He
planned just how he could put her on a train and "shoot her to Los
Angeles," as he worded it to himself. How she could take a boat there for
Vancouver, and how he could hold back developments here until he knew she
was safe. He figured the approximate cost and the hole it would make in
his little savings account. He thought of everything, even to marrying
her before she left, so that he could not be compelled to testify against
her, in case she was caught.
He had dozed afterwards, and had dreamed that he put his plan to the test
of reality. He had married Helen May and taken her himself to Los
Angeles. But there had not been money enough for him to go any farther,
and his chief had wired him peremptorily to return and arrest the leaders
of the Alliance and all connected with it. So he had bought a steerage
ticket for Helen May and put her aboard the boat, where she must herd
with a lot of leering Chinamen. He had stood on the pier and watched the
boat swing out and nose its way to the open sea, and a submarine had
torpedoed it when it had sailed beyond the three-mile limit off the
coast, so he could not go after her.
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