The Secret Mark Part 23

There is no feeling of desolation so complete as that which sweeps over one who is utterly alone in a great city at night. The desert, the Arctic wilderness, the heart of the forest, the boundless sea, all these have their terrors, but for downright desolation give me the heart of a strange city at night.

Hardly had Lucile covered two blocks on her journey from the book shop when this feeling of utter loneliness engulfed her like a bank of fog.

Shuddering, she paused to consider, and, as she did so, fancied she caught the bulk of a shadow disappearing into a doorway to the right of her.

"Where am I and where am I to go?" she asked herself in a wild attempt to gather her scattered senses. In vain she endeavored to recall the name of the street she was on at that moment. Her efforts to recall the route she had taken in getting there were quite as futile.

"Wish I were in Chicago," she breathed. "The very worst of it is better than this. There at least I have friends somewhere. Here I have none anywhere. Wish Florence were here."

At that she caught herself up; there was no use in wis.h.i.+ng for things that could not be. The question was, what did she intend to do? Was she to seek out a hotel and spend the night there, to resume her search for the first person in America who had sold the ancient copy of the Angler, or was she to take the first train back to Chicago? She had a feeling that she had seen the man she sought and that weeks of search might not reveal him again; yet she disliked going back to Frank Morrow with so little to show for his hundred dollars invested.

"Anyway," she said at last with a shudder, "I've got to get out of here.

Boo! it seems like the very depths of the slums!"

She started on at a brisk pace. Having gone a half block she faced about suddenly; she fancied she heard footsteps behind her. She saw nothing but an empty street.

"Nerves," she told herself. "I've got to get over that. I know what's the matter with me though; I haven't eaten for hours. I'll find a restaurant pretty soon and get a cup of coffee."

There is a strange thing about our great cities; in certain sections you may pa.s.s a half dozen coffee shops and at least three policemen in a single block; in other sections you may go an entire mile without seeing either. Evidently, eating places, like policemen, crave company of their own kind. Lucile had happened upon a policeless and eat-shopless section of New York. For a full twenty minutes she tramped on through the fog, growing more and more certain at every step that she was being followed by someone, and not coming upon a single person or shop that offered her either food or protection.

Suddenly she found herself in the midst of a throng of people. A movie theater had disgorged this throng. Like a sudden flood of water, they surrounded her and bore her on. They poured down the street to break up into two smaller streams, one of which flowed on down the street and the other into a hole in the ground. Having been caught in the latter stream, and not knowing what else to do, eager for companions.h.i.+p of whatever sort, the girl allowed herself to be borne along and down into the hole.

Down a steep flight of steps she was half carried, to be at last deposited on a platform, alongside of which in due time a train of electric cars came rattling in.

"The subway," she breathed. "It will take me anywhere, providing I know where I want to go."

Just as she was beginning to experience a sense of relief from contact with this flowing ma.s.s of humanity she was given a sudden shock. To the right of her, through a narrow gap in the throng, she recognized a face.

The gap closed up at once and the face disappeared, but the image of it remained. It was the face of the man she had seen in the shop, he of the birthmark on his chin.

"No doubt of it now," she said half aloud. "He _is_ following me." Then, like some hunted creature of the wild, she began looking about her for a way of escape. Before her there whizzed a train. The moving cars came to a halt. A door slid open. She leaped within. The next instant the door closed and she was borne away. To what place? She could not tell. All she knew was that she was on her way.

Quite confident that she had evaded her pursuer, she settled back in her seat to fall into a drowsy stupor. How far she rode she could not tell.

Having at last been roused to action by the pangs of hunger, she rose and left the car. "Only hope there is some place to eat near," she sighed.

Again she found herself lost in a jam; the legitimate theaters were disgorging their crowds. She was at this time, though she did not know it, in the down town district.

Her right hand was disengaged; in her left she carried a small leather bag. As she struggled through the throng, she experienced difficulty in retaining her hold on this bag. Of a sudden she felt a mighty wrench on its handle and the next instant it was gone. There could be no mistaking that sudden pull. It had been torn from her grasp by a vandal of some sort. As she turned with a gasp, she caught sight of a face that vanished instantly, the face of the man with the birthmark on his chin.

Instantly the whole situation flashed through her mind; this man had been following her to regain possession of one or both of the books which at this moment reposed in her coat pocket. He had made the mistake of thinking these books were in the bag. He would search the bag and then--

She reasoned no further; a car door was about to close. She dashed through it at imminent risk of being caught in the crush of its swing and the next instant the car whirled away.

"Missed him that time," she breathed. "He will search the bag. When he discovers his mistake it will be too late. The bird has flown. As to the bag, he may keep it. It contains only a bit of a pink garment which I can afford to do without, and two clean handkerchiefs."

Fifteen minutes later when she left the car she found herself in a very much calmer state of mind. Convinced that she had shaken herself free from her undesirable shadow, and fully convinced also that nothing now remained but to eat a belated supper and board the next train for her home city, she went about the business of finding out what that next train might be and from what depot it left.

Fortunately, a near-by hotel office was able to furnish her the information needed and to call a taxi. A half hour later she found herself enjoying a hot lunch in the depot and at the same time mentally reveling in the soft comfort of "Lower 7" of car 36, which she was soon to occupy.

CHAPTER XXII MANY MYSTERIES

One might have supposed that, considering she was now late into the night of the most exacting and exciting day of her whole life, Lucile, once she was safely stowed away in her berth on the train, would immediately fall asleep. This, however, was not the case. Her active brain was still at work, still struggling to untangle the many mysteries that, during the past weeks, had woven themselves into what seemed an inseparable tangle.

So, after a half hour of vain attempt to sleep, she sat bolt upright in her berth and snapped on the light, prepared if need be to spend the few remaining hours of that night satisfying the demands of that irreconcilable mind of hers.

The train had already started. The heavy green curtains which hid her from the little outside world about her waved gently to and fro. Her white arms and shoulders gleamed in the light. Her hair hung tumbled in a ma.s.s about her. As the train took a curve, she was swung against the hammock in which her heavy coat rested. Her bare shoulder touched something hard.

"The books," she said. "Wonder what my new acquirement is like?"

She drew the new book from her pocket and, brus.h.i.+ng her hair out of her eyes, scanned it curiously.

"French," she whispered. "Very old French and hard to read." As she thumbed the pages she saw quaint woodcuts of soldiers and officers. Here was a single officer seated impressively upon a horse; here a group of soldiers scanning the horizon; and there a whole battalion charging a very ancient fieldpiece.

"Something about war," she told herself. "That's about all I can make out." She was ready to close the book when her eye was caught by an inscription written upon the fly leaf.

"Looks sort of distinguished," she told herself. "Shouldn't wonder if the book were valuable because of that writing if for nothing else." In this surmise she was more right than she knew.

She put the book carefully away but was unable to banish the questions which the sight of it had brought up. Automatically her mind went over the incidents which had led up to this precise moment. She saw the child in the university library, saw her take down the book and flee, saw her later in the mystery cottage on Tyler street. She fought again the battle with the hardened foster mother of the child and again endured the torturing moments in that evil woman's abode. She thought of the mysterious person who had followed her and had saved her from unknown terrors by notifying the police. Had that person been the same as he who had followed her this very night in an attempt to regain possession of the two books? No, surely not. She could not conceive of his doing her an act of kindness. She thought of the person who had followed them to the wall of the summer cottage out at the dunes and wondered vaguely if he could have been the same person who had followed them on Tyler street at one time and at that other saved her from the clutches of the child's foster parents. She wondered who he could be. Was he a detective who had been set to dog her trail or was he some friend? The latter seemed impossible. If he was a detective, how had she escaped him on this trip?

Or, after all, had she? It gave her a little thrill to think that perhaps in the excitement of the day his presence near her had not been noticed and that he might at this very moment be traveling with her in this car.

Involuntarily she seized the green curtains and tried to b.u.t.ton them more tightly, then she threw back her head and laughed at herself.

"But how," she asked herself, "is all this tangle to be straightened out?

Take that one little book, 'The Compleat Angler.' The child apparently stole it from Frank Morrow; I have it from her by a mere accident; Frank Morrow has it from one New York book shop; that shop from another; the other from a theologian; he from a third book shop; and that shop more than likely from a thief, for if he would attempt to steal it from me to-night, he more than likely stole it in the first place and was attempting to get it from me to destroy my evidence against him. Now if the book was stolen in the first place and all of us have had stolen property in our possession, in the form of this book, what's going to happen to the bunch of us and how are we ever to square ourselves? Last of all," she smiled, "where does our friend, the aged Frenchman, the G.o.dfather of that precious child, come in on it? And what is the meaning of the secret mark?"

With all these problems stated and none of them solved, she at last found a drowsy sensation about to overcome her, so settling back upon her pillow and drawing the blankets about her, she allowed herself to drift off into slumber.

The train she had taken was not as speedy as the one which had taken her to New York. Darkness of another day had fallen when at last she recognized the welcome sound of the train rumbling over hollow s.p.a.ces at regular intervals and knew that she was pa.s.sing over the streets of her own city. Florence would be there to meet her. Lucile had wired her the time of her arrival. It certainly would seem good to meet someone she knew once more.

As the train at last rattled into the heart of the city, she caught an unusual red glow against the sky.

"Fire somewhere," she told herself without giving it much thought, for in a city of millions one thinks little of a single blaze.

It was only after she and Florence had left the depot that she noted again that red glow with a start.

The first indication that something unusual was happening in that section of the city was the large amount of traffic which pa.s.sed the street car they had taken. Automobiles, trucks and delivery cars rattled rapidly past them.

"That's strange!" she told herself. "The street is usually deserted at this time of night. I wonder if the fire could be over this way; but surely it would be out by now."

At last the traffic became so crowded that their car, like a bit of debris in a clogged stream, was caught and held in the middle of it all.

"What's the trouble?" she asked the conductor.

"Bad fire up ahead, just across the river."

"Across the river? Why--that's where Tyler street is."

"Yes'm, in that direction."