MORE TROUBLE
Dorothy started back as though Jack Popella had struck her.
It was not true! It could not be true! Joe never, never would do such a
thing! Her face turned very white and she trembled violently. Even Jack
Popella seemed alarmed at what he had done and stood regarding her with
a strange mixture of bravado and sheepishness.
Tavia sprang forward, putting her arm about Dorothy and fixing blazing
eyes upon the young Italian.
“How dare you say such a thing!” she gasped. “You know it is a horrible,
an awful——”
But Dorothy rallied and pressed a hand close upon Tavia’s lips.
“Don’t, dear,” she pleaded faintly. “I am not quite through with him
yet. Jack Popella,” she turned to the swarthy lad and her tone was
strangely quiet and subdued, “tell me all you know. Won’t you, please?”
“I don’t know nothin’ much,” protested the Italian, abashed and sullen
again. “I know that Joe set fire to the store and when the explosion
came he got scared and run away. That’s all.”
“Enough to scare anybody, I should say,” murmured Tavia, but Dorothy
took no notice of her.
“Why should Joe do a thing like that?” asked Dorothy, still in that
strangely gentle tone. “He never was a bad boy, Jack. He must have had
some reason.”
Popella was silent, but again his glance darted up and down the block as
though seeking escape.
“Won’t you tell me what reason Joe had for doing such a thing—if he did
it?” Dorothy persisted, repeating: “He must have had some reason.”
“Aw, I dunno,” returned the lad uneasily. “He had a fight with ole man
Haskell, that’s all.”
“What about?” asked Dorothy patiently. “You must know what it was about,
Jack.”
“The ole man short-changed him, if you want to know,” the lad burst out
as though her persistence irritated him past bearing. “We was buyin’
some toys with a two-dollar bill Joe had an’ the ole man wouldn’t give
him the right change. Joe tole him about it an’ the ole man got mad.
Then Joe got mad an’ they had a reg’lar fight.”
“Must have been an unequal struggle,” murmured Tavia. “I imagine Joe got
the worst of it.”
“Aw, it wasn’t that kind of a scrap,” retorted the Italian lad, favoring
Tavia with a pitying glance that caused her to choke and search
frantically for her handkerchief. “Joe knows better than to pitch into a
big feller like ole man Haskell. They just yelled at each other, that’s
all.”
“And Joe set fire to a store because of a little thing like that!” said
Dorothy, in a dazed tone, as though she were repeating something she had
heard in a dream. “I don’t believe it!”
“Believe it or not, lady,” retorted Jack Popella, with a return of his
insolent air now that suspicion had been shifted from him. “It’s the
trut’. So long!” And with another of his eel-like movements he dodged
past Dorothy and disappeared around the corner.
Dorothy watched him go apathetically. What did it matter to her what
happened to Jack Popella now?
“The slimy little toad!” cried Tavia, disgustedly. “Ugh! I should think
you would want to wash your hands, Doro. They must feel greasy.”
“They don’t feel at all,” admitted Dorothy wearily. “Just now I don’t
believe there is a bit of sensation in any part of me, Tavia.”
“Poor little Doro!” said Tavia gently. “Having a pretty hard time of it,
aren’t you, honey? But of course you don’t believe a word that little
toad told you?”
Dorothy was silent and Tavia looked at her sharply.
“You don’t, do you?” she repeated, with increased emphasis.
“Oh, I am trying hard not to, Tavia,” cried Dorothy desperately. “But
there—there is the circumstantial evidence.”
“Circumstantial evidence—pah!” cried Tavia vehemently. “Any real
criminal lawyer will tell you it isn’t worth powder to blow it up with.
Proof, that’s the thing! And what proof have you? Not a bit. Only the
word of that slimy little toad—who, by the way, will bear considerable
watching, if you will listen to me,” she added significantly.
“But Jack Popella didn’t run away and Joe did!” Dorothy pointed out to
her miserably.
“Oh-ho, so that’s what’s worrying you! Well, I wouldn’t let it, if I
were you. Don’t you know that the smartest criminals believe that the
safest place in the world for them is right in the vicinity of their
crime?”
“Good gracious, Tavia, I wish you wouldn’t speak of criminals so much,”
interrupted Dorothy unhappily. “It makes me feel uncomfortable.”
Tavia wanted to laugh but, after a glance at Dorothy’s face, forbore.
There were times when the careless Tavia could be very tactful,
especially with the people she loved.
They returned to The Cedars to find Mrs. White considerably worried over
their unexplained absence. But when Dorothy explained where she had been
and what she had found out Mrs. White readily forgave her. She was as
alarmed and distressed as Dorothy over the revelations of young Jack
Popella and she agreed with rather significant readiness that at present
nothing should be said to the Major concerning this new turn in events.
“Where is Dad?” asked Dorothy, as she turned to go upstairs. Mrs. White
looked still further distressed.
“You must not be alarmed, Dorothy dear,” she said. “But your father
preferred to stay in bed this morning——”
“In bed!” Dorothy interrupted swiftly. “Then he is ill!”
“He says he is just tired, dear. And, indeed, he has not slept for
several nights,” the Major’s sister explained, adding, as Dorothy once
more turned to leave the room: “He has been asking for you.”
“Asking for you, asking for you,” hammered in Dorothy’s head as she ran
up the stairs to see for herself why it was the Major had “preferred to
stay in bed.”
At the top of the stairs she ran into Ned, who caught her arm and held
on to it, laughingly.
“Whither away so fast, fair cousin?” he queried. “You should never rush
like that so soon after breakfast. Any doctor’s book will tell you as
much.”
“Let me go, Ned,” Dorothy pleaded. “Dad is ill.”
“Not ill—just tired,” corrected Ned, the while Dorothy wondered at his
denseness. “No wonder,” he added grumblingly. “I would be tired too, in
his place. That young brother of yours needs a sound thrashing, Dot.”
“Ned, how dare you say such a thing!” Dorothy turned upon him with
flashing eyes. “Poor Joe needs his family just now—and that’s all he
needs.”
She was gone before her cousin could speak, and Ned was left to whistle
his surprise and admiration.
“Poor, loyal kid,” he muttered, as he went on down the stairs. “Has a
lot on her mind, too. Guess Nat and I had better get busy if we don’t
want to lose our reputations as rivals of the great detectives.”
Meantime Dorothy had rapped upon her father’s door and, receiving no
answer, pushed it gently open.
So still and quiet was the Major’s face upon the pillow that she thought
for a moment he was asleep. But as she turned to creep silently away he
opened his eyes and called to her.
“I have been waiting to see you, daughter,” he said, and again Dorothy
detected that unusual wistfulness in his tone. “Where have you been?”
Dorothy evaded the question, feeling miserable as she did so. Never
before had she refused to answer any query put to her by the Major and
now it was almost impossible not to give him a straightforward reply.
Yet how could she tell him, in his weakened condition, that Joe was
suspected of having set fire to Haskell’s store?
Instead, she gave some explanation of her absence that seemed to satisfy
him well enough. When she came and knelt beside his bed he spoke in his
old cheerful vein of his indisposition, insisting that it was sheer
laziness on his part and that he would surely be downstairs for
luncheon.
But Dorothy, looking at his worn and weary face, was not so optimistic.
Although she succeeded in hiding her anxiety beneath her usual practical
and cheerful manner, she was inwardly deciding to call up the family
physician as soon as she left her father’s room.
She knew that when the Major kept his bed there was something seriously
wrong with him.
A few moments later, carefully muffling her voice so that her father
might not hear her, Dorothy called up the doctor and was told that the
physician would call at The Cedars as soon as possible, probably about
eleven o’clock.
She went down to the living room and found Tavia and Nat quite evidently
absorbed in each other’s company. She was about to retreat and leave
them to themselves when Tavia spied her and called out merrily.
“No reserved seats in here,” she told Dorothy gravely, as the latter
slowly returned and sank down into one of the big, comfortable chairs.
“Everybody invited, free of charge. Why the long face, Doro darling? Any
new and dreadful thing happened?”
“I have called Doctor Paugh to see Dad,” returned Dorothy wearily. “He
will be here soon, I think.”
“Why, Doro, is it as bad as that?” asked Tavia, with quick sympathy. “I
had no idea he was really ill.”
“Have you ever known the Major to stay in bed when he didn’t have to?”
retorted Dorothy, and something in her tone and manner convinced both
Tavia and Nat that there was more to the Major’s indisposition than they
had imagined.
They were silent for a few moments, then Nat spoke softly to Dorothy.
“Tavia has just been telling me what you found out from Jack Popella.”
Dorothy glanced up and Nat added quickly:
“You can’t put too much stock in what that fellow tells you, Dot. His
word would be the last I’d trust.”
“I don’t know what to trust,” confessed Dorothy miserably. “Or which way
to turn——”
“Which reminds me,” interrupted Tavia with apparent irrelevance, “that a
letter came for you from the wild and woolly West a few moments ago,
Doro. I have a sneaking notion it’s from Garry.”