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Updated: May 9, 2025
There seemed to be magic in the touch of Vona's caressing palm on the stricken man's forehead; the words she was murmuring in his ear were stirring his faculties. He opened his eyes and stared at her and at the two men, vague wonderment in his expression. "What is it what has happened?" he muttered. "That's what we want to know," said Starr. "What did happen? Who got afoul of you?" "I don't know.
He slowly raised his hand and set his right index finger upon the toupee and scratched meditatively through the mesh scratched carefully, having accustomed himself to handling his boughten hair with cautious touch. He had not liked her intonation when she said "Frank and I." He muttered something about his feelings. He had never thought of Frank as belonging in Vona's calculations.
Whenever he caught himself snapping back into wakefulness he found Vona's twinkle of amusement waiting for him. Once she pointed to the big figures on the day-by-day calendar on the wall. The date was February 21st. "Console yourself, Frank, dear," she advised, teasing him. "The bank will be closed to-morrow and you can make Washington's Birthday your sleep day!
She had gone bravely to her meeting with Britt, bearing Frank's kiss on her cheek a caress of encouragement when he had walked with her to the door in order to lock it after her. It was not worry that caused him to tramp to and fro, frowning. Vona's demeanor of self-reliance had helped his feelings a great deal.
He did not display his usual jocose manner when he referred to Egypt as a jumping-off place. Vona found a sort of furtive uneasiness in the way he glanced out of the window and fingered his vest-pocket equipment. And he trod to and fro with the air of a man stepping on hot bricks. "But you have said you are doing so well in your new business, father!" Vona's straightforward gaze was disconcerting.
In the meantime, also, Tasper Britt and a hired girl had become fixtures in the Harnden home and the hired girl was quite in love with Vona and in entire sympathy with her stand; the girl brought to Vona's room the tidbits of all the meals and offered to put tacks in Britt's doughnuts if that would help matters any. Vona was entirely serene in her companionship with her father and her mother.
He gave his wife a peck of a kiss and patted Vona's shoulder when he passed her. He picked up a valise in the hallway. The girl followed him. "Father, always when you have been away, mother and I have felt perfectly comfortable and safe here in our home. If Mr. Britt hasn't the sense or the good taste to go somewhere else to board, won't you suggest to him that he'd better do so?"
That night, too, Vona Harnden kept vigil, her door locked against her mother, whose fatuous commonplaces of commiseration were like files against the raw surface of the girl's agony. The front parlor of the Harndens had been converted into a sleeping room for Tasper Britt. Vona's room was over the parlor. She could hear the rasping diapason of his snoring.
"Is this cloth anything that has been about the premises?" asked the official. "It's Vona's dustcloth," stated Britt. He had watched the girl too closely o' mornings not to know that cloth! That information seemed to prick Starr's memory on another point. From his trousers pocket he dug the tape which he had cut from Vaniman's wrists. He glanced about the littered floor.
Harnden sliced the air with a hand that sought to sever further conference. "Absolutely impossible, young man." "Vona's prospects must not be ruined by anybody's selfishness," stated Mrs. Harnden. In his eagerness, encouraged by this parental backing, Mr. Britt did not employ a happy metaphor. "It has been my rule, in the case of bitter medicine, to take it quick and have the agony over with."
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