The Girl at Central Part 4

"No one. She went up alone and said she was going to be away for a few days. Where's she going?"

Anne gave me a look that said, "Keep your mouth shut," and turned quiet and innocent to Jim. "Just for a visit to friends. She's always visiting people in New York and Philadelphia."

Jim stayed round a while gabbing with us, and then went back to the station. When the door shut on him we stared at each other with our eyes as round as marbles.

"Oh, Molly," Anne said, almost in a whisper, "it's just what I've been afraid of."

"You think she's lighting out?"

"Yes-don't you see, the Doctor being at the Dalzells' has given her the chance."

"Where would she go to?"

"How do I know? Heaven send she hasn't done anything foolish. But this morning she sent Virginie, that French woman, up to the village for something-on Sunday when all the shops are shut. The housemaid told me they'd been trying to find out what it was and Virginie wouldn't tell.

Oh, dear, _could_ she have gone off with someone?"

We were talking it over in low voices when a call came. It was from Mapleshade to the Dalzells'. As I made the connection I whispered to Anne what it was and she whispered back, "Listen."

I did. It was from Mrs. Fowler, all breathless and almost crying. She asked for the Doctor and when he came burst out:

"Oh, Dan, something's happened-something dreadful. Sylvia's run away."

I could hear the Doctor's voice, small and distant but quite clear:

"Go slow now, Connie, it's hard to hear you. Did you say _Sylvia'd run away_?"

Then Mrs. Fowler said, trying to speak slower:

"Yes, with Jack Reddy. We've been hunting for her and we've just found a letter from him in her desk. Do you hear-her desk, in the top drawer? It told her to meet him at seven in the Lane and go with him in his car to Bloomington."

"Bloomington? That's a hundred and fifty miles off."

"I can't help how far off it is. That's where the letter said he was going to take her. It said they'd go by the turnpike to Bloomington and be married there. And we can't find Virginie-they've evidently taken her with them."

"I see-by the turnpike, did you say?"

"Yes. Can't you go up there and meet them and bring her back?"

"Yes-keep cool now, I'll head them off. What time did you say they left?"

"The letter said he'd meet her in the Lane at seven and it's a little after eight now. Have you time to get up there and catch them?"

"Time?-to burn. On a night like this Reddy can't get round to the part of the pike where I'll strike it under three and a half to four hours."

"But can you go-can you leave your case?"

"Yes-Dalzell's improving. Graham can attend to it. Now don't get excited, I'll have her back some time to-night. And not a word to anybody. We don't want this to get about. We'll have to shut the mouth of that fool of a French woman, but I'll see to that later. Don't see anyone. Go to your room and say nothing."

Just as the message was finished Minnie Trail came in. I made the record of it and then got up asking her, as natural as you please, how she felt. Anne did the same and you'd never have thought to hear us sympathizing with her that we were just bursting to get outside.

When we did we walked slow down the street, me telling her what I'd heard. All the time I was speaking I was thinking of Sylvia and Jack Reddy tearing away through that still, black night, flying along the pale line of the road, flashing past the lights of farms and country houses, swinging down between the rolling hills and out by the open fields, till they'd see the glow of Bloomington low down in the sky.

It was Anne who brought me back to where I was. She suddenly stopped short, staring in front of her and then turned to me:

"Why, how can she be eloping with Reddy by the turnpike when Jim Donahue saw her get on the train?"

IV

When I come to the next day I can't make my story plain if I only tell what I saw and heard. I didn't even pick up the most important message in the tragedy. It came at half-past nine that night through the Corona Exchange and was sent from a pay station so there was no record of it, only Jack Reddy's word-but I'm going too fast; that belongs later.

What I've got to do is to piece things together as I got them from the gossip in the village, from the inquest, and from the New York papers.

All I ask of you is to remember that I'm up against a stunt that's new to me and that I'm trying to get it over as clear as I can.

The best way is for me to put down first Sylvia's movements on that tragic Sunday.

About five in the afternoon Sylvia and Mrs. Fowler had tea in the library. When that was over-about half-past-Sylvia went away, saying she was going to her room to write letters, and her mother retired to hers for the nap she always took before dinner. What happened between then and the time when Mrs. Fowler sent the message to the Doctor I heard from Anne Hennessey. It was this way:

They had dinner late at Mapleshade-half-past seven-and when Sylvia didn't come down Mrs. Fowler sent up Harper to call her. He came back saying she wasn't in her room, and Mrs. Fowler, getting uneasy, went up herself, sending Harper to find Virginie Dupont. It wasn't long before they discovered that neither Sylvia nor Virginie were in the house.

When she realized this Mrs. Fowler was terribly upset. Sylvia's room was in confusion, the bureau drawers pulled out, the closet doors open. Anne not being there, Harper, who was scared at Mrs. Fowler's excitement, called Nora Magee, the chambermaid. She was a smart girl and saw pretty quickly that Sylvia had evidently left. The toilet things were gone from the dresser; the jewelry case was open and empty, only for a few old pieces of no great value. It was part of Nora's job to do up the room and she knew where Sylvia's Hudson seal coat hung in one of the closets.

A glance showed her that was gone, also a gold-fitted bag that the Doctor had given his stepdaughter on her birthday.

All the servants knew of the quarreling and its cause and while Mrs.

Fowler was moaning and hunting about helplessly, Nora went to the desk and opened it. There, lying careless as if it had been thrown in in a hurry, was Jack Reddy's letter. She gave a glance at it and handed it to Mrs. Fowler. With the letter in her hand Mrs. Fowler ran downstairs and telephoned to the Doctor.

The poor lady was in a terrible way and when Anne got back she had to sit with her, trying to quiet her till the Doctor came back. That wasn't till nearly two in the morning, when he reached home, dead beat, saying he'd come round the turnpike from the Riven Rock Road and seen no sign of either Sylvia or Jack Reddy.

No one at Mapleshade saw Sylvia leave the house, no one in Longwood saw her pa.s.s through the village, yet, two and a half hours from the time she had made the date with Mr. Reddy, she was seen again, over a hundred miles from her home, in the last place anyone would have expected to find her.

Way up on the turnpike, two miles from Cresset's Crossing, there's a sort of roadhouse where the farm hands spend their evenings and automobilists stop for drinks and gasoline. It's got a shady reputation, being frequented by a rough cla.s.s of people and once there was a dago-a laborer on Cresset's Farm-killed there in a drunken row. It's called the Wayside Arbor, which doesn't fit, sounding innocent and rural, though in the back there is a trellis with grapes growing over it and tables set out under it in warm weather.

At this season it's a dreary looking spot, an old frame cottage a few yards back from the road, with a broken-down piazza and a door painted green leading into the bar. Along the top of the piazza goes the sign "Wayside Arbor," with advertis.e.m.e.nts for some kind of beer at each end of it, and in the window there's more advertis.e.m.e.nts for whisky and crackers and soft drinks. Nailed to one of the piazza posts is a public telephone sign standing out very prominent.

At the time of the Hesketh mystery I'd only seen it once, one day in the summer when I was out in a hired car with Mrs. Galway and two gentlemen friends from New York. We'd been to Bloomington by train and were motoring back and stopped to get some beer. But we ladies, not liking the looks of the place, wouldn't go in and had our beer brought out to us by the proprietor, Jake Hines, a tough-looking customer in a shirt without a collar and one of his suspenders broken.

It's very lonesome round there. The nearest house is Cresset's, a half mile away across the fields. Back of it and all round is Cresset's land, some of it planted in crops and then strips of woods, making the country in summer look lovely with the dark and the light green.

Sunday evening there were only two people in the Wayside Arbor bar, Hines and his servant, Tecla Rabine, a Bohemian woman. Mrs. Hines was upstairs in the room above in bed with a cold. There was a fire burning in the stove, as a good many of Hines's customers were the dagoes that work at Cresset's and the other farms and they liked the place warm.

Hines was reading the paper and Tecla Rabine was cleaning up the bar before she went upstairs, she having a toothache and wanting to get off to bed.

At the inquest Hines swore that he heard no sound of a car or of wheels-which, he said, he would have noticed, as that generally meant business-when there was a step on the piazza, the door opened and a lady came in. He didn't know who she was but saw right off she wasn't the kind that you'd expect to see in his place. She had on a long dark fur coat, a close-fitting plush hat with a Shetland veil pushed up round the brim, and looked pale, and, he thought, scared. It was Sylvia Hesketh, but he didn't know that till afterward.

She asked him right off if she could use his telephone and he pointed to the booth in the corner. She went in and closed the door and Hines stepped to the window and looked out to see if there was a car or a carriage that he hadn't heard, the mud making the road soft. But there was nothing there. Before he was through looking he heard the booth door open and turning back saw her come out. He said she wasn't five minutes sending her message.