<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<div class="box">
<p class="center"><span class="large"><b><i><span class="u">Adventure Stories for Girls</span></i></b></span></p>
<h1>The <br/>Secret Mark</h1>
<p class="tbcenter"><b><i>By</i>
<br/><span class="large">ROY J. SNELL</span></b></p>
<div class="fig"> id="logo"><ANTIMG src="images/logo.jpg" alt="Author’s Logo" width-obs="200" height-obs="91" /></div>
<p class="tbcenter"><span class="large">The Reilly & Lee Co.
<br/>Chicago</span></p>
<p class="tbcenter"><span class="small"><i>Printed in the United States of America</i></span></p>
<p class="center"><span class="small">Copyright, 1923
<br/>by
<br/>The Reilly & Lee Co.</span>
<br/><span class="small"><i>All Rights Reserved</i></span></p>
</div>
<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
<dt class="jr"><span class="jl"><span class="small">CHAPTER</span></span> <span class="small">PAGE</span>
<br/><SPAN href="#c1">I A Mysterious Visitor</SPAN> 7
<br/><SPAN href="#c2">II Elusive Shakespeare</SPAN> 19
<br/><SPAN href="#c3">III The Gargoyle</SPAN> 30
<br/><SPAN href="#c4">IV What the Gargoyle Might Tell</SPAN> 40
<br/><SPAN href="#c5">V The Papier-Mache Lunch Box</SPAN> 50
<br/><SPAN href="#c6">VI “One Can Never Tell”</SPAN> 62
<br/><SPAN href="#c7">VII The Vanishing Portland Chart</SPAN> 73
<br/><SPAN href="#c8">VIII What Was In the Papier-Mache Lunch Box</SPAN> 81
<br/><SPAN href="#c9">IX Shadowed</SPAN> 94
<br/><SPAN href="#c10">X Mysteries of the Sea</SPAN> 102
<br/><SPAN href="#c11">XI Lucile Shares Her Secret</SPAN> 111
<br/><SPAN href="#c12">XII The Trial By Fire</SPAN> 121
<br/><SPAN href="#c13">XIII In the Mystery Room at Night</SPAN> 131
<br/><SPAN href="#c14">XIV A Strange Request</SPAN> 138
<br/><SPAN href="#c15">XV A Strange Journey</SPAN> 143
<br/><SPAN href="#c16">XVI Night Visitors</SPAN> 155
<br/><SPAN href="#c17">XVII A Battle in the Night</SPAN> 166
<br/><SPAN href="#c18">XVIII Frank Morrow Joins in the Hunt</SPAN> 176
<br/><SPAN href="#c19">XIX Lucile Solves No Mystery</SPAN> 190
<br/><SPAN href="#c20">XX “That Was the Man”</SPAN> 199
<br/><SPAN href="#c21">XXI A Theft in the Night</SPAN> 211
<br/><SPAN href="#c22">XXII Many Mysteries</SPAN> 218
<br/><SPAN href="#c23">XXIII Inside the Lines</SPAN> 228
<br/><SPAN href="#c24">XXIV Secrets Revealed</SPAN> 235
<br/><SPAN href="#c25">XXV Better Days</SPAN> 242
<div class="pb" id="Page_7">[7]</div>
<h1 title="">The Secret Mark</h1>
<h2 id="c1"><br/>CHAPTER I <br/>A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR</h2>
<p>Lucile Tucker’s slim, tapered fingers trembled
slightly as she rested them against a steel-framed
bookcase. She had paused to steady
her shaken nerves, to collect her wits, to determine
what her next move should be.</p>
<p>“Who can it be?” her madly thumping heart
kept asking her.</p>
<p>And, indeed, who, besides herself, could be
in the book stacks at this hour of the night?</p>
<p>About her, ranging tier on tier, towering
from floor to ceiling, were books, thousands on
thousands of books. The two floors above were
full of books. The two below were the same.
This place was a perfect maze of books. It
was one of the sections of a great library, the
library of one of the finest universities of the
United States.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_8">[8]</div>
<p>In all this vast “city of books” she had
thought herself quite alone.</p>
<p>It was a ghostly hour. Midnight. In the
towers the great clock had slowly struck. Besides
the striking of the clock there had been
but a single sound: the click of an electric light
snapped on. There had instantly gleamed at
her feet a single ray of light. That light had
traveled beneath many tiers of books to reach
her. She thought it must be four but was not
quite sure.</p>
<p>She had been preparing to leave the “maze,”
as she often called the stacks of books which
loomed all about her. So familiar was she with
the interior of this building that she needed no
light to guide her. To her right was a spiral
stairway which like an auger bored its way to
the ground four stories below. Straight ahead,
twenty tiers of books away, was a small electric
elevator, used only for lifting or lowering piles
of books. Fourteen tiers back was a straight
stairway. To a person unfamiliar with it, the
stacks presented a bewildering labyrinth, but
to Lucile they were an open book.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_9">[9]</div>
<p>She had intended making her way back to
the straight stairway which led to the door by
which she must leave. But now she clutched
at her heart as she asked herself once more:</p>
<p>“Who can it be? And what does he want?”</p>
<p>Only one thing stood out clearly in her bewildered
brain: Since she was connected with
the stacks as one of their keepers, it was
plainly her duty to discover who this intruder
might be and, if occasion seemed to warrant,
to report the case to her superiors.</p>
<p>The university owned many rare and valuable
books. She had often wondered that so
many of these were kept, not in vaults, but in
open shelves.</p>
<p>Her heart gave a new bound of terror as she
remembered that some of these, the most valuable
of all, were at the very spot from which
the light came.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_10">[10]</div>
<p>“Oh! Shame! Why be so foolish?” she
whispered to herself suddenly. “Probably
some professor with a pass-key. Probably—but
what’s the use? I’ve got to find out.”</p>
<p>With that she began moving stealthily along
the narrow passageway which lay between the
stacks. Tiptoeing along, with her heart thumping
so loudly she could not help feeling it might
be heard, she advanced step by step until she
stood beside the end of the stack nearest the
strange intruder. There for a few seconds she
stuck. The last ounce of courage had oozed
out. She must await its return.</p>
<p>Then with a sudden burst of courage she
swung round the corner.</p>
<p>The next instant she was obliged to exert
all her available energy to suppress a laugh.
Standing in the circle of light was not some
burly robber, but a child, a very small and innocent
looking child.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_11">[11]</div>
<p>Yet a second glance told her that the child
was older than she looked. Her face showed
that. Old as the face was, the body of the
child appeared tiny as a sparrow’s. A green
velvet blouse of some strangely foreign weave,
a coarse skirt, a pair of heavy shoes, unnoticeable
stockings and that face—all this
flashed into her vision for a second. Then all
was darkness; the light had been snapped out.</p>
<p>The action was so sudden and unexpected
that for a few seconds the young librarian
stood where she was, motionless. Wild questions
raced through her mind: Who was the
child? What was she doing in the library at
this unearthly hour? How had she gotten in?
How did she expect to get out?</p>
<p>She had a vaguely uneasy feeling that the
child carried a package. What could that be
other than books? A second question suddenly
disturbed her: Who was this child?
Had she seen her before? She felt sure she
had. But where? Where?</p>
<p>All this questioning took but seconds. The
next turn found her mind focused on the one
important question: Which way had the child
gone? As if in answer to her question, her
alert ears caught the soft pit-pat of footsteps.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_12">[12]</div>
<p>“She’s going on to my right,” she whispered
to herself. “That’s good. There is no exit
in that direction, only windows and an impossible
drop of fifty feet. I’ll tiptoe along, throw
on the general switch, catch her at that end
and find out why she is here. Probably accepting
a dare or going through with some
childish prank.”</p>
<p>Hastily she tiptoed down the aisle between
the stacks. Then, turning to her left, she put
out her hand, touched a switch and released a
flood of light. At first its brightness blinded
her. The next instant she stared about her
in astonishment. The place was empty.</p>
<p>“Deserted as a tomb,” she whispered.</p>
<p>And so it was. Not a trace of the child was
to be seen.</p>
<p>“As if I hadn’t seen her at all!” she murmured.
“I don’t believe in ghosts, but—where
have I seen that face before? You’d
never forget it, once you’d seen it. And I
have seen it. But where?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_13">[13]</div>
<p>Meditatively she walked to the dummy elevator
which carried books up and down. She
started as her glance fell upon it. The carrier
had been on this floor when she left it not
fifteen minutes before. Now it was gone. The
button that released it was pressed in for the
ground floor.</p>
<p>“She couldn’t have,” she murmured. “The
compartment isn’t over two feet square.”</p>
<p>She stared again. Then she pressed the
button for the return of the elevator. The
car moved silently upward to stop at her door.
There was nothing about it to show that it
had been used for unusual purposes.</p>
<p>“And yet she might have,” she mused. “She
was so tiny. She might have pressed herself
into it and ridden down.”</p>
<p>Suddenly she switched off the lights and
hurried to a window. Did she catch a glimpse
of a retreating figure at the far side of the
campus? She could not be sure. The lights
were flickering, uncertain.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_14">[14]</div>
<p>“Well,” she shook herself, then shivered, “I
guess that’s about all of that. Ought to report
it, but I won’t. They’d only laugh at me.”</p>
<p>Again she shivered, then turning, tiptoed
down the narrow passageway to carry out her
original intention of going out of the building
by way of the back stairs.</p>
<p>Her room was only a half block away in
a dormitory on the corner of the campus
nearest the library. Having reached the dormitory,
she went to her room and began disrobing
for the night. In the bed near her own,
wrapped in profound sleep, lay her roommate.
She wished to waken her, to tell her of the
strange event of the night. For a moment she
stood with the name “Florence” quivering on
her lips.</p>
<p>The word died unspoken. “No use to trouble
her,” she decided. “She’s been working
hard lately and needs the sleep.”</p>
<p>At last, clad in her dream robes, with her
abundant hair streaming down her back and
her white arms gleaming in the moonlight, she
sat down by the open window to think and
dream.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_15">[15]</div>
<p>It was a wonderful picture that lay spread
out before her, a vista of magnificent Gothic
structures of gray sandstone framed in lawns
of perfectly kept green. Sidewalks wound
here, there, everywhere. Swarming with students
during the waking hours, they were silent
now. Her bosom swelled with a strange, inexpressible
emotion as she realized that she, a
mere girl, was a part of it all.</p>
<p>Like her roommate, she was one of the thousands
of girls who to-day attend the splendid
universities of our land. With little money, of
humble parentage, they are yet given an opportunity
to make their way toward a higher
and broader understanding of the meaning of
life through study in the university.</p>
<p>The thought that this university was possessed
of fifty millions of dollars’ worth of
property, yet had time and patience to make a
place for her, both awed and inspired her.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_16">[16]</div>
<p>The very thought of her position sobered
her. Four hours each week day she worked in
the stacks at the library. Books that had been
read and returned came down to her and by her
hands were placed in their particular niches of
the labyrinth of stacks.</p>
<p>The work was not work to her but recreation,
play. She was a lover of books. Just to touch
them was a delight. To handle them, to work
with them, to keep them in their places, accessible
to all, this was joy indeed. Yet this
work, which was play to her, went far toward
paying her way in the university.</p>
<p>And at this thought her brow clouded. She
recalled once more the occurrence of a short
time before and the strange little face among
the stacks. She knew that she ought to tell
the head of her section of the library, Mr.
Downers, of the incident. Should anything
happen, should some book be missing, she would
then be free from suspicion. Should suspicion
fall upon her, she might be deprived of her
position and, from lack of funds, be obliged
to give up her cherished dream, a university
education.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_17">[17]</div>
<p>“But I don’t want to tell,” she whispered to
the library tower which, like some kindly, long-bearded
old gentleman, seemed to be accusing
her. “I don’t want to.”</p>
<p>Hardly had she said this than she realized
that there was a stronger reason than her fear
of derision that held her back from telling.</p>
<p>“It’s the face,” she told herself. “That
poor little kiddie’s face. It wasn’t beautiful,
no, not quite that, but appealing, frankly, fearlessly
appealing. If I saw her take a book I
couldn’t believe that she meant to steal it, or
at least that it was she who willed it.</p>
<p>“But fi-fum,” she laughed a low laugh, throwing
back her head until her hair danced over
her white shoulders like a golden shower, “why
borrow trouble? She probably took nothing.
It was but a childish prank.”</p>
<p>At that she threw back the covers of her bed,
thrust her feet deep down beneath them and
lay down to rest. To-morrow was Sunday; no
work, no study. There would be plenty of
time to think.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_18">[18]</div>
<p>She believed that she had dismissed the scene
in the library from her mind, yet even as she
fell asleep something seemed to tell her that
she was mistaken, that the child had really
stolen a book, that there were breakers ahead.</p>
<p>And that something whispered truth, for this
little incident was but the beginning of a series
of adventures such as a college girl seldom is
called upon to experience. Being ignorant of
all this, she fell asleep to dream sweet dreams
while the moon out of a cloudless sky, beaming
down upon the faultless campus, seemed at
times to take one look in at her open window.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_19">[19]</div>
<h2 id="c2"><br/>CHAPTER II <br/>ELUSIVE SHAKESPEARE</h2>
<p>The sun had been up for more than an hour
when on the following morning Lucile lifted
her head sleepily and looked at the clock.</p>
<p>“Sunday morning. I’m glad!” she exclaimed
as she leaped out of bed and raced away
for a cold shower.</p>
<p>As she dressed she experienced a sensation of
something unfinished and at the same time a
desire to hide something, to defend someone.
At first she could not understand what it all
meant. Then, like a flash, the occurrence of
the previous night flashed upon her.</p>
<p>“Oh, that,” she breathed.</p>
<p>She was surprised to find that her desire to
shield the child had gained tremendously in
strength while she slept. Perhaps there are
forces we know nothing of, which work on the
inner, hidden chambers of our mind while we
sleep, and having worked there, leave impressions
which determine our very destinies.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_20">[20]</div>
<p>Lucile was not enough of a philosopher to
reason this all out. She merely knew that she
did not want to tell anyone of the strange incident,
no not even her roommate. And in the
end that was just what happened. She told
no one.</p>
<p>When she went back to her work on Monday
night a whole busy day had passed in the library.
Thousands of books had shot up the
dummy elevator to have their cards stamped
and to be given out. Thousands had been returned
to their places on their shelves. Was
a single book missing? Were two or three
missing? Lucile had no way of knowing.
Every book that had gone out had been recorded,
but to look over these records, then
to check back and see if others were missing,
would be the work of weeks. She could only
await developments.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_21">[21]</div>
<p>She was surprised at the speed with which
these developments came. Mr. Downers, the
superintendent, was noted for his exact knowledge
regarding the whereabouts of the books
which were under his care. She had not been
working an hour when a quiet voice spoke to
her and with a little start she turned to face
her superior.</p>
<p>“Miss Tucker,” the librarian smiled, “do
you chance to have any knowledge of the whereabouts
of the first volume of our early edition
of Shakespeare?”</p>
<p>“Why, no,” the girl replied quickly. “Why—er”—there
was a catch in her throat—“is
it gone?”</p>
<p>Mr. Downers nodded as he replied:</p>
<p>“Seems temporarily so to be. Misplaced, no
doubt. Will show up later.” He was still smiling
but there were wrinkles in his usually placid
brow.</p>
<p>“I missed it just now,” he went on.
“Strange, too. I saw it there only Saturday.
The set was to be removed from the library to
be placed in the Noyes museum. Considered
too valuable to be kept in the library. Very
early edition, you know.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_22">[22]</div>
<p>“Strange!” he puzzled. “It could not have
been taken out on the car, as it was used only
in the reference reading room. It’s not there.
I just phoned. However, it will turn up. Don’t
worry about it.”</p>
<p>He turned on his heel and was gone.</p>
<p>Lucile stared after him. She wanted to call
him back, to tell him that it was not all right,
that it would not turn up, that the strangely
quaint little person she had seen in the library
at midnight had carried it away. Yet she said
not a word; merely allowed him to pass away.
It was as if there was a hand over her mouth
forbidding her to speak.</p>
<p>“There can’t be a bit of doubt about it,”
she told herself. “That girl was standing right
by the shelf where the ancient Shakespeare was
kept. She took it. I wonder why? I wonder
if she’ll come back. Why, of course she will!
For the other volume, or to return the one she
has. Perhaps to-night. Two volumes were too
heavy for those slim shoulders. She’ll come
back and then she shan’t escape me. I’ll catch
her in the act. Then I’ll find out the reason
why.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_23">[23]</div>
<p>So great was her faith in this bit of reasoning
that she resolved that, without telling a
single person about the affair, she would set
a watch that very night for the mysterious
child and the elusive Shakespeare. She must
solve the puzzle.</p>
<p>That night as she sat in the darkened library,
listening, waiting, she allowed her mind
to recall in a dim and dreamy way the face and
form of the mysterious child. As she dreamed
thus there suddenly flashed into the foreground
from the deepest depths of her memory the
time and circumstance on which she had first
seen that child. She saw it all as in a dream.
The girl had been dressed just as she was Saturday
at midnight. She had entered the stacks.
That had been a month before. She had appeared
leading an exceedingly old man. Bent
with the weight of years, leaning upon a cane,
all but blind, the old man had moved with a
strangely youthful eagerness.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_24">[24]</div>
<p>He had been allowed to enter the stacks only
by special request. He was an aged Frenchman,
a lover of books. He wished to come near
the books, to sense them, to see them with his
age-dimmed eyes, to touch them with his faltering
hands.</p>
<p>So the little girl had guided him forward.
From time to time he had asked that he be
allowed to handle certain volumes. He had
touched each with a reverent hand. His touch
had resembled a caress. Some few he had
opened and had felt along the covers.</p>
<p>“I wonder why he did that,” Lucile had
thought to herself.</p>
<p>She paused. A sudden thought had flashed
into her mind. At the risk of missing her
quarry, she groped her way to the shelf where
the companion to the stolen volume lay and
took it down. Slowly she ran her fingers over
the inner part of the cover.</p>
<p>“Yes,” she whispered, “there is something.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_25">[25]</div>
<p>She dared not flash on the light. To do so
might betray her presence in the building. To-morrow
she would see. Replacing the volume
in its accustomed niche, she again tiptoed to
her post of waiting.</p>
<p>As she thought of it now, she began to realize
what a large part her unconscious memory had
played in her longing to shield the child. She
had seen the child render a service to a feeble
and all but helpless old man. Her memory had
been trying to tell her of this but had only now
broken through into her wakeful mind. Lucile
was aroused by the thought.</p>
<p>“I must save her,” she told herself. “I
must. I must!”</p>
<p>Even with this resolve came a perplexing
problem. Why had the child taken the book?
Had she done so at the old man’s direction?
That seemed incredible. Could an old man,
tottering to his grave, revealing in spite of his
shabby clothing a one-time more than common
intellect and a breeding above the average,
stoop to theft, the theft of a book? And could
he, above all, induce an innocent child to join
him in the deed? It was unthinkable.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_26">[26]</div>
<p>“That man,” she thought to herself, “why
he had a noble bearing, like a soldier, almost,
certainly like a gentleman. He reminded me of
that great old general of his own nation who
said to his men when the enemy were all but
upon Paris: ‘They must not pass.’ Could he
stoop to stealing?”</p>
<p>These problems remained all unsolved, for on
that night no slightest footfall was heard in the
silent labyrinth.</p>
<p>The next night was the same, and the next.
Lucile was growing weary, hollow-eyed with
her vigil. She had told Florence nothing, yet
she had surprised her roommate often looking
at her in a way which said, “Why are you out
so late every night? Why don’t you share
things with your pal?”</p>
<p>And she wanted to, but something held her
back.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_27">[27]</div>
<p>Thursday night came with a raging torrent
of rain. It was not her night at the library.
She would gladly have remained in her cozy
room, wrapped in a kimono, studying, yet, as
the chimes pealed out the notes of Auld Lang
Syne, telling that the hour of ten had arrived,
she hurried into her rubbers and ulster to face
the tempest.</p>
<p>Wild streaks of lightning faced her at the
threshold. A gust of wind seized her and hurried
her along for an instant, then in a wild,
freakish turn all but threw her upon the pavement.
A deluge of rain, seeming to extinguish
the very street light, beat down upon her.</p>
<p>“How foolish I am!” she muttered. “She
would not come on a night like this.”</p>
<p>And yet she did come. Lucile had not been
in her hiding place more than a half hour when
she caught the familiar pit-pat of footsteps.</p>
<p>“This time she shall not escape me,” she
whispered, as with bated breath and cushioned
footstep she tiptoed toward the spot where the
remaining Shakespeare rested.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_28">[28]</div>
<p>Now she was three stacks away. As she
paused to listen she knew the child was at the
same distance in the opposite direction. She
moved one stack nearer, then listened again.</p>
<p>She heard nothing. What had happened?—the
child had paused. Had she heard? Lucile’s
first impulse was to snap on a light. She
hesitated and in hesitating lost.</p>
<p>There came a sudden glare of light. A
child’s face was framed in it, a puzzled, frightened
face. A slender hand went out and up. A
book came down. The light went out. And all
this happened with such incredible speed that
Lucile stood glued to her tracks through it all.</p>
<p>She leaped toward the dummy elevator, only
to hear the faint click which told that it was
descending. She could not stop it. The child
was gone.</p>
<p>She dashed to a window which was on the
elevated station side. A few seconds of waiting
and the lightning rewarded her. In the midst
of a blinding flash, she caught sight of a tiny
figure crossing a broad stretch of rain-soaked
green.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_29">[29]</div>
<p>The next instant, with rubbers in one hand
and ulster in the other, she dashed down the
stairs.</p>
<p>“I’ll get her yet,” she breathed. “She belongs
down town. She’ll take the elevated.
There is a car in seven minutes. I’ll make it,
too. Then we shall see.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_30">[30]</div>
<h2 id="c3"><br/>CHAPTER III <br/>THE GARGOYLE</h2>
<p>Down a long stretch of sidewalk, across a
sunken patch of green where the water was to
her ankles, down a rain-drenched street, through
pools of black water where sewers were choked,
Lucile dashed. With no thought for health or
safety she exposed herself to the blinding
tempest and dashed before skidding autos, to
arrive at last panting at the foot of the rusted
iron stairs that led to the elevated railway
platform.</p>
<p>Pausing only long enough to catch her
breath and arrange her garments that the child
might not be frightened away by her appearance,
she hurried up the stairs. The train came
thundering in. There was just time to thrust
a dime through the wicker window and to bound
for the door.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_31">[31]</div>
<p>Catching a fleeting glimpse of the dripping
figure of the child, she made a dash for that
car and made it. A moment later, with her
ulster thrown over on the seat beside her, she
found herself facing the child.</p>
<p>Sitting there curled up in a corner, as she
now was, hugging a bulky package wrapped
in oilcloth, the child seemed older and tinier
than ever.</p>
<p>“How could she do it?” was Lucile’s unspoken
question as she watched the water oozing
from her shoes to drip-drip to the floor
below. With the question came a blind resolve
to see the thing through to the end. This child
was not the real culprit. Cost what it might,
she would find who was behind her strange
actions.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_32">[32]</div>
<p>There is no place in all the world where a
thunderstorm seems more terrible than in the
deserted streets in the heart of a great city at
night. Echoing and re-echoing between the
towering walls of buildings, the thunder seems
to be speaking to the universe. Flashing from
a thousand windows to ten thousand others, the
lightning seems to be searching the haunts and
homes of men. The whole wild fury of it
seems but the voice of nature defying man in
his great stronghold, the city. It is as if in
thundering tones she would tell him that great
as he may imagine himself, he is not a law unto
himself and can never be.</p>
<p>Into the heart of a great city on a night like
this the elevated train carried Lucile and the
child.</p>
<p>On the face of the child, thief as she undoubtedly
was, and with the stolen goods in
her possession, there flashed not one tremor, not
a falling of an eyelash, which might be thought
of as a sign of fear of laws of nature, man or
God. Was she hardened or completely innocent
of guilt? Who at that moment could tell?</p>
<p>It would be hard to imagine a more desolate
spot than that in which the car discharged its
two passengers. As Lucile’s eye saw the sea of
dreary, water-soaked tenements and tumbledown
cottages that, like cattle left out in the
storm, hovered beside the elevated tracks, she
shivered and was tempted to turn back—yet
she went on.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_33">[33]</div>
<p>A half block from the station she passed a
policeman. Again she hesitated. The child
was but a half block before her. She suspected
nothing. It would be so easy to say to the
policeman, “Stop that child. She is a thief.
She has stolen property concealed beneath her
cape.” The law would then take its course and
Lucile’s hands would be free.</p>
<p>Yet something urged her past the policeman,
down a narrow street, round a corner, up a
second street, down a third, still narrower, and
up to the door of the smallest, shabbiest cottage
of the whole tumble-down lot.</p>
<p>The child had entered here. Lucile paused
to consider and, while considering, caught the
gleam of light through a torn window shade.
The cottage was one story and a garret. The
window was within her range of vision. After
a glance from left to right, she stepped beneath
the porch, which gave her an opportunity
to peer through the opening. Here, deep in the
shadows, she might look on at the scene within
without herself being observed by those within
or by passers-by on the street.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_34">[34]</div>
<p>The picture which came to her through the
hole in the shade was so different from that
which one might expect that she barely suppressed
a gasp. In the room, which was
scrupulously clean and tidy, there were but two
persons, the child and the old man who had
visited the library. Through the grate of a
small stove a fire gleamed. Before this fire,
all unabashed, the child stripped the water-soaked
clothing from her meager body, then
stood chafing her limbs, which were purple with
cold.</p>
<p>The old man appeared all absorbed in his
inspection of the book just placed in his hands.
Lucile was not surprised to recognize it as the
second Shakespeare. From turning it over and
over, he paused to open it and peer at its inside
cover. Not satisfied with this, he ran his finger
over the upper, outside corner.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_35">[35]</div>
<p>It was then that Lucile saw for the first time
the thing she had felt while in the library in the
dark. A small square of paper, yellow with
age, was in that corner, and in its center was
a picture of a gargoyle. A strange looking creation
was this gargoyle. It was with such as
these the ancients were wont to decorate their
mansions. With a savage face that was half
man and half lion, he possessed the paws of
a beast and the wings of a great bird. About
two sides of this picture was a letter L.</p>
<p>“So that was it,” she breathed.</p>
<p>The next moment her attention was attracted
by a set of shelves. These ran across one entire
end of the room and, save for a single foot of
space, were entirely filled with books. The
striking fact to be noted was that, if one were
able to judge from the appearance of their
books, they must all of them be of great age.</p>
<p>“A miser of books,” she breathed.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_36">[36]</div>
<p>Searching these shelves, she felt sure she
located the other missing volume of Shakespeare.
This decision was confirmed at last as
the tottering old man made his way to the shelf
and filled some two inches of the remaining
vacant shelf-space by placing the newly-acquired
book beside its mate.</p>
<p>After this he stood there for a moment looking
at the two books. The expression on his
face was startling. In the twinkling of an eye,
it appeared to prove her charge of book miser
to be false. This was not the look of a Shylock.</p>
<p>“More like a father glorying over the return
of a long-lost child,” she told herself.</p>
<p>As she stood there puzzling over this, the
room went suddenly dark. The occupants of
the house had doubtless gone to another part
of the cottage to retire for the night. She was
left with two alternatives: to call a policeman
and have the place raided or to return quietly
to the university and think the thing through.
She chose the latter course.</p>
<p>After discovering the number of the house
and fixing certain landmarks in her mind, she
returned to the elevated station.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_37">[37]</div>
<p>“They’ll not dispose of the books, that’s certain,”
she told herself. “The course to be
taken in the future will come to me.”</p>
<p>Stealing silently into her room on her return,
she was surprised to find her roommate awake,
robed in a kimono and pacing the floor.</p>
<p>“Why, Florence!” she breathed.</p>
<p>“Why, yourself!” Florence turned upon her.
“Where’ve you been in all this storm? Five
minutes more and I should have called the matron.
She would have notified the police and
then things would have been fine. Grand! Can
you see it in the morning papers? ‘Beautiful
co-ed mysteriously disappears from university
dormitory in storm. No trace of her yet found.
Roommate says no cause for suicide.’”</p>
<p>“Oh!” gasped Lucile, “you wouldn’t have!”</p>
<p>“What else could I do? How was I to
know what had happened? You hadn’t breathed
a word. You—”</p>
<p>Florence sat down upon her bed, dug her
bare toes into the rug and stared at her roommate.
For once in her life, strong, dependable,
imperturbable Florence was excited.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_38">[38]</div>
<p>“I know,” said Lucile, removing her watersoaked
dress and stockings and chafing her benumbed
feet. “I—I guess I should have told
you about it, but it was something I was quite
sure you wouldn’t understand, so I didn’t, that’s
all. But now—now I’ve got to tell someone
or I’ll burst, and I’d rather tell you than anyone
else I know.”</p>
<p>“Thanks,” Florence smiled. “Just for that
I’ll help you into dry clothes, then you can tell
me in comfort.”</p>
<p>The clock struck three and the girls were
still deep in the discussion of the mystery.</p>
<p>“One thing is important,” said Florence.
“That is the value of the Shakespeare. Perhaps
it’s not worth so terribly much after all.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps not,” Lucile wrinkled her brow,
“but I am awfully afraid it is. Let’s see—who
could tell me? Oh, I know—Frank Morrow!”</p>
<p>“Who’s Frank Morrow?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_39">[39]</div>
<p>“He’s the best authority on old books there
is in the United States to-day. He’s right here
in this city. Got a cute little shop on the fifteenth
floor of the Marshal Annex building.
He’s an old friend of my father. He’ll tell me
anything I need to know about books.”</p>
<p>“All right, you’d better see him to-morrow,
or I mean to-day. And now for three winks.”</p>
<p>Florence threw off her kimono and leaped
into bed. Lucile followed her example and the
next instant the room was dark.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_40">[40]</div>
<h2 id="c4"><br/>CHAPTER IV <br/>WHAT THE GARGOYLE MIGHT TELL</h2>
<p>Frank Morrow was the type of man any girl
might be glad to claim as a friend. He had
passed his sixty-fifth birthday and for thirty-five
years he had been a dealer in old books, yet
he was neither stooped nor near-sighted. A
man of broad shoulders and robust frame, he
delighted as much in a low morning score at
golf as he did in the discovery of a rare old
book. His hair was white but his cheeks retained
much of their ruddy glow. His quiet
smile gave to all who visited his shop a feeling
of genuine welcome which they did not soon
forget.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_41">[41]</div>
<p>His shop, like himself, reflected the new era
which has dawned in the old book business.
Men have come to realize that age lends worth
to books that possessed real worth in the beginning
and they are coming to house them well.
On one of the upper floors of a modern business
block Frank Morrow’s shop was flooded
with sunshine and fresh air. A potted plant
bloomed on his desk. The books, arranged
neatly without a painful effort at order, presented
the appearance of some rich gentleman’s
library. A darker corner, a room by itself, to
the right and back, suggested privacy and seclusion
and here Frank Morrow’s finds were
kept. Many of them were richly bound and
autographed.</p>
<p>The wise and the rich of the world passed
through Frank Morrow’s shop, for in his brain
there rested knowledge which no other living
man could impart. Did a bishop wish to purchase
an out-of-print book for his ecclesiastical
library, he came to Frank Morrow to ask where
it might be found. Did the prince of the steel
market wish a folio edition of Audubon’s
“Birds of America”? He came to Frank and
somewhere, in Boston, New York, Philadelphia,
Frank found it for him. Authors came to him
and artists as well, not so much for what he
could find for them as for what he might impart
in the way of genial friendship and the
lore of books.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_42">[42]</div>
<p>It was to this man and this shop that Lucile
made her way next morning. She was not prepared
to confide in him to the extent of telling
him the whole story of her mystery, for she
did not know him well. He was her father’s
friend, that was all. She did wish to tell him
that she was in trouble and to ask his opinion
of the probable value of the set of Shakespeare
which had been removed from the university
library.</p>
<p>“Well, now,” he smiled as he adjusted his
glasses after she had asked her question, “I’ll
be glad to help you if I can, but I’m not sure
that I can. There are Shakespeares and other
Shakespeares. I don’t know the university set—didn’t
buy it for them. Probably a donation
from some rich man. It might be a folio edition.
In that case—well”—he paused and
smiled again—“I trust you haven’t burned
this Shakespeare by mistake nor had it stolen
from your room or anything like that?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_43">[43]</div>
<p>“No! Oh, no! Not—nothing like that!”
exclaimed Lucile.</p>
<p>“Well, as I was about to say, I found a very
nice folio edition for a rich friend of mine not
so very long ago. The sale of it I think was
the record for this city. It cost him eighteen
thousand dollars.”</p>
<p>Lucile gasped, then sat staring at him in
astonishment.</p>
<p>“Eighteen thousand dollars!” she managed
to murmur at last.</p>
<p>“Of course you understand that was a folio
edition, very rare. There are other old editions
that are cheaper, much cheaper.”</p>
<p>“I—I hope so,” murmured Lucile.</p>
<p>“Would you like to see some old books and
get a notion of their value?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Indeed I would.”</p>
<p>“Step in here.” He led the way into the
mysterious dark room. There he switched on
a light to reveal walls packed with books.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_44">[44]</div>
<p>“Here’s a little thing,” he smiled, taking
down a volume which would fit comfortably
into a man’s coat pocket; “Walton’s Compleat
Angler. It’s a first edition. Bound in temporary
binding, vellum. What would you say it was
worth?”</p>
<p>“I—I couldn’t guess. Please don’t make
me,” Lucile pleaded.</p>
<p>“Sixteen hundred dollars.”</p>
<p>Again Lucile stared at him in astonishment.
“That little book!”</p>
<p>“You see,” he said, motioning her a seat,
“rare books, like many other rare things, derive
their value from their scarcity. The first edition
of this book was very small. Being small
and comparatively cheap, the larger number of
the books were worn out, destroyed or lost. So
the remaining books have come to possess great
value. The story—”</p>
<p>He came to an abrupt pause, arrested by a
look of astonishment on the girl’s face, as she
gazed at the book he held.</p>
<p>“Why, what—” he began.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_45">[45]</div>
<p>“That,” Lucile pointed to a raised monogram
in the upper inside cover of the book.</p>
<p>“A private mark,” explained Morrow.
“Many rich men and men of noble birth in the
past had private marks which they put in their
books. The custom seems to be as old as books
themselves. Men do it still. Let’s see, what is
that one?”</p>
<p>“An embossed ‘L’ around two sides of the
picture of a gargoyle,” said Lucile in as steady
a tone as she could command.</p>
<p>“Ah! yes, a very unusual one. In all my
experience I have seen but five books with that
mark in them. All have passed through my
hands during the past two years. And yet this
mark is a very old one. See how yellow the
paper is. Probably some foreign library. Many
rare books came across the sea during the war.
I believe—”</p>
<p>He paused to reflect, then said with a tone
of certainty, “Yes, I know that mark was in
the folio edition of Shakespeare which I sold
last year.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_46">[46]</div>
<p>His words caught Lucile’s breath. For the
moment she could neither move nor speak.
The thought that the set of Shakespeare taken
from the library might be the very set sold
to the rich man, and worth eighteen thousand
dollars, struck her dumb.</p>
<p>Fortunately the dealer did not notice her distress
but pointing to the bookmark went on:
“If that gargoyle could talk now, if it could
tell its story and the story of the book it marks,
what a yarn it might spin.</p>
<p>“For instance,” his eyes half closed as the
theme gripped him, “this mark is unmistakably
continental—French or German. French, I’d
say, from the form of the ‘L’ and the type
of gargoyle. Many men of wealth and of noble
birth on the continent have had large collections
of books printed in English. This little book
with the gargoyle on the inside of its cover is
a hundred years old. It’s a young book as
ancient books go, yet what things have happened
in its day. It has seen wars and bloodshed.
The library in which it has reposed may
have been the plotting place of kings, knights
and dukes or of rebels and regicides.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_47">[47]</div>
<p>“It may have witnessed domestic tragedies.
What great man may have contemplated the
destruction of his wife? What noble lady may
have whispered in its presence of some secret
love? What youths and maids may have slipped
away into its quiet corner to utter murmurs
of eternal devotion?</p>
<p>“It may have been stolen, been carried away
as booty in war, been pawned with its mates to
secure a nobleman’s ransom.</p>
<p>“Oh, I tell you,” he smiled as he read the
interest in her face, “there is romance in old
books, thrilling romance. Whole libraries have
been stolen and secretly disposed of. Chests of
books have been captured by pirates.</p>
<p>“Here is a book, a copy of Marco Polo’s
travels, a first edition copy which, tradition tells
us, was once owned by the renowned pirate,
Captain Kidd. I am told he was fond of reading.
However that may be, there certainly were
men of learning among his crew. There never
was a successful gang of thieves that did not
have at least one college man in it.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_48">[48]</div>
<p>He chuckled at his own witticism and Lucile
smiled with him.</p>
<p>“Well,” he said rising, “if there is anything
I can do for you at any time, drop in and ask
me. I am always at the service of fair young
ladies. One never grows too old for that; besides,
your father was my very good friend.”</p>
<p>Lucile thanked him, took a last look at the
pocket volume worth sixteen hundred dollars,
made a mental note of the form of its gargoyle,
then handed it to him and left the room. She
little dreamed how soon and under what strange
circumstances she would see that book again.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_49">[49]</div>
<p>She left the shop of Frank Morrow in a
strange state of mind. She felt that she should
turn the facts in her possession over to the officials
of the library and allow them to deal with
the child and the old man. Yet there was something
mysterious about it all. That collector of
books, doubtless worth a fortune, in surroundings
which betokened poverty, the strange book
mark, the look on the old man’s face as he
fingered the volume of Shakespeare, how explain
all these? If the university authorities or
the police handled the case, would they take
time to solve these mysteries, to handle the case
in such a way as would not hasten the death
of this feeble old man nor blight the future of
this strange child? She feared not.</p>
<p>“Life, the life of a child, is of greater importance
than is an ancient volume,” she told
herself at last. “And with the help of Florence
and perhaps of Frank Morrow I will solve the
mystery myself. Yes, even if it costs me my
position and my hope for an education!” She
paused to stamp the pavement, then hurried
away toward the university.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_50">[50]</div>
<h2 id="c5"><br/>CHAPTER V <br/>THE PAPIER-MACHE LUNCH BOX</h2>
<p>“But, Lucile!” exclaimed Florence after she
had heard the latest development in the mystery.
“If the books are worth all that money,
how dare you take the risk of leaving things as
they are for a single hour?”</p>
<p>“We don’t know that they are that identical
edition.”</p>
<p>“But you say the gargoyle was there.”</p>
<p>“Yes, but that doesn’t prove anything.
There might have been a whole family of gargoyle
libraries for all we know. Besides, what
if it is? What are two books compared to the
marring of a human life? What right has a
university, or anyone else for that matter, to
have books worth thousands of dollars? Books
are just tools or playthings. That’s all they
are. Men use them to shape their intellects
just as a carpenter uses a plane, or they use
them for amusement. What would be the sense
of having a wood plane worth eighteen thousand
dollars when a five dollar one would do just as
good work?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_51">[51]</div>
<p>“But what do you mean to do about it?”
asked Florence.</p>
<p>“I’m going down there by that mysterious
cottage and watch what happens to-night and
you are going with me. We’ll go as many
nights as we have to. If it’s necessary we’ll
walk in upon our mysterious friends and make
them tell why they took the books. Maybe
they won’t tell but they’ll give them back to us
and unless I’m mistaken that will at least be
better for the girl than dragging her into court.”</p>
<p>“Oh, all right,” laughed Florence, rising and
throwing back her shoulders. “I suppose you’re
taking me along as a sort of bodyguard. I
don’t mind. Life’s been a trifle dull of late.
A little adventure won’t go so bad and since it
is endured in what you choose to consider a
righteous cause, it’s all the better. But please
let’s make it short. I do love to sleep.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_52">[52]</div>
<p>Had she known what the nature of their adventure
was to be, she might at least have
paused to consider, but since the things we
don’t know don’t hurt us, she set to work planning
this, their first nightly escapade.</p>
<p>Reared as they had been in the far West
and the great white North, the two girls had
been accustomed to wildernesses of mountains,
forest and vast expanses of ice and snow.
One might fancy that for them, even at night,
a great city would possess no terrors. This was
not true. The quiet life at the university, eight
miles from the heart of the city, had done
little to rid them of their terror of city streets
at night. To them every street was a canyon,
the end of each alley an entrance to a den where
beasts of prey might lurk. Not a footfall
sounded behind them but sent terror to their
hearts.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_53">[53]</div>
<p>Lucile had gone on that first adventure alone
in the rain on sudden impulse. The second was
premeditated. They coolly plotted the return to
the narrow street where the mysterious cottage
stood. Nothing short of a desire to serve someone
younger and weaker than herself could have
induced Lucile to return to that region, the very
thought of which sent a cold shiver running
down her spine.</p>
<p>As for Florence, she was a devoted chum of
Lucile. It was enough that Lucile wished her
to go. Other interests might develop later; for
the present, this was enough.</p>
<p>So, on the following night, a night dark and
cloudy but with no rain, they stole forth from
the hall to make their way down town.</p>
<p>They had decided that they would go to the
window of the torn shade and see what they
might discover, but, on arriving at the scene,
decided that there was too much chance of
detection.</p>
<p>“We’ll just walk up and down the street,”
suggested Lucile. “If she comes out we’ll follow
her and see what happens. She may go
back to the university for more books.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_54">[54]</div>
<p>“You don’t think she’d dare?” whispered
Florence.</p>
<p>“She returned once, why not again?”</p>
<p>“There are no more Shakespeares.”</p>
<p>“But there are other books.”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>They fell into silence. The streets were dark.
It grew cold. It was a cheerless task. Now
and again a person passed them. Two of them
were men, noisy and drunken.</p>
<p>“I—I don’t like it,” shivered Lucile, “but
what else is there to do?”</p>
<p>“Go in and tell them they have our books
and must give them up.”</p>
<p>“That wouldn’t solve anything.”</p>
<p>“It would get our books back.”</p>
<p>“Yes, but—”</p>
<p>Suddenly Lucile paused, to place a hand on
her companion’s arm. A slight figure had
emerged from the cottage.</p>
<p>“It’s the child,” she whispered. “We must
not seem to follow. Let’s cross the street.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_55">[55]</div>
<p>They expected the child to enter the elevated
station as she had done before, but this she did
not do. Walking at a rapid pace, she led them
directly toward the very heart of the city. After
covering five blocks, she began to slow down.</p>
<p>“Getting tired,” was Florence’s comment.
“More people here. We could catch up with
her and not be suspected.”</p>
<p>This they did. Much to their surprise, they
found the child dressed in the cheap blue calico
of a working woman’s daughter.</p>
<p>“What’s that for?” whispered Lucile.</p>
<p>“Disguise,” Florence whispered. “She’s going
into some office building. See, she is carrying
a pressed paper lunch box. She’ll get in
anywhere with that; just tell them she’s bringing
a hot midnight lunch to her mother.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_56">[56]</div>
<p>“It’s strange,” she mused, “when you think
of it, how many people work while we sleep.
Every morning hundreds of thousands of people
swarm to their work or their shopping in
the heart of the city and they find all the carpets
swept, desks and tables dusted, floors and stairs
scrubbed, and I’ll bet that not one in a hundred
of them ever pauses to wonder how it all comes
about. Not one in a thousand gives a passing
thought to the poor women who toil on hands
and knees with rag and brush during the dark
hours of night that everything may be spick and
span in the morning. I tell you, Lucile, we
ought to be thankful that we’re young and that
opportunities lie before us. I tell you—”</p>
<p>She was stopped by a grip on her arm.</p>
<p>“Wha—where has she gone?” stammered
Lucille.</p>
<p>“She vanished!”</p>
<p>“And she was not twenty feet before us a
second ago.”</p>
<p>The two girls stood staring at each other in
astonishment The child had disappeared.</p>
<p>“Well,” said Lucile ruefully, “I guess that
about ends this night’s adventure.”</p>
<p>“I guess so,” admitted Florence.</p>
<p>The lights of an all-night drug store burned
brightly across the street.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_57">[57]</div>
<p>“That calls for hot chocolate,” said Florence.
“It’s what I get for moralizing. If I hadn’t
been going on at such a rate we would have
kept sight of her.”</p>
<p>They lingered for some time over hot chocolate
and wafers. They were waiting for a surface
car to carry them home when, on hearing
low but excited words, they turned about to
behold to their vast astonishment their little
mystery child being led along by the collar of
her dress. The person dragging her forward
was an evil looking woman who appeared
slightly the worse for drink.</p>
<p>“So that’s the trick,” they heard her snarl.
“So you would run away! Such an ungratefulness.
After all we done for you. Now you
shall beg harder than ever.”</p>
<p>“No, I won’t beg,” the girl answered in a
small but determined voice. “And I shan’t
steal either. You can kill me first.”</p>
<p>“Well, we’ll see, my fine lady,” growled the
woman.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_58">[58]</div>
<p>All this time the child was being dragged
forward. As she came opposite the two girls,
the woman gave a harder tug than before and
the girl almost fell. Something dropped to the
sidewalk, but the woman did not notice it, and
the child evidently did not care, for they passed
on.</p>
<p>Lucile stooped and picked it up. It was the
paper lunch box they had seen the child carrying
earlier in the evening.</p>
<p>“Something in it,” she said, shaking it.</p>
<p>“Lucile,” said Florence in a tense whisper,
“are we going to let that beast of a woman get
that child? She doesn’t belong to her, or if
she does, she oughtn’t to. I’m good for a fight.”</p>
<p>Lucile’s face blanched.</p>
<p>“Here in this city wilderness,” she breathed.</p>
<p>“Anywhere for the good of a child. Come
on.”</p>
<p>Florence was away after the woman and child
at a rapid rate.</p>
<p>“We’ll get the child free. Then we’ll get
out,” breathed Florence. “We don’t want any
publicity.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_59">[59]</div>
<p>Fortune favored their plan. The woman,
still dragging the child, who was by now silently
weeping, hurried into a narrow dismal alley.</p>
<p>Suddenly as she looked about at sound of a
footstep behind her, she was seized in two vises
and hurled by some mechanism of steel and
bronze a dozen feet in air, to land in an alley
doorway. At least so it seemed to her, nor was
it far from the truth. For Florence’s months of
gymnasium work had turned her muscles into
things of steel and bronze. It was she who
had seized the woman.</p>
<p>It was all done so swiftly that the woman
had no time to cry out. When she rose to her
feet, the alley was deserted. The child had
fled in one direction, while the two girls had
stepped quietly out into the street in the other
direction and, apparently quite unperturbed,
were waiting for a car.</p>
<p>“Look,” said Lucile, “I’ve still got it. It’s
the child’s lunch basket. There’s something
in it.”</p>
<p>“There’s our car,” said Florence in a relieved
tone. The next moment they were rattling
homeward.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_60">[60]</div>
<p>“We solved no mystery to-night,” murmured
Lucile sleepily.</p>
<p>“Added one more to the rest,” smiled
Florence. “But now I <i>am</i> interested. We must
see it through.”</p>
<p>“Did you hear what the child said, that she’d
rather die than steal?”</p>
<p>“Wonder what she calls the taking of our
Shakespeare?”</p>
<p>“That’s part of our problem. Continued
in our next,” smiled Lucile.</p>
<p>She set the dilapidated papier-mache lunch
box which she had picked up in the street after
the child had dropped it, in the corner beneath
the cloak rack. Before she fell asleep she
thought of it and wondered what had been
thumping round inside of it.</p>
<p>“Probably just an old, dried-up sandwich,”
she told herself. “Anyway, I’m too weary to
get up and look now. I’ll look in the morning.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_61">[61]</div>
<p>One other thought entered her consciousness
before she fell asleep. Or was it a thought?
Perhaps just one or two mental pictures. The
buildings, the street, the electric signs that had
encountered her gaze as they first saw the child
and the half-drunk woman passed before her
mind’s eye. Then, almost instantly, the picture
of the street on which the building in which
Frank Morrow’s book shop was located flashed
before her.</p>
<p>“That’s queer!” she murmured. “I do believe
they were the same!”</p>
<p>“And indeed,” she thought dreamily, “why
should they not be? They are both down in
the heart of the city and I am forever losing
my sense of location down there.”</p>
<p>At that she fell asleep.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_62">[62]</div>
<h2 id="c6"><br/>CHAPTER VI <br/>“ONE CAN NEVER TELL”</h2>
<p>When Lucile awoke in the morning she remembered
the occurrence of the night before
as some sort of bad dream. It seemed inconceivable
that she and Florence, a couple of
co-eds, should have thrown themselves upon a
rough-looking woman in the heart of the city
on a street with which they were totally unfamiliar.
Had they done this to free a child
about whom they knew nothing save that she
had stolen two valuable books?</p>
<p>“Did we?” she asked sleepily.</p>
<p>“Did we what?” smiled Florence, drawing
the comb through her hair.</p>
<p>“Did we rescue that child from that
woman?”</p>
<p>“I guess we did.”</p>
<p>“Why did we do it?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_63">[63]</div>
<p>“That’s what I’ve been wondering.”</p>
<p>Lucile sat up in bed and thought for a moment.
She gazed out of the window at the
lovely green and the magnificent Gothic architecture
spread out before her. She thought of
the wretched alleys and tumble-down tenements
which would greet the eye of that mysterious
child when she awoke.</p>
<p>“Anyway,” she told herself, “we saved her
from something even worse, I do believe. We
sent her back to her little old tottering man. I
do think she loves him, though who he is, her
grandfather or what, I haven’t the faintest
notion.</p>
<p>“Anyway I’m glad we did it,” she said.</p>
<p>“Did what?” panted Florence, who by this
time was going through her morning exercises.</p>
<p>“Saved the child.”</p>
<p>“Yes, so am I.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_64">[64]</div>
<p>The papier-mache lunch box remained in its
place in the dark corner when they went to
breakfast Both girls had completely forgotten
it. Had Lucile dreamed what it contained she
would not have passed it up for a thousand
breakfasts. Since she didn’t, she stepped out
into the bright morning sunshine, and drinking
in deep breaths of God’s fresh air, gave thanks
that she was alive.</p>
<p>The day passed as all schooldays pass, with
study, lectures, laboratory work, then dinner
as evening comes. In the evening paper an
advertisement in the “Lost, Strayed or Stolen”
column caught her eye. It read:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><span class="center">“REWARD</span></p>
<p>“Will pay $100.00 reward for the
return of small copy of The Compleat
Angler which disappeared from the
Morrow Book Shop on November 3.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was signed by Frank Morrow.</p>
<p>“Why, that’s strange!” she murmured. “I
do believe that was the book he showed me only
yesterday, the little first edition which was worth
sixteen hundred dollars. How strange!”</p>
<p>A queer sinking sensation came over her.</p>
<p>“I—I wonder if she could have taken it,”
she whispered, “that child?</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_65">[65]</div>
<p>“No, no,” she whispered emphatically after
a moment’s thought. “And, yet, there was the
gargoyle bookmark in the inside cover, the same
as in our Shakespeare. How strange! It might
be—and, yet, one can never tell.”</p>
<p>That evening was Lucile’s regular period at
the library, so, much as she should have liked
delving more deeply into the mystery which had
all but taken possession of her, she was obliged
to bend over a desk checking off books.</p>
<p>Working with her was Harry Brock, a fellow
student. Harry was the kind of fellow
one speaks of oftenest as a “nice boy.” Clean,
clear-cut, carefully dressed, studious, energetic
and accurate, he set an example which was hard
to follow. He had taken a brotherly interest
in Lucile from the start and had helped her
over many hard places in the library until she
learned her duties.</p>
<p>Shortly after she had come in he paused by
her desk and said in a quiet tone:</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_66">[66]</div>
<p>“Do you know, I’m worried about the disappearance
of that set of Shakespeare. Sort
of gives our section a long black mark. Can’t
see where it’s disappeared to.”</p>
<p>Lucile drew in a long breath. What was he
driving at? Did he suspect? Did he—</p>
<p>“If I wasn’t so sure our records were perfect,”
he broke in on her mental questioning,
“I’d say it was tucked away somewhere and
would turn up. But we’ve all been careful. It
just can’t be here.”</p>
<p>He paused as if in reflection, then said
suddenly:</p>
<p>“Do you think one would ever be justified in
protecting a person whom he knew had stolen
something?”</p>
<p>Lucile started. What did he mean? Did he
suspect something? Had he perhaps seen her
enter the library on one of those nights of her
watching? Did he suspect her? For a second
the color rushed flaming to her cheeks. But,
fortunately, he was looking away. The next
second she was her usual calm self.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_67">[67]</div>
<p>“Why, yes,” she said steadily, “I think one
might, if one felt that there were circumstances
about the apparent theft which were not clearly
understood.</p>
<p>“You know,” she said as a sudden inspiration
seized her, “we’ve just finished reading
Victor Hugo’s story of Jean Valjean in French.
Translating a great story a little each day, bit
by bit, is such a wonderful way of doing it.
And that is the greatest story that ever was
written. Have you read it?”</p>
<p>He nodded.</p>
<p>“Well, then you remember how that poor
fellow stole a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s
hungry children and how, without trying to
find out about things and be just, they put him
in prison. Then, because he tried to get out,
they kept him there years and years. Then
when they at last let him out, in spite of it all,
after he had come into contact with a beautiful,
unselfish old man, he became one of the most
wonderful characters the world may hope to
know. Just think how wonderful his earlier
years, wasted in prison, might have been if
someone had only tried a little to understand.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_68">[68]</div>
<p>“You’re good,” smiled Harry. “When I
get arrested I’ll have you for my lawyer.”</p>
<p>Lucile, once more quite herself, laughed
heartily. Then she suddenly sobered.</p>
<p>“If I were you,” she said in a low tone, “I
shouldn’t worry too much about that set of
Shakespeare. Someway I have an idea that it
will show up in its own good time.”</p>
<p>Harry shot her a quick look, then as he turned
to walk away, said in a tone of forced lightness:</p>
<p>“Oh! All right.”</p>
<p>The following night they were free to return
to the scene of the mystery, the cottage on
dreary Tyler street where the old man and the
strange child lived. A light shone out of the
window with the torn shade as they loitered
along in front of the place as before. Much
to their surprise, not ten minutes had passed
when the child stole forth.</p>
<p>“We were just in time,” breathed Florence.</p>
<p>“Dressed just as she was on the first night
I saw her,” Lucile whispered as the child
passed them.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_69">[69]</div>
<p>“She’s making for the elevated station this
time,” said Florence as they hurried along after
her. “That means a long trip and you are
tired. Why don’t you let me follow her alone?”</p>
<p>“Why I—”</p>
<p>Lucile cut her speech short to grip her companion’s
arm.</p>
<p>“Florence,” she whispered excitedly, “did
you hear a footstep behind us?”</p>
<p>“Why, yes, I—”</p>
<p>Florence hesitated. Lucile broke in:</p>
<p>“There was one. I am sure of it, and just
now as I looked about there was no one in sight.
You don’t think someone could suspect—be
shadowing us?”</p>
<p>“Of course not.”</p>
<p>“It might be that woman who tried to carry
the child away.”</p>
<p>“I think not. That was in another part of
the city. Probably just nothing at all.”</p>
<p>“Yes, yes, there it is now. I hear it. Look
about quick.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_70">[70]</div>
<p>“No one in sight,” said Florence. “It’s your
nerves. You’d better go home and get a good
night’s sleep.”</p>
<p>They parted hurriedly at the station. Florence
swung onto the train boarded by the child, a
train which she knew would carry her to the
north side, directly away from the university.</p>
<p>“Probably be morning before I get in,” she
grumbled to herself. “What a wild chase!”</p>
<p>Yet, as she stole a glance now and then at
the child, who, all unconscious of her scrutiny,
sat curled up in the corner of a near-by seat,
she felt that, after all, she was worth the effort
being made for her.</p>
<p>“Whosoever saveth a soul from destruction,”
she whispered to herself as the train rattled on
over the river on its way north.</p>
<p>In the meantime Lucile had boarded a south-bound
car. She was not a little troubled by the
thought of those footsteps behind them on the
sidewalk. She knew it was not her nerves.</p>
<p>“Someone <i>was</i> following us!” she whispered
to herself. “I wonder who and why.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_71">[71]</div>
<p>She puzzled over it all the way home; was
puzzling over it still when she left her car at
the university.</p>
<p>Somewhat to her surprise she saw Harry
Brock leave the same train. He appeared almost
to be avoiding her but when she called to him
he turned about and smiled.</p>
<p>“So glad to have someone to walk those five
lonely blocks with,” she smiled.</p>
<p>“Pleasure mutual,” he murmured, but he
seemed ill at ease.</p>
<p>Lucile glanced at him curiously.</p>
<p>“He can’t think I’ve got a crush on him,”
she told herself. “Our friendship’s had too
much of the ordinary in it for that. I wonder
what is the matter with him.”</p>
<p>Conversation on the way to the university
grounds rambled along over commonplaces.
Each studiously avoided any reference to the
mystery of the missing books.</p>
<p>Lucile was distinctly relieved as he left her
at the dormitory door.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_72">[72]</div>
<p>“Well,” she heaved a sigh, “whatever could
have come over him? He has always been so
frank and fine. I wonder if he suspects—but,
no, how could he?”</p>
<p>As she hung her wrap in the corner of her
room, her eye fell upon the papier-mache lunch
box. Her hand half reached for it, then she
drew it back and flung herself into a chair.</p>
<p>“To-morrow,” she murmured. “I’m so
tired.”</p>
<p>Fifteen minutes later she was in her bed fast
asleep, dreaming of her pal, and in that dream
she saw her rattling on and on and on forever
through the night.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_73">[73]</div>
<h2 id="c7"><br/>CHAPTER VII <br/>THE VANISHING PORTLAND CHART</h2>
<p>Florence was not rattling on and on through
the night as Lucile dreamed. Some two miles
from the heart of the city her journey on the
elevated came to a halt. The child left the car
and went bounding down the steps.</p>
<p>Not many moments passed before Florence
realized that her destination was a famous
library, the Newburg. Before she knew it the
massive structure of gray sandstone loomed up
before her. And before she could realize what
was happening, the child had darted through
the door and lost herself in the labyrinth of
halls, stairways and passageways which led to
hundreds of rooms where books were stacked
or where huge oak tables invited one to pause
and read.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_74">[74]</div>
<p>“She’s gone!” Florence gasped. “Now how
shall I find her?”</p>
<p>Walking with all the speed that proper conduct
in such a spacious and dignified hostelry
of books would allow, she passed from room to
room, from floor to floor, until, footsore and
weary, without the least notion of the kind of
room she was in or whether she was welcome
or not, she at last threw herself into a chair to
rest.</p>
<p>“She’s escaped me!” she sighed. “And I
promised to keep in touch with her. What a
mess! But the child’s a witch. Who could be
expected to keep up with her?”</p>
<p>“Are you interested in the exhibit?” It was
the well-modulated tone of a trained librarian
that interrupted her train of thought. The
question startled her.</p>
<p>“The—er—” she stammered. “Why, yes,
very much.”</p>
<p>What the exhibit might be she had not the
remotest notion.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_75">[75]</div>
<p>“Ah, yes,” the lady sighed. “Portland charts
are indeed interesting. Perhaps you should
like to have me explain some of them to you?”</p>
<p>“Portland charts.” That did sound interesting.
It suggested travel. If there was any
one thing Florence was interested in, it was
travel.</p>
<p>“Why, yes,” she said eagerly, “I would.”</p>
<p>“The most ancient ones,” said the librarian,
indicating a glass case, “are here. Here you
see one that was made in 1440, some time before
Columbus sailed for America. These maps
were made for mariners. Certain men took
it up as a life work, the making of Portland
charts. It is really very wonderful, when you
think of it. How old they are, four or five
hundred years, yet the coloring is as perfect
as if they were done but yesterday.”</p>
<p>Florence listened eagerly. This was indeed
interesting.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_76">[76]</div>
<p>“You see,” smiled the librarian, “in those
days nothing much was known of what is now
the new world, but from time to time ships lost
at sea drifted about to land at last on strange
shores. These they supposed were shores of
islands. When they returned they related their
experiences and a new island was stuck somewhere
on the map. The exact location could
not be discovered, so they might make a mistake
of a thousand or more miles in locating
them, but that didn’t really matter, for no one
ever went to them again.”</p>
<p>“What a time to dream of,” sighed Florence.
“What an age of mysteries!”</p>
<p>“Yes, wasn’t it? But there are mysteries
quite as wonderful to-day. Only trouble is, we
don’t see them.”</p>
<p>“And sometimes we do see them but can’t
solve them.” Florence was thinking of the mystery
that thus far was her property and her
chum’s.</p>
<p>“The maps were sometimes bound in thin
books very much like an atlas,” the librarian
explained. “Here is one that is very rare.”
She indicated a book in a case.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_77">[77]</div>
<p>The book was open at the first map with the
inside of the front cover showing. Florence
was about to pass it with a glance when something
in the upper outside corner of the cover
caught and held her attention. It was the picture
of a gargoyle with a letter L surrounding
two sides of it. It was a bookmark and, though
she had not seen the mark in the missing
Shakespeare, she knew from Lucile’s description
of it that this must be an exact duplicate.</p>
<p>“Probably from the same library originally,”
she thought. “I suppose these charts are worth
a great deal of money,” she ventured.</p>
<p>“Oh! yes. A great deal. One doesn’t really
set a price on such things. These were the
gift of a rich man. It is the finest collection
except one in America.”</p>
<p>As Florence turned to pass on, she was
startled to see the mysterious child who had
escaped from her sight nearly an hour before,
standing not ten feet from her. She was
apparently much interested in the cherubs done
in blue ink on one chart and used to indicate
the prevailing direction of the winds.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_78">[78]</div>
<p>“Ah, now I have you!” she sighed. “There
is but one door to this room. I will watch the
door, not you. When you leave the room, I will
follow.”</p>
<p>With the corner of an eye on that door, she
sauntered from case to case for another quarter
of an hour. Then seized with a sudden desire to
examine the chart book with the gargoyle in the
corner of its cover, she drifted toward it.</p>
<p>Scarcely could she believe her eyes as she gave
the case a glance. <i>The chart book was gone.</i></p>
<p>Consternation seized her. She was about to
cry out when the thought suddenly came to her
that the book had probably been removed by the
librarian.</p>
<p>The next moment a suggestion that the
ancient map book and the presence of the child
in the room had some definite connection flashed
through her mind.</p>
<p>Hurriedly her eye swept the room. The child
was gone!</p>
<p>There remained now not one particle of doubt
in her mind. “She took it,” she whispered.
“I wonder why.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_79">[79]</div>
<p>Instantly her mind was in a commotion.
Should she tell what she knew? At first she
thought she ought, yet deliberation led to silence,
for, after all, what did she know? She had
not seen the child take the book. She had seen
her in the room, that was all.</p>
<p>And now the librarian, sauntering past the
case, noted the loss. The color left her face,
but that was all. If anything, her actions were
more deliberate than before. Gliding to a desk,
she pressed a button. The next moment a man
appeared. She spoke a few words. Her tone
was low, her lips steady. The man sauntered
by the case, glanced about the room, then
walked out of the door. Not a word, not an outcry.
A book worth thousands had vanished.</p>
<p>Yet as she left the library, Florence felt how
impossible it would have been for her to have
carried that book with her. She passed four
eagle-eyed men before she reached the outside
door and each one searched her from head to
foot quite as thoroughly as an X-ray might
have done.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_80">[80]</div>
<p>“All the same,” she breathed, as she reached
the cool, damp outer air of night, “the bird has
flown, your Portland chart book is gone, for
the time at least.</p>
<p>“Question is,” she told herself, “what am I
going to do about it?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_81">[81]</div>
<h2 id="c8"><br/>CHAPTER VIII <br/>WHAT WAS IN THE PAPIER-MACHE LUNCH BOX</h2>
<p>“We can tell whether she really took it,”
said Lucile after listening to Florence’s story
of her strange experiences in the Portland
chart room of the famous old library. “We’ll
go back to Tyler street and look in at the
window with the torn shade. If she took it,
it’s sure to be in the empty space in the book-shelf.
Looks like he was trying to fill that
space.”</p>
<p>“He’s awfully particular about how it’s
filled,” laughed Florence. “He might pick up
enough old books in a secondhand store to fill
the whole space and not spend more than a
dollar.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_82">[82]</div>
<p>“Isn’t it strange!” mused Lucile. “He
might pack a hundred thousand dollars’ worth
of old books in a space two feet long, and will
at the rate he’s going.”</p>
<p>“The greatest mystery after all is the
gargoyle in the corner of each book they take,”
said Florence, wrinkling her brow. “He seems
to be sort of specializing in those books. They
are taken probably from a private library that
has been sold and scattered.”</p>
<p>“That is strange!” said Lucile. “The whole
affair is most mysterious! And, by the way,”
she smiled, “I have never taken the trouble to
look into that papier-mache lunch box the child
lost on the street, the night we rescued her from
that strange and terrible woman. There might
possibly be some clue in it.”</p>
<p>“Might,” agreed Florence.</p>
<p>Now that the thought had occurred to them,
they were eager to inspect the box. Lucile’s
fingers trembled as they unloosed the clasps
which held it shut. And well they might have
trembled, for, as it was thrown open, it revealed
a small book done in a temporary binding
of vellum.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_83">[83]</div>
<p>Lucile gave it one glance, then with a little
cry of surprise, dropped it as if it were on fire.</p>
<p>“Why! Why! What?” exclaimed Florence
in astonishment.</p>
<p>“It’s Frank Morrow’s book, Walton’s ‘Compleat
Angler.’ The first edition. The one worth
sixteen hundred dollars. And it’s been right
here in this room all the time!” Lucile sank
into a chair and there sat staring at the strangely
found book.</p>
<p>“Isn’t that queer!” said Florence at last.</p>
<p>“She—she’d been to his shop. Got into
the building just the way you said she would,
by posing as a scrubwoman’s child, and had
made a safe escape when that woman for some
mysterious reason grabbed her and tried to
carry her off.”</p>
<p>“Looks that way,” said Florence. “And I
guess that’s a clear enough case against her,
if our Shakespeare one isn’t. You’ll tell Frank
Morrow and he’ll have her arrested, of course.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_84">[84]</div>
<p>“I—I don’t know,” hesitated Lucile. “I’m
really no surer that that’s the thing to do than
I was before. There is something so very
strange about it all.”</p>
<p>The book fell open in her hand. The inside
of the front cover was exposed to view. The
gargoyle in the corner stared up at her.</p>
<p>“It’s the gargoyle!” she exclaimed. “Why
always the gargoyle? And how could a child
with a face like hers consciously commit a
theft?”</p>
<p>For a time they sat silently staring at the
gargoyle. At last Lucile spoke.</p>
<p>“I think I’ll go and talk with Frank Morrow.”</p>
<p>“Will you tell him all about it?”</p>
<p>“I—I don’t know.”</p>
<p>Florence looked puzzled.</p>
<p>“Are you going to take the book?”</p>
<p>Lucile hesitated. “No,” she said after a
moment’s thought, “I think I sha’n’t.”</p>
<p>“Why—what—”</p>
<p>Florence paused, took one look at her roommate’s
face, then went about the business of
gathering up material for a class lecture.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_85">[85]</div>
<p>“Sometimes,” she said after a moment, “I
think you are as big a riddle as the mystery
you are trying to solve.”</p>
<p>“Why?” Lucile exclaimed. “I am only trying
to treat everyone fairly.”</p>
<p>“Which can’t be done,” laughed Florence.
“There is an old proverb which runs like this:
‘To do right by all men is an art which no
one knows.’”</p>
<p>Lucile approached the shop of Frank Morrow
in a troubled state of mind. She had Frank
Morrow’s valuable book. She wished to play
fair with him. She must, sooner or later, return
it to him. Perhaps even at this moment
he might have a customer for the book. Time
lost might mean a sale lost, yet she did not
wish to return it, not at this time. She did not
wish even so much as to admit that she had the
book in her possession. To do so would be to
put herself in a position which required further
explaining. The book had been carried away
from the bookshop. Probably it had been stolen.
Had she herself taken it? If not, who then?
Where was the culprit? Why should not such
a person be punished? These were some of
the questions she imagined Frank Morrow asking
her, and, for the present, she did not wish
to answer them.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_86">[86]</div>
<p>At last, just as the elevator mounted toward
the upper floors, she thought she saw a way out.</p>
<p>“Anyway, I’ll try it,” she told herself.</p>
<p>She found Frank Morrow alone in his shop.
He glanced up at her from over an ancient
volume he had been scanning, then rose to bid
her welcome.</p>
<p>“Well, what will it be to-day?” he smiled.
“A folio edition of Shakespeare or only the
original manuscript of one of his plays?”</p>
<p>“Oh,” she smiled back, “are there really
original manuscripts of Shakespeare’s plays?”</p>
<p>“Not that anyone has ever discovered. But,
my young lady, if you chance to come across
one, I’ll pledge to sell it for you for a million
dollars flat and not charge you a cent commission.”</p>
<p>“Oh!” breathed Lucile, “that would be
marvelous.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_87">[87]</div>
<p>Then suddenly she remembered her reason
for being there.</p>
<p>“Please may I take a chair?” she asked, her
lips aquiver with some new excitement.</p>
<p>“By all means.” Frank Morrow himself
sank into a chair.</p>
<p>“Mr. Morrow,” said Lucile, poising on the
very edge of the chair while she clasped and
unclasped her hands, “if I were to tell you that
I know exactly where your book is, the one
worth sixteen hundred dollars; the Compleat
Angler, what would you say?”</p>
<p>Frank Morrow let a paperweight he had been
toying with crash down upon the top of his
desk, yet as he turned to look at her there was
no emotion expressed upon his face, a whimsical
smile, that was all.</p>
<p>“I’d say you were a fortunate girl. You
probably know I offered a hundred dollar reward
for its return. This morning I doubled
that.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_88">[88]</div>
<p>Lucile’s breath came short and quick. She
had completely forgotten the reward. She
would be justly entitled to it. And what
wouldn’t two hundred dollars mean to her?
Clothes she had longed for but could not afford;
leisure for more complete devotion to her
studies; all this and much more could be purchased
with two hundred dollars.</p>
<p>For a moment she wavered. What was the
use? The whole proposition if put fairly to the
average person, she knew, would sound absurd.
To protect two persons whom you have never
met nor even spoken to; to protect them when
to all appearances they were committing one
theft after another, with no excuse which at
the moment might be discovered; how ridiculous!</p>
<p>Yet, even as she wavered, she saw again the
face of that child, heard again the shuffling
footstep of the tottering old man, thought of
the gargoyle mystery; then resolved to stand
her ground.</p>
<p>“I do know exactly where your book is,” she
said steadily. “But if I were to tell you that
for the present I did not wish to have you ask
me where it was, what would you say?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_89">[89]</div>
<p>“Why,” he smiled as before, “I would say
that this was a great old world, full of many
mysteries that have never been solved. I should
say that a mere book was nothing to stand between
good friends.”</p>
<p>He put out a hand to clasp hers. “When you
wish to tell me where the book is or to see that
it is returned, drop in or call me on the phone.
The reward will be waiting for you.”</p>
<p>Lucile’s face was flushed as she rose to go.
She wished to tell him all, yet did not dare.</p>
<p>“But—but you might have a customer waiting
for that book,” she exclaimed.</p>
<p>“One might,” he smiled. “In such an event
I should say that the customer would be obliged
to continue to wait.”</p>
<p>Lucile moved toward the door and as she did
so she barely missed bumping into an immaculately
tailored young man, with all too pink
cheeks and a budding moustache.</p>
<p>“I beg your pardon,” he apologized.</p>
<p>“It was my fault,” said Lucile much confused.</p>
<p>The young man turned to Frank Morrow.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_90">[90]</div>
<p>“Show up yet?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Not yet.”</p>
<p>“Well?”</p>
<p>“I’ll let you know if it does.”</p>
<p>“Yes, do. I have a notion I know where
there’s another copy.”</p>
<p>“Well, I’ll be sorry to lose the sale, but I
can’t promise delivery at any known date now.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps not at all?”</p>
<p>“Perhaps.”</p>
<p>The young man bowed his way out so quickly
that Lucile was still in the shop.</p>
<p>“That,” smiled Frank Morrow, “is R.
Stanley Ramsey, Jr., a son of one of our richest
men. He wanted ‘The Compleat Angler.’”</p>
<p>He turned to his work as if he had been
speaking of a mere trifle.</p>
<p>Lucile was overwhelmed. So he did have a
customer who was impatient of waiting and
might seek a copy elsewhere? Why, this Frank
Morrow was a real sport! She found herself
wanting more than ever to tell him everything
and to assure him that the book would be on
his desk in two hours’ time. She considered.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_91">[91]</div>
<p>But again the face of the child framed in a
circle of light came before her. Again on the
street at night in the clutches of a vile woman,
she heard her say, “I won’t steal. I’ll die first.”</p>
<p>Then with a sigh she tiptoed toward the door.</p>
<p>“By the way,” Frank Morrow’s voice startled
her, “you live over at the university, don’t
you?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“Mind doing me a favor?”</p>
<p>“Certainly not.”</p>
<p>“The Silver-Barnard binderies are only two
blocks from your station. You’ll almost pass
them. They bind books by hand; fine books,
you know. I have two very valuable books which
must be bound in leather. I’d hate to trust
them to an ordinary messenger and I can’t take
them myself. Would you mind taking them
along?”</p>
<p>“N—no,” Lucile was all but overcome by
this token of his confidence in her.</p>
<p>“Thanks.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_92">[92]</div>
<p>He wrapped the two books carefully and
handed them to her, adding, as he did so:</p>
<p>“Ask for Mr. Silver himself and don’t let
anyone else have them. Perhaps,” he suggested
as an afterthought, “you’d like to be shown
through the bindery. It’s rather an interesting
place.”</p>
<p>“Indeed I should. Anything that has to do
with books interests me.”</p>
<p>He scribbled a note on a bit of paper.</p>
<p>“That’ll let you through,” he smiled, “and
no thanks due. ‘One good turn,’ you know.”
He bowed her out of the room.</p>
<p>She found Mr. Silver to be a brisk person
with a polite and obliging manner. It was with
a deep sense of relief that she saw the books
safely in his hands. She had seen so much of
vanishing books these last few days that she
feared some strange magic trick might spirit
them from her before they reached their
destination.</p>
<p>The note requesting that she be taken
through the bindery she kept for another time.
She must hurry back to the university now.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_93">[93]</div>
<p>“It will be a real treat,” she told herself.
“There are few really famous binderies in
our country. And this is one of them.” Little
she realized as she left the long, low building
which housed the bindery, what part it was
destined to play in the mystery she was attempting
to unravel.</p>
<p>She returned to the university and to her
studies. That night she and Florence went
once more to Tyler street, to the tumble-down
cottage where the two mysterious persons lived,
and there the skein of mystery was thrown into
a new tangle.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_94">[94]</div>
<h2 id="c9"><br/>CHAPTER IX <br/>SHADOWED</h2>
<p>A cold fog hung low over the city as the two
girls stole forth from the elevated station that
night on their way to Tyler street. From the
trestlework of the elevated there came a steady
drip-drip; the streets reeked with damp and
chill; the electric lamps seemed but balls of light
suspended in space.</p>
<p>“B-r-r!” said Florence, drawing her wraps
more closely about her. “What a night!”</p>
<p>“Sh!” whispered Lucile, dragging her into
a corner. “There’s someone following us
again.”</p>
<p>Scarcely had she spoken the words when a
man with collar turned up and cap pulled low
passed within four feet of them. He traveled
with a long, swinging stride. Lucile fancied
that she recognized that stride, but she could
not be sure; also, for the moment she could not
remember who the person was who walked in
this fashion.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_95">[95]</div>
<p>“Only some man returning to his home,”
said Florence. “This place gets on your
nerves.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps,” said Lucile.</p>
<p>As they reached the street before the cottage
of many mysteries they were pleased to see
lights streaming from the rent in the shade.</p>
<p>“At least we shall be able to tell whether they
have the book of Portland charts,” sighed Lucile
as she prepared to make a dash for the shadows.</p>
<p>“Now,” she breathed; “there’s no one in
sight.”</p>
<p>Like two lead-colored drifts of fog they
glided into a place by the window.</p>
<p>Lucile was first to look. The place seemed
quite familiar to her. Indeed, at first glance
she would have said that nothing was changed.
The old man sat in his chair. Half in a doze,
he had doubtless drifted into the sort of day-dream
that old persons often indulge in. The
child, too, sat by the table. She was sewing.
That she meant to go out later was proved by
the fact that her coat and tam-o’-shanter lay
on a near-by chair.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_96">[96]</div>
<p>As I have said, Lucile’s first thought was that
nothing had changed. One difference, however,
did not escape her. Two books had been
added to the library. The narrow, unfilled space
had been narrowed still further. One book was
tall, too tall for the space which it was supposed
to occupy, so tall that it leaned a little to the
right. The other book did not appear to be an
old volume. On the contrary its back was
bright and shiny as if just coming from the
press. It was highly ornamented with figures
and a title done all in gold. These fairly flashed
in the lamplight.</p>
<p>“That’s strange!” she whispered to herself.</p>
<p>But even as she thought it, she realized that
this was no ordinary publishers’ binding.</p>
<p>“Leather,” she told herself, “rich leather
binding and I shouldn’t wonder if the letters
and decorations were done in pure gold.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_97">[97]</div>
<p>Without knowing exactly why she did it, she
made a mental note of every figure which played
a part in the decorating of the back of that book.</p>
<p>Then suddenly remembering her companion
and their problem, she touched her arm as she
whispered:</p>
<p>“Look! Is that tall book second from the
end on the shelf with the vacant space the Portland
chart book?”</p>
<p>Florence pressed her face to the glass and
peered for the first time into the room of
mysteries. For a full two minutes she allowed
the scene to be photographed on the sensitive
plates of her brain. Then turning slowly away
she whispered:</p>
<p>“Yes, I believe it is.”</p>
<p>They were just thinking of seeking a place
of greater safety when a footstep sounded on
the pavement close at hand. Crouching low
they waited the stranger’s passing.</p>
<p>To their consternation, he did not pass but
turned in at the short walk which led up to the
cottage.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_98">[98]</div>
<p>Crouching still lower, scarcely breathing, they
waited.</p>
<p>The man made his way directly to the door.
After apparently fumbling about for an electric
button, he suddenly flashed out an electric torch.</p>
<p>With an inaudible gasp Florence prepared to
drag her companion out of their place of danger.
But to their intense relief the man flashed the
light off, then gave the door a resounding knock.</p>
<p>That one flash of light had been sufficient to
reveal to Lucile the features of his face. She
recognized it instantly. In her surprise she
gripped her companion’s arm until she was
ready to cry out with pain.</p>
<p>The door flew open. The man entered. The
door was closed.</p>
<p>“Look!” whispered Lucile, pressing Florence
toward the spot where the light streamed out.
“Look, I know him.”</p>
<p>She gave Florence but a half moment, then
dragging her from the place of vantage pressed
her own face to the glass.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_99">[99]</div>
<p>“This would be abominable,” she whispered,
“if it weren’t for the fact that we are trying
to help them—trying to find a way out.”</p>
<p>The man, a very young man with a slight
moustache, had removed his coat and hat and
had taken a seat. He was talking to the old
man. He did the greater part of the talking.
Every now and again he would pause and the
old man would shake his head.</p>
<p>This pantomime was kept up for some time.
At last the young man rose and walked toward
the bookshelves. The old man half rose in his
chair as if to detain him, then settled back again.</p>
<p>The young man’s eyes roved over the books,
then came to rest suddenly in a certain spot.
Then his hand went out.</p>
<p>The old man sprang to his feet. There were
words on his lips. What they were the girls
could not tell.</p>
<p>Smiling with the good-natured grace of one
who is accustomed to have what he desires, the
young man opened the book to glance at the
title page. At once his face became eager. He
glanced hurriedly through the book. He turned
to put a question to the old man beside him.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_100">[100]</div>
<p>The old man nodded.</p>
<p>Instantly the young man’s hand was in his
pocket. The two girls shrank back in fear.
But the thing he took from his pocket was a
small book, apparently a check book.</p>
<p>Speaking, he held the check book toward the
old man. The old man shook his head. This
touch of drama was repeated three times. Then,
with a disappointed look on his face, the young
man replaced the book, turned to the chair on
which his hat and coat rested, put them on, said
good night to the old man, bowed to the child
and was gone.</p>
<p>The two girls, after stretching their cramped
limbs, made their way safely to the sidewalk.</p>
<p>“Who—who was he?” whispered Florence
through chattering teeth.</p>
<p>“R. Stanley Ramsey.”</p>
<p>“Not the rich Ramsey?”</p>
<p>“His son.”</p>
<p>“What did he want?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_101">[101]</div>
<p>“I don’t know,” said Lucile, “but it may be
that we have found the man higher up, the real
criminal. It may be that this rich young fellow
is getting them to steal the books so he can buy
them cheap.”</p>
<p>Lucile told of the incident regarding the copy
of “The Compleat Angler.”</p>
<p>“He said he thought he knew where there
was another copy. Don’t you see, he may have
gotten the girl to steal it. And now he comes
for it and is disappointed because they haven’t
got it for him.”</p>
<p>“It might be,” said Florence doubtfully, “but
it doesn’t seem probable, does it? He must have
plenty of money.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps his father doesn’t give him a large
allowance. Then, again, perhaps, he thinks such
things are smart. They say that some rich
men’s sons are that way. There’s something
that happened in there though that I don’t
understand. He—”</p>
<p>“Hist,” whispered Florence, dragging her
into a slow walk; “here comes the child.”</p>
<p>Once more they saw the slim wisp of a girl
steal out like a ghost into the night.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_102">[102]</div>
<h2 id="c10"><br/>CHAPTER X <br/>MYSTERIES OF THE SEA</h2>
<p>The trail over which the mystery child led
them that night revealed nothing. Indeed, she
eluded them, escaping the moment she left the
elevated train at a down town station.</p>
<p>“Nothing to do but go home,” said Florence
in a disappointed tone.</p>
<p>“Oh, well, cheer up,” smiled Lucile. “We’ve
had a new chapter added to our mystery, as
well as a whole new character who promises to
become interesting. But look, Florence,” she
whispered suddenly. “No, don’t stare, just
glance down toward the end of the platform.
See that man?”</p>
<p>“The one with his collar turned up and with
his back to us?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_103">[103]</div>
<p>“That’s the man who passed us when we were
on our way to the mystery cottage.”</p>
<p>“Are you sure?”</p>
<p>“Can’t be mistaken. Same coat, same hat,
same everything.”</p>
<p>“Why then—”</p>
<p>Florence checked herself. A moment later
she said in a quiet tone of voice:</p>
<p>“Lucile, don’t you think it’s about time we
waded ashore? Came clear and got out of this
affair; turned facts over to the authorities and
allowed them to take their course?”</p>
<p>Lucile was silent for a moment. Then suddenly
she shivered all over and whispered
tensely:</p>
<p>“No—no, not quite yet.”</p>
<p>“We may get in over our necks.”</p>
<p>“I can swim. Can’t you?”</p>
<p>“I’ll try,” Florence laughed, and there for
the time the matter ended.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_104">[104]</div>
<p>Lucile worked in the library two hours the
next day. One fact could not escape her attention.
Harry Brock had been losing a lot of
sleep. She saw him rubbing his eyes from time
to time and once he actually nodded over his
records.</p>
<p>“Been studying late?” she asked in friendly
sympathy.</p>
<p>He shot her a quick, penetrating glance, then,
seeming to catch himself, said, “Oh, yes, quite
a bit.”</p>
<p>That afternoon, finding study difficult and
being in need of a theme for a special article to
be written for English 5b, she decided to use
her card of admittance to the bindery and glean
the material for the theme from that institution.</p>
<p>She could scarcely have chosen a more fitting
subject, for there are few places more interesting
than a famous book bindery. Unfortunately,
something occurred while she was there
that quite drove all the thoughts of her theme
out of her head and added to her already over-burdened
shoulders an increased weight of
responsibility.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_105">[105]</div>
<p>A famous bindery is a place of many wonders.
The stitching machines, the little and
great presses, the glowing fires that heat irons
for the stamping, all these and many more lend
an air of industry, mystery and fine endeavor
to the place.</p>
<p>Not in the general bindery, where thousands
of books are bound each day, did Lucile find
her chief interest, however. It was when she
had been shown into a small side room, into
which the natural sunlight shone through a
broad window, that she realized that she had
reached the heart of the place.</p>
<p>“This,” said the young man attending her,
“is the hand bindery. Few books are bound
here; sometimes not more than six a year, but
they are handsomely, wonderfully bound. Mr.
Kirkland, the head of this department, will tell
you all about it. I hear my autophone call. I
will come for you a little later.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_106">[106]</div>
<p>Lucile was not sorry to be left alone in such
a room. It was a place of rare enchantment.
Seated at their benches, bending over their work,
with their blue fires burning before them, were
three skilled workmen. They were more than
workmen; they were artists. The work turned
out by them rivaled in beauty and perfection
the canvas of the most skilled painter. They
wrought in inlaid leather and gold; the artist in
crayon and oils. The artist uses palette, knife
and brush; their steel tools were fashioned to
suit their art.</p>
<p>Ranged along one side of the room was a long
rack in which these tools were kept. There
were hundreds of them, and each tool had its
place. Every now and again from the benches
there came a hot sizzling sound, which meant
that one of these tools was being tested after
having been heated over the flame.</p>
<p>Seeing her looking at the rack of tools, the
head workman, a broad-shouldered man with a
pleasant smile and keen blue eyes, turned toward
her.</p>
<p>“Would you like to have me tell you a little
about them?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Indeed I should.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_107">[107]</div>
<p>“Those tools once belonged to Hans Wiemar,
the most famous man ever known to the craft.
After he died I bought them from his widow.
He once spent three years binding a single book.
It was to be presented to the king of England.
He was a very skillful artisan.</p>
<p>“We bind some pretty fine books here, too,”
he said modestly. “Here is one I am only just
beginning. You see it is a very large book, a
book of poetry printed in the original German.
I shall be at least two months doing it.</p>
<p>“The last one I had was much smaller but
it was to have taken me four months.”</p>
<p>A shadow passed over his face.</p>
<p>“Did—did you finish it?” asked Lucile, a
tone of instinctive sympathy in her voice.</p>
<p>“It was an ancient French book, done in
the oldest French type. It was called ‘Mysteries
of the Sea,’” he went on without answering
her question. “This was the tool we used
most on it,” he said, holding out the edge of
a steel tool for her inspection. “You see, the
metal is heated and pressed into the leather in
just the right way, then gold, twenty-two carat
gold, is pressed into the creases that are left
and we have a figure in gold as a result. This
one you see is in the form of an ancient sailing
ship.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_108">[108]</div>
<p>Lucile started, then examined the tool more
carefully.</p>
<p>“Here is another tool we used. It represents
clouds. This one makes the water. You
see we use appropriate tools. The book was
about ships and the sea, written before the time
of Columbus.”</p>
<p>He was silent for a moment, then said slowly,
a look of pain coming into his fine face, “I
suppose I might as well tell you. The book
was stolen, stolen from my bench during the
lunch hour.”</p>
<p>Lucile started violently.</p>
<p>The artist stared at her for a second, then
went on.</p>
<p>“Of course, I can’t be held responsible, yet
no doubt they blame me in a way. The book
was very valuable—worth thousands of dollars.
And it would have been finished in two
days.” He bowed his head as if in silent grief.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_109">[109]</div>
<p>“Please,” Lucile’s lips quivered with emotion
as she spoke, “did the book have three of these
ancient ship designs on the back of it, one large
and two small?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“And was it done in dark red leather with the
decorations all in gold?”</p>
<p>“Yes, yes!” the man’s tones were eager.</p>
<p>“And, and,” Lucile whispered the words,
“was there a bookmark in the upper corner of
the inside of the front cover?”</p>
<p>“Yes, yes, yes!” He uttered the words in
a tense whisper. “How can you know so much
about the book?”</p>
<p>“Please,” pleaded Lucile, “I can’t tell you
now. But per—perhaps I can help you.”</p>
<p>“I will take you to our president, to Mr.
Silver.”</p>
<p>“Please—please—no—not now. Please
let me go now. I must think. I will come back—truly—truly
I will.”</p>
<p>With the instinct of a born gentleman he
escorted her to a side door and let her out.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_110">[110]</div>
<p>The sunshine, as she emerged, seemed unreal
to her. Everything seemed unreal.</p>
<p>“The gargoyle! The gargoyle!” she whispered
hoarsely. “Can I never escape it? Can
I go no place without discovering that books
marked with that hated, haunting sign have
been stolen? That book, the hand-bound copy
of ‘Mysteries of the Sea,’ is the latest acquirement
of the old man in the mystery cottage on
Tyler street. She stole it; the child stole it.
And why? Why? It seems that I should tell
all that I know,” she whispered to herself, “that
it is my duty. Surely the thing can’t go on.”
She bathed her flushed cheeks in the outer air.</p>
<p>“And yet,” she thought more calmly, “there
are the old man, the child. There <i>is</i> something
back of it all. The gargoyle’s secret. Oh! if
only one knew!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_111">[111]</div>
<h2 id="c11"><br/>CHAPTER XI <br/>LUCILE SHARES HER SECRET</h2>
<p>As Lucile returned to her room it seemed to
her that she was being hedged about on all
sides by friends who had a right to demand
that she reveal the secret hiding-place of the
stolen books. The university which had done
so much for her, Frank Morrow, her father’s
friend, the great scientific library which was a
friend to all, and now this splendid artist who
worked in leather and gold; they all appeared
to be reaching out their hands to her.</p>
<p>In her room for two hours she paced the
floor. Then she came to a decision.</p>
<p>“I’ll tell one of them; tell the whole story
and leave it to him. Who shall it be?”</p>
<p>The answer came to her instantly: Frank
Morrow.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_112">[112]</div>
<p>“Yes, he’s the one,” she whispered. “He’s
the most human of them all. White-haired as
he is, I believe he can understand the heart of
a child and—and of a girl like me.”</p>
<p>She found him busy with some customers.
When he had completed the sale and the customers
had gone, she drew her chair close to
his and told him the story frankly from beginning
to end. The only thing she left out was the
fact that she held suspicions against the young
millionaire’s son.</p>
<p>“If there’s ground for suspicion, he’ll discover
it,” she told herself.</p>
<p>Frank Morrow listened attentively. At times
he leaned forward with the light on his face
that one sometimes sees upon the face of a boy
who is hearing a good story of pirates and the
sea.</p>
<p>“Well,” he dampened his lips as she finished,
“well!”</p>
<p>For some time after that there was silence
in the room, a silence so profound that the
ticking of Frank Morrow’s watch sounded loud
as a grandfather’s clock.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_113">[113]</div>
<p>At last Frank Morrow wheeled about in his
chair and spoke.</p>
<p>“You know, Miss Lucile,” he said slowly,
“I am no longer a child, except in spirit. I
have read a great deal. I have thought a great
deal, sitting alone in this chair, both by day
and by night. Very often I have thought of
us, of the whole human race, of our relation to
the world, to the being who created us and to
one another.</p>
<p>“I have come to think of life like this,” he
said, his eyes kindling. “It may seem a rather
gloomy philosophy of life, but when you think
of it, it’s a mighty friendly one. I think of
the whole human race as being on a huge raft
in mid-ocean. There’s food and water enough
for everyone if all of us are saving, careful and
kind. Not one of us knows how we came on
the raft. No one knows whither we are bound.
From time to time we hear the distant waves
break on some shore, but what shore we cannot
tell. The earth, of course, is our raft and the
rest of the universe our sea.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_114">[114]</div>
<p>“What’s the answer to all this? Just this
much: Since we are so situated, the greatest,
best thing, the thing that will bring us the
greatest amount of real happiness, is to be kind
to all, especially those weaker than ourselves,
just as we would if we were adrift on a raft
in the Atlantic.</p>
<p>“Without all this philosophy, you have caught
the spirit of the thing. I can’t advise you. I
can only offer to assist you in any way you may
suggest. It’s a strange case. The old man is
doubtless a crank. Many book collectors are.
It may be, however, that there is some stronger
hand back of it all. The girl appears to be
the old man’s devoted slave and is too young
truly to understand right from wrong. I should
say, however, that she is clever far beyond her
years.”</p>
<p>Lucile left the shop strengthened and encouraged.
She had not found a solution to her problem
but had been told by one much older and
wiser than she that she was not going at the
affair in the wrong way. She had received his
assurance of his assistance at any time when it
seemed needed.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_115">[115]</div>
<p>That night a strange thing happened. Lucile
had learned by repeated experience that very
often the solution of life’s perplexing problems
comes to us when we are farthest from them
and engaged in work or pursuit of pleasure
which is most remote from them. Someone had
given her a ticket to the opera. Being a lover
of music, she had decided to abandon her work
and the pursuit of the all-absorbing mystery, to
forget herself listening to outbursts of enchanting
song.</p>
<p>The outcome had been all that she might
hope for. Lost in the great swells of music
which came to her from hundreds of voices or
enchanted by the range and beauty of a single
voice, she forgot all until the last curtain had
been called and the crowd thronged out.</p>
<p>There was a flush on her cheek and new light
in her eyes as she felt the cool outer air of the
street.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_116">[116]</div>
<p>She had walked two blocks to her station and
was about to mount the stairs when, to her
utter astonishment, she saw the mystery child
dart across the street. Almost by instinct she
went in full pursuit.</p>
<p>The child, all oblivious of her presence, after
crossing the street, darted down an alley and,
after crossing two blocks, entered one of those
dark and dingy streets which so often flank
the best and busiest avenues of a city.</p>
<p>At the third door to the left, a sort of half
basement entrance that one reached by descending
a short stairs, the child paused and fumbled
at the doorknob. Lucile was just in time to get
a view of the interior as the door flew open.
The next instant she sprang back into the
shadows.</p>
<p>She gripped at her wildly beating heart and
steadied herself against the wall as she murmured,
“It couldn’t be! Surely! Surely it
could not be.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_117">[117]</div>
<p>And yet she was convinced that her eyes
had not deceived her. The person who had
opened the door was none other than the woman
who had treated the child so shamefully and
had dragged her along the street. And now
the child had come to the door of the den which
this woman called home and of her own free
will had entered the place and shut the door.
What could be the meaning of all this.</p>
<p>Some mysteries are long in solving. Some
are apparently never solved. Some scarcely become
mysteries before their solution appears.
This mystery was of the latter sort.</p>
<p>Plucking up all the courage she could command,
Lucile made her way down the steps
and, crowding herself through a narrow opening,
succeeded in reaching a position by a window.
Here she could see without being seen
and could catch fragments of the conversation
which went on within.</p>
<p>The child had advanced to the center of the
room. The woman and a man, worse in appearance,
more degraded than the woman, stood
staring at her. There was something heroic
about the tense, erect bearing of the child.</p>
<p>“Like Joan of Arc,” Lucile thought.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_118">[118]</div>
<p>The child was speaking. The few words that
Lucile caught sent thrills into her very soul.</p>
<p>The child was telling the woman that she
had had a book, which belonged to her friend,
Monsieur Le Bon. This book was very old and
much prized by him. She had had it with her
that other night in a lunch box. The woman
had taken it. She had come for it. It must
be given back.</p>
<p>As the child finished, the woman burst into a
hoarse laugh. Then she launched forth in a
tirade of abusive language. She did not admit
having the book nor yet deny it. She was too
intent upon abusing the child and the old man
who had befriended her for that.</p>
<p>At last she sprang at the child. The child
darted for the door, but the man had locked
and bolted it. There followed a scramble about
the room which resulted in the upsetting of
chairs and the knocking of kitchen utensils from
the wall. At last the child, now fighting and
sobbing, was roped to the high post of an ancient
bedstead.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_119">[119]</div>
<p>Then, to Lucile’s horror, she saw the man
thrust a heavy iron poker through the grate of
the stove in which a fire burned brightly.</p>
<p>Her blood ran cold. Chills raced up her
spine. What was the man’s purpose? Certainly
nothing good. Whatever these people
were to the child, whatever the child might be,
the thing must be stopped. The child had at
least done one heroic deed; she had come back
for that book, the book which at this moment
rested in Lucile’s own room, Frank Morrow’s
book. She had come for it knowing what she
must face and had come not through fear but
through love for her patriarchal friend, Monsieur
Le Bon. Somehow she must be saved.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_120">[120]</div>
<p>With a courage born of despair, Lucile made
her way from the position by the window toward
the door. As she did so, she thought she
caught a movement on the street above her.
She was sure that a second later she heard the
sound of lightly running footsteps. Had she
been watched from above? What was to come
of that? There was no time to form an
answer. One hand was on the knob. With the
other she beat the door. The door swung open.
She stepped inside. It seemed to her that the
door shut itself behind her. For a second her
heart stood still as she realized that the man
was behind her; that the door was bolted.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_121">[121]</div>
<h2 id="c12"><br/>CHAPTER XII <br/>THE TRIAL BY FIRE</h2>
<p>The moment Lucile heard the lock click behind
her she knew that she was trapped. But
her fighting blood was up. Even had the door
been wide open she would not have retreated.</p>
<p>“You release that child,” she said through
cold, set lips.</p>
<p>“Yes, you tell me ‘release the child,’” said
the woman, with an attempt at sarcasm; “you
who are so brave, who have a companion who
is like an ox, who likes to beat up poor women
on the street. You say, ‘release the child.’
You say that. And the child, she is my own
stepdaughter.”</p>
<p>“I—I don’t believe it,” said Lucile stoutly.</p>
<p>“It is true.”</p>
<p>“If it is true, you have no right to abuse her—you
are not fit to be any child’s mother.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_122">[122]</div>
<p>“Not fit,” the woman’s face became purple
with rage. “I am no good, she says; not fit!”
She advanced threateningly toward Lucile.</p>
<p>“Now, now,” she stormed, “we have you
where we want you. Now we shall show you
whether or not we can do as we please with
the child that was so very kindly given to us.”
She made a move toward the stove, from which
the handle to the heavy poker protruded. By
this time the end must be red hot.</p>
<p>“It’s no use to threaten me,” said Lucile
calmly. “I wouldn’t leave the room if I might.
If I did it would be to bring an officer. I
mean to see that the child is treated as a human
being and not as a dog.”</p>
<p>The woman’s face once more became purple.
She seemed petrified, quite unable to move, from
sheer rage.</p>
<p>But the man, a sallow-complexioned person
with a perpetual leer in one corner of his mouth,
started for the stove.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_123">[123]</div>
<p>With a quick spring Lucile reached the handle
of the poker first. Seizing it, she drew it,
white hot, from the fire. The man sprang back
in fear. The woman gripped the rounds of a
heavy chair and made as if to lift it for a
blow.</p>
<p>Scarcely realizing that she was imitating her
hero of fiction, she brought the glowing iron
close to the white and tender flesh of her forearm.</p>
<p>“You think you can frighten me,” she smiled.
“You think you can do something to me which
will cause me to cease to attempt to protect that
child. Perhaps you would torture me. I will
prove to you that you cannot frighten me.
What I have been doing is right. The world
was made for people to live in who do right.
If one may not always do right, then life is
not worth living.”</p>
<p>The fiery weapon came closer to her arm.
The woman stared at her as if fascinated. The
child, who had been silently struggling at her
bands, paused in open-mouthed astonishment.
For once the leer on the man’s lips vanished.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_124">[124]</div>
<p>Then, of a sudden, as she appeared to catch
the meaning of it all, the child gave forth a
piercing scream.</p>
<p>The next instant there came a loud pounding
at the door as a gruff voice thundered:</p>
<p>“Here, you in there! Open up!”</p>
<p>The woman dropped upon the ill-kept bed
in a real or pretended swoon. Lucile allowed
the poker to drop to her side. With trembling
fingers the man unloosed the door and the next
instant they were looking into the faces of a
police sergeant and two other officers of the
law.</p>
<p>“What’s going on here?” demanded the
sergeant.</p>
<p>Suddenly recovering from her swoon, the
woman sprang to her feet.</p>
<p>“That young lady,” she pointed an accusing
finger at Lucile, “is attempting to break up our
home.”</p>
<p>The officer looked them over one by one.</p>
<p>“What’s the girl tied up for?” he demanded.</p>
<p>“It’s the only way we can keep her home,”
said the woman. “That young lady’s been enticing
her away; her and an old wretch of a
man.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_125">[125]</div>
<p>“Your daughter?”</p>
<p>“My adopted daughter.”</p>
<p>“What about it, little one?” the officer
stepped over, and cutting the girl’s bands, placed
a hand on the child’s head. “Is what she says
true?”</p>
<p>“I—I don’t know,” she faltered. Her
knees trembled so she could scarcely stand. “I
never saw the young lady until now but I—I
think she is wonderful.”</p>
<p>“Is this woman your stepmother.”</p>
<p>The girl hung her head.</p>
<p>“Do you wish to stay with her?”</p>
<p>“Oh! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! No! No! No!
Oh, Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!”</p>
<p>The child in her agony of fright and grief
threw herself face down upon the bed.</p>
<p>The officer, seating himself beside her,
smoothed her hair with his huge right hand
until she was quiet, then bit by bit got from
her the story of her experiences in this great
American city. Lucile listened eagerly as the
little girl talked falteringly.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_126">[126]</div>
<p>A Belgian refugee, she had been brought to
the United States during the war, and because
this unprincipled pair spoke French, which she
too understood, the good-hearted but misguided
people who had her in charge had given her
over to them without fully looking up their
record.</p>
<p>Because she was small and had an appealing
face, and because she was a refugee, they had
set her to begging on the street and had more
than once asked her to steal.</p>
<p>Having been brought up by conscientious
parents, all this was repulsive to her. So one
day she had run away. She had wandered the
streets of the great, unfriendly city until, almost
at the point of starvation, she had been
taken home by a very old man, a Frenchman.</p>
<p>“French,” she said, “but not like these,”
she pointed a finger of scorn at the man and
woman. “A French gentleman. A very, very
wonderful man.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_127">[127]</div>
<p>She had lived with him and had helped him
all she could. Then, one night, as she was on an
errand for him, the woman, her stepmother, had
found her. She had been seized and dragged
along the street. But by some strange chance
she did not at all understand, she had been
rescued.</p>
<p>That night she had been carrying a book.
The book belonged to her aged benefactor and
was much prized by him. Thinking that her
foster mother had the book, she had dared return
to ask for it.</p>
<p>She proceeded to relate what had happened
in that room and ended with a plea that she
might be allowed to return to the cottage on
Tyler street.</p>
<p>“Are you interested in this child?” the officer
asked Lucile.</p>
<p>“I surely am.”</p>
<p>“Want to see that she gets safely home?”</p>
<p>“I—I will.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_128">[128]</div>
<p>“And see here,” the officer turned a stern
face on the others, “if you interfere with this
child in the future, we’ve got enough on you
to put you away. You ain’t fit to be no child’s
parents. Far as I can tell, this here old man
is. This case, for the present, is settled out of
court. See!”</p>
<p>He motioned to his subordinates. They stood
at attention until Lucile and the child passed
out, then followed.</p>
<p>The sergeant saw the girl and the child safely
on the elevated platform, then, tipping his hat,
mumbled:</p>
<p>“Good luck and thank y’ miss. I’ve got two
of ’em myself. An’ if anything ever happened
to me, I’d like nothin’ better’n to have you take
an interest in ’em.”</p>
<p>Something rose up in Lucile’s throat and
choked her. She could only nod her thanks.
The next instant they went rattling away, bound
for the mystery cottage on Tyler street.</p>
<p>For once Lucile felt richly repaid for all the
doubt, perplexity and sleepless hours she had
gone through.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_129">[129]</div>
<p>“It’s all very strange and mysterious,” she
told herself, “but somehow, sometime, it will all
come out right.”</p>
<p>As she sat there absorbed in her own
thoughts, she suddenly became conscious of the
fact that the child at her side was silently weeping.</p>
<p>“Why!” she exclaimed, “what are you crying
for? You are going back to your cottage
and to your kind old man.”</p>
<p>“The book,” whispered the child; “it is gone.
I can never return it.”</p>
<p>A sudden impulse seized Lucile, an impulse
she could scarcely resist. She wanted to take
the child in her arms and say:</p>
<p>“Dear little girl, I have the book in my room.
I will bring it to you to-morrow.”</p>
<p>She did not say it. She could not. As far
as she knew, the old man had no right to the
book; it belonged to Frank Morrow.</p>
<p>What she did say was, “I shouldn’t worry
any more about it if I were you. I am sure
it will come out all right in the end.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_130">[130]</div>
<p>Then, before they knew it, they were off the
elevated train and walking toward Tyler street
and Lucile was saying to herself, “I wonder
what next.” Hand-in-hand the two made their
way to the door of the dingy old cottage.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_131">[131]</div>
<h2 id="c13"><br/>CHAPTER XIII <br/>IN THE MYSTERY ROOM AT NIGHT</h2>
<p>Much to her surprise, just when she had expected
to be trudging back to the station alone,
Lucile found herself seated by a table in the
mystery room. She was sipping a delicious
cup of hot chocolate and talking to the mystery
child and her mysterious godfather. Every now
and again she paused to catch her breath. It
was hard for her to realize that she was in
the mystery room of the mysterious cottage on
Tyler street. Yet there she certainly was.
The child had invited her in.</p>
<p>A dim, strangely tinted light cast dark shadows
over everything. The strange furniture
took on grotesque forms. The titles of the
books along the wall gleamed out in a strange
manner.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_132">[132]</div>
<p>For a full five minutes the child talked to
the old man in French. He exclaimed now and
then, but other than that took no part in the
conversation.</p>
<p>When she had finished, he held out a thin,
bony hand to Lucile and said in perfect English:</p>
<p>“Accept my thanks for what you have done
to protect this poor little one, my pretty Marie.
You are a brave girl and should have a reward.
But, alas, I have little to give save my books
and they are an inheritance, an inheritance
thrice removed. They were my great-grandfather’s
and have descended direct to me. One
is loath to part with such treasure.”</p>
<p>“There is no need for any reward,” said
Lucile quickly. “I did it because I was interested
in the child. But,” with a sudden inspiration,
“if you wish to do me a favor, tell
me the story of your life.”</p>
<p>The man gave her a quick look.</p>
<p>“You are so—so old,” she hastened to add,
“and so venerable, so soldier-like, so like General
Joffre. Your life must have been a wonderful
one.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_133">[133]</div>
<p>“Ah, yes,” the old man settled back in his
chair. As if to brush a mist from before his
eyes, he made a waving motion with his hand.
“Ah, yes, it has been quite wonderful, that is,
I may say it once was.</p>
<p>“I was born near a little town named Gondrecourt
in the province of Meuse in France.
There was a small chateau, very neat and beautiful,
with a garden behind it, with a bit of
woods and broad acres for cattle and grain.
All that was my father’s. It afterwards became
mine.</p>
<p>“In one room of the chateau were many,
many ancient volumes, some in French, some in
English, for my father was a scholar, as also
he educated me to be.</p>
<p>“These books were the cream of many generations,
some dating back before the time of
Columbus.”</p>
<p>Lucile, thinking of the book of ancient Portland
charts, allowed her gaze for a second to
stray to the shelf where it reposed.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_134">[134]</div>
<p>Again the man threw her a questioning look,
but once more went on with his narrative of his
life in far-off France.</p>
<p>“Of all the treasures of field, garden, woods
or chateau, the ones most prized by me were
those ancient books. So, year after year I
guarded them well, guarded them until an old
man, in possession of all that was once my
father’s, I used to sit of an evening looking off
at the fading hills at eventide with one of those
books in my lap.</p>
<p>“Then came the war.” Again his hand went
up to dispel the imaginary mist. “The war
took my two sons. They never came back. It
took my three grandsons. We gave gladly, for
was it not our beloved France that was in danger?
They, too, never returned.”</p>
<p>The old man’s hand trembled as he brushed
away the imaginary mist.</p>
<p>“I borrowed money to give to France. I
mortgaged my land, my cattle, my chateau;
only my treasure of books I gave no man a
chance to take. They must be mine until I
died. They of all the treasures I must keep.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_135">[135]</div>
<p>“One night,” his voice grew husky, “one
night there came a terrible explosion. The earth
rocked. Stones of the castle fell all about the
yard. The chateau was in ruins. It was a
bomb from an airplane.</p>
<p>“Someway the library was not touched. It
alone was safe. How thankful I was that it
was so. It was now all that was left.</p>
<p>“I took my library to a small lodging in the
village. Then, when the war was ended, I
packed all my books in strong boxes and started
for Paris.”</p>
<p>He paused. His head sank upon his breast.
His lips quivered. It was as if he were enduring
over again some great sorrow.</p>
<p>“Perhaps,” he said after a long time, “one
is foolish to grieve over what some would say
is a trifle compared to other losses. But one
comes to love books. They are his very dear
friends. With them he shares his great pleasures.
In times of sorrow they console him. Ah,
yes, how wonderful they are, these books?”
His eyes turned toward the shelves.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_136">[136]</div>
<p>Then, suddenly, his voice changed. He hastened
on. He seemed to desire to have done
with it. One might have believed that there was
something he was keeping back which he was
afraid his lips might speak.</p>
<p>“I came to America,” he said hoarsely, “and
here I am in your great city, alone save for
this blessed child, and—and my books—some
of my books—most of my books.”</p>
<p>Again he was silent. The room fell into such
a silence that the very breathing of the old man
sounded out like the exhaust of an engine.
Somewhere in another room a clock ticked. It
was ghostly.</p>
<p>Shaking herself free from the spell of it,
Lucile said, “I—I think I must go.”</p>
<p>“No! No!” cried the old man. “Not until
you have seen some of my treasures, my books.”</p>
<p>Leading her to the shelves, he took down
volume after volume. He placed them in her
hands with all the care of a salesman displaying
rare and fragile china.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_137">[137]</div>
<p>She looked at the outside of some; then made
bold to open the covers and peep within. They
were all beyond doubt very old and valuable.
But one fact stood out in her mind as she finally
bade them good night, stood out as if embossed
upon her very soul: In the inside upper corner
of the cover of every volume, done on expensive,
age-browned paper, there was the same gargoyle,
the same letter L as had been in the other
mysterious volumes.</p>
<p>“The gargoyle’s secret,” she whispered as
she came out upon the dark, damp streets. “The
gargoyle’s secret. I wonder what it is!”</p>
<p>Then she started as if in fear that the gargoyle
were behind her, about to spring at her
from the dark.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_138">[138]</div>
<h2 id="c14"><br/>CHAPTER XIV <br/>A STRANGE REQUEST</h2>
<p>“But, Lucile!” exclaimed Florence in an excited
whisper, springing up in her bed after she
had heard Lucile’s story. “How did the police
know that something was going wrong in that
house? How did they come to be right there
when you needed them most?”</p>
<p>“That’s just what I asked the sergeant,” answered
Lucile, “and he just shrugged his shoulders
and said, ‘Somebody tipped it off.’”</p>
<p>“Which meant, I suppose, that someone reported
the fact to police headquarters that something
was wrong in that house.”</p>
<p>“I suppose so.”</p>
<p>“Is that all you know about it?”</p>
<p>“Why, I—I thought I heard someone hurrying
away on the sidewalk just as I was going
to enter.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_139">[139]</div>
<p>“You don’t suppose—”</p>
<p>“Oh, I don’t know what to suppose,” Lucile
gave a short, hysterical laugh. “It is getting to
be much too complicated for me. I can’t stand
it much longer. Something’s going to burst.
I think all the time that someone is dogging
my tracks. I think someone must suspect me
of being in league with this old man and the
child.”</p>
<p>“But if they did, why should they call the
police for your protection?”</p>
<p>“Yes, why? Why? A whole lot of whys.
And who would suspect me? I would trust
Frank Morrow to keep faith with me. I am
sure he trusts me fully. The Portland chart
book affair I was not in at all. The bindery
would scarcely suspect me. There’s only our
own library left. You don’t think—”</p>
<p>“One scarcely knows what to think,” said
Florence wearily. “We sometimes forget that
we are but two poor girls who are more or less
dependent on the university for our support
while we secure an education. Perhaps you
should have confided in the library authorities
in the beginning.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_140">[140]</div>
<p>“Perhaps. But it’s too late now. I must
see the thing through.”</p>
<p>“You don’t believe the old Frenchman’s
story.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. It’s hard to doubt it. He
seems so sincere. There’s something left out,
I suppose.”</p>
<p>“Of course there is. In order to keep from
starving, he was obliged to sell some of his
books. Then, being heartbroken over the loss
of them, he has induced the child to steal them
back for him. That seems sensible enough,
doesn’t it? Of course it’s a pity that he should
have been forced to sell them, but they were,
in a way, a luxury. We all are obliged to give
up some luxuries. For my part, I don’t see how
you are going to keep him out of jail. The
child will probably come clear because of her
age, but there’s not a chance in a million of
saving him. There’s got to be a show-down
sometime. Why not now? The facts we have
in our possession are the rightful property of
others, of our library, Frank Morrow, the scientific
library, of the Silver-Barnard bindery.
Why not pass them on?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_141">[141]</div>
<p>Florence was sitting bolt upright in bed. She
pointed her finger at her roommate by way of
emphasis.</p>
<p>But, tired and perplexed as she was, Lucile
never flinched.</p>
<p>“Your logic is all right save for two things,”
she smiled wearily.</p>
<p>“What two?”</p>
<p>“The character of the old man and the character
of the child. They could not do the thing
you suggest. No, not for far greater reward.
Not in a thousand years.” She beat the bed
with her hands. “There must be some other
explanation. There must. There must!”</p>
<p>For a moment there was silence in the room.
Lucile removed her street garments, put on her
dream robe, then crept into bed.</p>
<p>“Oh,” she sighed, “I forgot to tell you
what that extraordinary child asked me to do.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_142">[142]</div>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“She said she had an errand to do for the
old Frenchman; that it would take her a long
way from home and she was afraid to go alone.
She asked me if I would go with her.”</p>
<p>“What did you tell her?”</p>
<p>“I—I told her that both my roommate and
I would go.”</p>
<p>“You did!”</p>
<p>“Why, yes.”</p>
<p>“Well,” said Florence, after a moment’s
thought, “I’ll go, but if it’s another frightful
robbery, if she’s going to break in somewhere
and carry away some book worth thousands of
dollars, I’m not in on it. I—I’ll drag her to
the nearest police station and our fine little mystery
will end right there.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I don’t think it can be anything like
that,” said Lucile sleepily. “Anyway, we can
only wait and see.”</p>
<p>With that she turned her right cheek over on
the pillow and was instantly fast asleep.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_143">[143]</div>
<h2 id="c15"><br/>CHAPTER XV <br/>A STRANGE JOURNEY</h2>
<p>The hours of the following day dragged as
if on leaden wings. With nerves worn to single
strands, Lucile was now literally living on excitement.
The fact that she was to go with the
mystery child on a night’s trip which held promise
of excitement and possible adventure in it,
went far toward keeping her eyes open and on
their task, but for all this, the hours dragged.</p>
<p>At the library she was startled to note the
worn and haggard look on Harry Brock’s face.
She wanted to ask him the cause of it and to
offer sympathy, but he appeared to actually
avoid her. Whenever she found some excuse to
move in his direction, he at once found one for
moving away to another corner of the library.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_144">[144]</div>
<p>“Whatever can be the matter with him?”
she asked herself. “I wonder if I could have
offended him in any way. I should hate to lose
his friendship.”</p>
<p>Night came at last and with it the elevated
station and Tyler street.</p>
<p>With her usual promptness, the child led
them to a surface car. They rode across the
city. From the car they hurried to an inter-urban
depot of a steam line.</p>
<p>“So it’s to be out of the city,” Florence whispered
to Lucile. “I hadn’t counted on that.
It may be more than we bargained for.”</p>
<p>“I hope not,” shivered Lucile. “I’ve been
all warmed up over this trip the whole day
through and now when we are actually on the
way I feel cold as a clam and sort of creepy
all over. Do—do you suppose it will be anything
very dreadful?”</p>
<p>“Why, no!” laughed Florence. “Far as
feelings go mine have been just the opposite to
yours. I didn’t want to go and felt that way all
day, but now it would take all the conductors
in the service to put me off the train.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_145">[145]</div>
<p>With all the seriousness of a grown-up, the
child purchased tickets for them all, and now
gave them to the conductor without so much as
suggesting their destination to the girls.</p>
<p>“I don’t know where I’m going but I’m on
my way,” whispered Florence with a smile.</p>
<p>“Seems strange, doesn’t it?” said Lucile.</p>
<p>“Sh,” warned Florence.</p>
<p>The child had turned a smiling face toward
them.</p>
<p>“I think it’s awfully good of you to come,”
she beamed. “It’s a long way and I’m afraid
we’ll be late getting home, but you won’t have
to do anything, not really, just go along with
me. It’s a dreadfully lonesome place. There’s
a long road you have to go over and the road
crosses a river and there is woods on both sides
of the river. Woods are awful sort of spooky
at night, don’t you think so?”</p>
<p>Florence smiled and nodded. Lucile shivered.</p>
<p>“I don’t mind the city,” the child went on,
“not any of it. There are always people everywhere
and things can’t be spooky there, but right
out on the roads and in the woods and on
beaches where the water goes wash-wash-wash
at night, I don’t like that, do you?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_146">[146]</div>
<p>“Sometimes I do,” said Florence. “I think
I’m going to like it a lot to-night.”</p>
<p>“Oh, are you?” exclaimed the child. “Then
I’m glad, because it was awfully nice of you to
come.”</p>
<p>“A long road, woods and a river,” Florence
repeated in Lucile’s ear. “Wherever can we
be going? I supposed we would get off at one
of the near-in suburbs.”</p>
<p>“Evidently,” said Lucile, forcing a smile,
“we are in for a night of it. I’m going to
catch forty winks. Call me when we get to the
road that crosses the river in the woods.” She
bent her head down upon one hand and was
soon fast asleep.</p>
<p>She was awakened by a shake from Florence.
“We’re here. Come on, get off.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_147">[147]</div>
<p>What they saw on alighting was not reassuring.
A small red depot, a narrow, irregular
platform, a square of light through which they
saw a young man with a green shade over his
eyes bending before a table filled with telegraph
instruments; this was all they saw. Beyond
these, like the entrance to some huge, magical
cave, the darkness loomed at them.</p>
<p>The child appeared to know the way, even in
the dark, for she pulled at Florence’s sleeve
as she whispered:</p>
<p>“This way please. Keep close to me.”</p>
<p>There was not the least danger of the girls’
failing to keep close, for, once they had passed
beyond sight of that friendly square of light and
the green-shaded figure, they were hopelessly
lost.</p>
<p>True, the darkness shaded off a trifle as their
eyes became more accustomed to it; they could
tell that they were going down a badly kept,
sandy road; they could see the dim outline of
trees on either side; but that was all. The
trees seemed a wall which shut them in on either
side.</p>
<p>“Trees <i>are</i> spooky at night,” Lucile whispered
as she gripped her companion’s arm a
little more tightly.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_148">[148]</div>
<p>“Where are we?” Florence whispered.</p>
<p>“I couldn’t guess.”</p>
<p>“Pretty far out. I counted five stops after
the lights of the city disappeared.”</p>
<p>“Listen.”</p>
<p>“What is it?”</p>
<p>“Water rushing along somewhere.”</p>
<p>“Might be the river. She said there was
one.”</p>
<p>“Rivers rush like that in the mountains but
not here. Must be the lake shore.”</p>
<p>“Hist—”</p>
<p>The child was whispering back at them. “We
are coming to the bridge. It’s a very long
bridge, and spooky. I think we better tiptoe
across it, but we mustn’t run. The gallopin’
goblins’ll come after us if we do; besides, there’s
an old rusty sign on the bridge that says, ‘No
trotting across the bridge.’”</p>
<p>The next moment they felt a plank surface
beneath their feet and knew they were on the
bridge. It must have been a very ancient
bridge. This road had never been remodelled
to fit the need of automobiles. The planks rattled
and creaked in an ominous manner in spite
of their tiptoeing.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_149">[149]</div>
<p>“I wonder how much more there is of it,”
Florence groaned in a whisper when they had
gone on tiptoes for what seemed an endless
space of time. “If my toes don’t break, I’m
sure my shoes will.”</p>
<p>As for Lucile, she was thinking her own
thoughts. She was telling herself that if it
were not for the fact that this night’s performance
gave promise of being a link in the
chain of circumstances which were to be used
in dragging the gargoyle’s secret from its lair,
she would demand that the child turn about and
lead them straight back to the city.</p>
<p>Since she had faith that somehow the mystery
was to be solved and her many worries
and perplexities brought to an end, she tiptoed
doggedly on. And it was well that she did,
for the events of this one night were destined
to bring about strange and astounding revelations.
She was not to see the light of day again
before the gargoyle’s secret would be fully revealed,
but had she known the series of thrilling
events which would lead up to that triumphant
hour, she would have shrunk back and whispered,
“No, no, I can’t go all that way.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_150">[150]</div>
<p>Often and often we find this true in life; we
face seemingly unbearable situations—something
is to happen to us, we are to go somewhere,
be something different, do some seemingly
undoable thing and we say, “We cannot
endure it,” yet we pass through it as through
a fog to come out smiling on the other side.
We are better, happier and stronger for the
experience. It was to be so with Lucile.</p>
<p>The bridge was crossed at last. More dark
and silent woods came to flank their path.
Then out of the distance there loomed great
bulks of darker masses.</p>
<p>“Mountains, I’d say they were,” whispered
Lucile, “if it weren’t for the fact that I know
there are none within five hundred miles.”</p>
<p>For a time they trudged along in silence.
Then suddenly Florence whispered:</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_151">[151]</div>
<p>“Oh, I know! Dunes! Sand dunes! Now I
know where we are. We are near the lake
shore. I was out here somewhere for a week
last summer. By day it’s wonderful; regular
mountains of sand that has been washed up and
blown up from the bed of the lake. Some of
them are hundreds of feet above the level of
the lake. There are trees growing on them and
everything.”</p>
<p>“But what are we doing out here?”</p>
<p>“I can’t guess. There is a wonderful beach
everywhere and cottages here and there.”</p>
<p>“But it’s too late for summer cottages. They
must all be closed.”</p>
<p>“Yes, of course they must.”</p>
<p>Again they trudged on in silence. Now they
left the road to strike away across the soft,
yielding surface of the sand. They sank in to
their ankles. Some of the sand got into their
shoes and hurt their feet, but still they
trudged on.</p>
<p>The rush of waters on the shore grew louder.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_152">[152]</div>
<p>“I love it,” Florence whispered. “I like
sleeping where I can hear the rush of water.
I’ve slept beside the Arctic Ocean, the Behring
Sea and the Pacific. I’ve slept by the shore
of this old lake. Once in the Rocky Mountains
I climbed to the timber-line and there slept for
five nights in a tent where all night long you
could hear the rush of icy water over rocks
which were more like a stony stairway than
the bed of a stream. It was grand.</p>
<p>“When I am sleeping where I can hear the
rush of water I sometimes half awaken at night
and imagine I am once more on the shore of the
Arctic or in a tent at the timber-line of the
Rockies.”</p>
<p>While she was whispering this they felt the
sand suddenly harden beneath their feet and
knew that they had reached the beach.</p>
<p>“You know,” the child whispered suddenly
and mysteriously back at them, “I don’t like
beaches at night. I lived by one when I was a
very little girl. There was a very, very old
woman lived there too. She told me many terrible
stories of the sea. And do you know, once
she told me something that has made me afraid
to be by the shore at night. It makes it spooky.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_153">[153]</div>
<p>She suddenly seized Lucile’s arm with a grip
that hurt while she whispered, “That’s why I
wanted you to come.</p>
<p>“She told me,” she went on, “that old woman
told me,” Lucile fancied she could see the child’s
frightened eyes gleaming out of the night,
“about the men who were lost at sea; brave
seamen who go on ships and brave soldiers too.
Their bodies get washed all about on the bottom
of the water; the fishes eat them and by
and by they are all gone. But their souls can’t
be eaten. No sir, no one can eat them. The
old woman told me that.”</p>
<p>The child paused. Her breath was coming
quick. Her grip tightened on Lucile’s arm as
she whispered:</p>
<p>“And sometimes I’m afraid one of their souls
will get washed right up on the sand at night.
That’s what frightens me so. What do you
think it would look like? What do you? Would
it be all yellow and fiery like a glowworm or
would it be just white, like a sheet?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_154">[154]</div>
<p>“Florence,” whispered Lucile, with a shiver,
“tell her to be quiet. She’ll drive me mad.”</p>
<p>But there was no need. There is much courage
to be gained by telling our secret fears to
others. The child had apparently relieved her
soul of a great burden, for she tramped on once
more in silence.</p>
<p>Several moments had passed when she suddenly
paused before some dark object which
stood out above the sand.</p>
<p>“A boat,” whispered Lucile.</p>
<p>“If you’ll just help me,” said the child, “we
can push it into the water.”</p>
<p>“What for?” Florence asked.</p>
<p>“Why, to go in, of course. It’s the only
way.”</p>
<p>For a moment the two girls stood there undecided.
Then Florence whispered:</p>
<p>“Oh, come on. It’s not rough. Might as
well see it through.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_155">[155]</div>
<h2 id="c16"><br/>CHAPTER XVI <br/>NIGHT VISITORS</h2>
<p>A moment later they were listening to the
creak of rusty oarlocks and the almost inaudible
dip-dip of the oars as the child herself sent the
boat out from the beach to bring it half about
and skirt the shore.</p>
<p>The boat was some sixteen feet long. A
clinker-built craft, it was light and buoyant, but
for all that, with three persons aboard, the rowing
of it was a tax on the strength of the child’s
slender arms. To add to her troubles, the water
began to rubber up a bit. Small waves came
slap-slapping the boat’s side. Once a bit of
spray broke in Florence’s face.</p>
<p>“Here,” she whispered, “it’s too heavy for
you. Let me have the oars, then you tell me
which way to go.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_156">[156]</div>
<p>“Straight ahead, only not too close in.
There’s a wall.”</p>
<p>“A wall?” Lucile thought to herself.
“Sounds like a prison. There’s a parole camp
out here somewhere. It can’t be!” she shuddered.
“No, of course not. What would that
old man and child have to do with prisons?”</p>
<p>Then, suddenly an ugly thought forced its
way into her mind. Perhaps after all these two
were members of a gang of robbers. Perhaps
a member of the gang had been in prison and
was at this moment in the parole camp. What
if this turned out to be a jail-breaking expedition?</p>
<p>“No, no!” she whispered as she shook herself
to free her mind of the thought.</p>
<p>“There’s the wall,” whispered Florence, as
a gray bulk loomed up to the right of them.</p>
<p>They passed it in silence. To Lucile they
seemed like marines running a blockade in time
of war.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_157">[157]</div>
<p>But Florence was busy with other thoughts.
That wall seemed vaguely familiar to her. It
was as if she had seen it in a dream, yet could
not recall the details of the dream.</p>
<p>A storm was brewing off in the west. Now
and then a distant flash of lightning lighted up
the surrounding waters. Of a sudden one of
these, more brilliant than the rest, lighted up
the shore, which, at a word from the child, they
were now nearing. What Florence saw was a
small, artificially dredged buoy with a dock and
large boathouse at the back.</p>
<p>Instantly what had been a dream became a
reality. She had seen that wall and the little
buoy and boathouse as well. Only the summer
before she had spent two nights and a day with
a party on the dunes. They had hired a motor
boat and had skirted the shore. This place had
been pointed out to her and described as the
most elaborate and beautiful summer cottage on
the shore.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_158">[158]</div>
<p>“Why,” she whispered, with a sigh of relief,
“this is the summer cottage of your friend,
R. Stanley Ramsey, Jr., the young man you
saw at Frank Morrow’s place and whom we
saw later at the mystery cottage. This isn’t any
brigandish thieving expedition. It is merely a
business trip. Probably the old man has sold
him one of his books.”</p>
<p>Lucile’s first reaction to this news was intense
relief. This was not a jail-breaking expedition;
in fact, was not to be in any way an adventure.
But the next instant doubt came.</p>
<p>“What would that young man be doing in a
summer cottage at this time of year?” she demanded.
“All the cottages must have been
closed for nearly a month. Society flies back
to the city in September. Besides, if it’s plain
business, why all this slipping in at the lake
front instead of passing through the gate?”</p>
<p>Florence was silent at that. She had no
answer.</p>
<p>“Does seem strange,” she mused. “There’s
a very high fence all about the place, but of
course there must be a gate.”</p>
<p>The next instant the boat grated on the sandy
beach and they were all climbing out.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_159">[159]</div>
<p>Lucile shivered as she caught sight of a large,
low, rambling building which lay well up from
the shore.</p>
<p>“What next?” she whispered to herself.</p>
<p>The storm was still rumbling in the west.
The sky to the east was clear. Out from the
black waters of the lake the moon was rolling.
Its light suddenly brightened up the shore. The
girls stared about them.</p>
<p>Up from the beach a little way was an affair
which resembled an Indian tepee. It was built
of boards and covered with birch bark. Its
white sides glimmered in the moonlight.
Through the shadows of trees and shrubbery
they made out a rustic pavilion and beyond that
the cottage which was built in rustic fashion as
befits a summer residence of a millionaire, although
little short of a mansion.</p>
<p>“Wouldn’t you like to see the inside of it?”
breathed Florence. “I’ve always wondered
what such a place was like.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” whispered Lucile, “but I’d prefer
daylight.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_160">[160]</div>
<p>They had been following the child. She had
led them as far as a rustic arbor. Built of
cedar poles with the bark left on, this presented
itself as an inviting place to rest.</p>
<p>“You stay here,” the child whispered. “I’ll
come back.”</p>
<p>She vanished into the shadows.</p>
<p>“Well!” whispered Lucile.</p>
<p>“What do you make of it?” Florence asked.</p>
<p>“Nothing yet.”</p>
<p>“Is someone here to meet her or is she
entering the place to get something?”</p>
<p>“Don’t know. I—”</p>
<p>Lucile stopped short. “Did you see that?”
she whispered tensely as she gripped her companion’s
arm.</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“There was a flash of light in the right wing
of the building, like the flicker of a match.”</p>
<p>“She can’t have reached there yet.”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>“Do you think we should warn her? I can’t
help thinking she’s going to break into the
place.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_161">[161]</div>
<p>“If she is, she should be caught. If we
think she is, perhaps we should notify the
police.”</p>
<p>“The police? In such a place? You forget
that we are many miles from the city and two or
three miles from even a railroad station. Guess
we’ll have to see it through.”</p>
<p>“Let’s do it then?”</p>
<p>The two girls rose and began making their
way stealthily in the direction the child had
taken.</p>
<p>Now and again they paused to listen. Once
they heard a sound like the creaking of a door.
Lucile caught a second flash of light.</p>
<p>They paused behind two pine trees not ten
feet from the side entrance.</p>
<p>The wind rustled in the pine trees. The
water broke ceaselessly on the shore. Otherwise
all was silence.</p>
<p>“Creepy,” whispered Lucile.</p>
<p>“Ghostly,” Florence shivered.</p>
<p>“I believe that door’s ajar.”</p>
<p>“It is.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_162">[162]</div>
<p>“Let’s creep up close.”</p>
<p>The next moment found them flattened
against the wall beside the door.</p>
<p>This door stood half open. Suddenly they
caught a flash of light. Leaning far over to
peer within, they saw the child bent over before
a huge bookcase. The room, half illumined
by her flashlight, was a large lounging room.
The trimmings were rustic and massive.
Beamed ceiling and heavy beams along the
walls were flanked by a huge fireplace at the
back. The furniture was in keeping, massive
mission oak with leather cushions on chairs.</p>
<p>“What a wonderful place!” Florence whispered.
“What wouldn’t one give to have it
for a study?”</p>
<p>The child had taken three books from the
shelves. All these she replaced. She was examining
the fourth when Lucile whispered,
“That’s the one she has come for.”</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“The light fell full upon the inside of the
cover. I saw the gargoyle there.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_163">[163]</div>
<p>The prediction proved a true one, for, after
carefully closing the case, the child switched
off the light.</p>
<p>Scarcely realizing what they were doing, the
girls lingered by the door. Then suddenly
Lucile realized their position. “She’ll be here
in a second,” she whispered.</p>
<p>They turned, but not quickly enough, for of a
sudden a glare of light from a powerful electric
flashlight blinded them while a masculine voice
with a distinctly youthful ring to it demanded:</p>
<p>“Who’s there?”</p>
<p>To their consternation, the girls felt the child
bump into them as she backed away and there
they all stood framed in a circle of light.</p>
<p>The glaring light with darkness behind it
made it impossible for them to see the new arrival
but Lucile knew instantly from the voice
that it was the millionaire’s son.</p>
<p>For a full moment no one spoke. The tick-tock
of a prodigious clock in one corner of the
room sounded out like the ringing of a curfew.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_164">[164]</div>
<p>“Oh! I see,” came at last in youthful tones
from the corner; “just some girls. And pretty
ones, too, I’ll be bound. Came to borrow a book,
did you? Who let you in, I wonder. But never
mind. Suppose you’re here for a week-end at
one of the cottages and needed some reading
matter. Rather unconventional way of getting
it, but it’s all right. Just drop it in the mail box
at the gate when you’re done with it.”</p>
<p>The girls suddenly became conscious of the
fact that the child was doing her best to push
them out of the door.</p>
<p>Yielding to her backward shoves, they sank
away into the shadows and, scarcely believing
their senses, found themselves apparently quite
free to go their way.</p>
<p>“That,” breathed Florence, “was awful decent
of him.”</p>
<p>“Decent?” Lucile exploded. “It—it was
grand. Look here,” she turned almost savagely
upon the child, “you didn’t intend to give that
book back but you’re going to do it. You’re
going to put it in that mail box to-night.”</p>
<p>“Oh, no, I’m not,” the child said cheerfully.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_165">[165]</div>
<p>“You—you’re not?” Lucile stammered.
“What right have you to keep it?”</p>
<p>“What right has he? It does not belong to
him. It belongs to Monsieur Le Bon.”</p>
<p>“Why, that’s nonsense! That—” Lucile
broke off suddenly. “Look!” she exclaimed.
“The boat’s gone!”</p>
<p>It was all too true. They had reached the
beach where they had left the boat. It had
vanished.</p>
<p>“So we are prisoners after all,” Florence
whispered.</p>
<p>“And, and he was just making fun of us.
He knew we couldn’t get away,” breathed
Lucile, sinking hopelessly down upon the sand.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_166">[166]</div>
<h2 id="c17"><br/>CHAPTER XVII <br/>A BATTLE IN THE NIGHT</h2>
<p>“Oh, brace up!” exclaimed Florence, a note
of impatience creeping into her voice. “We’ll
get out of this place some way. Perhaps the
boat wasn’t taken. Perhaps it has—”</p>
<p>She stopped to stare away across the water.</p>
<p>“I believe it’s out there away down the beach.
Look, Lucile. Look sharp.”</p>
<p>The moon had gone behind a small cloud. As
it came out they could see clearly the dark bulk
of the boat dancing on the water, which was
by now roughening up before the rising storm.</p>
<p>“It’s out there,” exclaimed Florence. “We
failed to pull it ashore far enough. There is
a side sweep to the waves that carried it out.
We must get it.”</p>
<p>“Yes, oh, yes, we must!” the child exclaimed.
“It wasn’t mine; it was borrowed.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_167">[167]</div>
<p>“You borrow a lot of things,” exclaimed
Florence.</p>
<p>“Oh, no, indeed. Not many, not hardly any
at all.”</p>
<p>“But, Florence, how can we get it?” protested
Lucile.</p>
<p>“I’m a strong swimmer. I swam a mile once.
The boat’s out only a few hundred yards. It
will be easy.”</p>
<p>“Not with your clothes on.”</p>
<p>Florence did not answer. She threw a glance
toward the millionaire’s cottage. All was dark
there.</p>
<p>“Here!” Lucile felt a garment thrust into
her hands, then another and another.</p>
<p>“Florence, you mustn’t.”</p>
<p>“It’s the only way.”</p>
<p>A moment later Florence’s white body
gleamed in the moonlight as she raced away
down the beach to gain the point nearest the
boat.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_168">[168]</div>
<p>To the listening ears of Lucile and the child
there came the sound of a splash, then the slow
plash, plash, plash of a swimmer’s strokes.
Florence was away and swimming strong. But
the wind from off a point had caught the boat
and was carrying it out from shore, driving it
on faster than she knew.</p>
<p>Confident of her ability to reach the goal in
a mere breath of time, she struck out at once
with the splendid swing of the Australian crawl.
Trained to the pink of perfection, her every
muscle in condition, she laughed at the wavelets
that lifted her up only to drop her down again
and now and again to dash a saucy handful of
spray in her face. She laughed and even
hummed a snatch of an old sea song. She was
as much at home in the water as in her room
at the university.</p>
<p>But now, as she got farther from the shore,
the waves grew in size and force. They impeded
her progress. The shore was protected
by a rocky point farther up the beach. She
was rapidly leaving that protection.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_169">[169]</div>
<p>Throwing herself high out of the water, she
looked for the boat. A little cry of consternation
escaped her lips. She had expected to find
it close at hand. It seemed as far away as
when she had first seen it.</p>
<p>“It’s the wind off the point,” she breathed.
“It’s taking it out to sea. It—it’s going to be
a battle, a real scrap.”</p>
<p>Once more she struck out with the powerful
stroke which carries one far but draws heavily
upon his emergency fund of energy.</p>
<p>For three full moments she battled the waves;
then, all but breathless, she slipped over on her
back to do the dead man’s float.</p>
<p>“Just for a few seconds. Got to save my
strength, but I can’t waste time.”</p>
<p>Now for the first time she realized that there
was a possibility that she would lose this fight.
The realization of what it meant if she did lose,
swept over her and left her cold and numb. To
go back was impossible; the wind and waves
were too strong for that. To fail to reach the
boat meant death.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_170">[170]</div>
<p>Turning back again into swimming position,
she struck out once more. But this time
it was not the crawl. That cost too much.
With an easy, hand-over-hand swing which
taxed the reserve forces little more than floating,
she set her teeth hard, resolved slowly but
surely to win her way to the boat and to safety.</p>
<p>Moments passed. Long, agonizing moments.</p>
<p>Lucile on the shore, by the gleam of a flare
of lightning, caught now and then a glimpse of
the swimmer. Little by little she became conscious
of the real situation. When it dawned
upon her that Florence was in real peril, she
thought of rushing to the cottage and calling
to her assistance any who might be there. Then
she looked at the bundle of clothing in her arms
and flushed.</p>
<p>“She’d never forgive me,” she whispered.</p>
<p>Florence, still battling, felt the spray break
over her, but still kept on the even swing. Now
and again, high on the crest of a wave, she
saw the boat. She was cheered by the fact that
each time it appeared to loom a little larger.</p>
<p>“Gaining,” she whispered. “Fifty yards to
go!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_171">[171]</div>
<p>Again moments passed and again she whispered,
“Gaining. Thirty yards.”</p>
<p>A third time she whispered, “Twenty yards.”</p>
<p>After that it was a quiet, muscle-straining,
heart-breaking, silent battle, which caused her
very senses to reel. Indeed at times she appeared
conscious of only one thing, the
mechanical swing of her arms, the kick, kick
of her feet. They seemed but mechanical attachments
run by some electrical power.</p>
<p>When at last the boat loomed black and large
on the crest of a wave just above her she had
barely enough brain energy left to order her
arms into a new motion.</p>
<p>Striking upward with her right hand, she
gripped the craft’s side. The next instant, with
a superhuman effort, without overturning it she
threw herself into the boat, there to fall panting
across a seat.</p>
<p>“Wha—what a battle!” she gasped. “But
I won! I won!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_172">[172]</div>
<p>For two minutes she lay there motionless.
Then, drawing herself stiffly up to a sitting
position, she adjusted the oars to their oarlocks
and, bending forward, threw all her magnificent
strength into the business of battling the waves
and bringing the boat safely ashore.</p>
<p>There are few crafts more capable of riding
a stormy sea than is a clinker-built rowboat.
Light as a cork, it rides the waves like a seagull.
Florence was not long in finding this out. Her
trip ashore was one of joyous triumph. She
had fought a hard physical battle and won.
This was her hour of triumph. Her lips
thrilled a “Hi-le-hi-le-hi-lo” which was heard
with delight by her friends on land. Her bare
arms worked like twin levers to a powerful
engine, as she brought the boat around and shot
it toward shore.</p>
<p>A moment for rejoicing, two for dressing,
then they all three tumbled into the boat to make
the tossing trip round the wall to shore on the
other side.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_173">[173]</div>
<p>For the moment the book tightly pressed
under the child’s arm was forgotten. Florence
talked of swimming and rowing. She talked
of plans for a possible summer’s outing which
included days upon the water and weeks within
the forest primeval.</p>
<p>As they left the boat on the beach, they could
see that the storm was passing to the north of
them. It had, however, hidden the moon. The
path through the forest and across the river
was engulfed in darkness.</p>
<p>Once more the child prattled of haunts,
spooks, and goblins, but for once Lucile’s nerves
were not disturbed. Her mind had gone back
to the old problems, the mystery of the gargoyle
and all the knotty questions which had come to
be associated with it.</p>
<p>This night a new mystery had thrust its head
up out of the dark and an old theory had been
exploded. She had thought that the young
millionaire’s son might be in league with the
old man and the child in carrying away and
disposing of old and valuable books, but here
was the child coming out to this all but deserted
cottage at night to take a book from the young
man’s library.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_174">[174]</div>
<p>“He hasn’t a thing in the world to do with
it,” she told herself. “He—”</p>
<p>She paused in her perplexing problem to grip
her companion’s arm and whisper, “What was
that?”</p>
<p>They were nearing the plank bridge. She
felt certain that she heard a footstep upon it.
But now as she listened she heard nothing but
the onrush of distant waters.</p>
<p>“Just your nerves,” answered Florence.</p>
<p>“It was not. I was not thinking of the
child’s foolish chatter. I was thinking of our
problem, of the gargoyle’s secret. Someone is
crossing the bridge.”</p>
<p>Even as she spoke, as if in proof of her
declaration, there came a faint pat-pat-pat, as
of someone moving on the bridge on tiptoe.</p>
<p>“Someone is shadowing us,” Lucile whispered.</p>
<p>“Looks that way.”</p>
<p>“Who is it?”</p>
<p>“Someone from the cottage perhaps. Watching
to see what the child does with the book.
She must take it back.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_175">[175]</div>
<p>“Yes, she must.”</p>
<p>“It might be,” and here even stout-hearted
Florence shuddered, “it might be that someone
had shadowed us all the way from the city.”</p>
<p>“The one who followed me the night I got
caught in that wretched woman’s house, and
other times?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“But he couldn’t have gone all the way, not
up to the cottage. He couldn’t get through the
fence and there was no other boat.”</p>
<p>“Well, anyway, whoever it is, we must go on.
Won’t do any good standing here shivering.”</p>
<p>Once more they pressed into the dark and
once more Lucile resumed her attempt to disentangle
the many problems which lay before
her.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_176">[176]</div>
<h2 id="c18"><br/>CHAPTER XVIII <br/>FRANK MORROW JOINS IN THE HUNT</h2>
<p>That she had reached the limit of her resources,
her power to reason and to endure,
Lucile knew right well. To go on as she had
been day after day, each day adding some new
responsibility to her already overburdened
shoulders, was to invite disaster. It was not
fair to others. The set of Shakespeare, the
volume of Portland charts, the hand-bound
volume from the bindery and this book just
taken from the summer home of the millionaire,
were all for the moment in the hands of the old
man and the child. How long would they remain
there? No one could tell save the old
man and perhaps the child.</p>
<p>That she had had no part whatever in the
taking of any of them, unless her accompanying
of the child on this trip might be called taking
a part, she knew quite well. Yet one is responsible
for what one knows.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_177">[177]</div>
<p>“I should have told what I knew about the
set of Shakespeare in the beginning,” she chided
herself. “Then there would have been no other
problems. All the other books would be at this
moment in their proper places and the old man
and child would be—”</p>
<p>She could not say the words, “in jail.” It
was too terrible to contemplate! That man
and that child in jail! And, yet, she suddenly
remembered the child’s declaration that she
would not return the book to the summer cottage.
She had said the book belonged to the
old man. Perhaps, after all, it did. She had
seen the millionaire’s son in the mystery room
talking to the old man. Perhaps, after all, he
had borrowed the book and the child had been
sent for it. There was some consolation in that
thought.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_178">[178]</div>
<p>“But that does not solve any of the other
problems,” she told herself, “and, besides, if
she has a right to the book, why all this creeping
up to the cottage by night by way of the
water. And why did he assume that she was
borrowing it?”</p>
<p>And so, after all her speculation, she found
herself just where she had left off; the tangle
was no less a tangle than before.</p>
<p>“Question is,” she whispered to herself, “am
I going to go to the police or to the university
authorities with the story and have these
mysterious people arrested, or am I not?”</p>
<p>They reached the station just as the last train
was pulling in. Florence and the child had
climbed aboard and Lucile had her hand on the
rail when she saw a skulking figure emerge from
the shadows of the station. The person, whoever
he might be, darted down the track to
climb upon the back platform just as the train
pulled out.</p>
<p>“That,” Lucile told herself, “is the person
who crossed the bridge ahead of us. He is
spying on us. I wonder who he is and what
he knows.” A cold chill swept over her as if
a winter blast had passed down the car.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_179">[179]</div>
<p>When Florence had been told of what Lucile
had seen, she suggested that they go back and
see who the man was.</p>
<p>“What’s the use?” said Lucile. “We can’t
prove that he’s following us. It would only get
us into another mess and goodness knows we’re
in enough now.”</p>
<p>So, with the mystery child curled up fast
asleep in a seat before them, hugging the newly
acquired book as though it were a doll, they
rattled back toward the city.</p>
<p>In spite of the many problems perplexing her,
Lucile soon fell asleep. Florence remained to
keep vigil over her companion, the child and
the supposedly valuable book.</p>
<p>They saw nothing more of the mysterious
person who had apparently been following them.
Arrived at the city, they were confronted with
the problem of the immediate possession of the
latest of the strangely acquired volumes.
Should the child be allowed to carry it to the
mysterious cottage or should they insist on
taking it to their room for safe keeping? They
talked the matter over in whispers just before
arriving at their station.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_180">[180]</div>
<p>“If you attempt to make her give it up,”
Florence whispered, “she’ll make a scene. She’s
just that sort of a little minx.”</p>
<p>“I suppose so,” said Lucile wearily.</p>
<p>“Might as well let her keep it. It’s as safe
as any of the books are at that cottage, and,
really, it’s not as much our business as you
keep thinking it is. We didn’t take the book.
True, we went along with her, but she would
have gone anyway. We’re not the guardians of
all the musty old books in Christendom. Let’s
forget at least this one and let that rich young
man get it back as best he can. He took the
chance in allowing her to take it away.”</p>
<p>Lucile did not entirely agree to all this but
was too tired to resist her companion’s logic,
so the book went away under the child’s arm.</p>
<p>After a very few hours of restless sleep,
Lucile awoke with one resolve firmly implanted
in her mind: She would take Frank Morrow’s
book back to him and place it in his hand, then
she would tell him the part of the story that
he did not already know. After that she would
attempt to follow his advice in the matter.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_181">[181]</div>
<p>With the thin volume of “The Compleat
Angler” in the pocket of her coat, she made her
way at an early hour to his shop. He had
barely opened up for the day. No customers
were yet about. Having done his nine holes of
golf before coming down and having done them
exceedingly well, he was feeling in a particularly
good humor.</p>
<p>“Well, my young friend,” he smiled, “what
is it I may do for you this morning? Why!
Why!” he exclaimed, turning her suddenly
about to the light, “you’ve been losing sleep
about something. Tut! Tut! That will never
do.”</p>
<p>She smiled in spite of herself. Here was a
young-old man who was truly a dear. “Why
I came,” she smiled again, as she drew the
valuable book from her pocket, “to return your
book and to tell you just how I came to have it.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_182">[182]</div>
<p>“That sounds interesting.” Frank Morrow,
rubbing his hands together as one does who is
anticipating a good yarn, then led her to a chair.</p>
<p>Fifteen minutes later, as the story was
finished, he leaned back in his chair and gave
forth a merry chuckle as he gurgled, “Fine!
Oh, fine! That’s the best little mystery story
I’ve heard in a long time. It’s costing me two
hundred dollars, but I don’t begrudge it, not a
penny of it. The yarn’s really worth it. Besides,
I shall make a cool hundred on the book
still, which isn’t so bad.”</p>
<p>“Two hundred dollars!” exclaimed Lucile
in great perplexity.</p>
<p>“Yes, the reward for the return of the book.
Now that the mystery is closed and the book
returned, I shall pay it to you, of course.”</p>
<p>“Oh, the reward,” she said slowly. “Yes,
of course. But, really, the mystery is not ended—it
has only just begun.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_183">[183]</div>
<p>“As you like it,” the shopkeeper smiled back.
“As matters go, I should call the matter closed.
I have a book stolen. You recover it and are
able to tell me that the persons who stole it are
an old man, too feeble to work, and an innocent
child. You are able to put your finger on them
and to say, ‘These are the persons.’ I can have
them arrested if I choose. I too am an old
man; not so old as your Frenchman, yet old
enough to know something of what he must
feel, with the pinch of age and poverty dragging
at the tail of his coat. I happen to love all
little children and to feel their suffering quite
as much as they do when they must suffer. I
do not choose to have those two people arrested.
That ends the affair, does it not? You have
your reward; I my book; they go free, not because
justice says they should but because a
soft heart of an old man says they must.” He
smiled and brushed his eyes with the back of
his hands.</p>
<p>Having nothing to say, Lucile sat there in
silence.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_184">[184]</div>
<p>Presently Frank Morrow began, “You think
this is unusual because you do not know how
common it is. You have never run a bookstore.
You would perhaps be a little surprised to have
me tell you that almost every day of the year
some book, more or less valuable, is stolen,
either from a library or from a bookshop. It
is done, I suppose, because it seems so very
easy. Here is a little volume worth, we will
say, ten dollars. It will slip easily into your
pocket. When the shopkeeper is not looking,
it does slip in. Then again, when he is not
paying any particular attention to you, you
slip out upon the street. You drink in a few
breaths of fresh air, cast a glance to right and
left of you, then walk away. You think the
matter is closed. In reality it has just begun.</p>
<p>“In the first place, you probably did not take
the book so you might have it for your library.
Collectors of rare books are seldom thieves.
They are often cranks, but honest cranks. More
books are stolen by students than by any other
class of people. They have a better knowledge
of the value of books than the average run of
folks, and they more often need the money to
be obtained from the sale of such books.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_185">[185]</div>
<p>“Nothing seems easier than to take a book
from one store, to carry it to another store six
or eight miles away and sell it, then to wash
your hands of the whole matter. Nothing in
reality is harder. All the bookstore keepers of
every large city are bound together in a loosely
organized society for mutual protection. The
workings of their ‘underground railways’ are
swifter and more certain than the United States
Secret Service. The instant I discover that one
of my books has been carried off, I sit down
and put the name of it on a multigraph. This
prints the name on enough post cards to go to
all the secondhand bookshops in the city. When
the shopkeepers get these cards, they read the
name and know the book has been stolen. If
they have already bought it, they start a search
for the person who sold it to them. They
generally locate him. If the book has not yet
been disposed of, every shopkeeper is constantly
on the lookout for it until it turns up. So,” he
smiled, “you see how easy it is to steal books.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_186">[186]</div>
<p>“And yet they will steal them,” he went on.
“Why,” he smiled reminiscently, “not so long
ago I had the same book stolen twice within
the week.”</p>
<p>“Did you find out who it was?”</p>
<p>“In both cases, at once.”</p>
<p>“Different people.”</p>
<p>“Entirely different; never met, as far as I
know. The first one was an out and out rascal;
he wanted the money for needless luxuries. We
treated him rough. Very rough! The other
was a sick student who, we found, had used
the money to pay carfare to his home. I did
not even trouble to find out where his home was;
just paid the ten dollars to the man who had
purchased the book from him and charged it
off on my books. That,” he stroked his chin
thoughtfully, “that doesn’t seem like common
sense—or justice, either, yet it is the way men
do; anyway it’s the way I do.”</p>
<p>Again there was silence.</p>
<p>“But,” Lucile hesitated, “this case is different.
The mystery still exists. Why does
Monsieur Le Bon want the books? He has
not sold a single volume. Something must be
done about the books from the university, the
Scientific Library and the Bindery.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_187">[187]</div>
<p>“That’s true,” said Frank Morrow thoughtfully.
“There are angles to the case that are
interesting, very interesting. Mind if I
smoke?”</p>
<p>Lucile shook her head.</p>
<p>“Thanks.” He filled and lighted his pipe.
“Mind going over the whole story again?”</p>
<p>“No, not a bit.”</p>
<p>She began at the beginning and told her story.
This time he interrupted her often and it
seemed that, as he asked question after question,
his interest grew as the story progressed.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_188">[188]</div>
<p>“Now I’ll tell you what to do,” he held up
a finger for emphasis as she concluded. He
leaned far forward and there was a light of
adventure in his eye. “I’ll tell you what you
do. Here’s a hundred dollars.” He drew a
roll of bills from his pocket. “You take this
money and buy yourself a ticket to New York.
You can spare the week-end at least. When
you get to New York, go to Burtnoe’s Book
Store and ask for Roderick Vining. He sold
me that copy of ‘The Compleat Angler.’ I
sent out a bid for such a book when I had a
customer for it and he was one of two who responded.
His book was the best of the two, so
I took it. He is in charge of fine binding in
the biggest book store in his city. They deal
in new books, not secondhand ones, but he
dabbles in rare volumes on the side. Tell him
that I want to know where he got the book;
take the book along, to show you are the real
goods. When he tells you where, then find
that person if you can and ask him the same
question. Keep going until you discover something.
You may have to hunt up a half dozen
former owners but sooner or later you will come
to an end, to the place where that book crossed
the sea. And unless I miss my guess, that’s
mighty important.</p>
<p>“I am sorry to have to send you—wish I
could go myself,” he said after a moment’s
silence. “It will be an interesting hunt and may
even be a trifle dangerous, though I think not.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_189">[189]</div>
<p>“But this money, this hundred dollars?”
Lucile hesitated, fingering the bills.</p>
<p>“Oh, that?” he smiled. “That’s the last of
my profit on the little book. We’ll call that devoted
to the cause of science or lost books or
whatever you like.</p>
<p>“But,” he called after her, as she left the
shop, “be sure to keep your fingers tight
closed around the little book.”</p>
<p>This, Lucile was destined to discover, was
not so easily done.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_190">[190]</div>
<h2 id="c19"><br/>CHAPTER XIX <br/>LUCILE SOLVES NO MYSTERY</h2>
<p>Buried deep beneath the blankets of lower 9,
car 20, bound for New York, Lucile for a time
that night allowed her thoughts to swing along
with the roll of the Century Limited. She
found herself puzzled at the unexpected turn
of events. She had never visited New York and
she welcomed the opportunity. There was more
to be learned by such a visit, brief though it was
bound to be, than in a whole month of poring
over books. But why was she going? What
did Frank Morrow hope to prove by any discoveries
she might make regarding the former
ownership of the book she carried in her pocket?</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_191">[191]</div>
<p>She had never doubted but that the aged
Frenchman when badly in need of funds had
sold the book to some American. That he
should have repented of the transaction and
had wished the book back in his library, seemed
natural enough. Lacking funds to purchase it
back, he had found another way. That the
ends justified the means Lucile very much
doubted, yet there was something to be said for
this old man because of his extreme age. It
might be that he had reached the period of his
second childhood and all things appeared to
belong to him.</p>
<p>“But here,” she told herself, rising to a sitting
posture and trying to stare out into the
fleeing darkness, “here we suddenly discover
that the book came from New York. What is
one to make of that? Very simple, in a way,
I suppose. This aged Frenchman enters
America by way of New York. He needs funds
to pay his passage and the freight on his books
to Chicago, so he sells one or two books to procure
the money. Yet I doubt if that would be
Frank Morrow’s solution of the problem.
Surely he would not sacrifice a hundred dollars
to send me to New York merely to find out
who the man was to whom the old Frenchman
had sold the book. He must think there is more
to it than that—and perhaps there is. Ho,
well,” she sighed, as she settled back on her
pillow, “let that come when it comes. I am
going to see New York—N-e-w Y-o-r-k—”
she spelled it out; “and that is a grand and
glorious privilege.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_192">[192]</div>
<p>The next moment the swing of the Century
Limited as it click-clicked over the rails and the
onward rush of scenery meant nothing to her.
She was fast asleep.</p>
<p>Morning found her much refreshed. After
a half hour in the washroom and another in
the diner, over coffee and toast, she felt equal
to the facing of any events which might chance
to cross her path that day. There are days in
all our lives that are but blanks. They pass and
we forget them forever. There are other days
that are so pressed full and running over with
vivid experience that every hour, as we look
back upon it, seems a “crowded hour.” Such
days we never forget, and this was destined to
be such a day in the life of Lucile.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_193">[193]</div>
<p>Precisely at nine o’clock she was at the door
of Burtnoe’s Book Store. To save time she had
taken a taxi. The clerk who unfastened the
door looked at her curiously. When she asked
for Roderick Vining, she was directed by a nod
to the back corner of the room.</p>
<p>She made her way into a square alcove where
an electric light shining brightly from the ceiling
brought out a gleam of real gold from the
backs of thousands of books done in fine
bindings.</p>
<p>Bending over a desk telephone was the form
of a tall, slender-shouldered man.</p>
<p>“Are—are you Roderick Vining?” she
faltered, at the same time drawing “The Compleat
Angler” half out of her pocket.</p>
<p>His only answer was to hold up one long,
tapering finger as a signal for silence. Someone
was speaking at the other end of the wire.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_194">[194]</div>
<p>With burning cheeks and a whispered apology,
the girl sank back into the shadows. Her courage
faltered. This was her introduction to
New York; she had made a faux pas as her
first move; and this man, Roderick Vining, was
no ordinary person, she could see that. There
was time to study him now. His face was long,
his features thin, but his forehead was high.
He impressed her, seated though he was, as one
who was habitually in a hurry. Pressing matters
were, without doubt, constantly upon his
mind.</p>
<p>Now he was speaking. She could not avoid
hearing what he was saying without leaving the
alcove, and he had not requested her to do that.</p>
<p>“Why, yes, Mrs. Nelson,” he was saying,
“we can get the set for you. Of course you
understand that is a very special, de luxe edition;
only three hundred sets struck off, then
the plates destroyed. The cost would be considerable.”</p>
<p>Again he pressed the receiver to his ear.</p>
<p>“Why, I should say, three thousand dollars;
not less, certainly. All right, madam, I will
order the set at once. Your address? Yes,
certainly, I have it. Thank you. Good-bye.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_195">[195]</div>
<p>He placed the receiver on its hook with as
little noise as if it had been padded, then turned
to Lucile. “Pardon me; you wanted to see me?
Sorry to keep you waiting.”</p>
<p>“Frank Morrow sent me here to ask you
where you purchased this book.” She held the
thin volume out for his inspection.</p>
<p>He did not appear to look at it at all. Instead,
he looked her squarely in the eye.
“Frank Morrow sent you all the way from
Chicago that you might ask me that question?
How extraordinary! Why did he not wire me?
He knows I would tell him.” A slight frown
appeared on his forehead.</p>
<p>“I—I am—” she was about to tell him
that she was to ask the next person where he
got it, but thinking better of it said instead,
“That is only part of my mission to New York.
Won’t you please look at the book and answer
my question?”</p>
<p>Still he did not look at the book but to her
utter astonishment said, while a smile illumined
his face, “I bought that copy of ‘The Compleat
Angler’ right here in this alcove.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_196">[196]</div>
<p>“From whom?” she half whispered.</p>
<p>“From old Dan Whitner, who keeps a bookshop
back on Walton place.”</p>
<p>“Thank you,” she murmured, much relieved.
Here was no mystery; one bookshop selling a
book to another. There was more to it. She
must follow on.</p>
<p>“I suppose,” he smiled, as if reading her
thoughts, “that you’d like me to tell you where
Dan got it, but that I cannot answer. You must
ask him yourself. His address is 45 Walton
place. It is ten minutes’ walk from here; three
blocks to your right as you leave our door, then
two to your left, a block and a half to your left
again and you are there. The sign’s easy to
read—just ‘Dan Whitner, Books.’ Dan’s a
prince of a chap. He’ll do anything for a girl
like you; would for anyone, for that matter.
Ever been to New York before?” he asked
suddenly.</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>“Come alone?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_197">[197]</div>
<p>He whistled softly to himself, “You western
girls will be the death of us.”</p>
<p>“When there’s some place that needs to be
gone to we go to it,” she smiled half defiantly.
“There’s nothing so terrible about that, is
there?”</p>
<p>“No, I suppose not,” he admitted. “Well,
you go see Dan. He’ll tell you anything he
knows.” With that he turned to his work.</p>
<p>Lucile, however, was not ready to go. She
had one more question to ask, even though it
might be another faux pas.</p>
<p>“Would you—would you mind telling me
how you knew what book I had when you did
not see it?” she said.</p>
<p>“I did see it,” he smiled, as if amused. “I
didn’t see it when you expected me to see it,
that was all. I saw it long before—saw it
when I was at the phone. It’s a habit we book
folks have of doing one thing with our ears
and another with our eyes. We have to or we’d
never get through in a day if we didn’t. Your
little book protruded from your pocket. I knew
you were going to say something about it; perhaps
offer to sell it, so I looked at it. Simple,
wasn’t it? No great mystery about it. Hope
your other mysteries will prove as simple. Got
any friends in New York?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_198">[198]</div>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>He shook his head in a puzzled manner, but
allowed her to leave the room without further
comment.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_199">[199]</div>
<h2 id="c20"><br/>CHAPTER XX <br/>“THAT WAS THE MAN”</h2>
<p>Dan Whitner was a somewhat shabby likeness
of Roderick Vining; that is, he was a gray-haired,
stoop-shouldered, young-old man who
knew a great deal about books. His shelves
were dusty, so too was a mouse-colored jacket.</p>
<p>Yes, he “remembered the book quite well.”
Lucile began to get the notion that once one of
these book wizards set eyes upon an ancient
volume he never forgot it.</p>
<p>“Strange case, that,” smiled Dan as he
looked at her over his glasses.</p>
<p>“Ah! Here is where I learn something of
real importance,” was the girl’s mental comment.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_200">[200]</div>
<p>“You see,” Dan went on, “I sometimes have
dinner with a very good friend who also loves
books—the Reverend Dr. Edward Edwards.
Dinner, on such occasions, is served on a tea-wagon
in his library; sort of makes a fellow feel
at home, don’t you know?</p>
<p>“Well, one of these evenings when the good
doctor had an exceptional roast of mutton and
a hubbard squash just in from the farm and a
wee bit of something beside, he had me over.
While we waited to be served I was glancing
over his books and chanced to note the book you
now have in your hand. ‘I see,’ I said to him
jokingly, ‘that you have come into a legacy.’</p>
<p>“‘Why, no,’ he says looking up surprised.
‘Why should you think that?’</p>
<p>“I pointed to this little copy of ‘The Compleat
Angler’ and said, ‘Only them as are very
rich can afford to possess such as this one.’</p>
<p>“He looked at me in surprise, then smiled
as he said, ‘I did pay a little too much for it,
I guess, but the print was rather unusual; besides,
it’s a great book. I don’t mind admitting
that it cost me fifteen dollars.’</p>
<p>“‘Fifteen dollars!’ I exploded.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_201">[201]</div>
<p>“‘Got trimmed, did I?’ he smiled back.
‘Well, you know the old saying about the clergy,
no business heads on them, so we’ll let it stand
at that.’</p>
<p>“‘Trimmed nothing!’ I fairly yelled. ‘The
book’s a small fortune in itself; one of those
rare finds. Why—I’d venture to risk six
hundred dollars on it myself without opening
the covers of it. It’s a first edition or I’m not
a book seller at all.’</p>
<p>“‘Sold!’ he cried in high glee. ‘There are
three families in my parish who are in dire
need. This book was sent, no doubt, to assist
me in tiding them over.’</p>
<p>“So that’s how I came into possession of the
book. I sold it to Vining at Burtnoe’s, as you
no doubt know.”</p>
<p>“But,” exclaimed Lucile breathlessly, feeling
that the scent was growing fresher all the while,
“from whom did the doctor purchase it at so
ridiculous a price?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_202">[202]</div>
<p>“From a fool bookstorekeeper of course; one
of those upstarts who know nothing at all about
books; who handle them as pure merchandise,
purchased at so much and sold for forty and
five per cent more, regardless of actual value.
He’d bought it to help out some ignorant
foreigner, a Spaniard I believe. He’d paid ten
dollars and had been terribly pleased within
himself when he made five on the deal.”</p>
<p>“Who was he?” Lucile asked eagerly, “and
where was his shop?”</p>
<p>“That I didn’t trouble to find out. Very
likely he’s out of business by now. Such shops
are like grass in autumn, soon die down and
the snow covers them up. The doctor could
tell you though. I’ll give you his address and
you may go and ask him.”</p>
<p>The short afternoon was near spent and the
shades of night were already falling when at
last Lucile entered the shop of the unfortunate
bookseller who had not realized the value of the
little book. Lunch had delayed her, then the
doctor had been out making calls and had kept
her waiting for two hours. The little shop had
been hard to find, but here at last she was.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_203">[203]</div>
<p>A pitiful shop it was, possessing but a few
hundred volumes and presided over by a grimy-fingered
man who might but the day before
have been promoted from the garbage wagon
so far as personal appearance was concerned.
Indeed, as Lucile looked over the place she was
seized with the crazy notion that the whole place,
books, shelves and proprietor, had but recently
climbed down from the junk cart.</p>
<p>“And yet,” she told herself, “it was from
this very heap of dusty paper and cardboard
that this precious bit of literature which I have
in my pocket, was salvaged. I must not forget
that.</p>
<p>“I believe,” she told herself with an excited
intake of breath, “that I am coming close to
the end of my search. All day I have been
descending step by step; first the wonderful
Burtnoe’s Book Store with all its magnificence
and its genius of a bookman, then Dan Whitner
and the doctor, now this place, and then perhaps,
whoever the person is who sold the book to this
pitiful specimen of a bookseller.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_204">[204]</div>
<p>Her heart skipped a beat as the bookman,
having caught sight of her, began to amble in
her direction.</p>
<p>She made her question short and to the point.
“Where did you get this book?”</p>
<p>“That book?” he took it and turned it over
in his hand. He scratched his head. “That,
why that book must have been one I bought
with a lot at an auction sale last week. Want’a
buy it?”</p>
<p>“No. No!” exclaimed Lucile, seizing the
book. “It’s not your book. It is mine but you
had it once and sold it. What I wish to know
is, where did you get it?”</p>
<p>Three customers were thumbing through the
books. One seated at a table turned and looked
up. His face impressed the girl at once as
being particularly horrible. Dark featured,
hook-nosed, with a blue birthmark covering half
his chin, he inspired her with an almost uncontrollable
fear.</p>
<p>“We—we—” she faltered “—may we
not step back under the light where you can see
the book better?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_205">[205]</div>
<p>The shopkeeper followed her in stolid silence.</p>
<p>It was necessary for her to tell him the whole
story of the purchase and sale of the book before
he recognized it as having once been on
his shelves.</p>
<p>“Oh, yes,” he exclaimed at last. “Made five
dollars on her. Thought I had made a mistake,
but didn’t; not that time I didn’t. Where’d
I get her? Let’s see?”</p>
<p>As he stood there attempting to recall the
name of the purchaser, Lucile’s gaze strayed
to an opening between two rows of books. Instantly
her eyes were caught as a bird’s by a
serpent, as she found herself looking into a pair
of cruel, crafty, prying eyes. They vanished instantly
but left her with a cold chill running
up her spine. It was the man who had been
seated at the table, but why had he been spying?
She had not long to wait before a possible
solution was given her.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_206">[206]</div>
<p>“I know!” exclaimed the shopkeeper at this
instant, “I bought it from a foreigner. Bought
two others from him, too. Made good money
on ’em all, too. Why!” he exclaimed suddenly,
“he was in here when you came. Had another
book under his arm, he did; wanted to sell it,
I judge. I was just keeping him waiting a
little so’s he wouldn’t think I wanted it too bad.
If they think you want their books bad they
stick for a big price.” His voice had dropped
to a whisper; his eyes had narrowed to what
was meant to be a very wise-meaning expression.</p>
<p>“May be here yet.” He darted around the
stand of books.</p>
<p>“That’s him just going out the door. Hey,
you!” he shouted after the man.</p>
<p>Paying not the least attention, the person
passed out, slamming the door after him.</p>
<p>Passing rapidly down the room, the proprietor
poked his head out of the door and shouted
twice. After listening for a moment he backed
into the room and shut the door.</p>
<p>“Gone,” he muttered. “Worse luck to me.
Sometimes we wait too long and sometimes not
long enough. Now some other lucky dog will
get that book.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_207">[207]</div>
<p>In the meantime Lucile had glanced about
the shop. Two persons were reading beneath
a lamp in the corner. Neither was the man
with the birthmark. It was natural enough to
conclude that it was he who had left the room.</p>
<p>“Did he have a birthmark on his chin, this
man you bought the book from?” she asked
as the proprietor returned.</p>
<p>“Yes, ma’am, he did.”</p>
<p>“Then I saw him here a moment ago. When
is he likely to return?”</p>
<p>“That no one can tell. Perhaps to-morrow,
perhaps never. He has not been here before
in three months. Did you wish to speak with
him?”</p>
<p>Lucile shivered. “Well, perhaps not,” she
half whispered.</p>
<p>“Huh!” grunted the proprietor suddenly,
“what’s this? Must be the book he brought.
He’s forgotten it. Now he is sure to be back.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_208">[208]</div>
<p>Lucile was rather of the opinion that he
would not soon return. She believed that there
had been some trickery about the affair of these
valuable books which were being sold to the
cheapest book dealer in the city for a very
small part of their value. “Perhaps they were
stolen,” she told herself. At once the strangeness
of the situation came to her; here she was
with a book in her possession which had been
but recently stolen from Frank Morrow’s book
shop by a girl and now circumstances seemed
to indicate that this very book had been stolen
by some person who had sold it to this bookmonger,
who had passed it on to the doctor who
had sold it to Dan Whitner, who had sold it
to Roderick Vining, who had sold it to Frank
Morrow.</p>
<p>“Sounds like the house that Jack built,” she
whispered to herself. “But then I suppose
some valuable books have been stolen many
times. Frank Morrow said one of his had been
stolen twice within a week by totally different
persons.”</p>
<p>Turning to the shopkeeper, she asked if she
might see the book that had been left behind.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_209">[209]</div>
<p>As she turned back the cover a low exclamation
escaped her lips. In the corner of that
cover was the same secret mark as had been
in all the mystery books, the gargoyle and the
letter L.</p>
<p>Hiding her surprise as best she could, she
handed the book to the man with the remark:</p>
<p>“Of course you cannot sell the book, since it
is not your own?”</p>
<p>“I’d chance it.”</p>
<p>“I’ll give you ten dollars for it. If he returns
and demands more, I will either pay the
price or return the book. I’ll give you my
address.”</p>
<p>“Done!” he exclaimed. “I don’t think
you’ll ever hear from me. I’ll give him seven
and he’ll be glad enough to get it. Pretty good,
eh?” he rubbed his hands together gleefully.
“Three dollars clean profit and not a cent invested
any of the time.”</p>
<p>Like the ancient volume on fishing, this newly
acquired book was small and thin, so without
examining its contents she thrust it beside the
other in the large pocket of her coat.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_210">[210]</div>
<p>“I suppose I oughtn’t to have done it,” she
whispered to herself as she left the shop, “but
if I hadn’t, he’d have sold it to the first customer.
It’s evidence in the case and besides it
may be valuable.”</p>
<p>A fog hung over the city. The streets were
dark and damp. Here and there a yellow light
struggled to pierce the denseness of the gloom.
As she turned to the right and walked down the
street, not knowing for the moment quite what
else to do, she fancied that a shadow darted
down the alley to her left.</p>
<p>“Too dark to tell. Might have been a dog
or anything,” she murmured. Yet she shivered
and quickened her pace. She was in a great,
dark city alone and she was going—where?
That she did not know. The day’s adventures
had left her high and dry on the streets of a
city as a boat is left by the tide on the sand.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_211">[211]</div>
<h2 id="c21"><br/>CHAPTER XXI <br/>A THEFT IN THE NIGHT</h2>
<p>There is no feeling of desolation so complete
as that which sweeps over one who is utterly
alone in a great city at night. The desert, the
Arctic wilderness, the heart of the forest, the
boundless sea, all these have their terrors, but
for downright desolation give me the heart of
a strange city at night.</p>
<p>Hardly had Lucile covered two blocks on her
journey from the book shop when this feeling
of utter loneliness engulfed her like a bank of
fog. Shuddering, she paused to consider, and,
as she did so, fancied she caught the bulk of a
shadow disappearing into a doorway to the
right of her.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_212">[212]</div>
<p>“Where am I and where am I to go?” she
asked herself in a wild attempt to gather her
scattered senses. In vain she endeavored to recall
the name of the street she was on at that
moment. Her efforts to recall the route she
had taken in getting there were quite as futile.</p>
<p>“Wish I were in Chicago,” she breathed.
“The very worst of it is better than this.
There at least I have friends somewhere. Here
I have none anywhere. Wish Florence were
here.”</p>
<p>At that she caught herself up; there was no
use in wishing for things that could not be.
The question was, what did she intend to do?
Was she to seek out a hotel and spend the night
there, to resume her search for the first person
in America who had sold the ancient copy of
the Angler, or was she to take the first train
back to Chicago? She had a feeling that she
had seen the man she sought and that weeks of
search might not reveal him again; yet she disliked
going back to Frank Morrow with so little
to show for his hundred dollars invested.</p>
<p>“Anyway,” she said at last with a shudder,
“I’ve got to get out of here. Boo! it seems
like the very depths of the slums!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_213">[213]</div>
<p>She started on at a brisk pace. Having gone
a half block she faced about suddenly; she
fancied she heard footsteps behind her. She
saw nothing but an empty street.</p>
<p>“Nerves,” she told herself. “I’ve got to get
over that. I know what’s the matter with me
though; I haven’t eaten for hours. I’ll find a
restaurant pretty soon and get a cup of coffee.”</p>
<p>There is a strange thing about our great
cities; in certain sections you may pass a half
dozen coffee shops and at least three policemen
in a single block; in other sections you may go
an entire mile without seeing either. Evidently,
eating places, like policemen, crave company of
their own kind. Lucile had happened upon a
policeless and eat-shopless section of New York.
For a full twenty minutes she tramped on
through the fog, growing more and more certain
at every step that she was being followed
by someone, and not coming upon a single person
or shop that offered her either food or
protection.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_214">[214]</div>
<p>Suddenly she found herself in the midst of
a throng of people. A movie theater had disgorged
this throng. Like a sudden flood of
water, they surrounded her and bore her on.
They poured down the street to break up into
two smaller streams, one of which flowed on
down the street and the other into a hole in the
ground. Having been caught in the latter
stream, and not knowing what else to do, eager
for companionship of whatever sort, the girl
allowed herself to be borne along and down into
the hole. Down a steep flight of steps she was
half carried, to be at last deposited on a platform,
alongside of which in due time a train
of electric cars came rattling in.</p>
<p>“The subway,” she breathed. “It will take
me anywhere, providing I know where I want
to go.”</p>
<p>Just as she was beginning to experience a
sense of relief from contact with this flowing
mass of humanity she was given a sudden shock.
To the right of her, through a narrow gap in
the throng, she recognized a face. The gap
closed up at once and the face disappeared, but
the image of it remained. It was the face of
the man she had seen in the shop, he of the
birthmark on his chin.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_215">[215]</div>
<p>“No doubt of it now,” she said half aloud.
“He <i>is</i> following me.” Then, like some hunted
creature of the wild, she began looking about
her for a way of escape. Before her there
whizzed a train. The moving cars came to a
halt. A door slid open. She leaped within.
The next instant the door closed and she was
borne away. To what place? She could not
tell. All she knew was that she was on her way.</p>
<p>Quite confident that she had evaded her pursuer,
she settled back in her seat to fall into a
drowsy stupor. How far she rode she could
not tell. Having at last been roused to action
by the pangs of hunger, she rose and left
the car. “Only hope there is some place to eat
near,” she sighed.</p>
<p>Again she found herself lost in a jam; the
legitimate theaters were disgorging their crowds.
She was at this time, though she did not know
it, in the down town district.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_216">[216]</div>
<p>Her right hand was disengaged; in her left
she carried a small leather bag. As she
struggled through the throng, she experienced
difficulty in retaining her hold on this bag. Of
a sudden she felt a mighty wrench on its handle
and the next instant it was gone. There could
be no mistaking that sudden pull. It had been
torn from her grasp by a vandal of some sort.
As she turned with a gasp, she caught sight of
a face that vanished instantly, the face of the
man with the birthmark on his chin.</p>
<p>Instantly the whole situation flashed through
her mind; this man had been following her to
regain possession of one or both of the books
which at this moment reposed in her coat pocket.
He had made the mistake of thinking these
books were in the bag. He would search the
bag and then—</p>
<p>She reasoned no further; a car door was
about to close. She dashed through it at imminent
risk of being caught in the crush of its
swing and the next instant the car whirled away.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_217">[217]</div>
<p>“Missed him that time,” she breathed. “He
will search the bag. When he discovers his mistake
it will be too late. The bird has flown. As
to the bag, he may keep it. It contains only a
bit of a pink garment which I can afford to do
without, and two clean handkerchiefs.”</p>
<p>Fifteen minutes later when she left the car
she found herself in a very much calmer state
of mind. Convinced that she had shaken herself
free from her undesirable shadow, and fully
convinced also that nothing now remained but
to eat a belated supper and board the next train
for her home city, she went about the business
of finding out what that next train might be
and from what depot it left.</p>
<p>Fortunately, a near-by hotel office was able
to furnish her the information needed and to
call a taxi. A half hour later she found herself
enjoying a hot lunch in the depot and at
the same time mentally reveling in the soft comfort
of “Lower 7” of car 36, which she was
soon to occupy.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_218">[218]</div>
<h2 id="c22"><br/>CHAPTER XXII <br/>MANY MYSTERIES</h2>
<p>One might have supposed that, considering
she was now late into the night of the most
exacting and exciting day of her whole life,
Lucile, once she was safely stowed away in her
berth on the train, would immediately fall
asleep. This, however, was not the case. Her
active brain was still at work, still struggling
to untangle the many mysteries that, during the
past weeks, had woven themselves into what
seemed an inseparable tangle. So, after a half
hour of vain attempt to sleep, she sat bolt upright
in her berth and snapped on the light,
prepared if need be to spend the few remaining
hours of that night satisfying the demands of
that irreconcilable mind of hers.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_219">[219]</div>
<p>The train had already started. The heavy
green curtains which hid her from the little
outside world about her waved gently to and
fro. Her white arms and shoulders gleamed
in the light. Her hair hung tumbled in a
mass about her. As the train took a curve,
she was swung against the hammock in which
her heavy coat rested. Her bare shoulder
touched something hard.</p>
<p>“The books,” she said. “Wonder what my
new acquirement is like?”</p>
<p>She drew the new book from her pocket and,
brushing her hair out of her eyes, scanned it
curiously.</p>
<p>“French,” she whispered. “Very old French
and hard to read.” As she thumbed the pages
she saw quaint woodcuts of soldiers and officers.
Here was a single officer seated impressively
upon a horse; here a group of soldiers
scanning the horizon; and there a whole battalion
charging a very ancient fieldpiece.</p>
<p>“Something about war,” she told herself.
“That’s about all I can make out.” She was
ready to close the book when her eye was caught
by an inscription written upon the fly leaf.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_220">[220]</div>
<p>“Looks sort of distinguished,” she told herself.
“Shouldn’t wonder if the book were
valuable because of that writing if for nothing
else.” In this surmise she was more right than
she knew.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_221">[221]</div>
<p>She put the book carefully away but was
unable to banish the questions which the sight
of it had brought up. Automatically her mind
went over the incidents which had led up to
this precise moment. She saw the child in the
university library, saw her take down the book
and flee, saw her later in the mystery cottage
on Tyler street. She fought again the battle
with the hardened foster mother of the child
and again endured the torturing moments in
that evil woman’s abode. She thought of the
mysterious person who had followed her and
had saved her from unknown terrors by notifying
the police. Had that person been the
same as he who had followed her this very
night in an attempt to regain possession of the
two books? No, surely not. She could not
conceive of his doing her an act of kindness.
She thought of the person who had followed
them to the wall of the summer cottage out
at the dunes and wondered vaguely if he could
have been the same person who had followed
them on Tyler street at one time and at that
other saved her from the clutches of the child’s
foster parents. She wondered who he could
be. Was he a detective who had been set to
dog her trail or was he some friend? The latter
seemed impossible. If he was a detective,
how had she escaped him on this trip? Or,
after all, had she? It gave her a little thrill to
think that perhaps in the excitement of the day
his presence near her had not been noticed and
that he might at this very moment be traveling
with her in this car. Involuntarily she seized
the green curtains and tried to button them
more tightly, then she threw back her head
and laughed at herself.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_222">[222]</div>
<p>“But how,” she asked herself, “is all this
tangle to be straightened out? Take that one
little book, ‘The Compleat Angler.’ The child
apparently stole it from Frank Morrow; I
have it from her by a mere accident; Frank
Morrow has it from one New York book shop;
that shop from another; the other from a theologian;
he from a third book shop; and that
shop more than likely from a thief, for if he
would attempt to steal it from me to-night, he
more than likely stole it in the first place and
was attempting to get it from me to destroy my
evidence against him. Now if the book was
stolen in the first place and all of us have had
stolen property in our possession, in the form
of this book, what’s going to happen to the
bunch of us and how are we ever to square
ourselves? Last of all,” she smiled, “where
does our friend, the aged Frenchman, the godfather
of that precious child, come in on it?
And what is the meaning of the secret mark?”</p>
<p>With all these problems stated and none of
them solved, she at last found a drowsy sensation
about to overcome her, so settling back
upon her pillow and drawing the blankets about
her, she allowed herself to drift off into slumber.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_223">[223]</div>
<p>The train she had taken was not as speedy
as the one which had taken her to New York.
Darkness of another day had fallen when at
last she recognized the welcome sound of the
train rumbling over hollow spaces at regular
intervals and knew that she was passing over
the streets of her own city. Florence would
be there to meet her. Lucile had wired her the
time of her arrival. It certainly would seem
good to meet someone she knew once more.</p>
<p>As the train at last rattled into the heart of
the city, she caught an unusual red glow against
the sky.</p>
<p>“Fire somewhere,” she told herself without
giving it much thought, for in a city of millions
one thinks little of a single blaze.</p>
<p>It was only after she and Florence had left
the depot that she noted again that red glow
with a start.</p>
<p>The first indication that something unusual
was happening in that section of the city was
the large amount of traffic which passed the
street car they had taken. Automobiles, trucks
and delivery cars rattled rapidly past them.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_224">[224]</div>
<p>“That’s strange!” she told herself. “The
street is usually deserted at this time of night.
I wonder if the fire could be over this way; but
surely it would be out by now.”</p>
<p>At last the traffic became so crowded that
their car, like a bit of debris in a clogged stream,
was caught and held in the middle of it all.</p>
<p>“What’s the trouble?” she asked the conductor.</p>
<p>“Bad fire up ahead, just across the river.”</p>
<p>“Across the river? Why—that’s where
Tyler street is.”</p>
<p>“Yes’m, in that direction.”</p>
<p>“Come on,” she said, seizing Florence by the
arm; “the fire’s down toward Tyler street. I
think we ought to try to get to the cottage if
we can. What could that child and the old
Frenchman do if the fire reached their cottage?
He’d burn rather than leave his books and the
child wouldn’t leave him; besides there are the
books that belong to other people and that I’m
partly responsible for. C’m’on.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_225">[225]</div>
<p>For fifteen minutes they struggled down a
street that was thronged with excited people.</p>
<p>“One wouldn’t believe that there could be
such a crowd on the streets at this hour of the
night,” panted Florence, as she elbowed her way
forward. “Lucile, you hang to my waist.
We must not be separated.”</p>
<p>They came to a dead stop at last. At the end
of the river bridge a rope had been thrown
across the street. At paces of ten feet this
rope was guarded by policemen. None could
pass save the firemen.</p>
<p>The fire was across the river but sent forth
a red glare that was startling. By dint of ten
minutes of crawling Florence succeeded in securing
for them a position against the rope.</p>
<p>A large fire in a city at night is a grand
and terrible spectacle. This fire was no exception.
Indeed, it was destined to become the
worst fire the city had experienced in more than
forty years.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_226">[226]</div>
<p>Starting in some low, ancient structures that
lay along the river, it soon climbed to a series
of brick buildings occupied by garment makers.
The flames, like red dragons’ tongues, darted in
and out of windows. With a great burst they
leaped through a tar-covered roof to mount
hundreds of feet in air. Burning fragments,
all ablaze, leaped to soar away in the hot currents
of air.</p>
<p>The firemen, all but powerless, fought bravely.
Here a fire tower reared itself to dizzy heights
in air. Here and there fire hose, like a thousand
entwined serpents, writhed and twisted.
Here a whole battery of fire engines smoked
and there two powerful gasoline driven engines
kept up a constant heavy throbbing. Roofs
and walls crumbled, water tanks tottered and
fell, steel pillars writhed and twisted in the intense
heat, chimneys came crashing in heaps.</p>
<p>The fire had all but consumed the row of
four-story buildings. Then with a fresh dash
of air from the lake it burst forth in earnest, a
real and terrible conflagration.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_227">[227]</div>
<p>Lucile, as she stood there watching it, felt
a thousand hitherto unexperienced emotions
sweep over her. But at last she came to rest
with one terrible fact bearing down upon her
very soul. Tyler street was just beyond this
conflagration. Who could tell when the fire
would reach the mysterious tumble-down cottage
with its aged occupant? She thought of
something else, of the books she might long
since have returned to their rightful owners and
had not.</p>
<p>“Now they will burn and I will never be able
to explain,” she told herself. “Somehow I must
get through!”</p>
<p>In her excitement she lifted the rope and
started forward. A heavy hand was instantly
laid on her shoulders.</p>
<p>“Y’ can’t go over there.”</p>
<p>“I must.”</p>
<p>“Y’ can’t.”</p>
<p>The policeman thrust her gently back behind
the rope and drew it down before her.</p>
<p>“I must go,” she told herself. “Oh, I must!
I must!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_228">[228]</div>
<h2 id="c23"><br/>CHAPTER XXIII <br/>INSIDE THE LINES</h2>
<p>“Come on,” Lucile said, pulling at Florence’s
arm. “We’ve got to get there. It must be done.
For everything that must be done there is always
a way.”</p>
<p>They crowded their way back through the
throng which was hourly growing denser. It
was distressing to catch the fragments of conversation
that came to them as they fought
their way back. Tens of thousands of people
were being robbed of their means of making a
living. Each fresh blaze took the bread from
the mouths of hundreds of children.</p>
<p>“T’wasn’t much of a job I had,” muttered an
Irish mother with a shawl over her head, “but
it was bread! Bread!” “Every paper, every
record of my business for the past ten years,
was in my files and the office is doomed,” roared
a red-faced business man. “It’s doomed! And
they won’t let me through.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_229">[229]</div>
<p>“There’s not one of them all that needs to
get through more badly than I,” said Lucile,
with a lump in her throat. “Surely there must
be a way.”</p>
<p>Working their way back, the two girls hurried
four blocks along Wells street, which ran
parallel to the river, then turned on Madison
to fight their way toward a second bridge.</p>
<p>“Perhaps it is open,” Lucile told Florence.</p>
<p>Her hopes were short-lived. Again they faced
a rope and a line of determined-faced policemen.</p>
<p>“It just must be done!” said Lucile, setting
her teeth hard as they again backed away.</p>
<p>An alley offered freer passage than the
street. They had passed down this but a
short way when they came upon a ladder truck
which had been backed in as a reserve. On it
hung the long rubber coats and heavy black
hats of the firemen.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_230">[230]</div>
<p>Instinctively Lucile’s hand went out for a
coat. She glanced to right and left. She saw
no one. The next instant she had donned that
coat and was drawing a hat down solidly over
her hair.</p>
<p>“I know it’s an awful thing to do,” she whispered,
“but I am doing it for them, not for
myself. You may come or stay. It’s really my
battle. I’ve got to see it through to the end.
You always advised against going further but
I ventured. Now it’s do or die.”</p>
<p>Florence’s answer was to put out a hand and
to grasp a fireman’s coat. The next moment,
in this new disguise, they were away.</p>
<p>Had the girls happened to look back just before
leaving the alley they might have surprised
a stoop-shouldered, studious-looking man in the
act of doing exactly as they had done, robing
himself in fireman’s garb.</p>
<p>Dressed as they now were, they found the
passing of the line a simple matter. Scores of
fire companies and hundreds of firemen from
all parts of the city had been called upon in
this extreme emergency. There was much confusion.
That two firemen should be passing
forward to join their companies did not seem
unusual. The coats and hats formed a complete
disguise.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_231">[231]</div>
<p>The crossing of the bridge was accomplished
on the run. They reached the other side in the
nick of time, for just as they leaped upon the
approach the great cantilevers began to rise.
A huge freighter which had been disgorging
its cargo into one of the basements that line
the river had been endangered by the fire.
Puffing and snarling, adding its bit of smoke
to the dense, lampblack cloud which hung over
the city, a tug was working the freighter to a
place of safety.</p>
<p>“We’ll have to stay inside, now we’re here,”
panted Lucile. “There’s a line formed along
the other approach. Here’s a stair leading down
to the railway tracks. We can follow the tracks
for a block, then turn west again. There’ll be
no line there; it’s too close to the fire.”</p>
<p>“Might be dangerous,” Florence hung back.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_232">[232]</div>
<p>“Can’t help it. It’s our chance.” Lucile was
halfway down the stair. Florence followed and
the next moment they were racing along a wall
beside the railway track.</p>
<p>A switch engine racing down the track with
a line of box cars, one ablaze, forced them to
flatten themselves against the wall. There was
someone following them, the studious boy in a
fireman’s uniform. He barely escaped being
run down by the engine, but when it had passed
and they resumed their course, he followed
them. Darting from niche to niche, from
shadow to shadow, he kept some distance behind
them.</p>
<p>“Up here,” panted Lucile, racing upstairs.</p>
<p>The heat was increasing. The climbing of
those stairs seemed to double its intensity. Cinders
were falling all about them.</p>
<p>“The wind has shifted,” Florence breathed.
“It—it’s going to be hard.”</p>
<p>Lucile did not reply. Her throat was
parched. Her face felt as if it were on fire.
The heavy coat and hat were insufferable yet
she dared not cast them away.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_233">[233]</div>
<p>So they struggled on. And their shadow, like
all true shadows, followed.</p>
<p>“Look! Oh, look!” cried Florence, reeling
in her tracks.</p>
<p>A sudden gust of wind had sent the fire
swooping against the side of a magnificent
building of concrete and steel. Towering aloft
sixteen stories, it covered a full city block.</p>
<p>“It’s going,” cried Lucile as she heard the
awful crash of glass and saw flames bursting
from the windows as if from the open hearth
furnace of a foundry.</p>
<p>It was true. The magnificent mahogany
desks from which great, high-salaried executives
sent out orders to thousands of weary
tailors, made quite as good kindling that night
as did some poor widow’s washboard, and they
were given quite as much consideration by that
bad master, fire.</p>
<p>“Hurry!” Lucile’s voice was hoarse with
emotion. “We must get behind it, out of the
path of the wind, or we will be burned to a
cinder.” Catching the full force of her meaning,
Florence seized Lucile’s hand and together
they rushed forward.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_234">[234]</div>
<p>Burning cinders rained about them, a half-burned
board came swooping down to fall in
their very path. Twice Lucile stumbled and
fell, but each time Florence had her on her feet
in an instant.</p>
<p>“Courage! Courage!” she whispered. “Only
a few feet more and then the turn.”</p>
<p>After what seemed an age they reached that
turn and found themselves in a place where a
breath of night air fanned their cheeks.</p>
<p>Buildings lay between them and the doomed
executive building. The firemen were plying
these with water. The great cement structure
would be completely emptied of its contents by
the fire but it would stand there empty-eyed and
staring like an Egyptian sphinx.</p>
<p>“It may form a fire-wall which will protect
this and the next street,” said Florence hopefully.
“The worst may be over.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_235">[235]</div>
<h2 id="c24"><br/>CHAPTER XXIV <br/>SECRETS REVEALED</h2>
<p>On a night such as this, one does not stand
on formalities. There was a light burning in
the mystery cottage on Tyler street. The girls
entered without knocking.</p>
<p>The scene which struck their eyes was most
dramatic. On a long, low couch lay the aged
Frenchman. Beside his bed, her hair disheveled,
her garments blackened and scorched by fire,
knelt the child. She was silently sobbing. The
man, for all one could see, might be dead, so
white and still did he lie.</p>
<p>Yet as the girls, still dressed in great coats
and rubber hats, stepped into the room, his eyes
opened; his lips moved and the girls heard him
murmur:</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_236">[236]</div>
<p>“Ah, the firemen. Now my books will burn,
the house will go. They all will burn. But
like Montcalm at Quebec, I shall not live to see
my defeat.”</p>
<p>“No, no, no!” the child sprang to her feet.
“They must not burn! They shall not burn!”</p>
<p>“Calm yourself,” said Lucile, advancing
into the room and removing her coat as she did
so. “It is only I, your friend, Lucile. The
fire is two blocks away and there is reason to
hope that this part of Tyler street will be saved.
The huge concrete building is burning out from
within but is standing rugged as a great rock.
It is your protection.”</p>
<p>“Ah, then I shall die happy,” breathed the
man.</p>
<p>“No! No! No!” almost screamed the child.
“You shall not die.”</p>
<p>“Hush, my little one,” whispered the man.
“Do not question the wisdom of the Almighty.
My hour has come. Soon I shall be with my
sires and with my sons and grandsons; with
all the brave ones who have so nobly defended
our beloved France.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_237">[237]</div>
<p>“And as for you, my little one, you have
here two friends and all my books. It is in the
tin box behind the books, my will. I have no
living kin. I have made you my heir. The
books are worth much money. You are well
provided for. Your friends here will see that
they are not stolen from you, will you not?”</p>
<p>Florence and Lucile, too touched to trust
themselves to speak, bowed their heads.</p>
<p>“As for myself,” the man went on in a hoarse
whisper, “I have but one regret.</p>
<p>“Come close,” he beckoned to Lucile. “Come
very close. I have something more to tell you.”</p>
<p>Lucille moved close to him, something seeming
to say to her, “Now you are to hear the gargoyle’s
secret.”</p>
<p>“Not many days ago,” he began, “I told
you some of my life, but not all. I could not.
My heart was too sore. Now I wish to tell you
all. You remember that I said I took my books
to Paris. That is not quite true. I started with
all of them but not all arrived. One box of
them, the most precious of all, was stolen while
on the way and a box of cheap and worthless
books put in its place.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_238">[238]</div>
<p>“Heartbroken at this loss, I traced the robbers
as best I could at last to find that the
books had been carried overseas to America.</p>
<p>“I came to America. They had been sold,
scattered abroad. The thief eluded me, but the
books I could trace. By the gargoyle in the corner
and by the descriptions of dealers in rare
books, I located many of them.</p>
<p>“Those who had them had paid handsomely
for them. They would not believe an old man’s
story. They would not give them up.</p>
<p>“I brought suit in the courts. It was no
use. No one would believe me.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_239">[239]</div>
<p>“Young lady,” the old man’s voice all but
died away as his feeble fingers clutched at the
covers, “young lady, every man has some wish
which he hopes to fulfill. He may desire to
become rich, to secure power, to write a book,
to paint a great picture. There is always something.
As for me, I wished but one thing, a
very little thing: to die with the books, those
precious volumes I had inherited. The foolish
wish of a childish old man, perhaps, but that
was my wish. The war has taken my family.
They cannot gather by my bedside; I have only
my books. And, thanks to this child,” he attempted
to place his hand on the child’s bowed
head, “thanks to her, there are but few missing
at this, the last moment.”</p>
<p>For a little there was silence in the room,
then the whisper began again, this time more
faint:</p>
<p>“Perhaps it was wrong, the way I taught the
child to get the books. But they were really
my own. I had not sold one of them. They
were all my own. She knows where they came
from. When I am gone, if that is the way of
America, they may all be returned.”</p>
<p>Lucile hesitated for a moment, then bent over
the dying man.</p>
<p>“The books,” she whispered. “Were two
of them very small ones?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_240">[240]</div>
<p>The expression on the dying man’s face grew
eager as he answered, “Yes, yes, very small
and very rare. One was a book about fishing
and the other—ah, that one!—that was the
rarest of all. It had been written in by the
great Napoleon and had been presented by
him to one of his marshals, my uncle.”</p>
<p>Lucile’s hand came out from behind her back.
In it were two books.</p>
<p>“Are these the ones?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Yes, yes,” he breathed hoarsely. “Those are
the very most precious ones. I die—I die
happy.”</p>
<p>For a second the glassy eyes stared, then
lighted up with a smile that was beautiful to
behold.</p>
<p>“Ah!” he breathed, “I am happy now,
happy as when a child I played beneath the
grapevines in my own beloved France.”</p>
<p>Those were his last words. A moment later,
Lucile turned to lead the silently weeping child
into another room. As she did so, she encountered
a figure standing with bowed head.</p>
<p>It was the studious looking boy who had
donned the fireman’s coat and followed them.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_241">[241]</div>
<p>“Harry Brock!” she whispered. “How did
you come here?”</p>
<p>“I came in very much the same manner that
you came,” he said quietly. “I have been
where you have been many times of late. I
did not understand, but I thought you needed
protection and since I thought of myself as the
best friend you had among the men at the university,
I took that task upon myself. I have
been in this room, unnoticed, for some time. I
heard what he said and now I think I understand.
Please allow me to congratulate you and—and
to thank you. You have strengthened
my faith in—in all that is good and beautiful.”</p>
<p>He stepped awkwardly aside and allowed her
to pass.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_242">[242]</div>
<h2 id="c25"><br/>CHAPTER XXV <br/>BETTER DAYS</h2>
<p>There was no time for explanations that
night. The fire had been checked; the cottage
and the rare books were safe, but there were
many other things to be attended to. It was
several days before Lucile met Harry Brock
again and then it was by appointment, in the
Cozy Corner Tea Room.</p>
<p>Her time during the intervening days was
taken up with affairs relating to her new charge,
the child refugee, Marie. She went at once to
Frank Morrow for advice. He expressed great
surprise at the turn events had taken but told
her that he had suspected from the day she
had told the story to him that the books had
been stolen from Monsieur Le Bon.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_243">[243]</div>
<p>“And now we will catch the thief and if he
has money we will make him pay,” he declared
stoutly.</p>
<p>He made good his declaration. Through the
loosely joined but powerful league of book
sellers he tracked down the man with the birthmark
on his chin and forced him to admit the
theft of the case of valuable books. As for
money with which to make restitution, like most
of his kind he had none. He could only be
turned over to the “Tombs” to work out his
atonement.</p>
<p>The books taken from the university and
elsewhere were offered back to the last purchasers.
In most cases they returned them as
the child’s rightful possession, to be sold together
with the many other rare books which
had been left to Marie by Monsieur Le Bon.
In all there was quite a tidy sum of money
realized from the sale. This was put in trust
for Marie, the income from it to be used for
her education.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_244">[244]</div>
<p>As for that meeting of Lucile and Harry in
the tea room, it was little more than a series of
exclamations on the part of one or the other
of them as they related their part in the mysterious
drama.</p>
<p>“And you followed us right out into the
country that night we went to the Ramsey cottage?”
Lucile exclaimed.</p>
<p>“Yes, up to the wall,” Harry admitted. “The
water stopped me there.”</p>
<p>“And it was you who told the police I was
in danger when that terrible man and woman
locked me in?”</p>
<p>Harry bowed his assent.</p>
<p>He related how night after night, without
understanding their strange wanderings, he had
followed the two girls about as a sort of bodyguard.</p>
<p>When Lucile thought how many sleepless
nights it had cost him, her heart was too full
for words. She tried to thank him. Her lips
would not form words.</p>
<p>“But don’t you see,” he smiled; “you were
trying to help someone out of her difficulties
and I was trying to help you. That’s the way
the whole world needs to live, I guess, if we are
all to be happy.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_245">[245]</div>
<p>Lucile smiled and agreed that he had expressed
it quite correctly, but down deep in her
heart she knew that she would never feel quite
the same toward any of her other fellow students
as she did toward him at that moment.
And so their tea-party ended.</p>
<p>Frank Morrow insisted on the girls’ accepting
the two-hundred-dollar reward. There were
two other rewards which had been offered for
the return of missing books, so in the end Lucile
and Florence found themselves in a rather better
financial state.</p>
<p>As for Marie, she was taken into the practice
school of the university. By special arrangement
she was given a room in the ladies’ dormitory.
It was close to that of her good friends,
Lucile and Florence, so she was never lonely,
and in this atmosphere which was the world she
was meant to live in she blossomed out like a
flower in the spring sunshine.</p>
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