The Bartlett Mystery Part 32

He carried her, screaming, up-stairs, and pushed her into a large room.

Rachel Craik followed, with set face and angry words.

"Ungrateful girl!" was her cry. "After all I've done for you!"

"You stole me from my mother," sobbed Winifred despairingly. "I am sure you did. You are afraid now lest some one should recognize me. I am 'the image of my mother' that horrible man said, and I am to be taken away because I resemble her. It is you who are frightened, not I. I defy you.

Even Mrs. Carshaw knew my face. I scorn you, I say, and if you think your devices can deceive me or keep Rex from me, you are mistaken.

Before it is too late, let me go!"

Rachel Craik was, indeed, alarmed by the girl's hysterical outpouring.

But Winifred's taunts worked harm in one way. They revealed most surely that the danger dreaded by both Voles and Meiklejohn did truly exist.

From that instant Rachel Craik, who felt beneath her rough exterior some real tenderness for the girl she had reared, became her implacable foe.

"You had better calm yourself," she said quietly. "If you care to eat, food will soon be brought for you and Mr. Grey. He is your fellow-boarder for a few days!"

Then Winifred saw, for the first time, that the s.p.a.cious room held another occupant. Reclining in a big chair, and scowling at her, was Mick the Wolf, whose arm Carshaw had broken recently.

"Yes," growled that worthy, "I'm not the most cheerful company, missy, but my other arm is strong enough to put that fellow of yours out o'

gear if he b.u.t.ts in on me ag'in. So just cool your pretty lil head, will you? I'm boss here, and if you rile me it'll be sort o' awkward for you."

How Winifred pa.s.sed the next few hours she could scarcely remember afterward. She noted, in dull agony, that the windows of the sitting-room she shared with Mick the Wolf were barred with iron.

So, too, was the window of her bedroom. The key and handle of the bedroom lock had been taken away. Rachel Craik was her jailer, a maimed scoundrel her companion and a.s.sistant-warder.

But, when the first paroxysms of helpless pain and rage had pa.s.sed, her faith returned. She prayed long and earnestly, and help was vouchsafed.

Appeal to her captors was vain, she knew, so she sought the consolation that is never denied to all who are afflicted.

Neither Rachel Craik, nor the sullen bandit, nor the loud-voiced rascal who had dared to say he was her father, could understand the cheerful patience with which she met them next day.

"She's a puzzle," said Voles in the privacy of the apartment beneath. "I must dope out some way of fixin' things. She'll never come to heel again, Rachel. That fool Carshaw has turned her head."

He tramped to and fro impatiently. His ankle had not yet forgotten the wrench it received on the Boston Post Road. Suddenly he banged a huge fist on a sideboard.

"Gee!" he cried, "that should turn the trick! I'll marry her off to Fowle. If it wasn't for other considerations I'd be almost tempted--"

He paused. Even his fierce spirit quailed at the venom that gleamed from Rachel Craik's eyes.

CHAPTER XXI

MOTHER AND SON

A telegram reached Carshaw before he left Burlington with Clancy. He hoped it contained news of Winifred, but it was of a nature that imposed one more difficulty in his path.

"Not later than the twentieth," wired the manager of the Carshaw Mills in Ma.s.sachusetts. Carshaw himself had inquired the latest date on which he would be expected to start work.

The offer was his own, and he could not in honor begin the new era by breaking his pledge. The day was Sat.u.r.day, November 11. On the following Monday week he must begin to learn the rudiments of cotton-spinning.

"What's up?" demanded Clancy, eying the telegram, for Carshaw's face had hardened at the thought that, perhaps, in the limited time at his disposal his quest might fail. He pa.s.sed the typed slip to the detective.

"Meaning?" said the latter, after a quick glance.

Carshaw explained. "I'll find her," he added, with a catch of the breath. "I must find her. G.o.d in Heaven, man, I'll go mad if I don't!"

"Cut out the stage stuff," said Clancy. "By this day week the Bureau will find a bunch of girls who're not lost yet--only planning it."

Touched by the misery in Carshaw's eyes, he added:

"What you really want is a marriage license. The minute you set eyes on Winifred rush her to the City Hall."

"Once we meet we'll not part again," came the earnest vow. Somehow, the pert little man's overweening egotism was soothing, and Carshaw allowed his mind to dwell on the happiness of holding Winifred in his arms once more rather than the uncertain prospect of attaining such bliss.

Indeed, he was almost surprised by the ardor of his love for her. When he could see her each day, and amuse himself by playing at the pretense that she was to earn her own living, there was a definite satisfaction in the thought that soon they would be married, when all this pleasant make-believe would vanish. But now that she was lost to him, and probably enduring no common misery, the complacency of life had suddenly given place to a fierce longing for a glimpse of her, for the sound of her voice, for the shy glance of her beautiful eyes.

"Now, let's play ball," said Clancy when they were in a train speeding south. "Has any complete search of Winifred's rooms been made?"

"How do you mean?"

"Did you look in every hole and corner for a torn envelope, a twisted sc.r.a.p of paper, a car transfer, any mortal thing that might reveal why she went out and did not return?"

"I told you of the bookbinder's note--"

"You sure did," broke in Clancy. "You also went to the bookbinder s'teen times. Are you certain there was nothing else?"

"No--I didn't like--how could I peer and pry--"

"You'd make a b.u.m detective. Imagine that poor girl crying her eyes out in a cold dark cell all because you were too squeamish to give her belongings the once over!"

Carshaw was not misled by Clancy's manner. He knew that his friend was only consumed by impatience to be on the trail.

"You've fired plenty of questions at me," he said quietly. "Now it's my turn. I understand why you came to Burlington, but where is Steingall all this time?"

"That big stiff! How do I know?"

In a word, Clancy was uncommunicative during a whole hour. When the mood pa.s.sed he spoke of other things, but, although it was ten at night when they reached New York, he raced Carshaw straight to East Twenty-seventh Street and Miss Goodman.

There, in a few seconds, he was reading the agent's genuine note to Winifred--that containing the a.s.surance that no appointment had been made for "East Orange."

The letter concluded:

"At first I a.s.sumed that a message intended for some other correspondent had been sent to me by error. Now, on reperusal, I am almost convinced that you wrote me under some misapprehension. Will you kindly explain how it arose?"

Clancy, great as ever on such occasions, refrained from saying: "I told you so."

"We'll call up the agent Monday, just for the sake of thoroughness," he said. "Meanwhile, be ready to come with me to East Orange to-morrow at 8 A.M."

"Why not to-night?" urged Carshaw, afire with a rage to be up and doing.