blank of her mind and gave her pain, her bright handsome brother of whom she and her father had been so proud! Surely, surely they must be mistaken about Lawrence. He was always so happy and so ready for a good time. Only that morning they had been talking about the car they were going to get and the long trip they were going to take when his vacation came. He had told her how he was staying out late to earn more money. She had pictured him working hard over the books of the tailor who pressed his suits for him, and spending hours at the invoices in a little grocery store where the proprietor didn’t understand bookkeeping very well and had taken a fancy to Lawrence. Several times in the past months Lawrence had told about "helping out" these humble men and receiving a few extra dollars in return. Surely, surely they were mistaken about Lawrence’s having anything to do with this terrible business. Surely, if it were true at all, it was only Father, and he had done it for love of them. Poor Father! He wanted to give them beautiful things!
She thought of her pretty suit, crushed now beneath her weight on the floor, rumpled beyond restoration to freshness perhaps! Poor, poor Father! How could he have fallen? No! She would not believe yet that he had! There would be some explanation when he came to himself!
Oh God, please let him come to himself and explain! she cried in her anguished young soul. And then came another thought! But if he were guilty! If he could not explain!
And then she went back to her first prayer, just "Oh God! Oh God, don’t You know what to do?"
Presently the nurse stooped and lifted her away from the bed.
"It’s no use your staying there," she said in a low professional voice. "He’ll be like this for hours—days perhaps—before there’s any change. You better save your strength. You’ll need it. Did you have your dinner? You better go down and get it. I’ll sit right by him and call you the first sign of any change, but there won’t be any. The doctor was sure."
Romayne looked about and saw that they had all gone but the nurse and a man who seemed to be on guard outside the door. She shuddered as she realized that her father, in what might be his last illness, was having to be watched by an officer of the law. Her father!
She was glad the officer was not any of those who had been in the house when she first entered. She slid past him as if he had been something to fear and sped down the stairs. It had been slowly coming to her that she ought to do something to set Lawrence free at once. They ought to be consulting together about their father. If that terrible young man with the iron hand and the square jaw were downstairs, would he let her telephone to Judge Freeman? For, of course, if Judge Freeman was her father’s partner, he was responsible for things, and he ought to be able to do something about setting Lawrence free.
It was humiliating to her to think of opening a conversation once more with her obnoxious young jailer, but she would have to do something at once. Perhaps it was not true after all. Perhaps Lawrence was not arrested. Perhaps he had only gone for friends and would soon be back.
These thoughts all went through her mind as she glanced furtively in every corner for sight of the young man, Evan Sherwood.
But he was not there. Not anywhere apparently.
The little doors by the fireplace had been closed, and the chairs set straight, and everything looked normal again in her father’s office. Not until she searched twice in the dim light of the single shaded lamp that was lit did she discover the square shoulders of the boy Chris, standing half within the amber-colored curtains as if he shrank from being found.
Very well. She would not find him. She would just go ahead and do her telephoning as if no one were there.
So she turned her back on the shrinking Chris and sat down at the desk, drawing the telephone toward her.
She called Judge Freeman’s home but, after waiting some time, was told that he had suddenly been called out of town, and they did not know when he would return. It might be a week or more.
She hung up the receiver with a feeling that the props had been knocked from under her and she was slowly sinking.
She grasped for the receiver once more and called another number, the home of another of her father’s friends, with the same result. A third time she tried for another friend of the family with a like failure, and it dawned upon her that this might not be a mere coincidence. Could it possibly be business had found it convenient to get away while her father bore the penalty of the law for them in their absence?
After sitting for some minutes, silently turning over in her mind her list of friends who would be helpful now, she called one of her brother’s happy friends who had been much at the house during the past few weeks of their prosperity, and whose family were influential people.
Carefully she explained the situation as she saw it. Lawrence was gone. They had told her he was arrested! Of course it was some mistake. The whole thing was—but never mind! Her father was terribly ill, suddenly, a stroke of paralysis the doctor said. Would George kindly hunt up Lawrence and do whatever was necessary to get him out and get him home at once? He was needed——
But a lofty, ruthless voice at the other end of the wire answered her.
"Awfully sorry, Romayne, but I don’t see how I can possibly do anything. I’ve got an awfully important engagement for this evening. I’m late now, and you know you can’t stand up a lady. S’pose you call up Cholly. He’s a good friend of Larry’s. I guess he’ll do something. He has more time than I. And I hope your father’ll be better in the morning, kid. I really do!"
Romayne spent a precious ten minutes chasing over the wires from club to club after "Cholly" and finally found him. Cholly professed to have great concern for his old friend Larry but suggested that Albert Huston had more influence at court than he had and gave her Albert’s phone number.
Romayne tried Albert and received a flat refusal.
"Can’t do it, little girl. Sorry, but I’m in bad with the authorities now, ‘count of a little affair last week, and it simply wouldn’t do for me to come out in the open yet. Hope you find somebody to help—I surely do! And say, girlie, when you see Larry give him my best and say if there’s anything he wants brought to him, I’ll see’t he gets it. He’ll understand. Good luck, girlie. He’ll get out all right. Don’t you worry. Larry’s got lots of good friends."
Romayne rattled the receiver tremblingly into place and let her head sink down on her arms on the desk, utterly forgetting the ambushed Chris.
"Oh!" she moaned softly in despair. "Oh–h–h! Is there no one to help?"
Chris wheeled from his window and marched over to her suddenly.
"I’ll help, Romayne. I’ll do anything you want. But you can’t get your brother out now. I’ve been off trying for the last hour. They’ve refused him bail, and nothing anybody says will do any good. Evan Sherwood has gone off to try himself. He says he knows where he can find somebody that’ll go bail if he says so, but they won’t let him do it—I know. I heard ’em talk. They’re mad, and they think he’s the key to the whole situation. They say he’s slippery. I came back and told Sherwood, and he’s just gone. If anybody can do anything, that guy can, Romayne!"
Romayne’s face was white and set.
"I wish you would telephone him and tell him to do nothing," she said with a hard edge to her voice. "He is insufferable! I am sure my brother would rather remain where he is than have that man do anything about it. He is presuming. I told him I did not wish his help. A man who did what he has done is beyond the
