The Camp Fire Girls Solve a Mystery Or The Christmas Adventure at Carver House Part 21

"I'm afraid I can't," replied Katherine regretfully. "I'm due to go back on the five-fifteen train."

"O, but you _must_ come!" cried Veronica pleadingly. "I'll be so miserable if you don't that I sha'n't be able to play at all. You wouldn't want me to spoil the concert on your account, would you, Katherine dear? There is a later train you can go home on just as well, isn't there?"

"There is one at ten-forty-five," replied Katherine, consulting the time-table which she carried in her hand bag.

"You can hear me play, and make that train, too," said Veronica eagerly.

"My numbers come in the early part of the program, all but one. If you went out after I had played my first group you could make your train beautifully. Do telephone Nyoda that you are going to stay over, and have her send somebody down to meet you at the later train. That Justice person--" she said mischievously, finis.h.i.+ng with an expressive movement of her eyebrows.

Katherine finally yielded to her pleading, and telephoned Nyoda that she was going to stay in town until the ten-forty-five, which so delighted Veronica that she ordered another croquette all the way around to celebrate the happy circ.u.mstance.

"_Do_ be careful, dear," warned her aunt a second time. "Those croquettes are distressingly rich. What _would_ happen if you were to be taken ill to-night?"

Veronica smiled serenely. "I'm not going to be taken ill to-night, aunty dear," she replied. "I'm going to be like Katherine, who can eat forty lobster croquettes without getting sick."

"Remember the mixtures we used to cook up in the House of the Open Door?"

she asked, turning to Katherine. "They were lots worse than lobster croquettes, if the plain truth were known. You wouldn't worry at all, aunty, dear, if you knew what we used to eat at those spreads without damaging ourselves!"

Katherine was completely carried away by Veronica's vivaciousness and temperamental whimsies. If she had admired the fiery little Hungarian in the days of the House of the Open Door, she was now absolutely enslaved by her. To plain, matter-of-fact Katherine, Veronica, with her artistic temperament, was a creature from another world, inspiring a certain amount of awed wonder, as well as admiring affection.

"What are you going to play at the concert to-night?" Katherine asked respectfully.

Veronica's eyes began to glow, and she pushed aside her plate, leaving the second croquette to grow cold while she spoke animatedly upon the subject that lay ever nearest her heart.

"I'm going to play a cycle from Nagar, a Roumanian Gypsy composer," she replied. "One of the pieces is the most wonderful thing; it's called 'The Whirlwind.' It fairly carries you away with its rush and movement, until you want to fly, and shout, and go sailing away on the wings of the wind.

Another one is named 'Fata Morgana.' You know that's what people call the mirage that we can see out on the steppes-the open plains-of Hungary."

"Yes?" murmured Katherine in a tone of eager interest. She loved to hear Veronica tell tales of her homeland.

"Many a time I have seen it," continued Veronica, her eyes sparkling with a dreamy, far-off light, "a beautiful city standing out clear and fair against the horizon; and have gone forth to find it, only to see it vanish into the hot, quivering air, and to find myself lost out on the wide, lonely steppe."

Katherine listened, fascinated, while Veronica told stories of the curious mirage that lured and mocked the dwellers on the lonely steppes of her native land, and so deep was her absorption that she absent-mindedly ate up Veronica's croquette while she listened, to the infinite amus.e.m.e.nt of Mrs. Lehar.

"Aren't you going to play any of your own compositions?" asked Katherine, when Veronica had finished talking about the Nagar cycle.

"Not as a regular number," replied Veronica, taking up her fork to finish her croquette, and deciding that she must already have eaten it, since her plate was empty. "If, by any chance, I should be encored, I shall play a little piece of my own that I have named 'Fire Dreams,' and dedicated to the Winnebagos. I wrote it one night after a ceremonial meeting out in the woods where we danced around the fire and then sat down in a circle to watch it burn itself away to embers. We all told our dreams for the future that night, don't you remember? I have woven everything together in my piece-the tall pines towering up to the sky; the stars peering through the branches; the wind fiddling through the leaves, and the river lapping on the stones below; with the firelight waving and flickering, and coaxing us to tell our dreams. I love to play it, because it brings back that scene so vividly; that and all the other beautiful times we had around the camp fire."

Katherine gazed at Veronica in speechless admiration. With absolutely no musical ability herself, it seemed to her that anyone who could compose music was a child of the G.o.ds. Veronica smiled back frankly into Katherine's admiring eyes, and gave her hand a fond squeeze.

"Now, tell me about Carver House and all the dear people there," she said, settling herself comfortably in her chair and propping her elbows on the table. "We still have an hour to spare. Aunty won't mind if we talk about our own affairs, will you, aunty? Now, Katherine, take a long breath and begin."

The hour was up before Katherine was half way through telling the exciting things that had happened at Carver House in the past week, and with a sigh Veronica rose from the table and drew on her gloves.

"Come," she said regretfully, "we'll have to be starting. I have to go over to the hotel first and get my violin, and the auditorium where I am to play is some distance out."

As they stepped from the tea-room into the street Katherine paused to buy Veronica a huge bunch of violets at a little stand just inside the entrance of the tall building next door. Not having enough money in her change-purse to pay for them, she took a roll of bills from a bill-fold in her inner pocket, and, taking five dollars from the roll, returned it to its place of safety in the lining of her coat. Lounging against the gla.s.s counter beside her was a slender, long-fingered man, whose gaze suddenly became concentrated when the roll of bills made its appearance.

Katherine noticed his look of absorbed interest and a little thrill of uneasiness p.r.i.c.kled along her spine. She looked sharply at this inquisitive stranger, fixing in her mind the details of his appearance.

He wore a long, light-colored overcoat and a visor cap pulled down over his eyes, which were small and dark, and set close together in his thin, sallow face, giving him a peculiar, ratlike expression. Katherine b.u.t.toned her coat carefully over the bill-fold and hastily rejoined Veronica and Mrs. Lehar in the street outside, conscious that the man's eyes were still upon her and that he had followed her out of the shop. To her relief, Mrs. Lehar hailed a taxicab, and in a moment more they were being whirled rapidly away from the scene.

An hour later Katherine found herself sitting in state in one of the front boxes of a crowded auditorium, impatiently waiting for the soprano soloist to finish a lengthy operatic aria and yield her place to Veronica. The soloist bowed her way out at last, and Veronica, looking like a very slender little child in contrast to the ma.s.sive singer, tripped out on the stage with her violin under her arm, just as she had always carried it around in the House of the Open Door.

"She isn't a bit scared!" was Katherine's admiring thought.

Nodding brightly to the audience, Veronica laid her bow across the strings with that odd little caressing gesture that Katherine remembered so well, and began to play her long cycle from memory.

Strange images flitted through Katherine's brain as she listened; the lighted stage faded from sight, and in its place there stretched a wide, gra.s.sy plain, s.h.i.+mmering in the sunlight and flecked with racing cloud shadows, far ahead, gleaming clear against the gray-blue horizon, rose the white towers and spires of a fair city, which seemed to call to her in friendly invitation, awakening in her an irresistible longing to travel toward it and behold its wonders at near hand. But ever as she approached it receded into the distance, vanis.h.i.+ng at last in the twinkling of an eye, and leaving her alone in the heart of a wild, desolate moor upon which darkness was swiftly falling. She started in affright at the long, eerie cry of a nightbird; the deepening shadows were filled with fearful, unnamable terrors. Her head reeled; the strength went out from her limbs, and with icy hands pressed tightly over her eyes to shut out the menacing shadow-shapes, she sank shuddering to the ground. She was roused by the sound of thunder, and opening her eyes found the lonely moor vanished, and in its place the brightly lighted stage, while the thunder which echoed in her ears resolved itself into a tumult of hand-clapping.

Katherine rubbed her eyes and sat up straight. "What was that piece she just played?" she asked in a whisper.

"That was the 'Fata Morgana,'" replied Mrs. Lehar.

It was several minutes after ten o'clock when Veronica finished her last encore, and Katherine, glancing at her watch, hastily reached for her coat, and leaving a goodnight message for Veronica with Mrs. Lehar, started from the auditorium.

CHAPTER XIX THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF KATHERINE

The curious spell of the "Fata Morgana" descended upon Katherine again as she emerged from the concert hall and made her way through a poorly lighted side street toward the main avenue where the street cars pa.s.sed.

The long, waving shadows seemed to clutch at her ankles as she walked; strange noises sounded in her ears; the trees that bordered the curb left their places and began to move toward her with a grotesque, circling motion, while the distant glare of light toward which she was traveling began to recede until it was a mere twinkling speck, miles away in the distance. Again her strength forsook her, and with violently trembling hands she grasped an iron fence railing and clung desperately to keep herself from falling. The touch of the cold metal sent a little shock tingling through her; she braced herself and looked steadily at the spectres crowding about her. The trees had gone back into their places; the shadows no longer seemed to be crouching ready to spring at her.

"Silly!" exclaimed Katherine, though her teeth still chattered.

She let go of the fence and started on; immediately the trees resumed their fantastic circling, and again her knees threatened to double under her. Then she realized that it was not the "Fata Morgana" that held her in thrall, but the extra lobster croquette. The disastrous fate which Mrs. Lehar had predicted would overtake Veronica had befallen her instead-she was in the throes of acute indigestion! O, if only she had not eaten that second croquette! Lobster never agreed with her; she should have known better than to eat it, especially after she had just eaten shrimp salad. Why hadn't she had the sense to refuse that second one? (Katherine was still unaware that she had eaten, not two, but three of the deadly things, a circ.u.mstance which had undoubtedly saved Veronica from a like fate.)

She clung dizzily to the fence for a few moments, and then, feeling somewhat relieved by the cold wind blowing strongly against her face, struck out once more for the carline. A few steps convinced her that she could not make it; the world was whirling around her, and her limbs refused to obey her will. A little farther up the street, where the fence ended, the arched entrance-way into a church offered a resting-place and shelter against the high wind and beating rain. Stumbling up the steps, she sank down on the stone floor, and, pressing her cold hand against her throbbing temples, leaned weakly against the wall of her little sanctuary.

Weariness overcame her and she sank gradually into a doze, from which she wakened with a start at the sound of a steeple clock chiming. Boom! Boom!

Boom! The clanging tones echoed through the narrow street. Katherine sat up hastily and stared around her in bewilderment for a moment; then recollected herself and rose cautiously to her feet. To her infinite relief she found that her knees no longer had any inclination to knock together; the feeling of illness had pa.s.sed. Taking a deep breath, and setting her hat straight on her head, she walked steadily down the steps and out upon the street once more. The clock which had wakened her so rudely was in the steeple just above her and Katherine gave a gasp of dismay when she saw the time. A quarter to eleven! She should be down at the station now, taking the ten-forty-five train back to Oakwood. What had happened? Could she possibly have fallen asleep in that cozy little entrance way? Why had she not heard the clock strike the half hour? How worried Nyoda would be when she did not come in on that ten-forty-five train! she thought in sudden panic. She must hasten down to the station immediately and telephone Nyoda that she had missed that train, but would come on the next.

Was there another train to-night? she wondered, in fresh panic.

Ten-forty-five sounded like the last local. She stopped under a street light for the purpose of consulting her time-table, and then she made a discovery which drove the matter of time-tables out of her head entirely, and brought the weakness back to her knees in full force, namely, the discovery that she no longer carried her handbag. Her heart almost stopped beating, for in that handbag was Nyoda's watch-the little jewelled watch Sherry had given her for an engagement present. Aside from its intrinsic value, which was considerable, Nyoda cherished that watch above all her other possessions.

She must have left the bag in the entrance-way where she had stopped to rest, Katherine decided, and, forgetting all about the weakness of a half hour ago, she ran swiftly across the street and up the steps of the church. She felt over every inch of the floor in the darkness, but the bag was not there.

Had she brought it with her out of the auditorium? Yes, because she had dropped it in the lobby, and in stooping to pick it up had felt the first touch of that dizzyness which had overpowered her so soon afterward. She must have lost it in the street. She retraced her steps back to the concert hall, now dark and deserted, carefully searching all the way. Her search, however, was unavailing; and with a sinking feeling she realized that either someone had picked it up, or else she had been deliberately robbed while she slept; in either event, the bag was gone, and with it Nyoda's watch.

It seemed to her that she could never go home and tell Nyoda that it was lost; she wished the earth would open up and swallow her where she stood, thus releasing her, at one stroke, from her distressful position. She bitterly reproached herself for having stayed in town that evening,-if she had gone home on the five-fifteen train this wouldn't have happened.

Nyoda had given her precious watch into her keeping, trusting her to bring it back safely, and she had betrayed that trust; had proved herself unreliable. Nyoda would never trust her with anything valuable again; would never send her on another errand. True, it was not exactly her fault that she had lost the bag; but if she had not been foolish enough to eat all those lobster croquettes after eating shrimp salad she would not have had any dizzy spell to distract her attention from her responsibility.

For fully five minutes she stood still and called herself every hard name she could think of, and ended up by making an emphatic resolution in regard to the future att.i.tude toward lobster croquettes. In the meantime, she decided, she had better notify the police about the watch. A block ahead of her the green and blue lights of a drug store shone blurred but unmistakable through the misty atmosphere, and she splashed her way toward it, only to find on arriving that the place was closed. She walked several more blocks, searching either for an open drug store where she could telephone, or a corner policeman, and finding neither. A street clock pointed to eleven, and from somewhere in the darkness behind her came the subdued tone of the steeple chime.

The rain had stopped now, and it was growing colder; the puddles on the sidewalk began to be filmed over with ice. The wind took on a cutting edge and came sallying forth in great gusts, shrieking along the telephone wires and setting the electric arc lights overhead swaying wildly back and forth, until the rapidly s.h.i.+fting lights and shadows below gave the street the look of a tossing lake. Now billowing out like a sail, now wrapping itself determinedly around her ankles, Katherine's long coat began to make walking a difficult proceeding. Then, without warning, the arc lights suddenly went out, plunging the world into utter blackness. With that, Katherine abandoned her intention of searching for a telephone and decided to get down to her train as fast as she could.

With every other step she went cras.h.i.+ng through a thin coating of ice into a puddle, for in the darkness it was impossible to see where she was going, and once she tripped over an uneven edge of flagging and went sprawling on her hands and knees. Thereafter, she felt her way, like a blind person, with the point of her umbrella.

It was gradually borne in upon Katherine, as she floundered on through the puddles, that she was not retracing her steps toward the carline, but was proceeding in a new and entirely unknown direction. The store fronts which loomed indistinctly through the darkness were not the same ones she had pa.s.sed before; surely those others had not been so shabby and disreputable looking. But so intense was the blackness of the night that she could not be sure about anything; she might be on the right track after all. Undoubtedly the next turn would bring her back to the lighted drug store, and from that point she could easily locate herself. No green and blue lights appeared when she turned the next corner, however; as far as she could see, there was only gloom in the distance. Katherine tried street after street with no better success; they all led endlessly on into darkness. She met no one from whom she dared ask the way; for there was only an occasional pa.s.ser-by, and he usually looked tipsy. It was evidently a factory district Katherine had wandered into, for all around her were great dark buildings with high chimneys, long, dim warehouses, box cars standing on sidings, silent, gloomy freight sheds; there seemed to be no end of them anywhere; in all directions they stretched out, like Banquo's descendents, apparently to the crack of doom. The nightmare of the "Fata Morgana" had come true, and she was lost in the wilderness of a strange city.

For a long time Katherine had not heard the rumble of a street car, and this phenomenon finally became so noticeable that she realized what must have happened-the traction power had been cut off as well as the lighting current. With that realization her last hope of getting down to the station went glimmering-unless she could get a taxicab. But where was one to find a taxicab in this district? A faint light gleaming in the window of a small shop that crouched between two tall factories lured Katherine on with the hope that here was a telephone, or at least someone about who could tell her the way. She hastened toward it, but her heart turned to water within her when she saw that the lettering on the window pane was Chinese. More than anything else in the whole universe, Katherine feared a Chinaman; she was so afraid of the little yellow men that even in broad daylight she could never go by a Chinese laundry without holding her breath and shuddering. Even the picture of a Chinaman gave her the creeps. When she discovered that she was in a Chinese neighborhood after eleven o'clock at night, with the street lamps all out, a hoa.r.s.e cry of terror broke involuntarily from her lips, and she began to run blindly, she knew not where, penetrating deeper and deeper into that jungle of factories which flanks the railroad on both sides for miles.