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More than once Durkin thought that if ever those documents, for which he had endured and suffered and lost so much, were again wrested from him, it would be only after some moment of transcendent conflict, after some momentous battle of life's forlornest last reserves.
Frank hurried his steps, guessing out the situation, and anxious to rescue his impetuous friend from an outbreak. "Hi, chef!" howled out Durkin, as Frank approached, and Frank knew that the mean-spirited cads had been spreading the story of his meeting with Ned Foreman. "What have you got to say about it, huh? Who are you?" Frank heard Bob cry out angrily, as he came nearer to the crowd.
That Pobloff might have the bank-notes with him was a contingency; that he would carry about with him two thousand napoleons was an absurdity. And Durkin knew the money had not been deposited to ascertain that had been part of his day's work.
One sharp twist and pry with his cold-chisel forced this flimsy outer door away from its lock. Beneath it, thus lightly masked, stood the more formidable safe door itself. Durkin drew in a sharp breath of relief as he looked at it with critical eyes. It was not quite the sort of thing he had expected.
She looked at him, as bewildered as the others. "That man, you'll find, is armed." "You lie you fool!" "That man, I say, is armed!" Keenan laughed, scoffingly. "Take his revolver from him!" commanded Durkin. A momentary hesitation held her back. "Take it, I say! And, by God, if he so much as moves a finger, I'll blow the top of his head off!"
From the bridge, too, through one of the officers' glasses, Frank could see, far inland across the Pontine Marshes, the gilded dome of St. Peter's, glimmering in the pellucid morning sunlight. She called Durkin, and pointed it out to him. "See, it's Rome!" she cried, with strangely mingled feelings. "It's St. Peter's!" "I wish it was the Statue of Liberty and New York," he said, moodily.
That, Durkin told himself, was worth knowing. His second despatch was a warning to a certain "Al" Mackenzie not to fail to meet Penfield in Albany, Sunday, at midnight. The third message was brief, and seemed to be an answer to a question which had escaped the interloper. "Yes, got her here, and here she stays. Things will happen tonight."
There was a walk, not much used by the students, leading past the kitchen and laundry quarters of the school. As Frank got nearly to the end of this a baseball whizzed by him and he saw Banbury and a crony named Durkin making for it. Just at that moment, too, Frank noticed a boy wearing a long apron sitting on a stone step just outside the kitchen door.
He pounded on the clustered fingers of the gorilla-like hand, crushing and bruising them against the gilded iron grill-work, through which was interwoven the Penfield triple crescent. The clutching arms relaxed, but only for a moment. In that moment, however, Durkin had stooped and with the one hand that remained with him to use, struggled to tear Frank away from the deadly clutch.
It reminded Frank of earlier and older days, for, with the dropping away of his professional preoccupations, Durkin seemed to relapse into some more intimate and personal relationship with her. It was the first time since their flight from America, she felt, that his affection had borne out the promise of its earlier ardor. And it taught her two things.
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