# Waylaid by Wireless/Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI
ROBBERY AGAIN—WITH A SAFE CONDUCT
Something startled young Preston awake eight hours later. He had not followed to his room when the girl left him late the night before. He had waited about in the smoking-room with the men; and, even after that, he had delayed before retiring, so that he knew something must have awakened him, though he heard nothing as he sat up in bed.
The horizontal rays of the morning sun streamed in through his open windows, but they had not moved about far enough to strike his pillow. Besides, he thought some soft sound had aroused him; but he was a little confused. He had slept very soundly and had been dreaming; so he found it difficult to separate the real from the fancied in the first moment of consciousness.
​His dreams had the inconvenient habit of carrying him in his sleep through the last thing suggested to him; so he could seldom say, at once, exactly how many of the incidents dancing through his brain belonged to reality and would remain his responsible acts, and how many would efface themselves and vanish into the mere film of a dream.
He was quite certain that the girl had challenged him to follow and take their lock-box, if he could. He was quite certain, also, that he had gone in and made sure that Mrs. Varris did, indeed, take a lock-box to her room. But his brain balked at the next act in sequence. Well, he considered with himself, if he really did that and the following ones, he must have the packet in proof. It was put under the rug in the corner. He could decide that easily by getting up. But—he lay back drowsily again, when the gentle but nervous knock at his door, which had first startled him, brought him back wide awake.
"What is it?" he called.
​He could hear some one passing heavily down the hall; but neither was his call answered nor the knock repeated.
He sat up, still listening intently, until, when the heavy tread was gone, he heard again the distinctly agitated tap at his door. He sprang to open it then; and, as he peered out, he recognized the little English maid whom Mrs. Varris had engaged at Southampton and who had been travelling with her since.
As Preston started back in his surprise, she glanced quickly up and down the now empty hall and thrust a note toward him hurriedly.
"The Miss told me not to be seen," she murmured, and was gone.
"The Miss?" Preston repeated foolishly, staring stupidly at the note he found in his hand.
He closed the door quickly and, as the envelope was not addressed, he tore it open at once and read the few lines in Miss Varris's writing—her writing, which he saw now for the first time.
​"Dear Mr. Preston," the note ran. "Please come to our sitting-room as soon as possible. It is very important that you come at once, before you see or speak to any one.
"If any one comes to speak with you or question you, please put him off, and tell no one anything till you have seen us. I can only explain this to you personally, and at the earliest possible moment.
"Very sincerely,
"Ethel D. Varris."
But even as the young American was rereading the perplexing note, he began to get an explanation. There was again an imperative tread in the hall and this time a heavy knock at the door. Opening it, he found himself face to face with a sour-visaged officer of the law whom, after some small parley, he managed to put off with a promise to appear at the hotel office within a quarter hour.
Preston dressed very quickly then; and, hastening at once and unobserved to Mrs. Varris's private sitting-room upon the second ​floor, he found both the mother and daughter awaiting him within.
As he entered, the maid who had opened the door fastened it quickly again and slipped into one of the other rooms.
Both the women were clearly very much agitated, though they tried to conceal it. As Preston entered, Mrs. Varris nodded to him pleasantly from the writing table, where she was figuring; but the daughter arose and extended her hand to him.
"You have seen—you have said nothing to any one, as we asked?" she questioned, gently releasing her fingers from his absently unconscious grasp.
"A police officer came to my room just after I received your note, Miss Varris," Preston replied. "But I put him off. But what—what is the matter, Miss Varris—Mrs. Varris?" he turned from one to the other.
"You have not heard?" the girl asked.
"What?"
"That we have been robbed?"
​"Robbed? Last night? Of what?"
"Last night. Of everything."
"Of everything?"
"Of all we put into the lock-box to be sent to the safe."
"Oh! How?"
"Sit down, dear, won't you?" The elder woman arose and took her daughter's hand. "And you too, Mr. Preston. Thank you," she acknowledged, as the girl seated herself and Preston also threw himself nervously into a chair, though it was only to rise again at once.
"You remember," the girl began, "that we told you—that is," she substituted, "we had one of the iron lock-boxes they put into safes sent to our rooms last night. We were to put our money and things into it and lock it, and then ring the bell to have the office send for it and keep it in the safe for us until morning."
"Yes," Preston acknowledged, "I remember. Well?"
​The girl started to go on, but seemed to reject the first wording which occurred to her.
"We did not tell the proprietor that we would surely send it down to his safe, Mr. Preston,"—Mrs. Varris took it up then for the girl, as she watched her kindly. "We were to ring if we decided to send it down. He had given many of us safe-boxes for our personal things. He did not know that I had a good deal of currency besides."
"I know," Preston nodded again. "Only I knew that."
"No, Mr. Preston," the older woman corrected fairly, "many other persons in Ely must have known that I carried a good deal in funds because I tried in town to change it yesterday, you remember."
"Well; at any rate—"
"Just after we came to our rooms, Mr. Preston," the girl took the statement again as the mother hesitated, "we put the money and all our other things into the box. We locked it and rang the bell. Then—
​"We had started to take off some of our things when some one—we supposed, of course, he was from the office, for we had just rung, and he asked at once for the box—knocked at the door. I handed the box out to him through the crack of the door without seeing him well—in fact, without seeing him at all, as the hall was entirely dark. And then, when we sent for our things this morning, we discovered that—that—"
"We discovered this morning, Mr. Preston," Mrs. Varris took it up again quietly, as she placed her hand reassuringly over her daughter's "that the bell wire—it runs exposed just along the moulding in the hall—had been cut just outside our door, so that the office could never have received our signal at all. The hall lights had been tampered with so that they would not burn, and—"
"And in short," young Preston carried it on himself, "some one who knew both that you were carrying a good deal in funds and that you would probably send the box to the ​office—the thief," he substituted directly, "merely had to cut the bell-wires, wreck the lighting switch, and take the box from your door?"
"Yes. That is it!"
"I see now, Mrs. Varris," he comprehended, addressing the mother, though he spoke to the girl. "So therefore you sent for me before I could be arrested to give me a chance to—"
"Please wait a moment more, Mr. Preston," the girl checked him. "You have not heard quite all."
"When we asked for the box from the office this morning, and the proprietor discovered the method by which we had been robbed, he immediately communicated with the police. The officers came and examined us. They first asked us whom we had told of our carrying the money as we did. We had, truthfully, to name you."
"Of course."
"They asked, then, to whom we had mentioned our intention of sending the box to the office. Again we had to name you."
​"Certainly."
"We did not think seriously, Mr. Preston," the girl protested quickly," that they had really been watching and suspecting you upon the evidence of which you spoke yesterday. But they wished us to sign the papers, containing our statement as they made it out, upon which they were to arrest you."
"Were to?"
"For we refused, of course."
"Thank you," the young American acknowledged. "So you sent this," he indicated the note in his fingers, "to give me an opportunity to settle it with you privately, before the officers would have to arrest me—"
"Mr. Preston," the girl's tone came now as a rebuke, "we sent for you so that when they consult and advise with you as our friend, you will understand what we think of the matter and how you can best help us."
"As your friend, Miss Varris? Best help you?" he repeated.
"Yes; when they asked us to sign the ​papers upon which they wished to arrest you, we referred them to you, and told them that we wished them to consult you, as you would act for us in the matter."
"I act for you?"
"We had no time to ask if you would, Mr. Preston," Mrs. Varris answered for her daughter. "When I saw the very great injury I had unconsciously done in taking you into my confidence yesterday, and then naming you to the police this morning in reply to their questions, I thought it the only thing to do to protect you and undo the wrong I had done you."
"But, Mrs. Varris," young Preston inquired, "did they not question you about me?"
"Yes."
"What did you say?"
"I said that you are an American friend who had come to England with us, but that you had not been able to join us until yesterday, and that now you were going on with us—at our wish."
​"You said that to protect me?"
"Yes; and because we hope that you will do so."
"Then you are going on as you had planned?"
"Fortunately, Mr. Preston," Mrs. Varris explained, "I had given Elsie, the maid, ten pounds to settle the hotel account last night, and she has enough left to take us to Lincoln, where we have a banking connection which will furnish us with funds upon cabled instructions from America. We have decided to take the nine o'clock train directly to Lincoln. As I just said, we hope that you will accompany us after going through with the necessary police formalities."
"I am sure," the girl went on, "that father will wish us to keep on with our original plans for the rest of the summer. And, as mother says, Mr. Preston, we hope you will travel with us for a few days to give us some opportunity of righting the wrong we did you this morning."
​"In other words, you mean, Miss Varris," young Preston corrected, "that unless I go on with you and act according to the impression you were good enough to give the police for my protection—the impression that I am an old friend, long enough known by you to be trusted unquestioningly—I must be arrested. Without questioning me at all yourselves, you are offering me a safe conduct through the police lines with you—although there is every reasonable presumption that I am the man who has robbed you."
"Without understanding what we were doing," Miss Varris answered, "we directly implicated you with the robbery last night, Mr. Preston. We are offering 'safe conduct,' as you call it, only through those police lines which we ourselves drew about you."
"Yes; but—" the young American was considering, when there was a knock at the door.
A servant brought in word that Mrs. Varris and her daughter were desired at the office as soon as convenient.
​"At once!" the elder woman replied. "You will come with us, Mr. Preston?"
The American followed, and mechanically glanced over and approved the papers which he and Mrs. Varris and her daughter signed.
"I say, Miss Varris!" he heard Mr. Dunneston's voice greeting the girl as they moved away, "I say, but I knew, rather, that you were merely trying to worry me a bit yesterday. I knew, rather, you had met Mr. Preston before,—what?" he triumphed soberly. "And I say, Mr. Preston!" he offered his hand in frank apology to the young American. "I say, really, if Miss Varris here hadn't quite made me fancy she had merely met you upon the boat, I would not have connected you with these bobry burglaries a moment further. But really, you know, she quite convinced me of it, for a bit. So naturally enough, I say, wasn't it, I thought you might be doing the robbing?"
"Quite naturally, of course, Mr. Dunneston," Preston cut short the Englishman's congratulation grimly.
​He turned to the girl, still smiling grimly, and directed her glance with his own about the studying, stolid circle of official Britons.
"I'm afraid I'd forgotten the British nature, Miss Varris—Mrs. Varris," he murmured, "when I was so recklessly reluctant to go on with you; but Mr. Dunneston has kindly recalled it to me. So if it's not too late, I'll accept your convoy and safe conduct into Lincolnshire."
"Good!" they approved gladly.
Yet two hours later, as the shrill whistle of the little hurrying English locomotive shrieked for the first little station over the county borders in Lincolnshire, Preston surprised them by rising suddenly and pulling down his hand luggage from the racks over his head.
For two hours their talk had been carefully light and impersonal. But now the girl started quickly.
"You are not going on to Lincoln with us?" she asked. "I thought you said you were."
​"I said into Lincolnshire only, Miss Varris," young Preston amended. "Considering all elements, I thought I might be permitted to take your convoy out of Cambridgeshire, and your safe conduct into this county. But did you think that even I could let myself go further?"
He turned and, taking off his glove, gave his hand first to Mrs. Varris and then grasped the girl's fingers impulsively before she could form her reply.
"Good-bye!" he said simply.
The girl seemed to be waiting.
"Oh, during these past two hours, Miss Varris," he cried, "I've thought out a thousand things to say to try to thank you and show—my—appreciation of you—of what you have done. But the only word I can say now, the only one which can mean that I have even consideration for you, is 'Good-bye!'"
The train slowed and stopped. Preston opened the carriage door quickly, jumped down, and, removing his hat, stood uncovered as the ​engine shrieked again and bore the women swiftly away.
"Good-bye!" they waved from the window as they left the little English country platform with the vines and flowers about it, and the young American standing in the sun watching after them.