8
Maria defied Cunningham without words. And Cunningham saw her father’s hand stealing to a part of her dress where a weapon might be concealed. Sweat came out on his forehead. He could not shoot, and in another instant——
Then the defiance in her eyes turned to pleading and the deliberate wordless reiteration of the thing he had read in her face before. Cunningham spoke suddenly in a fierce whisper.
“I love you!” he cried softly and desperately. “Do you think I will let harm come to your father?”
The terror faded from her eyes and without a sound she clasped her father’s hands fast in her own, though still before him. Stephan stood tense, watching Cunningham through eyes that showed nothing whatever.
Cunningham turned his head.
“Who’s there?” he called. The answer was an anticlimax.
“Gray,” said Gray’s voice dryly. “I say—if you want to send any mail or telegrams, you’d better give them to me. I think they’d be opened, here.”
“I know they would,” Cunningham growled. “But I won’t have anything to go out. Anything else? I’m in bed,” he added as an afterthought.
“No. Nothing else.” Gray’s tone was very dry. Cunningham heard his footsteps retreating.
He silently picked up Stephan’s knife and handed it back. He replaced his pistol in his pocket.
“It’s dangerous to talk here,” he said grimly. “I suppose these partitions are thin. Let me come up to the hills tomorrow. I’ll tell you anything I can to help you. But please don’t kill anybody else until I’ve had time to explain. Don’t you understand that you can’t get away with that sort of thing in the United States? Where did you come from, anyhow?”
Stephan smiled faintly. He ignored the whisper to Maria of a moment before. He suddenly reached over and put his hand on Cunningham’s shoulder.
“Good man,” he said gravely. “We will talk to you, yes. But we will not tell you anything. Come up into the hills tomorrow. We will kill nobody else until you say.”
“But—I tell you you mustn’t kill anybody at any time,” protested Cunningham anxiously. “You can’t get away with it. Don’t you understand?”
“No,” said Stephan. He spread out his hands in a confession of despair. “We do not understand anything! Maria says you are our friend. We need a friend. Else we die. And if you do not help us——”
Cunningham stared from one to the other, but it was hard to think of anything when he looked at Maria. He had taken the Strangers seriously enough when he knew of the first man’s being killed. Now it looked as if he was called upon to prevent deadly serious trouble in the hills.
“I’ll try,” he said hopelessly. “Yes, I’ll try. Maria——”
The color mounted in her cheeks. Then she seemed to summon all her pride and met his eyes fairly. They told him many things, her eyes.
“I—I will wait for you,” she told him. And in the words she said much more than the words themselves.
Cunningham was tingling all over, at the same time that he felt a curious sense of absurdity in escorting callers to the window instead of to the door. But before they reached it a head appeared there. It was that of the young Stranger who had been the first to appear from the woods that afternoon.
“The sheriff,” he whispered. “He came. We hit him on the head. Shall we kill him?”
“No!” said Cunningham sharply. “Tie him up until you get clear away. Did he see you coming up to my window?”
“No.” The young man shrugged and disappeared. There were whispered instructions below. To Cunningham it seemed that the whispers were in a strange tongue. Maria and her father slipped out. Then there were little rustlings below. The ladder, probably, being taken down and carried elsewhere, and the marks it had made in the earth erased.
Cunningham sank into a chair and stared before him. His blood was still pounding in his veins. And Maria had glanced back at him as she disappeared from view. But there was no denying that a tremendous and unwelcome responsibility had been thrust upon him.
They were foreigners. They must be. They did not understand the laws of the United States—and they were hated now and would soon be subject to persecution. Why, otherwise, did Vladimir bribe the sheriff and try to keep both Gray and Cunningham away from the Strange People? Why, otherwise, had such unreasoning hatred been expressed that morning in Bendale?
And it was up to Cunningham to prevent a wholesale tragedy. For some unknown reason they believed that he was their friend. They would not kill anyone until he had spoken to them. That was the promise Stephan had made in their behalf,—and yet they were not bloodthirsty. He had said they only wished to be let alone, and he could not understand that that was the surest way to be thoroughly investigated. They depended now upon Cunningham. Before, without a counselor, they had killed. Now, unless Cunningham aided them, they would kill again. And Cunningham felt that the responsibility of human lives was more than he had bargained for.
Adventure was all very well, and romance was all very well, but this was different and in deadly earnest. And Cunningham could not feel any sense of superiority to them, as most men feel toward most uninformed foreigners. They were unlike him, but they were certainly not inferior to him. They knew less, but they gave no indication of lesser intelligence. And Maria——
Cunningham stood up, a trifle pale.
“Well,” he muttered, “I asked for adventure and I guess I’ve got it.”
There was another knock on the door.
“What is it?” he demanded. He wanted to be alone to think.
““Gray,” said a dry voice. “Have you gotten out of bed, Cunningham?”
Cunningham opened the door.
“I came in,” said Gray dryly, “to mention that Vladimir went through my room while I was gone. One key will unlock any door in this sort of hotel.”
“He went through mine, too,” said Cunningham abstractedly.
“And also,” said Gray still more dryly, “to mention that the partitions here are very thin and that I heard all of the conversation just now.”
Cunningham looked up with a start.
“I knocked on your door,” Gray added, smiling cryptically, “because I knew you wouldn’t open it. I was doing what I could to cement their confidence in you. Are you going to help them?”
“I guess I’ve got to try,” said Cunningham grimly. “But I wish I knew what to do.”
“Keep them from killing,” Gray told him with sudden sharpness. “And also, keep them out of jail. You’ve got to do it, Cunningham! There’ll be hell to pay in those hills if you don’t. These people are scared. That’s why they killed that man we saw on the train. And they will be worse scared of Vladimir. He hasn’t gone, and if I can read faces he’s planning devilment for them. I tell you there’ll be wholesale killings in the hills unless you go up there! Stay with them. Argue with them. Educate them if you must. But keep them from killing anybody!”
“And who,” asked Cunningham grimly, “is going to keep Vladimir from starting something?”
Gray spread out his hands. Then he said curtly, “Look here. I tell you nothing——”
“Just like most other people,” interpolated Cunningham none too cordially.
“——nothing,” went on Gray, ignoring the interruption, “but I can promise that you won’t get into trouble through trying to keep the peace.”
“You’re a detective?”
“No,” snapped Gray. “I’m not. But I can promise that much.”
“All those who have made mysteries of themselves so far,” observed Cunningham grimly, “have offered me money. What do you offer?”
Gray stopped short. He seemed to realize for the first time just what sort of a predicament Cunningham was in, hopelessly at sea regarding the motives of every person in the extraordinary triangle.
“Advice,” he said soberly after an instant. “I’ll offer you advice. That girl is devilish pretty and I heard what you said to her. And it’s insanity to say it, but—either avoid her entirely or marry her at once. And I mean at once! I’ve a reason for warning you.”
And just as he put his hand on the knob of the door there was a scream on the ground outside. Maria had screamed. There was a crashing of glass, and as Cunningham hurled himself to his feet a shot followed, which was sickeningly loud and reverberated horribly in the stillness.
Then Vladimir’s voice came purringly from a spot near by, as if he were gloating to himself, “Ha! I got her!”