The Short Cut | Page 7

My God! And he and Wayne quarrelled. . . ."
"Go on!" It was Sledge Hume's heavy, colourless voice. "Just because
two men quarrel it doesn't mean that one kills the other, does it?"
"Garth!" cried Mrs. Leland. "You mustn't . . ."
"I didn't say that," cried Conway. "I didn't mean . . ."
Wanda waited to hear no more. She hurried into her room, to stand
there trembling behind the closed door, her face as white as that other

face she had looked upon earlier in the day.
"He didn't do it!" she whispered. "He didn't. I know he didn't."
But the thing which she carried in her bosom seemed to be demanding
rudely: "Must you shut your eyes to believe with your heart?" And if
other eyes than her own saw it?
There was her closet, the open door showing the party dresses she had
brought back from school. She shook her head. Her room was so
plainly furnished with just a little dressing table, her bed, a chair, a
stand with some wild flowers on it, a smaller table with half a dozen
books scattered about. Then her eyes rested on the big trunk which had
not yet been carried down into the basement.
Running to it she flung up the lid and jerked out the tray. The bottom
was half filled with odds and ends, stockings, slippers, linen. She took
the revolver from her bosom, dropped it to the bottom of the trunk,
covered it hastily with loose clothing, replaced the tray and closed the
lid. But she could not feel that her secret was safe until she had found
the key on her dressing table. The lock was troublesome, it was always
troublesome. She was down on her knees, had just heard the little click
which told her that the lock was fast, and was trying to work the key
out again when the door opened softly and her mother came in.
For a moment the two women, motionless, looked at each other fixedly.
Then Wanda rose slowly to her feet, a little red flush colouring her
brow, a fear which she knew absurd and yet which she could not crush
down, rising into her fluttering breast. Then Mrs. Leland closed the
door behind her, and stood with her back to it.
"Will you tell me about it, Wanda, dear?"
Her voice was troubled; her frank eyes, so like her daughter's, were at
once sad and anxious.
"It is too horrible, mamma." Wanda closed her eyes tightly for a
moment, trying to shut out the picture which burned so in her brain.

Every little detail stood out in her memory clear cut and vivid, the grass
trampled into a rude circle, the hand that clung in death to what it had
last grasped in life, the grotesquely crumpled, huddled body.
"Tell me about it, Wanda." Her mother was looking into the frankly
distressed face, curiously. Wanda had again the uneasy idea that her
mother was wondering about the trunk which she had just locked, and
again a quick fear leaped up within her that she might guess the secret
it concealed.
"How did you happen to find him?"
"Shep was with me, running ahead. Shep found him."
"And some one had killed him?"
Wanda nodded, her lips tight pressed together, her hands twisting about
each other in her lap. For a moment there was silence in the little room.
"Wanda, look at me, dear."
Her eyes turned, wondering, from the window and the orchard beyond,
and went swiftly to her mother. The words were very clearly a
command now. The voice was lowered a little but had grown more
insistent. And it seemed to her that Mrs. Leland's eyes had in them now
something more than sadness and anxiety, that they were suspicious.
Again Wanda felt the hot blood in her temples.
"What is it, mamma?"
"Who killed Arthur? Do you know?"
"Mamma!" she cried, startled. "Why do you ask that? What do you
mean?"
"I want to know, dear. Do you know who killed him?"
"No." It was plain that she was troubled, it was equally as plain that she
spoke truthfully. "What makes you think . . . Why do you ask that?"

"I thought," replied Mrs. Leland, a little uneasily, "that you might have
seen something, found something. . . ."
"No, no!" cried the girl impulsively. "I know what you mean. I have no
vaguest idea who could have done it!"
The older woman came across the room and sat down at her daughter's
side, putting her arm about the slender form.
"Wanda, dear," she said softly. "I am going to tell you something which
you don't know yet. Wayne quarrelled with Arthur last night!"
The girl's body stiffened convulsively. She wanted to