The Secret Mark Part 12

Frank Morrow listened attentively. At times he leaned forward with the light on his face that one sometimes sees upon the face of a boy who is hearing a good story of pirates and the sea.

"Well," he dampened his lips as she finished, "well!"

For some time after that there was silence in the room, a silence so profound that the ticking of Frank Morrow's watch sounded loud as a grandfather's clock.

At last Frank Morrow wheeled about in his chair and spoke.

"You know, Miss Lucile," he said slowly, "I am no longer a child, except in spirit. I have read a great deal. I have thought a great deal, sitting alone in this chair, both by day and by night. Very often I have thought of us, of the whole human race, of our relation to the world, to the being who created us and to one another.

"I have come to think of life like this," he said, his eyes kindling. "It may seem a rather gloomy philosophy of life, but when you think of it, it's a mighty friendly one. I think of the whole human race as being on a huge raft in mid-ocean. There's food and water enough for everyone if all of us are saving, careful and kind. Not one of us knows how we came on the raft. No one knows whither we are bound. From time to time we hear the distant waves break on some sh.o.r.e, but what sh.o.r.e we cannot tell. The earth, of course, is our raft and the rest of the universe our sea.

"What's the answer to all this? Just this much: Since we are so situated, the greatest, best thing, the thing that will bring us the greatest amount of real happiness, is to be kind to all, especially those weaker than ourselves, just as we would if we were adrift on a raft in the Atlantic.

"Without all this philosophy, you have caught the spirit of the thing. I can't advise you. I can only offer to a.s.sist you in any way you may suggest. It's a strange case. The old man is doubtless a crank. Many book collectors are. It may be, however, that there is some stronger hand back of it all. The girl appears to be the old man's devoted slave and is too young truly to understand right from wrong. I should say, however, that she is clever far beyond her years."

Lucile left the shop strengthened and encouraged. She had not found a solution to her problem but had been told by one much older and wiser than she that she was not going at the affair in the wrong way. She had received his a.s.surance of his a.s.sistance at any time when it seemed needed.

That night a strange thing happened. Lucile had learned by repeated experience that very often the solution of life's perplexing problems comes to us when we are farthest from them and engaged in work or pursuit of pleasure which is most remote from them. Someone had given her a ticket to the opera. Being a lover of music, she had decided to abandon her work and the pursuit of the all-absorbing mystery, to forget herself listening to outbursts of enchanting song.

The outcome had been all that she might hope for. Lost in the great swells of music which came to her from hundreds of voices or enchanted by the range and beauty of a single voice, she forgot all until the last curtain had been called and the crowd thronged out.

There was a flush on her cheek and new light in her eyes as she felt the cool outer air of the street.

She had walked two blocks to her station and was about to mount the stairs when, to her utter astonishment, she saw the mystery child dart across the street. Almost by instinct she went in full pursuit.

The child, all oblivious of her presence, after crossing the street, darted down an alley and, after crossing two blocks, entered one of those dark and dingy streets which so often flank the best and busiest avenues of a city.

At the third door to the left, a sort of half bas.e.m.e.nt entrance that one reached by descending a short stairs, the child paused and fumbled at the doork.n.o.b. Lucile was just in time to get a view of the interior as the door flew open. The next instant she sprang back into the shadows.

She gripped at her wildly beating heart and steadied herself against the wall as she murmured, "It couldn't be! Surely! Surely it could not be."

And yet she was convinced that her eyes had not deceived her. The person who had opened the door was none other than the woman who had treated the child so shamefully and had dragged her along the street. And now the child had come to the door of the den which this woman called home and of her own free will had entered the place and shut the door. What could be the meaning of all this.

Some mysteries are long in solving. Some are apparently never solved.

Some scarcely become mysteries before their solution appears. This mystery was of the latter sort.

Plucking up all the courage she could command, Lucile made her way down the steps and, crowding herself through a narrow opening, succeeded in reaching a position by a window. Here she could see without being seen and could catch fragments of the conversation which went on within.

The child had advanced to the center of the room. The woman and a man, worse in appearance, more degraded than the woman, stood staring at her.

There was something heroic about the tense, erect bearing of the child.

"Like Joan of Arc," Lucile thought.

The child was speaking. The few words that Lucile caught sent thrills into her very soul.

The child was telling the woman that she had had a book, which belonged to her friend, Monsieur Le Bon. This book was very old and much prized by him. She had had it with her that other night in a lunch box. The woman had taken it. She had come for it. It must be given back.

As the child finished, the woman burst into a hoa.r.s.e laugh. Then she launched forth in a tirade of abusive language. She did not admit having the book nor yet deny it. She was too intent upon abusing the child and the old man who had befriended her for that.

At last she sprang at the child. The child darted for the door, but the man had locked and bolted it. There followed a scramble about the room which resulted in the upsetting of chairs and the knocking of kitchen utensils from the wall. At last the child, now fighting and sobbing, was roped to the high post of an ancient bedstead.

Then, to Lucile's horror, she saw the man thrust a heavy iron poker through the grate of the stove in which a fire burned brightly.

Her blood ran cold. Chills raced up her spine. What was the man's purpose? Certainly nothing good. Whatever these people were to the child, whatever the child might be, the thing must be stopped. The child had at least done one heroic deed; she had come back for that book, the book which at this moment rested in Lucile's own room, Frank Morrow's book.

She had come for it knowing what she must face and had come not through fear but through love for her patriarchal friend, Monsieur Le Bon.

Somehow she must be saved.

With a courage born of despair, Lucile made her way from the position by the window toward the door. As she did so, she thought she caught a movement on the street above her. She was sure that a second later she heard the sound of lightly running footsteps. Had she been watched from above? What was to come of that? There was no time to form an answer. One hand was on the k.n.o.b. With the other she beat the door. The door swung open. She stepped inside. It seemed to her that the door shut itself behind her. For a second her heart stood still as she realized that the man was behind her; that the door was bolted.

CHAPTER XII THE TRIAL BY FIRE

The moment Lucile heard the lock click behind her she knew that she was trapped. But her fighting blood was up. Even had the door been wide open she would not have retreated.

"You release that child," she said through cold, set lips.

"Yes, you tell me 'release the child,'" said the woman, with an attempt at sarcasm; "you who are so brave, who have a companion who is like an ox, who likes to beat up poor women on the street. You say, 'release the child.' You say that. And the child, she is my own stepdaughter."

"I--I don't believe it," said Lucile stoutly.

"It is true."

"If it is true, you have no right to abuse her--you are not fit to be any child's mother."

"Not fit," the woman's face became purple with rage. "I am no good, she says; not fit!" She advanced threateningly toward Lucile.

"Now, now," she stormed, "we have you where we want you. Now we shall show you whether or not we can do as we please with the child that was so very kindly given to us." She made a move toward the stove, from which the handle to the heavy poker protruded. By this time the end must be red hot.

"It's no use to threaten me," said Lucile calmly. "I wouldn't leave the room if I might. If I did it would be to bring an officer. I mean to see that the child is treated as a human being and not as a dog."

The woman's face once more became purple. She seemed petrified, quite unable to move, from sheer rage.

But the man, a sallow-complexioned person with a perpetual leer in one corner of his mouth, started for the stove.

With a quick spring Lucile reached the handle of the poker first. Seizing it, she drew it, white hot, from the fire. The man sprang back in fear.

The woman gripped the rounds of a heavy chair and made as if to lift it for a blow.

Scarcely realizing that she was imitating her hero of fiction, she brought the glowing iron close to the white and tender flesh of her forearm.

"You think you can frighten me," she smiled. "You think you can do something to me which will cause me to cease to attempt to protect that child. Perhaps you would torture me. I will prove to you that you cannot frighten me. What I have been doing is right. The world was made for people to live in who do right. If one may not always do right, then life is not worth living."

The fiery weapon came closer to her arm. The woman stared at her as if fascinated. The child, who had been silently struggling at her bands, paused in open-mouthed astonishment. For once the leer on the man's lips vanished.

Then, of a sudden, as she appeared to catch the meaning of it all, the child gave forth a piercing scream.

The next instant there came a loud pounding at the door as a gruff voice thundered: