The Hollow of Her Hand

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For a long time she stood there looking, as motionless as the object
on which she gazed. Behind her were the tense, keen-eyed men, not
one of whom seemed to breathe during the grim minutes that passed.
The wind howled about the corners of the inn, but no one heard it.
They heard the beating of their hearts, even the ticking of their
watches, but not the wail of the wind.

At last her hands, claw-like in their tenseness, went slowly to
her temples. Her head drooped slightly forward, and a great shudder
ran through her body. The coroner started forward, expecting her
to collapse.

"Please go away," she was saying in an absolutely emotionless voice.
"Let me stay here alone for a little while."

That was all. The men relaxed. They looked at each other with a
single question in their eyes. Was it quite safe to leave her alone
with her dead? They hesitated.

She turned on them suddenly, spreading her arms in a wide gesture
of self-absolution. Her sombre eyes swept the group.

"I can do no harm. This man is mine. I want to look at him for the
last time--alone. Will you go?"

"Do you mean, madam, that you intend to--" began the coroner in
alarm.

She clasped her hands. "I mean that I shall take my last look at
him now--and here. Then you may do what you like with him. He is
your dead--not mine. I do not want him. Can you understand? _I_ DO
NOT WANT THIS DEAD THING. But there is something I would say to
him, something that I must say. Something that no one must hear
but the good God who knows how much he has hurt me. I want to say
it close to those grey, horrid ears. Who knows? He may hear me!"

Wondering, the others backed from the room. She watched them until
they closed the door.

Listening, they heard her lower the window. It squealed like a
thing in fear.

Ten minutes passed. The group in the hall conversed in whispers.

"Why did she put the window down?" asked the wife of the inn-keeper,
crossing herself.

Drake shook his head. "I wonder what she is saying to him," he
muttered.

"A wonderful nerve," said Dr. Sheef. "Positively wonderful. I've
never seen anything like it."

"Her own husband, too," said Mrs. Burton. "Why, I--I should have
said she'd go into hysterics. Such a handsome man he was."

"I guess, from what I've heard of this fellow, Wrandall, he's not
been an angel," volunteered the sheriff.

Drake shook his head once more.

"He ain't one now, I'll bet on that," said the man who stood guard.
"He's in hell if ever a man--"

"Sh!" whispered the woman in horror. "God forgive you for uttering
words like that!"

"Every one in the city knows what sort of a man he's been," said
Drake.

He comes of a fine family," said the coroner. "One of the best in
New York. I guess he's never been much of a credit to it, however."

"They say he ran after chorus girls," said Mrs. Burton. The men
grinned.

"I've an idea she's had the devil's own time with him," mused the
sheriff, with a jerk of his head in the direction of the door.

"Poor thing," said the inn-keeper's wife.

"Well," said Drake, taking a deep breath, "she won't have to worry
any more about his not coming home nights. I say, this business will
create a fearful sensation, sheriff. The Four Hundred will have a
conniption fit."

"We've got to land that girl, whoever she is," grated the official.
"Now that we know who he is, it shouldn't be hard to pick out the
women he's been trailing with lately. Then we can sift 'em down
until the right one is left. It ought to be easy."

"I'm not so sure of it," said the coroner, shaking his head. "I
have a feeling that she isn't one of the ordinary type. It wouldn't
surprise me if she belongs to--well, you might say, the upper ten.
Somebody's wife, don't you see. That will make it rather difficult,
especially as her tracks have been pretty well covered."

"It beats me, how she got away without leaving a single sign behind
her," acknowledged the sheriff. "She's a wonder, that's all I've
got to say."

At that instant the door opened and Mrs. Wrandall appeared. She
stopped short, confronting the huddled group, dry-eyed but as pallid
as a ghost. Her eyes were wide, apparently unseeing; her colourless
lips were parted in the drawn rigidity that suggested but one
thing to the professional man who looks: the RISIS SARDONICUS of
the strychnae victim. With a low cry, the doctor started forward,
fully convinced that she had swallowed the deadly drug.

"For God's sake, madam," he began. But as he spoke, her expression
changed; she seemed to be aware of their presence for the first
time. Her eyes narrowed in a curious manner, and the rigid lips
seemed to surge with blood, presenting the effect of a queer,
swift-fading smile that lingered long after her face was set and
serious.

"I neglected to raise the window, Dr. Sheef," she said in a low
voice. "It was very cold in there." She shivered slightly. "Will
you be so kind as to tell me what I am to do now? What formalities
remain for me--"

The coroner was at her side. "Time enough for that, Mrs. Wrandall.
The first thing you are to do is to take something warm to drink,
and pull yourself together a bit--"

She drew herself up coldly. "I am quite myself, Dr. Sheef. Pray do
not alarm yourself on my account. I shall be obliged to you, however,
if you will tell me what I am to do as speedily as possible, and
let me do it so that I may leave this--this unhappy place without
delay. No! I mean it, sir. I am going to-night--unless, of course,"
she said, with a quick look at the sheriff, "the law stands in the
way."

"You are at liberty to come and go as you please, Mrs. Wrandall,"
said the sheriff, "but it is most fool-hardy to think of--"

"Thank you, Mr. Sheriff," she said, "for letting me go. I thought
perhaps there might be legal restraint." She sent a swift glance
over her shoulder, and then spoke in a high, shrill voice, indicative
of extreme dread and uneasiness:

"Close the door to that room!"

The door was standing wide open, just as she had left it. Startled,
the coroner's deputy sprang forward to close it. Involuntarily,
all of her listeners looked in the direction of the room, as if
expecting to see the form of the murdered man advancing upon them.
The feeling, swiftly gone, was most uncanny.

"Close it from the INSIDE," commanded the coroner, with unmistakable
emphasis. The man hesitated, and then did as he was ordered, but
not without a curious look at the wife of the dead man, whose back
was toward him.

"He will not find anything disturbed, doctor," said she, divining
his thought. "I had the feeling that something was creeping toward
us out of that room."

"You have every reason to be nervous, madam. The situation has been
most extraordinary,--most trying," said the coroner. "I beg of you
to come downstairs, where we may attend to a few necessary details
without delay. It has been a most fatiguing matter for all of us.
Hours without sleep, and such wretched weather."

They descended to the warm little reception-room. She sent at once
for the inn-keeper, who came in and glowered at her as if she were
wholly responsible for the blight that had been put upon his place.

"Will you be good enough to send some one to the station with me
in your depot wagon?" she demanded without hesitation.

He stared. "We don't run a 'bus in the winter time," he said gruffly.

She opened the little chatelaine bag that hung from her wrist and
abstracted a card which she submitted to the coroner.

"You will find, Dr. Sheef, that the car my husband came up here in
belongs to me. This is the card issued by the State. It is in my
name. The factory number is there. You may compare it with the one
on the car. My husband took the car without obtaining my consent."

"Joy riding," said Burton, with an ugly laugh. Then he quailed
before the look she gave him.

"If no other means is offered, Dr. Sheef, I shall ask you to let
me take the car. I am perfectly capable of driving. I have driven
it in the country for two seasons. All I ask is that some one be
directed to go with me to the station. No! Better than that, if
there is some one here who is willing to accompany me to the city,
he shall be handsomely paid for going. It is but little more than
thirty miles. I refuse to spend the night in this house. That is
final."

They drew apart to confer, leaving her sitting before the fire,
a stark figure that seemed to detach itself entirely from its
surroundings and their companionship. At last, the coroner came to
her side and touched her arm.

"I don't know what the district attorney and the police will say
to it, Mrs. Wrandall, but I shall take it upon myself to deliver
the car to you. The sheriff has gone out to compare the numbers. If
he finds that the car is yours, he will see to it, with Mr. Drake,
that it is made ready for you. I take it that we will have no
difficulty in--" He hesitated, at a loss for words.

"In finding it again in case you need it for evidence?" she supplied.
He nodded. "I shall make it a point, Dr. Sheef, to present the car
to the State after it has served my purpose to-night. I shall not
ride in it again."

"The sheriff has a man who will ride with you to the station or
the city, whichever you may elect. Now, may I trouble you to make
answer to certain questions I shall write out for you at once? The
man is Challis Wrandall, your husband? You are positive?"

"I am positive. He is--or was--Challis Wrandall."

Half an hour later, she was ready for the trip to New York City.
The clock in the office marked the hour as one. A toddied individual
in a great buffalo coat waited for her outside, hiccoughing and
bandying jest with the half-frozen men who had spent the night with
him in the forlorn hope of finding THE GIRL.

Mrs. Wrandall gave final instructions to the coroner and his deputy,
who happened to be the undertaker's assistant. She had answered all
the questions that had been put to her, and had signed the document
with a firm, untrembling hand. Her veil had been lowered since the
beginning of the examination. They did not see her face; they only
heard the calm, low voice, sweet with fatigue and dread.

"I shall notify my brother-in-law as soon as I reach the city," she
said. "He will attend to everything. Mr. Leslie Wrandall, I mean.
My husband's only brother. He will be here in the morning, Dr. Sheef.
My own apartment is not open. I have been staying in a hotel since
my return from Europe two days ago. But I shall attend to the
opening of the place to-morrow. You will find me there."

The coroner hesitated a moment before putting the question that
had come to his mind as she spoke.

"Two days ago, madam? May I inquire where your husband has been
living during your absence abroad? When did you last see him alive?"

She did not reply for many seconds, and then it was with a perceptible
effort.

"I have not seen him since my return until--to-night," she replied,
a hoarse note creeping into her voice. "He did not meet me on
my return. His brother Leslie came to the dock. He--he said that
Challis, who came back from Europe two weeks ahead of me, had been
called to St. Louis on very important, business. My husband had
been living at his club, I understand. That is all I can tell you,
sir."

"I see," said the coroner gently.

He opened the door for her and she passed out. A number of men
were grouped about the throbbing motor-car. They fell away as she
approached, silently fading into the shadows like so many vast,
unwholesome ghosts. The sheriff and Drake came forward.

"This man will go with you, madam," said the sheriff, pointing
to an unsteady figure beside the machine. "He is the only one who
will undertake it. They're all played out, you see. He has been
drinking, but only on account of the hardships he has undergone
to-night. You will be quite safe with Morley."

No snow was falling, but a bleak wind blew meanly. The air was free
from particles of sleet; wetly the fall of the night clung to the
earth where it had fallen.

"If he will guide me to the Post-road, that is all I ask," said
she hurriedly. Involuntarily she glanced upward. The curtains in
an upstairs window were blowing inward and a dim light shone out
upon the roof of the porch. She shuddered and then climbed up to
the seat and took her place at the wheel.

A few moments later, the three men standing in the middle of the
road watched the car as it rushed away.

"By George, she's a wonder!" said the sheriff.

CHAPTER II

THE PASSING OF A NIGHT

The sheriff was right. Sara Wrandall was an extraordinary woman,
if I may be permitted to modify his rather crude estimate of her.
It is difficult to understand, much less to describe a nature like
hers. Fine-minded, gently bred women who can go through an ordeal
such as she experienced without breaking under the strain are
rare indeed. They must be wonderful. It is hard to imagine a more
heart-breaking crisis in life than the one which confronted her
on this dreadful night, and yet she had faced it with a fortitude
that seems almost unholy.

She had loved her handsome, wayward husband. He had hurt her deeply
more times than she chose to remember during the six years of their
married life, but she had loved him in spite of the wounds up to
the instant when she stood beside his dead body in the cold little
room at Burton's Inn. She went there loving him as he had lived,
yet prepared, almost foresworn, to loathe him as he had died, and
she left him lying there alone in that dreary room without a spark
of the old affection in her soul. Her love for him died in giving
birth to the hatred that now possessed her. While he lived it
was not in her power to control the unreasoning resistless thing
that stands for love in woman: he WAS her love, the master of her
impulses. Dead, he was an unwholesome, unlovely clod, a pallid
thing to be scorned, a hulk of worthless clay. His blood was cold.
He could no longer warm her with it; it could no longer kill the
chill that his misdeeds cast about her tender sensitiveness; his
lips and eyes never more could smile and conquer. He was a dead
thing. Her love was a dead thing. They lay separate and apart. The
tie was broken. With love died the final spark of respect she had
left for him in her tired, loyal, betrayed heart. He was at last
a thing to be despised, even by her. She despised him.

She sent the car down the slope and across the moonless valley
with small regard for her own or her companion's safety. It swerved
from side to side, skidded and leaped with terrifying suddenness,
but held its way as straight as the bird that flies, driven by a
steady hand and a mind that had no thought for peril. A sober man
at her side would have been afraid; this man swayed mildly to and
fro and chuckled with drunken glee.

Her bitter thoughts were not of the dead man back there, but of the
live years that she was to bury with him: years that would never
pass beyond her ken, that would never die. He had loved her in his
wild, ruthless way. He had left her times without number in the
years gone by, but he had always come back, gaily unchastened, to
remould the love that waited with dog-like fidelity for the touch
of his cunning hand. But he had taken his last flight. He would
not come back again. It was all over. Once too often he had tried
his reckless wings. She would not have to forgive him again.
Uppermost in her mind was the curiously restful thought that his
troubles were over, and with them her own. A hand less forgiving
than hers had struck him dead.

Somehow, she envied the woman to whom that hand belonged. It had
been her divine right to kill, and yet another took it from her.

Back there at the inn she had said to the astonished sheriff:

"Poor thing, if she can escape punishment for this, let it be so.
I shall not help the law to kill her simply because she took it
in her own hands to pay that man what she owed him. I shall not be
the one to say that he did not deserve death at her hands, whoever
she may be. No, I shall offer no reward. If you catch her, I shall
be sorry for her, Mr. Sheriff. Believe me, I bear her no grudge."

"But she robbed him," the sheriff had cried.

"From my point of view, Mr. Sheriff, that hasn't anything to do
with the case," was her significant reply.

"Of course, I am not defending HIM."

"Nor am I defending her," she had retorted. "It would appear that
she is able to defend herself."

Now, on the cold, trackless road, she was saying to herself that
she did have a grudge against the woman who had destroyed the life
that belonged to her, who had killed the thing that was hers to
kill. She could not mourn for him. She could only wonder what the
poor, hunted terrified creature would do when taken and made to
pay for the thing she had done.

Once, in the course of her bitter reflections, she spoke aloud in
a shrill, tense voice, forgetful of the presence of the man beside
her:

"Thank God, they will see him now as I have seen him all these
years. They will know him as they have never known him. Thank God
for that!"

The man looked at her stupidly and muttered something under his
breath. She heard him, and recalling her wits, asked which turn she
was to take for the station. The fellow lopped back in the seat,
too drunk to reply.

For a moment she was dismayed, frightened. Then she resolutely
reached out and shook him by the shoulder. She had brought the car
to a full stop.

"Arouse yourself, man!" she cried. "Do you want to freeze to death?
Where is the station?"

He straightened up with an effort, and, after vainly seeking light
in the darkness, fell back again with a grunt, but managed to wave
his hand toward the left. She took the chance. In five minutes she
brought the car to a standstill beside the station. Through the
window she saw a man with his feet cocked high, reading. He leaped
to his feet in amazement as she entered the waiting-room.

"Are you the agent?" she demanded.

"No, ma'am. I'm simply stayin' here for the sheriff. We're lookin'
for a woman--Say!" He stopped short and stared at the veiled face
with wide, excited eyes. "Gee whiz! Maybe you--"

"No, I am not the woman you want. Do you know anything about the
trains?"

"I guess I'll telephone to the sheriff before I--"

"If you will step outside you will find one of the sheriff's deputies
in my automobile, helplessly intoxicated. I am Mrs. Wrandall."

"Oh," he gasped. "I heard 'em say you were coming up to-night.
Well, say! What do you think of--"

"Is there a train in before morning?"

"No ma'am. Seven-forty is the first."

She waited a moment. "Then I shall have to ask you to come out and
get your fellow-deputy. He is useless to me. I mean to go on in
the machine. The sheriff understands."

The fellow hesitated.

"I cannot take him with me, and he will freeze to death if I leave
him in the road. Will you come?"

The man stared at her.

"Say, IS it your husband?" he asked agape.

She nodded her head.

"Well, I'll go out and have a look at the fellow you've got with
you," said he, still doubtful.

She stood in the door while he crossed over to the car and peered
at the face of the sleeper.

"Steve Morley," he said. "Fuller'n a goat."

"Please remove him from the car," she directed.

Later on, as he stood looking down at the inert figure in the
big rocking chair, and panting from his labours, he heard her say
patiently:

"And now will you be so good as to direct me to the Post-road."

He scratched his head. "This is mighty queer, the whole business,"
he declared, assailed by doubts. "Suppose you are NOT Mrs. Wrandall,
but--the other one. What then?"

As if in answer to his question, the man Morley opened his blear-eyes
and tried to get to his feet.

"Wha--what are we doin' here, Mis' Wran'all? Wha's up?"

"Stay where you are, Steve," said the other. "It's all right."
Then he went forth and pointed the way to her. "It's a long ways
to Columbus Circle," he said. "I don't envy you the trip. Keep
straight ahead after you hit the Post-road." He stood there listening
until the whir of the motor was lost in the distance. "She'll never
make it," he said to himself. "It's more than a strong man could
do on roads like these. She must be crazy."

Coming to the Post-road, she increased the speed of the car, with
the sharp wind behind her, her eyes intent on the white stretch
that leaped up in front of the lamps like a blank wall beyond
which there was nothing but dense oblivion. But for the fact that
she knew that this road ran straight and unobstructed into the
outskirts of New York, she might have lost courage and decision. The
natural confidence of an experienced driver was hers. She had the
daring of one who has never met with an accident, and who trusts to
the instincts rather than to an actual understanding of conditions.
With her, it was not a question of her own capacity and strength,
but a belief in the fidelity of the engine that carried her forward.
It had not occurred to her that the task of guiding that heavy,
swerving thing through the unbroken road was something beyond her
powers of endurance. She often had driven it a hundred miles and
more without resting, or without losing zest in the enterprise:
then why should she fear the small matter of thirty miles, even
under the most trying of conditions?

The restless, driving desire to be as far as possible from that
horrid sight at the inn, with all that went to make it repellant,
put strength into her arms. The car swung from one side of the road
to the other, picking its way through the opaque desert, reeling
from rut to rut past hideous shadows and deeper into the black
abyss that lay ahead. No friendly light gleamed by the wayside; the
world was black and cold and dead. She alone was on the highway,
the only human creature who defied the night. Off there on either
side people lived, and slept, and were in darkness just as she was,
but not in dreadful darkness. They were not pursued by ghosts; they
were not running away from a Thing! They slept and were at peace,
and their lights were out for they were not afraid in the dark.
She thought of it: she was alone! No other creature was abroad--not
one!

Sharply there came to her mind the question: was she the only one
abroad in this black little world? What of the other woman? The
one who was being hunted? Where was she? And what of the ghost at
HER heels?

The car bounded over a railroad crossing. She recalled the directions
given by the man at the station and hastily applied the brake. There
was another and more dangerous crossing a hundred yards ahead. She
had been warned particularly to take it carefully, as there was a
sharp curve in the road beyond.

Suddenly she jammed down the emergency brake, a startled exclamation
falling from her lips. Not twenty feet ahead, in the middle of
the road and directly in line with the light of the lamps, stood
a black, motionless figure--the figure of a woman whose head was
lowered and whose arms hung limply at her sides.

The woman in the car bent forward over the wheel, staring hard. Many
seconds passed. At last the forlorn object in the roadway lifted
her face and looked vacantly into the glare of the lamps. Her eyes
were wide-open, her face a ghastly white.

"God in heaven!" struggled from the stiffening lips of Sara Wrandall.
Her fingers tightened on the wheel.

She knew. This was the woman!

The long brown ulster; the limp, fluttering veil! "A woman about
your size and figure," the sheriff had said.

The figure swayed and then moved a few steps forward. Blinded by
the lights, she bent her head and shielded her eyes with her hand
the better to glimpse the occupant of the car.

"Are you looking for me?" she cried out shrilly, at the same time
spreading her arms as if in surrender. It was almost a wail.

Mrs. Wrandall caught her breath. Her heart began to beat once more.

"Who are you? What do you want?" she cried out, without knowing
what she said.

The girl started. She had not expected to hear the voice of a woman.
She staggered to the side of the road, out of the line of light.

"I--I beg your pardon," she cried,--it was like a wail of
disappointment,--"I am sorry to have stopped you."

"Come here," commanded the other, still staring.

The unsteady figure advanced. Halting beside the car, she leaned
across the spare tires and gazed into the eyes of the driver. Their
faces were not more than a foot apart, their eyes were narrowed in
tense scrutiny.

"What do you want?" repeated Mrs. Wrandall, her voice hoarse and
tremulous.

"I am looking for an inn. It must be near by. I do--"

"An inn?" with a start.

"I do not recall the name. It is not far from a village, in the
hills."

"Do you mean Burton's?"

"Yes. That's it. Can you direct me?" The voice of the girl was
faint; she seemed about to fall.

"It is six or eight miles from here," said Mrs. Wrandall, still
looking in wonder at the miserable nightfarer.

The girl's head sank; a moan of despair came through her lips,
ending in a sob.

"So far as that?" she murmured. Then she drew herself up with a
fine show of resolution. "But I must not stop here. Thank you."

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