Samson stopped at his studio, and threw open an old closet where, from
a littered pile of discarded background draperies, canvases and
stretchers, he fished out a buried and dust-covered pair of saddlebags.
They had long lain there forgotten, but they held the rusty clothes in
which he had left Misery. He threw them over his arm and dropped them
at Adrienne's feet, as he handed her the studio keys.
"Will you please have George look after things, and make the necessary
excuses to my sitters? He'll find a list of posing appointments in the
desk."
The girl nodded.
"What are those?" she asked, gazing at the great leather pockets as at
some relic unearthed from Pompeian excavations.
"Saddlebags, Drennie," he said, "and in them are homespun and jeans.
One can't lead his 'fluttered folk and wild' in a cutaway coat."
Shortly they were at the station, and the man, standing at the side of
the machine, took her hand.
"It's not good-by, you know," he said, smiling. "Just auf
Wiedersehen."
She nodded and smiled, too, but, as she smiled, she shivered, and
turned the car slowly. There was no need to hurry, now.
Samson had caught the fastest west-bound express on the schedule. In
thirty-six hours, he would be at Hixon. There were many things which
his brain must attack and digest in these hours. He must arrange his
plan of action to its minutest detail, because he would have as little
time for reflection, once he had reached his own country, as a wildcat
flung into a pack of hounds.
From the railroad station to his home, he must make his way--most
probably fight his way--through thirty miles of hostile territory where
all the trails were watched. And yet, for the time, all that seemed too
remotely unreal to hold his thoughts. He was seeing the coolly waving
curtains of flowered chintz that stirred in the windows of his room at
the Lescott house and the crimson ramblers that nodded against the sky.
He was hearing a knock on the door, and seeing, as it opened, the
figure of Adrienne Lescott and the look that had been in her eyes.
He took out Sally's letter, and read it once more. He read it
mechanically and as a piece of news that had brought evil tidings.
Then, suddenly, another aspect of it struck him--an aspect to which the
shock of its reception had until this tardy moment blinded him. The
letter was perfectly grammatical and penned in a hand of copy-book
roundness and evenness. The address, the body of the missive, and the
signature, were all in one chirography. She would not have intrusted
the writing of this letter to any one else.