THE SHADOW OF DISASTER
Betty put a steadying arm about Mollie and asked gently:
"Would it make it any easier if I were to read it, dear?"
"No, oh, no!" cried Mollie, then smoothed out the crushed paper and read
the telegram through while her face grew whiter and her lips closed in a
tense line. With a queer little sound in her throat she turned away and
handed it to Betty.
"Read it," she commanded in a choked voice.
Mrs. Ford put an arm about Mollie while Betty read aloud and the girls
crowded closer.
It was a brief, paralyzing message the telegram contained.
"Twins are gone. Were not home last night, and am
wild with anxiety. No need your coming home. Am
doing everything possible to find them. MOTHER."
"The twins!" gasped Amy.
"Gone!" added Grace, stupefied. "Oh, Betty, are you sure you read it
aright?"
For answer, Betty handed her the telegram and turned to comfort Mollie,
who was sobbing bitterly.
"I knew I shouldn't have gone away," she was saying over and over again.
"I knew I should have stayed at home."
"But your staying at home probably wouldn't have made any difference,"
argued Betty soothingly.
"And by this time they may have been found, anyway," added Mrs. Ford,
gently leading Mollie toward the house, Betty at her side, while Grace
and Amy followed, mute with sympathy.
"Yes; or by this time they may be dead!" sobbed Mollie, refusing to be
comforted. "They must have met with some accident or they wouldn't have
stayed away all n-night."
"Maybe they ran away," suggested Grace, trying hard to think of
something cheering to say. "They've done it before, you know."
"Yes," agreed Mollie, sinking into a porch chair and searching
desperately for a handkerchief in her pocketless bathing suit. "But they
always came home before night. I know it must be something awfully
serious to keep them away over night."
Mrs. Ford was very much worried and disturbed, but she nevertheless
managed a bright smile.
"As you say, they probably ran away," she said. "Only this time they
have wandered too far and haven't been able to find their way back. But
if your mother has notified the police, as she surely has by this time,
they are sure to be found. And now," she added, rising briskly and
making for the door, "since everything seems a good deal worse than it
is on an empty stomach, I'm going to give you some lunch and we'll
decide what to do afterward."
Left alone, the girls gazed helplessly at each other. Mollie had stopped
sobbing and was staring moodily out at the ocean, her eyes and nose
swollen with weeping.
"I'll have to go home, of course," she said suddenly, breaking a silence
filled with unhappy thoughts. "I don't know that I'll be any good, but I
can at least comfort mother. I'm sorry," she gave them a wistful,
apologetic little glance that went straight to their hearts and brought
the tears to their eyes, "to break up the party."
"You darling," cried Betty, trying to laugh and not making a very great
success of it, "do you think we care a rap about our old party? Only,"
she added thoughtfully, "as you say yourself, I don't see that you can
do very much good by going home."
"I could comfort mother," repeated Mollie, in a flat tone, as though she
were repeating a lesson.
"But she said not to come," suggested Grace. "She said she was doing
everything possible--"
"I know," interrupted Mollie, wearily. "Of course she would say not to
come. And I suppose," she added, dabbing impatiently at her eyes, "all
I'd do would be to weep anyway, and make things about ten times worse."
"Do you want your lunch inside or out here?" Mrs. Ford asked from the
doorway and the girls jumped to their feet.
"Here we are, letting you do all the work again," cried Betty
self-reproachfully. "I guess we'd rather have it out here, but we'll
bring it out ourselves. Please go over there, get into the swing, and
don't stir until we say you may." Betty had a pretty manner, half of
deference, half of _camaraderie_, with older people that made them love
her. Mrs. Ford patted her cheek with a little smile and obeyed her
command while the three girls ran into the kitchen to bring out the
sandwiches and cake that she had already prepared.
And all the time Mollie sat motionless, staring out over the ocean,
apparently unconscious of everything that was going on around her.
"Little Dodo and Paul," she said over and over to herself. "What has
happened to them? Oh, I must go home, I must!"
"Come to your lunch," called Betty.
After lunch Mollie began to take a less gloomy view of the situation and
hope, which in youth can never long be forced into the background, began
to revive.
"In the first place," Betty argued, as she began to clear away the
dishes and Amy rose to help her, "it couldn't have been an accident, or
your mother would have read about it in the papers. The children are old
enough to tell their names and where they live."
"I know," said Mollie, while the troublesome tears welled to her eyes
again. "But it's possible they may have been unconscious, and then they
wouldn't be able to tell anything."
"But there would have been at least an announcement describing the
children," Amy argued in support of Betty.
"And, anyway, pretty nearly everybody in Deepdale knows the twins,"
Grace added.
"Well, then, there are only two or three things left that might have
happened," said Mollie, her lips quivering. "It's barely possible they
may have wandered off into the woods and gotten lost. In that case
somebody will have to hurry up and find them or they will just stay
there and s-starve! And that's almost worse than being run over."
"Well, with everybody in Deepdale, civilians as well as police,
searching for them," said Betty confidently, "I don't think there is
very much chance of their starving to death. If that's the solution, I
shouldn't wonder but that they are safe at home now with everybody
rejoicing."
Mollie's face brightened a little at this picture, but almost
immediately clouded over again.
"But we don't know that," she said. "And until we do, I'm not going to
let myself get too happy."
"I wonder," she said suddenly, after the girls had cleared away the
lunch and had perched themselves on the porch railing, "just what I
ought to do first. Send a telegram to mother, I suppose," answering her
own question.
"Yes, I think I would," said Betty, adding, as Mollie got up with
characteristic impulsiveness and started for the house: "Do you mind
telling us what you are going to say in it--about going home, I mean?"
Mollie paused uncertainly.
"I--I don't just know," she admitted. "One minute I think there's no
question but what I ought to go, and the next, I wonder if I wouldn't
only be in the way."
"There's another thing to consider," Mrs. Ford put in. "It is almost a
certainty that the children will be found in a day or two, perhaps are
found already, and in that case you would have all your trip for
nothing. I don't like to advise--"
"Oh, please do," Mollie begged, adding with a pathetic little smile: "I
feel so awfully lonesome, trying to decide everything all by myself."
"You poor little girl," said the woman tenderly, then fearing lest
sympathy would only make the girl feel worse, added hurriedly: "In that
case I should most strongly advise that you wait a day or two at least
and give things a chance to straighten out. At the end of that time, if
they haven't been found and you still think you ought to go, we'll pack
up everything and go along with you, of course."
"That's what I'll do then," agreed Mollie, relieved to have the question
settled for her. "And now," she added, making for the door once more,
"I'm going to get into my street things and wiz down to that station in
record time. Who wants to come with me?"
It seemed everybody did, and in a very short time the girls had changed
from their bathing suits to their street clothes and were ready for the
dash to the station, which was about two miles from their house.
They all climbed into Mollie's car, and the big machine started slowly
backward down the steep incline.
"Better hold on," Mollie warned them. "I've never done quite so steep a
hill as this backward, and the old boy may balk. Take your time, old
man," addressing the car, as it showed a tendency to pick up speed too
rapidly. "Of course we're in a hurry, but we don't want to land on our
ears. That's the way--gently now. All right--we're off!" as they reached
the foot of the hill in safety and swung around into the road. "Now
let's see how long it will take you to reach that station."
As a matter of fact, it took scarcely any time at all, for the demon of
speed seemed to have taken possession of Mollie, and she drove so
recklessly that even the girls, who were used to her daring, were
startled.
Yet something about the young driver's straight little back and tightly
compressed lips kept them from protesting.
However, the wild ride came to an end without accident, and the girls
tumbled out of the machine and on to the station platform. They looked
about them, but the only person in sight was an unpromising looking
person with a bald head--though he could not have been over
thirty-five--beaked nose, and small red-rimmed eyes.
This decidedly unattractive individual lounged against the door of the
waiting room and eyed the girls with insolent admiration.
"Anything I can do for you?" he asked, as he saw that they hesitated.
"Always willing to oblige the ladies," he added.
The girls exchanged a glance, then Betty approached the lounger who had
the grace to straighten up as she addressed him.
"We want to send a telegram," she explained coldly. "We understood we
could send one from here."
"Sure! That's me," he responded with alacrity. "Right this way, ladies."
The girls followed him reluctantly into a little square booth-like
place, and Mollie scribbled a telegram on the blank he gave her. Then
they hurried out to the machine again. A little way down the road Amy
turned and looked back. The fellow had resumed his lounging position and
was looking after them with his little red-rimmed eyes.
"Ugh! wasn't he awful?" said Betty, as Mollie rounded a turn in the road
on two wheels. "I'm glad we don't have to see him often, he'd give me
the nightmare."
But Mollie did not answer. Her mind was once more on the twins, and she
was repeating over and over the same old question.
"What has happened--what has happened? What could have happened?"
"Betty," she said aloud, so suddenly that Betty started, "there's just
one thing we didn't think of as being a solution. It's strange, too, for
it is the most probable solution of all."
"What?" asked Betty anxiously.
"Suppose--" said Mollie, her voice so low that Betty had to bend forward
to catch the words. "Suppose they have been kidnapped!"