THE PAPIER-MACHE LUNCH BOX
"But, Lucile!" exclaimed Florence after she had heard the latest
development in the mystery. "If the books are worth all that money, how
dare you take the risk of leaving things as they are for a single hour?"
"We don't know that they are that identical edition."
"But you say the gargoyle was there."
"Yes, but that doesn't prove anything. There might have been a whole
family of gargoyle libraries for all we know. Besides, what if it is?
What are two books compared to the marring of a human life? What right
has a university, or anyone else for that matter, to have books worth
thousands of dollars? Books are just tools or playthings. That's all they
are. Men use them to shape their intellects just as a carpenter uses a
plane, or they use them for amusement. What would be the sense of having
a wood plane worth eighteen thousand dollars when a five dollar one would
do just as good work?"
"But what do you mean to do about it?" asked Florence.
"I'm going down there by that mysterious cottage and watch what happens
to-night and you are going with me. We'll go as many nights as we have
to. If it's necessary we'll walk in upon our mysterious friends and make
them tell why they took the books. Maybe they won't tell but they'll give
them back to us and unless I'm mistaken that will at least be better for
the girl than dragging her into court."
"Oh, all right," laughed Florence, rising and throwing back her
shoulders. "I suppose you're taking me along as a sort of bodyguard. I
don't mind. Life's been a trifle dull of late. A little adventure won't
go so bad and since it is endured in what you choose to consider a
righteous cause, it's all the better. But please let's make it short. I
do love to sleep."
Had she known what the nature of their adventure was to be, she might at
least have paused to consider, but since the things we don't know don't
hurt us, she set to work planning this, their first nightly escapade.
Reared as they had been in the far West and the great white North, the
two girls had been accustomed to wildernesses of mountains, forest and
vast expanses of ice and snow. One might fancy that for them, even at
night, a great city would possess no terrors. This was not true. The
quiet life at the university, eight miles from the heart of the city, had
done little to rid them of their terror of city streets at night. To them
every street was a canyon, the end of each alley an entrance to a den
where beasts of prey might lurk. Not a footfall sounded behind them but
sent terror to their hearts.
Lucile had gone on that first adventure alone in the rain on sudden
impulse. The second was premeditated. They coolly plotted the return to
the narrow street where the mysterious cottage stood. Nothing short of a
desire to serve someone younger and weaker than herself could have
induced Lucile to return to that region, the very thought of which sent a
cold shiver running down her spine.
As for Florence, she was a devoted chum of Lucile. It was enough that
Lucile wished her to go. Other interests might develop later; for the
present, this was enough.
So, on the following night, a night dark and cloudy but with no rain,
they stole forth from the hall to make their way down town.
They had decided that they would go to the window of the torn shade and
see what they might discover, but, on arriving at the scene, decided that
there was too much chance of detection.
"We'll just walk up and down the street," suggested Lucile. "If she comes
out we'll follow her and see what happens. She may go back to the
university for more books."
"You don't think she'd dare?" whispered Florence.
"She returned once, why not again?"
"There are no more Shakespeares."
"But there are other books."
"Yes."
They fell into silence. The streets were dark. It grew cold. It was a
cheerless task. Now and again a person passed them. Two of them were men,
noisy and drunken.
"I--I don't like it," shivered Lucile, "but what else is there to do?"
"Go in and tell them they have our books and must give them up."
"That wouldn't solve anything."
"It would get our books back."
"Yes, but--"
Suddenly Lucile paused, to place a hand on her companion's arm. A slight
figure had emerged from the cottage.
"It's the child," she whispered. "We must not seem to follow. Let's cross
the street."
They expected the child to enter the elevated station as she had done
before, but this she did not do. Walking at a rapid pace, she led them
directly toward the very heart of the city. After covering five blocks,
she began to slow down.
"Getting tired," was Florence's comment. "More people here. We could
catch up with her and not be suspected."
This they did. Much to their surprise, they found the child dressed in
the cheap blue calico of a working woman's daughter.
"What's that for?" whispered Lucile.
"Disguise," Florence whispered. "She's going into some office building.
See, she is carrying a pressed paper lunch box. She'll get in anywhere
with that; just tell them she's bringing a hot midnight lunch to her
mother.
"It's strange," she mused, "when you think of it, how many people work
while we sleep. Every morning hundreds of thousands of people swarm to
their work or their shopping in the heart of the city and they find all
the carpets swept, desks and tables dusted, floors and stairs scrubbed,
and I'll bet that not one in a hundred of them ever pauses to wonder how
it all comes about. Not one in a thousand gives a passing thought to the
poor women who toil on hands and knees with rag and brush during the dark
hours of night that everything may be spick and span in the morning. I
tell you, Lucile, we ought to be thankful that we're young and that
opportunities lie before us. I tell you--"
She was stopped by a grip on her arm.
"Wha--where has she gone?" stammered Lucille.
"She vanished!"
"And she was not twenty feet before us a second ago."
The two girls stood staring at each other in astonishment The child had
disappeared.
"Well," said Lucile ruefully, "I guess that about ends this night's
adventure."
"I guess so," admitted Florence.
The lights of an all-night drug store burned brightly across the street.
"That calls for hot chocolate," said Florence. "It's what I get for
moralizing. If I hadn't been going on at such a rate we would have kept
sight of her."
They lingered for some time over hot chocolate and wafers. They were
waiting for a surface car to carry them home when, on hearing low but
excited words, they turned about to behold to their vast astonishment
their little mystery child being led along by the collar of her dress.
The person dragging her forward was an evil looking woman who appeared
slightly the worse for drink.
"So that's the trick," they heard her snarl. "So you would run away! Such
an ungratefulness. After all we done for you. Now you shall beg harder
than ever."
"No, I won't beg," the girl answered in a small but determined voice.
"And I shan't steal either. You can kill me first."
"Well, we'll see, my fine lady," growled the woman.
All this time the child was being dragged forward. As she came opposite
the two girls, the woman gave a harder tug than before and the girl
almost fell. Something dropped to the sidewalk, but the woman did not
notice it, and the child evidently did not care, for they passed on.
Lucile stooped and picked it up. It was the paper lunch box they had seen
the child carrying earlier in the evening.
"Something in it," she said, shaking it.
"Lucile," said Florence in a tense whisper, "are we going to let that
beast of a woman get that child? She doesn't belong to her, or if she
does, she oughtn't to. I'm good for a fight."
Lucile's face blanched.
"Here in this city wilderness," she breathed.
"Anywhere for the good of a child. Come on."
Florence was away after the woman and child at a rapid rate.
"We'll get the child free. Then we'll get out," breathed Florence. "We
don't want any publicity."
Fortune favored their plan. The woman, still dragging the child, who was
by now silently weeping, hurried into a narrow dismal alley.
Suddenly as she looked about at sound of a footstep behind her, she was
seized in two vises and hurled by some mechanism of steel and bronze a
dozen feet in air, to land in an alley doorway. At least so it seemed to
her, nor was it far from the truth. For Florence's months of gymnasium
work had turned her muscles into things of steel and bronze. It was she
who had seized the woman.
It was all done so swiftly that the woman had no time to cry out. When
she rose to her feet, the alley was deserted. The child had fled in one
direction, while the two girls had stepped quietly out into the street in
the other direction and, apparently quite unperturbed, were waiting for a
car.
"Look," said Lucile, "I've still got it. It's the child's lunch basket.
There's something in it."
"There's our car," said Florence in a relieved tone. The next moment they
were rattling homeward.
"We solved no mystery to-night," murmured Lucile sleepily.
"Added one more to the rest," smiled Florence. "But now I _am_
interested. We must see it through."
"Did you hear what the child said, that she'd rather die than steal?"
"Wonder what she calls the taking of our Shakespeare?"
"That's part of our problem. Continued in our next," smiled Lucile.
She set the dilapidated papier-mache lunch box which she had picked up in
the street after the child had dropped it, in the corner beneath the
cloak rack. Before she fell asleep she thought of it and wondered what
had been thumping round inside of it.
"Probably just an old, dried-up sandwich," she told herself. "Anyway, I'm
too weary to get up and look now. I'll look in the morning."
One other thought entered her consciousness before she fell asleep. Or
was it a thought? Perhaps just one or two mental pictures. The buildings,
the street, the electric signs that had encountered her gaze as they
first saw the child and the half-drunk woman passed before her mind's
eye. Then, almost instantly, the picture of the street on which the
building in which Frank Morrow's book shop was located flashed before
her.
"That's queer!" she murmured. "I do believe they were the same!"
"And indeed," she thought dreamily, "why should they not be? They are
both down in the heart of the city and I am forever losing my sense of
location down there."
At that she fell asleep.