LUCILE SHARES HER SECRET
As Lucile returned to her room it seemed to her that she was being hedged
about on all sides by friends who had a right to demand that she reveal
the secret hiding-place of the stolen books. The university which had
done so much for her, Frank Morrow, her father's friend, the great
scientific library which was a friend to all, and now this splendid
artist who worked in leather and gold; they all appeared to be reaching
out their hands to her.
In her room for two hours she paced the floor. Then she came to a
decision.
"I'll tell one of them; tell the whole story and leave it to him. Who
shall it be?"
The answer came to her instantly: Frank Morrow.
"Yes, he's the one," she whispered. "He's the most human of them all.
White-haired as he is, I believe he can understand the heart of a child
and--and of a girl like me."
She found him busy with some customers. When he had completed the sale
and the customers had gone, she drew her chair close to his and told him
the story frankly from beginning to end. The only thing she left out was
the fact that she held suspicions against the young millionaire's son.
"If there's ground for suspicion, he'll discover it," she told herself.
Frank Morrow listened attentively. At times he leaned forward with the
light on his face that one sometimes sees upon the face of a boy who is
hearing a good story of pirates and the sea.
"Well," he dampened his lips as she finished, "well!"
For some time after that there was silence in the room, a silence so
profound that the ticking of Frank Morrow's watch sounded loud as a
grandfather's clock.
At last Frank Morrow wheeled about in his chair and spoke.
"You know, Miss Lucile," he said slowly, "I am no longer a child, except
in spirit. I have read a great deal. I have thought a great deal, sitting
alone in this chair, both by day and by night. Very often I have thought
of us, of the whole human race, of our relation to the world, to the
being who created us and to one another.
"I have come to think of life like this," he said, his eyes kindling. "It
may seem a rather gloomy philosophy of life, but when you think of it,
it's a mighty friendly one. I think of the whole human race as being on a
huge raft in mid-ocean. There's food and water enough for everyone if all
of us are saving, careful and kind. Not one of us knows how we came on
the raft. No one knows whither we are bound. From time to time we hear
the distant waves break on some shore, but what shore we cannot tell. The
earth, of course, is our raft and the rest of the universe our sea.
"What's the answer to all this? Just this much: Since we are so situated,
the greatest, best thing, the thing that will bring us the greatest
amount of real happiness, is to be kind to all, especially those weaker
than ourselves, just as we would if we were adrift on a raft in the
Atlantic.
"Without all this philosophy, you have caught the spirit of the thing. I
can't advise you. I can only offer to assist you in any way you may
suggest. It's a strange case. The old man is doubtless a crank. Many book
collectors are. It may be, however, that there is some stronger hand back
of it all. The girl appears to be the old man's devoted slave and is too
young truly to understand right from wrong. I should say, however, that
she is clever far beyond her years."
Lucile left the shop strengthened and encouraged. She had not found a
solution to her problem but had been told by one much older and wiser
than she that she was not going at the affair in the wrong way. She had
received his assurance of his assistance at any time when it seemed
needed.
That night a strange thing happened. Lucile had learned by repeated
experience that very often the solution of life's perplexing problems
comes to us when we are farthest from them and engaged in work or pursuit
of pleasure which is most remote from them. Someone had given her a
ticket to the opera. Being a lover of music, she had decided to abandon
her work and the pursuit of the all-absorbing mystery, to forget herself
listening to outbursts of enchanting song.
The outcome had been all that she might hope for. Lost in the great
swells of music which came to her from hundreds of voices or enchanted by
the range and beauty of a single voice, she forgot all until the last
curtain had been called and the crowd thronged out.
There was a flush on her cheek and new light in her eyes as she felt the
cool outer air of the street.
She had walked two blocks to her station and was about to mount the
stairs when, to her utter astonishment, she saw the mystery child dart
across the street. Almost by instinct she went in full pursuit.
The child, all oblivious of her presence, after crossing the street,
darted down an alley and, after crossing two blocks, entered one of those
dark and dingy streets which so often flank the best and busiest avenues
of a city.
At the third door to the left, a sort of half basement entrance that one
reached by descending a short stairs, the child paused and fumbled at the
doorknob. Lucile was just in time to get a view of the interior as the
door flew open. The next instant she sprang back into the shadows.
She gripped at her wildly beating heart and steadied herself against the
wall as she murmured, "It couldn't be! Surely! Surely it could not be."
And yet she was convinced that her eyes had not deceived her. The person
who had opened the door was none other than the woman who had treated the
child so shamefully and had dragged her along the street. And now the
child had come to the door of the den which this woman called home and of
her own free will had entered the place and shut the door. What could be
the meaning of all this.
Some mysteries are long in solving. Some are apparently never solved.
Some scarcely become mysteries before their solution appears. This
mystery was of the latter sort.
Plucking up all the courage she could command, Lucile made her way down
the steps and, crowding herself through a narrow opening, succeeded in
reaching a position by a window. Here she could see without being seen
and could catch fragments of the conversation which went on within.
The child had advanced to the center of the room. The woman and a man,
worse in appearance, more degraded than the woman, stood staring at her.
There was something heroic about the tense, erect bearing of the child.
"Like Joan of Arc," Lucile thought.
The child was speaking. The few words that Lucile caught sent thrills
into her very soul.
The child was telling the woman that she had had a book, which belonged
to her friend, Monsieur Le Bon. This book was very old and much prized by
him. She had had it with her that other night in a lunch box. The woman
had taken it. She had come for it. It must be given back.
As the child finished, the woman burst into a hoarse laugh. Then she
launched forth in a tirade of abusive language. She did not admit having
the book nor yet deny it. She was too intent upon abusing the child and
the old man who had befriended her for that.
At last she sprang at the child. The child darted for the door, but the
man had locked and bolted it. There followed a scramble about the room
which resulted in the upsetting of chairs and the knocking of kitchen
utensils from the wall. At last the child, now fighting and sobbing, was
roped to the high post of an ancient bedstead.
Then, to Lucile's horror, she saw the man thrust a heavy iron poker
through the grate of the stove in which a fire burned brightly.
Her blood ran cold. Chills raced up her spine. What was the man's
purpose? Certainly nothing good. Whatever these people were to the child,
whatever the child might be, the thing must be stopped. The child had at
least done one heroic deed; she had come back for that book, the book
which at this moment rested in Lucile's own room, Frank Morrow's book.
She had come for it knowing what she must face and had come not through
fear but through love for her patriarchal friend, Monsieur Le Bon.
Somehow she must be saved.
With a courage born of despair, Lucile made her way from the position by
the window toward the door. As she did so, she thought she caught a
movement on the street above her. She was sure that a second later she
heard the sound of lightly running footsteps. Had she been watched from
above? What was to come of that? There was no time to form an answer. One
hand was on the knob. With the other she beat the door. The door swung
open. She stepped inside. It seemed to her that the door shut itself
behind her. For a second her heart stood still as she realized that the
man was behind her; that the door was bolted.