DERAILED
There was shrieking and confusion from one end of the train to the other
as the car righted itself again. With a horrid noise of scraping brakes
the cars ahead came to a jolting standstill.
Tavia was out of her seat bent on joining the general stampede for the
door, but Dorothy held her back firmly.
“You will be hurt in that rush!” she cried. “Wait a minute; do, Tavia.”
Tavia obeyed, and crouched down in the seat and covered her eyes with
her trembling hands.
“Oh, listen to those cries, Doro!” she wailed presently. “Somebody must
be horribly hurt.”
“Just hysterics, Miss.”
A man, one of those who had been the first to jump from the train,
returned and sank into a seat opposite the two girls. “The car ahead of
us jumped the track, and it’s a mercy the whole train wasn’t wrecked. As
it is, they ain’t nothing to worry about, except that we may be tied up
here for some considerable time.”
Tavia uncovered her eyes and looked at him. Dorothy had already done so
and had risen from her seat and started hastily for the door, because
this man who had undertaken to reassure them was none other than the
villainous looking companion of the tall dark stranger!
At her sudden motion the man put out his hand and made as though to
rise.
“Better not go out there just now, Miss,” he said, his beady black eyes
resting upon her admiringly. “The crowd is still mighty hysterical and
it’s possible you might get hurt.”
Dorothy might have retorted that she preferred the hysterical crowd to
the doubtful pleasure of his company, but she held her tongue.
Instead she smiled noncommittally and held out her hand to Tavia.
“Come along, dear,” she begged. “There may be something we can do out
there.”
“I tell you there ain’t nobody hurt,” again put in the small, squat man
in a faintly irritable voice. “Better stay right here—”
But the two girls were already half way to the door, Tavia accompanying
her chum grumblingly.
“Every time anything interesting happens, Doro, you have to come along
and spoil everything.”
“If you call that fellow interesting, then I am disappointed in your
common sense,” retorted Dorothy tartly. “Sometimes, Tavia, I really
think you need a nurse.”
“Well, any time that I feel like engaging one, I’ll tell you,” drawled
Tavia, angered in her turn, and there fell an uncomfortable silence
between the girls.
Mechanically they walked through the excited crowd on the platform to
the spot where the car had jumped the track. There it stood, its wheels
on the gravel bed of the roadside, tilted crazily and only held upright
by the cars in front and at the rear of it.
“The people in this car must have been jolted up for fair. Thought it
was an earthquake or something,” murmured Tavia, interest getting the
better of her anger at Dorothy. “It’s a wonder we didn’t have an
honest-to-goodness wreck out of this.”
“It was the quick wit of the engineer who saved us, I guess,” said a
musical voice behind her, and, astonished, the two girls turned about to
find behind them the tall good-looking stranger who had caught Tavia’s
particular attention.
The eyes of the irrepressible girl sparkled as she muttered in a tone
audible only to Dorothy:
“We can’t run amiss of ’em, no matter how hard we try.”
Dorothy flushed with annoyance and pretended she had not heard the man’s
observation. Not so Tavia! If for no other reason than to annoy her chum
she determined to see the adventure through.
“We should get up a vote of thanks and send it to the engineer,” she
said in her sweetest tones. “He really was quite heroic. Fancy saving
the lives of all the people on this train.”
“Just fancy!” mimicked Dorothy bitterly, but the young man was not to be
so easily discouraged.
He immediately ranged himself beside the two girls and launched into a
boringly detailed account of the accident. In the middle of it Dorothy
excused herself and hurried back to the car.
Her cheeks were hot and she felt unreasonably angry with Tavia. To her
mind her chum had always been far too easy-going and casual with men,
and this, Dorothy thought, was going a little too far.
It was not that Tavia had responded to the stranger—that might have been
excusable under the circumstances. It was the manner of her response.
She wondered if the offensive, squat man would still be occupying the
seat opposite her when she returned to the car. She was busy framing a
scathing speech as she ascended the car steps, but was immensely
relieved a moment later to find that there was no need of delivering it.
The fellow had evidently been discouraged by her manner—sufficiently,
that is, to slightly dampen his enthusiasm.
Yet he still lingered uncomfortably near. Dorothy was annoyed and more
than a little alarmed to find that he occupied a seat in the same car
with her and Tavia.
On the entire trip then, they would be forced to suffer the annoyance of
his presence, to ward off his offensive attentions.
Dorothy could see that he often glanced at her over the top of the paper
he pretended to be reading and knew that it needed only a word or a
glance from her to bring him instantly to her side.
She wished more than ever that Garry were with her. He would know how to
deal with offensive strangers who took advantage of the confusion and
excitement consequent upon a train accident to become familiar.
She thought of Tavia, still, presumably, busy fascinating the
good-looking stranger. This was always an interesting pastime with
Tavia, and it would probably be some time before she tired of it.
If she had the audacity to bring that man into their car—Dorothy gasped
for, out of the corner of her eye, she saw that was just what Tavia was
doing.
Her color high, she turned and looked steadily out of the window as
Tavia and her latest conquest approached. The latter seemed about to
take the seat his unpleasant friend had so recently vacated but a glance
at Dorothy’s averted profile warned Tavia that, for the time, she had
gone far enough.
“Thank you so much!” she said sweetly, sinking into the opposite seat
and adroitly placing a box of candy—the gift of her new friend—upon the
other half of the seat, so that there was no room left for him. “You are
in this car, too, and going through to Chicago? How nice! Ah, yes, thank
you,” as the young man handed her a magazine that had fallen to the
floor.
The latter lingered, indulging in inanities—or so Dorothy termed
them—with Tavia, but evidently interested in Dorothy’s stubbornly
averted profile.
At length, as his room was so patently desired to his company, he
reluctantly moved on, joining his unpleasant friend.
Tavia looked at Dorothy with a sparkle in her eye. Evidently she had
been enjoying herself immensely and was in a conciliatory mood.
“Don’t be mad with me, Doro, darling,” she coaxed. “I know I’m a perfect
simpleton. But I was born that way, you know. I really can’t help it.”
“You could help a good many things, Tavia, if you wanted to,” said
Dorothy, turning away from the window. “Sometimes I wonder how you can
be in love with Nat and still act the way you do.”
“Well, I am in love with Nat and that’s all that matters—to Nat and me,”
retorted Tavia, her voice suddenly hard and cold. “I think you are too
absurdly conventional for words, Dorothy Dale. If you insist on being a
spoil-sport, then you can be one by yourself. I don’t intend to help
you!”
And so began the quarrel—the first real one the girls had ever had, and
one that lasted all through that miserable journey to Chicago.
Tavia, through a perverse desire to torment her chum, was almost
constantly to be seen in the company of the young man whose name,
according to him, was Stanley Blake.
Chicago came at last, and with it an immense relief to Dorothy Dale. Her
relief vanished immediately, however, when she found that Stanley Blake
had taken the place of a porter and was to carry their bags.
“He shan’t carry mine,” she said, in a sudden fury, to Tavia. “If you
want to go on being an—an——”
“Idiot. You might as well say it,” Tavia finished for her. “You can do
as you please, Doro. If you want to make a scene over such a foolish
little thing—— Come on, be a sport,” she added, suddenly conciliatory
again. “What’s your awful objection to saving a porter’s tip?”
Dorothy bit her lips to keep back a flood of angry words. She could not
very well make a scene by refusing the attentions of this man when Tavia
so casually accepted them. She would, she decided, put up with Tavia’s
folly once more, but, after that— She was fortified by the knowledge
that they were now at their journey’s end and so would automatically
dispense with the company of Stanley Blake and his fox-eyed friend.
They were in their room in the Blenheim Hotel at last. Tavia and she
were alone.
“Thank goodness, we’re rid of them,” thought Dorothy, as she removed her
hat and sank wearily upon the edge of the hard, hotel bed. “I hope I
never have to see either of them again.”
But she did, and that in a way that was not only unpleasant but
exceedingly startling.
Descending with Tavia to the hotel dining room, Dorothy saw at a table
near the door the very two persons whom she had so recently and
fervently wished never to see again! Tavia had not seen them yet, and
Dorothy prayed fervently that she might not.
The head waiter coming toward them and beaming benignly seemed like a
rescuing angel to Dorothy. She must get Tavia seated somewhere,
anywhere, before she became aware of the presence of Blake and his
friend. To have again their company thrust upon her was unthinkable.
Even at that last moment she would have turned away, urged Tavia to go
with her to some quiet, small restaurant outside. But it was too late.
The head waiter already was guiding them toward a table.
The table was next to the one at which Blake and his friend sat, at the
side and a little to the rear of it. Dorothy gasped, would have
protested could she have done so without rousing the suspicion of her
friend.
For Tavia was still blissfully unaware of anything unusual in the
atmosphere. And the head waiter, with a beaming smile, had motioned one
of the waiters to take their order.
Well, it couldn’t be helped, thought Dorothy resignedly. If Tavia saw
them she would have to. Lucky the two men were sitting with their backs
toward the table where the chums were ensconced, and, by skillful
maneuvering on Dorothy’s part, Tavia also had her back turned to them.
Dorothy turned sideways so that only her profile would be exposed to
view, if either of the men chanced to glance over his shoulder.
Suddenly she stiffened, for, coming to her with a startling distinctness
above the noise and chatter all about her, she heard a familiar name.
It was a very familiar name. The two men were talking about Garry Knapp!
“What is the matter, Doro?” asked Tavia, looking at her curiously. “You
resemble a storybook detective on the eve of a startling discovery.”
Dorothy motioned her sharply to be still.
“They are talking of Garry,” she explained, in a tense whisper.
“Who? When? Where?” cried Tavia, screwing her head about most absurdly
in a vain effort to bring the entire dining room within her range of
vision at the same time. “What do you mean, Doro?”
Dorothy gestured toward the two men at the table next to them, at the
same moment making an imploring gesture pleading silence.
“Why, Stanley Blake and his dear little friend!” exclaimed Tavia in a
tone of pleased surprise. “Always turning up like the proverbial bad
penny, aren’t they, Doro? Do you mind if I ask them to join us?”
She half rose from the table as if about to carry out her preposterous
threat, but Dorothy seized her fiercely by the arm and forced her back
into her seat.
“If you move or say a word, I never will speak to you again!” she said,
and at the vehemence of the usually gentle Dorothy, Tavia looked
surprised. However, she obeyed and remained curiously quiet.
Dorothy had missed something of what the men had said. She realized this
with a sharp annoyance. But the next moment a wave of rage and fear
swept over her, blotting out every other sensation.
They were not only speaking of Garry, these two men, but they were
threatening him as well. She held her breath so that she might not miss
one word of what was to follow.
“He is a kind of simple guy, this Dimples Knapp,” the beady-eyed man was
saying with a half-satisfied smirk. “Thinks this old world is made up of
goody-goody stiffs who believe in the Golden Rule and go to church
regular twice on Sundays. A cute little lamb to fleece!”
“And a nice fat, succulent one,” added Stanley Blake, in a voice neither
of the girls recognized. It had a cold, mean quality that made Dorothy
shiver, though the dining room was hot.
She glanced at Tavia and saw the look of bewilderment and horror on her
face. Tavia had “caught on” at last. She was beginning to find that
Dorothy’s aversion to these two men had been founded on something very
much more real than a whim.
[Illustration:
“THEY ARE TALKING OF GARRY,” SHE EXPLAINED, IN A TENSE WHISPER.
“Dorothy Dale to the Rescue.” Page 99
]
“What does it all mean, Doro?” she whispered, but once more Dorothy held
up her hand for silence.
“Wait, and perhaps we shall hear,” she said tensely.
“The fellow thinks he’s goin’ to have the best l’il wheat ranch in the
West,” went on Stanley’s companion, pushing back his plate and lighting
a cigar. “He’s got the cash to do it and—I feel forced out o’ the
kindness of my heart to say it, Cal—he’s got the brains. If it wasn’t
for that trustin’ little disposition of his—” he did not finish the
sentence, but ended with a chuckle, a thin, mean alien sound in that
convivial atmosphere.
Dorothy was the victim of a chill fear. The man was like a snake, a
mean, poisonous snake that would lie treacherously still in a crevice of
rock awaiting the moment to strike at an unsuspecting prey.
She thought of that horrible moment during her first trip to Desert
City, seemingly ages ago, when she had flung the rock that had snuffed
out the life of the rattlesnake that had threatened the life of her
chum. She had acted then swiftly, unerringly, not thinking of herself,
but of Tavia’s peril.
But this was another, a more venomous kind of reptile, and something
told her he would be infinitely harder to deal with.
Stanley Blake was speaking now, and both she and Tavia listened
breathlessly.
“You may think this fellow Dimples Knapp is easy game, Gibbons, but I
know better,” drawled the hero of Tavia’s gay moments. “He may be as
trusting as you say he is, but I tell you he’s got friends that were not
born yesterday. And they weren’t born blind, either.”
“I s’pose you mean that snoopin’ Lance Petterby an’ his gang,” snarled
the little man, and the girls started nervously. “Well, I’m goin’ on
record now to the effect that if he tries any funny business, it’ll be
the last time, that’s all. You hear me, Cal, it’ll be the last time!”
“Say, you poor little shrimp, will you cut out calling me by my first
name? This is the second time you’ve done it in the last five minutes.
Getting childish or something, aren’t you?”
The man whose name quite obviously was not Stanley Blake glanced hastily
about the room as he gave vent to these irritable remarks, and Dorothy
turned hastily aside lest he should recognize her profile, and so put an
end to his remarkable discourse.
However, though the men continued talking and, presumably, on the same
subject, it did not take Dorothy long to realize that she would hear
nothing further of importance that day.
The two men, evidently beset by an excess of caution, had lowered their
voices so that it was impossible to catch a word of their discourse.
Although the girls strained their ears, the conversation at the next
table became only a confused mumbling and soon afterward the two men
rose and left the dining room.
Although she had scarcely tasted her lunch, Dorothy rose too.
“Where are you going, Doro?” asked Tavia.
“To the office,” said Dorothy. “I must send a telegram to Garry at
once!”