CHAPTER XXVII

HARVEY SPENCER TAKES UP THE TRAIL

Harvey had waited about the jail for days. He was certain that Elsie Welcome would return to Druce, and he was resolved to make a great effort to induce her to leave him.

In his unsubtle makeup the measure of his devotion was as great as the measure of his unspoiled manhood. The girl he wished to make his wife had been taken from him. She had removed herself far from his kindness and care, but he could not cease to offer her the care she needed more poignantly than before.

The personal interest of so conspicuous a person as Mary Randall, in Elsie's case, had undoubtedly urged Harvey on--when otherwise he might have given up. Even so, his courage and persistency, and personal sacrifices, were wonderful to behold.

On the night when Druce was at last removed from the jail Harvey was standing in an alley opposite the public entrance to the jail watching the automobile which stood awaiting the coming of someone from within.

Finally he saw the slender figure of a woman emerge from a doorway and enter the automobile. He knew that figure. He ran across the street and around the car. He noted its number with one of those keen flashes of memory, conscious at the moment that he should remember that number as long as he drew breath.

He flung open the door on the further side of the automobile.

Elsie faced him. "What are you doing here?" she asked in an icy little voice.

"I--no--Won't you come to your mother, Elsie? Won't you come away from this man? Your mother and Patience love you so much and have been trying so hard to find you and--"

"I can't, Harvey--I--perhaps--Oh! Go away. Druce is coming. He will--hurt you."

"It doesn't matter about me. It's you."

"I--I must stand by my husband."

"Husband! He isn't your husband. He fooled you with a marriage license.

Anybody can get a license in Chicago, but Druce's license was never returned. He likely got some fellow to pretend to perform the marriage.

Elsie, it wasn't legal, I can prove it."

For an instant Elsie's spirit flamed in her eyes and her burning cheeks paled. Then she saw Druce coming and she turned towards him wearily, a strange quivering and drooping of her eyelids alone showing that she had heard. In the presence of her master she grew meek as a little child.

Harvey drifted back into the shadows of the jail, powerless to help her, and saw her driven away with the man who had ruined her earthly life.

Fighting his grief and despair, he went to the nearest drug-store and telephoned Miss Randall of what he had seen.

"Druce out on bail! A murderer out on bail in Chicago!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, Harvey, if only you had thought to jump into a taxicab and follow them to see where they have been taken."

"I'm no detective. I am going back to Millville. Perhaps I can get back my old job in the grocery store," he answered grimly.

"h.e.l.lo! Miss Randall! h.e.l.lo! I remember the number of the machine." He gave it.

"Good! Wait a minute till I see whose that is. Hold the wire." She consulted her list of the automobile numbers entered in Illinois and found that this one belonged to a professional bondsman named Comstock.

She gave Harvey the man's residence number.

"Go out there first thing in the morning and see if you can find out from the chauffeur where the machine went tonight. Keep a stiff upper lip, Mr.

Spencer, you have really done splendidly."

Harvey went early next day to the address given him, a residence of the type called stone-fronted, in a district no longer fashionable. There was a garage, but no automobile. Harvey made a careful survey of the premises without gaining ground. He saw another of Mary Randall's aids come, linger about and go away; but remembering her advice about keeping a stiff upper lip, he stayed on. He was to be rewarded late in the afternoon.

A car rumbled into the garage. Its colored driver immediately began washing it and Harvey sauntered back into the yard. The number on it was the one printed on his memory.

From somewhere back in his tired brain came the impulse to say,

"I'm a repair man from Gavin's garage. Mr. Comstock told me to come over and take a look at his car. Said he had it out in the rain last night and it wasn't working right."

"Yes, sah; that car certainly has been drove last night. Some of the battery connections got wet." The chauffeur was glib enough.

"Lights and ignition out of order?" Harvey pretended to examine the car, asking seemingly careless questions and gaining from the negro the information that the car had gone from the jail with Druce to an obscure street far out on the northwest side. The man could not give the number of the house, but said it was one of three in the middle of "a short little street."

Harvey made the excuse that he must go back to the garage where he was employed to get his tools, and hurried away.

It was growing dark and a wild, stormy rain-wind was blowing when he reached the remote neighborhood described for him by the bondsman's talkative servant. He was gazing at the three forbidding dwellings standing near the center of the block, trying to make up his mind which to approach first, when he saw Elsie in her long rain-coat come out of the middle house, hesitate a moment, then hurry down the steps into the street.

He slipped into the shadow of a house, his heart thumping.

"Elsie!" he called softly in a voice scarcely above a whisper.

She stopped, startled.

"Is it Harvey?" Elsie peered doubtingly into the darkness, then stepped trustingly towards him as he replied,

"Yes, it's sure Harvey." He caught the sadness in her words and his voice shook. "Won't you come away with me now? Your mother wants you!"

"Your life is in danger with him. Why don't you leave him?" he added earnestly.

"Leave him," she repeated. "Oh, if I only could! My mother and Patience--how are they?"

"They are well and safe, only they want you. They're going back to Millville, to the same cottage. It's going to be all fixed over. Patience is going to be married--Mr. Harry Boland."

Tears streamed from Elsie's eyes. She leaned against the iron fence that skirted the sidewalk.

"Don't you see, Harvey, I just couldn't go home? I couldn't bear to make Patience--ashamed of me. Don't tell her that, though, will you? Tell them that I have to stay with my--my--oh, don't let mother know you saw me.

Don't let her know any different."

"You poor little thing--"

She looked about her in alarm. "I mustn't stay here. You mustn't, either.

It's no use, Harvey. The life's got me--I can't turn back."

The next moment she was running down the street as if hurrying from a pursuer.

Harvey saw her enter the corner drug-store, waited a little while, then decided he too had business in the drug-store. He would telephone Miss Randall--but he must be careful. Elsie was receiving a package from the drug clerk, as he entered the 'phone booth--and left while he was talking. Harvey was standing with his face to the wall, speaking in a whisper, lest his message would be overheard. He did not see Elsie depart.

He got the reformer herself on the telephone.

"I have found them," he said.