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Title: The mystery of Central Park
        A novel

Author: Nellie Bly

Release date: February 7, 2023 [eBook #69984]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: G. W. Dillingham, Publisher

Credits: Emmanuel Ackerman, PrimeNumber and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MYSTERY OF CENTRAL PARK ***



  THE “NELLIE BLY” SERIES

  The Mystery of
  Central Park

  [Illustration: cover]

  BY NELLIE BLY

  Originally published in the New York EVENING WORLD




MRS. MARY J. HOLMES’ NOVELS

Over a MILLION Sold.

_THE NEW BOOK_

GRETCHEN.

JUST OUT.

The following is a list of Mary J. Holmes’ Novels.

  TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE.
  ENGLISH ORPHANS.
  HOMESTEAD ON THE HILLSIDE.
  LENA RIVERS.
  MEADOW BROOK.
  DORA DEANE.
  COUSIN MAUDE.
  MARIAN GREY.
  EDITH LYLE.
  DAISY THORNTON.
  CHATEAU D’OR.
  QUEENIE HETHERTON.
  DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT.
  HUGH WORTHINGTON.
  CAMERON PRIDE.
  ROSE MATHER.
  ETHELYN’S MISTAKE.
  MILLBANK.
  EDNA BROWNING.
  WEST LAWN.
  MILDRED.
  FORREST HOUSE.
  MADELINE.
  CHRISTMAS STORIES.
  BESSIE’S FORTUNE.
  GRETCHEN. [_New._]




  THE

  MYSTERY

  OF

  CENTRAL PARK.

  A Novel.

  BY

  NELLIE BLY,

  AUTHOR OF

  “TEN DAYS IN A MAD HOUSE” AND “SIX MONTHS
  IN MEXICO.”

  [Illustration: colophon]

  NEW YORK:

  COPYRIGHT, 1889, BY

  _G. W. Dillingham, Publisher_,

  SUCCESSOR TO G. W. CARLETON & CO.

  MDCCCLXXXIX.

  _All Rights Reserved._




  TROW’S
  PRINTING AND BOOK BINDING CO.,
  N. Y.




CONTENTS.


Chapter                                                 Page

     I. The Young Girl on the Bench                        7

    II. Penelope Sets a Hard Task for Dick                19

   III. Wherein Dick Treadwell Meets with Another
        Adventure                                         45

    IV. Story of the Girl who Attempted Suicide           64

     V. The Failure of the Strike                         77

    VI. Is the Girl Honest?                               87

   VII. Mr. Martin Shanks: Guardian                       95

  VIII. The Missing Stenographer                         103

    IX. The Stranger at the Bar                          114

     X. Tolman Bike                                      121

    XI. Who was the Man that Bought the Gown?            139

   XII. One and the Same                                 153

  XIII. A Lovers’ Quarrel                                166

   XIV. “Give Me Until To-Morrow.”                       177

    XV. “To Richard Treadwell, Personal.”                190

   XVI. The Mystery Solved                               205

  XVII. Sunlight Through the Clouds                      220




THE

MYSTERY OF CENTRAL PARK.




CHAPTER I.

THE YOUNG GIRL ON THE BENCH.


“And that is your final decision?”

Dick Treadwell gazed sternly at Penelope Howard’s downcast face, and
waited for a reply.

Instead of answering, as good-mannered young women generally do,
Penelope intently watched the tips of her russet shoes, as they
appeared and disappeared beneath the edge of her gown, and remained
silent.

When she raised her head and met that look, so sad and yet so stern,
the faintest shadow of a smile placed a pleasing wrinkle at the corners
of her brown eyes.

“Yes, that is--my final decision,” she repeated, slowly.

Dick Treadwell dropped despondently on a bench and, gazing steadily
over the green lawn, tried to think it all out.

He felt that he was not being used quite fairly, but he was at a loss
for a way to remedy it.

Here he was, the devoted slave of the rather plain girl beside him,
who refused to marry him, merely because he had never soiled his firm,
white hands with toil, nor worried his brain with a greater task, since
his school days, than planning some way to kill time.

He was one of those unfortunate mortals possessed of an indolent
disposition, and had been left a modest legacy, that, though making
him far from wealthy, was still enough to support him in idleness.

He lacked the spur of necessity which urged men on to greater deeds.

In short, Richard was one of those worthless ornaments of society that
live, and die without doing much good or any great harm.

That he was an ornament, however, none dared to deny, and the
expressive brown eyes of the girl, who had seated herself beside him
bore ample testimony that she was not unconscious of his manly charms.

Dick took off his straw hat, and after running his firm, white fingers
through his kinky, light hair, crossed one leg over the other, while
he brooded moodily on his peculiar fate. The frank, boyish expression,
that had won him so many admirers, was displaced by a heavy frown, and
his bright blue eyes gazed unseeingly over the beautiful vista before
him.

He could not understand why a girl should get such crazy ideas, any
way. There were plenty of girls who made no effort to hide their
admiration for him, and he knew that they could be had for the asking,
if it only wasn’t for Penelope.

But, somehow, Penelope had more attraction for him than any girl he had
ever met. Her very obstinacy, her independence, made her all the more
charming to him, even if it was provoking.

Penelope Howard was in no wise Dick Treadwell’s mate in beauty.

She was slender to boniness and tall, but willowy and graceful, and one
forgot her murky complexion when gazing into the depths of her bright,
expressive eyes and catching the curve of a wonderfully winsome smile.

Penelope was an heiress, though, to a million dollars or more, and so
no one ever called her plain.

She was an orphan and had been reared by a sensible old aunt, who would
doubtless leave her another million.

Penelope knew her defects as well and better than did other people. She
had no vanity and was blessed with an unusual amount of solid sense.

Penelope Howard was well aware that she would not have to go begging
for a husband, but she had loved handsome Dick Treadwell ever since
the year before she graduated at Vassar. He had gone there to pay his
devotions to another fair under-graduate and came away head over heels
in love with Penelope. Nevertheless Penelope was in no hurry to marry.

She loved Richard with all her heart, but there was a barrier between
them which he alone could remove.

“You know, Dick,” she said, softly, as he still gazed across the green
lawn, trying to find a mental foothold, as it were, “that I told you
this before”----

“Yes, this makes the sixth time I have proposed,” he said, savagely,
still looking away.

“I have always told you,” smiling slightly at his remark and lowering
her voice as she glanced apprehensively at a girl seated on a bench
near by, “that I will not marry you as long as you live as you do. I
have money enough for two, so it makes no difference whether the man
I marry has any or not. But I can’t and won’t marry a--a worthless
man--one who has never done anything, and is too indolent to do
anything. I want a husband who has some ability--who has accomplished
something--just one worthy thing even, and then--well, it won’t make so
much difference if he is indolent afterwards. You know, Dick, how much
I care for you,” softly, “how fond I am of you, but I will not marry
you until you prove that you are able to do something.”

“It’s all very easy to talk about,” he replied savagely, “but what can
I do? I don’t dare risk what little I have in Wall street. I don’t know
enough to preach, or to be a doctor, or a lawyer, and it takes too
infernally long to go back to the beginning and learn. You object to my
following the races, and I couldn’t sell ribbons or run a hotel to save
me. Tell me what to do, Penelope, and I will gladly make the attempt.
When you took a--a craze to walk in the Park at a hideous hour every
morning before your friends, who don’t think it good form, were out
to frown you down, did I not promise to be your escort, and haven’t I
faithfully got up--or stayed up--to keep my promise?”

“And only late--let us see how many times?” she asked roguishly.

“Penelope, don’t,” he pleaded. “You know I love you. Why, Penel’,
love, if I thought that your foolish whim would separate us forever
I’d----Oh, darling, you don’t doubt my love, do you?”

“Hush!” she whispered, warningly, pointing to the girl on the other
bench.

“Oh, she is asleep,” Dick replied carelessly.

“Don’t be too sure,” Penelope urged, gazing abstractedly towards the
girl, her eyes soft with the feeling that was thrilling her heart.

Like all girls Penelope never tired of hearing the man who had won her
love swearing his devotion, but like all girls she preferred to be the
sole and only listener to those vows, to that tone.

“If she is awake she is the first young woman I ever saw who would let
her new La Tosca sunshade lie on the ground,” he said laughingly.

“She must be sleeping,” Penelope assented indifferently, glancing at
the parasol lying in the dust where it had apparently rolled from the
girl’s knee.

Two gray squirrels, with their bushy tails held stiffly erect, came out
on the dusty drive, and finding everything quiet scampered across to
the green sward, where they stood upright in the green grass viewing
curiously the unhappy lovers.

Penelope had a mania for carrying peanuts to the Park to give to the
animals. She took several from her reticule and tossed them towards the
gray squirrels.

The one, with a little whistling noise scampered up the nearest tree
and the other, taking a nut in his little mouth, quickly followed.

“I have not seen her move since we came here,” she said, returning to
the subject of the girl. “Do you suppose she put her hat over her eyes
in that manner to keep the light out of them, or was it done to keep
any passers-by from staring at her?”

“I don’t know,” carelessly. “Probably she is ill.”

“Ill? Do you think so, Dick? I am going to speak to her,” declared
Penelope, impulsively.

“Don’t, I wouldn’t,” urged Dick.

“But I will,” declared Penelope.

“You don’t know anything about her,” he continued pleadingly. “She
may have been out all night, or you can’t tell but perhaps she has
been drinking too much, and if you wake her she will doubtless make it
unpleasant for you.”

“How uncharitable you are,” indignantly exclaimed Penelope, who feared
no one. She had spent much time and money in doing deeds of charity,
and she had met all sorts and conditions of women. That a woman was in
trouble and she could help her, was all Penelope cared to know.

She got up and walked towards the girl. Richard, knowing all argument
was useless, went with her. When they stopped, Penelope, bending down,
peeped beneath the brim of the lace hat which, laden with an abundance
of red roses, was tilted over the motionless girl’s face.

“She is sleeping,” she whispered softly to Dick. “Her eyes are closed.
She has a lovely face.”

“Has she, indeed?” and Dick, with increased interest, bent to look.
“She is very pale and--I am afraid that she is ill,” in an awed tone.
“Young lady!” he called nervously.

The girlish figure never moved. Richard’s and Penelope’s eyes met with
a swift expression--a mingled look of surprise and fear.

“My dear!” called Penelope, gently shaking the girl by the shoulder.

The lace hat tumbled off and lay at their feet; the little hands,
which had been folded loosely in her lap, fell apart and the girlish
figure fell lengthwise on the bench.

Breathlessly and silently the frightened young couple looked at
the beautiful upturned face framed in masses of golden hair; the
blue-rimmed eyes, with their curly dark lashes resting gently against
the colorless skin; the parted lips in which there lingered a bit of
red.

Nervously Richard touched the cheek of pallor, and felt for the heart
and pulse.

“What’s wrong there?” called a gray-uniformed officer, who had left his
horse near the edge of the walk.

Penelope silently looked at Richard, waiting for him to answer, and as
he raised his face all white and horror-stricken, he gasped:

“My God! The girl is dead.”




CHAPTER II.

PENELOPE SETS A HARD TASK FOR DICK.


Richard Treadwell was not mistaken.

The golden-haired girl was dead.

The fair young form was taken to the Morgue, and for some days the
newspapers were filled with accounts of the mystery of Central Park,
and everybody was discussing the strange case.

And what could have been more mysterious?

A young and exquisitely beautiful girl, clad in garments stylish and
expensive, although quiet in tone, and such as women of refinement
wear, found dead on a bench in Central Park by two young people, whose
social position was in those circles where to be brought in any way to
public notice is considered almost a disgrace.

And to add to the mystery of the case the most thorough examination
of the girl’s body had failed to show the slightest wound or
discoloration, or the faintest clue to the cause of the girl’s death.

The newspapers had all their own theories. Some were firm in their
belief of foul play, but they could not even hint at the cause of
death, and how such a lovely creature could have been murdered, if
murder it was, in Central Park and the assassin or assassins escape
unseen, were riddles they could not solve.

Other journals hooted at the idea of foul play. They claimed the girl
had, while walking in Central Park, sat down on the bench, and died
either of heart disease or of poison administered by her own hand.

The police authorities maintained an air of impenetrable secrecy,
but promised that within a few days they would furnish some startling
developments. They did not commit themselves, however, as to their
ideas of how the girl met her death. In this they were wise, for the
silent man is always credited with knowing a great deal more than the
man does who talks, and so the public waited impatiently from day to
day, confident the police would soon clear the mystery away.

Hundreds of people visited the Morgue, curious to look upon the dead
girl.

Many went there in search of missing friends, hoping and yet dreading
that in the mysterious dead girl they would find the one for whom they
searched.

People from afar telegraphed for the body to be held until their
arrival, but they came and went and the beautiful dead girl was still
unidentified.

Penelope Howard and Richard Treadwell were made to figure prominently
in all the stories about the beautiful mystery, much to their
discomfort. The untiring reporters called to see Penelope at all hours,
whenever a fresh theory gave them an excuse to drag her name before the
public again, and poor Richard had no peace at his club, at his rooms,
or at Penelope’s home. If the reporters were not interviewing him, his
friends were asking all manner of questions concerning the strange
affair, and pleading repeatedly for the story of the discovery of the
body to be told again. Some of his club acquaintances even went so far
as to joke him about the girl he had found dead, and there was much
quiet smiling among his immediate friends at Dick’s fondness for early
walks, a trait first brought to light by his connection with this now
celebrated case.

Not the least important figure in the sensation was the Park policeman
who found Penelope and Richard bending over the dead girl. He became
a very great personage all at once. The meritorious deeds which
marked his previous record were the finding of a lost child and the
frantically chasing a stray dog, which he imagined was mad, and wildly
firing at it--very wide of the mark, it is true--until the poor
frightened little thing disappeared in some remote corner.

This officer became the envy of the Park policemen. Daily his name
appeared in connection with the case as “the brave officer of the
‘Mystery of Central Park.’” Daily he was pointed out by the people, who
thronged to the spot where the girl was found, curious to see the bench
and to carry away with them some little memento. He always managed to
be near the scene of the mystery during the busy hours of the Park, and
the dignity with which he answered questions as to the exact bench, was
very impressive.

But the officer’s pride at being connected with such a sensational
case was not to be wondered at.

Rarely had New York been so stirred to its depth over a mysterious
death. The newspapers published the most minute descriptions of the
dead girl’s dainty silk underwear, of her exquisitely made Directoire
dress, of her Suéde shoes, the silver handled La Tosca sunshade, and
more particularly did they dwell on descriptions of her dainty feet and
tiny hands, of her perfect features and masses of beautiful yellow hair.

There was every indication of refinement and luxury about her.

How came it, then, that a being of such beauty and grace could have no
one who missed her; could have no one to search frantically the wide
world for her?

The day of the inquest came.

Penelope, accompanied by her aunt and Richard, were forced to be
present. Penelope in a very steady voice told how they found the body,
and she was questioned and cross-questioned as to the reason why she
should have become so interested in the sight of an apparently sleeping
girl as to accost her.

It was a most unusual thing.

Did she not think that it had been suggested by the young man who
accompanied her?

Penelope’s cheeks burned and she became very indignant at their efforts
to connect Richard more closely with the case, and she related all that
had transpired after they spoke of the girl with such minuteness and
ease, that it was hinted afterwards that she had studied the story in
order to protect the culprit.

Poor Richard came next.

His story did not differ from Penelope’s, and while no one said in so
many words that they suspected him of knowing more than he divulged,
yet he felt their suspicions and accusations in every question and
every look.

A very knowing newspaper had that same morning published a long story,
relating instances where murderers could not remain away from their
victims, and always returned to the spot, in many cases pretending to
be the discoverer of the murder. The story finished by demanding that
the authorities decide at the inquest whose hand was in the murder of
the beautiful young girl.

Dick, remembering all this, felt his heart swell with indignation at
the tones of his examiner.

Penelope was more indignant, if anything, than Dick, but she had read
in a newspaper that repudiated the theory of murder, a collection
of accounts of deaths which had been thought suspicious that were
afterwards proven to be the result of heart disease or poison, and she
quietly hoped that the doctors who held the post-mortem examination
would set at rest all the doubts in the case.

The park policeman, in a grandiloquent manner, gave his testimony.

He told how he found the young couple bending over the dead girl, who
was half lying on a bench. When the officer asked what was wrong, the
young man, who seemed excited and frightened--and he laid great stress
on those words--replied “The girl is dead.” The officer had then looked
at the body but did not touch it. The young people denied any knowledge
of the girl’s identity, and then his suspicions being aroused he asked
the young man why he had replied “The girl is dead,” if he did not know
her?

The young man repeated that he had never seen the dead girl before, and
his companion gave him a quick, frightened glance; so the officer said
sternly:

“Be careful, young man, remember you are talking to the law; I’ll have
to report everything you say.”

And then the officer paused to take breath and at the same time to give
proper weight to his words. Everybody took the opportunity to remove
their gaze from the officer and to see how Dick Treadwell was bearing
it. They were getting more interested now and nearly everyone felt that
the elegant young man would be in the clutches of the law by the time
the inquest was adjourned.

The officer cleared his throat and in a deep, gruff voice continued his
story.

At his warning the young man had flushed very red, then paled, and then
he called the officer a fool.

Still the conscientious limb of the law determined to know more about
two young people, who, while able to drive, were doing such unusual
and extraordinary things as walking early in the Park and happening
upon the dead body of a young girl; so he asked the young man why, if
he did not know the girl, he did not say “_a_ girl is dead here,”
instead of “_the_ girl is dead,” whereupon the young man told the
officer again that he was a fool, adding several words to make it more
emphatic, and at this the young girl, who stood by very gravely up to
this time, had the boldness and impudence to laugh.

Richard Treadwell was called again, and had to repeat the reason of his
early walk in the Park, and had to tell where he spent the previous
evening, which was proven by Penelope and her aunt. He was questioned
why he used the definite article instead of the indefinite in answering
the officer’s question. He could offer no explanation.

That a man should say “_the_ girl” instead of “_a_ girl,” and
that he should be excited over finding the body of a girl unknown to
him, were things that looked very suspicious to the law, and those in
charge of the inquest had no hesitancy in showing the fact.

A few persons whose testimony was unimportant were called, and then
came the doctors who had made the post-mortem examination. Nothing was
discovered to indicate murder or suicide, nor, indeed, could they come
to any definite conclusion as to the cause of death.

The coroner’s jury brought in an indefinite verdict, showing that they
knew no more about the circumstances or cause of the girl’s death than
they did at the beginning of the inquest. With this unsatisfactory
conclusion the public was forced to rest content.

They did know that the girl had not been shot or stabbed, which was
some satisfaction, at any rate.

Penelope persuaded her aunt and Richard to accompany her through the
Morgue. She was deeply hurt at the way in which Dick had been treated.
Still she wanted to look on the face of the fair young girl, the cause
of all the worriment, before she was taken to her grave.

“How dreadful!” exclaimed Penelope’s aunt, as the keeper unbolted the
door and waited, before he closed it, for them to enter the low room.

She tiptoed daintily over the stone floor--which, wet all over, had
little streams formed in places flowing from different hose--holding
her skirts up with one hand, and with the other hand held a perfumed
handkerchief over her aristocratic nose. Penelope, with serious but
calm face, kept close to the keeper, and Richard walked silently with
the aunt.

“I thought the bodies lay on marble slabs,” said Penelope, glancing
at the row of plain, unpainted rough boxes set close together on iron
supports.

“They did in the old Morgue, but ever since we’ve been in this building
we put them in the boxes. They keep better this way,” explained the
keeper, delighted to show the sights of the Morgue to persons of social
prominence.

“Do you know the history of all these dead?” asked Penelope, counting
the fifty and odd coffins which came one after the other.

“We know somethin’ about most all ’cept those found in the river, and
the river furnishes more bodies than the whole city do. We photograph
every body and we pack their clothes away, with a description of ’em,
and keep them six months. The photographs we always keep, so that years
after people may find their lost here. Would you like to see them,
miss?”

“You see,” continued the man, lifting a lid, “we burn a cross on the
coffins of the Catholics, and the Protestants get no mark. The boxes
with the chalk mark on are the ones that’s to be buried to-morrow. This
man here, miss,” holding the lid up, “was a street-car driver; want to
see him, mam?”

Penelope’s aunt shook her head negatively.

“He struck, and could not get work afterwards, so as he and his family
was starvin’, he made them one less by committing suicide.”

“It is so hard to die,” Penelope said with a shudder.

“Hard? Not a bit, miss; death’s a great boon to poor people. This ’ere
fellow,” holding another lid while Penelope gazed with dry, burning
eyes down on a weather-beaten face, which, seared with a million
premature wrinkles, wore a smile of rest, “he was a tramp, they ’spose.
Fell dead on Sixth Avenue, an’ he had nothin’ on him to identify him.
And this ’ere woman who lies next the Park mystery girl, though she do
smile like she got somethin’ she wanted--an’ they nearly all smile,
miss, when they’ve handed in their ’counts--she were a devil. She’s
done time on the island, and they’ve had her in Blackwell’s Insane
Asylum, but ’twan’t no good; soon as she got out she was at her old
tricks. Drink, drink, if she had to steal it, an’ fight an’ swear!
They picked her up on a sidewalk the last time and hauled her to the
station-house, but when mornin’ come an’ they called her she didn’t
show up; an’ when they dragged her out, thinkin’ she was still full,
they found she’d got a death sentence and gone on a last trip to the
island where they never come back.”

A little woman, stumpy, fat and old, in a shabby black frock and plain
black bonnet, came in with one of the keeper’s assistants. She held a
coarse white cotton handkerchief in her hand, and her wrinkled, broad
face with its fish-like mouth, thick, upturned nose and watery blue
eyes, looked prepared to show evidence of grief when the search among
the labelled rough-boxes was successful.

“Mrs. Lang,” read the man who was assisting the woman in her search,
“from the Almshouse?”

“Yes, that was her name, true enough. The Lord rest her soul!” the
woman responded fervently, and the man slid the lid across the box, and
the little old woman, holding the handkerchief over her stubby nose,
peeped in.

“Yes, that’s her; that’s Mrs. Lang. Poor thing! Ah! she do look
desolate,” she wailed. “She hasn’t a fri’nd in all the world,” she
continued, looking with her weak eyes at Penelope, who sympathetically
stopped by her. “She was eighty years old, and paralyzed from her knees
down. Poor thing, they took her to the Almshouse not quite a month ago,
and she looks like she’d had a hard time, sure enough. Poor Mrs. Lang,
she do look desolate.”

The man closed the box as if he had given her time enough to weep, and
the wailing woman went out.

“What becomes of the bodies of these poor unfortunates?” asked
Penelope, with a catch in her voice.

“Most of ’em we give to the medical colleges as subjects. Yes, men and
women, black and white alike. That nigger woman, who wouldn’t tell on
the man who gave her a death stab, lying to the other side of the Park
mystery girl, will be taken to a college to-night. The bodies not sold
are all sent up to Hart’s Island, where they’re buried in a big trench.”

Penelope’s sympathetic nature quivered with pity by reason of what she
had seen and heard. She secretly resolved to give the poor unknown
girl a respectable burial, and to order some flowers to be strewed in
the rough-boxes with the other unfortunates who would be taken to the
Potter’s Field to-morrow.

“Death is a horrible thing,” she remarked sadly, as they filed through
the iron doors again.

“It is, miss,” the keeper assented. “I’ve had charge of this here
Morgue for these twenty years, still if I was to allow myself to think
about death and the mystery of the hereafter, I’d go crazy.”

“But the thought of Heaven. It is surely some consolation,” faltered
Penelope.

“Twenty years’ work in there,” nodding his head towards the throne
where death sits always; where the only noise is the sound of the
dripping water; “hasn’t left any fairy tales in my mind about what
comes after. We live, and when we’re dead that’s the last of it.
You can tell children about the ‘good man’ and ‘bad man’ and Heaven
and--beggin’ your pardon--Hell, just the same as you tell them about
Santa Claus, but when they grow up if they thinks for themselves they
know its fairy tales--all fairy tales. When you’re dead, you’re dead,
and that’s the last of it, take my word for that.”

Penelope was not a religious fanatic, but her few pious beliefs
experienced a little resentful shock at the man’s outspoken words. She
haughtily drew her shoulders up, the kind expression faded from her
face, leaving it less attractive, and she was conscious of a little
feeling of repulsion for the unbelieving Morgue keeper. Not that the
keeper’s ideas were so foreign to those that had visited her own mind.
She had many times felt dubious on such subjects herself, but she had
always felt it to be her duty to kill doubt and trust in that which was
taught her concerning the life hereafter.

Penelope joined her aunt and Richard Treadwell, where they stood under
a shade tree opposite the Morgue waiting her.

In a few words she told what she wished to do. Her kind aunt good
naturedly encouraged her. Perhaps what they had seen had had a
softening effect on her as well.

Instead of driving home they drove to the coroner’s, and with the
permit which they obtained without difficulty, to an undertaker’s,
where the final arrangements were made for the girl’s burial.

So the beautiful mystery of Central Park was not sent to a medical
college nor to the Potter’s Field. The next morning Penelope
accompanied Richard in his coupé, and Mrs. Louise Van Brunt, her aunt,
who had in her carriage two charitable old lady friends, followed the
sombre hearse in its slow journey across the bridge to Brooklyn. In a
quiet graveyard on the outskirts of the city the dead girl was lowered
into the earth.

Penelope was greatly wrought up over the case. All the way to the
graveyard she was moody and silent. Seeing that she was not inclined
to talk, Richard too sat silent and thoughtful.

Added to her interest in the dead girl, the evident suspicions
entertained against Richard had preyed upon Penelope’s mind. While she
never doubted Richard’s innocence in the affair, still ugly thoughts
concerning his careless nature, and the recalled rumors of affairs with
actresses, of more or less renown, which the newspapers darkly hinted
at, almost set her wild. Could it be possible that he had known the
girl, or ever seen her before they found her dead?

She recalled his excitement when he leaned down and for the first time
saw the face of the girl as she sat on the bench. The officer had laid
great stress on Dick’s excited manner, and to Penelope, as she looked
back, it seemed suggestive of more than he had acknowledged.

“And I love him, I love him,” she cried to herself during the long ride
to the cemetery, “and with this horrible suspicion hanging over him I
could never marry him; I could never be happy if I did. I can never be
happy if I don’t. If we only knew something about it; if only people
did not hint things; if I could only crush the horrible idea that he
knows more than he told!”

They dismounted, after driving into the cemetery, and walked silently
across the green; winding in and out among the grassy and flowered beds
and white stones which marked all that had once been life--hope.

An unknown but Christian minister stood waiting them at the open grave.
Penelope glanced at him and at the workmen, who left the shade of a
tree near-by when they saw the party approaching, and came forward with
faces void of any feeling but that of impudent curiosity. The minister
repeated the burial service very softly, as the coffin was lowered
into the earth. Penelope’s throat felt bursting, and her heart beat
painfully as Richard, with strangely solemn face, dropped some flowers
into the grave.

“Oh death? How horrible, how horrible!” she thought, “and I, too, some
day must die; must be put in a grave, and then--and then, what? What
have we done to our Creator that we must die? And that poor girl! This
is the last for all eternity, and there is not one here she knew to see
the last, unless”----but the morbid thought against Richard refused to
form itself into definite shape.

The men who filled the grave were the most light-hearted in the group.
They pulled up a board, and the pile of fresh earth at the mouth of the
grave, which it had upheld, went rattling in on the coffin and flowers,
almost gladly it seemed to Penelope. She shivered slightly, but watched
as if fascinated, until the men put on the last shovel-full and with
a spade deftly shaped out the mound. Richard helped her cover the
newly-made grave with the flowers and green ivy and smilax they had
brought for that purpose.

They were the last to leave. The others had walked slowly among the
graves and back to the place where the carriages were waiting. The
hearse, immediately after the coffin was lowered into the earth, had
gone off with rollicking speed, as if eager for new freight, and the
workmen with their spades and picks had disappeared.

“It is ended,” said Dick with a relieved sigh, as he led Penelope back
to her carriage. “Now let us forget all the misery of these last few
days and be happy.”

“It is not ended,” exclaimed Penelope, spiritedly. “It has only begun.
I can never be happy until I know the secret of that girl’s death.”

“That is impossible, Penelope,” replied Dick. “That mystery can never
be solved.”

“Dick, you have sworn you love me; you have sworn that you would do
anything I asked if I would marry you. Did you mean it? Will you swear
it again?” cried Penelope, breathlessly.

“Mean it, love?” repeated Dick, as he pressed her hand closely between
his arm and heart. “Upon my life, I swear it.”

“Then solve the mystery of that girl’s death, and I will be your wife.”




CHAPTER III.

WHEREIN DICK TREADWELL MEETS WITH ANOTHER ADVENTURE.


Richard Treadwell was in despair.

Days had passed since the burial of the unknown girl, and he was no
nearer the solution of the mystery than he was on the morning of the
discovery. He had not learned one new thing in the case, and what was
infinitely worse, he had not the least idea how to set about the task.

He had taken to wandering restlessly about the city racked with the
wildest despondency.

“Great Lord, if I only had an idea,” he thought, desperately, as he
walked up Fifth Avenue. “If I only knew how to begin--if I only knew
where to begin--if I only knew what to do--if I only--Confound the
girl, anyhow. Why couldn’t she have died somewhere else, or why didn’t
some one else find her instead of us. Confound it, I’ll be hanged if I
hadn’t enough to worry about before. Women will take the most infernal
whims. Good Lord! If I wasn’t suspected of being connected with her
death, and if Penelope----But I’ll be d---- if I can give it the go-by.
It’s solve the mystery or lose Penelope! If I only knew how to go to
work. But, by Jove, I know I could preach a sermon, or set a broken
leg, or--or cook a dinner easier than find out why, where, when, how,
that yellow-haired girl died. Curse my luck, anyhow.”

“I have read stories where fellows who don’t know much start out to
solve murder mysteries, but they always find something which all the
detectives and police authorities overlooked, which gives them the
right clue to work on. It’s very good for tales, but I find nothing.
The rest are just as smart and smarter at finding clues than I am. They
got nothing. I got nothing, and what to do would puzzle a Solomon.”

Dick stopped and looked up to the windows of Penelope’s home, where
his wandering feet had brought him. He had not seen her for two days;
so busy on the case, he wrote her with a groan, and then he had sent
her a bunch of roses, and gone forth to kill another day in aimless
wanderings.

But here, before her door--how could a lover resist the temptation to
enter and be happy in the presence of his divinity for a few moments at
least? Richard was not one of the resisting kind any way, so, after a
moment’s thought, he ran up the broad stone steps and was ushered into
Penelope’s room off the library--half sitting-room, half study--to wait
for her.

Nothing was wanting in Penelope’s special den, that luxury could
suggest, to make it an exquisite retreat for a young woman with a taste
for the beautiful. There were heavy portieres, soft, rich carpet,
handsome rugs here and there on the floor and thrown carelessly over
low divans. Chairs and lounges of different shapes, all made for
comfort, little tables strewed with rich bric-a-brac, unique spirit
lamps, and on easels and hanging around were paintings and etchings,
all of which, as Penelope said, had a story in them.

There were some fine statues, among which were several the work of
Penelope. A little low organ, with a piano lamp near it, stood open and
there were music and books in profusion.

Near where the daylight came strongest was a sensible flat-top
desk littered with paper, cards, books and the thousand little
trinkets--useless, if you please--which a refined woman gathers about
to please her eye.

The most unusual things that would have impressed a stranger, if
by some unknown chance he could gain admittance here, was a mixed
collection of odd canes and weapons, and a skull in the centre of the
desk, which was utilized as an inkstand and a penholder.

“Why, Dick,” said Penelope, as she tripped lightly in, clad in an
artistic gray carriage gown. “I am glad to see you. I wish you had been
earlier so you could have enjoyed a drive with aunt and me.”

“I have been busy,” Richard said bravely, releasing the hand she had
given him on entering.

They sat down together on a sofa.

“I have been so occupied that I haven’t had time for a drive these last
few days.”

“And have you discovered anything yet?” Penelope asked, eagerly.

“Well, not exactly,” hesitatingly, “it will take time to clear it all
up, you know.”

“Tell me, do you know her name yet, and where she came from, and was
she really murdered?”

“Slowly, slowly; would you have me spoil my luck by telling what I have
done?” asked Richard evasively, his eyes twinkling.

“Oh, you superstitious boy,” laughed Penelope, lightly tapping him with
her hand, which he immediately caught and held captive in his own.

“Don’t be unkind,” he pleaded, as she tried to draw her hand away.

“Not for worlds,” she replied gravely, ceasing to struggle. “Mr. John
Stetson Maxwell called here last night, and he told me of an experience
he had when he was an editor, that made me resolve never to speak or
act unkindly if I can help it.”

“I am deeply obliged to Mr. Maxwell,” Richard responded lightly.

“But it was very sad, Dick. I felt unhappy all the evening over it.”

“I wish my miseries and wretchedness could have the same influence on
you,” he broke in with a laugh.

“Don’t you want to hear the story? I had intended to tell it to you,”
she said, half provoked at his lack of seriousness.

“Why, certainly. By all means,” he replied, grave enough now. He never
joked when she assumed that tone and look.

“When he was an editor,” she began softly, “he one day received a
very bright poem from a man in Buffalo. He did not know the man as a
writer, still the poem was so meritorious that he straightway accepted
it, and sent a note to the author enclosing a check for the work. A
few days afterwards, the man’s card was sent in, with a request for an
interview. Mr. Maxwell was very busy at the time, but he thought he
would give the man a moment, so he told the boy to bring the visitor
up. When he came in, Mr. Maxwell was surprised to see a young man of
some twenty-five years. He was not well clad, and was much abashed
when he found himself in the presence of such a great personage as the
editor, Mr. Maxwell.”

“Rightly, rightly,” Richard said, good naturedly, patting her hands
encouragingly.

“Mr. Maxwell recalled afterwards that the young man looked in wretched
spirits,” Penelope continued, with a slow smile. “At the time he was
too hurried to notice anything, and then editors are used to seeing
people who are in ill-luck. He brusquely asked the young man his
business, seeing that he made no effort to tell it, and then the
young man said he had come to the city and thought he would like to
look around the office. Mr. Maxwell rang for a boy, and telling him
to show the young man about, shortly dismissed him. In a few days
after he received a batch of poetry from the young man, but though of
remarkable merit, Mr. Maxwell thought it too sombre in tone for his
publication, so he enclosed it with one of the printed slips used for
rejected manuscripts. In a day or so Mr. Maxwell was shocked to read of
the young man’s death. He had gone out to the park, and sitting down
on a bench, beside the lake, put a revolver to his ear and so killed
himself. He fell off the bench and into the lake, and his body was not
found until the next day. He had a letter in his pocket requesting
that his body be cremated. He left enough money to pay the expenses,
and word for one of his friends that he could do as he wished with his
ashes.”

“Well, many people do the same thing,” Richard said, rather unfeelingly.

“Yes, but this case was particularly sad,” Penelope asserted. “The
young man was all alone. He hadn’t a relative in the world. He had
fought his way up and had just completed his law studies, but had not,
as yet, succeeded in obtaining any practice. He was in distress and Mr.
Maxwell thinks, as I do, that he was so encouraged when his poem was
accepted that he came to the city with the purpose of asking employment
of the editor, but being greeted so coldly and roughly, I think he
could not tell the object of his visit. On his return to Buffalo,
as a last hope, he wrote some poetry which was colored with his own
despondent feelings, and when they were all returned to him it was the
last straw--he went out and shot himself.”

“But what else could Mr. Maxwell have done, Penelope,” Richard asked,
in a business way. “He could not accept work, and pay for it, that
was not suitable for his periodical. I don’t see how he could reproach
himself in that case.”

“I do and so does he,” she replied stoutly. “It wouldn’t have taken
any more time to be kind to that man than it took to be unkind to him,
and when he rejected the poetry, instead of sending back that brutal
printed notice he could have had his stenographer write a line, saying
the poetry, though meritorious, was not suitable for his journal. That
would, at least, have eased the disappointment.”

“But editors haven’t time for such things, Penelope.”

“Then let them take time. I tell you it takes less time to be kind than
to be unkind,” she maintained, nodding her head positively.

“If they were not short, bores would occupy all their time,” he
persisted.

“Richard, we will not argue the case,” she said loftily, as a woman
always does when she feels she is being worsted. “You can’t make me
think anything will excuse a man for being brutal and unkind.”

Richard had his own opinion on the subject, but he was wise enough to
refrain from trying to make Penelope have a similar one.

“I am going away,” she said, presently, finding that Dick was not
averse to dropping the discussion. “Auntie has accepted an invitation
to go to Washington for a few days to visit Mrs. Senator ----, and I am
to go along. I rather dread it, but auntie says they won’t know as much
about the Park mystery there, and I won’t be worried with reporters.”

“I hope not,” replied Dick, beginning already to feel the ghastly
emptiness which pervaded the city for him when Penelope was not in it.
As long as he knew Penelope was in the city, even if he did not see
her, he had a certain happiness of nearness, but when she was away he
felt as desolate as Adam must have done before Eve came.

“Penelope, girlie,” he said, with a sudden hope, “could we not be
engaged while I am working on this case? It would not embarrass you
in any way, for we only need tell your aunt, and it would be such
help, such encouragement, such happiness, sweet to me. You see it may
take months to solve this mystery.” Poor Richard thought it would
take years. “And if I only knew, darling, that I had your promise,
I could do so much. It would help me to conquer the world. Don’t be
hard-hearted, dear; don’t be cruel to the one who loves you more than
anything on earth or in heaven.”

“No, no, Dick, you must wait,” said Penelope. “Wait until the mystery
is solved, it shouldn’t take you a great while”--(Richard sighed)--“and
then, and then--”

“Then?” repeated Dick, questioningly. She looked down with sudden
embarrassment; he put his arms around her slender waist and drew her
close to him. “Then? my love, my soul!”--

“Dearest, come here!” called Penelope’s aunt, in that well-bred voice
of hers which charmed all hearers, but at this particular moment was
very exasperating to Dick. “Richard, come, I want you to see the man
standing on the other side of the Avenue. I have been watching him and
I think it is quite probable that he is watching the house. Are we
never to have done with that Park mystery business?”

They all looked cautiously through the curtains, and they all agreed
that the man was watching the house for some purpose.

“They are after you, Dick,” exclaimed Penelope. “Oh, I am so afraid
this will result seriously to you.”

Richard thought so too, only where she was concerned, though; but he
did not give voice to his fears.

“My dear child,” laughed the aunt, with that pleasant ring. “Do not
talk such nonsense! Richard is able to take care of himself, and
especially now that he knows some one is following him.”

Shortly afterwards Dick took his leave of Penelope. She maintained
an air of cheerfulness as he said farewell, but though the mouth was
merry, the sad eyes which met his seemed to whisper the nearness of
tears.

Catching up his walking-stick, Richard hastily left the house. He was
feeling so blue that he was almost savage. He thought of the man who
had been watching the house, and he looked to see if he was still
there, half tempted to hunt the fellow out and pull his nose.

Sure enough, the man was there and, as Richard started down the
Avenue, he sneaked along on the other side, much after the manner of
a disobedient dog who had been told to stay at home. Dick hailed a
passing stage, after walking a little way, and almost as soon as he was
seated the man also got in. Richard was not in a mood to bear watching,
so he jumped out when he saw an empty hansom cab, and, engaging it,
told the driver to cross town. He did not drive far until he had made
sure that he had eluded his would-be follower, and having no appetite
yet for dinner he ordered the driver to go to Central Park, where he
paid and dismissed him.

Now that he was alone, he became conscious of a desire to visit the
scene of the mystery which promised to be so fatal to his happiness.

“I’ll go there and think it over,” he mused; “it may give me some idea
how to work it out.” And on he walked over the course he and Penelope
had taken that direful morning.

Night was coming on and the Park was deserted, except for an occasional
workman taking a hurried cut across the Park home. How dreary and quiet
everything was, and then he thought about the officer who had made
himself so obnoxious. This led him to wonder if there were no policemen
on duty at night in the Park. He could not remember of ever having
noticed any the few times he had visited the Park after nightfall, and
there were none visible now anywhere.

He stopped to look for a few moments at the bench where they had found
the dead girl, and then he walked on until he came to a bench near the
reservoir, where he sat down, and lighting a cigarette gave himself up
to unhappy thoughts on his unhappy position.

“If only the Fates would throw something in my way to help me solve
that mystery,” he thought. “Unless the most extraordinary things occur
I shall never be able to tell anything about it. Penelope firmly
believes it was a murder, but I can’t see what grounds she has for it.
She thinks it was a deliberate and well-planned murder, because no one
has claimed the girl, and I sometimes think so myself, but how to prove
it?--that’s the question.”

And Dick gazed seriously at the space of light made by the opening
for the reservoir, and on to the dense thickness of trees where night
seemed to be lurking, ready to pounce down on all late comers.

As he looked he became aware of something moving between him and the
spot of light. He was a brave young man, yet his heart beat a little
quicker as he strained his eyes to see what the moving object was.

Again it passed in view, and this time it looked to be something
climbing; another moment and it was on the edge of the reservoir.

Now, plainly outlined between him and the strip of light sky, he saw
the figure of a woman, a slender girl with flowing hair.

Quick as a flash came the horrible thought that she had come there to
die--that she intended to commit suicide.

With a choking cry of horror he ran swiftly towards her.




CHAPTER IV.

STORY OF THE GIRL WHO ATTEMPTED SUICIDE.


Richard Treadwell sat moodily on a bench, half supporting the limp form
of the girl he had just saved from death.

He had caught her just as she threw up her hands with a pitiful, weak
cry, ready to spring into the reservoir.

“My dear young woman, don’t take on so,” he said, vexedly, as the girl
leaned against his shoulder, and sobbed in a heart-broken, distracted
manner. “You are safe now.”

As if that could be consolation to a woman who was seeking death which
sought her not.

“Really, I am sorry, you know, but there’s a good girl, don’t cry,”
making a ludicrous attempt to console her. “I did it before I thought;
if I had known how much you would have been grieved, I--I assure you,
upon my honor, I wouldn’t have done it. I--I haven’t much to live for,
either, still when I saw what you intended to do--it shocked me that
you should be so desperate. Now that it’s all over I wouldn’t cry any
more. I’d laugh, as if it were a joke, you know. I’d say the fates had
saved me for some treat they had reserved for me. There, that’s better,
don’t cry, you are not hurt--not even wet.”

The girl broke into a nervous, hysterical laugh, in which the sobs
struggled for mastery. Dick, much relieved, added a laugh that sounded
rather hollow and mirthless.

“I c-can’t help it,” said she, haltingly and endeavoring to stop her
sobs. “It seems so unreal to be still living when I wanted to be dead.
I--I thought it all over, and it seemed so comforting to think of it
being ended. Then I couldn’t see, nor think, nor hear, nor suffer. Oh,
why did you stop me?”

“I didn’t know, you see; I didn’t understand it all. I thought you
would regret it--that you were making a mistake,” he tried to say
cheerfully.

“What right has anybody--what right had you to prevent me from ending
my life? I don’t want to live! I am tired of life and of misery. I
want to know what right any one has to interfere--to make me live a
life that doesn’t concern them and only brings me misery?” she cried,
indignantly.

“Come now, don’t be so cast down.” At this burst of anger Richard was
himself again. “Tell me all about it; maybe I can help you. Have things
gone wrong?”

“Have they ever gone right? Don’t preach to me. It’s easy to preach
to people who have friends and money and home. Save your sermons for
them. I have nothing! I am all alone in this great big heartless world.
I haven’t a cent, a home or a friend, and I’m tired of it all. There
is no use in talking to me. Some people get it all, and the others get
nothing. I am one of the unlucky ones, and the only thing for me to do
is to die.”

“Why, my good girl, there is surely something better for you than
death.”

“There is nothing but trouble and hunger, and sometimes work. Do you
call that better than death?” she cried despondently.

What a story her few words contained! But Richard, happy, careless,
fortunate, little understood their real import.

He knew the girl was very much depressed and morbid, so he concluded
it might have a beneficial effect if he could induce her to relate her
woes to him.

How mountainous our troubles grow when we brood over them.

How they dwindle into little ant-heaps when we relate them to another.

Richard talked in his frank, healthy way to the girl, and it was not
long until she told him the simple, pathetic story of her life.

Her name was Dido Morgan, she said. She was a country girl, the only
child of a village doctor, who lived in comfort but died penniless. Her
mother died at her birth. She had been raised well, and when reduced to
poverty she was too proud to go to work in her native village, so after
her father was buried she came to New York.

She soon found that without experience and references she could not
get any desirable work in New York. When all other things failed, she,
at last, in desperation, applied for and obtained a position in a
paper-box factory. She was fortunate enough to learn the work rapidly,
and in a few months was able to earn as much as the best workers. She
rented a little room on the top floor of a large tenement-house, where
she slept and cooked her food. Every week she managed to save a little
out of her scant earnings.

One day a girl who worked at the same table with Dido, and who had for
a long time been her friend, fainted. The girls crowded around them as
Dido knelt on the floor to bathe the sick girl’s head and rub her hands.

“Aha! Away from yer tables durin’ work hours. I’ll pay yer fer this,
I’ll dock every one of you,” yelled the foreman, who at this instant
entered the workroom.

The girls, frightened, crept quietly back to their work, but Dido still
continued to bathe the girl’s head.

“Here, you daisy on the floor, you’ll disobey me, hey? I’ll dock yer
twice,” brutally spoke the foreman as he caught a glimpse of Dido’s
head across the table.

She looked at him with scorn. If glances could kill, he would have died
at her feet. Still, she managed to say, quietly:

“Maggie Williams has fainted.”

“And because a girl faints must all the shop stop work and disobey
rules, eh? I’ll pay yer for this. I’ll teach yer,” he vowed, as he
quitted the room.

Dido, unmindful of his brutal threats, turned her attention to Maggie,
who in a short time opened her eyes and tried to rise.

“Lie still awhile yet, Maggie,” urged her self-appointed nurse. “I’ll
hold your head on my knee. Don’t you feel better now?”

But the girl made no reply. Her small gray eyes stared unblinkingly,
unseeingly, up at the smoked rafters of the ceiling.

“What is it, Maggie?” asked the kindly Dido, smoothing the wet, tangled
hair, her slender fingers expressing the sympathy which found no
utterance in words. “Are you still ill? Shall I take you home to your
mother?”

The stare in the small gray eyes grew softer and softer; the corners
of the mouth drew down into a pitiful curve, the under lip quivering
like a tiny leaf in a strong wind; turning her face down, she sobbed
vehemently.

Drawing the poor thin body into a closer embrace, Dido sought to
comfort the weeping girl.

Some of the nearest workers hearing those low, heavy sobs, started
nervously, and their hands were not as cunning as usual as they covered
the boxes, but they dared not go near their unhappy companion or speak
the sympathy they felt.

“I’m awfully sorry, Maggie,” whispered Dido, “don’t cry so; you’ll feel
better by-and-by.”

“Mother’s dead,” blurted out Maggie.

Dido was stunned into silence by this communication. She could say
nothing.

What could you say to a girl when her mother is dead?

What could console a girl at such a time?

Maggie told Dido that the dead body of her mother, who, for a year
past, had been confined to her bed with consumption, was lying alone,
uncared for, at home.

“I loved her so, and I didn’t want her to die,” she said pitifully.
“I was afraid to go home after work for fear I’d find her dead, and I
was afraid to sleep at night for fear she’d be dead when I woke up.
She lay so still, and she looked so white and death-like, and I would
lean on my elbow and watch her, fearing her breath would stop. Every
few moments I prayed, ‘O God, save her!’ ‘O God, have mercy!’ I--I
couldn’t say more, and I would swallow down the thing that would choke
my throat and wink away the tears that would come, and watch and watch,
until I couldn’t bear the doubt any longer, then I would touch her
gently with my foot to see if she was still warm, and that would wake
her, and I would be so sorry.

“All last night I never took my eyes off her dear face,” Maggie
continued between her sobs, and Dido was softly crying, too, then.

“She wouldn’t eat the things I had brought her, and when I talked to
her she didn’t seem to understand, but said things about father, who
died so long ago, and once or twice she laughed, but it only made
me cry. She didn’t seem to see me either, and when I spoke to her
it only started her to talk about something else, so I watched and
watched. I didn’t pray any more. Somehow all the prayer had left my
soul. Just before morning she got very still, sometimes a rolling
sound would gurgle in her throat, but when I offered her a drink
she couldn’t swallow, and then I called to her--I couldn’t stand it
any longer--‘Mother, mother, speak to me. I have always loved you,
speak to me once,’ and her dear lips moved and I bent over her,
holding my breath for fear I would not hear, and she whispered:
‘Lucille--my--pretty--one,’ and then her eyes opened and her head fell
to one side, but she didn’t see; she was dead--dead without one word to
me, and I loved her so.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Dido Morgan shared her own scant dinner with Maggie that day, and the
unhappy girl remained at work that she might earn some money, which
would help towards burying her mother.

That afternoon foreman Flint came in, and, nailing a paper to the
elevator shaft, told the girls to read it, saying he’d teach them to
disobey another time, and that next week they would work harder for
their money.

In fear and trembling the girls crowded timidly about the shaft to read
what new misery the foreman had in store for them. They instinctively
felt it was a reduction, and the first glance proved their fears were
not unfounded.

Some of the girls began to cry, and Dido, the bravest and strongest,
spoke excitedly to them of the injustice done them. Even now they were
working for less than other factories were paying.

“There is surely justice for girls as well as men somewhere in the
world, if we only demand it,” she cried, encouragingly. “Let us demand
our rights. We will all go down, and I will tell the proprietor that we
cannot live under this new reduction. If he promises us the old prices,
we will return to work. If he refuses, we will strike.”

The braver girls heartily joined the scheme, and the weaker
ones naturally fell in, not knowing what else to do under the
circumstances, and frightened at their own boldness.

Dido Morgan, taking little Margaret Williams by the hand, naturally
headed the line, and the girls quietly marched after her, two by two,
down the almost perpendicular stairs.

Dido stopped before the ground-glass door on the first floor, on which
was inscribed:

  ............................
  .       TOLMAN BIKE,       .
  .                          .
  .         PRIVATE.         .
  ............................

Her heart beat very quickly, but clasping Maggie’s hand closer, she
opened the door and entered.




CHAPTER V.

THE FAILURE OF THE STRIKE.


Tolman Bike was engaged in conversation with foreman Flint when Dido
opened the door and entered.

He lifted his head, and never noticing Dido, fixed a look of absolute
horror on Maggie Williams’s tear-stained and swollen face, as he rose
pale and trembling and gasped in a husky tone:

“Why do you come to me?”

Margaret gazed stupidly at him with her small, grey eyes, offering no
reply.

Dido, greatly astonished at Mr. Bike’s manner, stammered out that she
represented the girls he employed, who had decided to appeal to him
not to enforce the proposed reduction, as they were already working for
less than other factories were paying.

When she began to speak a strange look of relief passed over his face
and with a peculiar, nervous laugh, he sat down again.

“Get out of this,” said he roughly. “If you don’t like my prices leave
them for those who do.”

Turning his back to the girls he coolly began arranging the papers on
his desk.

When Dido began to plead for justice he calmly ordered foreman Flint to
“remove these young persons.”

“If you do dare touch me, I’ll kill you!” exclaimed Dido in a rage, as
Flint made a movement to obey orders.

He cowered, stepped back and stammered an excuse to his employer. He
felt the scorch in Dido’s blazing midnight eyes and he respected her
warning and his own person.

Mr. Bike moved quietly to the door and holding it open, said:

“My beauty, you be careful, or that fine spirit of yours will get you
into trouble some of these days.”

Dido gave him a scornful glance as she and Maggie walked out, and the
door was closed behind them.

She related her failure to the waiting girls, and they all went home
after promising to be there Monday morning to prevent others taking
their places. They seemed to feel the consequence of their own act less
than Dido and rather welcomed an extra holiday.

That evening Dido pawned all her furniture and extra clothes, and
the money she received for them, added to her savings, went towards
saving the body of Mrs. Williams from the Potter’s Field. There was not
quite enough to pay the undertaker, so Dido was forced to borrow the
remainder from Blind Gilbert, the beggar, who occupied the room in the
rear of that occupied by the Williamses.

Monday morning the girls all gathered around the entrance to
the factory and urged the new girls, who came in answer to an
advertisement, not to apply for work and thereby injure their chances
of making the strike successful.

Only the foreigners stubbornly refused the girls’ request, and they
applied for and received the work which the others had abandoned.
Tuesday more foreigners were given work, and the weaker strikers,
getting frightened at this, quitted their companions and returned to
the factory.

This so enraged the other strikers that they waited for the deserters
in the evening, when they were going home from work. They first tried
to persuade their weaker companions to reconsider their decision and
somehow the argument ended in a fight.

Dido Morgan, who was stationed as a picket further down the street,
came rushing up to the struggling, pulling, crying girls, hoping to
pacify them.

Almost instantly foreman Flint arrived, accompanied by an officer.
Pointing out Dido, with a diabolical grin he told the officer to arrest
her. The now frightened girls fell back while the officer dragged Dido
away, despite her protests.

That night she spent in the station-house, and in the morning she was
taken to the Essex Market Court, where the Judge, listening to the
policeman’s highly imaginative story, asked her what she had to say,
and though she endeavored to tell the truth, hustled her off with “ten
days or ten dollars.”

Being penniless she was sent to the Island, where she spent the most
miserable ten days of her life.

But her final release brought her no happiness or joy. She knew that
it was useless to return to her bare rooms, because of the rent being
overdue, and she had no friend but Margaret Williams, who had as much
as she could manage to provide for herself.

Disheartened, penniless and hungry, she spent the day wandering around
from one place to another, begging for any kind of work. At every place
they complained of having more workers than they needed.

Night came on and she thought of the Christian homes, ostensibly
asylums for such unfortunate beings as herself. She applied to several
along Second Avenue and Bleecker Street, but she found no refuge in
any. They were either filled, or because she had no professed religion
and had long since quit attending church, they barricaded their
Christian (?) quarters against her.

The last and only place, in which they made no inquiries about
religion, they charged twenty cents for a bed, and so the weary, hungry
girl was forced again to go out into the darkness.

She noticed an open door, leading to a dispensary, on Fourth Avenue,
and hiding herself in a dark corner of the hallway there, she spent the
night.

In the morning she got a glass of milk and a cup of broth in the diet
kitchen, and then she resumed her search for work.

It was useless. Tired out and discouraged she wandered on and on, until
she came to the Park. The unhappy girl sought the enticing shade, where
she watched the gay, merry people who passed before her. The more she
saw, the more despondent she became. They looked so blest, so happy.

Life gave them everything and gave her nothing.

It began to grow dark, and every one hurried from the Park. She had
no place to go, no one to care for her, nothing to live for, and she
walked further into the Park, helpless, hopeless.

How grand it would be to rest for evermore!

The thought came and charmed her. How sweet, how blessed a long, easy,
senseless slumber would be with no pain, no unhappiness, no hunger!

She noticed the reservoir, she climbed up and looked in. Like a bed of
velvet the dark waters lay quietly before her, and the rough darkness
of the surrounding country seemed to warn her to partake of what was
within her reach.

A great wave of peace welled up in her heart, her weariness disappeared
in an exquisite languor, which enwrapped her body and mind.

“‘Rest, everlasting rest,’ rang soothingly in my ears,” said Dido, in
conclusion, “and with a little cry of joy I went to plunge in”----

“And I saved you from a very rash deed,” broke in Dick. “My poor girl,
don’t you know there are hundreds of noble-hearted people in New York
who are always ready to help the unfortunate? There is charity and
Christianity in some places.”

“But they are hard to find,” said the girl, “and they do not exist in
so-called benevolent homes.”

“Now, I tell you what we will do,” said Dick, cordially, lighting a
match and looking at his watch. “We will first try to find something to
eat, for I am beastly hungry, and then I will take you to your friend,
Maggie Williams, if you will kindly show the way, and we will see what
can be done for a young woman who gives up so easily.”

To be frank, Richard doubted the girl’s story. Yet he did not want
to act hastily in the matter. If the girl had suffered all she said,
he felt that not only would he gladly help her, but Penelope would be
delighted to make life brighter for the poor victim of fate. So he
decided to take her to the home of Margaret Williams, if such a person
really existed, and learn from others the true story, if what she had
told him should prove to be false.

In this Richard showed himself very wise for a young man. If it was
really a case of charity no one would be kinder or more liberal, but he
doubted.




CHAPTER VI.

IS THE GIRL HONEST?


In a small oyster-house near the Park they found something to eat, and
Dick also found that he had saved the life of a remarkably pretty girl.

At any other time Dick Treadwell would have scorned to eat dinner--and
such a dinner--at such a place. This night he not only ate, but enjoyed
it. He never noticed the uninviting appearance of the big, fat German
waiter who had, when they first came in, leaned with both hands on the
table and said briefly, and with a rising accent, “Beer?”

He slapped his dirty towel over the sticky circular spots on the table
as Richard ordered dinner from a card that looked as if it had never
served any other purpose than that of fly-paper.

The waiter went out, after receiving the order, carefully closing the
door after him. The room was evidently meant for small parties, for the
only thing in it was the table and four chairs.

“Don’t you think the room is too warm?” Dick asked, and hardly waiting
for his guest’s reply, he got up and opened wide the door.

The waiter spread a cotton napkin over the table before Dick and Dido
Morgan, and set some pickles and crackers, and pepper and salt, and
two little bits of butter, the size and shape of a half dollar, on the
table; then he brought the clams.

This done he went out again, very carefully closing the door after
him. Richard called to him, but he did not answer, so Dick got up and
opened the door himself. Dido Morgan looked at him with an innocent,
questioning smile. She had no idea that Dick could possibly have any
other reason for opening the door, than that it made the room cooler.
When the waiter came in the next time he closed the door. Richard’s
face flushed angrily as he said sternly:

“I wish that door open. You will please leave it so.”

The waiter gave an impudent, almost familiar grin, but the door was
open during the rest of the dinner.

As Dido Morgan sat opposite Dick eating daintily but appreciatively,
the color came into her dark, creamy cheeks, and her brown eyes
sparkled like the reflection of the sun in a still, dark pool. Her
loose, damp hair, hanging in little rings about her broad brow and
white throat, was very appealing to the artistic sense.

And her look--it was so frank, so sincere, so trusting, and her eyes
had such a way of looking startled, that Dick felt a warmer thrill of
interest invade his soul than he ever thought possible for any other
girl than Penelope.

Before dinner was finished Richard had called her “Miss Dido,” and
“Dido,” and she had not even thought of resenting it.

There are a great many false ideas that are forgotten in such moments
as these.

The one had seen the other face death, and a human feeling had for the
time swept all false pretenses and hollow etiquette away.

They drove down to Mulberry Street in a coupé, and if such a thing was
unusual to the young girl whom Richard rescued, it was well hidden
under a manner of ease that suggested familiarity.

“There is where Maggie Williams lived,” she said, as they turned down
Mulberry Street. Richard leaned forward, but in the semi-light got
little idea of the appearance of the place.

“She may have gone from there by this time,” Dido continued, showing
a slight hesitation that threatened to shake Dick’s not over-strong
confidence in her. “She lived there when I went away, but so many
things happen in such short time among the poor.”

“Don’t stop the driver,” she said, quickly, as Dick pounded on the
glass with the head of his walking-stick. “Drive on to the corner. It
is such an unusual sight to see a carriage stop before these houses,
that it would likely attract a crowd, and you don’t want to do that.”

“Why?” asked Dick, curiously. When he could not see her face he liked
her less.

“Well, you look so unlike the people who live in this neighborhood, and
if you attract notice, you might find it a very uncomfortable place for
an elegant young man to be in at almost midnight,” Dido Morgan said,
with a light laugh; then, taking matters into her own hands, she opened
the door of the coupé, and called the driver to stop.

Richard had no sooner dismissed the driver than he regretted it. He
again felt the old mistrust of the strange girl, and recollections of
tales he had read of female trappers and the original snares they lay
for their victims returned forcibly to his mind.

He felt he was a fool to come here at night, but he was ashamed to
go back now. The night was warm and the heat had driven many of the
people out of the tenements in search of a breath of air, and the dark
groups of silent men and women who filled the door-steps and basement
entrances and curbstones, and the ill-favored people who passed them
offered Dick little hope for succor, if indeed he was the victim of a
plot.

There were no policemen to be seen anywhere, although Dick knew the
police headquarters were not far distant.

Quietly he walked beside the girl, who, too, had grown silent. He
scorned to confess his fears, and he felt a determination to meet what
there might be waiting for him, even if it be death, before he would
weaken and retreat.

The girl entered the doorway of a dark, dilapidated house, the only
doorway which had no lounger, a fact in itself suspicious to Dick. He,
with many misgivings and a decided palpitation of the heart, stumbled
on the step as he started to follow.

Had he done right and was he safe in trusting and following this clever
girl?

Before he had time to decide she caught his hand and led him into the
dark hall.

A little weak thought, that doubtless holding his hand was part of the
plan to give him less chance for self-defense, flashed through his
mind.

Gropingly he put forth his other hand, and a thrill of horror shot
through him like an electric shock as it came in contact with a man’s
coat and a warm, yielding body.




CHAPTER VII.

MR. MARTIN SHANKS: GUARDIAN.


“Did you run against something?” asked Dido, as she felt Richard start.

“It’s only me,” said a deep bass voice, which had such an honest and
harmless ring, that Richard’s fear and nervousness dropped from him
like a cloak.

“It’s all right,” Dido responded cheerfully, as she stopped and knocked
on a door.

Dick knew it was a door from the sound, but he was unable to
distinguish door from wall in the darkness.

It was opened by some one inside. Dick saw the outlines of a
girlish figure between himself and the light, and heard a surprised
exclamation: “Why, Dido!”

They stepped in, and the girl closed the door and hastened to set
chairs for her visitors.

“Mr. Treadwell, this is Margaret Williams,” said Dido; then turning to
Maggie she added, simply, “Mr. Treadwell has been kind to me.”

“We were frightened about you,” Maggie said, her eyes beaming warmly
on Dido. “I heard you got in trouble ’round at the shop. I went out to
look you up, but I couldn’t find out anything about you either at the
station-house or at your house.”

“I s’pose you know,” she added, “that the girls went in? Yes, the
strike is off. They wouldn’t take me back, so I’m doing what I can for
Blind Gilbert, and he pays rent and buys what we eat.”

Dido, in a few simple words, frankly told Maggie all that had befallen
her since her arrest. She did not omit her rash attempt to commit
suicide, and Richard’s timely intervention.

Meanwhile Richard had taken a glance about the little bare room.

A plain, single-board table, covered with a bit of badly worn oilcloth,
had been pulled out into the room, and they now sat around it. A little
low oil lamp, with a broken chimney--which had been patched with a
scrap of paper--was the only light in the room. Dick carefully slipped
a paper bill under the newspaper which lay on the table where Margaret
had flung it when she came to open the door for them.

A small stove stood close to the wall, and on it was a tin coffee-pot
and an iron tea-kettle with a broken spout.

Above the stove was a little shelf, which held some tallow candles in
a jar, and some upturned flat-irons.

The bed looked very unsafe and uncomfortable. It was covered with a
gayly colored calico patchwork quilt. The patchwork was made in some
set pattern, which was unlike anything Richard had ever seen or dreamed
of.

Several pieces of as many carpets lay on the floor, and a much worn
blanket was hung on two nails over the window, to take the place of a
shade or curtain.

Dick’s heart ached at the evident signs of poverty, and a warm instinct
of protection possessed him.

“I hope you will allow me to be of some assistance to you,” he said,
when the girls, having finished their confessions, became silent. “I
think I can, in a few days, assure Miss Dido of a better position than
the one she has lost.”

As he spoke, there came a timid knock on the door, and Maggie sprang to
open it.

“I jest thought I’d drop in tew see how you wuz gettin’ along, Maggie,”
said from the darkness the same deep bass voice that had restored
Richard’s courage in the hallway.

It was followed by a tall, lank man, who awkwardly held a black, soft
felt hat in his big red hands. His rough clothes seemed to hang on him,
and he held one shoulder higher than the other in an apologetic manner,
as if to assure the world that his towering above the average height
of people was neither his fault nor desire. His bushy and unattractive
dust-colored hair seemed determined to maintain the stiffness which
its owner lacked. His red mustache and chin-whiskers were resolved to
out-bristle his hair. His shaggy eyebrows overhung modest blue eyes
that looked as if they fain would draw beneath those brows as a turtle
draws its head under its shell.

He bashfully greeted Dido, and she introduced him to Richard as “Mr.
Martin Shanks, who boards with some friends upstairs.” He held out his
big hand to Dick, saying:

“Glad to make yer acquaintance, sir!” all the while blushing vividly.

“We ran against you in the hall, I think,” ventured Dido.

“Yes, I was standin’ there when you came,” he answered, slowly,
shooting a glance from under his brows at Maggie.

Maggie looked down, and Dido was surprised to see her blush. She would
have been more surprised if Maggie had told her that this great, big,
hulking man had stood guard at her door every night since her mother
died.

“I should jedge you don’t belong to this yer neighborhood,” he
remarked to Richard, shooting forth a jealous look.

“You are correct,” replied Richard, pleasantly.

“What might yer business be?” he demanded further, nervously turning
his hat.

“Down here, or my professional employment?” asked Richard, waking up.

“What do ye do fer a livin?”

“Oh! I see. I’m a lawyer,” Dick replied, glibly.

“A lawyer, eh? An’ I take it as yer not a married man, else ye wouldn’t
be payin’ attentions to this ’ere orphan girl.”

“You don’t understand,” Maggie interrupted, startled. “Dido was in
trouble and Mr. Treadwell found her and brought her here.”

“Martin should mind his own business,” exclaimed Dido, indignantly. “If
this was my house I would show him the door.”

“Not on my account,” interposed Dick, warmly. “If Mr. Shanks is a
friend of the family he has a right to know the reason of a stranger
being here.”

“These young girls ’ere, sir,” explained frightened Martin Shanks,
“have no parints to take care on them, an’ I says to meself, when Mis’
Williams wuz a lyin’ dead here, that I’d see no harm come aninst them
while I wuz about.”

“That was very good of you, Mr. Shanks,” cordially replied Dick, and
then, bidding the girls good night, he left. Martin Shanks, wishing to
see the stranger well out of the neighborhood before he quit his post
of guardianship for the remainder of the night, accompanied Dick as far
as Broadway, and Dick was not sorry to have his escort.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE MISSING STENOGRAPHER.


When next Richard went to Mulberry Street, it was to notify Dido Morgan
of a position he had secured for her with a prominent photographer. Her
duties would be light and not unpleasant, as she was merely required to
take charge of the reception room.

Dido was delighted; nothing could have suited her better. Before
her father died, she had devoted a great deal of time and study to
sketching, and now this work seemed as though it might lead her nearer
to her old life.

While Richard was talking to the girls he heard a scraping noise in
the hall, and presently the door opened, and an old man, with such
a decided roundness of the shoulders that it was almost a hump, felt
with his cane the way before him and apparently finding everything all
right entered and closed the door. A little, short-tailed, spotted dog,
with a world of affection bound up in his black-and-white hide, slid in
beside the man’s uncertain legs, and now stood wiggling his body with a
wiggle that bespoke affection for the man.

“Maggie, is you ready for me and Fritz?” he asked, timidly.

“Yes, Gilbert,” she replied, gently, and she went to him and guided his
uncertain feet to a chair which stood before the table.

“The young gentleman who was so good to Dido is here,” she explained,
and he lifted his head quickly as if he would like to see. At this,
Richard very thoughtfully came forward and taking the old man’s shaking
hand, gave it a warm pressure.

“I’m glad to know you, sir,” Blind Gilbert said, deferentially. “May
be you know me, sir. It’s sixteen years this coming August since I’ve
had a stand on Broadway. I don’t do much business, but I’m thankful for
all I have. The Lord, in all this mercy, seen fit to afflict me, but he
never let old Gilbert starve.”

“How did you lose your sight?” Richard asked awkwardly, not wishing to
express any opinion concerning the mercy of making a man blind.

“Well, it came very sudden like. I had a little shop in this very room,
sir, and I lived in the one back, where I’ve lived ever since I lost
my shop. I done a good business, as I had done ever since me and me
old woman came out from Ireland, these forty years ago. Me old woman
fell sick and after running up a long doctor bill, she died, the Lord
bless her soul, for if we had our fights, she was a good woman to me.
One mornin’ after she had been put in her grave, I started out to go
across Mulberry Street. The sun was shinin’ bright when I started out
the door and it was as fine a mornin’ as I ever seen. When I got to
the middle of the street, everything got as dark as night and I yelled
for help. They took me to the doctor’s but he said I had gone blind
and nothing could help me. Then they took me to a hospital, and after
a while I could see some light with one eye, but then it left and they
said nothing could be done. I couldn’t stay shut up, so I came back.
Me little shop was gone and everything I owned, so I got a license and
went on to Broadway and begged until I got enough to rent the back room
again and there I’ve lived ever since.”

“Does what you get pay all your expenses?” Richard asked.

“The city gives me forty dollars a year, and I manage to make enough
with that to keep me.”

Maggie took a newspaper off the table which disclosed beneath it the
table spread for a simple meal. She took a bit of fried steak and some
fried potatoes from the oven and set them before Gilbert.

Richard felt somewhat embarrassed and started to leave, but they all
urged him so warmly to stay that he sat down again. When Maggie poured
out Gilbert’s coffee, she offered a cup of it to Dick. He, fearing to
hurt her feelings by refusing to partake of what she had made, accepted
the great thick cup. It was the worst dose Dick ever took. He tried to
maintain an air of enjoyment, but he found it impossible to prevent his
face drawing very stiff and grave when he tried to swallow the horrible
stuff.

“Won’t you have some more coffee? This is warmer,” Maggie asked, as
Dick at last set the cup down.

“No, no,” he answered, thickly, but most decidedly.

Maggie gave him a startled, inquiring look, and poor Richard felt
himself blush as he endeavored to swallow the mouthful of coffee-grains
he got with the last of the coffee. Finding this unpleasant as well as
impracticable, he disposed of them as best he could in his handkerchief
and hastened to reassure her.

“I never, never drink coffee until after dinner,” he said, earnestly,
“and only broke my usual rule on this occasion because you made it.”

He gave her a smile with this pretty speech; while it was not exactly
what his pleased smiles usually were, it made Maggie blush with
pleasure.

The spotted dog, having swallowed his food after the manner of people
at railway stations, came rubbing and sniffling around Richard’s knee
in a very friendly spirit.

“Fine dog, sir, Fritz is,” Blind Gilbert said, hearing the dog’s
sounds. “Gettin’ old, though, like the old man. Now, Mag’,
child,--she’s me ’dopted daughter, sir, I never had no children of me
own--if you’re ready, me girl, we’ll start for me place of business.”

Maggie put on her hat and fastened a chain to Fritz’s collar, and then
giving Richard a little smile, took blind Gilbert by the hand and led
him out.

“Maggie is very wretched about her sister Lucille,” said Dido,
confidentially, when left alone with Dick. “She went away two weeks
before Mrs. Williams died, and she hasn’t come back yet.”

“Did she say that she would be away for any time?” Richard asked, with
a show of interest that he was far from feeling. He was rather weary of
troublesome girls just then.

“No, that’s it,” eagerly. “They hadn’t any idea that she wasn’t coming
home.”

“Indeed! Where had she gone?”

“They don’t even know that. She said she was going out to do some extra
work.”

“What kind of work?”

“She was a typewriter and a stenographer,” Dido explained, “and in the
evenings she used to get extra work. This night she went to work, but
she did not come back, and Maggie worries over it.”

“I should think she would,” Richard replied kindly. “Why didn’t Maggie
go to her sister’s employer? Probably he could throw some light on the
subject.”

“She did go to him, and he said Lucille had asked for two weeks’
vacation, which he had given her, and Maggie didn’t want to tell him
that Lucille had gone out to do some extra work, for fear he wouldn’t
like it. He paid her by the week, and didn’t know she did outside work.
Maggie thought then she would be back, but now it is five weeks and she
hasn’t come back yet.”

“And poor mother loved her so,” added Maggie huskily, as she re-entered
the room, having left Blind Gilbert on his corner.

“Do you think we could do anything towards finding her?” Dido asked
eagerly.

“I hardly see what you could do, unless you notify the police and
advertise for her,” Dick replied, listlessly. He had enough girls on
his mind now, with Penelope, the Park Mystery girl and Dido, and he did
not feel anxious to add another to his already too large list. He felt
satisfied to look after Penelope, and was desirous of assuming sole
charge of her, but did not want any more.

“I should say that she had received a better position somewhere, and
that you will hear from her before long,” Dick added, encouragingly.

“Oh, she would surely send for her clothes if she had,” Dido said,
earnestly. “If you will tell us what to do--what is the best thing--we
will try to do it; Maggie is so anxious to find her.”

“I can easily do for you all that can be done,” Dick replied. “If you
can give me a description of her, I will send it to Police Headquarters
and have them search for her.”

“She was slender, and had a lovely white complexion and blue eyes, and
black hair,” Dido began, Richard writing it in a little notebook.

“Was she tall or short?” he asked, pausing for a reply.

“About my height--don’t you think so, Maggie? I’m five feet four and
one-half inches.”

“How was she dressed?”

“She had on her black alpaca dress, and wore a round black turban, with
a bunch of green grass on the back of it,” said Dido.

“And she carried her light jacket along to wear home, ’cause mother
thought it would be cold,” Maggie said, helping Dido along. “Lucille
always had nicer dresses than I had. She was twenty-one, though she
didn’t look it. I am older than she is.”




CHAPTER IX.

THE STRANGER AT THE BAR.


Richard Treadwell sent a description of Maggie Williams’ missing sister
to the police authorities, and also inserted a cautious but alluring
personal in all the leading newspapers; still the missing Lucille did
not return, and nothing was heard of her.

“My God, what it is to be poor!” Richard mused one morning as he
walked up Broadway. “Why, the glimpses I get during my visits to
Mulberry Street, of the trials and privations the poor endure, makes
me heartsick. There’s Gilbert, blind and helpless, forced to spend his
time on a Broadway corner begging his living. Sitting there waiting
for people to give him pennies, and yet he doesn’t want to die. Why, he
clings to life as if he had the wealth of Monte Cristo. And all those
untidy, unhappy women down there, with peevish, crying, dirty children,
live on in their garrets and cellars, for what?

“They have no pleasures, no happiness, no comfort, and they are raising
families to live out the same miserable existence. Ugh!

“And there are Maggie and Dido! They live in that miserable,
God-forsaken room, and haven’t a decent-looking dress to their backs.
There are no drives, no jewels, no pretty dresses, no fond petting for
them, yet, bless their brave hearts, they are more cheerful than most
girls I know who live on the Avenue. Dido is happy now that she has
work, and Maggie would be happy if it wasn’t for her absent sister.
By Jove, I respect those girls. I admire their spirit, and if I don’t
find Maggie’s sister it won’t be my fault. It’s just as easy to solve
the mystery of two girls, as it is to solve the mystery of one,” he
thought, with grim humor, as he had made no progress in either case.

“I haven’t the least doubt that Maggie’s sister, tiring of the poverty
at home, found snugger quarters and is sticking to them. If I only
knew what she looked like I would likely run across her in some of my
rounds. New York is a very little place to those that go about. I’ll
wager if I knew that girl, and she was running around, I’d meet her
inside of three evenings. If I could only identify her----By Jove! I
have it. I’ll get Dido, who knows the girl, and I’ll take her to the
places where we are likely to meet the missing sister. Whew! Why didn’t
I think of it before? If I don’t know all about her inside of a week
I’ll think--well, I’ll find the little scamp, that’s all.”

Delighted with his new scheme, Richard cut across Twenty-fourth Street
and went into the Hoffman House bar-room. Without stopping he went
through to the office, where he wrote and sent a note to Dido, asking
her to take dinner with him that evening. Then he walked back to the
bar to congratulate himself--after the manner of his sex--for taking
the road, whose way, he thought, led to success.

Richard stood before the famous bar and marvelled how daylight seemed
to rob the room of half its fascination. The men of the world, the men
of fashion, the outlandish youth of dudedom, the be-diamonded actor and
bejewelled men whose modes of life would ill bear investigation, had
all fled with the night.

The Flemish tapestry looked dull, and the exquisite Eve was a less
glaring white, and seemed to have lost expression in a newfound
modesty, and the nymphs and satyr looked dull and tired. How different
from the hours when the gas brought beautiful colors into the cut-glass
pendants on the chandeliers, and everything seemed awake and alive
where now they slept. The bartenders looked dull and uninterested, and
a man who stood alone at the bar drank as if he had nothing else to do.

He was a low, heavy-set man, dressed handsomely. He wore a black beard
and mustache, and his small, black, bright eyes critically surveyed,
across his high nose, the handsome and genial Richard. He set down an
empty whiskey glass from which he had just been drinking, and, after
taking a swallow of ice water, he remarked, in a voice perfectly void
of emotion:

“I beg your pardon, but do you know that you are being ‘shadowed’?”

“I knew they were after me some days ago, but I thought they had given
me up,” Dick said, laughingly. “What do you know about it?”

“I saw a man dog after you to the office when you first went through,
and when you returned he came after you and went on out the side door.
He’ll be on the watch for you when you go out,” he continued, in that
even, passionless voice.

“You are very kind,” Dick said, gratefully, “to warn me of the fellow.”

“The game was too easy, if you didn’t know,” he said, with a malicious
grin. “I only wanted to give the fellow some work--make him earn his
money. You can both work at the same game now.”

“You are very kind,” Dick repeated, mechanically. He had a faint
impression that the stranger had warned him of his followers more with
malicious motives than with any feeling of good will, still the next
moment he felt ashamed of harboring such a thought against the man.

“If you care to know the fellow, I’ll walk out with you and point him
out,” the man offered gruffly, still with a gleam in his eyes which
showed that the expected discomfort of the two men afforded him if not
exactly pleasure, at least, amusement.

“Thank you. Won’t you join me first?” asked Dick. “What will you have?
Whiskey”--to the bartender. “I am very much obliged for your kindness,
and if I can ever be of any service to you, command me,” and the
impulsive Dick took his card case from his pocket and handed one of
the rectangular bits of pasteboard to the man just as they both lifted
their glasses.

The stranger glanced at the name and turned ghastly pale. His glass
fell from his nerveless fingers to the floor with a crash, and he
leaned heavily against the mahogany bar.




CHAPTER X.

TOLMAN BIKE.


One evening Mr. Richard Treadwell found the following letter awaiting
him when he went to his rooms to dress for dinner.

                                      “Washington, _June Third, 18--_.

  “Dear Dick:

  “I am glad to say our prolonged visit has drawn to a close, and
  to-morrow we return to dear old New York and--Dick. I wonder how much
  we have been missed. You cannot imagine how anxious I am to see you.
  I feel sure that you are ready to tell me all about the poor dead
  girl.

  “You can’t imagine how I feel about her. Auntie says I am morbid and
  depressed. When I go to bed at night and close my eyes I can see her
  again lying before us, her masses of golden hair, her pretty little
  hands, her delicate clothes, and I can’t go to sleep for wondering
  whose darling she was and how she came to stray so far away from home
  and that they never found her.

  “I firmly believe she eloped with some rascal who tired of her at
  last and murdered her to free himself.

  “When will you solve this unhappy mystery?

  “Your short, unsatisfactory letters, I have felt all along, were a
  mere blind to keep me from suspecting the surprising story you have
  in reserve for me.

  “If you have been wasting your time in being devoted to some of the
  many girls who used to attract your attention, and neglecting the
  Park mystery case, I feel that I can never forgive you.

  “I forgot to tell you in my last that we met Clara Chamberlain and
  her mother here. They came over for a day to arrange with their
  lawyers something about Clara’s Washington property. Clara confessed
  to me that the report which was published awhile ago concerning her
  engagement was true. You remember none of us credited it at the time.
  Well, it is true, and the wedding is to be celebrated privately on
  the seventh. Auntie is to go and I promised Clara I would be there.
  Will this not be rather a blow to your friend Chauncey Osborne?

  “Her fiancé, I believe, is quite unknown in our set. You know how
  very peculiar dear Clara always was! She, of course, says that he is
  charming and a man of culture and ability, a prominent politician and
  bound to make a stir in the world.

  “Auntie met an old friend here, Mr. Schuyler, who went to school with
  auntie. They have been living their school-days over again--it seems
  they were boy and girl lovers--and to hear them laugh over the things
  they used to do makes me laugh from very sympathy.

  “Do you know, girls don’t have half the fun now that they did in
  auntie’s day. I will never be able, when I get to be an old woman,
  to sit down and recall with a playmate the funny scrapes we got into
  when we were children. When I hear auntie and Mr. Schuyler talk, I
  feel so sorry that my life has been so common-place.

  “But there--I have written four times as much as you did in your
  last. Mr. Schuyler is going over to New York with us, and we are
  going to show him about. He has not been there since he was a boy.

  “Hoping you have been a good boy during my absence, I am,

  “Very sincerely your (s),
  “PENELOPE.”

  To

  “RICHARD TREADWELL, Esqre.,
  “‘The Washington,’
  “New York City.”

  “I forgot to say that Clara’s fianceé, I have been told, is the sole
  proprietor of some kind of a factory downtown which assures him quite
  a nice income. His name is Tolman Bike. Did you ever hear of him?”

“The name sounds familiar to me,” thought Dick, as he folded the letter
and put it in his pocket. “Still I do not remember ever knowing such a
person. Probably I recollect it, from reading that notice of Clara’s
engagement, although I had forgotten the whole matter.”

Dick Treadwell was not feeling very easy. He longed for Penelope’s
return, yet he dreaded it, knowing that he had no progress to report in
the task she had imposed upon him. He had thought she would be pleased
with his conduct in regard to Dido Morgan and Maggie Williams, but
when she had expressed a hope that he had not been devoting himself to
girls and wasting the time that belonged to the work he had undertaken,
he felt a little dubious as to the way in which she would receive any
account of the part he took with the poor girls whom he wished to
befriend.

“Isn’t the matter of likes and dislikes a strange thing?” Dick asked,
when, an hour later, he and Dido Morgan were dining together. He
refilled the glasses which stood by their plates. “This is very good
wine, don’t you think? Let me help you to some spaghetti. I have often
wondered why at first meeting we conceive a regard for some people and
a dislike for others.

“You remember the incident I related to you the first, or rather the
second time you dined with me, of the man I met in the Hoffman House
who warned me that I was shadowed. Well, I have run across him several
times since. I have the strangest feeling for him, and he apparently
dislikes me. I can’t say that I like him, but I have such a desire to
be with and near him that I can’t say I dislike him either. By Jove,
I was surprised when he fell against the bar that day and looked so
miserably ill. I thought at first it was the sight of my name that
affected him, but he assured me that it was a spasm of the heart, a
chronic complaint of his.”

“What was his name?” asked Dido, breaking off a bit of bread. She was
growing prettier every day since Richard had secured a position for
her, and to-night she was bewitching in a new gray cloth gown.

“Clark, he said; I think I asked him for it,” said Dick, laughing.

“You don’t seem to have tired of going around to all sorts of
restaurants,” he continued, noticing the happy expression on Dido’s
pretty face.

“Tired of it!”

Her tone but faintly expressed what untold happiness those evenings had
been to her.

“I thought you would be disgusted with our search before it was half
finished,” he said, looking admiringly into her soft brown eyes that
had given him one of those startled glances which half bewitched him.

“It has been heaven!” she said, with a sigh of rapture. “I love the
bright lights, and the well-dressed, happy people, and the busy, silent
waiters, and the white linen and the fine dishes. Oh, I think people
who can take their dinners out all the time must be very, very happy.”

“You would not think so if you were a poor, forlorn man,” he said,
smiling at her enthusiasm, “and had to dine out three hundred and
sixty-five times a year, not counting breakfast and luncheon. I’ve
started out evenings and I’ve stopped on Broadway and wondered where
on earth I should eat. Delmonico’s, St. James, Hoffman, all are old
stories, clear down the list. Here I had luncheon, there probably I had
breakfast, the other place I dined last night or the night before, and
at last I turn down some cross street, and go into a cheap place where
a fellow can’t get a mouthful that it doesn’t gag him, so I’ll have an
appetite to-morrow. I hate the sight of a bill of fare and I get so
that I’ll fool around for half an hour until some man near me orders,
and then I order the same thing. I tell you it’s dreadful not to know
where to eat.”

“I suppose that is the reason some men marry?” she asked, brightly.

“Well, not exactly,” he said, flushing slightly.

“Do the people you see in the restaurants never interest you?” Dido
asked, seeing he had become silent.

“No, I never notice them unless it is some one with loud dress or
manners, and then I watch them as I watch a lot of monkeys in a cage.”

“Every place I go I see some one interesting,” Dido said, slowly. “Look
at that fat woman over there, in the cherry-red dress and hat. See how
proud that little dark man looks of having such a woman with him. I
have heard her tell him of her former great triumphs as an actress, and
I can imagine a story of her life. See that slender, pretty, dark-eyed
girl, with very white brow, and very red cheeks, and very dark shadows
about her eyes, and very, very golden hair. See her smile and talk
to that insipid-looking man, with an enormous nose and bald head and
eye-glasses, whose ‘villain’s mustache,’ carries a sample of everything
he had for dinner. Now can’t you picture that pretty girl is some
ballet girl ambitious to rise. He, a man of means and influence, and
she forgets his looks and that he talks through his nose, and tries to
impress him with her ability.”

“Hum!” said Richard, giving Dido a strange smile. “I’m afraid my
imagination is not as great or as charitable as yours. Tell me what you
think of the party to our left.”

“That poor little man without legs?” asked Dido, quick tears coming
to her eyes. “He has a bright, happy face though, and he has
diamonds--many of them, on his fingers. I think that large woman who
sits beside him and looks into his eyes so affectionately, loves him
very much because of his affliction. I’m sure I would. And that man and
woman opposite, though I don’t like their looks, seem to heed every
word he says and to be very fond of him.”

Richard laughed softly.

“Well, Dido, I don’t want to spoil your dream, but that little man has
a brain that is far out of proportion to his weak and dwarfed body. He
stands at the head of his profession, and has accumulated wealth by
his industry and ability. Quite a reproach to us worthless fellows,
who were born with legs. I have a great admiration for him, but those
people with him neither care for him for his ability or his affliction.
They are not of that kind.”

“What then?” asked Dido, in distress.

“Money--money, child. It’s the story you could read at almost every
table here. That’s why I don’t allow my imagination any liberty in
restaurants. Your eyes have not yet tried the worldly glasses which
experience has put on mine. And now, while we drink our coffee, let us
talk about Maggie’s sister.”

A girl came through, trying to sell some badly assorted flowers, and a
black and yellow bird in a cage, high above their heads, thrusts his
long beak and head through the wires and, impudently twisting his head
to see what was taking place below him, gave vent at intervals to a
shrill, defiant cry.

Meanwhile, Richard lighted a cigarette and resumed the conversation.

“I think it is useless to hunt for Maggie’s sister any longer. We have
made a pretty thorough search of the resorts where I thought we were
likely to meet her. I confess I am disappointed. I was sure we would
run across her somewhere, and that you would recognize her. Do you
think it is possible for you not to recognize her?”

“No, indeed! I’d recognize Lucille Williams anywhere,” Dido replied,
earnestly.

“My private opinion--don’t tell Maggie--is, that she tired of her
family and home and that she took herself to better quarters and means
to keep them in ignorance of her whereabouts, fearing they would ask
her to give towards their support.”

“I hardly think Lucille was as heartless as that,” thoughtfully replied
Dido. “She was vain and fond of dressing, but I don’t think she would
be as mean as that.”

“What were her habits?” asked Dick.

“Habits? What she did regularly? Well, she used to go to Coney Island
and Rockaway and such places in the Summer, with some boys she met in
the places she worked, but after she got work in the office at the
factory where we worked, she got very steady and she wouldn’t go out
with anybody any more. The nights she went out she went to do extra
work.”

“How did she get along with your employer? You gave me the impression
that he was very brutal,” Dick said, musingly.

“Oh, Lucille got along splendidly with him. I always thought he
was horrible, but she never said anything about him. She was very
easy-natured, anyway, and I have a bad temper,” said Dido, in a
shamefaced way.

“How did he like her, do you know?”

“Who? Tolman Bike?” asked Dido, quickly.

“Tolman Bike? Why”--stammered Dick.

“He was the proprietor, you know, and Lucille was his stenographer,”
exclaimed Dido. “I don’t know what he thought of her, for Lucille
didn’t talk much; but she seemed to get along well enough.”

Dido became silent, as Richard was intent on his own thoughts.

Tolman Bike was the name of the man who was to marry Clara Chamberlain.

Tolman Bike was also the name of the employer of Lucille and Maggie
Williams and Dido Morgan.

Tolman Bike, Miss Chamberlain’s fianceé, was the proprietor of a
downtown factory, so it must be one and the same man.

Well, and if so, could it be possible that Tolman Bike, the man who
was engaged to marry a banker’s daughter, could have been in love with
Lucille Williams, a poor stenographer, and persuaded her to leave her
home for him?

Richard was a young man, and the idea was not a surprising one to him.
According to what he could learn, the dark-haired stenographer was fond
of the things she could little afford to possess, and it was likely
that her employer, knowing her desires, made it possible for her to
gratify them.

Now that he was to marry, he would not be likely to hold out any
inducement for the girl to stay with him, and if they should happen
across her now it was possible that she would gladly return to the
humble home of her sister.

Still, supposing Tolman Bike had found no attraction for him in the
stenographer? It was a very delicate thing to handle, considering that
Richard’s knowledge was mostly supposition.

“Do you think that Maggie’s sister really worked those nights she was
away from home?” Dick asked Dido.

“She always brought extra money home, which proved she did,” Dido
replied positively.

“Did she ever talk about Tolman Bike?”

“Never, except when she mentioned that he had dictated more work than
usual, or something of that kind.”

“Well, I believe that Tolman Bike can tell me something about Maggie’s
sister,” Richard said. Dido looked at him with a smile of doubt. “If
she is not with him, he can tell me who she is with, and that is just
as well. I must see him immediately. I have no time to lose, for three
days from to-morrow he is to be married.”




CHAPTER XI.

WHO WAS THE MAN THAT BOUGHT THE GOWN?


But Tolman Bike was not easily found.

Richard Treadwell got up early and went to the box factory, only to be
told that Mr. Bike, suffering from ill-health, had gone out of the city
for a time.

The people in charge of the shop either feigned ignorance or did not
know when he was to return, but Dick knew, in view of Mr. Bike’s
approaching marriage, on the evening of the 7th, that he could not be
absent from the city more than two days at the very most.

But one thing he determined on. He would see Tolman Bike before his
marriage to Miss Chamberlain, and for Maggie Williams’s sake he would
know the whereabouts of her sister. And also for Maggie’s sake would he
do what he could for the sister to induce her to return to her home.

In the meantime Richard intended to make an extra effort to learn
something about the Park mystery girl.

He drove to the Morgue, and after some persuasion he got the bundle of
clothes the pretty dead girl had worn when found in the Park.

He took the gloves and gown and left the remaining articles with the
keeper.

He decided from the appearance of the dress that it had been made at
some expensive establishment. He further decided that he would make a
round of the fashionable dressmaking places and see if some one in them
would not be able to recognize the work.

If they recognized the work, tracing the owner home should be very
easy, he thought.

He took the gloves also, but like the dress, they had no mark that
would assist him in his search.

After trying several glove stores he abandoned this as impracticable,
for no one claimed the gloves as having been bought from them, and even
if they had known the gloves were from their stock, it would have been
impossible to tell who bought them.

Carefully he made a tour of the fashionable dressmakers. He felt
dreadfully embarrassed as he entered the different establishments
with the large parcel in his arms. The women in waiting, as well as
the women customers, looked at him curiously, and when he asked, in a
hesitating way, to see the proprietor or the forewoman, he could hardly
endure the amused smiles of those who were eagerly listening to hear
him state his business.

He thought all sorts of things which made him uncomfortable. First,
the idea came to him that they would think he had brought a dress to
be made to wear in amateur theatricals, or at a masquerade. But that
was not half as bad as to imagine they thought he had a wife who was
displeased with a dress which she had returned by him.

The worst part of all was, when he showed the crumpled gown to the
persons in charge and inquired if they had made it, to have them first
show surprise at the unusual proceeding, then quiet indignation when
they found that if Richard had a secret concerning the gown he meant to
keep it, and when he guarded well his reasons for such a strange visit
they bowed him out with such an air of injured dignity that Richard
felt very small and unhappy.

There were a few that instead of assuming an injured air, laughed at
Richard, and one familiarly asked him if his wife refused to tell where
she got it.

The majority of the dressmakers denied the gown so emphatically that
Richard began to have a dim idea that the workmanship was not so fine
as had been thought and that the dress had come from a humbler shop.
He, not being a woman, did not know that one dressmaker never saw any
good in another dressmaker’s work.

When he reached the last establishment of any note and importance
it was almost dinner time. There were no customers about, and the
employees were making preparations for closing the shop. A girl came
forward and politely asked Richard his business.

He told her he wished to see whoever had charge of the place.
Requesting him to be seated she left soon to return with a man.

Richard felt more comfortable than he had all day. He explained to the
man, who listened kindly and politely, showing neither surprise nor
curiosity, that he wished to find the persons who had made the gown he
had with him, in order to find out who had paid for the dress and where
it had been delivered.

The man took the gown and went to the workroom. Later he returned and
went inside the small office.

Richard waited impatiently, and for the first time a hope of solving
the mystery of Central Park entered his heart. Surely when the man took
so much time he had discovered something.

Still Richard tried to keep his expectations from running away, lest he
be compelled to suffer a severe disappointment; so when the man came
towards him with the crumpled gown flung across his arm Richard offered
the consolation to himself that he had still left for his inquiry the
less fashionable dressmakers.

“The dress was made here,” the man said. Dick’s pulse started off at
a two-minute gait. “A letter was sent here containing an order for a
dress. The measurements were inclosed and with them over half the price
of the dress in bills. The letter stated that the person for whom it
was intended was out of town, and that in ten days the dress would be
called for.

“We often have customers order dresses from a distance,” the man
continued, “and we make them from measure. Ten days afterwards a
messenger boy came in with an order for us to receipt for the price of
the dress and a $100 bill, from which I took the rest of the price and
gave him the dress and the change.”

“Have you the letter that was sent you with the measurements and
order?” asked Richard, with a calmness that covered his excitement.

“No. The boy said he must have the letter containing the measurements,
and I sent up to the forewoman in the workroom. She had transferred
the order to her book, but had the letter pinned to the same page, so
she sent it down and I gave it to the messenger.”

“Have you not even the name and address of the person who ordered the
dress?” asked Dick, very much cast down by the turn things had taken.

“The name we have--it was Miss L. W. Smith--but there was no address.
It was an unusual thing for us to do, but as I told you, we have many
customers who send us orders for dresses when they are away from town,
and ladies are not always careful and exact about addresses. They are
liable to fall into the error of thinking that if we have once made a
garment for them, by merely signing their name we are sure to recall
their address and histories. We keep very satisfactory books, which
contain little histories of every garment we make, so we always refer
to that when a lady forgets to write us as much as is necessary for us
to know.”

“Had you ever made a dress for Miss Smith before?” Dick asked, still a
faint hope stirring his pulses.

“We thought so, but on consulting our books found the measurements
showed that one was for a large woman and the other woman must have
been slender.”

“I suppose it is absurd to ask if you have any idea of where the
messenger was from,” Dick said, rather faintly.

“I do not know, of course, but there is a messenger office on the block
above, where you might inquire. It is almost useless, though, for the
lady doubtless got the boy in her district, and as you are aware, this
is not a district of residences. Still, you would not lose anything by
asking. They may be able to offer you some assistance. I can give you
the date the boy called for the gown and I am very sorry I cannot do
more for you.”

The man had the gown put in a box for Richard, who left the
establishment feeling happier than he had since he and Penelope had
found the dead girl. He was on the track of her identity at last, and,
though it was a faint clue he possessed, he felt it a very sure one.

They did not show much inclination to help Richard at the District
Telegraph office. At first they said it was impossible to tell which
messenger it was, even if he had been from that place, and then, after
a fashion, they did make a search, but with no success.

“I know it,” said one of the messengers, who was standing at the
counter. “I had stopped out front to scrap with Reddy Ryan, who was
takin’ a basket of clothes home, and a duffer drove up in a carriage
and asked if I’d do a job for him, ’n I told him I’d been sent on
a call, so he said he’d give me a dime if I’d run an’ get him a
messenger. I came, an’ Shorty, No. 313, was sent out. I remember it
’cause he told me the man just sent him into Moscowitz’s to get a dress
an’ pay a bill, an’ gave him a dollar for doin’ it.”

“Where is No. 313?” asked Dick, his spirits rising fifty per cent.

“He’s off on a call. No, here he is,” said the messenger who knew
something. “Come here, Shorty, you’re wanted.”

Shorty was a red-headed boy with a freckled face and one eye. The other
messenger recalled the circumstances to him, and he sniffed his nose
and said he remembered.

Richard then asked if there was a lady in the carriage, but No. 313
thought not. Then Richard asked him what the man looked like, but No.
313 could not say, except that he had a mustache and wore a soft felt
hat. No. 313 had no opinion as to whether the carriage was private or
hired, but he “guessed” it wasn’t a livery hack, “cause the harness
jingled.”

The other and brighter messenger said the man was young, denied the
soft felt hat and pronounced the carriage a hired one.

       *       *       *       *       *

Richard hurried through his dinner, possessed of an unusual feeling
of happiness, and went for Dido Morgan to spend their last evening in
their peculiar search for Maggie’s sister.

To-morrow Penelope would be home, and he had learned something. If ever
so little, still it was something, and now that he had made such a
successful start he began to feel hopeful of a final success. He knew
now where the dress had been made and he knew a man had called for it.
He had engaged the two messenger boys, and with them he intended to
search the town over for the man who got the dress which the dead girl
had worn. Once he found the man, then the rest would be easy.

Richard took Dido to the Eden Musée, and after she had seen all the
figures that interested her, Dick took her up to the cosy retreat above
the orchestra, where the tall green palms cut off the glare of the
electric light. He ordered some ice cream for Dido and some Culmbacher
for himself, and lighting a cigarette he gave himself up to the
influence of the beautiful Hungarian music and dreams of Penelope.

The music sobbed and sighed, and Dick drifted on dream-clouds and was
lazily happy. He would solve the mystery, he felt sure, and then what
years of happiness with Penelope stretched before him. What a great
thing it was to be happy; life is so short, why should people allow
themselves to be unhappy for a second if they can possibly avoid it? An
unusual tenderness filled his heart, a peaceful happiness stole over
him, making him very gentle.

And poor little Dido, how dreary life loomed up before her! Dick’s
heart swelled with pity, and he sympathetically took the girl’s hand in
his and looked tenderly into the soft, brown eyes that looked at him so
trustingly.

There was so much happiness and love in waiting for him and Penelope,
but what did life offer to poor, lonely Dido?

And as the sobbing music ended in one long thrill, Richard, raising
his eyes from the richly tinted face of this sweet girl companion, saw
standing before him, with white face and stern eyes--

Penelope.




CHAPTER XII.

ONE AND THE SAME.


At the sight of Penelope Richard was dumbfounded.

He stifled a first impulse to spring to his feet and greet her when
he saw her stern, white and reproachful face, and sitting still tried
slyly to drop Dido’s hand.

With an almost imperceptible bow of recognition, Penelope went on after
her aunt and a gentleman who, unnoticed, had in advance passed Dick and
his companion.

“D---- it!” said Dick, warmly, in an undertone, and then he thought:
“I’m in for it now. Penelope will never believe that thinking of my
love for her made me feel a great pity for this lonely girl. She will
say I was making love to her, because I held her hand, and she will
never forgive it. What an ass I am to risk a life-time of happiness
with Penelope, just to sympathize with a girl whose life is lonely,
and yet, poor little devil--It’s all up with Penelope, I know. I can
tell by the look on her face that she will not forgive or believe me.
I’ll give up. It’s no use now trying to solve the Park mystery--no use
trying to do anything.”

Dido looked uneasy. She had seen all and she partly understood. She
said, in a little strained voice: “I am very sorry.”

“I wish some man would tramp on my toes or punch me in the ribs. I’d
just like a chance to knock the life out of somebody,” Dick said,
savagely.

Dido laughed softly at Dick’s outburst, but she delicately avoided the
subject of the lady who looked so angry.

“I forgot to tell you,” she said, at length, in an effort to change the
subject, “that it’s all arranged at last.”

“What?” asked Dick, curiously, the current of his thoughts leading him
to think it was something about Penelope.

“Why, the affair between Maggie and Martin Shanks. Why, didn’t you
know?” in great surprise. “Why, I saw it all the first night you
brought me back.”

“I didn’t notice anything in particular, but I recall plainly feeling
Mr. Shanks in the dark,” Richard replied, grimly. He always felt a
little disgust at the remembrance of his fears that night, and he
cherished a grudge against lanky Martin Shanks for waiting to be run
over in the hallway.

“Well, Maggie and Martin are in love,” exultingly.

“Possible!”

“Yes, and last night he proposed and was accepted, and Sunday they are
going to be married, and they are going down to Coney Island to spend
the first day of their honeymoon,” and Dido sighed in ecstasy.

“Lucky Martin, I’m sure; I wish I were in a like position,” Dick said,
half enviously, as the sad thought came that it was all over between
him and Penelope. “I must get a nice present for Maggie.”

“It was all so amusing,” said Dido, with a rippling laugh. “I’m half
sorry the courtship ended so soon. Martin was so faithful, so bashful,
and so desperately in love. The only time he ever showed the least
spirit was the night you took me home.”

“I remember it quite well,” Dick said, drily.

“I thought he was very insulting that night, but it’s just his way, you
know. He has liked you ever since then. You know he always stood guard
in the hall; every night I was out, I would stumble over him, yet he
couldn’t be coaxed to come in. When Maggie took Blind Gilbert out to
his stand, Martin always followed, so as to protect her coming home.
Still, if she looked at him or spoke to him, he was so embarrassed that
he couldn’t answer.”

“He gave her some flowers once, and when she thanked him, he was so
broke up that he stammered that he had found them on Broadway and
thought she might as well have them, and the great simpleton had bought
them expressly for her. Next he bought some cloth for a dress, and when
Maggie said she couldn’t take it, he said he didn’t want it, that he
couldn’t make any use of it. Just fancy Martin Shanks wearing a dress!”

Richard smiled at the picture presented to his mind of lanky Mr. Shanks
in a gown.

“His proposal was the funniest thing,” Dido continued, with a chuckle.
“There came a loud knock on the door. Maggie opened it, and there
before her was a work-basket. She picked it up and lifted the lid and
there lay a plain gold ring.”

“Martin,” she said, going out to where he was standing in the hall,
“you are too good to me. I can’t take these things.”

“I had an idee you’d let the parson, who brings us tracts, put that
there ring on yer finger, and then you’d have the right to do me
mendin’. It was an idee, maybe I’m wrong?”

“‘Then Maggie said gently, ‘Come in, Martin,’ and he replied, ‘If yu
air wid me, Maggie?’ and she blushed, and said, ‘Yes, Martin,’ and he
stepped into the room, saying, ‘I’ll come in to settle accounts.’

“When he went out again all arrangements had been made for a speedy
marriage. Martin said it was no use to waste time in being engaged, so
they are to be married Sunday. They are the happiest couple you ever
saw,” and Dido sighed enviously.

“And what is to become of you and blind Gilbert? Are you to have no
share in their Eden?” Richard asked.

“Oh, yes. Maggie says they are going to rent a flat further uptown, and
one room is to be for me and Lucille when she comes back, and Gilbert
is to stay with them also. It’s a pretty big family to begin with, but
we’ll all give what we can to pay expenses. I don’t think Gilbert will
go, though. He likes Maggie as though she was his daughter, but he’s
been so many years in that house on Mulberry Street that I don’t think
he will leave it.”

“Well, this is our last evening to search for Maggie’s sister,” Richard
said, with half regret, “and we have had no success whatever. I’m
sorry, for Maggie’s sake, though personally I feel it is just as well
for her if her sister never returns to be a burden on her.”

“I intend to see Tolman Bike before his marriage and learn from him
where the sister is. Then, if we think it advisable, we can still
persuade her to go home, but I have another important matter that will
take all my time, so I cannot do much, for a while, at least, about
Maggie’s sister, unless Bike tells me where she is when I see him, as I
intend to do to-morrow. I expect to be too busy working on an important
case to see you for a while, but I hope your good luck will still
continue, and you can congratulate Mr. Shanks and Maggie for me.”

“It is useless for me to try to thank you for your kindness and help to
me,” Dido said, brokenly.

Dick’s blue eyes beamed kindly on Dido as he replied, quickly: “There’s
a good girl, don’t let us talk about that. I’m a useless fellow, and if
I have been of the least service to any one, the gratitude is all on my
side. I am grateful to you for allowing me to imagine I have been of
service to you.”

“You have been better to me than any one on earth,” she said,
vehemently, her eyes burning into his. “You have often said there was
no gratitude in the world, so I won’t say I would like to prove my
gratitude to you, but some day--I’ll wait. The day will come when I can
show you what I feel.”

“My dear child,” he said, softly, his eyes moist, for he was much
touched by the girl’s words, “only be happy and that knowledge will
make me happier.”

Dido looked down and was silent. Presently two tears chased each
other down over her cheeks and splashed on her slender hands, folded
pathetically in her lap.

“Why, Dido, child!” Dick said, startled.

She raised her brown eyes, wet with tears, to his frank blue ones, and
her lips were quivering pitifully. He took her hands, patting them
soothingly, not daring to say a word.

“T-they _would_ come,” she faltered, her mouth bravely smiling
while her eyes were filling with tears. “I--I could not help it.”

He still said nothing, but kept on patting her hands, half embarrassed
now.

“I was so--so wretched until you found me, and I’ve been so happy
since, that--that I couldn’t quite bear--your words.”

“I hope I did not speak roughly,” poor, blind Dick said, hardly
understanding her grief. In his separation from her he was losing
nothing, but she--poor child--she was losing everything.

“No--that’s it. You are so kind,” she faltered. “Don’t, please, don’t
mind me. I am so foolish. I am always crying, don’t you think?”

She looked up at him with a sad, little smile that made his heart ache,
he hardly knew why.

“Will you promise me something, Dido?” he asked, suddenly.

“Yes,” she answered, simply.

“Promise that you will try to be happy; that you will never cherish
blue thoughts, no difference what happens. Let ill-luck frown on you
all it wishes. Laugh at it; laugh in it’s face until your laughter
makes it smile. Promise me to do this?”

“Is that what you do?” she asked, evasively.

“Well, I don’t know. But what difference! I don’t get as low in spirits
as you do. Won’t you promise?”

“You have brought me happiness. I promise if I get blue to think of
you. Will that do?” she asked, seriously.

“I don’t know,” he said, half provoked, but he urged no further.

And these two young people, whose barks had floated side by side on the
stream of life for a brief time, were drifting apart. Mentally they
were taking farewell, for they knew that, if even for a few days, they
remained yet in sight or call, still their course lay so widely apart
that they might never hope to float near each other again.

So they silently left the place where they had spent their last evening
together and went out on the street into the cool quiet night.

A few gas jets dimly lighted up Twenty-third Street, and the stores
that lined the opposite side frowned dark and gloomy upon the few
people who occasionally made their appearance as they walked from the
darkness into the light of the street lamps, and then disappeared again
into the shadows beyond.

Coming towards the young couple from Sixth Avenue was a man,
thoughtfully walking along, as if, unable to sleep, he had sought the
quiet streets to think.

Richard noticed him, and pressing Dido’s arm, he whispered:

“Look at this man.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, excitedly.

The men exchanged glances, and the stranger raised his hat stiffly in
response to Richard’s cordial greeting. After they had passed, Richard
said:

“Why do you tremble so? I merely wanted to call your attention to him.
That is Mr. Clarke, the gentleman I had the experience with in the
Hoffman House bar.”

“Mr. Clarke!” cried Dido, in amazement. “_Why that is Tolman
Bike!_”




CHAPTER XIII.

A LOVERS’ QUARREL.


“Why!” as if unpleasantly surprised at his visit, “how do you do?”

Such was Penelope Howard’s greeting to Richard Treadwell the morning
following the meeting in the Eden Musée. He could not stay away from
her, so he decided to try to explain all about Dido. He wished now he
had not been so anxious to keep the affair a secret until Penelope’s
return. It made things look all the blacker for him.

Penelope was a clever girl. She was bitterly hurt, but she had no
intention of quarreling with Dick. If she experienced any jealous pangs
he should not have the satisfaction of knowing it. She would merely
maintain a cold indifference and make him feel that, do as he pleased,
it was nothing to her. She would smile, but indifferently, and not with
the smile of affection with which she had always greeted him. She would
treat him in a manner that would show her displeasure and utter lack of
affection for him, but she would not quarrel and so give him a chance
to offer an apology or explanation.

“You don’t seem very glad to see me?” Dick ventured, with a forced
smile.

Penelope looked with well assumed amazement and surprise at his
audacity, and, raising her eyebrows, said with a slightly rising
inflection, “No?”

Richard felt very ill at ease.

“You don’t understand,” he continued, helplessly. “I hope at least you
will allow me to explain the scene which you witnessed last night.”

She said, with a cold smile: “Really, you must excuse me. I have no
right or desire to know anything about your personal affairs.”

“Confound it, Penelope. Don’t be so infernally indifferent,” exclaimed
the young man with exasperation.

She simply looked at him. Scorn and disdain was pictured on her
expressive countenance now.

“I hope Mrs. Van Brunt is well?” he said awkwardly, hoping to bridge
over Penelope’s anger.

“Quite well, thank you,” looking idly out the window.

“Is she at home?”

“No; she has just gone out with Mr. Schuyler,” Penelope replied,
picking up a book and aimlessly turning the leaves.

“I hope I may be permitted to call and pay my respects to her?” he
said, indifferently.

“Auntie will doubtless be pleased to see you,” was the reply, with a
marked emphasis on the noun.

“How long are you going to keep up this nonsense, Penelope?”

She shrugged her shoulders impatiently and pouted her lips, but made no
reply.

“Do you know you are a very foolish girl sometimes? You cheat yourself
and me out of happiness. You know down in your heart you never doubt
my faith to you. What pleasure you get from pretending that you do, I
can’t imagine. Come, be reasonable. Don’t cultivate a bad temper.”

“Hum! I should not think you would care what I did if I am
unreasonable, bad tempered, foolish, suspicious--is that all?”
mockingly. “I am glad to know your honest opinion of me. Doubtless,
that cheap looking girl you were with last night is more amiable.”

“I imagine she is, Penelope,” Dick said, dejectedly and out of
patience. “I have loved you devotedly, and I have meekly endured all
your caprices, and if you want my devotion to end in this way I can
only obey. If you ever regret it, Penelope, remember it was your own
doing. You sent me away and I shall not return.”

And Richard, a very wretched young man indeed, walked hastily from the
room.

Penelope never moved until she heard the hall door close. She thought
that he would come back; he always had, but when she realized that he
had really gone she was surprised and a little frightened.

Richard was very good-natured, but she felt she had gone just a little
too far, and that if she wanted him back it would be necessary to
humble herself.

She could not recall a time before that she had so forgotten herself,
and allowed her temper to take such a hold of her. She could hardly
recall all she had said, but she felt very small and ungenerous.

Now that she had lost him she reviewed her own conduct, and felt that,
although Richard had done wrong, she had been unnecessarily harsh. He
deserved some punishment to teach him not to err again, but she had
been too unforgiving.

Wasn’t Dick always gentle and kind to her, and did he not always
manfully and tenderly overlook her little mistakes and pettishness?
Besides, was she not sure he loved her better than any girl in the
world? Then why should she be jealous if he amused himself with those
other women who are always so ready to “draw men on.”

A woman in love always reproaches herself with being the cause of every
lover’s jar.

A woman in love invariably blames other women for all the slips made by
the man she loves.

And they will do it to the end of the world.

While Penelope was spending the day racked with unhappy thoughts,
Richard was busy trying to see Tolman Bike and managing the messenger
boys in their search for the man who paid for the dead girl’s gown.

Richard called at Mr. Bike’s office, only to be informed that Mr. Bike
was still absent from town. But he knew to the contrary this time; so,
obtaining the address, he called at Tolman Bike’s bachelor apartments
in Washington Square.

Mr. Bike was in town, this servant said, but he did not expect him in
until it was time to dress for a 7 o’clock dinner. He did not know
where Mr. Bike was to be found, so Richard was forced to rest content
with this meagre information until a later hour.

Richard first consulted a directory. He found quite a list of Smiths,
but no Miss L. W. Smith, and he concluded if nothing more feasible
offered he would select the Smiths who lived in the best neighborhoods,
and personally visit every family until he found the right one, or
knew positively no such Smith lived in New York. He had inserted a
personal advertisement in all the morning and evening newspapers asking
for information concerning the relatives of Miss L. W. Smith, and he
expected by evening to have some definite clue to work on.

His disagreement with Penelope, instead of killing all desire to try
further to solve the mystery of Central Park, infused him with new life
and energy, and he was resolved to solve the mystery, and by doing so,
make Penelope regret her unreasonableness.

Accompanied by the messenger boy, Richard Treadwell tried his original
plan of walking about to meet people in the busy parts of the city.

“When you see a man that you think resembles the man who got the
dress, I want you to tell me,” he instructed the boy, and so in hopes
of knowing at least what the man looked like, Richard spent the day
wearily travelling around.

“There goes a fellow that looks just like the other duffer,” the boy
announced, as he and Dick stood watching the passers-by on Broadway.

Richard started to follow the man who, in company with a red-headed
florid-faced man that carried about with him one hundred and fifty
pounds of superfluous flesh, was going down Broadway.

The man pointed out by the boy had a light beard, a high nose and sharp
eyes. Richard recognized him as an Albany assemblyman.

“That looks totally unlike the man I pictured from your description,”
Richard said, crossly, as they followed the two men into the Hoffman
House.

“Well, his face looks like the other fellow, only the other one had
black whiskers, and this here one’s is red.”

“Bleached, doubtless,” Dick said ironically.

“Well, he looks the same, anyway,” the boy protested, as Dick seated
himself in the bar-room and made a pretense of reading a letter.

The two men went to the bar and ordered drinks, and as the thinner one
(they were neither on the lean order) raised a glass to his mouth,
Richard started and looked more closely at him.

Surely his face looked familiar then!

“I am tired; you can go to your office now and come to me in the
morning,” Dick said to the messenger, who gladly started off.

Richard sat there with serious face watching the man at the bar whom
the boy had pointed out, until he and his heavy companion went out;
then Dick fell into deep thought.

A wild, improbable suspicion had come to his mind, so improbable, so
wild, that he felt ashamed to dwell on it. The likeness was familiar;
so unlike, and yet so strangely like, that Dick hardly knew what to
believe.

“Poor devil! Why should I allow a chance resemblance to make me accuse
him of a thing so bad as that. He has enough to bear and answer for
now, yet--yet--But it’s too wild, too improbable. I’ll forget it, I’ll
dismiss the thought from my mind; the messenger was surely mistaken,
and I’ll devote my evening to seeing about Maggie’s sister. Here’s to
an evening free from all thoughts of that dead girl. And yet--it’s
very strange--I half believe”--Then, shrugging his shoulders, Dick
impatiently drained his glass and started for Washington Square.




CHAPTER XIV.

“GIVE ME UNTIL TO-MORROW.”


As Richard was early, he stopped for a moment to see Dido Morgan, and
finding her ready to start home, asked her to walk a little way with
him down Fifth Avenue.

She was looking quite wan when he went in, but she brightened up and
flushed with pleasure at the prospect of seeing him for a little time.

“I had an offer from a manager to-day to go on the stage,” she said,
quietly.

“I hope you did not accept it,” Dick replied, quickly, looking at the
girl’s downcast face, which seemed strangely altered since last night.

“Not yet.”

“And you won’t, Dido?” he said, pleadingly.

“I don’t see why not, Mr. Treadwell.”

Dick started unpleasantly. He had not before noticed that she never
called him by any name when addressing him, and now it seemed to
suggest that there was a difference between them, and he vainly
wondered what it was.

“I should be very sorry, Dido, to see you go on the stage. In the first
place you don’t know anything about acting, and it would take you years
before you could hope to attain any position.”

“I FEEL that I can act,” she said deeply. “My nerves seem so tight that
I long to get up and act some life. I want to act love, and then hate,
and then murder.”

“Why, Dido?” Dick asked, coolly and curiously, although he felt the
deep emotion underlying her words. He recalled what an old club-man
said to him once, that every woman disappointed in love wanted to act,
and he half wondered if Dido had been falling in love with some of the
handsome men who frequented photograph galleries to have reproduced the
being they love most of any on earth, but he put away the thought as a
wrong to Dido.

“I _feel_ it, I tell you I feel it. I can’t endure a monotonous
life any more. I must have some excitement,” she said, passionately.

“I tell you what you want--exercise! You want to walk and you want to
swing clubs and you’ll soon be all right. You are so confined that you
have a superfluous energy which your work does not exhaust. If you
spend it on exercise, it will make you a happier and stronger girl.”

Dido showed a little resentment. It always disgusts a woman to have her
romantic feelings dissected in a matter-of-fact manner. Having reached
Washington Square, she bade Richard good-bye and went on her way to her
humble home.

Richard walked along North Washington Square until he came to the house
where he expected to find the man who had taken Lucille Williams from
her home. He went up one flight of stairs to Tolman Bike’s apartments,
and knocked on the door on which was tacked Mr. Bike’s visiting card.

In a moment the door was opened, and the man he knew as Mr. Clarke
stood before him.

“Mr. Bike,” said Richard, with emphasis on the name, “I must speak with
you alone.”

Richard spoke imperatively and at the same moment stepped inside.

Mr. Bike looked as ill as the day he fell against the Hoffman House
bar. He silently motioned Dick to enter the first room leading off
the private hall in which they stood. Closing and locking the door he
followed.

Richard seated himself in an easy chair, unasked. Mr. Bike sat down
before a richly-carved desk, littered with packages of letters and
photographs, which apparently he had been engaged in assorting and
destroying, for bundles of them were slowly smouldering in the open
grate.

The room was very handsome, and Richard viewed it with appreciation.
There was a large open grate and above the low, wide mantle was a
cabinet containing, in the centre, a French plate mirror, and on the
brackets fine bits of bric-a-brac. The floor was richly carpeted, the
walls were hung with fine paintings, while near the portieres, draped
just far enough back to give a picturesque perspective view of a suite
of rooms as cosy in the rear, was an alabaster statue of The Diver and
another of Paul and Virginia.

A Mexican _serape_, quaintly colored, was thrown over a low
lounge, before which lay a white fur rug. At one side was a little,
square breakfast table, with curiously turned legs, and near it a half
side-board, half cabinet, attractively filled with exquisite dishes, a
few solid silver pieces and crystal glasses, backed up by long-necked
bottles of liquids to fill them.

Mr. Bike had removed his coat and waistcoat and had on a little
embroidered jacket. He did indeed have an unhealthy pallor, and Dick
noticed that the hand with which he toyed with a carved paper-cutter
shook violently.

“How this man loves life and its good things,” Dick thought,
sympathetically, as his gaze wandered from one article of luxury to
another, and on to another room, where, just through the portire, he
could see a brass cage, in which a yellow canary was jumping restlessly
about, and a small aquarium, up through which came a spraying fountain.
He could even see goldfish swimming about and a little dark turtle run
its head out of the water and then dive down again to the bottom of the
basin.

“I suppose you know why I came to see you?” Dick said at last, when he
saw Mr. Bike would not introduce any subject.

“No, I can’t say that I do,” Mr. Bike responded, with affected
indifference.

“Well, I want to know all about Lucille Williams,” he said abruptly.

“What right have you to come to me for such information?” Mr. Bike
asked coldly.

“Because you induced the girl to leave her home,” Dick replied
positively, “and I want to know all you have to tell about the rest of
it.”

“I have nothing to tell,” Mr. Bike said, with a slight, sarcastic smile.

“Well, sir, if you won’t tell, I’ll find a way to make you,” Richard
said, angrily.

“Ah! Indeed!” Mr. Bike ejaculated, still cool and unconcerned.

“Yes, sir; if you don’t tell me what I want to know before I leave
here, I will go to Miss Chamberlain, your fiancée”--Mr. Bike started
uneasily--“I’ll tell her a story you would not like her to know.”

“And you flatter yourself that she would believe you?” sarcastically.

“I know it. I can prove what I have to say,” Dick replied in a manner
that was unmistakable.

“All right, go to her. See what you can do.”

“By Jove, I will. I will go to the newspapers too, and I’ll tell them--”

“What?” Mr. Bike asked, rather uneasily.

“You know _what_! Disabuse your mind of any idea that I don’t
know some chapters in your life, that, if made public, will end your
devilish career.” Richard hinted darkly, the suspicions which had come
to him before that day sweeping over him with full force.

Tolman Bike was thinking intently. Richard saw that his last bluff had
gone home and he determined to follow it up with more of the same kind.

“Be as unconcerned as you please, Mr. Bike. To-morrow, when your
marriage is postponed, and you are called on to answer to the serious
charge I shall bring against you, you will be sorry that you didn’t
take the easier course, and give me the information I asked for.” Dick
said this as if his patience had run out.

“I have no information to give,” Mr. Bike said, in a tone which showed
he was beginning to weaken.

“Say, it’s wasting time to pretend to me. Either you will, or you will
not, do as I have asked you. If you don’t, the consequences be on your
own head.”

“And would you--do you mean--” hesitated Tolman Bike, losing confidence
at sight of Dick’s undiminished determination.

“Yes, sir; I mean every word of it.” Dick had risen and he looked very
angry and capable of doing all the bad things he threatened. “I have
given you a chance, and you refuse to accept, so--” and he shrugged his
shoulders as if his responsibility ended there.

“And if you get the information, what use will you make of it?” asked
Bike, as if longing for some hope to be held out to him.

“You know what I want. It is not to bring any credit to myself, but to
relieve the suspense of a heart-broken sister.”

“And would you, if I tell you all, be man enough to show some mercy?”
he asked, in a hopeless way.

“I hold out no promises. I am determined to have a confession from you
before your marriage. If you don’t give it, you don’t marry, and you
can put that down for a certainty,” Dick said doggedly.

“And if I tell you,” in sudden hope, “will you let my marriage go
on without telling Clara? Promise to let us get away on our wedding
tour and then you can do as you wish. Only give me that much,” almost
pleaded the now trembling man.

“And let you wreck the life of the innocent, unsuspecting woman who
becomes your bride? What sort of a man do you think I am?” Richard
asked in scorn.

“My God, man! Have some feeling. Haven’t I suffered enough already? You
are a man, you can understand how a man will sell his soul to hell for
the sake of a woman,” he said bitterly. “Have some feeling!”

“Can’t you understand it?” he continued, desperately, in vain effort
to wake compassion in Richard’s breast. “She was pretty, she had
no friends to make any trouble about it, and I lost my head. I have
suffered for it. I have regretted it.” And Tolman Bike put his hands
over his face, and Richard heard a broken, husky sob.

This was more than he could endure. His sternness fled at that sound,
and he could hardly refrain from attempting to console the wretched
man. Only thoughts of the poverty-stricken little sister helped him
maintain an air of unrelenting sternness.

“Well, what do you ask of me?” Richard asked with a roughness that
covered his real feeling. Now that he had conquered the man his
suspicions fled. He felt sorry for Bike’s suffering and had a guilty
feeling that he was the cause of it.

“Only give me until to-morrow and I’ll swear to you that you shall know
what you want to before ten o’clock. Give me until then. If I fail,
you have yet time to stop my marriage in the evening. You are a man,
but if you won’t spare me for a man’s follies, spare me for the sake
of the woman I am to marry. I’m sick! I can’t talk! Only give me until
to-morrow.”

“---- it, Bike,” Richard said, feelingly, “if it wasn’t for the girl’s
sister, I’d fling the whole thing over.” He little knew what it meant
to him. “I believe your promise. I’m a man, reckless, indolent,
careless as the worst of them, and, confound it, I’m sorry for you.
There’s my hand.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Bike said, his deep emotions showing in the
painful twitching of his pale face. He clasped Dick’s firm hand in his
own dry, feverish one, and gave it a grateful pressure.

“Until to-morrow, then?”

“Until to-morrow,” echoed the unhappy man, looking into Dick’s face
with an appealing look of agony that Richard never forgot.




CHAPTER XV.

“TO RICHARD TREADWELL, PERSONAL.”


It was ten o’clock when Richard Treadwell in gown and slippers, sat
down in a high-backed chair to partake of a light breakfast.

The dainty table was spread with its burden of light rolls and yellow
butter, with a bit of ice on it, and crisp, red berries. The odor of
the coffee was very appetizing, but Richard ate and read the morning
paper at the same time.

The awnings lowered over the windows shut out the glare of the morning
sun. A light breeze moved the curtains lazily, and a green palm on
the window-sill waved its long arms energetically, as if to hurry
the indolent young man who was missing the beauty of Summer’s early
morning.

Richard Treadwell’s rooms were as unlike the elegant apartments of
Tolman Bike, as a violet is unlike a rose. One, like a laughing,
romping child, denoted health and cheerfulness; the other, unhealthy in
tone and coloring, spoke of dreams and selfish gratification.

Here were copies of Rosa Bonheur’s master-pieces of animal life,
pictures of racing horses, photographs of serious-faced dogs in comical
positions, a stuffed fish’s head, with wide open mouth, mounted on
a plaque; boxing gloves, clubs and dumb-bells, lying where they had
fallen after this young man had taken a turn at each of them. There
was an unsorted jumble of walking-sticks, whips, fishing tackle and
firearms. The furniture was light, the curtains were thin and airy, the
carpet was bright and soft.

Richard ate and read unmindful of the wrestling match between a
bow-legged pug and a saucy black-and-tan, whose little sharp ears
stood stiffly erect, expressive of cool amusement at the fat pug’s
futile attempts to throw him.

As Richard pushed his chair back and lighted a cigarette, a man-servant
entered quietly and put a large envelope and a smaller one on the
table before him. Richard took the larger envelope and read the
superscription.

  ..................................
  .   TO                           .
  . RICHARD TREADWELL, ESQ^{RE.}   .
  .   FROM             _PERSONAL._ .
  .    TOLMAN BIKE.                .
  ..................................

He hastily tore it open with his thumb. The letter began without any
preliminaries:

  In writing this I place my life at your disposal. I neither expect
  mercy nor ask it.

  I have been so wretched for days that life is a burden I little care
  to bear.

  Do what you please with this, but if you possess an unheard-of
  generosity I would ask you, after clearing yourself, to spare me as
  much as possible.

“My wild, improbable suspicions were correct!” Dick exclaimed, in
surprise. The black-and-tan, hearing his voice, came and jumped
inquiringly against his knee, but receiving no attention returned to
finish the English Kilrain on the rug.

  I first met Lucille Williams when she came to my office in answer
  to my advertisement for a typewriter and stenographer. Of the many
  who applied I selected her. Not because she was the most proficient
  worker, but for a man’s reason.

  She had a pretty face.

  Wonderfully pretty, I have had men tell me. She had large, clear blue
  eyes and an abundance of wavy black hair, and a faultless pink and
  white complexion that often accompanies the combination. Her hands
  were small and slender. She was particular in the care of them, and
  her remarkably small feet were always well shod.

  Life is dull at best during business hours, so I amused myself with
  my pretty typewriter. It started first by my playfully putting my
  arm around her chair when dictating. Harmless enough. Yes, but it
  brought me so close to her that I began to wonder what she would do
  if I kissed her. When I stopped in my dictation she raised her great,
  blue, alluring eyes to me in such a way, that I wouldn’t have been a
  man had I not felt a little thrill of temptation.

  I did kiss her at last.

  She was not much offended. She cried a little and wanted to know
  what she had done that encouraged me to insult her. Her chief fault
  was vanity, so I pleased myself and comforted her by taking her in
  my arms and vowing that the sight of her red lips so close, and her
  great eyes, so alluring and entrancing, was more than I could resist.
  It comforted her and pleased me.

  Yes, I said something of love.

  It somehow seemed the only thing to say under the circumstances. I
  think I called her “My Love,” and similar names. I am positive I did
  not say that I loved her, although I recall coaxing her to say she
  loved me.

  She said she loved me and I believed her.

  It was all very pretty and interesting while it had the charm
  of newness. We soon spent our evenings together. I took her to
  restaurants patronized by Bohemia, where, if one happens across an
  acquaintance, he, on a similar errand, is just as anxious to keep it
  a secret as you are. In the summer, when there was less chance of
  embarrassing meetings, I took her to better places and occasionally
  to the theatre.

  I found it interesting.

  Meanwhile, I learned that Lucille’s sister was employed in the
  factory, and I threatened Lucille with an eternal parting if, by any
  chance, her family learned of our intimacy. When the pretence of
  seeing friends and persons about business would no longer serve as a
  blind, I instructed Lucille to say she was engaged on extra work. She
  very sensibly said she could not do this without money to show for
  it, so I promptly made it possible. Thereafter that was her blind.

  Thus she deceived her family.

  Meanwhile I thought I would feel more comfortable if Lucille were
  better dressed. You know how men feel on this subject. Most of them
  would rather be seen in company with the lowest woman in New York if
  she wore a Paris gown, than with a woman in rags, even if she were
  as pure as a saint. A man is always afraid of being chaffed for being
  with a badly dressed woman.

  For the world, looking on, judges only by the dress.

  I spoke to Lucille. I found she was as sensitive about her cheap
  garments as I was, so I told her if she would buy an entire outfit
  suitable for our wanderings I would pay for it. I made suggestions,
  and the garments she bought were as lady-like and appropriate as if
  it had been an every-day affair with her.

  Then came the question, Where to send the clothes?

  She could not send them home, for her mother and sister, though poor,
  had Puritan ideas concerning morals and propriety.

  There is a way out of every difficulty.

  I had her send all her new articles to my bachelor apartment. Then I
  gave her a key, so she could enter my rooms at any time to change
  her cheap clothing for her new and vice versa.

  So I got her to my rooms.

  I don’t deny that it was my intention at first to finally take her
  there, but I wanted to preserve the sentiment of the affair as long
  as possible. She was very perfect to the sight, very lovable, and I
  was eager for our evenings--anxious to drip out as slowly as possible
  the intoxication of the affair, still breathlessly eager to drain the
  cup.

  There is no need of going into detail.

  You know what bachelor apartments are; you know what opportunities
  they afford. Lucille was timid at first; afraid to come in or go out,
  but she soon grew bolder. She even grew to like the danger of it.

  I was very fond of her then.

  There is no use to be hypocritical and cry it was love of her that
  led me on. Why men adopt such weak pleas, I never could understand.

  It was not love of her.

  A man never injures a woman through love of her, but through love of
  self. I realized this all the time, but I was passionately happy, and
  happiness is not so plentiful that I should slight it, result as it
  might.

  I promised to marry her.

  It happened in a moment when I loved her best. I knew at the time,
  I was doing a reckless thing. The next day I warned her to keep our
  love secret, because there were reasons why, if it were known, it
  would be injurious to me. She, appreciating the difference between
  us, was as silent as I could be.

  By and by things began to pall.

  I was too well acquainted with her. I grew tired of her pretty face.
  Her little vulgarities exasperated me. She was a woman of such little
  variety, and she so weakly bowed to every demand I made that it
  became unbearable.

  I have known homely women whose charms were more lasting.

  Her weakness maddened me. I grew to hate her. If she had only had
  enough spirit to quarrel with me, but that was the secret of it; she
  had no spirit until it was too late.

  Just before this I met Miss Chamberlain. I found that I had pleased
  her fancy and I concluded to marry.

  It mattered little that I was not in love; I had long since learned
  that love was merely the effect of some pleasing sensation, which
  some persons, like some music, produce on us, that shortly wears
  itself out.

  I thought it better to marry where there was no feeling than where
  there was. For the sensation of love is sure to die, leaving an
  unsupportable weariness caused by its own emotion. Where there is no
  such feeling, there is no such result to fear.

  I never expected any trouble from Lucille.

  But I reckoned without my host. Although I endeavored to keep my
  engagement secret, yet a line to the effect that I was to marry Miss
  Chamberlain, reached print. Lucille, though hardly in society, always
  read society notes. She read that one.

  She became a tigress--a devil. Isn’t it queer that a weak woman
  always has an ungovernable temper? Expecting nothing more than a few
  tears from her, I answered carelessly, and she grew infuriated. Of
  course, I was astonished. She accused me of falseness and demanded
  that I deny the report over my own name and marry her immediately, or
  she would seek Miss Chamberlain and lay before her what she pleased
  to call my baseness.

  I was determined to marry.

  It meant wealth, a better social position, power, and a wife that at
  least I would be proud of. I had cherished such an idea of marriage
  since I was a boy, and I was resolved that nothing should balk me now
  that it was in my grasp.

  I was determined to take fate into my own hands.

  Finding I could not quiet Lucille, I concluded to rid myself of all
  responsibility in her case.

  Call me base if you will!

  Was I doing more than hundreds of men are doing in New York to-day!

  Had I done more than hundreds--aye, thousands--of men have done in
  New York?

  You are a man of education and means; denounce me if you have never
  sinned likewise.

  Let any New York man of education, leisure and money denounce me, if
  any there are who have not likewise blundered.

  It was only a matter of a few days’ amusement, harmless if it ended
  quietly.

  But I slipped up on it--therein lies the sin. Not in what I did, but
  in blundering over it.

  People may say what they will. I was not wrong. It is the system that
  is wrong, the system that prevents people who care for each other
  from being happy in that affection while it lasts. Had the system
  been different Lucille would have been home to-day, happier and in
  more comfortable circumstances than previous to our meeting, and I--I
  would not now be writing to you.

  But there was nothing to save us.

  Tired and disgusted with Lucille, she further exasperated me with her
  jealousy and unreasonable demands for a speedy marriage. Fearful of
  losing the marriage which meant so much to me, I carefully planned
  what seemed the only course to pursue.

  Yes, it was deliberate.

  Calming her anger for the day, I persuaded her to come to my
  apartment--these very rooms where I sit and quietly write this
  confession of my crime.

  Unsuspecting, aye, even gladly she came--came to meet her fate, which
  waited for her like a spider in his entangling web for a fly.

“If you please, sir, Miss Howard’s compliments, and would you come up
as soon as possible,” said a voice at the door.

The little black-and-tan paused for a moment, with the pug’s ear still
between his little sharp teeth, to see where the voice came from, and
Richard responded, impatiently: “Very well, say I’ll be there,” and
returned to Tolman Bike’s letter.




CHAPTER XVI.

THE MYSTERY SOLVED.


  The mockery of the thing amused me.

  I knew so well how it was to end, and when Lucille came cheerfully to
  me, never thinking but that she would return to her home that night,
  I laughed aloud.

  She wanted to talk about my promise of marriage, and I readily
  consented. In very few words I gave her to understand that it was
  impossible for me to marry her in her present condition, but if
  she would be guided by my judgment, and bought suitable clothing,
  we could then go away and be quietly married. To do this it was
  necessary that she remain with me.

  She was more than satisfied.

  She was elated over her brilliant prospects. Still she was stubbornly
  determined to notify her family, and only by threatening to abandon
  the whole affair if it became known did I keep her from doing so.
  I did, however, consent to her writing a note saying she had gone
  out of town for a few weeks, and on her return would have a joyful
  surprise for them. It satisfied her and did not hurt me.

  The letter was never mailed.

  Lucille’s presence was not unknown to some few. My servant, who slept
  at home, knew I had somebody with me, but as he had served many years
  in taking care of bachelor apartments, he was neither surprised nor
  inquisitive. The waiters who served our meals knew I was not alone,
  but to them, also, it was a story too old to merit comment. Still I
  took precautions that they should not see Lucille.

  In the garments I had bought her I sent Lucille to a dressmakers
  to get her measurements. I also sent her to a dentist to have some
  decaying teeth filled, and so I started to work out my release from a
  woman of whom I had tired.

  You might say that I could have taken a more simple way. I don’t see
  how. I was afraid of losing my wealthy fiancée and so I would not
  risk the least chance of Lucille’s telling. Of course I could have
  claimed blackmail and been declared innocent, yet, knowing the nature
  of the woman I was hoping to marry, I would not risk the effect it
  would have on her.

  There seemed only one thing to do, and I did it. I had Lucille write
  an order for a dress, from my dictation, inclosing the measurements
  and stating that it would be called for on a certain date. Personally
  I went to different stores and bought the garments necessary to make
  a perfect outfit. I did not spare expense. I brought everything home
  with me in the coupé. This relieved me of necessity of giving any
  address or name, which made me feel sure the articles could not be
  traced to their destination.

  During this time Lucille was very happy, notwithstanding her
  imprisonment. She was constantly planning what she would do when we
  were married. She dwelt in delight on the sensation her marriage
  would create among those who knew her. She discussed the localities
  most suitable for us to live in, and talked of things she intended to
  buy for her house and the dresses she meant to get.

  It is useless to try to describe the emotions I labored under during
  those days. I was conscious of a tiredness, underlaid with a stolid
  determination not to be balked in my purpose. I felt no sympathy
  for Lucille. I think I was absolutely without feeling one way or
  the other. I only felt a desire to laugh at her air castles as she
  told them to me. Not amused--no. I can’t say what the feeling was.
  Even when she lay awake some nights and I knew she was painting her
  future, I laughed aloud at the strangeness of it all.

  I counted the nights. Every one found my preparations nearer
  completion.

  Carefully I removed all trade marks and names from every garment I
  had bought her. The gloves and _Suéde_ shoes only bore their
  size. I took the crown lining out of the hat, and before I brought
  her dress home I removed the inside belt, which was stamped with the
  name of the man who made it.

  The dress was the last article but one I brought to my apartment.
  I did not even show myself at the establishment where the gown was
  made. I drove near the place, and, hiring a messenger boy, sent
  him in for the garment. In this way I preserved the secret of my
  identity.

  The last thing I bought was a bottle of hair bleaching fluid. I told
  Lucille that if her hair was golden to match her eyes I thought her
  appearance would be much improved. She was quite anxious to make the
  test, always being ready to do anything she thought would increase
  her beauty. For two days, at different intervals, I brushed her hair
  with the fluid, and it turned the most perfect golden shade I had
  ever seen.

  It really transformed her. I have since then marvelled at the change
  and have felt an admiration for her perfect beauty. Then I felt
  nothing.

  I only had a desire to watch her. I watched her eat and wondered
  at her appetite. I listened to her light talk and marvelled at her
  happiness. I gazed at her while she slept, amazed, almost, at her
  evident sense of security.

  Why did nothing warn her? I waited and watched for some sign that
  would show that instinct felt the approaching end. There was no sign.

  The last night, I leaned on my elbow and watched her sleep. She
  looked so perfect! Her soft, dimpled arms thrown above her head, her
  pretty face in a nest of golden hair, her straight black brows, her
  long, black lashes resting lightly on her pink cheeks, and all to
  become nothing--nothing. To-morrow night it would be over; this was
  her last night. Impulsively I leaned over her and whispered “Lucille!
  Lucille!” but she merely opened her great blue eyes, and giving me a
  little smile, as innocent and sweet as a babies, moved with a sigh of
  perfect content close to my arm, which rested on the pillow, and so
  went to sleep again.

  I lay down and tried to still the heavy, painful beating of my
  heart. I was very weary, but I could not sleep.

  At breakfast something kept saying, “Her last! her last!” and it
  gratified me to see her eat. At luncheon she complained of no
  appetite, yet I almost compelled her to eat, while I ate nothing.
  During the day I told my servant to take a holiday, that I would be
  out of town and he could have several days to spend as he wished. Rid
  of him, I ordered a dinner fit for a wedding feast; still I could not
  eat. Lucille ate and I helped her joyfully. I had a desire to see her
  happy. I have thought the jailer who feasts the condemned prisoner an
  hour before the execution must feel as I felt this day.

  Late in the evening I laid her new garments, the finery that so
  delighted her, out on the bed. I laughed when I did it, and then I
  sat down and watched her dress. She was as happy as a child. She put
  on one thing after the other, surveying each addition in the mirror
  with little cries of delight. I laced her _Suéde_ shoes and
  helped fasten her dress and buttoned her gloves. When all was done I
  wrapped her in a gray travelling cloak and hid her pretty face under
  a thick veil.

  I had told her we would take the midnight train for Buffalo, where
  we would be married, and remain at Niagara for a few days before our
  return to New York. She trusted me in everything, and asked me if
  she could increase her wardrobe before the time for our return. We
  were to start early enough to permit us to take a drive before going
  to the station. Lucille had been confined so long in the house that
  she welcomed this arrangement, and she was very eager and nervous to
  start.

  I had ordered my horse and dog-cart to be ready at a certain hour.
  I had a liking for late drives, so my orders were not considered
  unusual. I walked out of the house, first telling Lucille to lock the
  door and walk around the corner on Fifth Avenue, where I would get
  her.

  Before starting, however, I asked Lucille to drink a glass of wine
  with me. I put in hers a sleeping potion, and she raised it to her
  lips, saying:

  “Here’s to our happiness.”

  I put my wine down untasted.

  Then she came to me in an affectionate way I had once admired, and
  raising her veil, said:

  “Tolman, kiss your little one.”

  I folded her in my arms. My heart beat quickly, my breath came
  painfully. I held her close to my breast, I kissed her soft, warm,
  lips regretfully.

  “Lucille,” I said, pleadingly, “will you go back to your home and
  forget you wanted to be my wife?”

  “I would rather die,” she answered me, angrily.

  I knew then it was too late. There was no way to retreat. Either I
  must accomplish my purpose, or renounce all claim to Miss Chamberlain
  and take Lucille as my wife.

  “We have been very happy these two weeks, haven’t we, Tolman?” she
  said, with her arms about my neck. “Kiss your little one good-by, for
  when she comes back here she will be your wife.”

  “Yes, when you come back,” I said, and I kissed her. With that there
  flitted through my mind a picture of a little quiet home with her as
  my wife. I thought of her beauty, but then came the thought that it
  would cost me what I most longed for--wealth--position. No, it was
  too late.

  I drove to the curb almost the instant she had reached there, and
  only stopped long enough to get her in. I had a valise, which
  Lucille thought contained a change of clothing, in the dog-cart. I
  drove off quickly to the Park.

  We had not more than entered the Park when Lucille yawned and
  complained of feeling drowsy. I drove on, listening intently for any
  sounds that would indicate the presence of any one. Reaching a bend
  in the road and finding everything still, I asked Lucille to hold the
  reins until I could get out to see if something was not amiss with
  the harness.

  Drowsily she took the reins.

  “Do you see anything coming, Lucille?” I asked, as I reached under
  the seat and, drawing out a sandbag which I had made ready in advance
  and concealed there, I rose to my feet as though to jump out of the
  buggy.

  “No, Tolman; the way looks clear,” she replied, slowly, as she leaned
  forward to look.

  With a swift motion I raised the sandbag and brought it down on her
  head.

  She never uttered a sound, but fell across the side of the cart. I
  caught her with one hand and, taking the reins from her limp fingers,
  steadied the horse.

  I took her in my arms to the nearest bench. I listened for her
  heart-beats. They were still. I removed the Connemara cloak and veil.
  I had some difficulty, but at last managed to place her in an upright
  position on the bench. Then I folded her hands in her lap, and as I
  could not make her parasol stay on her knee, I left it where it fell
  on the ground before her.

  I kissed her lips, still warm and soft, and closing her eyes, pulled
  her hat down so it would prevent their opening. Taking the wrap and
  veil and putting them and the sandbag in the valise I drove back to
  the stable.

  I returned to my rooms and spent the remainder of the night in
  destroying all the clothing which belonged to her. Early in the
  morning, just about daybreak, I went quietly out and to the Gilsey
  House, where I got a room and went to bed. I slept. It was afternoon
  when I awoke, and while eating my breakfast I read in the first
  edition of an evening paper an account of your finding Lucille’s body
  in Central Park.

  In the smaller envelope I enclose a photograph of Lucille taken
  before her hair was bleached. You will doubtless recognize it. I also
  inclose the letter she wrote to her mother.

  You can understand now why I was frightened at the sight of Maggie
  Williams’s tears; why I was horrified when I met in the Hoffman House
  the man who was suspected of being guilty of my crime. My guilty
  fears prevented my giving you my name, and when you came to my
  apartment, seeking Lucille, I knew that my hour had come.

  I might have given you a fight and warded off the end for a while.
  But what use. If the proof was not conclusive enough to hang me,
  it was enough to imprison me, for the waiters, my servant and the
  livery-man could have made out a case of circumstantial evidence. I
  prefer death.

  It is morning. The morning of the day which was to have been
  my wedding day. Oh God, I had some wild hope when I began this
  confession. It has gone now. This is all. If you have any charity in
  your soul, spare me all you can.

  TOLMAN BIKE.

  NORTH WASHINGTON SQUARE,
  _June Seventh, 18--_.




CHAPTER XVII.

SUNLIGHT THROUGH THE CLOUDS.


Richard could hardly dress quickly enough after he finished Tolman
Bike’s letter. The indolent young man had never been seen in such
frantic haste. The elevator seemed to him to creep. Rushing out to the
street, he jumped into the first cab, telling the driver to make the
best possible speed to Fifth Avenue.

With a sad, penitent face, Penelope Howard was impatiently awaiting her
handsome lover in her own little room, her abject apologies all cut and
dried for use. But he gave her no time.

“Penelope, the mystery is solved!” he yelled, and catching her in his
strong arms, he held her so close to his heart that she gasped for
breath.

“I’ve the story right here, sweetheart,” and in the fewest possible
words, punctuated with Penelope’s exclamations of surprise and sorrow,
Richard related all that had happened since the night before she went
to Washington.

“My dear--Oh, Richard. Good morning,” said Penelope’s aunt, as she
entered the room with bonnet on and a carriage-wrap thrown hastily
over a house dress. “Mrs. Chamberlain has sent for me. They have just
received news that Clara’s fiancée, Mr. Bike, was found dead in his
bathroom, shot through the head. They think it was accidental, and poor
Clara, who was to have been a bride this evening, is prostrated. I’ll
be back presently, dear. Richard stay with the child.”

They let her go without a word of the information they possessed, and,
oblivious to all else, they read Tolman Bike’s confession. Woman-like,
Penelope was in tears, and had as much pity for the unhappy man as for
the luckless girl.

“I knew he was the man,” Richard said. “When the messenger boy pointed
out the man in the Hoffman House as looking like the man who got the
gown, the resemblance struck me, though this man was fair and Tolman
Bike was dark. The moment the resemblance struck me, the whole thing
flashed before my mind. My ridiculous remark that probably the man was
bleached, suggested to me the possibility of Maggie’s sister having
bleached after she left home. Still, it was all so wild and improbable
that I tried not to think of it.”

They decided only to tell the secret of the crime to those most
concerned. That done, they effectually saved the name of Tolman Bike
from deeper disgrace, little as he deserved it.

When Mrs. Van Brunt returned from the house where the preparations for
wedding festivities had been turned into arrangements for a funeral,
Penelope, with her eyes red from weeping, drew her aunt into her own
little den where Richard was. Together they told the astonished woman
the story of the crime, and she was more determined even than they
were that the confession should be held sacred, since making it public
could benefit no one, and would only serve to hurt the family who had
expected to welcome him into their home as the husband of the daughter
of the house.

They had intended to visit Maggie Williams that day and tell her the
story of her sister, but Mrs. Van Brunt, more thoughtful, told them to
delay the sad information until the girl was married, as Richard had
told them of her intended marriage Sunday.

Tolman Bike was privately buried Sunday from the Chamberlain mansion,
while the girl who was to have been his bride, lay unconscious in a
darkened room upstairs. Mrs. Van Brunt, as an old and intimate friend
of Mrs. Chamberlain, went to the funeral. Penelope went with her aunt,
her heart divided in sympathy for the dead man, the dead girl, and the
stricken daughter of the Chamberlain household. If Tolman Bike had
lived, Penelope would have hated him for his crime, but because he had
strength to die, and when she pictured his lonely end, she felt sorry
for his wretched fate.

Sunday evening they visited Maggie Williams, now Mrs. Martin Shanks,
and Penelope gently told them the story of the Mystery of Central Park,
omitting as much as possible that would pain the sister. Rough, but
kindly Martin Shanks comforted his bride. Dido Morgan mingled her tears
with Maggie’s, but she was shy and awkward, having little to say in
the presence of Penelope Howard, though Penelope did her utmost to be
cordial and considerate.

The warm, frank feeling that had heretofore existed between Dido and
Dick was gone. Dick endeavored to be friendly and pleasant, but Dido
maintained a stiff silence that made him have a sense of relief when he
and Penelope finally took their departure.

“Ah, Penelope, it’s true, as Tolman Bike said, happiness is not so
plentiful in life that we can afford to let it slip by when near
our grasp,” Richard said, sadly, as he and Penelope drove homeward.
Penelope merely sighed in response.

“I did not solve the mystery as you expected and wished,” he continued,
taking her hand in his, “still I object to being cheated of my
happiness. When are you going to marry me?”

“Oh!” Penelope tried to say in playful surprise, but her hand trembled.

“This is the tenth. I will give you until the twenty-first to make
what little preparations you need for the wedding,” Richard said,
masterfully, yet tenderly.

“Oh! If you talk that way I suppose I must meekly obey,” Penelope said,
as, with a sigh of content, she allowed Dick to take her in his arms.


THE END.




  G. W. DILLINGHAM, Successor.

  1889.      1889.

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  Tempest and Sunshine            $1 50
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