MR. STANLOCK AMUSED.
"I understand now how a mathematician could write 'Alice in
Wonderland'," Helen Nash remarked to Marion after Mr. Stanlock had
withdrawn to the diningroom and his belated meal.
"How is that?" the hostess inquired, looking curiously at her friend.
"Why, your father, I suppose, has been thinking in terms of tons of
coal all day--"
"Carloads," Marion corrected, with a toss of levity.
"Well, make it carloads," Helen assented. "That's better to my
purpose, more like a multiplication table, instead of addition. But it
must be about as dry as mathematics."
"Oh, I get you," Marion exclaimed delightedly. "You mean that it is
quite as remarkable for a coal operator, with carloads of coal and
soot weighing down his imagination all day, to come home in the
evening and spin off a lot of nonsense like a comedian as it is for a
mathematician to have written 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'."
"Precisely," answered Helen.
"Well, I don't know but you're right. Anyway, I wouldn't detract from
such a nice compliment paid to the dearest daddy on earth. Still,
after leaving the atmosphere of his carloads of coal he had
experienced the diversion of being held up."
"By two masked men with guns on a lonely highway," supplemented Helen.
"Yes."
"And later found that his driver had turned traitor and planned to
deliver him into the hands of the enemy."
"Yes."
"I don't see any diversion or inspiration in that sort of experience.
Many a man would have come home in a very depressed state of mind
after such an adventure. And yet he came home, found everybody scared
to death, and before he even began his story had us all laughing just
as Alice would at some of the contortions behind the looking glass.
And he kept us smiling even when he told of the masked would-be
kidnappers standing in the middle of the road and pointing pistols at
the driver of his automobile."
"Kidnappers," repeated Marion in puzzled surprise. "Why do you say
kidnappers?"
The two girls were alone in the library when this conversation took
place. All of the other guests, feeling that the members of the family
would prefer to be left alone following the startling occurrences of
the evening, had withdrawn to their rooms. Helen was about to bid her
friend good-night when her remark regarding Mr. Stanlock's happy
personal faculties opened the discussion as here recorded. She
hesitated a few moments before answering the last inquiry; then she
said:
"Don't you think that those men intended to kidnap your father? What
other explanation can you find for their actions?"
"I hadn't tried to figure out their motive," Marion replied
thoughtfully. "Father called it a hold-up and I took his word for it."
"But he had no money with him, did he?"
"No, I think not. He seldom carries much money."
"And it is hardly reasonable to suppose that this plot between the
chauffeur and the two highwaymen was for the purpose of murder. They
would have gone about it in some other way. This one leaves too many
traces behind."
"Yes," Marion admitted.
"Well, the only reasonable conclusion you can reach with the robbery
and murder motives out of the way, is that the plotters wished to take
your father prisoner and hold him some place until they got what they
wanted."
"But what did they want?" asked the bewildered Marion.
"That's for your father to suspect and the police to find out," said
Helen shrewdly. "Personally, I haven't a doubt that the strike has
everything to do with it."
"What makes you think so?"
"The threatening letter that you received at the Institute. Show that
to your father tonight and suggest that he turn it over to the
police."
"I will," Marion promised. "In this new excitement I forgot all about
it. I didn't even show it to mother. Just as soon as papa finishes his
dinner, I'm going to show that letter to him. I'll go upstairs now and
get it. You wait here and be present when we talk it over, Helen.
You're so good at offering suggestions that maybe with you present we
can all work out some kind of solution of what has been going on."
Marion hastened up to her room and returned presently with both of the
anonymous letters she had received in Westmoreland. A few minutes
later her father and mother both entered the library with the evident
purpose in mind of holding a lengthy conference on the problems
growing out of Mr. Stanlock's business troubles.
"Papa, do you think those men tried to kidnap you?" Marion inquired by
way of introducing the subject.
Mr. Stanlock laughed heartily.
"Kidnap me!" he exclaimed. "Well, that's a good one. I thought they
only kidnapped kids."
"Father," the girl pleaded; "do be serious with me. I've got something
very important to show you, something I forgot all about until Helen
reminded me. Helen thinks those men tried to kidnap you, and she's a
pretty wise girl, as I've had occasion to find out."
"If Helen said that, she surely must be a wise girl or else she has
made a pretty accurate guess," was the mine owner's reply.
"Then they did want to kidnap you?"
"Absolutely no doubt of it. They've got some kind of retreat in the
mountains, and planned to carry me off there and keep me prisoner."
"What for?"
"Why, to force me to yield to some of their demands, which are utterly
impossible and unreasonable. First, they demand an increase of wages
that would force us into a receivership sooner or later and again they
demand the adoption of a cooperative plan which eventually would make
them owners of the mines, if there were any possibility of it working,
and there isn't. It's a most ridiculous hold-up, the responsibility
for which rests with a few fanatical leaders of doubtful integrity."
"What do you think of these letters?" Marion asked, handing the two
anonymous missives to her father. "I received them by mail at the
Institute last night, but neglected to read them until we were all on
the train this morning."
As Mr. Stanlock read them, his brow contracted sternly. He could treat
lightly any hostile attack on himself, but when danger threatened
members of his family or their intimate friends, all signs of levity
disappeared from his manner and he was ready at once to meet with all
his energy the source of the danger, whether it be human or an element
of inanimate nature.
"This" he said, as he finished reading and held up the letter signed
with a skull and cross-bones, "undoubtedly came from the source where
the plot to kidnap me originated. They are pretty well organized and
determined to go the limit. Of course, you girls must give up your
plans to work among the strikers' families. It would be foolhardy and
probably would result in somebody's getting hurt."
"How about the other letter?" Marion asked.
"I don't know," was the reply. "It doesn't seem to amount to much. I
hardly think it is to be taken as a threat. Have you no idea who sent
it?"
"Some of the girls think it was sent by some of the Boy Scouts at
Spring Lake. You see they came up in full force to Hiawatha on the
night when we held our Grand Council Fire. It was a complete surprise
on us, exceedingly well done and about as clever as you could expect
from the cleverest boys. Before they left, several of them boasted
openly that they were planning another surprise for some of us, and
they dared us to find out in advance what it was."
"No doubt that is what this note means," Mr. Stanlock declared so
positively and such a gleam of interest in his eyes that Marion
could not help wondering just a little.
"What makes you so certain about it?" she inquired. "I don't see any
real proof in those words as to what they mean or who wrote them."
"No, no, of course not," agreed Mr. Stanlock with seemingly uncalled
for glibness; "but then, you see, it is more reasonable to suspect
that this note came from the boys than from the strikers. If it is
between the two,--the boys and the strikers,--I say forget the
strikers and be sure that the boys sent this note."
"I wish that the boys would spring their surprise tonight and settle
the question of that note," said Marion.
"Why?" inquired her father with the faint light of a smile in his
eyes.
"Because I don't like the uncertainty of the thing. Uncertainty always
bothers me, and this is a more than ordinary case."
"But how could the boys spring their surprise without coming to
Hollyhill?" her father asked.
"That's just it," she returned with a quick glance of suspicion toward
both her father and her mother. "Do you know, I found myself wondering
several times if Clifford wouldn't bring some of those boys down here
some time during the holidays."
Mr. Stanlock laughed, but he would have given a good deal to be able
to recall the noise he made. It was really a noise, as he must have
admitted himself, and so hollow as to indicate something decidedly
unlike spontaneous amusement.
Marion caught herself in a brown study several times over these
circumstances and her father's manner before she went to sleep that
night.
* * * * *