Coming Through the Rye

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “Chris Hollister! This will never again be over! And we shall never be friends! He is a terrible man, and I hate him!” She cried out the last words as if they were a pain. It was not like Romayne Ransom to say she hated people. Chris looked at her startled and realized he wasn’t being much of a help. He looked down awkwardly and then looked up.

  “I say, Romayne, if there’s anything I can do, I’d be all kinds of glad. I always liked you best of any of the girls—”

  “Have the mercy then to keep quiet!” cried the girl desperately. “There is nothing you nor anybody else can ever do! You have done it all and more. Get over there to your window, and watch the house as long as it’s your duty, but don’t try to talk to me again.”

  Chris retreated, crestfallen, but was suddenly called into action again at the sound of the doorbell pealing through the house. It was a part of his duty to open that door.

  A telegram was handed in addressed to Romayne.

  He passed it on to her silently and went back to his window curtain again. The girl’s trembling fingers opened it nervously, and she read:

  For the love of mercy, kid, get into action and send some of my friends down after me if Dad can’t come. I’ve got to get out of here before seven tomorrow morning to look after something, or the mischief will be to pay!

  (Signed) Lawrence

  Chapter 7

  Romayne stood with the paper trembling in her hand and looking helplessly from the telephone to the back of the hurt boy, who stood just within the curtain waiting her call. How inadequate he looked. As inadequate as when he had been required to translate a paragraph in Latin or solve an algebra problem. He had never been a good scholar, but he had always been a kindly soul, ready to do a good turn for anyone, and she used to like him. Now she looked away from him bitterly as she would look from any traitor. Where should she turn? What should she do?

  Her heart sank as she read the note over again. What was it that Lawrence was so afraid of? Why must he get out before morning especially? Was it then true that he had had a part in this dreadful business that it seemed her father had been carrying on? Or could it be possible he had just suspected all was not right and that he hoped to get home and to put out of sight some incriminating goods or papers? Well, whatever it was, he was her brother, and she must answer his call.

  She racked her brain for someone else who might be a help at this time, but she could not think of anyone she dared ask, and she was not well versed in the politics of the town. It ought to be somebody who had influence with the powers that were doing all this, of course.

  She walked over to the desk and dropped into a chair by the telephone again, and as she did so, a card attracted her attention. She reached over and grasped it, hoping in some way it might help her in this trying moment.

  EVAN SHERWOOD, ATTORNEY AT LAW, the card read, and down in the corner, 772 PARK BUILDING.

  She flung it from her as if it had been hot and, catching up the telephone, called Judge Freeman’s number again, asking, when the response came, for Mrs. Freeman, only to be told that Mrs. Freeman was away on a motor trip with friends and would not return for a week at least.

  In her desperation she asked if the servant could give her Judge Freeman’s present whereabouts, as she needed to telephone him on important business at once; something she was sure he would want to know. After some parley with the servant to establish her right to such an address, he finally gave her the name of a New York club, and Romayne started on an hour’s long-distance search. She had made up her mind to fight this thing to a finish if it took all night. She felt positive that a telegram from Judge Freeman could set her brother free, and she determined that if there was anything she could do to get hold of him that night, she would do it.

  In the long and patience-trying intervals between calls, she sat back and wrought out other plans in case the present chance failed. She was so busy at this that she did not notice that the motionless boy in the shadow of the curtain was still standing, and that his shoulders had taken on an exceeding droop of discouragement. She was thankful only for this, that he let her alone and let her forget him.

  At the end of an hour and ten minutes the club she was calling informed her that Judge Freeman had started on a week’s yachting trip with friends at eleven o’clock that morning, and he had left no address where he might be reached by wireless. No, they did not know the name of the yacht nor its owner.

  Sitting back almost in tears at last, she considered the brief list of possibilities she had written out on a bit of paper from one of her father’s desk drawers.

  The last name on the list was that of her friend, Isabel Worrell. Isabel’s father was a rich man, a businessman. He had some vague connection, too, with her father’s business. But, anyway, businessmen had great influence. She had always heard that. Surely he could do something if she could only reach him. Had they left yet? She tried to remember whether they were leaving that night or not till the next morning. Isabel had been locking her trunk when she arrived there and had said something about getting it off beforehand. Well, it was worth trying.

  So she tried.

  After a long wait and a parley with the toll operator, she succeeded in getting the house at which she had so blithely arrived that morning. The butler who answered was very explicit.

  “Yes, miss, she has left, miss. She left on the next train after you went. Their boat left the dock at six o’clock, miss.”

  Romayne’s lips trembled. Then her friend Isabel was even now sailing out over a moonlit sea of trouble! And where—to whom—should she turn next? Would they let her telephone to her brother?

  She was all untaught in the ways of prisons. She would try.

  So she tried that, only to be refused. And while she was discussing that matter, someone came to the door, and her young warden opened it and let in Mr. Sherwood, who stood silently by and listened until Romayne hung up the receiver again with a long drawn sigh of worry. Then the man came out of the shadow by the front door and spoke.

  “I am sorry to intrude, Miss Ransom, but my duty makes it necessary—”

  “Oh by all means, do your duty!” she said scornfully.

  He looked a little as if she had slapped him, but he went on with his sentence in an even tone of voice.

  “I have just come from the place where your brother is,” he said. “I have done my best to get him released for the night, but I find it impossible.”

  “You would, of course,” she said loftily. In spite of her anxiety, she felt angered beyond measure at this young man’s cocksureness. “I have friends who could do anything,” she added with equal assurance, “if I only knew where to reach them.”

  “I’m afraid even your friends could do nothing this time,” he said sadly. “But I am come to ask if I can carry a message, or do your bidding in any way. I know you do not wish to trust me, but if you have no one else—”

  “I do not need your help,” she said wearily. “I am going myself. That is permitted, I suppose, isn’t it?”

  “I think it can be managed. Do you wish to go at once? I will call a taxi and take you to him.”

  “Why do you have to go, too? Couldn’t I go by myself? Am I a prisoner?”

  “No, but I could not take the responsibility of letting you go unescorted.”

  “Well, let Mr. Hollister go then, and you stay here. I at least know who he is.”

  Sherwood looked toward the shrinking Chris meditatively.

  “I think I had better go,” he said. “They don’t know Chris, and he might have some trouble in getting the thing through smoothly. You see—well, there’s been some other trouble about an automobile—and—well—a man was killed in a mix-up, and your brother was in the party—which explains why they are taking unusual precautions.”

  Romayne heard his words as if in a dream. They meant little to her save that it was necessary for some vague reason that she go with this officious young man. It seemed all a part of the horror that had suddenl
y fallen down upon her. She could not explain it, and she did not try to, but back in her mind she had a conviction that a large part of the difficulty lay in his imagination. However, she was in the clutches of the law and must humble herself and get to Lawrence as best she could.

  She swept him with a glance that was almost annihilating and turned toward the staircase.

  “Very well,” she said, “if there is no other way, I suppose I can’t help myself; but I can’t see that you are keeping your promise very well.”

  “I will go away if you say so,” said Sherwood quietly, “but I think you will have to go with me if you go at all.”

  “He’s all right, Romayne,” put in Chris. “Everybody knows him—”

  “Then take me quickly!” said Romayne. “I must get back to my father. He might rouse and want me.”

  He was certainly expeditious, and the taxi was at the door almost immediately.

  Sherwood did not intrude upon her during the ride. He put her inside and sat with the driver, and she found herself trembling as they whirled through the lighted streets. They came at last to a grim, looming building where the taxi drew up sharply. Here she was going to jail to find her brother! How terrible! What if their dear little mother had lived to see this awful happening!

  For the first time since her mother had been taken away, Romayne was glad that she was gone. At least she was saved this horror and shame.

  Lawrence was white and nervous when they came to him. He seemed almost angry with his sister for not coming sooner, and for not having brought immediate release for him. There was something about his attitude that made her almost afraid to tell him how she had failed in trying to get hold of any of their friends to help him. He seemed to take it as a personal failure of her own instead of the accident of circumstance. He raved at her as much as he dared. Her drooping lashes hid bright tears that she would not let fall. She shrank from having her escort see how her brother treated her. Her brother seemed strange, almost beside himself. She scarcely knew him. All the courtesy of his lifetime seemed swept away. And yet he was her dear brother, who had shared everything with her for years. She was bound to overlook his actions, to do all in her power for him.

  He seemed aghast that his father was still unconscious, and yet he did not seem to feel it as much for his father’s sake as because of his own captivity. It merely served to make his own strait the more difficult, since there was no father to lean upon. That, too, he took as a personal affront. Was it possible that Lawrence was the least bit spoiled? Romayne could not help noticing that he had not once said a word about her predicament, nor seemed deeply concerned about his father. But she quickly laid that to his excitement. Of course, he was not normal. It was enough to make one crazy to suddenly find oneself in jail!

  Romayne found her mind running on aimlessly, excusing him while she tried to tell him what she had done and listen to his excited sentences. Sherwood stood aloof from them, not seeming to notice them, yet nothing escaped his observation. He felt sorrier for that game little girl than for anybody he had ever seen before. He wished he could just pick her up and carry her away from it all. Take her to his Aunt Patty up in the mountains and let her run with the wind and laugh with the sunshine—he felt sure she could laugh like a brook—such absurd thoughts to be racing through his head while he waited here in a grim jail for a girl he’d never seen before whose father was a bootlegger! Was ever any situation more unpleasant! He would give all he had to be well out of it, yet he did not want to leave her, little, delicate, scornful, lovely thing!

  There he was at it again! This business must be getting his nerve. He had never before fallen for a girl that snubbed him. But this one was so bravely pitiful in her terrible situation! No girl he ever knew had had to face a thing like this!

  And then he jerked himself back to reality. The young man was telling his sister he wanted her to destroy certain papers that were in his bureau drawer, also certain letters that she would find in the pocket of his coat. And then he was giving her a note that he wanted her to personally give to a girl who lived in a street down near the railroad station—not a neighborhood to which Sherwood would have cared to send his sister hunting a strange girl at that time of night.

  Sherwood stood with his back turned toward them and patiently waited without a sign that he had heard anything. There were other men in the room. No one was especially noticing the brother and sister. The girl’s white ethereal face stood out, strangely incongruous in the grim surroundings. She shrank back as the door opened, and a reeling, ribald man singing a snatch of a song out of the past peered gustily in.

  “If a body meet a body, comin’ through the rye,” he sang mirthlessly, and bowed toward Romayne with mock ceremony.

  Romayne looked up with a shudder and grew whiter round her lips. She had her brother’s keys and had written down his directions.

  Sherwood hurried her away as soon as possible. It seemed now to him that he had done a terrible thing in bringing this sweet young girl here among drunken roughs. He ought to have prevented the visit somehow. Yet how could he?

  Romayne did not cry on the way back to her home. She seemed to have grown old, so old, and to have things they called cares hanging all over her. She did not know which was the more terrible. To have her beloved father locked in a sleep like death, or to have her only brother spending the night in jail with all-too-apparently good reason.

  “Did you wish to go anywhere else?” Sherwood asked her abruptly as they were about to turn into her street. “You had a message to take?”

  “Oh!” She roused herself with a start and told off the address, but when the taxi drew up in front of the number she had given, she looked out to find it was the very house where she had spent an hour that afternoon before coming home, and with new horror she remembered that the little note had been addressed to “Frances” somebody. What could this mean? Surely Lawrence could have nothing to do with a girl like Frances Judson, common little painted thing that she was! What possible communication could Lawrence have to make to her?

  She straightened up in her seat after glancing out.

  “I think there is some mistake,” she said to her silent escort. “I will not take the message tonight. I would like to go home now, please.”

  There was a note of humility in her voice that had not been there before, and Sherwood felt his own heart go out to her in her despair. If only he were her friend now and could help a little—really help!

  They went swiftly back to the house, and Romayne looked up at the light in the upper window and remembered how she had glanced up that afternoon with such satisfaction. How soon and how swiftly her satisfaction had been swept away! How gladly now would she welcome back the hard sweet days when she and her father had lived in a little old house on an uninteresting street and were happy companions together! How happy poverty could be if she had it again, along with her utter trust in her father and brother!

  As she passed through the hall, she threw just one glance toward the narrow open door, but she caught the gleam of the row of bottles with their labels: PURE RYE WHISKEY.

  How indelibly that was stamped on her brain! And to think that she had been living in a house with all that hidden peril and had not known it, had, in fact, been hiding its presence and protecting it by her own presence there. Could it be that her dear father had realized that and had been willing to put her in such a position? She felt as if she were entering a charnel house.

  She fled up the stairs that the men who were visible beyond the narrow door might not see her. She felt that she could not bear their eyes upon her. When she reached the top of the stairs, she found her knees were all but sinking under her. Where was her fine vigorous strength of the morning? Oh, how had life fled away and left nothing but death? Death in life!

  She went once more and stood by the bed, listening to her father’s hoarse unnatural breathing, taking his twisted hand in hers and wondering how a single moment like that could have changed and disto
rted his form and features. Her heart was bursting with its heavy burden.

  The nurse had shaded the light and motioned her to go and rest, and Romayne slipped away to her own room. She took off her hat and then remembered that she had yet a mission to perform. Perhaps even now men were on their way to her brother’s room.

  She slipped down the hall again and was about to open her brother’s door when she noticed there was a light streaming from the crack below. She drew back as the door swung open and saw two men, one with a flashlight, going through her brother’s pockets. It was too late! The papers he had wanted destroyed were already in their hands! So she had failed to do even so much to help him! She made a little sound like a moan and turned to go, but her foot slipped on the polished floor, and she would have fallen if someone had not caught her. She looked up and found that Sherwood was steadying her with his arm. A sudden feeling of fury came upon her that he should be present everywhere as if he was at the bottom of all her trouble. Her overstrained nerves recoiled, and she stiffened away from him.

  “So that was why you were so anxious to go with me to see my brother!” she said the scorn. “You went to spy!”

  He looked down at her sadly.

  “You poor little girl!” he said. “What I heard made no difference. This would have all been done anyway.” He swept the room with his gesture. “This has all been arranged since yesterday. I had nothing to do with it except as I have been obeying orders.”

  “Oh!” she moaned. “I wish I might never see you again!” and the tears flowed down in a deluge.

  The young man recoiled at her words as if he had been stung again, but his voice was steady.

  “If you will go into your room and stay an hour, I will do my best to make your wish come true,” he said and walked away back to Lawrence’s room once more.

  Romayne hurried into her own room, locked the door, and fell upon her trembling knees in a deluge of tears.