The Strange Attraction/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
I
“N o, Jimmy, you’d better not come back to-night.”
“You can’t do those jobbing proofs by yourself, Miss Carr.”
“Can’t I?” Valerie smiled up into the face of the boy who hovered over her. She knew he was longing to be asked to come back and do his part with the men. “All right. Then I will be glad to have you to-night. I’ll be here at seven. You try to get a run round in the fresh air before you come in.”
“Yes, Miss Carr.” He went out whistling merrily.
Valerie looked at her watch. It was half-past five. Miss Hands came out of the composing-room.
“Now, Miss Hands,” said Valerie, “I insist that you don’t come back to-night. You can to-morrow if it looks as if we won’t get through. I shall be sorry I took that job, you know, if anybody gets sick on it.”
Miss Hands’ thin face was lit with a sacrificial smile.
“It isn’t tiring working for you, Miss Carr,” she said. Valerie felt a sudden gulp in her throat. The faithfulness of these people sometimes made her want to throw bricks at them. But she shot a quick look at the woman who had been so easily overwhelmed by a little ordinary kindness.
“Miss Hands, it means a lot to me to hear you say that. But it’s part of my job not to overwork you. Now you rest to-night.”
Ryder and Johnson came out of the composing-room door struggling into their coats. They had their hats on the backs of their heads, and they lit cigarettes as they paused.
“I couldn’t quite finish that sporting copy, Miss Carr,” said Ryder. “I’ll come back to do it. I don’t like to keep my wife waiting for dinner.”
“Thanks, Mr. Ryder. But I don’t like to have you come back for that. Perhaps I can manage it.”
“Not at all. I’ll be glad to come back.”
“I’ll be back for a couple of hours, Miss Carr,” said Johnson.
“All right, thanks, good-night.”
Miss Hands and the men went out together. Valerie stretched herself. “What a wonderful thing work is. It puts such colour into people,” she thought.
It was Thursday evening of the last week in March. Bob had been away since the previous Saturday going over part of the electorate with Roger Benton, and Valerie was running the paper herself. Bob had left leaders ready for the Monday and the Wednesday. Valerie said she could manage one for Friday. She had her books all up to date now, could edit the telegrams and cablegrams, and was more than equal to the reporting and paragraphing and editorial work. It was not the paper or the bookkeeping that troubled her so much as the drudgery of the proof-reading on the jobbing.
Most New Zealand newspapers have their own general printing plants, and the News committee expected in time to have the expenses paid by the jobbing work of the river towns. There was only one way to beat the Auckland presses at this business, and that was to do it cheaper and faster than they could. Valerie took little interest in the bill-heads and circulars and letter-heads and show schedules, and what interest she did take was centred in Johnson’s pride in turning out good work. She only wished he could read his own proofs, but that turned out to be mostly her job, and one that often had to be done at night.
The week that Bob thought would be a slack one turned out to be strenuous. On the Tuesday morning Townshend, the owner of the biggest timber mill up the river, walked into the office.
“Where’s the boss?” he asked as Valerie got up from her chair.
“I am for the present,” she smiled. “What can I do for you?”
He looked doubtfully at her. “Well, I thought I’d try you people on a job. But I guess I’d better send it on to Auckland.”
“Dear me! Do I look as discouraging as all that?” She gave him a ravishing smile. “And it’s hardly fair to judge the jobbing work by me, anyway. I don’t do it. But we have one of the best men from Auckland here who does, and he’s bored to death because we haven’t jobs worthy of his skill. Now this one of yours might just save his reason. You might let me have a look at it.”
His shrewd eyes had lit up as she talked. He took a bundle of timber specifications out of his pocket and unrolled them. He didn’t suppose she would understand them in the least. And she didn’t, but she gazed at them with the greatest interest. There were fifteen different kinds of sheets, and she was really alarmed at the multiplicity of red and black lines and the complicated figures and the amount of careful proof-reading it would take. And she had no idea whether Johnson could do it, or whether they had the paper.
“This looks like the stuff he’s been itching for,” she said warmly. “How many do you want of each and when do you want them, and must it be exactly this same quality of paper?”
“I want five thousand of each altogether, but you could do it in lots of five hundred. I want the first lot delivered next Monday by the Tangiteroria steamer. The paper doesn’t have to be identical, but the nearest you can do.”
“Can you wait till this afternoon for an estimate? You can get the Auckland mail to-night if you don’t like our offer.”
“Yes, I’ll do that. I’m going to be here all day. I’ll come in about three o’clock. Good-morning,” and he walked out.
Valerie hurried in to Johnson.
“I don’t know what I’ve let you in for. But come and look at this.”
They spread the sheets out on a bench. Johnson saw at once it was far and away the best job the place had produced, that it was indeed a good hard one, a real test of what he could do. It warmed Valerie to see how keen he was to do it. They called Ryder into the conference.
“We haven’t the paper,” he said.
She looked woefully disappointed. But a search disclosed a few sheets that would do as a specimen. Johnson wrote out an urgent telegram to a printing house in Auckland as to the possibility of getting paper up the next day, and Jimmy rushed off with it to the post-office. Johnson and Ryder dropped what they were doing, and started to work out a scale of prices based on day and overtime rates.
“Would you work overtime on it?” asked Valerie.
“You bet, rather than lose it,” answered Johnson. “But you will have the worst of it, Miss Carr. It will be a beastly thing to read.”
When Townshend walked in at three o’clock she was ready for him. He approved the paper and the price, and she assured him they would be in time.
“All right. Go ahead,” he smiled into her keen face.
This job was straining the energies of the whole office. Ryder had to help Johnson on the difficult setting, and this threw a lot more work on Miss Hands and the local girls and Jimmy. But the whole staff rose to the occasion.
II
After they had gone this Thursday evening Valerie worked on till a quarter past six. There had been that week a return of heat, a last flicker of summer. The office was very stuffy, and she felt tired and worn. She hurried to the hotel for a quick dinner, hoping she was not going to have a headache. Her feet dragged as she walked to her table. This was one of the nights when she could not take Mac’s dining-room humorously.
“You do look so tired, Miss Carr,” said Lizzie.
“I really am, Lizzie,” she smiled back. She ordered a light meal and held her head in her hands. When she raised it again she saw that Mac and Dane Barrington had come in. They both nodded at her smile, and then she began to feel better. She saw Michael go to their table, but she did not notice Mac nod at her and give an order. As she began her dinner the seedy Irishman came up to her with a bottle of Burgundy and poured out a glass.
“It’s the spoiled lady you are, for sure,” he said slyly.
“Ah, it’s so nice to be spoiled, Michael.” Her eyes twinkled at him. Then she raised her glass to the table at the other end of the room, oblivious of curious glances from men near by, and she was delighted that Dane as well as Mac drank to her in return. This incident warmed her up to such an extent that she felt better.
Soon after she got back to the office she felt the ominous return of her headache. Jimmy had been waiting on the steps for her. She could never get ahead of him. He liked to watch her coming, to flourish his cap at her, to take the key and open the door and stand by for her as if she were a queen. He did it all with a twinkle in his eye as if he enjoyed being romantic.
Soon after he and Valerie had settled down to the proof-reading Ryder and Johnson came in and the jobbing machine began to shake the building.
Ryder came out again at a quarter past eight ready to go.
“You look a bit sick,” he said to Valerie.
“Yes, I have a headache.”
“Can’t you leave it?”
“No. We’ll be done with this by half-past eight. How much copy have you for the morning?”
“A column and a few sticks.”
“That all ? Well, I must have the leader and the meeting done to-night. I can manage it. That sporting copy of yours has helped a lot.”
Ten minutes after he had gone out she put down her pencil. “Now, Jimmy, nothing more. You get out of this at once.”
When she had got him out she held on to her head, feeling she could do nothing till the jobbing machine stopped. It went on till nine. Then Johnson came out hot and tired.
His intelligent brown eyes looked admiringly at her.
“I say, why don’t you knock off? You look as if you’d done enough for one day.”
“I wish I could, but I’ve got to do a leader and a meeting.”
“Sorry. I can’t help, can I?”
“No indeed, thanks just the same. Good-night.”
III
In a few minutes there was silence. Few people went by that way at night unless there happened to be a vessel at the station wharf or freight trains running late. Riders might pass after the hotels were closed. Men rarely worked in the evening in the nearest stores on the town side. Occasionally sounds from the houses at the back drifted in. Valerie was gladly conscious of the quiet, but it did not help her much.
These occasionally devastating headaches were the one blot upon her otherwise vigorous health. Once past a certain point they accumulated pain with express speed, and reduced her to nausea and utter helplessness. She knew no cure but to lie down and take a big dose of aspirin. Then at the end of an hour she was all right again. But she had used up her stock of tablets and the chemist was now closed. As the copy had to be ready for Ryder at half-past eight in the morning it could not be put off, and she knew she must fight the pain as best she could. She began to write slowly struggling against it. But her head dropped in spite of her. She felt as if she were going to faint.
The opening of the door stimulated her to raise her face. She had not heard steps. In a mist she saw Dane Barrington looking at her over the high counter.
“Why, Miss Carr, what is the matter? You look beastly ill.” He came quickly round to her.
She tried to keep her head up. “It’s only a headache, and I must work.” She never wondered why he was there. “Well, you can’t work looking like that. Have you ever taken aspirin?”
“Yes, but I haven’t any.”
“I have. Will you take it and go home?”
“I can’t go home. I have a leader to write, and—and a meeting.” The effort to keep up nauseated her. Her head dropped back onto her hands.
Dane leaned his snake stick against the corner of her table, opened the door into the composing-room, struck a match and lit a near gas jet. Then he hurried to the back door, opened it and looked out into the small yard littered with boxes, barrels and paper. He saw there was a high wooden fence all round it and that no one could look in. It had odours of its own, but it was incomparably fresher and cooler than any place inside. He found two large sheets of brown paper on a bench and spread them out on a flat place near a tap where water dropping into a bucket cooled the air. Then he went quickly back to Valerie.
“Come on, Miss Carr, and lie down. I’ve fixed a clean place. You’ll be all right soon if you keep still.”
He put an arm round her and helped her out. She did not seem conscious of him at all. Hardly knowing what she was doing she dropped down on to the paper and lay dizzy with pain. Mechanically she clutched at her throat. She was wearing a shirt-waist with a collar that though soft seemed to be choking her. Very deftly with his sensitive hands Dane undid the knotted tie and loosened it. Then he found a tumbler inside, rinsed it at the tap and filled it.
“Can you take a good dose?” he asked leaning over her.
“Yes, oh yes,” she mumbled.
He took a little box out of his vest pocket, gave her five tablets, and helped her to drink half the glass of water. Then she slumped back and lay still, her face livid with pain. He was torn with misery at the sight of it. He searched for a clean handkerchief, and finding one, soaked it in water and put it on her hot forehead. Then he undid her heavy ropes of hair, spread them out on the paper, and carefully laid the large amber pins together in one place. Looking at her thus he thought her beautiful.
He leaned over her again. “Tell me if you can what you were going to write a leader about.”
“The Warendon fire—I wanted to make it good—something on heroism—you know ———”
“I know. I’ll do it. How long did you want it?”
“A column, if I could—we need the copy.”
“All right. I’ll do it. Lie still, and you will be better by the time it is finished.”
She was vaguely conscious that he covered her up with something, and then that she was alone. For a time, it seemed an eternity, she was sure her head was flying to bits. There were ghastly explosions of agony when she clenched her hands to keep from screaming, and then it all went suddenly, and she had exquisite moments of relief at the cessation of the pain. She slid into dreamland. She did not know where she was or remember that she had had a headache. She was aware of pale stars over her head and of the sheen of the moon tipping over the roof of the office. Then she thought she was in a boat. She could hear water. She tried to turn her head. She was mildly puzzled that she could not move it. She tried her arms. They too were made of lead. But she lay on untroubled by this phenomenon and drifted into curious dreams and profound oblivion.
IV
It was a quarter to eleven when Dane had finished writing. He was astonished when he saw how late it was. Valerie must have fallen asleep, he thought. He went quietly out through the dimly lit composing-room and saw from the doorway that she lay exactly as he had left her with his coat unmoved, showing that she had never stirred. He leaned down to look at her. Her face was not so livid now, and he was struck again with the distinction of it, and by an expression of sadness and disillusionment that was not there when her eyes were open and her features ablaze with the light from them. No, she was not the mere child he had thought her. He looked at her shapely, passionate mouth, contrasting with the intellectual forehead and the balance in the rest of her face. That mouth beguiled him, enticed him, overcame him. He told himself he was a fool to play with the temptation to kiss her, but he leaned lower and very delicately kissed the unconscious lips, thereby stirring in himself senses that after considerable starvation were only too ready to be stirred. He sat up a little ashamed of himself, but as she did not stir he leaned down recklessly and did it again. He took up her ropes of hair and laid them against his cheek enjoying the fragrance of them. He had always loved women’s hair when it was soft and fine like this. He was just thinking she was very sound asleep when a noise staggered him and brought him to his feet with a sickening sense of shock.
What he distinctly heard was the opening of the front door. In a flash it went through his mind that the office was lit, that it was a public place, and that anyone could come in as he himself had done. And he was here in the yard with Valerie unconscious and prostrate upon the ground. Instinctively he snatched up his coat and put it on while a variety of lies raced through his mind.
But whatever the situation, it would be improved if she were awake. He dropped on his knees beside her, took his handkerchief off her forehead, and spoke with anxious tenseness.
“Miss Carr, wake up! Wake up! You are all right now.”
As she did not stir he shook her lightly, but it had no effect upon her. As he thought it strange she should be so sound asleep he heard the front door close again. But whether the person who had closed it was in or out he did not know. He stepped cautiously to the back door. If there was anyone there who might come through there was only one thing for him to do, go in at once and find out what manner of man he had to deal with.
Then he heard a very comforting sound, that of steps retreating along the path. After a minute or two of reassuring silence in the building he stepped inside and walked quickly to the office. There was no one there. He hurried to the front door and saw the figure of a man in the moonlight going off towards the town. He could not make out who he was. There was no one else about. He had been in tight places in his life, but never had he felt more relieved. He turned the key in the lock, put out the light, leaving the office in darkness, shut the composing-room door, drew the blinds of the side windows, and went back to wake Valerie.
He wished himself out of this now, and reflected sadly what an everlasting fool he was with his lack of suspicion. He ought to have remembered the office was a public place. Still at that hour who would have expected anyone to have business with the paper? He leaned quickly down over Valerie and spoke her name. Then for the first time he noticed her shallow breathing. He shook her violently, and saw that her eyes opened and closed with an uncomprehending stare. Frantically he found matches, struck one, pulled up her eyelid, and saw the dilated pupil.
His heart stopped. “My God! My God! What have I done?” he groaned.
He dived into his vest pockets, drew out two little boxes, struck another match and examined the contents. Then he sprang to his feet. For a moment he stood overcome by a speechless rage at this damnable trick that fate and his own carelessness had played him. He wondered how many men in the history of the world had gone down to obloquy for no stronger cause. But he dare not add inaction to carelessness, whatever the result to himself. There was nothing to do but to trust the two men in the town he knew he could trust.
Spreading out paper on the composing-room floor, with great difficulty he raised Valerie and carried her in. He took in her hairpins and put them beside her. He locked the back door. He hesitated about the gas, but finally left the jet burning low, in case she came to in his absence, though he had little hope of that. He went through the office without lighting it, opened the front door and looked out. He blessed the regular habits of the town. There was not a soul in sight. He locked the door behind him, and with the key in his hand began to run. It worried him dreadfully to think of Valerie lying on the floor even in the midst of the harmless machinery. There might be mice or rats.
He was thankful to find the hotel fairly quiet. What he would do if Doctor Steele was away he did not know, but the doctor was in the very first room he poked his head into, playing poker with a stranger.
“Lucky I have my case here, D. B.,” he said, when he had heard the bare facts. “Let’s get Mac and find out how soon we can bring her along.”
The big Irishman was in his own room. The tale did not surprise him in the least.
“I’ll have every ——— son of a ——— ——— out of the way by half-past twelve. Nothing much doing to-night. I’ll clear Mike to bed, and sit up for you myself. Back door. Come through the yard.”
“Damnation, it’s going to be risky bringing her through the town,” said Dane.
“Of course, you bloody fool,” said Mac good-humouredly, “don’t do it. Take a boat.”
And though the distance was less than half a mile that is what they did.
They found Valerie exactly as Dane had left her. The doctor at once applied stimulants to her heart and respiration and bent over her watching, while Dane stood by racked with anxiety. But strained as he was, he was struck by the picture the gloomy doctor made there on his knees, playing his small flashlight over the face of the unconscious Valerie who lay like the effigy of a mediæval princess on the top of her own sarcophagus pale and stiff.
“She’s all right, D. B. Splendid heart. She’ll come out very well.”
“Thank God!”
The doctor wrapped round her a rug they had brought from the hotel, and drew up a wooden chair so that he could look down on her face. Dane drew a stool to the other side of her and dropped on to it. After a few minutes the doctor took out his watch.
“A quarter to twelve. Well, we’d better wait till half-past. Haven’t got any cards about you, have you, Barrington?” Something on the expression of the other man’s face arrested him.
“Why not have a game to pass the time?” he asked solemnly.
“It’s a perfectly good idea, Doc,” smiled Dane with a little shrug of the shoulders. “A pleasant antidote to the hour I have just spent. You know, if I couldn’t have trusted you and Mac I might just as well have shot myself?”
“As bad as that?” said the doctor laconically keeping his eye on Valerie.
“Well, it was for less than this that I was blackballed in Christchurch,” said Dane, with intense bitterness.
“Yes, it is unfortunate that men are often judged not for what they have done, but for what the men who judge them would have done in their place.”
The flashlight cast fantastic shadows on the walls through the frames of the impassive old printing press and the spick and span jobbing machine, and glittered on steel wheels and rods. The bulky cases of type loomed up above them, and the heavy tables and benches added to the weight of the air in the close room. But Dane had been afraid to let the doctor open the doors lest at that hour of the night the light attracting someone should be taken for a fire. He was only too anxious to see Valerie safe in her room in the hotel.
“Wonderful thing, a woman,” said the doctor softly, gazing down at Valerie with profound reverence.
Dane thought of the other man’s wife as he had seen her one day as conspicuous in the middle of River Street as a red barn in the middle of a ploughed field, as blatant as the blaring of a circus troupe, and he marvelled at this inextinguishable charity.
“I wish I could believe it again, Doc,” he said, and they fell into a silence.
At half-past twelve he investigated the neighbourhood for signs of activity, but the whole place was peacefully asleep. The doctor partly roused Valerie when he picked her up, but she gazed at him with a mild surprise and closed her eyes again. He carried her out to the boat while Dane, using his flashlight, restored the composing-room to its ordinary arrangement. He carefully put the brown paper back where he had found it, collected all the amber pins, and put out the gas. But he forgot to raise the blinds. In the office he felt the hand of fate upon him again. The circle of light fell on his stick, which he had completely forgotten. Had the man who had come in recognized that stick? Then he saw Valerie’s coat and small bag on a hook. He cursed himself for the worst fool ever born as he gathered them up.
But he did feel considerable relief as he rowed the boat along to the hotel, reflecting as he looked at the doctor sitting with Valerie in his arms, that the sleepers in little towns don’t know any more than those in big ones what strange things may go on round them in the night.
V
A little after seven the next morning Doctor Steele slipped out of Bob’s room, where he had stayed to watch Valerie, and into hers, and gave her a strong injection of caffeine. Then he sat down on the bed beside her till she roused.
“Why, doctor!” She opened her eyes wider and wider, and rubbed them and started to raise herself.
“Lie still. There’s nothing the matter. Just get hold of yourself and think.”
She looked at him, puzzling about in her memory.
“Well, how do you feel?”
“Feel?” She shook herself. “What has happened to me?” Then she looked at him in amazement as if she did remember something. “What is it, doctor? I feel stupid, very heavy in my head. Aren’t I all right?”
“Quite,” he said, in his even manner. “But you had a headache last night, do you remember? In the office?”
She struggled to clear the fog in her mind. “Why, yes, I had. I remember now.” Her eyes widened again. And he saw a tense enquiry in them.
“What do you remember?” he asked.
She hesitated. “Why, I—I just had a headache. But it was very bad. I do get them very bad. Did I try to come home and faint, or what?”
“H’m!” he thought to himself. “You’re on the defensive for him already.”
“No,” he went on aloud, “you didn’t faint. You remember that Barrington went into the office? Well, he gave you morphia in mistake for aspirin, one and a quarter grains, a nice little dose.”
“Oh, heavens! Well, please don’t blame him. It hasn’t done me any harm. I do hope nobody knows.”
Something like a smile gathered at the back of the doctor’s sepulchral eyes. “Nobody who will ever mention it, my dear young lady, only Mac and myself. We keep the secrets of this town. Now presently, when Father Ryan goes down to breakfast, Barrington will slip in here to tell you about it. I’ll see there is nobody around. You can get up when he has gone. Drink all the strong coffee you can for breakfast and eat plainly. You’ll feel stupid perhaps all day. But you’re all right now.”
He stood up as he finished, and with a laconic nod he went quietly out.
He left behind him a patient who was stimulated with more than the caffeine. Valerie heard low sounds in the next room and hoped Father Ryan would go down early as he usually did. She tried to think back over the evening before, but everything was blank after the appearance of Dane’s face over the counter. She was very curious now to know what had happened. Then she heard Father Ryan close his door and go off along the hall. She wondered if he had heard anything in the night. But, she reflected, he would never tell.
She heard a low knock on her door. In answer to her quick reply Dane came through it in stockinged feet and closed it behind him.
Valerie had raised herself on her pillows and her abundant hair fell about her like a cascade of gold, but she saw at once that he was quite oblivious of the fact that she was in bed or that she had any hair at all. He moved forward to the bedside near the foot, and looked at her with intensely worried eyes. His face was strained and she knew he had not slept.
“Oh, Miss Carr,” he began at once in a nervous whisper, “can you believe me and forgive my damned carelessness? I gave you morphia last night by mistake. I had aspirin.” He put his hands to his pockets and pulled out the two little boxes. “But somehow in my hurry and in the bad light I got the wrong thing. You were suffering so badly. You see.” He held the boxes out to her.
Valerie spoke slowly for it was still an effort to talk. “Oh, my dear man, you don’t have to produce any evidence.”
“You believe me?”
“Good Lord! May I ask why I shouldn’t believe you? Why, you look as if you’d never been believed before!”
For he had looked at her out of most grateful but rather incredulous eyes.
“When I can tell you the story I think you’ll understand. The thing that is worrying me still is that somebody came in when I had you in the yard, when I found I couldn’t wake you. I don’t know who it was, but he went out again almost at once. He didn’t see us, I’m sure, but I’d left my stick in there ———”
“Oh, don’t let that worry you for a minute.” She had recovered sufficiently to put contempt into her tone.
“I came at once for the doctor,” he went on, “and we had to tell Mac. But he is absolutely trustworthy ———”
“Heavens above!” she broke in, “what are you talking about? What are you afraid of?”
“Oh, Miss Carr,” he threw out his hands, and shook his head. “If you’d been hit as I have ———”
“My friend, if the other women you have known have been malignant beasts, please don’t judge me by them. It’s not very complimentary to me or to your own judgment.”
Something in her eyes hypnotized him and his mobile face lightened.
“I apologize for my judgment. I’m afraid it never has been very good. Now I want to know if I can’t help you to-day. You won’t feel like work. Is there anything I could write here and send along?”
“You did the leader?” She was beginning to think quite clearly now.
“Yes, a column. And I wrote up an interesting bit of news I got yesterday about an Englishman up at Townshend’s mill who has just come into a fortune. I know him, and the news is accurate. You will have it ahead of the Auckland papers. I did nearly a column of that, thinking you could cut it if you did not want it all. That’s what I stopped in to give you last night. I was going to bring it in this morning, but seeing your light as I was going home I changed my mind.”
“Oh, that was awfully good of you. Then I’ve got all I need. There isn’t anything else you can do. I can manage it all.”
“Are you sure? You’re really all right?” He was seeing the woman now, her flushed face and bright eyes set in the cloud of hair.
“Quite. You had a much worse night than I did. But now, please forget it.” She held out her hand.
He took it, raised it to his lips, kissed it twice, dropped it without looking at her, and slipped out of the door.
She stared for some seconds at the place where he had disappeared. “Well! Romantic! that man! But why am I surprised?”
Then she thought over what he had told her. And then she felt a chill upon this rather exciting event. She wondered whether he made a habit of taking morphia.
She was in the office at nine o’clock reading his leader. It was a beautiful bit of writing, so out of the common rut of such work that it was copied in full afterwards by a number of papers with comments on the inspired moment that had fallen upon the editor of the News. Then she read the account of the Englishman and his windfall. It was excellent journalism. She would not cut a word of it. She labelled both and took them in to the foreman.
Later in the Hay Ryder looked at her curiously. He alone of the staff had noticed that she was not quite herself.
“Bully stuff, that leader, Miss Carr,” he said.
“Yes, isn’t it? Mr. Barrington gave it to me last night with the other copy.”
Ryder did not tell her that he guessed who had written it. He did not ask her why he found the office empty the night before when he had stepped in as he was going by to see if her head was better. He had seen her hat and coat, and he had seen Dane Barrington’s stick. He had just observed these things and had gone out. And he did not ask her why he had found the blinds drawn all round the composing-room that morning. And neither Valerie nor Dane ever learned who it was who had opened and closed the front door.