Coming Through the Rye Read Online Free PDF

gravely.
    â€œBut—what for?”
    â€œFor complicity—with your father. They have acted together in this business—”
    â€œStop!” said Romayne, trying to speak calmly. “It is terrible for you to say such things with him lying up there!”
    She caught her breath in a sob and hurried on: “But I want you to try to be sensible, and tell me what made you ever get an idea like this? You know you will have to
prove
a statement such as you have just made.”
    The young man bowed again.
    â€œI’m very sorry, Miss Ransom, but it has
been proved
.”
    â€œWhere is your proof?” she demanded, her eyes flashing with the restrained look of one who feels strong and sure of her position and can afford to hold her anger in abeyance until facts come to her rescue.
    The young man looked at her sadly for a moment and then spoke.
    â€œMiss Ransom, I would have spared you if I could, but I suppose you will have to know the truth sooner or later, although I would rather it were not my task to tell you. Can’t you be persuaded to take my word for it, and spare yourself the unpleasant details? No one has any wish to bring trouble upon you.”
    â€œI thought you could not prove your charges,” flashed the girl, with bitter contempt in her tone. “You are a coward and afraid to face the truth!”
    For answer Sherwood turned to her, his face hardening.
    â€œCome then,” he said half-bitterly. “I have warned you. It is your own fault if you have to suffer.”
    He stepped to the panel beside the beautiful carved mantel and touched a spring. The panel swung open and disclosed a set of shelves inside, shallow shelves, as she had told him a little while before, filled with papers fastened in neat bundles with rubber bands about them, official-looking documents, and each shelf labeled with letters of the alphabet. A gleam of triumph came in her eyes.
    But even as it dawned, the young man silently touched what looked like a nail head, and the whole set of shelves, papers and all, began to move, slowly, smoothly, swinging around out of sight into a recess somewhere behind the mantel, leaving a dark opening into a cavern-like space beyond. It could not exactly be called a doorway, yet it was wide enough for a person to pass through.
    Romayne stood staring in amazement and said nothing.
    The young man reached his hand through the opening and touched a button, and a shaded light sprang up in the space beyond.
    â€œCome!” he said, and with strange premonition Romayne followed him, stepping through the opening with a strange sensation of fright, yet unable to refuse to follow.
    It was a room that she arrived in through the narrow door, a room with little attempt at beauty and luxury. There were tables and chairs, and pictures on the wall. Several of the chairs were pushed back as if their occupants had left them in a hurry. There was a lady’s glove upon the floor and a rose with a broken stem beside it. There were glasses on the tables and an odor of liquor faintly tanging the air. She looked toward the windows, doubting her exact location, and saw that they were closely and heavily curtained, and that the lamps were shrouded in dim draperies. Sherwood reached out and removed one shade, and the glare of electric light fell garishly over the place. A cupboard door half open he swung wide and disclosed rows and rows of bottles, with many labels. She did not try to read them all. Her eye caught one with terror-stricken gaze—P URE R YE W HISKEY , it read. There were other names that meant nothing to her, vaguely associated in her mind with a world of which she knew little. She turned, bewildered, half questioning what he meant by it all, and why this should have anything to do with her father.
    â€œCome!” said Sherwood again, setting his firm lips to the task he did not relish. Yet this girl must be convinced.
    He led her through other rooms and showed