"You must go now--good night!" she said breathlessly, and darted out of the summer-house.
"Wait! Where are you going?" he cried, and tried to seize her, but she was gone.
He stumbled amazedly after her vague figure, which was running through the grape-arbour swiftly toward the stable. The blackness, his unfamiliarity with the way, made him half a minute behind Katherine in entering the barn.
"Miss West!" he called. "Miss West!"
There was no answer and no sound within the stable. Just then a flash of lightning showed him that the rear door was open. As he felt his way through this he heard Katherine say, "Whoa, Nelly! Whoa, Nelly!"
and saw her swing into the saddle.
He sprang forward and caught the bridle rein.
"What are you going to do?" he cried.
"Going out for a little gallop," she answered with an excited laugh.
"What?" A light broke in upon him. "You've been sitting there all evening in your riding habit! Your horse has been standing saddled and bridled in the stall! Tell me--where are you going?"
"For a little ride, I said. Now let loose my rein."
"Why--why--" he gasped in amazement. Then he cried out fiercely: "You shall not go! It's madness to go out in a storm like this!"
"Mr. Bruce, let go that rein this instant!" she said peremptorily.
"I shall do nothing of the sort! I shall not let you make an insane fool of yourself!"
She bent downward. Though in the darkness he could not see her face, the tensity of her tone told him her eyes were flashing.
"Mr. Bruce," she said with slow emphasis, "if you do not loosen that rein, this second, I give you my word I shall never see you, never speak to you again."
"All right, but I shall not let you make a fool of yourself," he cried with fierce dominance. "You've got to yield to sense, even though I use force on you."
She did not answer. Swiftly she reversed her riding crop and with all her strength brought its heavy end down upon his wrist.
"Nelly!" she ordered sharply, and in the same instant struck the horse. The animal lunged free from Bruce's benumbed grasp, and sprang forward into a gallop.
"Good night!" she called back to him.
He shouted a reply; his voice came to her faintly, wrathful and defiant, but his words were whirled away upon the storm.
CHAPTER XV
POLITICS MAKE STRANGE BED-FELLOWS
She quieted Nelly into a canter, made her way through the soundly sleeping back streets, and at length emerged from the city and descended into the River Road, which was slightly shorter than Grayson's Pike which led over the high back country to The Sycamores.
She knew what Nelly could do, and she settled the mare down into the fastest pace she could hold for the eleven miles before her.
Katherine was aquiver with suspense, one moment with hopeful expectation, the next with fear that her deductions were all awry.
Perhaps Blake had not gone out to meet a confederate. And if he had, perhaps The Sycamores was not the rendezvous. But if her deductions were correct, who was this secret ally? Would she be able to approach them near enough to discover his identity? And would she be able to learn the exact outlines of the plot that was afoot? If so, what would it all prove to be?
Such questions and doubts galloped madly through her mind. The storm grew momently in fierceness. The water and fury of three months of withheld storms were spending themselves upon the earth in one violent outburst. The wind cracked her skirt like a whip-lash, and whined and snarled and roared among the trees. The rain drove at her in maddened sheets, found every opening in her raincoat, and soon she was as wet as though dropped in the river yonder. The night was as black as the interior of a camera, save when--as by the opening of a snapshot shutter--an instantaneous view of the valley was fixed on Katherine's startled brain by the lightning ripping in fiery fissures down the sky. Then she saw the willows bending and whipping in the wind, saw the gnarled old sycamores wrestling with knotted muscles, saw the broad river writhing and tossing its swollen and yellow waters. Then, blackness again--and, like the closing click of this world-wide camera, there followed a world-shaking crash of thunder.
Katherine would have been terrified but for the stimulant within. She crouched low upon her horse, held a close rein, petted Nelly, talked to her and kept her going at her best--onward--onward--onward--through the covered wooden bridge that spanned Buck Creek--through the little old village of Sleepy Eye--up Red Man's Ridge--and at last, battered, buffeted, half-drowned, she and Nelly drew up at the familiar stone gateway of The Sycamores.
She dismounted, led Nelly in and tied her among the beeches away from the drive. Then cautiously, palpitantly, she groped her way in the direction of the Blake cabin, avoiding the open lest the lightning should betray her presence. At length she came to the edge of a cleared space in which she knew the cabin stood. But she could see nothing. The cabin was just a cube of blackness imbedded in this great blackness which was the night. She peered intently for a lighted window; she listened for the lesser thunder of a waiting automobile.
But she could see nothing but the dark, hear nothing but the dash of the rain, the rumble of the thunder, the lashing and shrieking of the wind.
Her heart sank. No one was here. Her guesses all were wrong.
But she crept toward the house, following the drive. Suddenly, she almost collided with a big, low object. She reached forth a hand. It fell upon the tire of an automobile. She peered forward and seemed to see another low shape. She went toward it and felt. It was a second car.
She dashed back among the trees, and thus sheltered from the revealing glare of the lightning, almost choking with excitement, she began to circle the house for signs which would locate in what room were the men within. She paused before each side and peered closely at it, but each side in turn presented only blackness, till she came to the lee of the house.
This, too, was dark for the first moment. Then in a lower window, which she knew to be the window of Blake's den, two dull red points of light appeared--glowed--subsided--glowed again--then vanished. A minute later one reappeared, then the other; and after the slow rise and fall and rise of the glow, once more went out. She stood rigid, wondering at the phenomenon. Then suddenly she realized that within were two lighted cigars.
Bending low, she scurried across the open space and crouched beside the window. Luckily it had been opened to let some fresh air into the long-closed room. And luckily this was the lee of the house and the beat of the storm sounded less loudly here, so that their voices floated dimly out to her. This lee was also a minor blessing, for Katherine's poor, wet, shivering body now had its first protection from the storm.
Tense, hardly breathing, with all five senses converged into hearing, she stood flattened against the wall and strained to catch their every word. One voice was plainly Blake's. The other had a faintly familiar quality, though she could not place it. This second man had evidently come late, for their conversation was of a preliminary, beating-around-the-bush character--about the fierceness of the storm, and the additional security it lent their meeting.
Katherine searched her memory for the owner of this second voice. She had thought at first of Doctor Sherman, but this voice had not a tone in common with the young clergyman's clear, well-modulated baritone.
This was a peculiar, bland, good-natured drawl. She had not heard it often, but she had unmistakably heard it. As she ransacked her memory it grew increasingly familiar, yet still eluded her. Then, all of a sudden, she knew it, and she stood amazed.
The second voice was the voice of Blind Charlie Peck.
Katherine was well acquainted with the secret bi-partisan arrangement common in so many American cities, by which the righteous voter is deluded into believing that there are two parties contending for the privilege of giving him their best service, whereas in reality the two are one, secretly allied because as a political trust they can most economically and profitably despoil the people. Her first thought was that these ancient enemies, who for ten years had belaboured one another with such a realistic show of bitterness upon the political stage of Westville, had all along been friends and partners behind the scenes. But of this idea she was presently disillusioned.
"Well, Mr. Blake, let's get down to business," Blind Charlie's voice floated out to her. "You've had a day to think over my proposition.
Now what have you got to say to it?"
There was a brief silence. When Blake did speak, Katherine could discern in his repressed tone a keen aversion for his companion.
"My position is the same as last night. What you say is all guesswork.
There is nothing in it."
Blind Charlie's voice was soft--purringly soft.
"Then why didn't you ask me to go to hell, and stay at home instead of coming out here?"
There was again a short silence.
"Come now," the soft voice persuaded, "let's don't go over what we did last night. I know I'm right."
"I tell you you're only guessing," Blake doggedly returned. "You haven't a scrap of proof."