The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [4949]
Then Rudolph washed his hands under the faucet and faced the older man. "How do you know she bought herself that watch," he demanded.
Herman eyed him.
"Perhaps you gave it to her!" Something like suspicion of Rudolph crept into his eyes.
"Me? A hundred-dollar watch!"
"How do you know it cost a hundred dollars?"
"I saw it. She tried that story on me, too. But I was too smart for her. I went to the store and asked. A hundred bucks!"
Herman's lips drew back over his teeth.
"You knew it, eh? And you did not tell me?"
"It wasn't my funeral," said Rudolph coolly. "If you wanted to believe she bought it herself?"
"If she bought it herself!" Rudolph's shoulder was caught in an iron grip. "You will tell me what you mean."
"Well, I ask you, do you think she'd spend that much on a watch? Anyhow, the installment story doesn't go. That place doesn't sell on installments."
"Who is there would buy her such a watch?" Herman's voice was thick.
"How about Graham Spencer? She's been pretty thick with him."
"How you mean - thick?"
Rudolph shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't mean anything. But he's taken her out in his car. And the Spencers think there's nothing can't be bought with money."
Herman put down the dish-cloth and commenced to draw down his shirt sleeves.
"Where you going?" Rudolph demanded uneasily.
"I go to the Spencers!"
"Listen!" Rudolph said, excitedly. "Don't you do it; not yet. You got to get him first. We don't know anything; we don't even know he gave her that watch. We've got to find her, don't you see? And then, we've got to learn if he's going there - wherever she is."
"I shall bring her back," Herman said, stubbornly. "I shall bring her back, and I shall kill her."
"And get strung up yourself! Now listen?" he argued. "You leave this to me. I'll find her. I've got a friend, a city detective, and he'll help me, see? We'll get her back, all right. Only you've got to keep your hands off her. It's the Spencers that have got to pay."
Herman went back to the sink, slowly.
"That is right. It is the Spencers," he muttered.
Rudolph went out. Late in the evening he came back, with the news that the search was on. And, knowing Herman's pride, he assured him that the hill need never learn of Anna's flight, and if any inquiries came he advised him to say the girl was sick.
In Rudolph's twisted mind it was not so much Anna's delinquency that enraged him. The hill had its own ideas of morality. But he was fiercely jealous, with that class-jealousy which was the fundamental actuating motive of his life. He never for a moment doubted that she had gone to Graham.
And, sitting by the fire in the little house, old Herman's untidy head shrunk on his shoulders, Rudolph almost forgot Anna in plotting to use this new pawn across the hearth from him in his game of destruction.
By the end of the week, however, there was no news of Anna. She had not returned to the mill. Rudolph's friend on the detective force had found no clew, and old Herman had advanced from brooding by the fire to long and furious wanderings about the city streets.
He felt no remorse, only a growing and alarming fury. He returned at night, to his cold and unkempt house, to cook himself a frugal and wretched meal. His money had run very low, and with true German stubbornness he refused to draw any from the savings bank.
Rudolph was very busy. There were meetings always, and to the little inner circle that met behind Gus's barroom one night later in March, he divulged the plan for the destruction of the new Spencer munition plant.
"But - will they take him back?" one of the men asked. He was of better class than the rest, with a military bearing and a heavy German accent, for all his careful English.
"Will a dog snatch at a bone?" countered Rudolph. "Take him back! They'll be crazy about it."
"He has been there a long time. He may, at the last, weaken."
But Rudolph only laughed, and drank more whisky of the German agent's providing.
"He won't weaken," he said. "Give me a few days more to find the girl, and