he had gone wild, cleared the traces. Staring at her, at that sweater, he tried to think… She would upbraid Betty. How would he ever square things with Hy!
He saw her hands grip the fence rail so tightly that her finger-tips went white.
“Tell me,” she said again, with deliberate emphasis, “where you learned these things. Who told you?”
He felt rather than saw the movement of her body within the sweater as she breathed with a slow inhalation. His own breath came quickly. His throat was suddenly dry. He swallowed – once, twice. Then he stepped forward and laid his hand, a trembling hard, on her forearm.
She shook it off and sprang back.
“Don’t look at me like that!” his voice said. And rushed on: “Can’t you see that I’m pleading for your very life! Can’t you see that I know what you are headed for – that I want to save you from yourself – that I love you – that I’m offering you my life – that I want to take you out of this crazy atmosphere of the Village and give…”
He stopped, partly because he was out of breath, and felt, besides, as if his tonsils had abruptly swollen and filled his throat; partly because she turned deliberately away from him.
He waited, uneasily leaning against the fence while she walked off a little way, very slowly; stood thinking; then came back. She looked rather white now, he thought.
“Suppose,” she said, “we drop this and finish our walk. It’s a good three hours yet over to the other railroad. We may as well make a job of it.”
“Oh, Sue,” he cried – “how can you!..”
She stopped him. “Please!” she said.
“But – but – ”
“Please!” she said again.
“But – but – ”
She turned away. “I simply can not keep up this personal talk. I would be glad to finish the walk with you, but…”
He pulled himself together amid the wreckage of his thoughts and feelings. “But if I won’t or can’t, you’ll have to walk alone,” he said for her.
“Yes, I did mean that. I am sorry. I did hope it would be possible.” She compressed her lips, then added: “Of course I should have seen that it wasn’t possible, after what happened.”
“Very well,” said he.
They walked on, silent, past the woods, past more plowed fields, up another hillside.
She broke the silence. Gravely, she said: “I will say just one thing more, since you already know so much. Zarin signs up with Silverstone to-morrow morning. Or as soon as they can finish drawing up the contracts. Then within one or two weeks – very soon, certainly – we go down to Cuba or Florida to begin taking the outdoor scenes. That, you see, settles it.”
Peter’s mind blurred again. Ugly foggy thoughts rushed over it. He stopped short, his long gloomy face workhing nervously.
“Good God!” he broke out. “You mean to say – you’re going to let those crooks take you off – to Cuba! Don’t you see…”
There was no object in saying more. Even Peter could see that. For Sue, after one brief look at his sputtering, distorted face, had turned away and was now walking swiftly on up the hill.
“Wait!” he called. “Sue!”
She reached the top of the hill, passed on over the crest. Gradually she disappeared down the farther slope – the tam o’shanter last.
CHAPTER IX – THE NATURE FILM PRODUCING CO. INC
THEN Peter, muttering, talking out loud to the road, the fence, the trees, the sky, turned back to retrace the miles they had covered so lightly and rapidly. His feet and legs hurt him cruelly. He found a rough stick, broke it over a rock and used it for a cane.
He thought of joining Hy and Betty. There would be sympathy there, perhaps. Hy could do something. Hy would have to do something. Where were they, anyway!
Half an hour later he caught a glimpse of them. They were sitting on a boulder on a grassy hillside, some little distance from the road. They appeared to be gazing dreamily off across a valley.
Peter hesitated. They were very close together. They hardly seemed to invite interruption. Then, while he stood, dusty and bedraggled, in real pain, watching them, he saw Betty lean back against the boulder – or was it against Hy’s arm?
Hy seemed to be leaning over her. His head bent lower still. It quite hid hers from view.
He was kissing her!
Blind to the shooting pains in his feet and legs, Peter rushed, stumbling, away. In his profound self-pity, he felt that even Hy had deserted him. He was alone, in a world that had no motive or thought but to do him evil, to pervert his finest motives, to crush him!
Somehow he got back to that railroad. An hour and a half he spent painfully sitting in the country station waiting for a train. There was time to think. There was time for nothing but thinking.
And Peter, as so often when deeply stirred either by joy or misery, found himself passing into a violent and soul-wrenching reaction. It was misery this time. He was a crawling abject thing. People would laugh. Sue would laugh…
But would she! Would she tell? Would Hy and Betty, if they ever did get home, know that she had returned alone?
Those deep-green eyes of hers, the strong little chin… She was Miss Independence herself.
Zanin was signing with Silverstone in the morning! Or as soon as the contracts could be drawn.
The train came rumbling in. Peter, in, physical and spiritual agony, boarded it.
All these painful, exciting experiences of the day were drawing together toward some new unexpected result. He was beaten – yet was he beaten! A news agent walked through the train with a great pile of magazines on his arm.
Peter suddenly thought of the moving-picture periodical he had dropped, so long, long ago, in the Tunnel Station. He bought another copy; and again turned the pages. Then he let it fall to his knees and stared out the window with eyes that saw little.
Zanin – Silverstone – Sue walking alone over a hill!.. Peters little lamp of genius was burning once more. He was thrilled, if frightened, by the ideas that were forming in that curious mind of his.
Shortly after seven o’clock of the same evening Jacob Zanin reached his mean little room in Fourth Street, after a stirring twenty-four hours at Silver-stone’s house at Long Beach and an ineffectual attempt to find Sue in her rooms. Those rooms were dim and silent. No one answered his ring. No one answered his knock when he finally succeeded in following another tenant of the building into the inner hall. Which explains why he was at his room, alone, at a quarter to eight when Peter Ericson Mann called there.
Peter, pale, nerves tense, a feverish glow in his eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses, leaned heavily on a walking stick in the dark hallway, listening to the sound of heavy footsteps coming across the creaking boards on the other side of the door. Then the door opened; and Zanin, coatless, collarless, hair rumpled over his ears on either side of his head, stood
