The Short Cut | Page 7

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 spring up and run out of the house to some hiding place in the old orchard and be alone. But she answered, her eyes clear and truthful.
"I'm sorry. Oh, so sorry! Poor Wayne. That will make it so much harder for him."
"Yes. It is going to make it hard for him, Wanda. Harder than you have imagined." She paused as if considering the advisability of what she had started to say, and then ended simply, hopelessly, "They are going to think that Wayne shot him!"
"They mustn't!" cried Wanda hotly. "They haven't the right. It would be thinking a lie, a wicked, hideous lie!"
Mrs. Leland shook her head sadly.
"Wanda," she went on quietly, "the first thing Garth said when I told him was that Wayne had quarrelled with Arthur