Читать книгу The Thirteenth Ring: Mystery Stories for Girls - Roy J. Snell - Страница 5

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“This way!” Florence caught the words whispered in her ear. The next instant she was speeding down a narrow corridor. Was there the sound of footsteps behind them? She was sure of it.

“The Chinaman!” she thought as her heart became a throbbing dynamo.

“The ring! The ring!” The words, singing in her ears like the hiss of a whip, served to urge her on.

“This way!” It was Betty’s whisper. An open window loomed before them. Betty disappeared. She had gone over the sill. Florence hesitated for a second. They were on the third floor of a city office building. A second only, then over she went. Her feet touched a solid surface. To her surprise she found the window opened upon an air shaft.

Along the bottom of this shaft they sped; then through another window; down an iron stairway; across a great room filled with gigantic presses; then into a room completely dark. Florence bumped into Betty. For a second they paused to listen. First they heard only the sound of their own breathing; then came the pat-pat of soft footsteps.

“He—he’s coming!” Betty panted in a whisper. “This way!”

They crept forward in the dark. Coming to some obstacle, Betty mounted it. Florence followed. A second and higher object lay before them, a circular affair. This, too, they mounted. Then began a slow and stealthy forward movement until with an all but inaudible sigh, Betty whispered:

“Down here.”

Gripped by the feet, Florence felt herself being pulled down into a hole some six or seven feet deep. Finding herself at last upon a solid surface, which appeared to be a floor, she crouched low to await further developments.

“It’s like playing hide-and-seek,” she told herself, “only one would hate dreadfully to be caught.”

“Caught?” At once her mind was busy with the problem of the rings. There was time now to think the whole affair through. And think it through she did.

It had been strange, interesting, and in the end quite mysterious and startling. She had come upon the beginning of this adventure quite by chance. The small park where, eight hours each day she supervised children’s play, was in the center of the city’s most congested district. Though only one block square, this city playground was a boon indeed to the countless hundreds of children who swarmed there daily. To have a part in this, to bind up the hurts of the little ones, to settle the quarrels of the big ones, to keep things safe for everyone, to add encouragement here, to teach some new stunt there, all this was her great privilege and duty.

But it was tiring. When the noon hour came Florence always found herself ready for a quiet stroll all alone. It was during one of these wandering trips on little frequented streets that a high pitched voice had caught her ear.

“How much am I bid?” The words came to her distinctly.

“An auction,” she had told herself. “Wonder what kind?”

She had stepped within. To her surprise she had found herself in a vast room lined about on every side by wire netting. Behind the screen were all manner of boxes and bundles. In one corner were boxes and baskets of silverware, watches and jewelry; in another bales of suits, coats and sheets. Here was a box of shoes and there a heap of blacksmith’s tools. From one corner a skull in a box grinned at her, and in another a stuffed alligator showed his gleaming rows of teeth.

“How strange!” she had said to herself.

It had all been quite confusing until she had learned that this was the Postoffice Department’s quarterly sale of unclaimed parcel post. Here all the articles lost in the mails during the past three months were being sold.

She had been handed a booklet which gave a description of the lots to be sold. The lots were numbered. They were sold by number.

As she glanced down the list one item appeared to leap at her from the printed page: “Thirteen used wedding rings.”

“Thirteen used wedding rings,” she had said to herself. “How could thirteen used wedding rings have been lost in the mail?” At once her mind was rife with speculation. There were many ways in which wedding rings might be lost. A mother has died. An attempt is made to send her wedding ring to a bereaved daughter. It is lost. Again, there is a family quarrel. The wife leaves home. In a fit of anger she tears her wedding ring from her finger and mails it to her husband. She may be sorry now. It is too late. The ring is lost in the mail. Here it is, ready to be sold at auction. Once more, a thief has stolen many things, among them a wedding ring. He repents, tries to return the ring. He has the wrong address. The ring is lost. Here it is, ready to be sold to the highest bidder.

Drawn on further by curiosity and a feeling she could not quite understand, Florence had sought out the box of used wedding rings and had stared at them through the wire screen.

There they were, thirteen used wedding rings. Some were plain gold bands. Some were engraved. Some seemed almost new. Some had been worn thin—on the washboard, perhaps.

“You poor things,” she had whispered through the netting. “There you are, like so many lost kittens which some child loves. Somewhere perhaps,” she whispered, looking at a slender ring, “in this broad land there is a woman who would give her all to feel you on her finger once again. Yet here you are, lost to the ones to whom you have brought romance. Here you are, ready to be sold to the highest bidder, for—well, probably for a very few dollars. And after that? Who knows?”

As she had spoken so to the ring, she had been surprised to feel a tear splash down upon her cheek. Surprised. Well, yes, of course. And yet, was it not pathetic that so many used wedding rings should have been lost, lost perhaps forever?

Quite suddenly a strange resolve had taken possession of her. She would bid in those rings. Her heart had beat madly at the thought. Why? Perhaps she had a premonition of the adventures that would come to her through this apparently quite unromantic venture.

Let that be as it may. She had bid in the rings. And here they were in her blouse above her heart. They were her rings, at least hers in a way, for she had bought them. And yet, in a deeper, truer sense, each ring belonged to another. It was her hope that in the editorial rooms of this great newspaper she might find some one who could help her to search out these other owners. It was this hope that had brought her here to-night.

“And here I am,” she whispered, smiling in spite of herself. “I come trying to do good, only to find myself hiding in a hole.”

She put out a hand to feel the object that for a moment formed her place of hiding. They were large, solid cylinders standing on end. She knew in an instant where they were.

“The print paper storage room,” she thought to herself.

She had seen these great cylinders of print paper being unloaded before the office. They had been rolled upon an elevator that rose up from beneath the sidewalk, then were lowered into the basement. Once she had asked a workman about them. “Seventy-five inches long. Weigh about 1,600 pounds,” he had told her.

“Tomorrow,” she told herself, “this paper will be flying over the presses to be sent to all parts of the land. And tomorrow, if we escape in time, perhaps those newspapers will be telling a million people the story of the ‘Thirteen used wedding rings.’”

In that small office she had confided in Betty. She had told her the strange story of those rings.

Betty, who also was endowed by nature with a deeply romantic nature, had been greatly interested.

“Tell you what,” she had exclaimed, “we’ll make it a news story! It’ll be a great one for human interest. We’ll have Mr. Brown, one of the staff photographers, photograph the rings and make a large print of it, showing all the engravings, initials and everything. Then I’ll write a story telling all about it, how you discovered the rings, how they came to be there, and how you bought them. Our paper goes into so many homes that some of the readers are sure to recognize their lost ring or their friend’s ring.”

“And won’t it be splendid to return some of the rings to their rightful owners!” Florence had put in. “Won’t it be wonderful!”

“It will be spiffy!” Betty had agreed.

“The ring,” Florence whispered to herself as she listened breathlessly to a scratching sound that might be rats and might be the Chinaman climbing over the rolls of paper in search of them. “The ring! That was what he always said. There must be a ring, one of the thirteen, which he wants. I wonder why? And which one could it be?”

She closed her eyes that she might recall her mental image of those thirteen rings. Three of them came to her out of the dark. There was a thin, delicate ring, very small and very elaborately carved, a platinum ring. There was a gold ring carved in a peculiar way, showing some Oriental flower; inside it were strange marks, not initials unless they were in a strange, foreign language.

“Must be that one,” she thought to herself. “Oriental design. Oriental letters inside probably. He wants that. And yet, I wonder why he would risk so much for it? Orientals are not sentimental.”

There was still a third ring that rose up before her. An extraordinary broad and thick gold band, it was perfectly plain and almost too large to belong on any woman’s hand. She gave this ring little thought. The time was coming, however—

Thoughts of the rings were driven from her mind as her ear caught a shuffling sound off to the left which certainly could not have been caused by rats. Gripping at her breast in a mad attempt to still her heart’s wild beating, she crouched low to the floor and waited.