American fiction -- 20th century; Detective and mystery stories
"While I was thinking this he was telling me that he had a safe hiding
place and that I must join him at once, the plans were now perfected for
the new enterprise in which he was to launch me. I demurred and to gain
time told him how I’d tried to go before and been followed. That caught
his attention at once, his questions came quick and eager. Perhaps
before that he had tried to disguise his voice, anyway now the familiar
note in it grew stronger. I began to catch at something—inflexions,
accent—till suddenly, like a runner who rounds a corner and sees his
goal unexpectedly before him, my memory saw a name—Harland!
"I was so amazed, so staggered that for a moment I couldn’t speak. The
voice brought me back, saying sharply, ’Are you there?’ I stammered a
reply and said I couldn’t make up my mind to come. He urged, but I
wouldn’t promise, till at length, feeling I might betray myself, I said
I’d think it over and let him know later. He had to be satisfied with
that and gave me his telephone number telling me to call him up as soon
as I decided.
"What did I feel as I sat alone in that dismantled place? Can you
realize the state of my thoughts? What did it mean—what was going on?
The man was not Johnston Barker, but how could he be Harland, who was
dead and buried? Ah, if you had come _then_ instead of Friday I’d have
told you for I was in waters too deep for me. All that I could grasp was
that I was in the midst of something incomprehensible and terrible, from
the darkness of which one thought stood out—my father had never sent for
me, I had never heard from him—it had been this other man all along! I
was then as certain as if his spirit had appeared before me that
Johnston Barker was dead.
"And now I come to one of the strangest and finest things that ever
happened to me in my life. Late on Sunday night a girl—unknown to me and
refusing to give her name—came and told me of the murder, the whole of
it, the evidence against me, and that I stood in danger of immediate
arrest."
I jumped to my feet—I couldn’t believe it:
"A girl—what kind of a girl?"
"Young and pretty, with dark brown eyes and brown curly hair. Oh, I can
place her for you. She said she had been employed to help get the
information against me and my father, and was the only woman acting in
that capacity."
"Molly!" I gasped, falling back into my chair. "Molly Babbitts! What in
Heaven’s name—"
"You’re right to invoke Heaven’s name, for it was Heaven that sent her.
She wouldn’t tell me who she was or why she came, but I could see. What
reason could there have been except that she believed me innocent and
wanted to help me escape?"
For a moment I couldn’t speak. I dropped my head and a silent oath went
up from me to hold Molly sacred forever more. I could see it all—she’d
found her heart, realized the cruelty of what was to be done, discovered
in some way she’d given me wrong information, and done the thing
herself. The gallant, noble little soul! God bless her! God bless her!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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