Little Lost Lambs, page 12
The traffic at Forty-Second held him up for a precious minute. Dodging a bus and sliding past the traffic cop, he made the other side of Fifth Avenue with a precarious margin of safety. Seven years of financial statistics had not served to eradicate his New England country vigor, and a serviceable pair of legs, aided by a keen eye, enabled him to gain the upper level of the Grand Central and the vestibule of the Boston sleeper just before the porters hopped aboard the moving train. As it was, he was the last person but one to make the train.
Seating himself in his section with the gratification of the man who has bought his tickets in advance and defeated the combination of time-table and clock by a matter of seconds, Hollis stowed his overcoat and bag on the seat beside him. He noticed that the car was filled.
Not until then did it occur to him that he had thrust his new purchase hastily into the bag, and that it might be well to pack it securely against danger of breakage. He lifted the suitcase to his knees, picked up the curio, oblivious of the inquisitive glances cast his way by fellow travelers, and inserted it neatly between some clothing in the bag. Years of handling stock and bond quotations had bred exactitude of habit in Hollis, until even his New England aunt admitted that he was “careful with his things.”
Satisfied, he pushed the suitcase under the seat, begging the pardon of a rather striking-looking blond lady for disturbing her as he did so. It struck him that Mrs. Hollis had written him a note which he had only time to glance at hastily that day owing to the pressing need of clearing his desk before leaving the office. He took it out now and ran over it leisurely.
As usual, his aunt informed him that she would meet him with the car—said the snow was two feet deep—and that she had killed a choice turkey in honor of his coming.
In the postscript, the most important part of a woman’s letter, she added that a cousin of his was visiting the farm. Ruth Carruthers had come from New Orleans, he read, a charming girl. She knew that he would like her.
“Trust a widowed aunt,” he thought disgustedly, “to assemble all the family chickens in the coop. I’ve never seen this Carruthers girl, and I don’t want to. Ten to one she wants to know all about the big city, how many fish are in the aquarium, who built the Washington Arch, and why the Woolworth Building doesn’t fall into the subway—”
Hollis ran a slim hand through his sandy hair with something like a groan. A darky waiter, pursuing his swaying course through the car, reminded him that the diner was open; and the hasty movement of passengers after the waiter recalled the fact that he would have to hurry, if he expected to get a seat.
Thrusting the letter into the pocket of his overcoat, Hollis picked up his cap and sought the diner.
CHAPTER II
Something for Nothing
Dinner and a pipe in the smoking-compartment did not wholly relieve Hollis’s irritation at the news contained in his aunt’s note. Aunt Emma, he told himself, was a good sport who kept a supply of his favorite brand of tobacco waiting for him, and who cooked absolutely the best mince pies and buckwheat cakes in the State of New Hampshire. Why did she have to go and spoil his three-days’ vacation by inviting a woman cousin, whom he would be expected to amuse, or, worse, might expect to amuse him?
Southerners, as he remembered them, were addicted to telling continuous jokes, at which he was bound to laugh. A confirmed bachelor, Andrew Hollis disliked women generally, particularly young girls, who, he assured himself, were always either trying to make a slave of him or use him to make other slaves jealous.
He skipped through his evening paper disconsolately, glancing at the story of a two-days’ old jewel robbery at the Charity Ball and his own column of Wall Street news. He glanced up with a scowl as the porter thrust his head through the curtains of the compartment.
“Which of you gentlemen,” inquired the factotum of the Pullman, “has lower eight?”
“I have,” Hollis’s scowl deepened. “What’s the idea?”
“Well,” informed the porter apologetically, “I reckon you ain’t got it now, boss.”
Hollis snorted and reached for his wallet. “I’d like to know why not. I have the ticket here.”
“Look here, boss. This is whut happened. I made up lower eight like you told me. Soon as it was made up a lady done got into it. I told her it was your berth, but she said to tell you she hadn’t any herself, an’ the cyar was full. There ain’t an empty berth in the train. So if you don’t mind sleepin’ here—she’s trying to open her big suitcase on lower eight this minute, boss—”
“I do mind!” grunted the newspaperman. “Ask the lady if she won’t take the upper. Maybe the man who has the upper will bunk in with me.”
The porter scratched his head.
“The puhson in upper eight is another lady, sir. And the one in your berth ain’t the kind you can ask. She said to tell you thank you for the berth, but she cain’t sleep in the smoker and you can.”
Hollis sheltered himself behind his paper from the ironical glances of his companions in the compartment.
“All right.” He gave in. “Bring my bag and overcoat in here.”
Immersed in his heavy coat, with the bag stowed under the leather settee, Hollis prepared to make the best of his quarters. The other men had retired to their sections, with the exception of a Jap, who was studiously reading a guide-book at the other corner of the seat.
Hollis had guessed the man to be a student at one of the eastern colleges—the country was full of them—whether a Jap or a Chinaman, he could not judge. In the absence of a pigtail, one looked like the other to him. And the man on the other side of the bench was neatly clad in very modern garments.
The rocking of the train and the gloom of the compartment—he had switched off the main lights—soon drew Hollis’s thoughts into a sleepy haze. He lapsed into the dreamless half-sleep of the Pullman traveler.
Cold and the renewed clicking of rails speeding underfoot aroused him slightly. His stiff body and numb hands told him that he had been asleep some hours, and he was about to change to a more comfortable position when his eyes flew wide open. The settee was in gloom, but in a gleam of light coming through the curtains from the passageway without he saw his companion squatted on the floor.
The Oriental was bending over an object on the floor of the compartment. The object was Hollis’s suitcase, and as he watched the man snapped back the catch and opened it.
The newspaperman did not move, but his glance searched the other keenly. The Chinaman seemed to be studying something among the articles in the bag, and so far as Hollis could judge, his expression was one of keen satisfaction.
“If I can lend you anything,” observed Hollis amiably, “say so. If not—”
Abruptly the Oriental closed the bag, and slid it hastily to its former position under the settee. He rose, with a quick glance at the man on the seat. Standing in the light the Oriental was clearly exposed to Hollis’s gaze. Without attempting to reply, he ducked out of the compartment.
Hollis waited until the other’s footsteps had died away in the direction of the vestibule. Then he switched on one of the lights and drew out his suitcase. Opening it, he ran his hand swiftly over its contents. When he had made a hasty, but thorough, inventory of what the bag contained, he sat back with a puzzled frown.
Apparently the Oriental person had been moved by predatory motives; certainly there could be no confusing Hollis’s bag with the other’s small satchel. Yet, so far as he could see, nothing had been disturbed.
True, he had not seen the other take anything from the suitcase. But why anyone should go to so much trouble, even risk, to look at a few shirts or pajamas and a toilet kit, was more than Hollis could fathom. There was the yellow elephant, of course—
He took out the animal in question and surveyed it speculatively. As has been said, Hollis had a keen sense of property ownership. The attempted burglary of the Oriental, if it was that, annoyed him. The unlucky incident of the woman appropriating his berth had been responsible for it, he told himself.
Hollis gave a thoughtful whistle as he replaced the elephant. He remembered that the porter had said the lady had been trying to open the big suitcase on lower eight. Now, he recalled quite clearly that his own piece of baggage had lain in that section while he was in the diner. It was one of Hollis’s pet axioms that nothing happens without a cause. Could the lady of lower eight have been anxious to see the inside of the bag, as well as the Oriental?
He pressed the button at the side of the settee, and the sleepy porter poked his head through the curtains, shoe-brush in hand.
“Look here, Jonathan,” interrogated Hollis amiably, “what kind of a lady was the one who grabbed my berth?”
The slave of the sleeper cast a shrewd eye at his questioner and decided that he meant well.
“Well, sir,” he meditated, “she wuz a powuhful strong-minded lady. She had blond hair and black eyes. But I cain’t find her shoes, nohow.”
Hollis thought of the handsome and rather dressy woman who had shared his seat early in the evening when he had inspected his purchase. He exhibited a silver dollar.
“Some of the people are getting up, Jonathan,” he observed. “Suppose you look once more for the blond lady’s shoes, and see if she is in the berth. I may have left something there, and I would like to look around without disturbing her—if she happens to be out of the berth.”
Such occurrences are part of the routine of a Pullman. The Negro led Hollis to lower eight and felt through the curtains discreetly. His expression changed, and he opened the hangings. Peering over his shoulder, the newspaperman saw that the berth was empty. It had not been slept in, but the bedclothes were rumpled, as if someone had been sitting on them.
“She certainly did get into lower eight, sir,” the darky mused.
“Well, she’s not here now,” Hollis pointed out. “Any chance of her leaving the train?”
The porter grinned suddenly.
“I know how it was now, sir. She must have been the lady what wuz taken off the train at New Haven. Yes, sir. That wuz it.”
“Sick?”
“I reckon you didn’t hear her when she wuz taken off. Two plain-clothes gentlemen from New York headquarters held the train while they went through it. They pinched a lady in this cyar, I saw them assist her out the vestibule. Yes, sir. She done yell out they weren’t no gentlemen to pull her off the train without a warrant. But one of the plain-clothes cops, he said, he reckoned there’d be warrant enough for her in New York.”
“Did you hear her name? Also, what kind of a bag did she have with her?”
“They called her Gladys, I think, sir. A small hand-satchel, boss.”
Hollis returned to the smoking-room, washed and shaved, and resumed his place on the settee. Within him stirred the righteous indignation of the man who has had his belongings tampered with. The porter had seen the blond lady of lower eight and police notoriety carry a small satchel from the train. But she had tried to unlock his own suitcase, just before the porter had restored it to him in the smoking compartment. A mistake? Hardly. His belongings, he reflected, had become suddenly of interest to his fellow-travelers.
Hollis laughed, realizing that the thing was absurd. Except for some toilet things and clothing, there was only the yellow elephant in the bag. And why should anyone, woman or Oriental, want to steal a yellow elephant, price fourteen dollars and fifty cents? He had exhibited the elephant he had purchased in the Pullman. Either the woman or the Oriental might have seen it there. But why should they immediately covet it?
He wondered if the Oriental was known by his first name, also, to the police. Or if he knew the woman. In that case, the man had not seemed disturbed by her removal—had gone about calmly investigating Hollis’s bag. Unnoticed by him, the train had slowed to a halt at one of the towns on the outskirts of Boston. Hollis jumped out of the smoker into the passageway. He stumbled through the sleeper, looking for the Chinaman. He did not want the man to leave the train before he could question him.
But the train was already in motion again. The newspaperman halted in one of the vestibules, staring out through the glass door. On the platform of the station he saw in the gray light of early morning his companion of the smoking compartment standing, satchel in hand. As their glances met the other turned quickly and walked back into the station.
CHAPTER III
A Piece of News
“My goodness! Andy Hollis, you look as if your food in the city didn’t agree with you!”
Mrs. Emma Hollis surveyed her nephew from a pair of bright eyes—the only thing visible in a medley of fur coat, muffler, and cap—as he climbed into the runabout beside her.
“I expect it will, for the next few days,” grinned the newspaperman, sniffing the keen air with its scent of burning pine appreciatively. His aunt started the car with a practiced hand over the packed snow of the road into the mountains.
“Yes, I guess it will,” she said brightly. “Ruth was putting a pan of biscuits into the oven when I left. She says she’s going to make you some real, Southern waffles which will go fine with our maple syrup.”
Hollis grunted. It was bad enough to have a strange girl on the place without her trying to cook things which he would have to eat. He had slept little on the trail and his temper had suffered accordingly. When he had put the runabout in the barn he took his suitcase to the room that had always been his, being careful to avoid the kitchen of the farmhouse, whence came sounds of voices and clatter of dishes.
He halted on the threshold of the room with an exclamation of disgust. A girl coat and fur cap were on the bed. An array of mysterious articles was on a new lace cover upon the bureau. A subtle perfume assailed his senses, very different from the accustomed smell of camphor and linen that pervaded his room.
“Oh, Andy”—the voice of his am floated up to him—“I didn’t tell you that Ruth had your room! You have the spare room with Uncle Henry’s portrait.”
Hollis picked up his bag and sought his unaccustomed quarters with a scowl which had not entirely worn off when he descended to the dining-room with the ivory elephant under his arm. He found Aunt Emma seated at the table with his new cousin. He felt himself the target for a pair of warm, brown eyes.
Ruth Carruthers, he told himself with relief, was not a pretty girl. Later, he was not so sure of this point. She was pale, with a mass of heavy, dark hair, a fine pair of eyes. She wore a simple waist with heavy skirt and a pair of stout outing shoes.
“Why, Andy Hollis?” cried his aunt. “Whatever have you got—”
“Your birthday present,” he explained. “A Chinese curio, aunty. It’s—it’s an antique elephant.”
With a swift motion the mistress of the house seized on the article.
“My goodness! It’s a treasure, Andy. Why, look, Ruth, it’s the finest ivory. And such carving. It must have cost a mint of money.”
Hollis nodded with some embarrassment. Now that his aunt had estimated the value of the thing, he thought, he could not very well tell her that he had actually bought an imitation. Uncle Henry had been a merchant skipper in the Pacific, and had brought home a collection of trophies from the Orient. Hence Mrs. Hollis’s discrimination. She placed the elephant on its stand and eyed it with profound satisfaction.
“Why, yes, the thing has some value,” he admitted. “Coming up on the train a car-thief went through my bag after it.”
“A thief!” Ruth’s eyes widened.
“Yes,” announced Hollis, not unconscious of the effect of his words on his cousin; “and also, perhaps, the woman who was in my berth.”
Aunt Emma paused in the act of handing him a plate of warm biscuits.
“In your berth?”
“Oh, I had to give it up to her!” Hollis hastened to add. “Just before some cops from the big town pulled her off at New Haven. Seems that she was wanted. These are fine biscuits, aunty.”
“I’m so glad you like them, Mr. Hollis,” his cousin smiled. “I was afraid to try to make them, but your aunt insisted.”
“Oh, are they yours?” Hollis was surprised. He did not see the girl flush at his tone. He was afraid that she would come into the sitting room with him when he retired, as of hallowed custom, to smoke his pipe, with the morning paper. But Miss Carruthers vanished upstairs. He scanned the pages indifferently between puffs of Mrs. Hollis’s excellent tobacco. Suddenly he sat up alertly.
The account of an accident in the maelstrom of New York business had caught his eye.
CHINESE ART DEALER SHOT.
Wong Li, Proprietor of Fifth Avenue Curio
Shop, Victim of Unknown
Marauder’s Bullet.
After the manner of a newspaper story, the time, the place, and the motive of the shooting were prominently set forth. At five minutes of six, the evening before, pedestrians on Fifth Avenue had heard a shot in the Chinese shop at Forty-Third Street. Wong Li had been found lying on the floor with a bullet wound in his head. His condition was serious. No others were found in the shop. The wounded man would make no statement as to the identity of the assassin.
The police declared, the story concluded, a man with a suitcase had been seen to run from the door of the store. This man had vanished down Forty-Second Street. As usual, the police announced that they had a clue to the person in question.
Hollis let the paper fall with a low whistle. Five minutes to six was approximately the time he had left Wong Li’s place. But the proprietor had been in sound health, to the best of his knowledge. The shooting must have been immediately after his departure.
But, by whom? Events had transpired swiftly, he thought, for not only had Wong Li fallen by another’s bullet during those eventful few moments just before six o’clock yesterday, but the curio he purchased had become an object of interest to others.
