“How long has it been since you last saw your daughter?”
“Why, she left here last Tuesday morning to go back to Lycurgus.
She works down there for the Griffiths Collar & Shirt Company.
But —?”
“Now, one moment,” insisted the district attorney determinedly, “I’ll explain all in a moment.
She was up here over the week-end, possibly.
Is that it?”
“She was up here on a vacation for about a month,” explained Titus, slowly and meticulously.
“She wasn’t feeling so very good and she came home to rest up a bit.
But she was all right when she left.
You don’t mean to tell me, Mr. Mason, that anything has gone wrong with her, do you?”
He lifted one long, brown hand to his chin and cheek in a gesture, of nervous inquiry.
“If I thought there was anything like that —?”
He ran his hand through his thinning gray hair.
“Have you had any word from her since she left here?” Mason went on quietly, determined to extract as much practical information as possible before the great blow fell.
“Any information that she was going anywhere but back there?”
“No, sir, we haven’t.
She’s not hurt in any way, is she?
She’s not done anything that’s got her into trouble?
But, no, that couldn’t be.
But your questions!
The way you talk.”
He was now trembling slightly, the hand that sought his thin, pale lips, visibly and aimlessly playing about his mouth.
But instead of answering, the district attorney drew from his pocket the letter of Roberta to her mother, and displaying only the handwriting on the envelope, asked:
“Is that the handwriting of your daughter?”
“Yes, sir, that’s her handwriting,” replied Titus, his voice rising slightly.
“But what is this, Mr. District Attorney?
How do you come to have that?
What’s in there?”
He clinched his hands in a nervous way, for in Mason’s eyes he now clearly foresaw tragedy in some form.
“What is this — this — what has she written in that letter?
You must tell me — if anything has happened to my girl!”
He began to look excitedly about as though it were his intention to return to the house for aid — to communicate to his wife the dread that was coming upon him — while Mason, seeing the agony into which he had plunged him, at once seized him firmly and yet kindly by the arms and began:
“Mr. Alden, this is one of those dark times in the lives of some of us when all the courage we have is most needed.
I hesitate to tell you because I am a man who has seen something of life and I know how you will suffer.”
“She is hurt.
She is dead, maybe,” exclaimed Titus, almost shrilly, the pupils of his eyes dilating.
Orville Mason nodded.
“Roberta!
My first born!
My God! Our Heavenly Father!”
His body crumpled as though from a blow and he leaned to steady himself against an adjacent tree.
“But how?
Where?
In the factory by a machine?
Oh, dear God!”
He turned as though to go to his wife, while the strong, scar-nosed district attorney sought to detain him.
“One moment, Mr. Alden, one moment.
You must not go to your wife yet.
I know this is very hard, terrible, but let me explain.