Читать книгу The Thirteenth Ring: Mystery Stories for Girls - Roy J. Snell - Страница 4

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The girl in the boat half rose from her seat. It was time to go in, past time, yet she dearly loved to sit out here and think. There was something inspiring in the slow, sturdy sweep of the river. For a moment she hesitated, then sank back into her place. The clock in some distant tower would soon strike the dreamy hour of midnight. When the first stroke sounded she would go. Until then she would sit and think.

With her chin cupped in her hands, she sat and dreamed. Her work as secretary to the Children’s Editor had not provided her with many thrills, yet she planned to stay with the paper. Every vacation she would work there. When school was over she would try for a permanent position. Many women went in for newspaper work these days. Made good, too. Look at the Children’s Editor. She was well paid. The Society Editor, too, and Miss Mansfield, the Radio Editor. Everyone knew that Miss Mansfield’s salary was very large. And her influence! It reached to every far corner of the country.

Yes, running errands, typing letters, copying stories, going to the composing room for proofs, entertaining callers until the Children’s Editor could see them, all this in a way was drudgery, but glorious drudgery, since it led to something higher.

There had been thrills as well, at least one or two. If she found a story for the paper all by herself she was permitted to write it up. Her high school was large. She had many friends there. Once one of these, a girl, had rescued a child from drowning. She had discovered this story, and had written it. At another time a childhood playmate had come near being burned to death in a tenement house. That had been her story too. Only tomorrow she planned to go hunting for a story after hours. One of her classmates was a Chinese girl, Niesiana. She sold orange crush and lemonade at a little stand down in Chinatown during the summer. There had been trouble down there. A tong war had been started. Some Chinese had been shot. Betty was not afraid. She would go down there. Perhaps Niesiana would give her a story, a thrilling front page story, a—

“What was that!” A mysterious shadow swept across the gleaming waters of the river. Now, like the shadow of a pendulum, it came swinging back. At the same instant the distant clock began to sound the hour of midnight. It was spooky. The girl caught her breath.

Of a sudden the swinging shadow shot into a hundred wavering images and, with a splash that sent a shower of great drops over the girl, some dark object fell into the river.

“Oh-o-o,” with a shudder. “Who threw that?”

The next instant in her imagination she saw herself a flattened mass floating down this river of her dreams.

“If they throw again and aim more accurately,” her mind told her, “that’s what will come of me.”

She had risen in the boat, had seized a paddle and was frantically forcing her boat to shore when with a sudden start she paused to stare, then to make a mad dash for the boat’s mooring.

“Suicide!” she thought. “Have to try to save him.”

Where the splash had come, a head had appeared above the water.

“A story!” she whispered. “What do you know about that! A story for me right out of the old river!”

Standing up and paddling furiously, she at last came alongside.

“Of all things!” she exclaimed. “It’s a girl!”

“And such a big girl,” she thought without saying it.

With her help, in imminent danger of swamping the boat, the big girl climbed aboard. Then she dropped limply into the stern seat.

“Suicide,” Betty thought again. “What do you know about that? A girl. Not twenty, I know. Midnight! The river! What a story. Ought to have a picture. Get it, too. Get her story.”

“How? How did she?” She looked up. “The middle of the river, thirty feet from the bridge. Where’d she jump from?”

She began studying the other girl’s face. Her bobbed hair was plastered over it. Like one drawing away a curtain from a valuable painting, she parted the damp hair and pressed it to one side. The other girl did not move. She appeared to be in a daze.

“Drugs,” thought Betty.

Suddenly, yet slowly, as if speaking in her sleep, the other girl began to talk.

“I—I’ve still got them.”

“Got what?” Betty asked quickly.

“The—the rings.”

“Oh!”

That was all that was said. Betty was beginning to understand, or thought she was. There had been trouble somewhere, perhaps a quarrel. The girl couldn’t stand it, had tried the river. Water had brought her back to her senses.

“Well, she’ll have to stand it,” Betty said fiercely. “Such a fine big girl. What a lot of good she could do!”

She took a good look at the girl’s face. One look was a revelation. The cheeks were round. Good eyes, too, and not sunken in; good healthy eyes. There was color in the cheeks, too, real color, not the kind that wears off.

Well, perhaps here was romance, romance from the river. She’d see. But first for this suicide business. She’d take that out of her. She’d lecture her right here and now, wet clothes and all. She was shivering. Well, let her shiver. Do her good.

Betty had splendid ideas about life, and there was a lot of warmth in the way she expressed them. One of her very biggest ideas was that, come what might, life was well worth living. A beggar could look at a sunrise or listen to the thunder of the storm on the lake, couldn’t he? All of beauty, all demonstrations of the Creator’s might and power were to be seen and felt by the poorest comer. These alone made life well worth living, and there was always more, a great deal more than this.

All this she told to the girl who, save for an occasional shudder, sat motionless in the boat. Betty had tied the boat to the bridge again.

“You ought to be ashamed,” her voice was low and tense, “to want to blot out the sunshine from those eyes of yours forever, to try to say good-bye forever to the sunrise and the sunset, to songs of birds and blush of flowers, to shirk the duty of living!”

Betty broke off suddenly. Had there been a flicker of a smile about the corners of the other’s mouth? She thought so; was sure of it. The thing was incongruous, disconcerting. Here was a girl who, but for her timely aid, might now be dead. Here she was sitting there calmly smiling at her. It—why, it was ghastly, like being smiled at by a corpse. She had meant to tell her about the river, about Joliet, Marquette and LaSalle, about the tall grass, the buffalo, and the deer. Somehow she couldn’t now.

Suddenly she saw that the other girl’s lips were turning blue.

“Have to get her in. Get dry clothes on her.”

Fortunate that she had access to the boiler room back of their apartment. The boiler was hot, too; for it provided steam for machinery in the day time. There they could dry her clothes in a hurry. The girl would have to undress in the little back room and hand her things out.

“C’mon,” Betty said a bit huskily. “Got to get you dried out.”

“In there,” she said a moment later as she pushed the big girl through the door to her small room. “Blankets in there. Hand me out your clothes, all of them.”

Five minutes later she looked at the door. Outside of it was a soggy heap of water soaked garments.

“Her outfit,” she told herself as she wrung out each garment separately and hung it up back of the furnace on a line, “is of good serviceable material, and quite complete; and—and gym bloomers. How queer!

“Getting late,” she told herself. “Have to get the story before she goes. Have to—”

Her thoughts broke short off. Was there to be a story? It would make a peach of a story. She saw it all on the front page:

“BEAUTIFUL GIRL TRIES SUICIDE.”

“And yet,” she sighed, “supposing it were Betty Bronson whose picture was to be printed above such a story? What then? How would Betty like it?” No, she could not be sure there would be a story.

This mystery girl, as you have doubtless guessed, was not a would be suicide, but was Florence Huyler, who, attempting to escape from the unknown terror that lurked there among the steel girders, had been obliged to take a flying dive from the swinging rope into the river.

The distance she fell was greater than she had expected. Her dive had been a successful one, but as she rose to the surface she found herself stunned and in a daze. Had she not been a splendid swimmer she might have been drowned. As it was, even though her mind was a blank, her well trained muscles did the work of keeping her upon the surface.

She did not speak at once upon being dragged into the boat. That was because she was still in a daze. As she slowly came to her senses to find herself being lectured for an attempt at suicide by a girl younger and much smaller than herself, she thought it amusing. The idea that she might attempt suicide was beyond possibility. There were few people in that great city who loved life as she loved it. She had a passionate love for just the things Betty talked of. A sunset, flowers, the songs of birds, a storm on lands or sea, all these brought joy to her heart. Only one was different; Chicago River had never impressed her as being an object for romance.

She had not spoken at first because she was dazed, and at last because she wished to hear what the other girl would say. Now, as she sat in Betty’s little room waiting for her clothes to dry, she smilingly said to herself:

“I must not lose track of her. She’d make a grand little pal. I must know her better. Sooner or later, I must tell her the whole truth.”

As she said this she put out a hand to remove the blankets that covered a small water soaked box.

She removed the cover to look within. In the box were thirteen gold and platinum rings.

“Thirteen used rings,” she whispered to herself. And, a moment later, “He did not say ‘rings.’ That mysterious beetle-eyed Chinaman said, ‘the ring.’ I wonder what he could have meant? Which ring?” She examined them closely, but discovered nothing unusual about any of them. They were just such weddings rings as the average woman wears. Some were smooth, some of fancy design, most of them initialed within, but after all, one looked as unimportant as another. She had bought the lot of them for $11.50. She blushed a little at the thought, “Thirteen used wedding rings for $11.50.” But here was Betty with her clothes.

The two girls talked little that night. The hour was late. Tomorrow was another day of work. Although Florence did not tell her experience as it really was, Betty gave up the notion of a sensational newspaper story. She hadn’t the heart to do it. She told Florence where she might be found, and urged her to call if she were in need.

Florence, with a little smile in the corners of her mouth, promised she would come, then turning, climbed the iron stairs to the bridge and was soon lost in the night.

The next evening, just before dark, Florence climbed the second floor stair that led to the editorial rooms of the Mid-City Times, Betty’s paper.

As she reached the top step she paused to pat the front of her blouse. The wrinkle on her brow cleared. The rings were still there, thirteen used wedding rings. At once her brow clouded again. What was she to do about the rings? And then again, why do anything? They were her rings. She had bought them. It had been a legitimate sale. She had the signed bill of sale. No one ever questioned the word of the one who had signed that bill. And yet these rings had been lost by some one. Every one of the thirteen had been lost. There were rings in that collection that had been priceless possessions, wedding rings that stood for romance and for years of hallowed associations.

“Thing is to find the persons who lost them,” she whispered to herself as she started down a dimly lighted hall. She had thought of a possible way.

“It might work,” she told herself. Just now she was looking for Betty Bronson.

Presently she came to a door marked “Children’s Editor.” Timidly she knocked.

The door swung open, a head was thrust out. It was Betty.

“Oh, hello!” she exclaimed. “Come in. I’m alone. Doing the tag end of some work. Meant to get out to Chinatown, but couldn’t make it, not to-night.”

The office Florence entered was small and crowded, scarcely room to turn about. Betty cleared a chair and told her to sit down.

Without a word regarding the experience of the previous night, Florence first laid the thirteen used wedding rings before her new found friend, then launched at once upon her project.

Betty listened with absorbed attention. From time to time she gave vent to such exclamations as “That would be wonderful!” ... “I’m sure it could be done!” ... “It would make a wonderful human interest story!” ... “Sure we could follow it up!” ... “That would be great, if only we could!”

She had just ended one of these exclamations when, after a glance upward, her face became transfixed with horror.

“C’mon,” she whispered, “we must get out of here!”

Gripping Florence by the arm, she dragged her into the outer darkness of endless corridors. At the same time a particularly terrible face, the face of a Chinaman with a lofty forehead and small black eyes set close together like a beetle’s, disappeared from a small square opening between that narrow room and the one next to them. Ten seconds later he was on their trail.