CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
When the teller of a tale has to fly from one side of the ocean to the
other in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, at any rate between
chapters, and the persons in the tale have no communication with one
another except by letters that are more than likely to be tampered with
on the high seas, it is a great comfort to find that all the characters
have at last arrived at the same date. On that morning after the
dropping of bombs when Judy, dressed in her sad mourning garb, was
selling spinach and tarts to the hungry occupants of the Montparnasse
quarter, Molly, allowing for the difference in time, was oversleeping
herself after a wakeful night and the college girls were quietly
cleaning her living room. Kent and Jim Castleman were stretching
themselves luxuriously in the not too comfortable beds of the _Haute
Loire_ preparatory to making themselves presentable, first to find
Judy, and then to find the general who, no doubt, would be glad to have
the Kentucky giant enlist in the ranks, even though his letter of
introduction and credentials had gone to the bottom with the _Hirondelle
de Mer_. Jim Castleman's appearance was certainly credential enough that
he would make a good fighter.
A bath and a shave did much towards making our young men presentable.
Kent with a needle and thread, borrowed from the chambermaid, darned the
knees of his trousers so that they did very well just so long as he did
not try to sit down; then the strain would have been too much. Jim's
were hopelessly short.
"Nothing but a flounce would save me, so I'll have to go around at high
water mark; but I'll soon be in a uniform, I hope."
They had breakfast in a little cafe where Kent had often gone while he
was a student at the Beaux Arts, and there Jim Castleman astonished the
madame by ordering four eggs. She couldn't believe it possible that any
one could eat that much _dejeuner_ and so cooked his eggs four minutes.
His French was quite sketchy but he plunged manfully in with what he had
and finally came out with breakfast enough to last until luncheon. Kent
was willing to do the talking for him but he would none of it.
"Let me do it myself! I'll learn how to get something to eat if I starve
in the attempt."
And now for Judy! Kent could hardly wait for his famished friend to eat
his two orders of rolls and coffee and his four eggs, but at last he was
through.
First to the bank! No, they did not know where Mlle. Kean was. She had
been in once to get money but they were sorry they could not honour her
letter of credit. She had left no address.
Then to the American Club! Judy had been in the day before for mail, and
had had quite a budget. She had left no address, but came for letters
always when the American mail was reported in.
Where could she be?
Next, to his cousin, the Marquise d'Ochte, on the Faubourg!
The venerable porter, at the porte-cochere, who came in answer to the
vigorous ring that the now very uneasy Kent gave the bell, said that
none of the family was within and they had no visitor. Madame the
Marquise had gone to the front only the day before, but was coming home
soon to open a hospital in her own home. Even then the workmen were busy
carrying out her orders, packing away books, pictures, ornaments, rugs
and what not so that the house would be the more suitable to care for
the wounded. The Marquis and Philippe were both with their regiments.
The old porter was sad and miserable. Jules, the butler, was gone; also
Gaston, the chef whose sauces were beyond compare. Madame had taken
great hampers of food with her, even going to Montparnasse for tarts
from Tricots'.
Kent turned sadly away. Judy was somewhere, but where? Her letter to
Molly telling of her being in the Bents' studio had come after Kent
left Kentucky and he had no way of knowing that she was there. Polly
Perkins and his wife, he knew were in the thick of the battle from the
first letter he had seen from Judy. Where was Pierce Kinsella? He had
not heard from his studio mate and friend but he rather thought there
was little chance of finding him. At any rate, he determined to go to
the Rue Brea and see if the concierge there knew anything of the lost
damsel.
They found a crowd at the entrance to the court on which the studios
fronted. The concierge in the midst of them was waving her arms and
talking excitedly.
"Yes, and the first I heard was a click! click! click! and that, it
seems, was the terrible thing flying over us and then an explosion that
deafened me. They say it was meant for the Luxembourg and they missed
their mark. That I know nothing about----"
"What is it? Tell me quick!" demanded Kent, elbowing his way through the
crowd with the help of Jim, that renowned center rush.
"Ah, Monsieur Brune!" she exclaimed, grasping his hand. "Did you know
that a dirty Prussian had sent a bomb right down through the skylight of
the good Bents' and now all their things are wrecked?"
"The Bents'!" gasped Kent. "Was any one hurt?"
"And that we can't say. The young lady has not been sleeping there
lately but yesterday she came and got the key and did not return it, so
I thought she must have slept there last night! This morning we can find
no trace of her. The bomb did much damage, but surely it could not have
destroyed her completely."
"Destroyed her! What young lady?"
"Why, Mademoiselle Kean, of course."
Kent was glad of the strong arm of Jim Castleman. He certainly needed a
support but only for a moment. He pushed through the crowd and made his
way to the shattered wall of the studio. The bomb had not done so much
damage as might have been expected. The front wall was fallen and the
skylight was broken all over the floor. The chairs and easels were
piled up like jackstraws at the beginning of a game. The bedrooms were
uninjured but the balcony where Judy and Molly had slept that happy
winter in Paris had fallen.
Would Judy have slept up on the roost just for auld lang syne or would
she have occupied a more comfortable bedroom? If she had been blown into
such small bits that there was nothing to tell the tale, why should
these other things have escaped? There were the blue tea cups in the
china closet uninjured, although most of them were turned over, showing
that the shock had reached them, too. What was that blue thing lying on
the divan in the corner under untold debris?
Kent pulled off the timbers and broken glass and unearthed Judy's blue
serge dress, which was waiting to be dyed a dismal black. He clasped it
in his arms in an agony of apprehension. Letters fell out of the pocket.
He recognized his mother's handwriting, also Molly's. So, Judy had
heard from Kentucky! He stuffed them back in the jacket.
"Jim, I simply don't believe she was here. I couldn't have slept all
night like such a lummux if she--if she----"
"Yes, old fellow! I know! I don't believe she was here, either."
"I just know I would have had some premonition of it! I would have been
conscious of it if anything had been happening to Judy," which showed
that Kent Brown was his mother's own son. He was not going to mourn the
loss of a loved one until he was sure the loved one was gone, and he had
her own unfailing faith that something could not have happened to one he
cared for without his being aware of it.
"Sure you would!" declared Jim, not at all sure but relieved that his
friend was taking that view of the matter.
"I know something that will be a positive proof whether she was here or
not last night." Kent walked firmly to the bath room, which was behind
the bed rooms and out of the path of the bomb. He threw open the door
and looked eagerly on the little glass shelf for a tooth brush.
"Not a sign of one. I know and you know that if Judy had been here last
night her tooth brush would have been here, too. I am sure now! Come on,
and let's look somewhere else."
Kent went out with Judy's serge dress over his arm. The concierge looked
sadly after him: "Her dress is all he has to cherish now. The poor young
man! I used to see he was in love with her when Mrs. Brune was in the
Bents' studio and her son occupied the one to the right with Mr.
Kinsella. Oh, la la! _Mais la vie est amer!_"
The crowd dispersed, since there was nothing more to see and the hour
for _dejeuner a la fourchette_ was approaching. The concierge went off
to visit her daughter who was ill. The studios were all empty now and
her duties were light. Her husband was to see that no one entered the
court to carry off the Bents' things, which were exposed pitifully to
the gaze of the public until the authorities could do something. He,
good man, waited a little while and then made his way to a neighbouring
_brasserie_ to get his tumbler of absinthe, and one tumbler led to
another and forgetfulness followed soon, and the Bents' studio
properties were but dreams to his befuddled brain.
Judy had spent a busy morning. Marie had gone to carry tarts to "the
regiment" and all of the waiting in the shop fell on her. She did it
gladly, thankful that she was so busy she could not think. She measured
soup and weighed spinach and potato salad and wrapped up tarts until her
back ached. Finally Mere Tricot came in from the baking of more tarts.
"My child, go out for a while. You need the air. I am here now to feed
these gourmands."
"All right, Mother! I want to get my dress at the studio. Marie says she
will dye it for me."
"Certainly! Certainly! We can save many a sou by doing it ourselves. Go,
child!"
Judy put on her little mourning bonnet and sadly found her way to the
Rue Brea.
"I wonder where the bomb hit last night. Pere Tricot said near the
Luxembourg."
What was her amazement to find the poor studio in ruins. No concierge to
tell her a thing about it, for her lodge was locked tight and no one
near. Judy picked her way sadly over the fallen front wall.
"I'll get my dress, anyhow." But although she was sure it had been on
the divan in the studio, no dress was to be found.
"Well, I'll have to have something to wear besides this thin waist. I am
cold now, and what will I do when winter, real winter comes? I shall
have to send to Giverny for my trunk, and no telling what it will cost
to get it here. Oh, oh, how am I to go on? I wish to God I had been
sleeping on that balcony when the bomb struck. Then I would have been at
peace."
Judy gave herself up to the despair that was in her heart. She made a
thorough search for the suit through the poor wrecked apartment but no
sign of it could she see. She went sadly back to the delicatessen shop
and stepped behind the counter, her hat still on, to assist the good
Mother Tricot, who was being besieged with customers.
"Take off your hat, child. Here is a fresh cap of Marie's and an apron.
Did you get your dress?"
Judy told her kind friend of the bomb-wrecked studio and her lost suit.
"Oh, the vandals! The wretches! There must be a Prussian in our midst
who would be so low as to steal your suit. No Frenchman would have done
it. Before the war,--yes, but now there is not one who would do such a
dastardly trick. We are all of one family now, high and low, rich and
poor,--and we do not prey on one another."
"Well, it makes very little difference," said Judy resignedly. "I'll
send for my trunk. I have other suits in it."
"Other suits! Oh, what riches!" but then the old woman considered that
the friend of the Marquise d'Ochte perhaps had many other suits.
Judy donned the cap and apron and went on with the shop keeping. No one
could have told her from a poor little bereaved French girl. The cap
was becoming, as was also the organdy collar. Her face was pale and her
eyes full of unshed tears, but the sorrow had given to Judy's face
something that her enemies might have said it had lacked: a softness and
depth of feeling. Her friends knew that her heart was warm and true and
that the feeling was there, but her life had been care free with no
troubles except the scrapes that she had been as clever getting out of
as she had been adroit getting in. She had many times considered herself
miserable before but now she realized that all other troubles had
been nothing--this was something she had had no conception of--this
tightening of the heart strings, this hopeless feeling of the bottom
having dropped out of the universe.
She felt absolutely friendless, except for her dear Tricots. The Browns
could never see her again. They must blame her, as it was all her fault
that Kent had come for her. If she had not been so full of her own
conceit, she would certainly have sailed for America when all the others
did at the breaking out of the war. Her mother and father seemed as
remote as though they were on another planet. The war might last for
years and there seemed no chance of their leaving Berlin.
"I'll just stay on here and earn my board and keep," she sighed. "The
Tricots find me useful and they want me."
In the meantime, Kent and Jim Castleman went and sat down in the Garden
of the Luxembourg to smoke and talk it over, Kent still fondly clasping
the serge dress.
"I'll find her all right before night," declared Kent. "She'll be sure
to go to the Bents' studio sometime to-day. I'll write a note and leave
it with the concierge. I'll also leave a note at the American Club. She
must go there twice a week at least. I'd like to know where the poor
little thing is," and Kent heaved a sigh.
"I bet she is all right, wherever she is," comforted Jim. "Say, Brown,
I don't like to mention it, but I am starved to death."
"Not mention it! Why not?"
"Well, you see when a pal is in trouble it seems so low to go get
hungry."
"But I'm not in trouble. Now if I thought that Judy had been in that
place last night there would be something to be troubled about, but as
it is, I just can't find her for a few hours, or maybe minutes. Where
shall we eat?"
"That's up to you. I'm getting mighty low in funds, so let's do it cheap
but do it a plenty," and Jim looked rather ruefully at his few remaining
francs.
"I am still in funds but I shall have to go it mighty easy, too, to get
Judy and me home. I tell you what we might do. Let's go to a shop where
they have ready cooked food and bring it out here and eat it. They say
you can live on half what it costs to eat in a restaurant. When I was
studying over here I knew lots of fellows who lived that way. Of course,
they had studios where they could take the stuff and eat it, but the
Luxembourg Garden is good enough. I know a place where the Perkinses
used to deal. They are the funny lot I told you about, the long-haired
man and the short-haired woman. He is driving an ambulance now and
goodness knows where she is."
"Well, let's go to it. I am so hungry I can hardly waddle. These
Continental breakfasts with nothing but bread and coffee don't fill me
up half way."
Kent smiled, remembering the two full orders and the four eggs his
friend had tucked away, but he said nothing. Having a good appetite of
his own, he had naught but sympathy for his famished friend.
They left the garden and made for the shop where Jo and Polly Perkins
had bought their ready cooked provisions.
"These people make some little pies that are mighty good, too. We might
get half a dozen or so of them as a top off," suggested Kent.
"Fine! I've got a mouth for pie, all right."
Judy had gone to the kitchen for a moment to bring to the fore the
smoked tongue that Pere Tricot had been slicing in those paper-thin
slices that he alone knew how to accomplish. She bore aloft a great
platter of the viand, the even slices arranged like a wreath of autumn
leaves. While she was still in the living room behind the shop, two
strangers entered. Their backs being to the light, Judy only saw their
silhouettes as they bent over the show cases eagerly discussing what
selection of meats and vegetables they should make, while Mere Tricot,
accustomed to slim-pocketed customers, patiently waited. Suddenly she
leaned over the counter and touched something which one of the young men
had thrown over his arm.
"What is this?" she demanded with the manner she could so well assume,
that of a woman of the Commune who meant to right her wrongs.
The purchaser of sauce and potato salad, the two cheapest and most
filling of the wares, held up rather sheepishly a blue serge suit.
"Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle! Come quick! It is your suit--and no
Frenchman, as I said, but a Prussian, no doubt."
The grenadier slid quickly from behind the counter and putting her
brawny arm out, held the door firmly, so that no escape could be
possible.