It was only an hour or so before dawn when Huff got to the hall. There were no trains between midnight and morning. And Talbot's car, which he might have used, had been long delayed by his burst tire. He took a suburban trolley line for perhaps half the distance and walked the rest.
At four o'clock in the morning he pressed the arbor button, and old Henriette, grumbling at this second disturbance of her rest, roused Elinor again.
Time was precious. Huff, having rung the announcing bell, made his way up through the dew to the house. And so it was that Elinor, opening the house door, met him face to face. As she recoiled from him, he closed the door.
"I have brought you a message from Boroday," be said swiftly. "I've been a fool and a scoundrel and—it's about all up."
Elinor hardly realized what he was saying. The light of horror had hardly died out of her eyes. To her, Walter, once her lover, now typified all of suffering and nearness to death that lay in old Hilary's room upstairs.
"The first train leaves the city at six o'clock," he said, trying to keep his voice steady. "It is hardly likely they will be out so soon, but under some pretext or other they will search the house this morning."
"How can I leave the house now? Upstairs in father's room—"
"I know," he put in hastily. "I know all about it. Elinor, I am sorry, I am wildly sorry. It's no excuse to say I was crazy. but I was."
"If I go away," Elinor said, with white lips, "how will they manage about him? The nurse needs so many things, and I—I see that she has them."
A flame leaped into the boy's eyes.
"If you care for him like that—what are you going to do about it? Even if he cares for you, you cannot marry him. If he ever found out about you—"
"He will never marry me. And—he does know."
The fact that Ward knew the truth about Elinor and the band brought back to him their common peril. He thrust aside, for the time at least, his passion and his despair; and calmly directed his energies toward preparing the house for the inevitable search.
So systematic had old Hilary been that there were few papers to destroy. Such of the ledgers as were incriminating he burned in the furnace. Elinor's box of jewels he carried upstairs and placed on the library table. Such settings as had remained from the country club raid, after the gems had been taken out, he melted together in old Hilary's crucible and placed the gold and platinum nugget in Elinor's box.
He had set the safe to a simple combination and closed it. Except for its size, and for the protective wiring buried in its walls, it might have been a family safe, built by a nervous and elderly gentleman living is the country to hold his silver spoons.
It was too late by that time to bury the box as Boroday had suggested. Huff did the next best thing. He buried it carefully in Elinor's garden, under a clump of crimson phlox.
Elinor worked hurriedly, but with hopeless eyes. Her preparations consisted in little more than putting on the clothing in which she meant to travel. In this new life on which she was entering she wanted little to remind her of the old. A letter to Henriette contained enough money to pay off the servants and the household accounts, in another envelope she folded the deed to the house and a note conveying it to Henriette.
"You can sell it," she wrote. "Good-by, dear Henriette. I shall never forget you, and if ever is is possible, be sure I shall see you again."
The time came, just before dawn, when she and Walter stood again face to face in the library.
Huff was going at once. It was not Boroday's plan that any of them should further incriminate Elinor by accompanying her to the train. At a sound of steps on the stairs, Huff started.
"The nurse going down, probably for ice," she explained.
"He is getting better, isn't he?"
"Yes, but he still suffers at times."
When the steps had died away, Elinor slowly drew off her engagement ring, and held it out to him across the table. Although he was watching her, he made no move to take it, and she laid it down between them on the table.
"I don't think we need talk about it, Walter," she said simply. "There is nothing to say, is there?"
"I suppose not," he returned bitterly. He added: "If only you will try not to hate me, Elinor."
"I do not hate you. But if he had died—"
Huff came swiftly around the table and taking both her hands in his, held them to his throat with a despairing gesture.
"If I didn't know that it would make you more unhappy," he said slowly. "I'd kill myself today."
"Walter!"