The Girl and The Bill Part 34

"Very well," he said, and going over to the door, he called out several times with the full power of his lungs. The sound, pent in that narrow room, fairly crashed in their ears, but there was no answer from without.

"Don't do it again," she said at last. Then she sighed. "Oh, the irony of it!" she exclaimed.

"I know." He laughed. "But don't give up, Girl. We'll deliver those papers yet."

"I will not give up," she said, gravely. "But tell me, how did you get the papers?"

Orme began the story of the afternoon's adventures.

"Why don't you sit down?" she asked.

"Why"--he stammered--"I----"

He had been so conscious of his feeling toward her, so conscious of the fact that the one woman in all the world was locked in here alone with him, that since he arranged her seat he had not trusted himself to be near her. And she did not seem to understand.

She wished him to sit beside her, not knowing that he felt the almost overpowering impulse to take her in his arms and crush her close to him.

That desire would have been more easily controlled, had he not begun to believe that she in some degree returned his feeling for her. If they escaped from this black prison, he would rest happy in the faith that her affection for him, now, as he supposed so largely friendly, would ripen into a glorious and compelling love. But it would not be right for him to presume--to take advantage of a moment in which she might think that she cared for him more than she actually did. Then, too, he already foresaw vaguely the possible necessity for an act which would make it best that she should not hold him too dear. So long he stood silent that she spoke again.

"Do sit down," she said. "I will give you part of your coat."

There was a tremulous note in her laugh, but as he seated himself, she spoke with great seriousness. "When two persons understand each other as well as you and I," she said, "and are as near death as you and I, they need not be embarra.s.sed by conventions."

"We never have been very conventional with each other," he replied, shakily. Her shoulder was against his. He could hear her breathing.

"Now tell me the rest of the story."

"First I must change your notion that we are near death."

He could feel that she was looking at him in the blackness. "Don't you think I know?" she whispered. "They will not find us until to-morrow.

There isn't enough air to last. I have known it from the first."

"Someone will open the door," he replied. "We may have to stay here quite a while, but----"

"No, my friend. There is no likelihood that it will be opened. The clerks are leaving for the night."

He was silent.

"So finish the story," she went on.

"Finish the story!" That was all that he could do.

"Finish the story!" His story and hers--only just begun, and now to end there in the dark.

But with a calmness as great as her own, he proceeded to tell all that had happened to him since he boarded the electric-car at Evanston and saw Maku sitting within. She pressed his hand gently when he described the trick by which the j.a.panese had brought the pursuit to an end. She laughed when he came to his meeting with the detective in his apartment.

The episode with Madame Alia he pa.s.sed over lightly, for part of it rankled now. Not that he blamed himself foolishly but he wished that it had not happened.

"That woman did a fine thing," said the girl.

He went on to describe his efforts to get free from Alcatrante.

"And you were under the table in Arima's room," she exclaimed, when he had finished.

"I was there; but I couldn't see you, Girl. And you seemed to doubt me."

"To doubt you?"

"Don't you remember? You said that no American had the papers; but you added, unless----"

"Unless Walsh, the burglar, had played a trick on Poritol and held the true papers back. I went straight from Arima's to the jail and had another talk with Walsh. He convinced me that he knew nothing at all about the papers. He seemed to think that they were letters which Poritol wanted for his own purposes."

"Then, you did not doubt me." Glad relief was in his voice.

"I have never doubted you," she said, simply.

There was silence. Only their breathing and the ticking of Orme's watch broke the stillness.

"I don't believe that Alcatrante knew that this place was unventilated,"

she remarked at last.

"No; and he didn't know that you were here."

"He thinks that you will be released in the morning, and that you will think it wiser to make no charges. What do you suppose his conscience will say when he learns----"

"Girl, I simply can't believe that there is no hope for us."

"What possible chance is there?" Her voice was steady. "The clerks must all have gone by this time. We can't make ourselves heard."

"Still, I feel as though I should be fighting with the door."

"You can't open it."

"But some one of the clerks going out may have seen that it was bolted.

Wouldn't he have pushed the bolt back? I'm going to see."

He groped to the door and tugged at the handle. The door, for all the effect his effort had on it, might have been a section of solid wall.

"Come back," she called.

He felt his way until his foot touched the coat. As he let himself down beside her, his hand brushed over her hair, and unconsciously she leaned toward him. He felt the pressure of her shoulder against his side, and the touch sent a thrill through him. He leaned back against the wall and stared into the blackness with eyes that saw only visions of the happiness that might have been.

"We mustn't make any effort to break out," she said. "It is useless. And every time we move about and tug at the door, it makes us breathe that much faster."

"Yes," he sighed, "I suppose we can only sit here and wait."

"Do you know," she said softly, "I am wondering why our situation does not seem more terrible to me. It should, shouldn't it?"

"I hardly think so," he replied.