Mrs. Engle returned and Virginia, staying another minute, said good-by.
As she went out she glanced down at the table. In her room she asked
herself what it was that he had snatched and hidden. It seemed a
strange thing to do and the question perplexed her; while she attached
no importance to it, it was there like a pebble in one's shoe, refusing
to be ignored.
That night, just as she was going to sleep, she knew. Out of a half
doze she had visualized the table with its couple of bottles, a
withering rose, a scrap of note-paper, a fountain pen. The pen . . .
it was Patten's . . . had evidently leaked and had been wiped
carelessly upon the sheet of paper, left lying with the paper half
wrapped around it. She had noted carelessly a few scrawled words in
Patten's slovenly hand. And she knew that it had been removed while
she turned her back, removed by a hand which, in its haste, had slipped
the pen with it under the pillow.
She went to sleep incensed with herself that she gave the matter
another thought. But she kept asking herself what it was that Patten
had written that Roderick Norton did not want her to read.
CHAPTER XIV
A FREE MAN
"I am a free man, if you please." The sheriff stood in the hotel
doorway, looking down upon her as she sat in her favorite veranda
chair.
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