The Bartlett Mystery

“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 butts 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 passed 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 assistant-warder.

But, when the first paroxysms of helpless pain and rage had passed, 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 Massachusetts. 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 Saturday, 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 passed 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. God 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 scrap 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 bum 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 passed 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 assurance that no appointment had been made for “East Orange.”

The letter concluded:

“At first I assumed 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.

“What? To sleep there? Young man, you don’t know East Orange. Run away home to your ma!”

“Where have you been?” inquired Mrs. Carshaw when her son entered. Her air was subdued. She had suffered a good deal these later days.

“To Vermont.”

“Still pursuing that girl?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Have you found her?”

“No, mother.”

“Rex, have you driven me wholly from your heart?”

“No; that would be impossible. Winifred would not wish it, callous as you were to her.”

“Do not be too hard on me. I am sore wounded. It is a great deal for a woman to be cast into the outer darkness.”

“Nonsense, mother, you are emerging into light. If your friends are so ready to drop you because you are poor – with the exceeding poverty of twenty-five hundred a year – of what value were they as friends? When you know Winifred you will be glad. You will feel as Dante felt when he emerged from the Inferno.”

“So you are determined to marry her?”