Tongues of Flame (MacFarlane)/Chapter 30
SPENDING his first night in a cell, "She'll come," Harrington whispered, turning restlessly on his narrow-mattressed shelf, the creaking springs of which protested with each shifting of his weight. "She'll come!" Actually the man lulled himself to sleep, murmuring, with a smile upon his lips: "She'll come . . . she'll come."
But when he came back to consciousness with daylight peering through that barred north window, ugly realities were all about him. He cowered before them for a few seconds, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, staring at the unfamiliar network of bars, listening to the unfamiliar sounds, olfactories quivering to the unfamiliar smells; then thinking beyond all these sensations to what they meant.
"She'll come," he tried to assure himself stoutly; but instead of Billie it was Lahleet again who came, gazing at him hungrily, penetratingly, as if she would see in the very soul of him, how he did. Truth to tell, he did very badly at the moment and peered out at her hollow-eyed, forgetting to smile as she also forgot.
"The papers! Have you seen the morning papers?" he asked hoarsely, his anxiety admitting now what effect of good or ill to him could proceed from what these dastard little blanket sheets said and how.
"Lies—nothing but lies!" The black eyes snapped and, as though she did it to discharge a painful duty, loathing while she touched them, Lahleet swept the papers from behind her and thrust them through the bars, then watched with concern and compassion while he read.
And to think that he did not love her but another—a woman not worth him—not like him—who would disappoint him now and always disappoint him.
And if she, Lahleet, saved him? Why, he might turn from the other woman and fix his eyes on her.
"But it wasn't Count Ulric who was killed," Harrington broke out, looking up from the pages of the Blade. "That beast dead, with his face turned up in the bushes, merely looked like Ulric. The complaint doesn't say I killed Ulric. It says a 'person unknown.' I thought it was Ulric, all right, till I ran onto him that same night at Boland's."
"Oh!" gasped Lahleet, mind harking back to a fact she had learned in the last few hours. "And did he tell you that he had been out on the inlet in a motorboat that afternoon?"
"No!" answered Harrington, surprised. "Was he? How did you know?"
But Lahleet only smiled inscrutably and shrugged her small shoulders as if it did not matter anyway. Henry after a second didn't appear to think it mattered either. "I expect Miss Boland this morning," he announced, as if her coming would settle all things.
"You have heard from her?" she asked quickly, though making a magnificent effort to be casual.
"No; not heard from her, no; not exactly," explained Henry honestly. "But I expect her. These calumnies, if nothing else, will bring her," he announced, crushing the papers in his hand.
"I should think they would, yes," she conceded; and then just to spare him the pain of others of these terrible disappointments, she suggested artfully: "Although, you know how a delicate, refined woman—if those cunning schemers had made her believe you guilty"
But Henry smiled proudly. "She'll never believe me guilty," he proclaimed. "Not on your life! Not all the Scanlons and John Bolands in the world could make her believe that. No; she'll come; she'll probably come this morning."
And then in his foretaste of triumph, he remembered Adam John and beckoned her to the grating. "It's going to be tough, seeing Adam John go out to trial without me," he choked. "You'll stick close—sit beside him today," he whispered significantly.
"Of course," declared Lahleet.
"Courage, Adam, and good luck!" Henry called to him, when they took him away.
"How's it going, Adam, old fellow?" he asked when at five minutes past twelve a deputy brought him back.
"She go pretty bad, I t'ink so—mebbe so—I dunno!" Adam shook his head wearily.
"Have they got the jury?"
"Got jury fifteen minutes," blurted Adam John. "Ever dam man dis dam town want get on my jury . . . lie like hell!" The Indian sat down upon his bed and shrouded himself in taciturnity. Henry, having been able to visualize and even to auralize every procedure of the morning in court from these brief, jerky words of Adam's and unable to construe hope from them, relapsed also into silence.
In the late middle of the afternoon they brought Adam John back again to the cell. Henry marked this with honest surprise. "What's the idea, Adam?" he inquired in a low voice, as soon as they were alone.
"Idea to hang me," gutturaled the Indian, with a sullen blaze in his eye.
Henry started violently. "Guilty—they found you guilty? So soon?"
"That what!" muttered Adam, wrathfully.
"Railroaded, so help me!" groaned Harrington; for though he had believed this was inevitable, yet absorption with his own one great concern—this waiting for the coming of Billie—gave the news of the actual event all the shock value of something unforeseen.
Adam John was struggling with his indignation. "Dam fools!" he exploded. "Dam fool lawyer—dam fool jury—dam fool judge! Me dam fool too!"
The Indian seemed quite out of sorts with himself. Henry confessed with deep chagrin: "You were a fool to trust me, all right!"
Adam John, already at the side of his cell, quickly thrust his fingers through until they could touch Henry's. "Me trust you all time," he assured gratefully. "Dat one time me never be dam fool!"