The Secret Mark Part 5

"Anywhere for the good of a child. Come on."

Florence was away after the woman and child at a rapid rate.

"We'll get the child free. Then we'll get out," breathed Florence. "We don't want any publicity."

Fortune favored their plan. The woman, still dragging the child, who was by now silently weeping, hurried into a narrow dismal alley.

Suddenly as she looked about at sound of a footstep behind her, she was seized in two vises and hurled by some mechanism of steel and bronze a dozen feet in air, to land in an alley doorway. At least so it seemed to her, nor was it far from the truth. For Florence's months of gymnasium work had turned her muscles into things of steel and bronze. It was she who had seized the woman.

It was all done so swiftly that the woman had no time to cry out. When she rose to her feet, the alley was deserted. The child had fled in one direction, while the two girls had stepped quietly out into the street in the other direction and, apparently quite unperturbed, were waiting for a car.

"Look," said Lucile, "I've still got it. It's the child's lunch basket.

There's something in it."

"There's our car," said Florence in a relieved tone. The next moment they were rattling homeward.

"We solved no mystery to-night," murmured Lucile sleepily.

"Added one more to the rest," smiled Florence. "But now I _am_ interested. We must see it through."

"Did you hear what the child said, that she'd rather die than steal?"

"Wonder what she calls the taking of our Shakespeare?"

"That's part of our problem. Continued in our next," smiled Lucile.

She set the dilapidated papier-mache lunch box which she had picked up in the street after the child had dropped it, in the corner beneath the cloak rack. Before she fell asleep she thought of it and wondered what had been thumping round inside of it.

"Probably just an old, dried-up sandwich," she told herself. "Anyway, I'm too weary to get up and look now. I'll look in the morning."

One other thought entered her consciousness before she fell asleep. Or was it a thought? Perhaps just one or two mental pictures. The buildings, the street, the electric signs that had encountered her gaze as they first saw the child and the half-drunk woman pa.s.sed before her mind's eye. Then, almost instantly, the picture of the street on which the building in which Frank Morrow's book shop was located flashed before her.

"That's queer!" she murmured. "I do believe they were the same!"

"And indeed," she thought dreamily, "why should they not be? They are both down in the heart of the city and I am forever losing my sense of location down there."

At that she fell asleep.

CHAPTER VI "ONE CAN NEVER TELL"

When Lucile awoke in the morning she remembered the occurrence of the night before as some sort of bad dream. It seemed inconceivable that she and Florence, a couple of co-eds, should have thrown themselves upon a rough-looking woman in the heart of the city on a street with which they were totally unfamiliar. Had they done this to free a child about whom they knew nothing save that she had stolen two valuable books?

"Did we?" she asked sleepily.

"Did we what?" smiled Florence, drawing the comb through her hair.

"Did we rescue that child from that woman?"

"I guess we did."

"Why did we do it?"

"That's what I've been wondering."

Lucile sat up in bed and thought for a moment. She gazed out of the window at the lovely green and the magnificent Gothic architecture spread out before her. She thought of the wretched alleys and tumble-down tenements which would greet the eye of that mysterious child when she awoke.

"Anyway," she told herself, "we saved her from something even worse, I do believe. We sent her back to her little old tottering man. I do think she loves him, though who he is, her grandfather or what, I haven't the faintest notion.

"Anyway I'm glad we did it," she said.

"Did what?" panted Florence, who by this time was going through her morning exercises.

"Saved the child."

"Yes, so am I."

The papier-mache lunch box remained in its place in the dark corner when they went to breakfast Both girls had completely forgotten it. Had Lucile dreamed what it contained she would not have pa.s.sed it up for a thousand breakfasts. Since she didn't, she stepped out into the bright morning suns.h.i.+ne, and drinking in deep breaths of G.o.d's fresh air, gave thanks that she was alive.

The day pa.s.sed as all schooldays pa.s.s, with study, lectures, laboratory work, then dinner as evening comes. In the evening paper an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the "Lost, Strayed or Stolen" column caught her eye. It read:

"REWARD

"Will pay $100.00 reward for the return of small copy of The Compleat Angler which disappeared from the Morrow Book Shop on November 3."

It was signed by Frank Morrow.

"Why, that's strange!" she murmured. "I do believe that was the book he showed me only yesterday, the little first edition which was worth sixteen hundred dollars. How strange!"

A queer sinking sensation came over her.

"I--I wonder if she could have taken it," she whispered, "that child?

"No, no," she whispered emphatically after a moment's thought. "And, yet, there was the gargoyle bookmark in the inside cover, the same as in our Shakespeare. How strange! It might be--and, yet, one can never tell."

That evening was Lucile's regular period at the library, so, much as she should have liked delving more deeply into the mystery which had all but taken possession of her, she was obliged to bend over a desk checking off books.

Working with her was Harry Brock, a fellow student. Harry was the kind of fellow one speaks of oftenest as a "nice boy." Clean, clear-cut, carefully dressed, studious, energetic and accurate, he set an example which was hard to follow. He had taken a brotherly interest in Lucile from the start and had helped her over many hard places in the library until she learned her duties.

Shortly after she had come in he paused by her desk and said in a quiet tone:

"Do you know, I'm worried about the disappearance of that set of Shakespeare. Sort of gives our section a long black mark. Can't see where it's disappeared to."

Lucile drew in a long breath. What was he driving at? Did he suspect? Did he--

"If I wasn't so sure our records were perfect," he broke in on her mental questioning, "I'd say it was tucked away somewhere and would turn up. But we've all been careful. It just can't be here."