THE GARGOYLE
Down a long stretch of sidewalk, across a sunken patch of green where the
water was to her ankles, down a rain-drenched street, through pools of
black water where sewers were choked, Lucile dashed. With no thought for
health or safety she exposed herself to the blinding tempest and dashed
before skidding autos, to arrive at last panting at the foot of the
rusted iron stairs that led to the elevated railway platform.
Pausing only long enough to catch her breath and arrange her garments
that the child might not be frightened away by her appearance, she
hurried up the stairs. The train came thundering in. There was just time
to thrust a dime through the wicker window and to bound for the door.
Catching a fleeting glimpse of the dripping figure of the child, she made
a dash for that car and made it. A moment later, with her ulster thrown
over on the seat beside her, she found herself facing the child.
Sitting there curled up in a corner, as she now was, hugging a bulky
package wrapped in oilcloth, the child seemed older and tinier than ever.
"How could she do it?" was Lucile's unspoken question as she watched the
water oozing from her shoes to drip-drip to the floor below. With the
question came a blind resolve to see the thing through to the end. This
child was not the real culprit. Cost what it might, she would find who
was behind her strange actions.
There is no place in all the world where a thunderstorm seems more
terrible than in the deserted streets in the heart of a great city at
night. Echoing and re-echoing between the towering walls of buildings,
the thunder seems to be speaking to the universe. Flashing from a
thousand windows to ten thousand others, the lightning seems to be
searching the haunts and homes of men. The whole wild fury of it seems
but the voice of nature defying man in his great stronghold, the city. It
is as if in thundering tones she would tell him that great as he may
imagine himself, he is not a law unto himself and can never be.
Into the heart of a great city on a night like this the elevated train
carried Lucile and the child.
On the face of the child, thief as she undoubtedly was, and with the
stolen goods in her possession, there flashed not one tremor, not a
falling of an eyelash, which might be thought of as a sign of fear of
laws of nature, man or God. Was she hardened or completely innocent of
guilt? Who at that moment could tell?
It would be hard to imagine a more desolate spot than that in which the
car discharged its two passengers. As Lucile's eye saw the sea of dreary,
water-soaked tenements and tumbledown cottages that, like cattle left out
in the storm, hovered beside the elevated tracks, she shivered and was
tempted to turn back--yet she went on.
A half block from the station she passed a policeman. Again she
hesitated. The child was but a half block before her. She suspected
nothing. It would be so easy to say to the policeman, "Stop that child.
She is a thief. She has stolen property concealed beneath her cape." The
law would then take its course and Lucile's hands would be free.
Yet something urged her past the policeman, down a narrow street, round a
corner, up a second street, down a third, still narrower, and up to the
door of the smallest, shabbiest cottage of the whole tumble-down lot.
The child had entered here. Lucile paused to consider and, while
considering, caught the gleam of light through a torn window shade. The
cottage was one story and a garret. The window was within her range of
vision. After a glance from left to right, she stepped beneath the porch,
which gave her an opportunity to peer through the opening. Here, deep in
the shadows, she might look on at the scene within without herself being
observed by those within or by passers-by on the street.
The picture which came to her through the hole in the shade was so
different from that which one might expect that she barely suppressed a
gasp. In the room, which was scrupulously clean and tidy, there were but
two persons, the child and the old man who had visited the library.
Through the grate of a small stove a fire gleamed. Before this fire, all
unabashed, the child stripped the water-soaked clothing from her meager
body, then stood chafing her limbs, which were purple with cold.
The old man appeared all absorbed in his inspection of the book just
placed in his hands. Lucile was not surprised to recognize it as the
second Shakespeare. From turning it over and over, he paused to open it
and peer at its inside cover. Not satisfied with this, he ran his finger
over the upper, outside corner.
It was then that Lucile saw for the first time the thing she had felt
while in the library in the dark. A small square of paper, yellow with
age, was in that corner, and in its center was a picture of a gargoyle. A
strange looking creation was this gargoyle. It was with such as these the
ancients were wont to decorate their mansions. With a savage face that
was half man and half lion, he possessed the paws of a beast and the
wings of a great bird. About two sides of this picture was a letter L.
"So that was it," she breathed.
The next moment her attention was attracted by a set of shelves. These
ran across one entire end of the room and, save for a single foot of
space, were entirely filled with books. The striking fact to be noted was
that, if one were able to judge from the appearance of their books, they
must all of them be of great age.
"A miser of books," she breathed.
Searching these shelves, she felt sure she located the other missing
volume of Shakespeare. This decision was confirmed at last as the
tottering old man made his way to the shelf and filled some two inches of
the remaining vacant shelf-space by placing the newly-acquired book
beside its mate.
After this he stood there for a moment looking at the two books. The
expression on his face was startling. In the twinkling of an eye, it
appeared to prove her charge of book miser to be false. This was not the
look of a Shylock.
"More like a father glorying over the return of a long-lost child," she
told herself.
As she stood there puzzling over this, the room went suddenly dark. The
occupants of the house had doubtless gone to another part of the cottage
to retire for the night. She was left with two alternatives: to call a
policeman and have the place raided or to return quietly to the
university and think the thing through. She chose the latter course.
After discovering the number of the house and fixing certain landmarks in
her mind, she returned to the elevated station.
"They'll not dispose of the books, that's certain," she told herself.
"The course to be taken in the future will come to me."
Stealing silently into her room on her return, she was surprised to find
her roommate awake, robed in a kimono and pacing the floor.
"Why, Florence!" she breathed.
"Why, yourself!" Florence turned upon her. "Where've you been in all this
storm? Five minutes more and I should have called the matron. She would
have notified the police and then things would have been fine. Grand! Can
you see it in the morning papers? 'Beautiful co-ed mysteriously
disappears from university dormitory in storm. No trace of her yet found.
Roommate says no cause for suicide.'"
"Oh!" gasped Lucile, "you wouldn't have!"
"What else could I do? How was I to know what had happened? You hadn't
breathed a word. You--"
Florence sat down upon her bed, dug her bare toes into the rug and stared
at her roommate. For once in her life, strong, dependable, imperturbable
Florence was excited.
"I know," said Lucile, removing her watersoaked dress and stockings and
chafing her benumbed feet. "I--I guess I should have told you about it,
but it was something I was quite sure you wouldn't understand, so I
didn't, that's all. But now--now I've got to tell someone or I'll burst,
and I'd rather tell you than anyone else I know."
"Thanks," Florence smiled. "Just for that I'll help you into dry clothes,
then you can tell me in comfort."
The clock struck three and the girls were still deep in the discussion of
the mystery.
"One thing is important," said Florence. "That is the value of the
Shakespeare. Perhaps it's not worth so terribly much after all."
"Perhaps not," Lucile wrinkled her brow, "but I am awfully afraid it is.
Let's see--who could tell me? Oh, I know--Frank Morrow!"
"Who's Frank Morrow?"
"He's the best authority on old books there is in the United States
to-day. He's right here in this city. Got a cute little shop on the
fifteenth floor of the Marshal Annex building. He's an old friend of my
father. He'll tell me anything I need to know about books."
"All right, you'd better see him to-morrow, or I mean to-day. And now for
three winks."
Florence threw off her kimono and leaped into bed. Lucile followed her
example and the next instant the room was dark.