BOB DULANEY’S CHASE
Ursula could not help smiling at Bob’s enthusiasm. She knew that he
had great sympathy for her, but at the same time she was sure he was
enjoying himself hugely being what he called “a gum-shoe reporter.”
It seemed to her as though she had hardly put down the receiver after
telephoning him when a prolonged tooting called her to the window, and
there was Bob in his small, shabby racer whizzing by the house.
“Anyhow, I’ll soon know something,” sighed the girl. “I wish I had
Josie here to counsel me. So it isn’t Mr. Cheatham and Miss Fitchet
after all! I can’t telegraph such a complicated thing as this letter,
but I will write immediately and get the letter to Josie on the
midnight train, special delivery.”
She was glad of the occupation of writing and with great care she
copied the communication found under her door and enclosed the copy in
her letter to Josie.
“I am enclosing the envelope in which the letter came so you may see
the kind of writing, dear Josie,” she wrote. “I know you set great
store by such things. The letter itself I am afraid to trust to the
mails, but will keep it carefully until I see you. Bob has gone to
catch the man who put the letter under my door, but in the meantime I
shall mail this and will follow it by a telegram.”
She was afraid to leave the apartment to mail the letter, thinking news
of some kind might some while she was out, so she knocked on the door
of the nervous, middle-aged bachelor, the one who had so carefully
poked up the chimneys with a hearth broom in vain search of Philip, and
asked him to attend to getting the letter off for her. He was glad to
be of any assistance to his pretty neighbor and gallantly donned his
goloshes and set out for the post office.
Then Ursula sat down to wait. She felt happier. Anyhow her beloved
child was not dead. As for poor Uncle Ben, she was not at all sure he
was dead, and although she had been very fond of him, he had been away
from Louisville so long she could not make up her mind to weep very
much over him--certainly not until she knew for sure that he had really
passed away. The fortune reputed to have been left her she almost
forgot about. The realization came to her with a start. Suppose she
really had been left a fortune! What a difference it would make in her
life.
“I’d rather have Uncle Ben here to love and protect me than all kinds
of money,” she said to herself. “Anyhow I’ll have to go to Louisville
as soon as my boy is found. Since Mr. Cheatham is not the one at the
back of the kidnaping I shall not dread seeing him as much as I fancied
I would. Indeed, I am ashamed to have harbored such a suspicion of him.
Perhaps I have been to blame too. Maybe he is not so black as I have
always painted him.”
The plain clothes man from Captain Lonsdale was the next person to
mount the stairs to Ursula’s apartment. He was a stolid individual, but
had a kind blue eye and no doubt was more keen witted than he appeared
to be. Ursula remembered Josie’s assumed stupidity when she was working
on a case and felt perhaps this man Donner was pursuing the same
tactics. She showed him the letter and told him what had happened,
describing the ancient automobile and the man who had walked up the
street immediately before she had noticed the letter under her door.
“You done right to phone the Cap’n,” said Donner. “These here
blackmailers would be brought to justice oftener if the folks weren’t
so scairt of them. Ladies are usually the worst of the bunch for taking
them serious like and letting them get the bits between their teeth.
Most ladies in your fix would have laid low about the letter and handed
over whatever they asked just to make sure the kid was safe. I tell
you, lady, the kid is just as safe, and a deal sight safer, with your
telling us about this letter than he would have been if you had just
kep’ it to yourself.”
“I had to let Captain Lonsdale know about it, because I promised Miss
O’Gorman I would. Somehow I feel as though she knows best about my
affairs.”
“Sure she does! I wasn’t strong for women policemen--policewomen, I
believe they call them--until I had a case to work up alongside of that
Miss Josie O’Gorman, and I tell you then I got to thinking that the
Almighty must have took out some of Adam’s brains along with the rib
when he made Eve, and that Josie girl got a good share of them. Did you
ever hear about how she caught the thieves that were carrying off Mrs.
Danny Dexter’s wedding presents?”
Ursula quickly assured him she had, as she could not contemplate
having to hear the tale again and she felt that the sooner the kindly
officer got on his job of hunting up the kidnapers the better for all
concerned. She wished him good luck and politely got rid of him.
Ben came home full of the delightful time he had spent with the
Dexters, also full of a good dinner.
“Did you eat anything, Sister?” he asked, pressing his rosy cheek to
Ursula’s pale one.
“I forgot to eat,” confessed Ursula.
“Well, you must remember,” declared Ben. “I’m gonter get you some
supper. There’s oodles in the ice box. Now you just sit still and I’ll
fix you up in no time.”
Ursula held the boy to her and told him of the letter she had found
under the door, and then read it to him.
“The dirty pup!” was all he could say. “Don’t let him fool you, Sis.
You call up the police--”
“I’ve done it, dear, and already they have started in to hunt for the
person who brought the letter.”
“Ain’t Uncle Ben the one I’m named for?”
“Yes, dear!”
“Well, he never cheated this hound.”
“Of course not! That hasn’t worried me for a moment. Uncle Ben was the
soul of honor. I feel very sad at the thought he may be dead. I wish I
might have seen him again. Poor Uncle Ben!”
The boy busied himself with a tray of food for his sister, and then
began the process of endeavoring to keep his eyes open. He was ashamed
of being so sleepy when his beloved sister was certainly not going to
close her eyes until some report was brought her by either Bob Dulaney
or Donner.
“Go on to bed, honey,” insisted Ursula. “It is much better for you to
go to sleep. Didn’t I tell you you must sleep a lot so you can grow up
big and take care of me?”
“Will you call me if you need me?”
“Of course I will, because I depend on you all the time.”
“Well, let me keep on my clothes and sleep on the sofa, so I can wake
up easy.”
“All right, dear, wherever you want to sleep, just so you sleep.”
So Ben was tucked in on the sofa, with the light carefully screened
from his eyes, and again Ursula waited.
At eleven o’clock Bob Dulaney stopped his little car in front of the
door and ran lightly up the steps.
“I saw your light and stopped in.”
“Please, what news?” she asked excitedly.
“Well, I’ve done some eliminating, but that’s all,” said Bob
dejectedly. “But don’t you get down-hearted because we’ll keep going
until the kid is found.”
“I’ll keep on hoping. Only tell me, please.”
“I raced along the road I thought the old car had taken and in spite
of a puncture and getting out of gas and then out of water I finally
came up with the worst looking old automobile I ever saw. It looked as
though the Forty-Niners might have used it to travel over the old trail
to California. It was pulled up in front of a half-way house, midway
between Dorfield and Benton. I tell you I parked behind it in a jiffy
and slipped into what used to be the bar, where I found some village
bums and two or three transient guests eating ice cream cones and
drinking ginger pop. One old cove was warming himself at the stove and
loudly deploring the dry state of the country. He had on a great fur
coat and looked as though he might have been traveling some distance.
“I cottoned to the old chap and began warming myself, too.”
“Come from far?” he asked with a nice, warm, kindly voice.
“The other side of Dorfield,” I answered.
“So did I, but I live over at Benton. I tell you a country doctor
leads some life. One of my old patients has moved beyond Dorfield and
nothing would suit him but that I should come and treat him for a bad
cold--nothing but a bad cold, mind you! He ’phoned me he was coming
down with pneumonia. Here I had to ride ’way over there in all this
weather and when I got there, bless you, if the fellow wasn’t having a
party. He did have a bad cold. I wish he’d sneeze his head off! That
was last night. Yes, I had a good time but it was a mean way to get me
to go to a party. My old car won’t stand many such trips. I’ve had it
going on fifteen years as it is.
“I had a funny experience coming back from my patient’s. About six
miles the other side of Dorfield a man got off the train at a wayside
station--Dorset. I reckon he thought he had got to Dorfield, because
he seemed rather astonished that there were so few houses in what he
had evidently been told was a flourishing town. He’d got Dorfield and
Dorset mixed and when the conductor hollered Dorset he thought he’d
got where he was going. Said he had a little business to attend to
in Dorfield and then was going on beyond, and was mighty glad when I
picked him up and gave him a ride. I always give people rides along the
country pikes. He wasn’t my kind of passenger though, because he had
such a low forehead and a kind of wry neck. I talked along to him and
he never answered a word more than just to ask me if that was all the
speed I could get out of my old locomotive. I got right peeved, but I
never said so.
“When we got to Dorfield he said he’d like me to stop on the corner of
Spruce street, as he had a little errand to do. I had to get a pint of
iodine and some gauze at the drug store near by, so it suited me very
well. It didn’t take me a minute to make my purchases, but, by golly,
that fellow was back in the car the minute I was and when we crossed
the track and he saw a freight train coming he never said thank you,
but jumped out of my car and ran like fun and got onto that car while
it was moving, just like Douglas Fairbanks or Harold Lloyd. He was a
rum customer, I can tell you.”
“Which way was the freight headed?” I asked.
“West--that six o’clock freight where the engineer plays a tune on his
locomotive whistle.”
Ursula had listened to Bob with breathless interest.
“That man’s business in Dorfield was to deliver that letter to your
address,” declared Bob. “The doctor in the funny old car had no more to
do with it than I had myself.”
“I believe you are right,” agreed Ursula. “And now what next?”
“Next, I must let Captain Lonsdale know what I know and maybe he can
put a watch on that freight. Gee, I hate to ask help, but I must
remember the way Josie works and how the important thing with her is
always to get the criminal landed, whether she does it herself or not
being of no importance.”