Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 68: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

66 | | Adventure eee go with me at once and ave him re- eased. This time she started violently. He look- ed at her keenly to catch every fleeting shade, but he could find in her astonished eyes no sign of the guilt that he had ex- pected. They were bent upon him in a look that was one of complete surprise, al- most of unbelief, but he searched in vain for the fear that he had anticipated. “T’m sorry—treally,” she said, shaking her head in bewilderment. “I don’t want to seem stupid, but I must ask you to re- peat that. You say that I probably al- ready knew of the kidnaping of Mr. Con- way? Will you please tell me what could possibly have given you the impression that I have had the remotest connection with it?” He glared at her a moment in silence. So surrounded had he been lately by as- sumptions of honesty that had proved dis- honest, that he found himself wondering where she had learned to act so perfectly. Yet, as his eyes searched hers, he found himself convinced against his will that she was not playing a part to deceive him. He ed under the even gaze that she kept fixed upon him. “I do not mean—not exactly—that you are connected with it,” he temporized. “I only mean that I have reason to believe that it was done by persons whom you know, persons whose activity since the dis- covery of Caprice has shown them to be un- friendly to Mr. Conway and me.” “Yes?” She raised her brows again, but her glance fell as if his words were an accu- sation that she could not refute. “The persons,’ Ward continued, seeing her momentary embarrassment, ‘who are encamped on the shore below here—the persons whom you visited one night in a motor-boat from Sea View.” He could see her start with surprise at this thrust. The color fled from her cheeks but returned quickly again and she smiled bravely up at him. 7 “So you know that?” she asked. ‘I had intended telling you about it anyway. That was one of the things I thought we should discuss with Mr. Greiner. But are you cer- tain that these persons are the ones who have captured Mr. Conway?” “No,” he admitted slowly. “I am not, absolutely. I have a description of one of the men. He is so swarthy as to be almost. black. Doesn’t that fit one of the men down there?” She shook her aed: a puzzled frown gath- ering over her eyes. “Swarthy?” she asked. ‘‘No; there was no one there who was swarthy.” ” “You are sure?” “Absolutely. At least, there was no such man there on the night you mention—the night I ran down in the launch I hired at Sea View. There were only three men there, and Uncle Stephen. None of them was dark. Are you certain of your description?” “Quite. This dark man and another man, whom my informant could not describe, drugged John Drummond and, pretending that he was too drunk to drive the car, called at the telegraph office, got a message intended for me, telling me the train on which Mr. Conway was to arrive and then drove off. It is perfectly obvious to me that they met Mr. Conway at the train with some story that made him believe they were from me, that he entered the car expecting them to bring him down here, and that, as soon as they reached a place lonely enough for their purpose, they overpowered him and made him prisoner.” “And you judged from that—”’ her voice was more pained than angry—“‘that I must have had something to do with it, that I could play you such a trick after the way you have—have helped me? What can your opinion of me be to permit you to rush to such a conclusion?”’ “T knew of this gang down the shore,” he protested. ‘I knew that they had attacked us once and that that attack was prompted by our accidental discovery of Caprice. And I knew, unfortunately, that you were connected with this gang, for I followed you that night in my aeroplane and I was hid- den in the underbrush not twenty feet from you when you and your uncle came ftom the tent down there and you started back for Sea View. Id give my right hand not to have to suspect you, Miss Blaydon, for I promised—and meant every word of it, too—that I would help you here. But my friend comes first.” “You promised, you remember, no mat- ter what happened.” There was a trace of wounded pride and bitterness in her tone. She seemed hurt, not so much by the things he accused her of, as by his defection from her side in this tangle. Eomichbooks (EO)