Molly Brown's College Friends Part 26

The dear girl was rescued by a rather indignant brakeman and led through the empty coach that happened to be hitched on to the train and finally installed in the chair car, after many explanations and excuses had been made to train conductor and then Pullman conductor.

Young women have no business on night trains with no tickets--certainly no business in boarding those trains from the rear, thereby risking their own necks and making the railroads liable to damage suits.

"But you see my father telephoned me from New York," she confided to the train conductor, a grizzled looking old fellow with a decidedly military bearing. "He is going to France next week and he simply had to see me.--Perhaps you know my father," she added with a certain a.s.surance that everybody connected with railroads ought to know Bobby.

"More than likely!" was the grim reply. The conductor had no idea of being cajoled into good humor by this daring girl.

"He is Mr. Robert Kean,--Bobby!"

The conductor was suddenly a changed creature.

"Know him! I should say I did! Bless my soul, if you don't look like him--same eyes--same mouth! Ha, ha! See Bob Kean missing a train! Not much!" and the erstwhile stern captain of the train now grasped Judy's hand. "Come on, I'll see that you get a chair, Miss Kean. I'm certainly pleased to make your acquaintance."

"I'm not Miss Kean any more,--I'm Mrs. Kent Brown now.--It was my husband who pitched me and my luggage on the back end of the train."

"Married! By jiminy! I can't believe Bob Kean has a married daughter!

And your husband aided and abetted you in jumping on the back of fast trains, did he?" and the once grim captain laughed aloud. "Well, I'm glad you got a game husband. I don't know what your father would have done with a 'fraid cat."

Judy's entrance in the Pullman caused some commotion. The old conductor was laughing heartily and the brakeman was in a much pleasanter frame of mind as he handed over Judy's bag to the grinning porter. There were about eight persons in the chair car as Judy entered and Judy-like, she immediately became intensely interested in them.

Of course, the spot of color made by a flashy dame in lavender attracted her attention first, and then her companion in loud checks cried out to be noticed. What a couple! Race track written all over both of them!

Even from three seats off Judy could smell the musk on the woman. The man's face was hidden by the newspaper and the woman seemed to be engaged in rapt contemplation of her beauty in the narrow little mirror by her chair. To Judy's disappointment the gaudy dame whirled her chair around so she could not see her face.

"I bet she's a peacherino!" she said to herself.

There were other persons in the train that proved interesting, too: among them a mother and child who appealed to Judy's artistic sense; a G. A. R. veteran who was sure he had been in worse battles than the Marne; an ancient lady from Louisiana who made our young artist wild to paint her white hair and patrician nose. Opposite Judy's chair was a young man, (or was he a young man?) At least he was not an old man!

There were a few tiny lines around his twinkling bright blue eyes, but his movements were as alert as a college athlete's, and his mouth, though very firm, had the saucy expression of a street boy. Judy was sure she had seen his face before. The way his hair grew on his forehead in a so-called widow's peak reminded her vaguely of someone,--the cleft chin she was sure she had known somewhere. He was interested in her, too, she could plainly see. He had a pleasant, dependable expression, the kind of look one felt meant that in time of trouble he would be a good person to call on. He was making himself generally useful to the madonna-like mother and child; he had a.s.sisted the ancient lady from Louisiana to get up and sit down several times since Judy had so unceremoniously boarded the car.

"I wish I knew where I had known him. His face is as familiar to me as my own."

She felt in her jacket pocket for her sketch book. She must get an impression of the mother and child, and the old lady was destined to be sketched in, too. She longed to do the youngish-oldish person opposite, but he was too close for her to permit herself such a familiarity. She turned over the leaves of her book and suddenly came upon the page given up to the Tucker twins and their friend Page Allison. What delightful girls they were! Suddenly she could place the resemblance seen in the gentleman across the aisle. Of course his forehead and widow's peak were the same that Dum Tucker owned, and his cleft chin was the identical one belonging to Dee Tucker. Could he be their father?

She remembered what the girls had told her of their delightful father.

He was a newspaper man in Richmond, Virginia, and according to the twins was just about the most wonderful person in the world. Page Allison, too, had given him praise, although not quite so wildly unstinted as his daughters.

"I think I'll drop something and let him pick it up for me and get in a conversation with him," Judy laughed to herself. "He is such a squire of dames, he is sure to pick it up."

She turned the pages of her sketch book until she came to the quick impressions she had made of Madame Misel at the war relief rooms.

"The wretch!" was her inward comment, and her thoughts went back to the last days at Wellington. She looked up; her eye was again chained by the gaudy lavender spot and she suddenly became conscious that she could see the woman's face in the large mirror at the end of the Pullman. Her eyes were down as she perused the pages of a magazine.

Another familiar face! Where under Heaven had she seen just that chin and nose? Her eyes fell again on the open sketch book. Why, it is Madame Misel--no other! With quick strokes she copied the sketch and then cleverly added the beplumed hat, fluffy collar and fashionably cut coat.

The woman stood up for a moment to get something from the pocket of her great coat, hanging on the hook at one side, and then Judy took in her general contours standing, and added some draperies to the full length figure she had also obtained of Madame Misel in the work room. High heels were put on the flat, unstylish shoes. The straight severe dress and basque were transformed into the fashionable, if gaudy, creation.

Judy was careful not to erase any of the original lines and all of the new parts she sketched in in dots and dashes.

The gentleman opposite was plainly interested in what she was doing and it evidently required all his self-control to keep from asking to be allowed to see.

"They are the Misels and they are running away!" flashed into Judy's mind. "It is up to me to stop them--but how? The gent in checks is undoubtedly Misel. They can't fool me; I remember his ears too well and the way his hands held things."

She glanced across the aisle and her eyes met the bright blue ones belonging to the widow's peak and cleft chin.

"What would Bobby do in this case?" she asked herself.

"Use the sense G.o.d gave him and get help if he couldn't cope with a thing single-handed," she answered herself.

She accordingly let her sketch book slide from her lap, rubber and pencil hopping gaily after it.

"Oh, thank you so much!" she exclaimed as the squire of dames immediately dived for the belongings and restored them to her. "I would not loose my sketch book for worlds."

"I should say not! I have a daughter who is very much interested in art,--in fact, she is studying in New York now,--her specialty is sculpture, though."

"Yes, I know her! She is Dum Tucker!"

"You know my Dum! How wonderful! And how did you know she was--I was her father?"

"By your widow's peak! I also know you are Dee's father by your chin."

Mr. Tucker changed his seat, taking the one by Judy.

"By Jove! You artists are a clever lot. You would make a great detective, Mrs. Brown. You must excuse me for knowing your name, but I heard you tell the captain what it was,--Mrs. Kent Brown. My girls have written me how kind you have been to them and I have been dying to make myself known to you, but was waiting for some kind of opening wedge."

"And I, too, Mr. Tucker, have been wondering where I had seen you, when I found your girls' pictures in my little book. See! Here they are!"

"And little Page, too!" He exclaimed eagerly scanning the sketches. "You are wonderfully clever at a likeness."

"Do you think so? I--Mr. Tucker--I deliberately sc.r.a.ped up an acquaintance with you because I want you to do something for me," and Judy looked frankly into the honest eyes of her new acquaintance.

"Why, Mrs. Brown, you know I am at your service."

"I was sure of you somehow, even if I had not been almost certain you were related in some way to Dum and Dee Tucker. My little sketch book told me that and it told me something else, too, but I must begin at the beginning."

Judy, whispering, began with her meeting of the Misels, of her interesting the Greens at Wellington, of Misel's subst.i.tuting in French at the college and of Madame's work in the war relief. Jeffrey Tucker's eyes flashed as the newspaper man in him scented a rousing good story.

When Judy got to the part where she and her friends went out in the night to hunt for adventure and found it in the manly shape of Misel taking strenuous exercise for a cripple, he beamed with joy and felt in his pocket for a pencil. Judy rapidly told him of the puppy's wounded leg and of the teta.n.u.s germs as well as ground gla.s.s being found in the dressings. He set his square jaw and looked as though he could eat the kaiser and all his crew at one mouthful.

"And now I have come to the _denouement_!" gasped Judy, excitement making her breathless. "If I could recognize you by your likeness to my sketches, I fancy I could also recognize Madame Misel by sketches of herself. I got two of her this morning at the war relief. The detectives did not arrest them, as they want to get others in their dragnet, but in some way the spies must have caught on to the fact that they were under suspicion, as they sneaked away."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure as shooting! In fact they are on this train."

"No!" excitedly.

"Now, Mr. Tucker, you must compose yourself if we mean to catch the creatures!"

"Certainly!" and the eager man sank back in his seat and tried to look as though he were having a mild conversation with the attractive young woman who had jumped on the back of the moving train.

"Now that is better! Keep that nonchalant expression for what I am going to tell you----"

"All right, fire away!"