Part 16
Sitting with ears as well as eyes alert, his quick brain began to dissociate the sound of the typewriters one from another.
That tall girl in black--the one with the pale, pale face, he amended in his thought, so many, alas! were in black--that girl wrote with an even monotony in consonance with her expressionless countenance.
The pert little lass in blue seemed to write each word with an emphasis, for her spacing was noticeable each time.
And so it went, each typist showing some marked peculiarity as his ear picked out the particular rhythm.
His examination had reached the last one, and for the first time he observed its operator closely.... Something familiar and different about that girl.... Not her clothes, nor her coiffure--nothing he could put a finger on.
Then he caught the click of her machine. Different from any of the others, it seemed to jerk out the words and syllables with amazing irregularity, dwelling on one letter, slighting another, pausing between. Here, too, was something hauntingly familiar.
In the meantime men came and went, and Lance's watchful eye followed the slightest movement made by each newcomer. At any moment some signal might give him a clue to the disclosures which the General declared seemed to be made daily.
A timid country lad entered, wiping the dew of embarrassment from his brow. After some awkward hesitation he conferred with one of the clerks, evidently stumbling and halting in his inquiries.
No word of the colloquy reached Lance's ear, but he suddenly became aware of a message in the air--clear, deliberate, reiterated!
_Fifty thousand English left Paris this morning. Destination, Arras._
An hour later the girl who somehow seemed different was confronted in the private quarters of Monsieur the General by Lance Allison, American detective. Bright-eyed and defiant, she smouldered under the guard's restraint.
"You are an American!" There was curt reproach in the detective's tone.
"Well, what of that?" she snapped.
"How came _you_ a traitor to the Allies?"
Then, as she did not answer, he bowed to Monsieur the General. "This girl gave out her information to a young clod-hopper to-day. More than likely some other one yesterday and the day before, or to him in a different disguise. At any rate, they were men who could spell English--or American," he added whimsically.
"But how? How, Monsieur le detective? He approached her not--nor even looked toward her."
"No," smiled Lance, "but he had his ear cocked in her direction." He turned to the seething girl. "Now, make a clean breast of it, Miss. You are done for. What evil spirit prompted treachery in one born under the Stars and Stripes?"
Suddenly the smouldering fire burst into the flame of speech.
"'Twas Jean Armand, the low-down dog! Pretended to love me--_me_! Kissed me--took my hard-earned money for his own comfort. And then--the day he went to the front--he married Elise, a stupid, wax-faced doll!... _Then_ I swore to betray France as he had betrayed me--and I have done it."
"But how?" The General's question was addressed to the detective.
"By the clicks of her typewriter, Monsieur. She practised a peculiar jerky touch so that it would become unnoted. Then when a spy came in--was the hand on the heated brow the signal, I wonder?--she talked to him by the dots and dashes of the Morse code with as much clearness as if the words were breathed into his ear."
"Yes, and it took an American to find me out," she glowed with strange exultation. "These conceited Frenchies were all at sea.... _And_--Jean, the husband of the fat Elise, fell yesterday under a charge from troops I sent to meet his regiment--so--I don't care what you do to me, now. My work is done!"
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IN A GARDEN
By Catherine Runscomb
Dick Halcomb stood waiting on the shady station platform. A little groom appeared, suddenly and breathlessly.
"Sorry to be late, sir," he gasped. "Mrs. Paige and Miss Laura have gone to Mrs. Vingut's garden party, and left word for you to join them."
"Damn!" muttered Halcomb. He had had a hard day in the city, and felt quite unequal to dragging himself about, wilted and irritated, any longer. Really, he considered, settling back into the motor, he was getting pretty fed up with this insatiable lust of Laura's. He wondered whether, when they were married and she was away from her mother, he would be able to instil in her a more normal enjoyment of her pleasures. He thought, vaguely, of not going after all--of awaiting them at the house. But a vision rose before him of Laura all evening wrapped in her delicate fury of aloofness, something too inhumanly polite to be called sulking, but of shattering import to nerves on edge--and he decided grimly that he was too hot, too tired. In the last analysis it was less trouble to go to the garden party.
By this time they were humming smoothly up to the Vinguts' gates. The breeze had cooled the heat of his brow, but his thoughts were growing only more feverish with the passing moments. He halted the chauffeur suddenly: "Let me out here, Lane. I'll walk up to the house--I need exercise."
It was pleasant to stroll along the driveway, to stretch his cramped limbs, and absorb at leisure the careful beauties of the land about him. The lonely graciousness of tall poplar trees, the low-flowering crimson of rhododendrons ministered gratefully to his troubled soul. New satisfaction filled him as he discovered no people in sight. They must be the other side of the house, on the terraces, he thought, restfully. And then, suddenly, he stopped short, staring.
Just ahead in a clearing was an old Italian fountain, gray stone, carved and mellowed by the centuries, water splashing musically into its basin. Sitting on the edge was a tall young girl, the adolescent grace of her body showing clear and white through the classic scantness of her shell-pink draperies. Diana herself she might have been, nymph-robed and formed, her chestnut hair bound about by a silver fillet, her long, white legs, uncovered, dangling in the water. He felt a wild certainty that if he spoke she would melt away into the spray of the fountain. And then she turned her head and saw him.
"You are late," she said, in a very clear, low voice that merged into the plashing water.
"Yes--I am late," he stammered. "I wonder ... who you are?"
She stared into his eyes with the deep, unconscious gravity of a child.
"I am Athena," she answered simply.
"Athena!" he gasped. "Good heavens! Then you _are_ a goddess--or a nymph----"
She laughed--and her laughter sounded in his ear more like the fountain than the fountain itself.
"Oh, no," she reassured him. "We all have Greek names because they are more beautiful."
"'We all'!... Good lord, child, who _are_ you?"
"Why--I am Athena--one of the Morris Dancers. We came to do our Spring Dance for the party."
How absurdly simple, he thought. And yet how insufficiently it explained the wonder of her.
"Why are you here--alone?" he went on. He could do nothing but question her. He had to get to the bottom of her, somehow.
"We're through dancing--and the people tired me."
He sat down on the edge of the fountain, and she moved up beside him, touching him, a divine friendliness in her deep blue eyes.
"How did they tire you--child?" he asked her gently.
"They are all so artificial--and so conscious. We are taught how terrible this consciousness of self and sex is. Hellena Morris teaches us that woman is only really beautiful, really strong, when she is quite unconscious and unstudied."
He eyed the grave little lecturer amusedly.
"Do you understand all that--Athena?" he ventured.
"Why, yes," she said. "We are all very intelligent. It's the wholesome life we lead and the perfection of our bodies."
He threw back his head and laughed.
"I like you when you laugh," she told him suddenly. "I like you to throw your head back, and the kind little crinkles round your eyes. When you are not laughing you look so tired."
"I am tired," he admitted; "tired and disillusioned most of the time. Perhaps it's my unwholesome life and imperfect body----"
He watched her, glowing with unreasoning pleasure at her laugh.
"Humour, too!" he cried. "Child, you are wonderful! Tell me about yourself ... everything. I must know the magic that evolved such perfection."
"Give me your hand," she said. "There!... Now you can understand me better.
"There isn't much to tell. I am seventeen, and have lived with Hellena since I was eight. There are twenty of us. She teaches us ... wonderful things. Not hideous 'accomplishments,' but _real_ things that will help us--Greek and Latin, and the care of our bodies, and the worship of beauty. We all dance, and sing, and play ... and we paint, and write verse, and translate the classics, and read to each other. And we are very strong and hardy, because of our simple lives.... We can beat men at their own games, although we are so slight. We wear few clothes--nothing to restrain or disfigure us. And when we dance we don't learn special steps; we express in ourselves whatever we are dancing--Sorrow, or Love, or Spring. See, I will do you part of our Spring Dance."
She drew her white, dripping legs from the fountain and danced before him--a thing so light and delicate, so breeze-blown and whimsical, so altogether lovely, that his distrust of her humanity returned to him unbearably.
She stopped--a sudden flush of rose and gleam of white--and dropped by his side again.
"And every night," she went on, as though there had been no interruption, "we say our creed: 'I believe in beauty--all the beauty that ever has been and ever will be in the world. And I will worship and serve it with the highest there is in me--always.'"
He could not speak at first. Then finally, unevenly: "I can't presume to praise your theory of life, Athena--any more than I could your dancing. Thank you for them both."
She put her hand on his knee, looking at him, whitely, a little wildly.
"What is your name?" she asked.
"Dick," he answered, as simply as she had told him hers.
"I should like to marry you--Dick."
He stared at her.
"So you include marriage--in your scheme of life?" he said dully.
"Yes. Hellena says our marriage laws are terrible, but, while there is no substitute, if we love terribly it is right to marry. I want to marry you, Dick--to be with you always, and take the tired look away from your eyes."
"Child!" he cried. "You don't know me!"
"It doesn't matter," she told him quaintly. "Love often comes this way."
He took her hand against his cheek.
"Dear," he said, "I am thirty-five--a pretty world-stained and world-weary creature. Your radiant youth was given you for a better man than I."
"I love _you_, Dick, I have never loved before."
"Athena, I am ... going to marry ... some one else."
She trembled against him.
"Some one you _love_?" she cried. "Dick, some one you love as you could love me? Is she as young and beautiful? Could she amuse you, and care for you, and adore you always--_always_, as I would?"
"Athena," he said slowly, "there is no one like you ... in the world. I love this ... other girl in my own way. Not as you should be loved, but I'm not fit for such love as that. I can't marry you. Athena--dear--don't make it too hard."
She sat, silent.
Then: "Dick--would you--kiss me?"
He took her gently in his arms.
In the distance people were moving. There was a rustle and a chatter. He let her go suddenly.
"Good-bye--dear," he said.
"Good-bye--Dick," she answered dully.
Once he turned back and saw her--drooping, rose-white, against the old gray fountain.
* * * * *
From the gay group ahead Laura detached herself, ruffled and fluttering.
"You're late enough," she greeted him.
"Yes," he said. Then, with an effort: "Have you seen the--Morris Dancers?"
"Oh, yes; we all did. I think they're rather disgusting--so few clothes and so much throwing themselves about; don't you?"
"You forget," he answered slowly, "that I have just arrived."
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A CLEVER CATCH
By Lloyd F. Loux
She was a thief, and he knew it. He had followed her in her travels, where she posed as a saleswoman. At various times he had thought to capture her, but she evaded him. He feared he had too little evidence, and she was so wily and so clever.
When he saw her sun-kissed hair and inviting lips, he felt abashed to think of associating crime with her, and so he waited for more conclusive evidence. He wished to be sure. How embarrassing it would be to accuse her and then find her innocent!
And yet--he knew she was dangerous. Then one day he realized something odd. He had been robbed! _He_, the cleverest detective on the force, had been robbed! Yes, it was hard to realize. And by the very woman he was seeking to capture. Yes, he knew _she_ must have done it.
Now he would bring her to justice! But how? He had no actual evidence more than his own conviction. Ah, yes! He would put on a bold front and bluff her. Yes, bluff her! How happy he felt. Why, after he had made this capture he would be the proudest man on the force. And he could have the satisfaction of saying he had wrung the confession from her. So he togged up and put on a bold front and a wise air and started out. But suppose she suspected his bluff? Oh, horrors! Imagine his chagrin. The wisest man on the force, and made a plaything of by a baby of a woman! But he was started, and only cowards turn back. Suffice it for us to know that he succeeded and escorted her to the nearest magistrate's office, and she confessed! Yes, and he had the satisfaction of hearing her take oath to the confession. Then the magistrate appointed him to be her keeper for life.
The case was closed with the best wishes of the magistrate.
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STRICTLY BUSINESS
By Lincoln Steffens
"There's an extra, a Christmas girl downstairs, that I think you'll want to keep; she's a worker, but----"
The big store manager looked up at the tall, prim New England woman who was the head of his employment bureau, and he understood. But he's a brute.
"But?" he insisted.
"Her references aren't good."
"Not good?" he said. "You mean they ain't good people?"
"Oh," she exclaimed, "they're good people; they're very good people, but----"
"But?"
"They prefer not to speak, for or against."
"I see," he growled. "A case for bad people. Send her up to me."
And up came the case, another Puritan, slim, alive, afire.
"I know," she began, "I know what you're going to say; every word of it. I'm fired, but, first, I must hear a lecture; the same old lecture. So fire away, but cut it short."
"Won't you be seated?" he said politely.
"Thanks," she mocked.
He rose, and, with a chivalrous bow, begged her to "Please be seated."
"No," she declared decidedly, "I'll take it standing, so I can get out if I don't like----"
"Sit down," he bellowed.
She sat.
He stood glaring at her. "Think I'd let you stand there lecturing and judging me?" he growled. And he lectured and judged her. Then he, too, sat.
"How do you know what I was going to say?" he demanded.
"Because you all say the same thing," she flashed; "everywhere I work. They tell me I'm bad, so I'm discharged, but they all give me that lecture on how to be good--out of a job." She named places she had worked: stores where the managers and the conditions were notorious. "They gave it to me at Freeman's," she sneered, "and," she jeered, "at the One Price Stores! Everywhere I get it, and not only from you bosses. I see the other girls catch on to my story, and, with looks at me, pass it on. 'Poor Thing,' they whisper and, then, of course, the Poor Thing is fired."
She didn't look like a Poor Thing. She looked like a very Brave Thing to this manager of women, but he felt, with his man's intuition, the despair that was washing her courage away. So he was kind.
"How old is the child?" he asked brutally.
"Five."
"Who takes care of it while you're at work?"
"Mother."
"And you support all three?"
"Yes, and," she blazed, "you needn't worry about that. You fire away. I'll make out, somehow. Only don't, don't tell me I'm bad again. I know that, too. Don't I tell it to myself every hour, every day, and, if I forget it for one little hour, doesn't some one remind me?"
He was afraid she'd break, and he didn't want her to; not her. "Too proud, too brave."
"You needn't worry about me, either," he said. "This is a business house, strictly business. No sentiment, and no scruples. We're here to make money, and we're on the lookout for women who'll work and work hard for us. We don't mind a little thing like a little child. Fact is, a little----"
She was lifting from her chair.
"Which is it," he asked roughly, "a boy, or----?"
"A girl," she said, and she dropped back.
"The fact is," he resumed, "a little girl at home makes the mother work harder in the store. And that's the report on you. They say you're a hard worker, so I'd like to keep you on, regular, for life."
She lifted again.
"But----" he said.
"But," she collapsed.
"I don't see," he said, "how you can work hard, regular, if you go on telling yourself that lie every hour, every day; that you're bad."
He got up, huffily. "How bad are you, anyway? How good you been since--during the last five years?"
"As good as I was before," she blazed, springing to her feet.
"Um-m," he calculated. "I'll bet you are, and I'll bet that's pretty good. Good enough for us. We ain't so awfully good ourselves. Quick sales, small profits, and satisfied customers--lots of 'em. That's what we call good."
She was reaching for him again, with hands, with eyes.
"But," he struck, "you can't do much for us and the little girl if you're afraid every hour, every day, that you'll be found out and fired. We got to cut out fear."
"You mean?" she gasped.
"I mean," he thundered, "I mean that you got to cut out that every-hour-every-day business. See? It's rot, anyhow. You're as good as anybody, and if anybody here says you ain't, you come to me and I'll tell 'em this is a women's business, run for profit; and women; including mothers; women, children, and--money. Y'on?"
She stood there staring; comprehending, and he felt that she wanted to break, but----
"Now, now, none o' that," the brute commanded. "Not here. This is business, strictly business. You get back on your job. D'y' hear?"
Yes, she nodded; she heard, and she bolted for the door, but as she opened it she turned and she broke:
"God, how I will work! How I will----"
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THE ADVENT OF THE MAJORITY
By Stella Wynne Herron
Colonel Scipio Breckenbridge stopped polishing the lighthouse lamp and stared out across Lone Palm Key to where the blazing yellow sand met the dark blue waters of the Gulf. Yes--there they were again, hobnobbing on the beach--the alien Higgins, his face a beef red from alcohol within and the tropic sun without, stretched prone, the breeze flapping his loose sailor's pants around his skinny ankles--the Captain erecting a tarpaulin tent against the day of the great four-yearly event, the presidential election.
Yes, indeed. Make no mistake. Lone Palm Key _is_ a part of the United States. This speck of an island that flips up out of the Gulf like the tip end of a fish's tail is listed as the sixty-sixth precinct of Florida. For twenty years now the Colonel had religiously cast one vote for the Democratic candidate; the Captain, one for the Republican candidate. For twenty years--the Captain and the Colonel being the entire population--the sixty-sixth had split fifty-fifty--and for twenty years both had cherished the secret hope of one day carrying it.
Mr. Higgins had drifted into Lone Palm--literally--on a hatch top of the ill-fated _Petrel_ two months before, and it was not long before his lamentable failing made itself manifest. Mr. Higgins was unhappy unless drunk. When his entertainment ceased, and it looked as if, through sheer thirst, he would have to consent to be taken to Key West with the Captain's next cargo of sponges--non-human--he had discovered a cast-up keg of whiskey. Such an act of Providence almost restored his waning faith in God. But, alas! for an acrid week now the sacred fount had been dry. This time he would surely be frozen out---- But, now, here was the Captain encouragingly friendly, almost chummy, with him----
The Colonel strode across to the recumbent Higgins, and touched him with his foot.
"Higgins," he asked, "do yo' reckon to vote on Lone Palm this election?"
"I 'ave that intention," replied Mr. Higgins gently.
"Are yo'--Republican or--Democrat?" The Colonel's voice trembled in spite of himself.
"I 'aven't decided--yet," and Mr. Higgins let his gaze drift again skyward.
The Colonel met the Captain's perfidious eyes across the prostrate form of the potential majority. In that silent glance there was a declaration of bloody war.
From that moment began the Golden Age on Lone Palm for Mr. Higgins. With flattering frequency he drank healths to the Grand Old Party, then to the party "that gave birth to Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson, sah!"
But no maiden, pressed by two suitors, was ever more coy in avowing a choice than he.
A week before election the Captain's and the Colonel's liquor ran out. Mr. Higgins, to his horror, began to get sober. The day before election the Captain and his sloop disappeared. The Colonel did not wait to investigate. He also hoisted sail for Key West. That night both the Captain and the Colonel unloaded mysterious cargoes. At midnight, after wandering constantly between the Captain's bungalow and the lighthouse, Mr. Higgins fell down in the sand, impartially between the two abodes. The Captain and the Colonel, in silence, removed the political enigma to his sail-cloth tent.
Mr. Higgins did not appear at the polls until nearly noon. It was evident that the combination of Jamaica rum and Kentucky mountain dew had made terrible ravages on a constitution even so immune to spirituous shocks as his.
"Drink's the cause o' this here country's goin' to the dorgs," he remarked, through pallid, parched lips, as he entered the booth.
His ballot cast, he disappeared, still enwrapped in mystery and silence.
At exactly six o'clock the Colonel arose.
"The polls of the Sixty-sixth Precinct, Monroe County, State of Florida, are now closed. We will proceed to count votes, Captain Hartford!"
The Colonel thrust into the box a hand that shook in spite of him and drew out a ballot.
"One Republican!"
The Captain's heart leaped.
"One Democratic!" announced the Colonel tremulously.
The Captain waited, staring at the floor. Finally he looked up. The Colonel was gazing as if hypnotized, his bulging eyes fastened on the ballot in his hand. At last the announcement came:
"The Prohibition Party--one vote!"
Two minutes later they found this pinned to Mr. Higgins' empty tent: