Then we will sit together on the couch over there and I will tell you all that is in my heart for you, and you will bring me the sweetness of your presence, and we shall understand what real friendship is.
You did not give me time to tell you of the little car that goes with this establishment, any make you like best, and of other things that money will buy to satisfy and delight your heart. The bracelet I have bought you I will keep until you ask me for it. But I know that one day I shall see it clasped about your pretty arm, and that another like it, even more exquisitely fashioned if I can find an artificer who can do better work than this, shall clasp about your white throat. And when that day comes, I shall know you are all mine. Does not your heart turn to mine, my darling, at the thought?
But until you are ready, I shall wait and say no more about it. The little apartment will be there when you are ready to occupy it, for I have bought it lest someone else would get it before you were ready.
You need not fear that I will trouble you until you are fully in accord with my ideas. I would not force your lovely development, for you are rare and sweet as a child, but I know that the day will come when you will take on real sophistication and put aside your childish old-fashioned notions for true freedom and self-expression. Therefore I can wait. I will see you Friday evening as usual,
Yours as ever,
Lew
Lauderdale mailed his letter and took the first train back to New York, and the shades of night drew down.
In the same train, riding in a common car because he had not yet come to the point where he dared spend money for luxuries himself, rode Mr. Arleth, on the way to New York in haste to meet a man early in the morning by appointment for Mr. Jefferson Dulaney.
And back in Flora Street there were scalloped oysters for supper and roasted potatoes and baked stuffed tomatoes, with a chocolate bread pudding for dessert and real whipped cream on the top.
“Such a good dinner,” said Betty Lou plaintively, “and so few of us here to eat it! Tom says Mr. Sherwood had to go to New Jersey today on business, and there’s no chance he will come. Oh, I wonder why Jane doesn’t get here! There comes another car! No, that didn’t stop, either! Oh Mother, why doesn’t Jinny come? She’s never as late as this. It’s after seven o’clock, and I’m so hungry!”
“Call up the office, dear, and see if she is there yet,” said her mother. “She’s probably had to stay late and work. She said they were sending out a lot of advertisements or something, and she was off this afternoon. I wonder if she could have gone with Mr. Lauderdale to dinner. What did she say when she went away?”
“No, Mother, she had her old blue dress on, the one she wears to the office, and she spoke as if Mr. Lauderdale had to go back to New York right away. Oh, I’m sure she wouldn’t go to the concert in that old blue dress.”
“Are you sure she had that on?” asked the mother, looking troubled. “Run upstairs and see before you call.”
But Betty Lou came down almost at once. “It’s just as I said, Mother, everything is there but her office dress. The one she put on to go with Mr. Lauderdale this afternoon was lying on the floor in a heap, her pretty new dress! And her hat and gloves are on the bed. She must have thrown them down in a great hurry. I guess she must have met Mr. Dulaney, and he made her go to the office again.”
“Well, call up the office.”
But Betty Lou called the office in vain. Joe had stepped out for his supper.
Tom came in and tried but hung up impatiently. “Aw, why bother. She’s probably on her way home. Let’s eat!”
So they tried to eat the nice supper without her, and they talked about their father on his way to New York.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” said Betty Lou. “He’s probably eating his supper in the diner now, isn’t he, Mother?”
“Nothing wonderful about it,” said Tom, helping himself to more scalloped oysters. “Everybody goes to New York! Only wonderful thing about it is Dad didn’t get a position like this sooner. Dad’s a big man, Betts.”
“Of course.” Betty Lou smiled. “Oh, I wish Jane would come! She doesn’t know Father has gone to New York. Won’t she be surprised? He telephoned to tell us he was going five minutes after Jane left here, so he would be gone by the time she got down there and she wouldn’t know it.”
Betty Lou left the table seven different times to flatten her nose against the windowpane and watch for another trolley, but no Jane came.
By nine o’clock, Mother began to worry.
“Tom, I wish you’d try to call up again. It seems odd she doesn’t come.”
Tom was reading a detective story and didn’t want to be bothered. “Oh, for cat’s sake, Mudge, why do you worry? Jane’s twenty-one, can’t ya let her take care of herself? She won’t thank ya to be bothering her if she’s working, don’t ya know that? If Mr. Dulaney or any of the firm’s sticking round, she’ll be mortified ta death ta have her family butting in forever, calling her away from her work. It isn’t late, Mudge. Let ’er alone for Pete’s sake!”
Mrs. Arleth wondered just what Pete had to do with it, but she sighed and said no more.
At ten o’clock Mrs. Arleth put her sewing aside and went to the front door to look out. The wind blew in the living room with a great gust and drove the evening paper half across the room. Tom shivered and brought his feet down from the arm of the chair where they had rested.
“Oh, good night! Mother! You’d think Jane was a child. Can’t ya let her outta yer sight? She’s prob’bly with the poor fish after all. I’ve no sympathy with a girl that goes with a simp like that anyhow! Mudge, will ya shut that door? Good night! You just wait till eleven o’clock. She’ll come then, you see. She always gets here round eleven after those concerts of hers. If she don’t come then, I’ll go out and have her broadcasted.”
Mrs. Arleth shut the door and stumbled back to the couch with tears in her eyes, saying, “Oh Tom!” But Tom stubbornly read on to the end of his story, though he got very little pleasure out of the last few thrills.
Eleven o’clock struck at last, and Betty Lou, with her face glued to the windowpane, began to cry.
“Good night!” said Tom coming to the last line of his story and flinging the book across the room. “Can’t a fella read in peace? Hey, Betty Lou, shut off that faucet. Don’t be silly! We don’t want any sob stuff around here. Now, I’ll go out and find my sister, and ten to one I’ll find her down at the station saying good-bye to that dirty bum! If he had ten more brains, he’d still be half-witted, but I thought she had more sense. Mudge, where’s my overcoat? Gee! I can’t ever find my things around this house. I left it right on the chair in the dining room. Well, how should I know it was hung up in the closet, I ask you? Now, you two women go ta bed! I’ll call ya up if I need yer advice, but if ya don’t get a call, ya can just go on sleeping and know that all’s right. Like as not, Jane hadta work till midnight, and maybe the telephone service is shut off at the building that time a’ night. If Jane hasta stay any later, I’ll stay with her and bring her home, so don’t ya worry. But I expect she’s with that dirty bum right now at the station waiting till his train’s gone. Gee! I’d like ta punch his ugly mug for him! Goo’night! Don’t ya worry!”
The door slammed, and he was gone. Then Betty Lou and her mother began to pray in earnest. Twelve o’clock came and no word.
It was a little after one when Tom called up the house where Sherwood boarded. “Gee! John, I’m awful sorry ta disturb yer happy dreams, but I’m up a tree. I guess I gotta ask yer help. Dad’s had ta go ta New York fer the com’p’ny, and Mother’s in a fit.”
“What’s the matter, brother?” asked Sherwood anxiously, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes.
“Why, ya see, Jane hasn’t come home yet.”
“She hasn’t? What time is it? Where did she go? Wasn’t this her concert night? Didn’t she go with that Lauderdale from New York? He’s likely taken her to dinner somewhere. I don’t think you need worry. She got off
early this afternoon to meet him. I heard someone say so, and likely that bunch from New York are down and they are having a big night somewhere. She’s probably somewhere she can’t telephone.”
“Naw,” said Tom with a worried accent in his voice, “she ain’t. She didn’t go with that bum. At least she didn’t stay. She came home and got her working clothes on and went back ta the office, but I couldn’t get the office on the wire all evening, and I thought perhaps you’d know what I’d better do. Of course if Dad was home, he’d likely know.”
Sherwood woke up at last. “Jane went back to the office?”
“Yes, she told Betty Lou there was some mailing list hadta be finished or something.”
“Where are you now, Tom?”
“I’m at the drugstore near the Dulaney building.”
“Got your car?”
“Sure thing!”
“Well, drive around for me, and I’ll see what I can raise on the wire meantime.”
Sherwood, struggling into his clothes with one hand and telephoning with the other, managed to locate Joe at last, dragging him up from a nice warm nap on a cot in the cellar by the furnace.
“Sure, Mr. Sherwood, she was here. Stayed late workin’. Oh no, Mr. Sherwood, she ain’t here now. No, she went home a little after six. Yes, I’m positive. What’s that? Her coat and hat? Oh, I dunno. I guess so. Yep, I’ll go look, but I’m most sure!”
During the interval of waiting, Sherwood struggled into his overcoat trying hard to think what to do next.
Then came the voice over the wire again, “Why, yes, Mr. Sherwood, there’s a coat an’ hat here. Yes, it’s black, I guess, with some kinda fur on the neck, and yes, a felt hat, hangin’ on the tree in the inner office. There’s a handbag, too. No, I didn’t open it, but it’s on her desk. But I looked all around and I didn’t see her nowheres.”
“Did you say you saw her when you came in, Joe?”
“Yes, sir, I seen her at her desk, and she called out ta me, said she was goin’ in jest a minute, and then pretty soon Mr. Gates called me ta know I was there, and I sez yes, and he yelled back was Miss Arleth gone, and I sez yes, and that’s all I know, sir.”
“Did you look around everywhere for her, Joe?” asked Sherwood, a terrible premonition of trouble overshadowing him. “Could she be asleep on the couch, or—there isn’t any closet she could get shut in, is there?”
“Not’s that I knows on, but I’ll look.”
“Well, you look, Joe, and I’ll call you back in a couple of minutes.”
So Joe went to rake the building with sleepy eyes, slumped shoulders, and a positive conviction that Jane had gone home. But Sherwood kept the wires hot trying to find Benny Gates or somebody else who could tell him something. He traced Gates from his boardinghouse to the YMCA, from there to a pool room, and from there to a nightclub, but the nightclub claimed he had gone home, and his home number did not answer.
Sherwood could hear the coughing of Tom’s old car out in front before he reached this point. He ran downstairs to let Tom in, and the boy stood gravely listening to Sherwood at the telephone, marveling at the confidence with which he traced out and called up from their respective beds or dinner parties or clubs, the great ones of the firm of Dulaney and Dulaney.
Calling the office again, Joe had no more information to give, and in despair Sherwood called Dulaney himself from his sleep. A new thought had occurred to him and a new horror possessed him.
Who had the combination to the safe tonight? That was the great question. Could someone give it to him over the phone?
But when Jefferson Dulaney heard that it was Jane Arleth who was lost, he declared that he would drive down himself and join in the search. He said that Harold Dulaney and Gates both had the combination, as well, but he had no idea where to find either and would come himself.
So Sherwood and Tom climbed in the old car and drove down to the office building, and Joe went back to his warm cot in the cellar and his slumber. Jefferson Dulaney attired himself briefly in trousers and a fur overcoat, roused out his chauffeur, and came. The night went on, and still Betty Lou and her mother prayed and waited.
Chapter 16
What’s getting me,” said Tom, as, with anxious faces, they drove down the silent street, “is how we’re goin to break in ta that office. Will that half-stewed watchman let us in, ur not? We may get pinched yet.”
“I happen to have a passkey,” said Sherwood gravely. “Tom, did you ever happen to hear your sister say anything about the safe? Would she know how to take out the tumblers and open the door if it got shut?”
“Good night!” said Tom, turning a ghastly startled face toward Sherwood. “No, she never knows the first thing about machinery. She can’t even drive a tack straight!”
“Well, don’t worry. I just happened to think—!”
Tom whirled into the street and drew up sharply, wasting little time in parking the car, and was out on the sidewalk almost as soon as Sherwood, who had sprung out before the car stopped.
Tom stood in awe while Sherwood opened the great iron grating, but before they could get inside they saw another car drive up before the door and stop, a shining car with much nickel about it and a sleepy chauffeur with brass-buttoned cap awry.
Jefferson Dulaney! Tom had a sudden warm feeling about his heart and an added sense of the solemnity of the occasion. Almost for a minute he thought he might be going to cry. Jane! His sister Jane! And Mudge, at home waiting! And Dad—off in New York! And little Betty Lou with tears in her eyes! What was he going to tell them? And John—good old John! What would he have done without John?
Then, just as they were about to enter the iron gates, a yellow taxi careened up to the curb and a dark figure was catapulted out on the sidewalk. Little Benny Gates, short, stocky, out of breath, pulling off before his chief a hat that wasn’t there and then trying to smooth his rumpled hair.
“Anybody want me?” he puffed, running in after them. “They said you called me, wanted me at the office. What’s the matter? Fire broke out?”
“Did you see Miss Arleth, Gates?” questioned the chief sharply.
“Arleth? What? Jane? Oh sure! Talked with her at six just before she went home. She worked late tonight. Got all the mailing list done. Why? What’s the matter? Nothing has happened to Jane, has there?”
“She went home, did she? You’re sure?” asked Dulaney, fixing the little anxious man with his gaze.
“Why, sure she did. I—well—I—didn’t see her go, but she told me to wait till she put the mailing list in the safe, and when I came back from your office getting those measurements you asked for, you know, she was gone. Joe said she was gone.”
“You closed the safe tonight?”
“Yes. Closed it just after she left.”
“Did you look in?”
“Why, no, donno as I did. There wasn’t any reason to. Joe said she was gone.”
Joe didn’t seem to be about and they were running up the four flights of stairs, puffing.
“But Ben, she didn’t go home, and her coat and hat are still here!”
Ben Gates grew white to the lips in the dim light of the corridor as he took in the meaning of these words. Then suddenly he seemed to develop wings and became a huge bird, flying ahead of them all, the short legs taking great strides.
They found him on the third floor, leaning back against the wall, gasping, getting ready for another sprint.
Tom gathered courage, and said in a shaky voice, trying to sound grown up, “Mr. Dulaney, how big is that safe? How many cubic feet of air? That is—how long—?” His voice choked and he felt those silly tears coming again.
“Well, that’s hard to say, young man,” said Dulaney in a grave tone. “I don’t remember the exact measurement—but it all depends—Gates, you don’t remember if the light was going? I’ve no idea whether electric light burns up oxygen quickly. But then she—that is—anybody—would be able to turn that out of course.”
He looked pitifu
lly at Gates, who was shaking his head and mumbling, “Can’t remember” between puffs.
“We ought, of course, to have one of the new air-equipped safes,” said Dulaney sadly. “I don’t know how that has escaped our notice so long. We’ve just been getting along as our fathers did. Nothing has ever happened before—that is, nothing has ever happened!”
They were at the top now, in the great familiar outer office. Sherwood touched the switch and flooded the place with light. His eyes sought Jane’s desk, covered with the piles of envelopes in neat array, tray after tray of them, ready for mailing! How like methodical Jane.
The four men hurried across the room toward the inner office, which appeared to be all dark.
“Strange!” said Dulaney. “I could swear I saw a light as we entered. Perhaps it was back in my office.”
It was ominously still except for the sound of their running footsteps. It was Sherwood who reached the door first, throwing it wide and switching on the light. Right ahead of him, hanging on a tree in its accustomed place, he saw Jane’s familiar coat and little hat. And although he had known they would be there, it gave him a strange sinking of heart.
But it was toward the safe in the other corner that they turned their footsteps, as if they were approaching a tomb. Suddenly they all stopped and exclaimed, staring ahead, for there, crouching before them with one hand on the knob of the combination and the other partly support two large ledgers and clutching a flash of light, was Harold Dulaney, a look of terrible fear in his eyes.
For an instant it came to Tom’s bewildered brain that perhaps this man, whoever he was, had killed his sister and put her in the safe. Was that Lauderdale? And how did he get in here?
But Sherwood instantly swept Tom aside and pushed Gates to the front. The little magic knob began to turn first this way, then that.
Tom noticed that the man sprawling on the floor beside his two great books was edging slowly and cunningly away, trying to gather up his books as he crept. Tom didn’t mean to let anything get away, not just now, not till things were plain.
Happiness Hill Page 20
