NEW PLANS
Alice's announcement caused her sister to start in surprise. Ruth looked
as if she could not understand, and Alice repeated:
"See, the man who fell is Dan Merley--the one who says daddy owes him
five hundred dollars."
"I believe you're right!" agreed Russ, who had had a good look at the
impudent fellow the night he invaded the DeVere rooms. "And I know one
of those other men--at least by sight. His name is Jagle. Let's see what
is going on here."
Fortunately no very large crowd gathered, so the girls felt it would be
proper for them to remain, particularly as the accident was not of a
distressing nature.
The motorman had stopped his car and had run back to the scene with the
conductor.
"What's the matter here? What did you want to get in the way of the car
for, anyhow?" demanded the motorman. He was nervously excited, and the
reaction at finding, after all, he had not killed a man, made him rather
angry.
"Matter? Matter enough, I should say!" replied one of the men with
Merley. "My friend is badly hurt. Someone get an ambulance! Fripp, you
call one."
"That was Jagle who spoke," Russ whispered to the girls. "But I don't
know the other one."
"He doesn't seem to be badly hurt," remarked the motorman. The
conductor, with a little pad and pencil, was getting the names of
witnesses to be used in case suit was brought. This is always done by
street car companies, in order to protect themselves.
"Hurt? Of course he's hurt!" exclaimed the man Russ called Jagle. "See
that cut on his head!"
There was a slight abrasion on Merley's forehead, but it did not seem at
all serious.
"Aren't you hurt, Dan?" asked Jagle.
"Of course I am!" was the answer. "I'm hurt bad, too. Get me home, Jim."
"If he's hurt the best place for him is a hospital," remarked the
motorman. "But I can't see where he's hurt."
"I can't walk, I tell you," whined Merley, and he attempted to get up,
but fell back. One of his friends caught him in his arms.
"There, you see! Of course he's hurt!" declared Jagle. "Go call an
ambulance, Fripp."
"I'll get an ambulance if he really needs one," spoke a policeman, who
had just come up on seeing the crowd. "Where are you hurt?"
"Something's the matter with my legs," declared Merley. "I can't use my
right one, and the left one is hurt, too. My foot got caught between the
rail and a piece of ice, and I couldn't get loose. My friends tried to
help me, but they couldn't get me away in time. I'm hurt, and I'm hurt
bad, I tell you! I think one of my legs must be run over."
"Nothing like that!" declared the motorman. "There's been no legs run
over by my car!"
That was very evident.
"Get me away from here," groaned Merley.
"Well, if you're really hurt I'll call an ambulance and have you taken
to the hospital," offered the policeman as he went to turn in a call.
"I sure am hurt," insisted Merley. "Why, I can hardly move now," and he
seemed to stiffen all over, though there was no visible sign of injury.
"Why doesn't someone get a doctor?" a boy in the crowd asked.
"There'll be one in de hurry-up wagon!" exclaimed another urchin. "A
feller in a white suit--dem's doctors. I know, cause me fadder was in de
'ospital onct."
Merley's two friends carried him to a drug store not far from the scene
of the accident. Ruth and Alice shrank back as he was borne past them,
for they feared he might recognize them, and cause a scene. But if he
saw them, which is doubtful, he gave no sign.
"Here comes de hurry-up wagon!" cried the lad who had thus designated
the ambulance. "Let's see 'em shove him on de stretcher! Say dis is
great!"
"I think we had better be going, Alice, dear," said Ruth. "Daddy
wouldn't like us to be in this crowd."
"Oh, I want to stay and see what happens. Besides, it might be
important," Alice objected. "This is Dan Merley, who might make trouble
for papa. We ought to see what happens to him. I think that whole
accident was queer. He didn't seem to be hit at all, and yet he says he
can't move. We ought to stay."
"If you want to go, I'll stay and let you know what happens," offered
Russ. "I don't mind."
"Perhaps that would be best," said Ruth.
"All right," agreed Alice, and she and her sister, with a last look at
the crowd around the ambulance, started for their apartment.
Russ came along a little later.
"What happened?" asked Ruth, when he had knocked on the door of their
hall and had been admitted.
"Not much," he replied. "They took Merley home, instead of to a
hospital. He wouldn't go to an institution, he said."
"Did those other two men go with him?" asked Alice.
"Who, Fripp and Jagle? No, they wouldn't be allowed to ride on the
ambulance. But they got a taxicab and went off in that. I heard Jagle
say to the ambulance surgeon, that he was a doctor, and that he'd attend
his friend when he got him home."
"Is Jagle a doctor?" asked Alice. "He didn't look like one."
"He's a _sort_ of doctor," Russ replied. "I think he's a quack, myself.
I wouldn't have him for a sick cat. But he calls himself a doctor and
surgeon. So that's all that happened."
"It was enough, anyhow," remarked Ruth. "I don't like to see anybody
hurt."
"I'm not so sure that fellow _was_ hurt," said Russ, slowly.
"What do you mean?" Alice asked, curiously.
"Well, he might have _imagined_ he was. I guess he was pretty well
scared at seeing that car come down on him. But I watched when he was
put in the ambulance and he seemed as well as either of his friends.
Only he kept insisting that he could not walk."
"It was certainly a queer accident," said Alice. "But, in spite of the
fact that he is a bad man, and wants to make trouble for daddy, I hope
he isn't seriously hurt."
"I don't believe it is serious," said Russ. "But it might easily have
been, though, if he had fallen in front of the car instead of away from
it."
"Well, there is nothing that hasn't its good side," remarked Ruth.
"Emerson's idea of the law of compensation works out very nicely in this
case."
"Kindly translate, sister mine," invited Alice, laughingly.
"Why, you know Emerson holds that one advantage makes up for each
defect. In this case Merley has had an accident--a defect. That may
cause him to stop annoying daddy--a distinct advantage to us."
"Oh, Ruth, how queer you are!" exclaimed Alice with a laugh. "I never
heard of such an idea."
"Who was this Emerson--a moving picture fellow?" asked Russ.
"No, he was a great writer," explained Ruth. "I'll let you take one of
his books."
"I wish you would," said Russ, seriously. "I never had much of a chance
to get an education, but I like to know things."
"So do I," agreed Ruth. "I never tire of Emerson."
Mr. DeVere was surprised when he heard about the accident to Merley.
"I can't understand it," said the girls' father. "He must have been
hurt, and yet--er--was he in a sensible condition, Russ?"
"Oh, yes, he seemed to be himself, all right," the young moving picture
operator replied, thoughtfully. "I haven't gotten to the bottom of it
myself."
And indeed it developed that there was a strange plot back of the
accident--a plot which involved the moving picture girls in an amazing
way, as will soon appear.
But puzzle over the odd accident as they might, neither Mr. DeVere, his
daughters, nor Russ could understand what it involved.
"At any rate, as you say, Ruth," the actor remarked with a smile, "there
is some compensation. He may not annoy me for some time; and,
meanwhile, I may think of a plan to prove I really paid that money."
"I hope so, Daddy!" she exclaimed. "Is your throat any better?"
"Yes, much," he replied with a smile. "Dr. Rathby is going to try a new
kind of spray treatment, and I had the first one this afternoon. It
helped me wonderfully."
"That's good!" exclaimed Alice.
The next day's papers contained a slight reference to the accident. It
was not important enough to warrant much space, and about all that was
said was that Merley claimed to have received an injury that made him
helpless, though its nature was a puzzle to the physician sent around by
the street car company.
"Well, if he's helpless, and the Lord knows I wish that to no man," said
Mr. DeVere, reverently, "he will not come here bothering you girls
again. If he confines his attacks to me I do not so much mind, but he
must leave you alone."
"That's what I say!" cried Russ.
When Mr. DeVere and his daughters arrived at the moving picture studio
that afternoon, for they were not to report until then, they found
notices posted, requesting all members of the company to remain after
rehearsal to hear an "important announcement."
"I wonder what it can be?" said Ruth.
"Probably it's about the new plans Mr. Pertell has been working on,"
suggested Alice.
"I think so," Russ said. He knew something of them, but had not
permission to reveal them.
And this proved to be the case. After the day's work was ended, and it
included the filming of several scenes for important dramas, Mr. Pertell
called his players together, and said:
"Ladies and gentlemen--also Tommy and Nellie, for you will be in on
this, I hope--we are going to leave New York City again, and be together
in a new place to make a series of plays."
"Leave New York!" gasped Miss Pennington.
"I hope we don't go to Oak Farm again!" cried Miss Dixon. "I want to be
in some place where I can get a lobster now and then."
"There will be no lobsters at Deerfield!" said Mr. Pertell, with a
smile, "unless there are some of the canned variety."
"How horrid!" complained Miss Pennington.
"Will there be deers there?" asked Tommy, with big eyes.
"I think there will, sonny," answered the manager.
"Reindeers--like Santa Claus has?" little Nellie wanted to know.
"Well, I guess so!" laughed Mr. Pertell. "At any rate, I plan to take
you all there."
"Where is Deerfield, if one may ask?" inquired Miss Dixon, pertly.
"Deerfield is a sort of backwoods settlement, in one of our New England
States," explained the manager. "It is rather isolated, but I want to go
there to get some scenes for moving pictures with good snow, and ice
effects as backgrounds."
"Are there good hotels there?" Miss Pennington demanded.
"We are going to stop in a big hunting lodge, that I have hired for the
occasion," Mr. Pertell replied. "I think you will like it very much."
"Hold on! One moment!" exclaimed Mr. Sneed, the grouchy actor. "You may
count me out of this! I shall go to no backwoods, in the middle of
winter, and freeze. I cannot stand the cold. I shall resign at once!"
"One moment. Before you decide that, I have something else to say to
you," said Mr. Pertell, and there was a smile on his face.