“You bet your boots I’m comin’ back.” She offered her cheek and he kissed it. Then Clinton offered his own cheek and she kissed him back. Clinton stepped away from the car. Echo placed the gear into position and raced the motor with her foot. Then she hesitated for a moment.
“You wrote me a note once, didn’t you?” she said.
He nodded.
“Well, that note, I just wanted you to know—it goes double.”
As she started to smile, her face seemed to crumble from within; and her tears had begun to flow. Then the car was in motion. And Echo O’Brien was gone.
part 4
part 4
WORD OF Echo O’Brien’s death reached Seminary Street on Sunday, a few minutes before noon.
Her mother’s nurse and companion, a Mrs. Foss, delivered to Annabel on the telephone only the bare fact itself—that there had been a crash in which Echo was killed. An hour later, when the first terrible waves of anguish and consternation had subsided in the Williams household, Annabel and Clinton stood by as Ralph put in a call to Toledo.
He learned from Mrs. Foss, in this second conversation, that Echo’s automobile had left the highway, just forty-some miles south of Toledo, that it had crashed into the brick chimney of a private residence, that death had come during the first instant after the impact. The accident had taken place during a heavy storm, but its exact cause was not known.
Ralph suggested that Annabel’s presence in Toledo might be helpful to the girl’s mother. Mrs. Foss agreed. She said that the doctor had given Bernice O’Brien an injection to induce sleep; but that, in her opinion, the comfort to the poor woman, if Annabel could be at her side when she awakened, might be invaluable.
Ralph offered to drive her to Toledo in the family car, but Annabel held that it was the duty of Berry-berry to accompany her. Besides, she insisted, Ralph should remain in bed.
Annabel refused to believe that Berry-berry would stay away for long. Though Clinton had offered no information at all concerning the events of the night, Annabel had deduced, from the absence of both of the lovers, that some quarrel had taken place between them. But now, because the girl had died as an indirect result of it, Annabel could not permit herself to imagine that this quarrel had been of any real importance to either of them.
Therefore, while she prepared for her trip, Ralph, at her insistence, made several attempts to reach Berry-berry by telephone at his establishment in Apple Mountain. But as these attempts failed, it was decided that Clinton would drive his mother to Toledo; and in the evening he would return, alone, to Seminary Street. Then, in two or three days, he and his father—and Berry-berry, if they could find him—would drive up together for the funeral.