Page:Frederick Faust--Free Range Lanning.djvu/79

Rh of face, but she guessed an excitement beneath the surface.

"I've got something to show you," he said.

A great thought made her sit up in the chair; but she was afraid just then to stand up. "I know. The posse has reached that silly boy and brought him back. But I don't want to see him again. Handcuffed, and all that."

"The posse is here, at least," said Charles noncommittally. She was finding something new in him. The fact that he could think and hide his thoughts from her was indeed very new; for, when she first met him, he had seemed all surface, all clean young manhood without a stain, frank, careless, gay. Also, he danced wonderfully, and could wear his clothes. Everything between them had grown out of that, and an impulse.

"Do you want me to see the six brave men again?" she asked, smiling, but really she was prying at his mind to get a dew of the truth. "Well, I'll come down."

And she went down the stairs with Charles Merchant beside her; he kept looking straight ahead, biting his lips, and this made her wonder. She began to hum a gay little tune, and the first bar made the man start. So she kept on. She was bubbling with apparent good nature when Charles, all gravity, opened the door of the living room.

The shades were drawn. The quiet in that room was a deadly, living thing. And then she saw, on the sofa at one side of the place, a human form under a sheet.

"Charles!" whispered the girl. She put out her hand and touched his shoulder, but she could not take her eyes off that ghastly dead thing. "They—they—he's dead—Andrew Lanning! Why did you bring me here?"

"Take the cloth from his face," commanded Charles Merchant, and there was something so hard in his voice