The Automobile Girls at Washington Part 21

But Harriet insisted that she desired only to be left alone. Feeling strangely unhappy about her cousin, Ruth, at last joined the theater party.

Mr. Hamlin did not leave the house immediately after dinner, although he had an engagement to spend the evening at the home of Mrs. Wilson. She had asked him, only that morning, to come. Mr. Hamlin was also troubled about his daughter. He had not been so un.o.bservant that he had not seen the change in her. She was less animated, less talkative. Mr. Hamlin feared Harriet was not well. Though he was stern and unsympathetic with Harriet, he was genuinely frightened if she were in the least ill.

So it was with unusual gentleness that he tapped lightly on Harriet's door.

"I am all right, Mary, thank you," Harriet replied, believing her maid to be outside. "Go to bed whenever you please. I shall fall asleep after a while."

Mr. Hamlin cleared his throat and Harriet started nervously. Why was her father standing outside her door? Had he learned of her bill to her dressmaker?

"I do not wish to disturb you, Harriet," Mr. Hamlin began awkwardly. "I only desired to know if I could do anything for you."

"No, Father," poor Harriet replied wearily. As Mr. Hamlin turned away, she sprang up and started to run after him. At her own door she stopped.

She heard her father's stern voice giving an order to a servant, and her sudden resolution died within her. A few moments later the front door closed behind him and her opportunity had pa.s.sed.

An hour afterwards, when the house was quiet and the servants nowhere about, Harriet Hamlin slipped cautiously downstairs. She was gone only a few minutes. But when she came back to her own room, she opened a private drawer in her bureau and hid something in it. Harriet then threw herself on her bed and lay for a long time with her eyes wide open, staring straight ahead of her.

Just before midnight, when she heard the gay voices of her friends returning from the theater, and when Ruth tripped softly to her bedroom, Harriet lay with closed eyes, apparently fast asleep.

The next morning Harriet was really ill. Her hand trembled so while she poured the breakfast coffee that she spilled some of it on the tablecloth. When Mr. Hamlin spoke to her sharply she burst into tears and left the room, leaving her father ashamed of himself, and the "Automobile Girls" so embarra.s.sed that they ate the rest of their breakfast in painful silence. Ruth did dart one indignant glance at her uncle, which Mr. Hamlin saw, but did not in his heart resent.

Harriet was willing, that morning, to have Ruth come into her darkened bedroom and sit by her bed. For Harriet's wakeful night had left her slightly feverish.

"I don't want to disturb you, Harriet," Bab apologized, coming softly to the door. "But some one has just telephoned for you. The person at the telephone has a message for you, but whoever it is refuses to give his name. What shall I do!"

Harriet sat up in bed, quickly, a hunted expression on her beautiful face. "Tell Mr. Peter Dillon that I will keep my word," Harriet answered angrily. "He is not to worry about me again."

"Is that your message?" Bab queried wonderingly. "It was not Mr.

Dillon's voice."

Harriet laughed hysterically. "Of course not!" she returned. "Oh, I know you girls are wondering why I am behaving so strangely. And I am breaking my word to tell you. But I must tell some one. I don't care what Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon say, I know I can trust you. I have decided to help Mrs. Wilson and Peter play their silly joke on Father and the State Department! Oh, you needn't look so horrified, girls. It is only a joke. The papers are about some Chinese business. I have them hid in my bureau drawer."

Harriet nodded toward her dressing-table, while Ruth and Bab stood looking at each other, speechless with horror, the same idea growing in their minds.

"When Father comes to look for his stupid papers he'll find them gone, and, of course, will think he has misplaced them," Harriet continued. "He will be dreadfully worried for a little while; then Mrs. Wilson will return the papers to me and I will slip them back in their old place, and Father will never know what has happened. Mrs. Wilson and Peter have vowed they will never betray me, and I have promised not to betray them.

If I were to be caught, I suppose Father would never forgive me. But I'll take good care that he doesn't find out about it."

"Harriet, do please give up this foolish plan!" Ruth entreated earnestly.

"I know you are doing something wrong. Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Dillon both know that Uncle William's papers are too valuable to be played with. Why, they belong to the United States Government, not to him! Harriet, I implore you, do not touch your father's papers!"

Harriet shook her head obstinately. She was absolutely adamant. Ruth pleaded, scolded, in vain. Bab did not say a word nor enter a protest.

She was too frightened. All of a sudden a veil had been rent asunder. Now she believed she understood what Peter Dillon and Mrs. Wilson had planned from the beginning. They were spies in the service of some higher power.

The papers that Harriet thought were to be used for a joke on her father were really to be sold! Was not some state secret to be betrayed? Ever since Bab's arrival in Washington it had looked as though Peter Dillon and Mrs. Wilson had been working toward this very end. Having failed with her they had turned their attention to poor Harriet. But Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon must be only hired tools! Shrewdly Barbara Thurston recalled her recent conversation with innocent Wee Tu: "Mr. Dillon and my father, they have Chinese secrets together." Could a certain distinguished and wisely silent Oriental gentleman be responsible for the thrilling drama about to be enacted? Bab was never to know positively, and she wisely kept her suspicion to herself.

"I do wish, Ruth, you and Bab would go away and leave me alone," Harriet protested. "I shall be well enough to get up for luncheon, if you will let me take a nap. I don't see any harm in playing this joke on Father.

At any rate, I have quite made up my mind to go through with my part in it and I won't give up my plan. You can tell Father if you choose, of course. I cannot prevent that. I know I was foolish to have confided in you. But, unless you are despicable tale bearers, the papers in my bureau drawer will go out of this house in a few hours! I don't see any harm in their disappearing for a little while. Father will have them back in a few days. Please go!"

Yet with all Harriet's air of bravado, however, there was one point in her story which she did not mention. In return for her delivery of certain of her father's state papers Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon had promised to advance to Harriet the five hundred dollars necessary to pay her dressmaker. Harriet had agreed only to receive it as a loan. And she tried to comfort herself with the idea that her friends were only doing her a kindness in exchange for the favor she was to do for them. Still, the thought of the money worried Harriet. But how else was she to be saved from the weight of her stern father's displeasure?

CHAPTER XX

FOILED!

At Harriet's request Bab and Ruth went silently out of her room, their faces white and frightened.

"Ruth, is there any place where we can be alone?" Barbara whispered faintly. "I must talk with you."

Ruth nodded, and the two friends found their way into the library, turning the key in the lock. Then they stood facing each other, speechless, for a moment, from the very intensity of their feelings.

"Ruth, you must do something," Bab entreated. "The papers that Mrs.

Wilson and Mr. Dillon are making Harriet get for them they do not intend to use for a joke. Oh, Ruth, they are no doubt important state papers!

Harriet may be betraying her country and ruining her father by placing these papers in their hands."

"I think, too, that Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon are spies," Ruth returned more quietly. "And, of course, we must do something to prevent their getting their hands on the papers."

"But what can we do?" Barbara demanded sharply. "We cannot tell Mr.

Hamlin of Harriet's deed. It would be too cruel of us. Nor can we confront Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon with the accusation. They would only laugh at us, and declare that we were mad to have imagined any such thing. Then, again, we would be betraying Harriet's confidence. We do not know just what state papers Harriet is to give to them, but they must be very, very valuable. I suppose those dreadful people will have the papers copied, sell our country's secret, and return the papers to Harriet when all the mischief has been done. Ruth, I believe, now, that Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon both meant to make me steal Mr. Hamlin's papers. Then they would have declared I had sold them to some one. And Mr. Hamlin would never have suspected his friends. Now, they think poor Harriet will be too much afraid to betray them."

Bab's voice trembled slightly. She realized how nearly she had been the dupe of these two clever schemers. She felt that she and Ruth must save Harriet at all events.

"Mrs. Wilson tried to steal Mr. Hamlin's papers the night she masqueraded as a ghost," Barbara continued. "I picked up the envelope she dropped on the floor in the hall."

"I know it, Barbara," Ruth answered in her self-controlled fashion, which always had a calming effect on the more impetuous Bab. "I also believe Mrs. Wilson meant to fix the guilt of the theft upon you. Uncle William called me into his study the other day and asked me if I considered you trustworthy. Of course I was awfully indignant and told him just what I thought of him for being so suspicious. But I believe Mrs. Wilson had tried to poison his mind against you. You must be on your guard now, Bab, dear. If Harriet gives up these papers of Uncle's the plotters may still try to use you as their scapegoat. When Uncle finds his papers have disappeared Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Dillon will, of course, appear to know nothing of them; but they will somehow try to direct suspicion against you, trusting to Harriet's cowardice. Don't you worry though, Bab, dear. You shall not suffer for Harriet's fault while I am here."

"Oh, I am not worrying about myself, Ruth," Bab answered. "It is Harriet's part in the affair that troubles me. Do, please, go to Harriet and talk to her again. Surely you can make her see the risk she is running. Do you suppose it would do any good if I were to call on Mrs.

Wilson? I could just pretend I still thought she meant to play the joke on Mr. Hamlin. You know she told me she intended to do so. I could beg her to give it up without mentioning Harriet's name or letting Mrs.

Wilson guess that Harriet had confided in us."

Ruth shook her head. "It would not do any good for you to go to Mrs.

Wilson, Bab. And, somehow, I am afraid for you. We do not know how much further they intend to involve you in their plot."

"Oh, they won't do me any harm, now," Barbara rejoined. "Anyhow, I am willing to take the risk, if Harriet will not give in."

"Just wait here, Bab, until I have been to see Harriet again," Ruth entreated. "I will go down on my knees to her, if I can persuade her to give up this wicked deed. Oh, why is she so determined to be so reckless and so foolish?"

Fifteen minutes afterwards Ruth came back from her second interview with Harriet, looking utterly discouraged. "Harriet simply won't give up,"

Ruth reported to Bab. "She is absolutely determined to go her own way, and she is angry with me for interfering. Oh, Bab, what will happen?

Uncle is so proud! If his daughter is known to have given Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon state papers, the report will be circulated that she stole them, and Uncle William will be disgraced. Then, what will become of Harriet? She does not intend to do wrong. But I simply can't make her see this thing as we see it. So what can we do?" Unusually self-contained, Ruth broke down, now, weeping on Bab's shoulder. The thought of the dreadful disgrace to her uncle and her cousin was more than she could face.

"I am going to see Mrs. Wilson, Ruth," Bab declared. "You had better stay here and do your best with Harriet. The papers are not to be delivered until four this afternoon, when, I believe, Harriet is to meet Peter Dillon. Of course it was he who telephoned Harriet, only he was clever enough to disguise his voice. So we have until afternoon to work.

Don't worry yourself sick. We simply must save Harriet in some way. I don't pretend that I see the way clearly yet, but I have faith that it will come. I cannot do any harm by going to Mrs. Wilson, and I may do some good."

"I don't like you to go there alone, Bab," Ruth faltered. "But I don't dare to leave Harriet by herself. She might find a way to give up the papers while we were out, and then all would be lost!"

When Bab rang the bell at the door of Mrs. Wilson's home she did not know that her approach had been watched. She meant to be very careful during her interview, for she realized that she and Ruth were endeavoring to foil two brilliant and unscrupulous enemies.