When Judge Peterson woke up in the morning after a night of restless
tossing, and an early morning doze, he called to his wife with a voice
much like his old time vigor.
“Miranda, bring me my pants. I want to try how it seems to sit up. I’ve
got to get out of here and find that little girl. There’s something
queer about this business and I reckon it’s up to me to study it out.”
The anxious face of Miranda Peterson that had been creased all night
with tormenting fears suddenly relaxed and a gleam of joy came into her
eyes. This was her old time husband back again. The visitors hadn’t
done him so much damage after all, perhaps had only given him an added
incentive to get well. With a spring in her step and a light in her eye
she swung the old-fashioned wardrobe door open and revealed his baggy
trousers hung up by their suspenders just where she had put them the
night he was taken sick.
“All right, father,” she said briskly, “There they are. You have your
breakfast and as soon as the doctor comes we’ll ask him if you can put
’em on. There’s ham and eggs this morning, do you feel for ham or only
eggs?”
“Both!” declared the indomitable old man, “I’ve got a lot to do today
and I want strength. Mother, did you ever think that Mary Massey
suspected her son’s wife of not being--well--exactly loyal to the
family?”
Miranda Peterson paused in the open doorway:
“Yes, I did, father. The last time I was up there before she died she
kind of tried to apologize to me for asking me to close the door while
we talked. She said she knew Nan wasn’t very fond of Joyce, and she
didn’t want her to know we were talking about her future, it might
cause jealousy. She said Nan had accused her of thinking more of Joyce
than she did of her own son’s wife, as of course she did. How could she
help it? But I could see she was real uneasy about how they would get
on when she was gone, especially when they found out about the house.
She said then she was going to explain it all to Eugene right away. But
you know she took worse that night and I suppose she never did get the
chance. I think myself it was a great mistake, letting the children
grow up without knowing all about it, but of course Mary Massey felt
she must keep her sister’s dying request, and her sister hadn’t wanted
Joyce to know she had money coming to her till she was twenty-one. She
said she was afraid it would spoil her. Well, she isn’t spoiled, that’s
one thing certain, but it always seems to me when you work real hard to
escape one trouble, you’re like as not to run head on to another that’s
about as bad. Look what’s happened now. I don’t blame Joyce Radway one
little mite for not standing that Nannette. She’s got a tongue like
a hissing serpent, and she can wind that light-minded, weak-chinned,
bull-headed husband of hers around her little finger. How that poor bag
of meal ever came to be Mary Massey’s son I can’t figure, even with a
husband like Hiram Massey, for Mary Massey was the salt of the earth.
Talking about salt, do you want your eggs on toast? And hot milk? Yes,
I know. I’ll have ’em here in the jerk of a lamb’s tail, and then
you’ll be ready to talk to the doctor when he comes.”
“All right, mother. And say, send Dan down. He’s about isn’t he? Well,
I want him to go an errand. Send him in.”
Dan appeared, clean shaven, kindly eyed, with a square jaw like his
father’s and a determined set to his shoulders.
“Dan, we’ve got to find that little girl right away. Understand?”
“Yes, father. So I told Darcy Sherwood last night. I’ve a notion we’ll
be on her track soon. Darcy gets around quite a good bit, and he seemed
interested. Always thought a good bit of Aunt Mary, you know. Any
danger of that poor fish of a Gene lighting out?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said the Judge, “He’s too mad. Thinks his
dignity has been offended. It’s about all he’s got left of the family
pride, his dignity and he’s working that for all it’s worth. He likes
to be bowed down to, has ever since he was born, and he thinks his
mother’s Christianity was wide enough to cover him and his fat, lazy
family. I don’t want to do injustice to anybody, Dan, but I’ve a notion
that chump needs a lesson or two and I’m figuring on being able to give
it to him in a few days. I don’t know why good women like Mary Massey
have to be afflicted with conceited puppies for sons. I suppose she
loved him so she spoiled him. Women mostly do. Take your mother. Dan,
you’d have been a ruined man if it hadn’t been for the lickings I gave
you with the old birch rod down behind the barn when your mother’d
gone to missionary meeting. You’ve never thanked me for that, Dan, but
you’re a better man for it, you know. Now, Dan, just slip me those
pants on the nail behind you, lad. I’m going to surprise your mother.
Hurry up. I hear those ham and eggs coming!”
With the help of Dan, Judge Peterson got into his nether garments and
was sitting on the side of the bed when his wife arrived with the ham
and eggs, and though a bit weak and trembly he insisted on sitting up
in the rocking chair without pillows while he ate his breakfast. The
old zest for work and fight had lifted him at last from his weakness
back into the world again and he was determined to get right into line.
Of course the doctor hustled him back to bed again when he arrived, and
glad enough he was to get there, though he wouldn’t own it, but in the
half-hour after he had finished the ham and eggs and before the doctor
arrived he managed to get quite a number of little things started that
meant business for all those who were trying to oppress any of his
beloved clients.
When Dan Peterson came home for the noonday meal he was able to report
that several lines of secret organizations that thread this land of
ours like hidden tracery had been set vibrating with efforts to find
Joyce Radway and restore her if possible at once to her home. Meantime
Eugene Massey had been notified that while he would be at liberty of
course to remain in the home where his mother had lived for so many
years until its rightful owner could be found and should return, it
must be thoroughly understood that nothing about the place must be hurt
or sold or destroyed in any way.
It was all done very quietly, and nobody in town was told. Judge
Peterson was friends with everybody, but he had been able to go about
that town for a good many years without letting his neighbors so much
as dream that he knew aught about them and their affairs, or anybody
else’s, and he was not going to begin now by disgracing the family of
his old friend Mary Massey. Eugene and Nannette simply were made to
understand that they must walk carefully, and that they were under
surveillance. Nannette grew to have a hunted, ingratiating look, and
stayed at home more than had been her custom. She spent much time
writing letters to Joyce and addressing them to “General Delivery” in
every part of the country. She even put advertisements in the personal
columns of one or two big city papers in parts of the country where
her fancy thought Joyce might have wandered. She questioned Dorothea
and Junior nightly on what they knew about Joyce’s friends, and habits
in the village; and concerning anything that had been said to them
during the day about her. They acquired the habit of being sharply
alert to any scrap of news that might bear in the remotest degree upon
the tragedy in their home. For even to their childish minds this that
had happened in their family had assumed the proportions of a tragedy.
Their mother cried a good deal and scarcely ever made desserts for
dinner. Their father had locked up cousin Joyce’s room and taken the
key. They were forbidden to go into the parlor and play on the piano,
and anything that had been very especially nice in the way of furniture
was guarded carefully. Their father explained to them that it might
mean some one had to go to jail if it turned out that they had no right
to things and any thing had been injured. Scarcely a night passed that
their father and their mother did not have a wild orgy of argument
ending in a fit of weeping on their mother’s part. Dorothea and Junior
decided that it would have been better to have Joyce back. Besides,
they were hungry for jelly roll. They even set out on one or two
expeditions of their own to find their cousin, but only got into some
trouble each time, and once Junior barely escaped with his life from
under the wheels of an automobile.
But the worst of all to their thinking was when their father decided
that they must all go to church every Sunday. Dorothea didn’t mind so
much because she could wear her prettiest clothes, but Junior hated
the white stiff collar his mother made him wear, and the sitting so
long without wriggling, for Eugene was very strict, and the time seemed
endless.
Quite respectably they filed into the church the first Sunday after
Joyce disappeared, just as if they had been doing so regularly during
the three years they had lived in Meadow Brook. Of course every one
thought they were doing the proper thing after a death in the family,
and would probably never come again. But the minister welcomed them
gravely, and Nannette in her new black veil which was almost becoming,
dabbed her eyes with a black-bordered handkerchief when he spoke of
the departed mother who had been so faithful in her church attendance
during the many years. People spoke to them sympathetically, it was
not in their scheme of Christian living to do otherwise; but one or
two sharp voiced sisters who believed in “speaking their minds,” asked
pointedly after Joyce and wanted to know when she would be back.
Nannette had by this time concocted a flexible story about her having
gone to see several distant relatives of her father’s in response to
a telegram. Whereupon one keen minded sister who had a daughter in the
telegraph office hastened home to acquire further details. Before night
Nannette’s version of Joyce’s western visit had grown and acquired
definite shape, with a definite destination and even the length of time
she was to stay. It reached the minister’s wife who told it to the
minister on the way home from church, and they decided to write to the
minister in the town where Joyce was visiting and ask him to call on
her and make her feel at home, and incidentally discover if she looked
happy and all was well with her. So the ball rolled on, and Eugene,
despite his ravings and rantings, was powerless to stop it.
Lib Knox suddenly began to cultivate Dorothea’s companionship
industriously, using her own peculiar methods for so doing. She brought
Dorothea a handful of tulips which she had stealthily extracted from
one of the finest gardens in town, and she offered her five minutes’
lick from her all-day sucker. Now, although Lib was somewhat of a
social outcast, much sneered at by the children who were not in her
clique, Dorothea was nevertheless flattered by the unusual attention
given her by this notorious outlaw, and was presently deep in the
ecstasy of an illicit friendship with a child whom respectable mothers
tabooed. Not that Lib at the age of eight had reached any depths of
wickedness beyond most, but she had no respect for age and class, she
did as she pleased without regard to clothes and manners, and she could
sling a fine line of truth uttered in purest Saxon language at any one
who dared attempt to interfere in any of her plans. “Not a nice little
girl” was what the mothers met in social conclave said about her, and
she early knew it and delighted to distress them by cultivating their
young hopefuls and leading them into bypaths of mischief where only her
guiding hand could lead them safely out again. Lib cultivated Dorothea
until Dorothea was as wax in her hands, and no foreign spy or diplomat
could have used advantage with keener skill than did little Lib Knox
of the dancing bronze curls and the wicked green eyes. What she did
not extract of facts from unsuspecting Dorothea’s soul was not worth
extracting.
The high school professor felt keenly annoyed. He trusted his
intuitions violently, and to have the opportunity to prove them taken
away from him by so simple a thing as a girl going on a visit was not
to be thought of. In the first place it was not like a girl with a face
like that one to suddenly fly up without any reason and go off on a
series of visits to distant relatives, right in the midst of important
examinations which he had all reason to suppose she had worked hard for
and was anxious to take. In fact, the members of the school board whom
he consulted all agreed in his judgment of Joyce’s character and the
things they said about her showed that she had every reason to wish to
pass her examinations well and get a position to teach. There must be
something behind all this and he meant to ferret it out.
So he put aside his stacks of examination papers and took his hat and
went for the third time to interview poor Nannette. But Nannette saw
him coming and fled to the attic, locking herself in, and keeping
quiet as a mouse till he grew discouraged knocking and went back to
his papers once more. But he did not give up. He searched out Eugene’s
city address and got him on the telephone, grilling him for fifteen
expensive minutes as to the cause of Joyce’s leaving, and why he
couldn’t reach her by telephone or wire if he tried every place that
she had expected to visit. Eugene was reduced almost to a state of
distraction and came home that night in a worse temper than ever.
* * * * *
That night four men sought out an old haunt where they had been
accustomed to meet and sat in dark conclave. They were big, husky
fellows and three were dark-browed with heavy jaws and hands that could
break an iron bar or crush a lily, but one had bright red hair and
unclean eyes, with a voice that had continually to be hushed by his
companions.
“Well, _I_ say there’s a _skirt_ somewhere in all this,” he bellowed
forth as he raised a glass of ill-smelling liquor to his lips.
“You spilled a mouthful!” hissed out one they called Bill. “He never
cleared out alone. D’you know who the dame is, Tyke?”
“I got my ideas,” boasted the red-haired one mysteriously.
“Whaddaya know, Tyke? Spit it out. This ain’t no Deef Mute Club. You’ll
get in the same class with him if you go around keepin’ things ter
yerself, an’ you know what that means, Tyke! We ain’t to be trifled
with. Can’t swing that game with us the second time. It’s mates or
hang, and you understand. Now, let her fly. Whaddaya know?” A heavy
hand came down on his shoulder and Tyke shivered in his long length
like a serpent taken unawares.
“Take yer hand off’n my shoulder you, Taney, ur ya don’t get a word
outen me.” He shook the rough grip off and shuffled into another
position. “You fellers go off like powder. Ef you don’t quit yer
suspicions I’m outta this fer good, and then where’ll ya be? I got
brains, an’ I know a thing er two, an’ when I say I got ideas I ain’t
sayin’ I know it all, but I got a line on it. I think I can foller it
up.”
“Meanin’?” The heavy hand came down once more upon his shoulder.
“Meanin’--well--boys, I seen a girl in the graveyard that night.
Splashed my flashlight full in her face oncet. I think he seen her
too--”
A low mutter from Bill as he took another drink in big gulps.
“Know who she was?” asked Cottar, the man who had not spoken yet.
“Nope. I don’t live around these diggin’s you know, but I’d know her
again ef I seen her, I swear I would. She had eyes you don’t forget.”
The man drank in silence and watched him.
“Get it all off’n yer chest Tyke--” said Bill at last. “There’s more
comin’.”
Tyke edged in his chair uneasily. He dropped his voice to a whisper:
“She slep’ in a hammock that night. I seen her. I follered after he
went back to the village. I made an excuse an’ cut across to the
station. Remember? But I come back after you all left an’ went down the
road a piece. I think I could find the house again. I seen her in a
hammock underneath the trees.”
The men bit hard on their pipes and watched him in silence piercing
him through with little narrowed eyes in the smoke haze of the room,
grilling his soul to see if it were true.
“Well, whaddaya figger?” Taney asked at last.
“Ain’t figgerin’ yet. Gotta find out more. Gotta find that girl. Gotta
find him. Ef they’re both gone, they’re gone together. You all didn’t
think fer a little minute that guy told a straight story, did you? You
all didn’t believe he’d give up a business that was rollin’ in the
money hand over fist jest fer what he called conscience, did ya? Just
because he thought it wasn’t a nice, pretty little business? Not on
your bottom dollar he didn’t.”
“Mebbe he got cold feet,” suggested Cottar.
“Cold feet? That guy get cold feet? Nope, you don’t know him. Nothin’
couldn’t ever make him get cold feet. I know that guy. I seen him in
France. He’d walked right outta the dugout just after his bunk had been
shot away an’ smoke a cigarette as cool as if he was takin’ a ride
in a pleasure park. Nothin’ didn’t never faze him. He’d just eat up
danger. He thrived on it. No, sir, the only thing he’d ever fall fer
was a skirt, an’ it’s a skirt that’s done it this time fer sure ur I
don’t know nothin’. No siree, he’s got that last cache all salted down
somewheres, good and rich you bet, an’ he’s throwed us off’n the track
an’ thinks we can’t find out where he got it from ner where he’s sold
it to, but we’ll show him we’re too smart fer him. I ain’t got red
hair fer nothin’. I wouldn’t ha thought he’d a lied to me, we was like
brothers, we was; in France, I took him back to the base when he got
his, an’ he brang me a drink when I had the fever an’ was left on the
field with the little love messages comin’ over constant from the enemy
all around me, he just walked out calm as you please, just like he
always is, an’ said, ‘Tough luck, kid, but we’ll pull you outta here--’”
“Cut that!” said Bill sharply, “We ain’t hearin’ any soft soap. We come
here to get fair play an’ justice. He’s a sharper he is! He’s a slick
robber! He promised us a big deal when we went into this here dangerous
business, an’ he’s went back on his word. He let us take all the risks,
an’ he hung round in the bushes. An’ then here he comes along after
he gets the business goin’ fine to suit him an’ pays us a couppla
hundreds apiece an’ says he’s _done_. That he’s decided to _leave
off_. Now--Tyke, you there, you just might ez well understand what I’m
sayin’, we ain’t takin’ no soldier boy blarney about this guy at all.
He’s turned _yaller_, an’ took _all the dough_! Bought us off with a
trifle, an’ skipped the country! Left us here to face the music while
he skips out with a dame an’ spends his thousands. No, sir, I ain’t no
fool. Drink o’ water ain’t in it. Get him a knockout. That’s what he
needs, an’ we’re here to do it, d’ya hear, Tyke?”
“Oh, shure, I’m with ya boys, I was only tellin’ ya, he ain’t no
bloomin’ coward, an’ don’t ya reckon on that. He’ll take his medicine
with a smile if we ever catch him to feed it to him, an’ don’t you
ferget it.”
“Well, I’m a goin’ to knock that there bloomin’ smile off his pretty
face,” declared Bill. “Get me?”
“Here too!” declared Tyke lustily. “But we gotta find the skirt.”
“We gotta make one more try fer the boodle,” declared Bill, “an’ that
we’re goin’ to do t’night. I been figgerin’ we ain’t looked carefully
down at that first place we went, out near the point ya know. There’s a
spot down behind some hazels--” he lowered his voice and looked around
the room at the hazy groups around the tables and finished his sentence
in a whisper.
A door opened across the room, a face shone with a white pallor through
the blue haze of smoke, and a low, sibilant voice uttered a single
sentence:
“Cop’s comin’.”
A soft shuffle of feet on the sawdust floor, and the gray figures in
the room melted like mist from a breath, as if the rushing in of the
outside air had blown them all into rings of smoke and carried them
away. Mysterious doors opened and closed as if they had not been, and
the room was quiet and deserted, the proprietor and his assistant
reading the sporting pages with their feet on a table when the cop
swung along and looked in:
“Business pretty poor t’night, Jake,” he said with a significant look
around.
“Yas, Cap’n, pretty poor. Beats all how a man’s goin’ to live ef this
here prohibition keeps up. Have a glass o’ sody, Cap’n? Sorry I ain’t
got nothin’ better to offer ya.”
Out in the night gray figures melted into black shadows, and a low
voice murmured: “Behind the hazel--”
* * * * *
And out at sea a revenue cutter paced the coast, and a little black
boat with a silent crew and no lights, dropped down after a long wait
behind the horizon and stole away, hovered back to watch, and stole
away again just before the dawning.