Again she shivered, then turning, tiptoed down the narrow passageway to carry out her original intention of going out of the building by way of the back stairs.
Her room was only a half block away in a dormitory on the corner of the campus nearest the library. Having reached the dormitory, she went to her room and began disrobing for the night. In the bed near her own, wrapped in profound sleep, lay her roommate. She wished to waken her, to tell her of the strange event of the night. For a moment she stood with the name “Florence” quivering on her lips.
The word died unspoken. “No use to trouble her,” she decided. “She’s been working hard lately and needs the sleep.”
At last, clad in her dream robes, with her abundant hair streaming down her back and her white arms gleaming in the moonlight, she sat down by the open window to think and dream.
It was a wonderful picture that lay spread out before her, a vista of magnificent Gothic structures of gray sandstone framed in lawns of perfectly kept green. Sidewalks wound here, there, everywhere. Swarming with students during the waking hours, they were silent now. Her bosom swelled with a strange, inexpressible emotion as she realized that she, a mere girl, was a part of it all.
Like her roommate, she was one of the thousands of girls who today attend the splendid universities of our land. With little money, of humble parentage, they are yet given an opportunity to make their way toward a higher and broader understanding of the meaning of life through study in the university.
The thought that this university was possessed of fifty millions of dollars’ worth of property, yet had time and patience to make a place for her, both awed and inspired her.
The very thought of her position sobered her. Four hours each week day she worked in the stacks at the library. Books that had been read and returned came down to her and by her hands were placed in their particular niches of the labyrinth of stacks.
The work was not work to her but recreation, play. She was a lover of books. Just to touch them was a delight. To handle them, to work with them, to keep them in their places, accessible to all, this was joy indeed. Yet this work, which was play to her, went far toward paying her way in the university.
And at this thought her brow clouded. She recalled once more the occurrence of a short time before and the strange little face among the stacks. She knew that she ought to tell the head of her section of the library, Mr. Downers, of the incident. Should anything happen, should some book be missing, she would then be free from suspicion. Should suspicion fall upon her, she might be deprived of her position and, from lack of funds, be obliged to give up her cherished dream, a university education.
“But I don’t want to tell,” she whispered to the library tower which, like some kindly, long-bearded old gentleman, seemed to be accusing her. “I don’t want to.”
Hardly had she said this than she realized that there was a stronger reason than her fear of derision that held her back from telling.
“It’s the face,” she told herself. “That poor little kiddie’s face. It wasn’t beautiful, no, not quite that, but appealing, frankly, fearlessly appealing. If I saw her take a book I couldn’t believe that she meant to steal it, or at least that it was she who willed it.
“But fi-fum,” she laughed a low laugh, throwing back her head until her hair danced over her white shoulders like a golden shower, “why borrow trouble? She probably took nothing. It was but a childish prank.”
At that she threw back the covers of her bed, thrust her feet deep down beneath them and lay down to rest. Tomorrow was Sunday; no work, no study. There would be plenty of time to think.
She believed that she had dismissed the scene in the library from her mind, yet even as she fell asleep something seemed to tell her that she was mistaken, that the child had really stolen a book, that there were breakers ahead.
And that something whispered truth, for this little incident was but the beginning of a series of adventures such as a college girl seldom is called upon to experience. Being ignorant of all this, she fell asleep to dream sweet dreams while the moon out of a cloudless sky, beaming down upon the faultless campus, seemed at times to take one look in at her open window.
CHAPTER II
ELUSIVE SHAKESPEARE
The sun had been up for more than an hour when on the following morning Lucile lifted her head sleepily and looked at the clock.
“Sunday morning. I’m glad!” she exclaimed as she leaped out of bed and raced away for a cold shower.
As she dressed she experienced a sensation of something unfinished and at the same time a desire to hide something, to defend someone. At first she could not understand what it all meant. Then, like a flash, the occurrence of the previous night flashed upon her.
“Oh, that,” she breathed.
She was surprised to find that her desire to shield the child had gained tremendously in strength while she slept. Perhaps there are forces we know nothing of, which work on the inner, hidden chambers of our mind while we sleep, and having worked there, leave impressions which determine our very destinies.
Lucile was not enough of a philosopher to reason this all out. She merely knew that she did not want to tell anyone of the strange incident, no not even her roommate. And in the end that was just what happened. She told no one.
When she went back to her work on Monday night a whole busy day had passed in the library. Thousands of books had shot up the dummy elevator to have their cards stamped and to be given out. Thousands had been returned to their places on their shelves. Was a single book missing? Were two or three missing? Lucile had no way of knowing. Every book that had gone out had been recorded, but to look over these records, then to check back and see if others were missing, would be the work of weeks. She could only await developments.
She was surprised at the speed with which these developments came. Mr. Downers, the superintendent, was noted for his exact knowledge regarding the whereabouts of the books which were under his care. She had not been working an hour when a quiet voice spoke to her and with a little start she turned to face her superior.
“Miss Tucker,” the librarian smiled, “do you chance to have any knowledge of the whereabouts of the first volume of our early edition of Shakespeare?”
“Why, no,” the girl replied quickly. “Why—er”—there was a catch in her throat—“is it gone?”
Mr. Downers nodded as he replied:
“Seems temporarily so to be. Misplaced, no doubt. Will show up later.” He was still smiling but there were wrinkles in his usually placid brow.
“I missed it just now,” he went on. “Strange, too. I saw it there only Saturday. The set was to be removed from the library to be placed in the Noyes museum. Considered too valuable to be kept in the library. Very early edition, you know.
“Strange!” he puzzled. “It could not have been taken out on the car, as it was used only in the reference reading room. It’s not there. I just phoned. However, it will turn up. Don’t worry about it.”
He turned on his heel and was gone.
Lucile stared after him. She wanted to call him back, to tell him that it was not all right, that it would not turn up, that the strangely quaint little person she had seen in the library at midnight had carried it away. Yet she said not a word; merely allowed him to pass away. It was as if there was a hand over her mouth forbidding her to speak.
“There can’t be a bit of doubt about it,” she told herself. “That girl was standing right by the shelf where the ancient Shakespeare was kept. She took it. I wonder why? I wonder if she’ll come back. Why, of course she will! For the other volume, or to return the one she has. Perhaps tonight. Two volumes were too heavy for those slim shoulders. She’ll come back and then she shan’t escape me. I’ll catch her in the act. Then I’ll find out the reason why.”
So great was her faith in this bit of reasoning that she resolved that, without telling a single person about the affair, she would set a watch that very night for the mysterious child and
the elusive Shakespeare. She must solve the puzzle.
That night as she sat in the darkened library, listening, waiting, she allowed her mind to recall in a dim and dreamy way the face and form of the mysterious child. As she dreamed thus there suddenly flashed into the foreground from the deepest depths of her memory the time and circumstance on which she had first seen that child. She saw it all as in a dream. The girl had been dressed just as she was Saturday at midnight. She had entered the stacks. That had been a month before. She had appeared leading an exceedingly old man. Bent with the weight of years, leaning upon a cane, all but blind, the old man had moved with a strangely youthful eagerness.
He had been allowed to enter the stacks only by special request. He was an aged Frenchman, a lover of books. He wished to come near the books, to sense them, to see them with his age-dimmed eyes, to touch them with his faltering hands.
So the little girl had guided him forward. From time to time he had asked that he be allowed to handle certain volumes. He had touched each with a reverent hand. His touch had resembled a caress. Some few he had opened and had felt along the covers.
“I wonder why he did that,” Lucile had thought to herself.
She paused. A sudden thought had flashed into her mind. At the risk of missing her quarry, she groped her way to the shelf where the companion to the stolen volume lay and took it down. Slowly she ran her fingers over the inner part of the cover.
“Yes,” she whispered, “there is something.”
She dared not flash on the light. To do so might betray her presence in the building. Tomorrow she would see. Replacing the volume in its accustomed niche, she again tiptoed to her post of waiting.
As she thought of it now, she began to realize what a large part her unconscious memory had played in her longing to shield the child. She had seen the child render a service to a feeble and all but helpless old man. Her memory had been trying to tell her of this but had only now broken through into her wakeful mind. Lucile was aroused by the thought.
“I must save her,” she told herself. “I must. I must!”
Even with this resolve came a perplexing problem. Why had the child taken the book? Had she done so at the old man’s direction? That seemed incredible. Could an old man, tottering to his grave, revealing in spite of his shabby clothing a one-time more than common intellect and a breeding above the average, stoop to theft, the theft of a book? And could he, above all, induce an innocent child to join him in the deed? It was unthinkable.
“That man,” she thought to herself, “why he had a noble bearing, like a soldier, almost, certainly like a gentleman. He reminded me of that great old general of his own nation who said to his men when the enemy were all but upon Paris: ‘They must not pass.’ Could he stoop to stealing?”
These problems remained all unsolved, for on that night no slightest footfall was heard in the silent labyrinth.
The next night was the same, and the next. Lucile was growing weary, hollow-eyed with her vigil. She had told Florence nothing, yet she had surprised her roommate often looking at her in a way which said, “Why are you out so late every night? Why don’t you share things with your pal?”
And she wanted to, but something held her back.
Thursday night came with a raging torrent of rain. It was not her night at the library. She would gladly have remained in her cozy room, wrapped in a kimono, studying, yet, as the chimes pealed out the notes of Auld Lang Syne, telling that the hour of ten had arrived, she hurried into her rubbers and ulster to face the tempest.
Wild streaks of lightning faced her at the threshold. A gust of wind seized her and hurried her along for an instant, then in a wild, freakish turn all but threw her upon the pavement. A deluge of rain, seeming to extinguish the very street light, beat down upon her.
“How foolish I am!” she muttered. “She would not come on a night like this.”
And yet she did come. Lucile had not been in her hiding place more than a half hour when she caught the familiar pit-pat of footsteps.
“This time she shall not escape me,” she whispered, as with bated breath and cushioned footstep she tiptoed toward the spot where the remaining Shakespeare rested.
Now she was three stacks away. As she paused to listen she knew the child was at the same distance in the opposite direction. She moved one stack nearer, then listened again.
She heard nothing. What had happened?—the child had paused. Had she heard? Lucile’s first impulse was to snap on a light. She hesitated and in hesitating lost.
There came a sudden glare of light. A child’s face was framed in it, a puzzled, frightened face. A slender hand went out and up. A book came down. The light went out. And all this happened with such incredible speed that Lucile stood glued to her tracks through it all.
She leaped toward the dummy elevator, only to hear the faint click which told that it was descending. She could not stop it. The child was gone.
She dashed to a window which was on the elevated station side. A few seconds of waiting and the lightning rewarded her. In the midst of a blinding flash, she caught sight of a tiny figure crossing a broad stretch of rain-soaked green.
The next instant, with rubbers in one hand and ulster in the other, she dashed down the stairs.
“I’ll get her yet,” she breathed. “She belongs down town. She’ll take the elevated. There is a car in seven minutes. I’ll make it, too. Then we shall see.”
CHAPTER III
THE GARGOYLE
Down a long stretch of sidewalk, across a sunken patch of green where the water was to her ankles, down a rain-drenched street, through pools of black water where sewers were choked, Lucile dashed. With no thought for health or safety she exposed herself to the blinding tempest and dashed before skidding autos, to arrive at last panting at the foot of the rusted iron stairs that led to the elevated railway platform.
Pausing only long enough to catch her breath and arrange her garments that the child might not be frightened away by her appearance, she hurried up the stairs. The train came thundering in. There was just time to thrust a dime through the wicker window and to bound for the door.
Catching a fleeting glimpse of the dripping figure of the child, she made a dash for that car and made it. A moment later, with her ulster thrown over on the seat beside her, she found herself facing the child.
Sitting there curled up in a corner, as she now was, hugging a bulky package wrapped in oilcloth, the child seemed older and tinier than ever.
“How could she do it?” was Lucile’s unspoken question as she watched the water oozing from her shoes to drip-drip to the floor below. With the question came a blind resolve to see the thing through to the end. This child was not the real culprit. Cost what it might, she would find who was behind her strange actions.
There is no place in all the world where a thunderstorm seems more terrible than in the deserted streets in the heart of a great city at night. Echoing and re-echoing between the towering walls of buildings, the thunder seems to be speaking to the universe. Flashing from a thousand windows to ten thousand others, the lightning seems to be searching the haunts and homes of men. The whole wild fury of it seems but the voice of nature defying man in his great stronghold, the city. It is as if in thundering tones she would tell him that great as he may imagine himself, he is not a law unto himself and can never be.
Into the heart of a great city on a night like this the elevated train carried Lucile and the child.
On the face of the child, thief as she undoubtedly was, and with the stolen goods in her possession, there flashed not one tremor, not a falling of an eyelash, which might be thought of as a sign of fear of laws of nature, man or God. Was she hardened or completely innocent of guilt? Who at that moment could tell?
It would be hard to imagine a more desolate spot than that in which the car discharged its two passengers. As Lucile’s eye saw the sea of dreary, water-soaked tenements and tumbledown cottages that, like cattle left out in the storm, hovered bes
ide the elevated tracks, she shivered and was tempted to turn back—yet she went on.
A half block from the station she passed a policeman. Again she hesitated. The child was but a half block before her. She suspected nothing. It would be so easy to say to the policeman, “Stop that child. She is a thief. She has stolen property concealed beneath her cape.” The law would then take its course and Lucile’s hands would be free.
Yet something urged her past the policeman, down a narrow street, round a corner, up a second street, down a third, still narrower, and up to the door of the smallest, shabbiest cottage of the whole tumble-down lot.
The child had entered here. Lucile paused to consider and, while considering, caught the gleam of light through a torn window shade. The cottage was one story and a garret. The window was within her range of vision. After a glance from left to right, she stepped beneath the porch, which gave her an opportunity to peer through the opening. Here, deep in the shadows, she might look on at the scene within without herself being observed by those within or by passers-by on the street.
The picture which came to her through the hole in the shade was so different from that which one might expect that she barely suppressed a gasp. In the room, which was scrupulously clean and tidy, there were but two persons, the child and the old man who had visited the library. Through the grate of a small stove a fire gleamed. Before this fire, all unabashed, the child stripped the water-soaked clothing from her meager body, then stood chafing her limbs, which were purple with cold.
The old man appeared all absorbed in his inspection of the book just placed in his hands. Lucile was not surprised to recognize it as the second Shakespeare. From turning it over and over, he paused to open it and peer at its inside cover. Not satisfied with this, he ran his finger over the upper, outside corner.
It was then that Lucile saw for the first time the thing she had felt while in the library in the dark. A small square of paper, yellow with age, was in that corner, and in its center was a picture of a gargoyle. A strange looking creation was this gargoyle. It was with such as these the ancients were wont to decorate their mansions. With a savage face that was half man and half lion, he possessed the paws of a beast and the wings of a great bird. About two sides of this picture was a letter L.
The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 69