Читать книгу The Thirteenth Ring: Mystery Stories for Girls - Roy J. Snell - Страница 6

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As the moments dragged by, the silence in the paper room grew oppressive. No place in the world can seem quite so still as the press rooms and store rooms of a great evening daily after the last edition has gone off the press. With the rattle, bang and thunder of presses working at top speed gone, with the thump of bundles and the throb of labor over, the place grows so suddenly silent that a single mouse, searching a forgotten lunch box for a morsel of bread, appears to set up a prodigious racket.

It was so now. A tomb-like silence hung over the spot where the girls lay in hiding. To Betty it was most oppressive. Slight of build, vivacious, born for action, the slightest check to the course she ran threatened disaster. Besides, in her soul was registered the contrast. She had heard the bang and boom of it all when some great extra was coming off the press. To her this silence was like the sudden cessation of life itself.

“C’mon!” Her voice was tense. “We’ll risk it. Door over here; goes up and out. Who is that Chinaman, anyway?”

“Wish I knew,” the other girl whispered back. “Wish I knew the whole of it. I don’t. I’ll tell you when—”

She caught her breath to listen sharply. From the way they had come there had sounded a shuffling step.

“C’mon!” Betty’s whispers became insistent. “I know a secret passage. He’ll never follow.”

Gripping Florence’s hand, she led on. Florence could never in a hundred trials have retraced the way. Up over bales of paper, down a narrow passage way dark as night, through another passage way, up a narrow iron stairway, through a door into an alley, into the street, then straight away.

“C’mon!” urged Betty. “Might as well make a clean break of it. We’ll go to my room by the river. He’ll never find us there.”

“Now!” she sighed as she dropped upon her bed close to the window that overlooked the river and motioned her new-found friend to a chair. “Now tell me all about that queer Chinaman.”

“I’ll have to tell you something else first,” Florence smiled. “I wasn’t attempting suicide when I jumped into the river. I—I’m afraid I deceived you.”

“You did at first,” said Betty soberly. “But I thought it was queer. You didn’t seem to be that kind. You seem the sort of person who looks life in the face and says to the present and the future, ‘Come on future, come on fate, come on joy and sorrow, pain and trouble, dreams and hopes, I’ll take you all and fight my way through. I am not afraid to live. I shall glory in life all the way.’”

Betty paused for breath, then laughed. “Well, anyway,” she half apologized, “that’s the way I feel about it, and it’s the way I like my friends to feel.”

“That little speech,” said Florence, “is worth putting into your paper.”

“Yes, mebby. But they wouldn’t print it,” said Betty. “It’s not news. It must be news. You have to have a nose for news if you’re going to be on a paper. The Chinaman—please tell me. Why did you jump into the river?”

“That,” said Florence, leaning forward in her chair, “is part of the story.”

“I have already told you,” she went on, “how I happened into that curious sale of unclaimed parcel post and how I bid in those thirteen used wedding rings.” As she said this she patted her breast. The rings were still there. “Well, you know it is one of the rules of the sale that nothing can be claimed and taken away the day of the sale. You must return next day for your purchases.

“I went back for my rings at noon the day after the sale. I found quite a group of people standing before the counter waiting for their goods. When I had received my receipt I walked over and joined them. This queer Chinaman was there. He didn’t seem to have any receipt, but he crowded up like the rest. He stared at the parcels that were given out, especially at boxes of jewelry. I thought one old Jewish woman was going to strike him when he thrust his beady eyes into her box of white stone rings.

“It’s queer though. By the time it came my turn to receive a package, I had entirely forgotten him. I remembered soon enough!” She took a deep breath. “And I’ve been remembering ever since.”

“Why? What did he do?” asked Betty eagerly, her eyes shining with excitement.

“He stared at my box, which was half open. I thought those queer eyes of his would come out of his head. Then he plunged square into me. If it hadn’t been for my gym work, basket ball and all that, I am sure I should have gone flat. As it was, three of my rings flew out of the box.

“I’m quick.” She paused for another breath. “Quicker than you think I am. In my work I have to be. I had those three rings scooped up and was out of the building before that Chinaman could turn around, but not before I heard those two words he’s been haunting me with ever since, ‘The ring!’ That’s all he says, ‘The ring!’ Just like that.”

“What ring?” asked Betty, leaning far forward.

“I wish I knew!” said the other girl soberly. “It must be one of the thirteen. But which one? Why should he, a Chinaman, want the ring?”

“It’s a mystery,” said Betty. Her tone was low and solemn. “A deep, deep mystery. We must solve it.”

“It is more than that,” said Florence soberly. “It’s a dangerous mystery.”

“So it is,” said Betty. “Shall we share mystery and perils together?”

She put out a hand. Florence grasped it. That instant a new secret society was formed.