CHAPTER XXIII

When Lyon left the Wolcotts, he hurried for the car to reach Howell's office as quickly as possible. As he went down Hemlock Avenue he saw a group of Miss Elliott's girls taking their daily constitutional under the supervision of Miss Rose. In orderly ranks, two by two, they crossed the street sedately, and up on the opposite side, and Lyon scrutinized them eagerly to discover if Kittie was among them. There she was, near the center of the procession, her tall, slight figure swinging in the time of the march, but somehow so much more individual and graceful than any of the others! He was so absorbed in watching her as the file came nearer that he did not notice at all the sound of a runaway behind him until a light delivery wagon, with one wheel gone, dashed frantically by, in the direction of the girls. The horse, wild with terror at the ungainly thing which bumped at his heels, swung in toward the sidewalk, and in a moment the girls had broken ranks and were flying, in swift disorder, in all directions. Lyon had instinctively broken into a run as soon as he saw the situation, but if he had any intention of catching the horse and cutting an heroic figure in the eyes of Kittie, the thought was utterly and absolutely forgotten the next instant. Instead, he suddenly stood stock still in the middle of the street, staring at one of the girls who had cut diagonally across the road with the long, easy running gait that he had seen once and only once before. It was the girl who had fled from the scene of Fullerton's murder, and so had swept for an instant across the field of Lyon's vision,--and it was not the frail and delicate invalid, Mrs. Broughton, nor yet the slow and stately Miss Wolcott. This was a young athlete, who ran with a grace, a sureness, that made the sight a joy and unforgettable. It was not until she had turned again and was clinging to his arm for protection that he fully realized what it meant that he should have identified the running girl whom he had so long been searching for with Kittie Tayntor.

"Oh, Cousin Percy, wasn't it perfectly beautiful that the horse should run away right here and give you a chance to rescue me like this? I have always wanted to be rescued to see what it would feel like. The girls in the novels almost always faint, but I never faint, so I knew I would always be able to remember afterwards just how it felt. I was so glad when I saw that you were the only man in sight on the street!"

"Kittie, when we were talking about Mr. Fullerton, why didn't you tell me what you knew about it?"

"What I knew? About what?"

"About the--accident."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

She looked so plainly bewildered that his heart sank. Could it be, after all, that she really knew nothing. She must know! He took up the filmy clue carefully.

"Kittie, one evening not long ago--it was on the Monday before Thanksgiving--I was on Hemlock Avenue opposite Miss Wolcott's, and I saw a girl run across the street, and in at the Wolcotts' side yard. She ran just as you ran a minute ago when that horse startled you. Wasn't that girl you?"

"Oh, yes! I didn't know what you were talking about. Did you really see me then? How curious! Then that was the first time!"

"It was a little before ten?"

She nodded, her eyes dancing with suppressed mischief, though she drew her lips down like a fair penitent.

"Where had you been, Kittie?"

"To the skating rink on Elm Street."

"Alone?"

She nodded again, and glanced back at Miss Rose, who was gathering her scattered flock together at a safe distance beyond hearing.

"It was this way," she said, hurriedly. "Everybody else had gone home for the vacation on Saturday, and Miss Elliott had made me stay till Tuesday to make up some history. I was just wild about it, missing three whole days. I got thinking what I could do to get even,--it would be a secret satisfaction even if she never knew it. So Monday night I climbed down from my room by way of the window, and got out by the Secret Passage I told you there was, and went to the rink and had a splendid time. I knew Miss Elliott had a friend visiting her, and so she would not be likely to think of me or anything like that. And she didn't. She never knew I wasn't learning the names of the Roman emperors, horrid old things, all the time."

"But, Kittie, is that all?"

"Goodness! Miss Elliott would think it was enough!"

"But what made you run so? You ran as though you were frightened."

She gave him a startled look and half turned away. She did not answer.

"What frightened you? Had you seen anything,--a row, or a fight of any sort?"

She shook her head. "I was frightened," she said, "but it isn't worth talking about. Besides, it isn't pleasant. I don't want to talk about it."

"But I have a very special reason for asking, Kittie. It isn't just curiosity."

"Well, a horrid man frightened me. I suppose he was drunk. But if Miss Elliott knew about that--!"

"How did he frighten you?"

"He jumped out at me. It's a kind of dark place on Sherman Street, and I was scurrying along and I didn't see him at all until I was right up to him, and then as I hurried by he suddenly jumped out and caught my arm."

"Did you scream?"

"I shrieked and struck at him--"

"What with?"

"Why, I just struck out. But I had my skates in my hand and I guess I hit him, because he let go of my arm. Then I ran as hard as I could."

The physician's testimony at the inquest flashed across Lyon's mind,--"a heavy instrument with a cutting edge." Kitty's skate and not Lawrence's cane! The relief was so great that he almost forgot the necessity of establishing all the links. But Miss Rose was approaching, and he knew he must lose no time.

"How was he dressed, Kittie?"

"Goodness! I didn't stop to see."

"But in dark clothes or light? Did he wear a hat?"

"He had a long loose grey coat, and a hat pulled away down over his eyes. And a silk muffler around his throat was pulled up over his chin. That came off in my hand when I pushed him away. I didn't know I had it until I had run half a block. Then I threw it in the street."

Lyon nodded. "I found it. Now, Kittie, I want you to come and show me the exact spot on Sherman Street where this happened."

Her face was already flushed and her breath coming fast with her recital, but she now looked annoyed at his persistence.

"I can't. Miss Rose is waiting for me now. And besides,--" she hesitated to impugn his chivalry by so unworthy a suggestion, but needs must,--"you aren't going to tell?"

"Kittie, haven't you any idea who that man was?"

She looked shocked at the question. "Of course not!" Then the seriousness of his tone struck her and she began to tremble.

"What do you mean?"

"It was Mr. Fullerton,--I am sure it must have been. But you must come and show me the spot. You know that Mr. Lawrence is in jail under suspicion of having killed him."

"Yes." Then, suddenly, she understood. She went very white and her eyes grew large with horror. He feared she would faint, but Kittie was not of the fainting sort. Instead she began talking volubly, in intense nervous excitement.

"I don't care, he hadn't any business to jump out of the shadows in that way. He just did it to frighten me, and it made my heart beat so terribly that I didn't know what I was doing. I just struck at him and I didn't think about the skates, and if Miss Elliott hears about it she will simply be hysterical. I'll have to tell her how I got out and that will be breaking my initiation oath and there will simply be nothing terrible enough for her to say. And--" she stopped suddenly as a new horror struck her, and gasped. "Will they put me in jail?"

"I think probably not, but we'll have to see Mr. Howell, the lawyer, and let him arrange in regard to all that."

His hesitancy was more terrible than anything she had expected. It struck her dumb.

"You never suspected, when you saw the report in the paper the next day, that the man found dead on Sherman Street was the man you had met?"

"I never saw the papers," said Kittie. "Miss Elliott doesn't allow them to come into the school. And besides I went away early Tuesday morning, you know, and didn't come back till Saturday. I never heard a thing about it."

"I see. And when you came back, and became acquainted with Mrs. Broughton, and she spoke of Lawrence and Fullerton, you would naturally never connect that with what had happened to you, especially as you did not know that the man was dead. I see: Now, first of all, I want you to come around and show me the place so as to make sure there is no mistake, and then we'll take the car down town and see Mr. Howell. I'll explain to Miss Rose. Would you like to have her come with you?"

She shook her head.

"Or any of the girls?"

"No. They are sillies. I don't want to tell any of them. I'd rather have nobody there but just you. You will take all the responsibility, won't you?"

"Yes," said Lyon, with an emphasis that she did not altogether understand until somewhat later in the story. "I am going to take the whole responsibility of you from this time on, and you must always tell me when you do anything like--killing people, you know. Someone will always have to explain such things, and I am just as good at explaining as anyone. Promise you will let me--look out for you always."

She looked at him doubtfully. "But--if I have to go right to jail?"

"Perhaps that can be avoided. But you must come down with me to Mr. Howell's office and tell him the whole story. That is the first thing. I think he will be able to fix it up so that you won't have to go to jail even for a minute. Wait here for me while I run back to explain to Miss Rose."

Poor Miss Rose was the most bewildered woman in town when Lyon hastily told her that it would be necessary for him to take Miss Tayntor down town for an interview with his lawyer, and that there was not time for her to go back to the school to secure Miss Elliott's permission.

"But it would be entirely contrary to the rules to allow one of our pupils to go down town alone with a man," she protested, feebly.

"That's too bad," said Lyon, sympathetically. "You just tell Miss Elliott that I was in too much of a hurry to see her and explain, but I will come around and tell her about it afterwards." He hurried back to where poor Kittie, looking much more like a frightened school-girl than like a deep-dyed criminal, awaited him on the corner.

"Now come on," he said. "We must have this over as soon as possible and then I'll take you to Sweetzer's and you are to pick out the biggest box of chocolates he can fill while we have time to wait. We'll go down Sherman Street first. Oh, Kittie, Kittie, what a dance you have been leading me for the last two weeks! I have been suspecting everybody but you. Now show me where the man stood."

"There," she said, pointing to the exact spot where Fullerton's body had been found.

"That, I think, settles everything," said Lyon, cheerfully. "You see, the law is particular, so I had to know exactly. It will be worth a month's salary to see old Howell's face when he hears your story."

He thought he had really placed the estimate too low when he sat watching that amazed gentleman listening to Kittie a few minutes later. That witch, whose terrors of the rigors of the law had been somewhat softened by Percy's manner of receiving her story, rose to the dramatic occasion and told her tale with a vividness and color that held Howell absorbed from the beginning. He let her tell the whole without interruption, and when it was over he turned to Lyon, drawing him aside so that Kittie should not hear.

"Perhaps you don't remember, but for several weeks before the murder there were stories of a man who lurked about that district, frightening women and eluding the police. There have been no such reports since Fullerton was killed. That explains the turned overcoat worn inside-out for a disguise, and the black silk muffler you found in the street. A quick change and the respectable, black-coated Fullerton had replaced the skulking vagrant in gray that the police might be inquiring for. I am not a pious man, but it strikes me as more than accident that the hand of an innocent girl should be the instrument, under Providence, to send him to his account. However, that is speculation. Thank heaven I have some facts to deal with, at last."

"And I've found the explanation of the cane business," said Lyon. "You can add that to your small but choice assortment of facts."

And he related his encounter with Mr. Wolcott, and the significant facts that had been evolved from that gentle old peace-maker of canine quarrels.

Howell rubbed his glasses, and put them on to look at Lyon, and then took them off to rub them again.

"Well!" he remarked. "Well, well!" It seemed inadequate, but it was the best he could do with Kittie present.

Then he called in a stenographer, and asked Kittie a number of questions slowly, and the stenographer wrote them down, and also, to Kittie's dismay, wrote her answers. This process seemed to her so uncanny that she could not keep her eyes from the point of the rapid pencil, and even when Mr. Howell bade her look at him and not at the stenographer, she could hardly keep herself from turning nervously to see if that thing was still going. Then she had to wait until it was all written out on the typewriter, and then Mr. Howell read it all over to her and asked her to sign it. It was all very exciting and interesting, and Kittie made good use of it as material for tales afterwards. But when it was over, and the box of chocolates had been duly selected and sampled, Kittie suddenly felt that she had been living up to the character of a reasonable being long enough, and when Lyon suggested that he would go back with her to the school and tell Miss Elliott what they had been doing, Kittie calmly announced that she was never going back there. Never.

"But, Kittie, you will have to! That is your home while you are at school."

"I shall never go back there."

"But why not?"

"Do you suppose I could ever tell Miss Elliott that I had killed somebody? Why, I'd rather go to jail. Honest."

"Where else can you go?"

"I don't know. But I won't go there. I won't ever go where Miss Elliott can say anything to me until I am as old as she is,--or till I am married, maybe."

"But you will have to go somewhere for a day or two, you know. You needn't be afraid. Miss Elliott won't say anything when she understands,--"

"No, she won't, because I won't give her the chance. I won't be there for her to say anything to."

"Kittie, dear,--"

"It doesn't make any difference what you say. I won't go."

"Do you know anyone in Waynscott?"

"No. But I can go to a hotel."

"No, you can't. That's nonsense."

"Now you are not being polite." And her lip trembled in a way that warned Lyon she was near the verge of tears. He looked distractedly up and down the street,--for they had been waiting on the corner for the car when this deadlock developed,--and then he had an inspiration.

"Will you let me take you to Miss Wolcott's?"

She looked at him suspiciously. "You needn't think that if you get me so near the school as that, I will change my mind and go in. Because I won't."

"Oh, Kittie, I'm not trying to play any tricks on you! I'd know better than to try! But you must go somewhere, and if you won't go back to Miss Elliott's, I don't know of a better place for you to go than to Miss Wolcott's. She will be glad to see you and to help you, because she is engaged to Arthur Lawrence, and your--your statement to Mr. Howell will set him free, you see, so she will feel under obligations to you on that account. You must have a woman friend to stay with, Kittie. It wouldn't be nice for you to go off anywhere by yourself."

"You needn't tell me that," said Kittie, with quick offense. "I guess I know what is proper. All right, I'll go to Miss Wolcott's if I have to. But she needn't think she can lecture me."

"Mrs. Broughton is staying with Miss Wolcott, I forgot to tell you. You like her, you know."

"Like her!" exclaimed Kittie with a swift clearing of her darkened brow. "Why, I'd go to her if she was on the tip-top of the North Pole. She's the only one in all the world I do like." She stole a glance at him from the corner of her eye as she made this sweeping statement.

Lyon made no answer. The subject was too large to discuss.