark."

Orme hunted his pockets for a match. He found just one.

"I don't suppose, Girl, that you happen to have such a thing as a match."

She laughed lightly. "I'm sorry--no."

"I have only one," he said. "I'm going to strike it, so that we can get our bearings."

He scratched the match on his sole. The first precious moment of light he permitted himself to look at her, fixing her face in his mind as though he were never to see it again. It rejoiced him to find that in that instant her eyes also turned to his.

The interchange of looks was hard for him to break. Only half the match was gone before he turned from her, but in that time he had asked and answered so many unspoken questions--questions which at the moment were still little more than hopes and yearnings. His heart was beating rapidly. If she had doubted him, she did not doubt him now. If she had not understood his feeling for her, she must understand it now. And the look in her own eyes--could he question that it was more than friendly?

But the necessity of making the most of the light forced him to forget for the moment the tender presence of the girl who filled his heart. He therefore employed himself with a quick study of their surroundings.

The chamber was about ten feet square, and lined smoothly with white tiling. It was designed to show the sanitary construction of the Wallingham refrigerator. Orme remembered how Tom had explained it all to him on a previous visit to Chicago.

This was merely a storage chamber. There was no connection with an ice-chamber, and there were none of the hooks and shelves which would make it complete for its purpose. The only appliance was the thermometer, the coils of which were fitted in flush with the tiling, near the door, and protected by a close metal grating. As for the door itself, its outline was a fine seam. There was a handle.

As the match burned close to his fingers, Orme pulled out his watch. It was twenty-nine minutes past five.

Darkness again.

Orme groped his way to the door and tugged at the handle. The door would not open; built with air-tight nicety, it did not budge in the least.

This was as Orme had expected. He knew that Alcatrante would have shot the bolt. He knew, too, that Alcatrante would be waiting in the corridor, to a.s.sure himself that the last clerk left the office without freeing the prisoner--that all the lights were out and the office locked for the night. Then he would depart, exulting that the papers could not be delivered; and in the morning Orme would be released.

But had Alcatrante realized that the chamber was air-tight? Surely he had not known that the girl was already there. The air that might barely suffice to keep one alive until relief came would not suffice for two.

There was not the least opening to admit of ventilation. Even the places where, in a practical refrigerator, connection would be made with the ice-chamber, were blocked up; for that matter, they were on that side of the chamber which was built close into the corner of the office.

Orme drove his heel against the wall. The tiles did not break. Then he stepped back toward the middle of the chamber.

"Where are you, Girl?" he asked.

"Here," she answered, very near him.

He reached out and found her hand, and she did not withdraw it from his clasp.

"The rascal has locked us in," he said. "I'm afraid we shall have a long wait."

"Will it do any good to shout?"

"No one could hear us through these walls. No, there's nothing to do but remain quiet. But you needn't stand, Girl."

He led her to the wall. Removing his coat, he folded it and placed it on the floor for a cus.h.i.+on, and she seated herself upon it. He remained standing near by.

"The papers," he said, "are in that coat you are sitting on."

He laughed, with a consciousness of the grim and terrible humor of their situation--which he hoped she had not yet realized. Here they were, the hard-sought papers in their possession, yet they were helpless even to save their own lives.

"I wish you _would_ shout," she said.