MARY LOUISE MAKES A DISCOVERY
That night the air seemed breathless. A storm was threatening, and by
eleven o’clock the wind had risen from a gentle sigh to quite a steady
roar and was sending great dark clouds scudding across the full golden
face of the moon.
Mary Louise felt breathless too, and was strangely unquiet. A storm was
brewing in the very heart of her, and she could not understand just
why. All she knew was that there was no use trying to sleep as yet. She
simply had to think. So, pulling a silken sweater of a soft rose color
over her light dinner frock, she dragged her great wicker chair before
the window and curled up therein.
All her being was crying out in rebellion at the thought that Danny,
her kind, candid, cheery Danny Dexter, could be a forger. As if she
were in his presence, she could see the honest, straight-forward
glance of his clear, blue eyes, and as she lay in her big chair in
her darkened room and watched the wind play havoc in the garden,
she suddenly realized that she had at times believed that there was
something deeper in his eyes when they rested upon her.
This idea strangely disquieted Mary Louise. She made a remarkably
lovely picture as the moon shone full upon her in one of its fleeting
moments of freedom. The wind had loosened her soft dark hair and had
flung it in little tendrils about her flushed young face, and her lips
were parted in the eager recognition of a fact that had suddenly come
to her. She knew she believed in and trusted Danny Dexter!
“Oh, what can I do?” she moaned. “Danny, I know you’ve done nothing
wrong, but how can I make the others understand? And how can I ask
Josie to hunt for someone else; she will hunt down one clue until she
knows about it. Oh, dear me!”
And at this point a little sigh escaped from Mary Louise.
The wind evidently being in a mood sympathetic with her own, gave a
sudden gusty sigh of despair; it fairly shook the house, and whistling
about the chimney, finally expended itself in whirling through the
window the tiny bit of cambric Mary Louise called a handkerchief.
She rose listlessly to catch it, her thoughts all centered on her
problem, but the bit of white fluttered off in gay abandon among the
rose bushes. Mary Louise watched the speck of light out there, idly
leaning her rose-clad shoulder against the frame of the open window.
Suddenly she felt she could no longer breathe inside. She must, she
felt, get out in the wind, under the clouds, and feel the wildness and
vitality of the night. Her rose-pink bedroom opened on a little balcony
from which a few steps led directly into the garden. With a sudden
sense of relief, Mary Louise threw back her dark head, breathing in the
very storm about her, and ran down the steps into the dark. Straight
for the group of tall pines at the rear of the grounds she went, to
hear their wailing response to the wind, and to watch the hide and seek
of the moonlight through the long needles.
Refreshed and almost happy again, she leaned against the dark pungent
trunk of the oldest pine, and her dark eyes turned to the tower room
that had been Danny’s.
All at once she started quickly, for faint and dim though it was, a
light was unmistakably filtering through the drawn shutters of the
tower chamber.
“Oh!” gasped the girl, her voice trembling with relief. “Of course he
came back; I knew he would; but he must come to the house and tell
Grandpa Jim he’s back.”
So saying, she ran across the open space and finding the door of the
old stable to be unlocked though tightly closed, she pushed it back.
As she did so, the moon drifted out from behind its veil and shone
full and bright upon the smart trim car which Mary Louise had named
“Queenie.” Yes, there it was without a scratch or mar that Mary Louise
could see, and appearing as matter of fact as though it had never
vanished into thin air!
Mary Louise welcomed it home with a little pat of joy, but most of that
joy just now was for the Danny Dexter who had brought her automobile
safely back.
Standing there by her beloved car she called shyly, “Danny.”
After a brief pause, again, “Danny.”
But there was no answer, and suddenly it seemed to her that everything
was very, very quiet. Startled, she ran up the tower stairs calling in
frightened tones, “Danny, oh, Danny! Answer me!”
Not, however, until she had reached the top step did she get her
answer. Then the tower room door was flung back and by the dull glow of
a candle Mary Louise could see the dim outline of a man. A frightened
shriek rose to her lips but before it could be uttered, the man had
leaped forward and with strength born of desperation, had lifted her
bodily and carried her into the room pushing shut the door after him.
Gasping, Mary Louise sank onto the wicker couch which she had bought
for Danny, to make his room more cheery. Even in her great fear, a
sense of gratitude came to her that it was this stranger and not Danny
Dexter who had stolen her car. And thinking so, some of the fear
vanished and she dared glance up at the man.
His was not at all a criminal type of face. The mouth and the lines
about the mouth were very weak, but the eyes were kindly, and just now,
as she met their gaze, they seemed filled with apology and distress.
His tone, however, was firm and decided as he turned to Mary Louise.
“Keep absolutely quiet,” he commanded crisply, “and no harm will come
to you. But if you try to call out--”
Here he gave his shoulders a shrug and, with a bitter laugh, added:
“I’m pretty desperate. I’ve got to get away, and if you make a sound, I
may have to tie you up.”
Mary Louise most decidedly did not want to be tied up. Words choked
right in her throat but in some way she managed to convey the idea to
this waiting man that she was and always would be more quiet than the
quietest mouse. She felt she never, never could speak a word again, and
she was trembling as if from cold in the dead of winter.
When the man was reassured, he returned to the task from which he
had evidently been interrupted. This seemed to be page after page of
accounts, and he was going over them with infinite care. As he leaned
close under the candle flame, Mary Louise could see that he was a man
very far from young. His hair was quite gray and the lines upon his
face were heavy. As he turned the last leaf of the accounts, a deep
sadness was on his face, which, when he had slipped the package into an
envelope and addressed it, changed into as great a tenderness as Mary
Louise had ever seen. Then and there all fear dropped from her and she
wished she could aid this old man who so surely needed help.
Her presence had evidently been forgotten for the moment, but now the
man straightened up with a start as the town clock boomed midnight.
“Good Lord,” he muttered, “and I’m due in twenty minutes! There’s
nothing for it but to take the car again and the girl in it. I’m sorry
for Danny’s sake, but I don’t dare leave her to give the alarm.”
Deciding which, he muffled himself in a huge tan duster and cap, and
motioned to Mary Louise to follow him. As he stooped to blow out the
candle the long envelope slipped from his pocket to the floor. Mary
Louise, almost without thought, glanced down at it, and there, glaring
and flashing up at her from the envelope, was Danny’s name!
She had no time for puzzling, for already her jailor was halfway down
the stairs and calling her to hurry. In her anxiety to obey to the
letter, Mary Louise fairly flew down the stairs and found the stranger
climbing into her beloved place in her very own car. He ordered her
to sit beside him, and Mary Louise did so feeling as if she were in
a dream. Here she was at her home and in her own car and yet she was
a prisoner. Her captor seemed to have some thought for her welfare,
however, for as the car slipped quietly out into the night, he tucked a
robe carefully about her shoulders and then in silence the two flew off
into the wildness of the night.