Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/47

 "Why, it was easy," she said to herself. "All I did was just—shoot!"

She patted the automatic pistol as though it had been a glove or a scarf. She let the cocked hammer down, and put another cartridge into the case, to take the place of the one she had fired. "Is that all there is to it?" she asked herself, and then she laughed lightly and aloud.

The secret of Old Mississipp' was hers! She had discovered it, and she laughed with delight at the discovery she had made. There was nothing to it but keep her mouth closed and shoot—shoot quick and straight!

She locked the doors now and sat down to think it all over. She tried to read, but reading was less exciting, less exacting, less true than just thinking. All the romances of the world, all the news items, all the learned essays were as nothing compared to the unmatched adventure through which she had gone that night.

She had saved herself from that visitor who waited to call in the dark. She gave no thought to the question of what had become of him. That was immaterial. Nothing had happened to her; that was the idea uppermost in her mind.

She sat there, with the automatic pistol in her lap, stroking it with a rare tenderness and affection.