Читать книгу The Thirteenth Ring: Mystery Stories for Girls - Roy J. Snell - Страница 8

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We say that a city sleeps, yet it never truly sleeps. Like the great immovable ocean, it is in constant motion. It only seems to rest. Here a police wagon, there an ambulance and here a motor bus rattles over midnight streets. There are silent workers in every one of those great buildings where during the busy daylight hours men labor to serve humankind or to cheat and defeat them. Ten thousand scrub women work on hands and knees. Ten thousand watchmen walk their weary rounds. The city does not sleep. Nor did Betty sleep.

At midnight she stood on one of the bridges spanning the river. Her mind was filled with many thoughts. She had read with much pride her story of the thirteen rings. They had run it almost word for word as she had written it.

“And now,” she thought with a little shudder half fear and half joy, “what will come of it? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps something wonderful, or—or terrible.” She thought of the pop-eyed Chinaman, then sent a hurried glance down the bridge.

The bridge at that moment was deserted. The river swept on in silence. There is nothing so ghost-like as a bridge on a great river at midnight. Then all the millions who have hurried across that bridge, eager for the day, all those who have crept slowly, broken and weary at night, all the joyous ones, all the sad ones, come trooping back to haunt you. All the ships, too, that have ever passed out of that river into the great waters, come gliding silently back. Birch-bark canoes, sailing boats, steam boats, puffing tugs, silent gliding barks with destination unknown, sweep on and on.

It was such pictures as these that kept Betty charmed and tied by invisible bonds on the bridge until long after the midnight hour.

Of a sudden, wakened to reality by the thud of a distant footstep on the bridge, she started and stared. She thought of the rings. She did not have them now. She had returned them to Florence. She would have them tomorrow, Florence had promised. Claimants might arrive.

Had she but known it, the sleepy night telegraph operator at the newspaper office had just received the second caller interested in those rings. One was a tall thin man in a long black coat. The other a short man with pin point eyes. Each, upon learning that Betty was not there, demanded to know her address. Each went away disappointed. One must give a very good reason if he is to receive a newspaper person’s address at midnight. They gave none.

So Betty stood on the bridge and missed two very interesting and mystifying interviews. Yet the night held something in store for her.

As she glanced in the direction of the approaching footsteps, she gave forth an inaudible cry, “The Chinaman!” and vanished.

It is not always, after all, the things we see that frighten us, but the things we think we see. It was so with Betty. As you will see later, the mysterious Chinaman could not at that moment have been upon the bridge, yet fancy and fear lent wings to the girl’s feet. Ten seconds had scarcely elapsed before she hung by her hands to a cement wall. She was prepared for a drop, a drop into the police boat that always bumped there. It was a short drop. She could accomplish it without a sound. Chances were, the man she feared would not discover her. If he did, he’d have to swim for it. He’d lose, too, for Betty pulled a strong oar.

The girl had miscalculated in only one small detail. The boat was not there. Where was it? That does not really matter. The fact is that she dropped and went to the bottom of the river like a plummet, then came to the top like a corked bottle.

She struck out with both hands. No danger. She was a strong swimmer. Blank walls stared at her on either side, walls she could not scale. Yet there was somewhere a painter, a landyard, a guy rope of anchored craft that she could climb. Silently she swam with the current, keeping a sharp lookout for a place to make her exit from the river.