The Automobile Girls at Washington Part 22

Mrs. Wilson and Peter were in the library, and through the window Mrs.

Wilson had watched Bab approaching the house.

"Here comes that tiresome Thurston girl, whom you were going to use as your tool, Peter," teased Mrs. Wilson. "She wasn't so easy to manage as you thought, was she? Never mind; she will still be used as our scapegoat. But I shall not see her this morning. What's the use?"

"Let her come in, by all means, Mrs. Wilson," Peter Dillon urged. "I shall hide so that she will not see me. What would fall in with our plans better than to have this girl come here to-day! Who knows how this visit may be made to count against her? Of course, if suspicion never points to us we had best never mention the name of Barbara Thurston. But--if Mr.

Hamlin ever questions you, why not say Miss Thurston came here to-day and betrayed the fact to you that she had stolen Mr. Hamlin's papers? We have circ.u.mstantial evidence enough against her."

Bab found Mrs. Wilson very much surprised to see her, and looking very languid and bored.

Straightforward Barbara rushed headlong into her request.

"Really, Miss Thurston, don't you think you are rather impertinent?"

drawled her hostess, when Bab finished. "I don't see what business it is of yours whether or not I wish to play a joke on my friend, Mr. Hamlin.

Don't try to get out of mischief by reporting to Mr. Hamlin the story of my poor little joke. You can hardly save yourself by any such method. No one will believe you. And I have an idea that you came to my house to-day for a very different purpose than to persuade me to give up my joke. What was it?"

Bab was mystified. She had no idea how Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon had planned to use her visit as evidence against her, so it was impossible for her to understand Mrs. Wilson's insinuation.

Barbara did not stay long. She saw Mrs. Wilson had no intention of being persuaded from her design. Even though the woman was beginning to see that Bab and Ruth were a little suspicious of her, she had no idea of being frightened from her deep-laid scheme by two insignificant schoolgirls.

Barbara hurried to her car as fast as she could, anxious to get back to Ruth and to devise some other move to checkmate the traitors. She even hoped, against hope, that Harriet had been induced to change her mind and that all would yet be well. But as Bab jumped aboard her car she saw another girl, running down the street, waving something in the air and evidently trying to induce Bab's street car to wait for her. Barbara begged the conductor to hold the car for a moment, before she recognized the figure, running toward them. But the next second she beheld the ever-present newspaper girl, Marjorie Moore, tablet and pencil in hand, completely out of breath and exhausted. Marjorie Moore could not speak for some time after she had secured a seat next Bab in the car.

"I have been watching Mrs. Wilson's house since eight o'clock this morning," she finally gasped. "What on earth made you go in there?"

"I can't tell you," Bab returned coldly. Not for anything in the world would she have Marjorie Moore suspect what she and Ruth feared.

Miss Moore gave a little, half amused, half sarcastic laugh. "You can't tell? Oh, never mind, my dear. I know you are all right. You weren't doing anything wrong. I expect you were trying to help set matters straight. You don't need to tell me anything. I think I know all that is necessary. Good-bye now. I must get off this car at the corner. Let me tell you, however, not to worry, whatever happens. I am in possession of all the facts, so there will be no trouble in proving them. But if anything disagreeable happens to you," Marjorie Moore gave Bab a rea.s.suring smile, "telephone me, will you? My number is 1607, Union."

Marjorie Moore rushed out of the street car as hurriedly as she had entered it, before Bab could take in what she had said.

Barbara puzzled all the rest of the way home. Could it be possible that Marjorie Moore had discovered Mrs. Wilson's and Peter's plot? Could she also have guessed Harriet's part in it? Bab shuddered, for she remembered the newspaper girl's words to her on the night of their first meeting: "If ever I have a chance to get even with Harriet Hamlin, won't I take my revenge?" Did Marjorie Moore also suspect that an effort would be made to draw Barbara into this whirlpool of disgrace?

No one ate any luncheon at the home of the a.s.sistant Secretary of State, except Mollie and Grace. Fortunately Mr. Hamlin did not return home. Ruth and Bab had decided not to tell the other two "Automobile Girls" of their terrible uneasiness unless they actually needed the help of the younger girls to save the situation. Ruth and Bab did not wish to prejudice Mollie and Grace against Harriet if it were possible to spare her. But Ruth had told Bab that, at four o'clock, Harriet was determined to deliver the papers to Peter Dillon.

At two o'clock, however, the two friends had found no way to influence Harriet to give up her mad project. Indeed, Harriet scarcely spoke to either of them, she was so bitterly angry at what she termed their interference.

At three o'clock, Ruth and Barbara grew desperate. For, at three, Harriet Hamlin closed the door of her bedroom and commenced to dress for her engagement.

"Try once again, Ruth," Bab pleaded. "It is worse even than you know. I believe Marjorie Moore suspects what Harriet is about to do. Suppose she publishes the story in the morning papers. Tell Harriet I have a reason for thinking she knows about the affair."

Bab waited apprehensively for Ruth's return. It seemed to her that, for the first time in their adventures, the "Automobile Girls" had met with a situation that no amount of pluck or effort on their part could control. This was the most important experience of their whole lives, for their country was about to be betrayed! Once Barbara stamped her foot in her impatience. How dared Harriet Hamlin be so willful, so headstrong? Bab's face was white with anxiety and suspense. Her lips twitched nervously. Then in a flash her whole expression changed. The color came back to her cheeks, the light to her eyes. At the eleventh hour the way had been made clear.

Ruth had no such look when she returned to Barbara. She flung herself despondently into a chair. "It's no use," she declared despairingly.

"Harriet must go her own way. We can do nothing with her!"

"Yes, we can!" Bab whispered. She leaned over and murmured something in Ruth's ear.

Ruth sprang to her feet. "Barbara Thurston, you are perfectly wonderful!"

she cried. "Yes, I do know where it is. Go to my desk and take that blank paper. It is just the right size. Fold it up in three parts. There, it will do, now; give it to me. Now go and command Grace and Mollie, if they love us, to call Harriet out of her room for a minute. We can explain to them afterwards."

Mollie and Grace feared Barbara had gone suddenly mad when she rushed in upon them with her demand. But Mollie did manage to persuade Harriet to go into the next room. As Harriet slipped out of her bedroom, her cousin, Ruth Stuart, stole into it, hiding something she held in her hand. She was alone in Harriet's room for not more than two minutes.

At a quarter to four o'clock, Harriet Hamlin left her father's house with a large envelope concealed inside her shopping bag. Opposition had merely strengthened Harriet's original resolution. She was no longer frightened. Ruth and Bab were absurd to have been so tragic over a silly joke.

At a little after four o'clock, in a quiet, out-of-the-way street in Was.h.i.+ngton, Harriet turned over to Peter Dillon this envelope, which, as she supposed, contained the much-coveted papers which she had extracted from the private collection of the a.s.sistant Secretary of State.

Whatever the papers were, Peter Dillon took them carelessly with his usual charming smile. But inwardly he was chanting a song of victory. He and Mrs. Wilson would be many-thousands of dollars richer by this time to-morrow. He glanced into the envelope with his near-sighted eyes. The papers were folded up inside and all was well! Peter did not dare, before Harriet, to be too interested in what the envelope contained.

It would not have made him happier to have looked closer; the song of victory would have died away on his lips. For, instead of certain secret doc.u.ments sent to the office of the Secretary of State, from representatives of the United States Government in China, Harriet Hamlin had turned over to Peter Dillon an official envelope, which contained only folded sheets of blank paper!

It had been Barbara's idea and Ruth had carried it out successfully. In the moment when Harriet left her room in answer to Mollie's call, Ruth had exchanged the valuable state papers for the worthless ones. Once Harriet was safely out of the way, she and Bab carried the precious doc.u.ments downstairs and shut them up in Mr. Hamlin's desk. Both girls hoped that all trouble was now averted, and that Mr. Hamlin would never hear of Harriet's folly!

CHAPTER XXI

THE DISCOVERY

The members of the Hamlin household went early to their own rooms that night.

Ruth at once flung herself down on a couch without removing her clothing.

In a few minutes she was fast asleep, for she believed their difficulties were over. Bab did not feel as secure. She was still thinking of the speech the newspaper girl had made to her in the car.

At ten o'clock the a.s.sistant Secretary of State, who was sitting alone in his study, heard a violent ringing of his telephone bell. He did not know that, at this same instant, his daughter Harriet had crept down to his study door intending to make a full confession of her mistakes to him.

Mr. Hamlin picked up the receiver. "'The Was.h.i.+ngton News?' Yes. You have something important to say to me? Well, what is it?" Mr. Hamlin listened quietly for a little while. Then Harriet heard him cry in a hoa.r.s.e, unnatural voice: "Impossible! The thing is preposterous! Where did you ever get hold of such an absurd idea?"

Harriet stopped to listen no longer. She never knew how she got back upstairs to her room. She half staggered, half fell up the steps.

Suddenly she realized everything! She had been used as a tool by Mrs.

Wilson and Peter Dillon. Ruth and Barbara had been right. She had stolen her father's state papers. A newspaper had gotten hold of the story and already her father and she were disgraced.

In the meantime, Mr. Hamlin continued to talk over the telephone, though his hand shook so he was hardly able to hold the receiver.

"You say you think it best to warn me that the story of the theft of my papers will be published in the morning paper, that you know that private state doc.u.ments entrusted to me keeping have been sold to secret spies?

What evidence have you? I have missed no such papers. Wait a minute." Mr.

Hamlin went to his strong box. Sure enough, certain doc.u.ments were missing. Ruth and Bab had put the papers in the desk. "Have you an idea who stole my papers?" Mr. Hamlin called back over the telephone wire, his voice shaken with pa.s.sion.

Evidently the editor who was talking to Mr. Hamlin now lost his courage.

He did not dare to tell Mr. Hamlin that his own daughter was suspected of having sold her father's papers. Mr. Hamlin repeated the editor's exact words. "You say a young woman sold my papers? You are right; this is not a matter to be discussed over the telephone. Send some one up from your office to see me at once."

Mr. Hamlin reeled over to his bell-rope and gave it a pull, so that the noise of its ringing sounded like an alarm through the quiet house.

A frightened servant answered the bell.

"Tell Miss Thurston and my niece, Miss Stuart, to come to my study at once," Mr. Hamlin ordered. The man-servant obeyed.

"Ruth, dear, wake up," Bab entreated, giving her friend a shake.