Читать книгу The Thirteenth Ring: Mystery Stories for Girls - Roy J. Snell - Страница 3
ОглавлениеCHAPTER I
A PLUNGE IN THE DARK
The hour was nearing midnight. A misty moon shone down between the brick walls of skyscrapers to paint a wavering golden glimmer on the surface of the river.
Well back in the shadows at the foot of the bridge a flat-bottomed boat, dragged at by the river’s restless tugging, bumped against a stone wall. In the boat sat a slim, black-haired girl—Betty Bronson.
Betty was seventeen. Her home was right there by the river, in the restless business center of a great metropolis. If she climbed up from the boat, walked along the breakwater twenty paces, then crossed a six foot strip of grass that grew at the water’s edge, she would come to the door of her home. As far back as she could remember her home had been there. In winter she wakened to watch ice floating by; in summer there was only the milky-gray sweep of water. It was summer now.
The boat in which she sat had been placed there by the city police department. There was one at every bridge. They were left there all the time. If some one fell off the bridge, or in a fit of despondency jumped off, this boat was to be used in the rescue. Twice Betty had assisted in such work. The last time it had been a boy who fell off the breakwater, and a grateful father had given her ten dollars.
Betty was not hoping to rescue anyone now. The city streets were all but deserted then. She sat out there because the water, coming directly from the lake, cooled the air. It was a glorious place to think, and she loved this old river of her early childhood dreams.
The street along the river front was not wholly deserted on this night. Near the street car track two blocks away, another girl, a year or two older than Betty, stood waiting for a car. This was Florence Huyler. Florence was large and very strong. As summer playground director for one of the west side parks, she had to keep physically fit. Even in summer she kept up her gymnasium work, and was returning from a night class now.
As her gaze swept the empty street a wrinkle of anxiety appeared upon her brow. Early that morning a rather disturbing thing had happened to her.
She put one hand over an inner pocket of her blouse, to murmur,
“Yes, they’re there.”
A second later her hand dropped to her side as a little gasp escaped her lips.
A short, brown faced Chinaman with high brow and beetle-like eyes had suddenly appeared from nowhere. Not twenty paces away he was walking rapidly toward her.
“It’s the very same man,” she whispered.
With a sudden move that betrayed great agitation, she turned and walked rapidly west toward the bridge. And still, beneath that bridge, the flat-bottomed boat bumped the wall; still in the center of it the black-eyed girl sat hugging her knees, breathing the cool damp river air of night, and thinking of many things.
Florence had not gone far before, without really willing to do so, she broke into a run. A glance over her shoulder told her that the little yellow man was running too.
This set her heart beating wildly. So he was really following her, would catch up with her if he could! Why? This she could not tell. She could guess. It had something to do with the rings. Even now she fancied she caught low hissed words from him:
“The ring! The ring!”
Well, he shouldn’t catch her! She’d escape him. Her gym training would count now. A cool head and physical skill, that was enough. She was strong. She would keep her head.
While she was thinking this she was racing forward. She was near the bridge. She tried to think of a way out. Beyond the bridge was a viaduct, a dark cave-like affair that ran for a whole block beneath railway tracks. She shuddered at thought of that.
“Not there if I can help it!” she breathed. “But where?”
To her right along the street the perpendicular wall of a seven story building reared itself to the sky. No chance there.
Across the street the steel skeleton of a tall building in process of construction loomed in the dark. She had a good heart and a clear head. She was not afraid to climb.
Like a flash she was across the street and on the nearest steel girder.
Having come from the gym, without a complete change, she still wore her rubber soled gym shoes, and beneath a broad skirt, her bloomers. She could climb unhandicapped.
“Should lose him in a minute now,” she told herself.
But she did not. The man seemed desperately in earnest. Though she repeatedly risked her life by climbing the posts that led from girder to girder, though her head swam and her heart beat wildly as she paused for a second to gaze into the dark dizzy depths below, she found him always but a few feet beneath or behind her. And as she paused, panting, before another desperate endeavor, she caught the hissed words:
“The ring! The ring!”
“The ring!” she thought desperately. “There is no one ring. There are thirteen; thirteen used wedding rings. What would he want of them? Is he a criminal? No, no. They would not bring ten dollars in a pawn shop. He must be mad!” Again she climbed, climbed up and struggled on until at last she found herself in a corner.
To her right towered a brick wall. Behind her was the mysterious Chinaman, and far beneath her lay the glimmering surface of the river.
In the boat, among the shadows by the bridge, Betty Bronson still sat, half asleep, dreaming of adventure and romance.
A car rumbled across the bridge.
“Probably a taxi bound for the depot,” she told herself dreamily. “Must be near midnight.”
A rippling breeze sped across the water. The river tugged vainly at her boat’s mooring.
“Like a puppy pulling at a stick,” she thought, “only you’re no puppy of a river. You’re old and, in a way, dignified.”
Betty loved the river. Somehow she always expected it to bring her romance and adventure. A queer thing to expect. But then the river had seen adventure—Marquette, Joliet, LaSalle, they had all paddled silently up this river to explore lands that no white man had ever seen. Tall grass had waved on its banks then; deer and buffalo had waded belly deep in its clear waters.
It was different now. The very course of it had been changed. Where it had flowed north it now flowed south. Its waters now moved between walls, a stone and brick canyon. But what of that? You can’t take romance out of a river by putting walls around it, and turning its course end for end.
Most certainly not. Anyway that’s the way Betty thought of it. Yes, she was sure romance and adventure would come to her from that river; sure as her love for it was constant, it would come, come as the sword Excaliber came mysteriously to King Arthur.
Betty was tall, slender, black-eyed, black-haired and quite fearless. Living in the heart of a great city had made her fearless. She longed for adventure. Mystery, too, she loved, the right kind of mystery—not trumped up mystery, but real mystery.
She longed to solve the many mysteries that had passed up and down the river at night; the small, silent boats that hugged the shadows, the larger boats that drifted down the river without a sound. Ah yes, there were mysteries here, but not such mysteries that one slender girl might solve.
She loved adventure. That was why she had found a position on a great city newspaper during her summer vacation. Had she found adventure there? Hardly. They had made her office girl to the Children’s Editor. No great adventure in that. Yet within the walls of that dingy old newspaper building adventure had come to many. Would it come to her? Who could say? In the meantime surprise and adventure were preparing to leap at her from the dark shadows above the bridge.
Hardly had Florence, on the steel frame, found herself in a corner with a mysterious Chinaman at her heels than she saw a possible means of escape. A great steel crane, more than forty feet long, rising at an angle from the very top of the steel structure, hung far out over the river. A heavy rope, extending from the outer end of this crane, had been brought in and tied to a steel girder not twenty feet from the point where she stood. In a moment her keen mind took in all the possibilities of that rope.
“If I were there; if I loosened the rope, if I threw a loop into it; if I stepped off, let myself go,” she thought breathlessly, “I would swing like a great pendulum across the river, and I would—perhaps I would, land on the roof of that building on the other side.”
Fear of the unknown spurred her on. With a leap and a flying swing she was at the spot where the rope was tied. Ten seconds of suspense while her practiced fingers worked with the rope; a sudden step forward, a gripping of the rope, a quick prayer for protection. Just as the Chinaman reached out to seize her, she was away.
There followed a breath taking swing over the river.
“Like clinging to the tail of a comet,” her keen mind flashed.
Her eyes were upon the roof across the river. As with one foot extended for a leap she waited, seconds seemed broken up into infinite periods of time, yet the passage was swift as the flight of a bird. One second found her speeding, the next found her slowing up, nearing her goal. An instant more and—She ceased breathing, her heart seemed to pause. Now—now for the briefest period of time she hung motionless in space, so close to that roof, and yet so far. Could she have made it? No one will ever know. She did not dare try. An instant of hesitation, and all was lost. She was going back, would not swing so far next time, would never touch that roof.
What now? Her heart beat wildly. As she looked back to the spot she had left she saw the Chinaman. He was standing there with both arms outstretched, like a baseball catcher waiting a ball. Would he catch her? Undoubtedly he would if she swung all the way back. But would she? In a flash a bold plan presented itself. Beneath her was the river. It was deep. Great ships were brought down that river. She was a skillful diver. She had never dived from a rope. But—
With a quick intake of breath, she gripped the rope, loosed her foot, twisted herself about the rope, then leaped up and out. The next instant her body executed a graceful circle to go darting through the dark to gleaming depths below.
Below, and a little farther up the river, a slim, dark-haired girl still sat dreaming of mystery, adventure and romance.
