“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 seems 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 pants 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 around the town for a good many years without letting his neighbors so much as dream that he knew all 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 someone had to go to jail if it turned out that they had no right to things and anything had been injured. Scarcely a night passed that their father and their mother did not have a wild 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 went 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 should 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 everyone 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 pretty, 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 sharp-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 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 at anyone who dared attempt to interfere in any of her plans. “Not a nice little girl” was what the mothers who 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 better 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 intensely 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 o
n 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 middle 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 time to keep things locked up. 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 out’n me.” He shook the rough grip off and shuffled into another position. “You fellas 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 smoky haze of the room, grilling his soul to see if it was 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 for 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, sirree, 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, and 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, sure, 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.
Chapter 13
Joyce did not get up as early as she had planned. She had been utterly worn out with the experience of the last two days, and human flesh will have its revenge. The sun stole into her little casement windows and laid warm fingers on her brown hair, but she did not feel them. She was sleeping deeply. It was the grocery boy with the little yellow Ford from the store across the way who finally reached her consciousness. He was possessed of a clear, sharp whistle and a jazzy tenor voice, and when he was not using one, he was using the other while he unloaded boxes from the freight station.
Joyce roused at last, rubbed her eyes, and looked around, for a moment forgetting where she was. The little house was full of sweet air and brilliant sunshine, and in the maples overhead two robins were singing with all their might. The world sounded cheerful and busy, and she felt rested and readier for life than when she had crept between her newspapers the night before.
As her eyes wandered over her own painted walls, suddenly she saw the two five-dollar bills pinned there, waving a little in the morning breeze. Where could they have come from? Had someone, a former occupant, pinned them there for safekeeping while at work? And must she waste her valuable time going out to hunt for the owner? Then she spied the ragged edge of one bill, and a crooked tear halfway across, and noticed that the other was crisp and new. These must be the bills she had paid the men for their work! That tear was unmistakable. She had been afraid it would tear all the way across before she got rid of it. The other two bills she had used had been crisp and new. She remembered that the man who drove the truck got a crisp, new one. It was the two older men who had left this money for her. The kindly spirit of the rough workmen drew sudden tears to her eyes. To think that such a beautiful act should be done by rough workingmen who were utter strangers to her. Gentlemen at heart, they were. Ah, more than that, God’s men. Surely her heavenly Father, knowing her need, had let them be His ministers. She knelt suddenly beside the wooden box and prayed a blessing on the men and a thanksgiving to the Father who had thus given His help, and arose feeling strengthened. Somehow the nearness of God her Father and Christ her Companion had become real to her in a new sense. Some might have said this little bit of money came from the kindness of humanity and proved nothing about an overruling God. Joyce knew better. She had the inner witness in her soul that God was with her, the spiritual sense that comes to those, and those only, who believe and who yield their lives to God’s leading because of that belief, which becomes faith, the faith of our fathers. Because faith is the gift of God in answer to our deliberate act of faith. Joyce had no question but that her Father’s hand was in every happening of her life, and had one suggested that all these things would have happened anyway, whether she believed or prayed or not, she would have merely smiled as at one who is talking about something he does not understand. So simply had she been taught in the faith while she was yet a little child, and so deeply and truly had the faith grown within her year by year.