Some mysteries are long in solving. Some are apparently never solved. Some scarcely become mysteries before their solution appears. This mystery was of the latter sort.
Plucking up all the courage she could command, Lucile made her way down the steps and, crowding herself through a narrow opening, succeeded in reaching a position by a window. Here she could see without being seen and could catch fragments of the conversation which went on within.
The child had advanced to the center of the room. The woman and a man, worse in appearance, more degraded than the woman, stood staring at her. There was something heroic about the tense, erect bearing of the child.
“Like Joan of Arc,” Lucile thought.
The child was speaking. The few words that Lucile caught sent thrills into her very soul.
The child was telling the woman that she had had a book, which belonged to her friend, Monsieur Le Bon. This book was very old and much prized by him. She had had it with her that other night in a lunch box. The woman had taken it. She had come for it. It must be given back.
As the child finished, the woman burst into a hoarse laugh. Then she launched forth in a tirade of abusive language. She did not admit having the book nor yet deny it. She was too intent upon abusing the child and the old man who had befriended her for that.
At last she sprang at the child. The child darted for the door, but the man had locked and bolted it. There followed a scramble about the room which resulted in the upsetting of chairs and the knocking of kitchen utensils from the wall. At last the child, now fighting and sobbing, was roped to the high post of an ancient bedstead.
Then, to Lucile’s horror, she saw the man thrust a heavy iron poker through the grate of the stove in which a fire burned brightly.
Her blood ran cold. Chills raced up her spine. What was the man’s purpose? Certainly nothing good. Whatever these people were to the child, whatever the child might be, the thing must be stopped. The child had at least done one heroic deed; she had come back for that book, the book which at this moment rested in Lucile’s own room, Frank Morrow’s book. She had come for it knowing what she must face and had come not through fear but through love for her patriarchal friend, Monsieur Le Bon. Somehow she must be saved.
With a courage born of despair, Lucile made her way from the position by the window toward the door. As she did so, she thought she caught a movement on the street above her. She was sure that a second later she heard the sound of lightly running footsteps. Had she been watched from above? What was to come of that? There was no time to form an answer. One hand was on the knob. With the other she beat the door. The door swung open. She stepped inside. It seemed to her that the door shut itself behind her. For a second her heart stood still as she realized that the man was behind her; that the door was bolted.
CHAPTER XII
THE TRIAL BY FIRE
The moment Lucile heard the lock click behind her she knew that she was trapped. But her fighting blood was up. Even had the door been wide open she would not have retreated.
“You release that child,” she said through cold, set lips.
“Yes, you tell me ‘release the child,’” said the woman, with an attempt at sarcasm; “you who are so brave, who have a companion who is like an ox, who likes to beat up poor women on the street. You say, ‘release the child.’ You say that. And the child, she is my own stepdaughter.”
“I—I don’t believe it,” said Lucile stoutly.
“It is true.”
“If it is true, you have no right to abuse her—you are not fit to be any child’s mother.”
“Not fit,” the woman’s face became purple with rage. “I am no good, she says; not fit!” She advanced threateningly toward Lucile.
“Now, now,” she stormed, “we have you where we want you. Now we shall show you whether or not we can do as we please with the child that was so very kindly given to us.” She made a move toward the stove, from which the handle to the heavy poker protruded. By this time the end must be red hot.
“It’s no use to threaten me,” said Lucile calmly. “I wouldn’t leave the room if I might. If I did it would be to bring an officer. I mean to see that the child is treated as a human being and not as a dog.”
The woman’s face once more became purple. She seemed petrified, quite unable to move, from sheer rage.
But the man, a sallow-complexioned person with a perpetual leer in one corner of his mouth, started for the stove.
With a quick spring Lucile reached the handle of the poker first. Seizing it, she drew it, white hot, from the fire. The man sprang back in fear. The woman gripped the rounds of a heavy chair and made as if to lift it for a blow.
Scarcely realizing that she was imitating her hero of fiction, she brought the glowing iron close to the white and tender flesh of her forearm.
“You think you can frighten me,” she smiled. “You think you can do something to me which will cause me to cease to attempt to protect that child. Perhaps you would torture me. I will prove to you that you cannot frighten me. What I have been doing is right. The world was made for people to live in who do right. If one may not always do right, then life is not worth living.”
The fiery weapon came closer to her arm. The woman stared at her as if fascinated. The child, who had been silently struggling at her bands, paused in open-mouthed astonishment. For once the leer on the man’s lips vanished.
Then, of a sudden, as she appeared to catch the meaning of it all, the child gave forth a piercing scream.
The next instant there came a loud pounding at the door as a gruff voice thundered:
“Here, you in there! Open up!”
The woman dropped upon the ill-kept bed in a real or pretended swoon. Lucile allowed the poker to drop to her side. With trembling fingers the man unloosed the door and the next instant they were looking into the faces of a police sergeant and two other officers of the law.
“What’s going on here?” demanded the sergeant.
Suddenly recovering from her swoon, the woman sprang to her feet.
“That young lady,” she pointed an accusing finger at Lucile, “is attempting to break up our home.”
The officer looked them over one by one.
“What’s the girl tied up for?” he demanded.
“It’s the only way we can keep her home,” said the woman. “That young lady’s been enticing her away; her and an old wretch of a man.”
“Your daughter?”
“My adopted daughter.”
“What about it, little one?” the officer stepped over, and cutting the girl’s bands, placed a hand on the child’s head. “Is what she says true?”
“I—I don’t know,” she faltered. Her knees trembled so she could scarcely stand. “I never saw the young lady until now but I—I think she is wonderful.”
“Is this woman your stepmother.”
The girl hung her head.
“Do you wish to stay with her?”
“Oh! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! No! No! No! Oh, Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!”
The child in her agony of fright and grief threw herself face down upon the bed.
The officer, seating himself beside her, smoothed her hair with his huge right hand until she was quiet, then bit by bit got from her the story of her experiences in this great American city. Lucile listened eagerly as the little girl talked falteringly.
A Belgian refugee, she had been brought to the United States during the war, and because this unprincipled pair spoke French, which she too understood, the good-hearted but misguided people who had her in charge had given her over to them without fully looking up their record.
Because she was small and had an appealing face, and because she was a refugee, they had set her to begging on the street and had more than once asked her to steal.
Having been brought up by conscientious parents, all this was repulsive to her. So one day she had run away. She had wandered the streets of the great, unfriendly city until, almost at the point of starvation, sh
e had been taken home by a very old man, a Frenchman.
“French,” she said, “but not like these,” she pointed a finger of scorn at the man and woman. “A French gentleman. A very, very wonderful man.”
She had lived with him and had helped him all she could. Then, one night, as she was on an errand for him, the woman, her stepmother, had found her. She had been seized and dragged along the street. But by some strange chance she did not at all understand, she had been rescued.
That night she had been carrying a book. The book belonged to her aged benefactor and was much prized by him. Thinking that her foster mother had the book, she had dared return to ask for it.
She proceeded to relate what had happened in that room and ended with a plea that she might be allowed to return to the cottage on Tyler street.
“Are you interested in this child?” the officer asked Lucile.
“I surely am.”
“Want to see that she gets safely home?”
“I—I will.”
“And see here,” the officer turned a stern face on the others, “if you interfere with this child in the future, we’ve got enough on you to put you away. You ain’t fit to be no child’s parents. Far as I can tell, this here old man is. This case, for the present, is settled out of court. See!”
He motioned to his subordinates. They stood at attention until Lucile and the child passed out, then followed.
The sergeant saw the girl and the child safely on the elevated platform, then, tipping his hat, mumbled:
“Good luck and thank y’ miss. I’ve got two of ’em myself. An’ if anything ever happened to me, I’d like nothin’ better ’n to have you take an interest in ’em.”
Something rose up in Lucile’s throat and choked her. She could only nod her thanks. The next instant they went rattling away, bound for the mystery cottage on Tyler street.
For once Lucile felt richly repaid for all the doubt, perplexity and sleepless hours she had gone through.
“It’s all very strange and mysterious,” she told herself, “but somehow, sometime, it will all come out right.”
As she sat there absorbed in her own thoughts, she suddenly became conscious of the fact that the child at her side was silently weeping.
“Why!” she exclaimed, “what are you crying for? You are going back to your cottage and to your kind old man.”
“The book,” whispered the child; “it is gone. I can never return it.”
A sudden impulse seized Lucile, an impulse she could scarcely resist. She wanted to take the child in her arms and say:
“Dear little girl, I have the book in my room. I will bring it to you tomorrow.”
She did not say it. She could not. As far as she knew, the old man had no right to the book; it belonged to Frank Morrow.
What she did say was, “I shouldn’t worry any more about it if I were you. I am sure it will come out all right in the end.”
Then, before they knew it, they were off the elevated train and walking toward Tyler street and Lucile was saying to herself, “I wonder what next.” Hand-in-hand the two made their way to the door of the dingy old cottage.
CHAPTER XIII
IN THE MYSTERY ROOM AT NIGHT
Much to her surprise, just when she had expected to be trudging back to the station alone, Lucile found herself seated by a table in the mystery room. She was sipping a delicious cup of hot chocolate and talking to the mystery child and her mysterious godfather. Every now and again she paused to catch her breath. It was hard for her to realize that she was in the mystery room of the mysterious cottage on Tyler street. Yet there she certainly was. The child had invited her in.
A dim, strangely tinted light cast dark shadows over everything. The strange furniture took on grotesque forms. The titles of the books along the wall gleamed out in a strange manner.
For a full five minutes the child talked to the old man in French. He exclaimed now and then, but other than that took no part in the conversation.
When she had finished, he held out a thin, bony hand to Lucile and said in perfect English:
“Accept my thanks for what you have done to protect this poor little one, my pretty Marie. You are a brave girl and should have a reward. But, alas, I have little to give save my books and they are an inheritance, an inheritance thrice removed. They were my great-grandfather’s and have descended direct to me. One is loath to part with such treasure.”
“There is no need for any reward,” said Lucile quickly. “I did it because I was interested in the child. But,” with a sudden inspiration, “if you wish to do me a favor, tell me the story of your life.”
The man gave her a quick look.
“You are so—so old,” she hastened to add, “and so venerable, so soldier-like, so like General Joffre. Your life must have been a wonderful one.”
“Ah, yes,” the old man settled back in his chair. As if to brush a mist from before his eyes, he made a waving motion with his hand. “Ah, yes, it has been quite wonderful, that is, I may say it once was.
“I was born near a little town named Gondrecourt in the province of Meuse in France. There was a small chateau, very neat and beautiful, with a garden behind it, with a bit of woods and broad acres for cattle and grain. All that was my father’s. It afterwards became mine.
“In one room of the chateau were many, many ancient volumes, some in French, some in English, for my father was a scholar, as also he educated me to be.
“These books were the cream of many generations, some dating back before the time of Columbus.”
Lucile, thinking of the book of ancient Portland charts, allowed her gaze for a second to stray to the shelf where it reposed.
Again the man threw her a questioning look, but once more went on with his narrative of his life in far-off France.
“Of all the treasures of field, garden, woods or chateau, the ones most prized by me were those ancient books. So, year after year I guarded them well, guarded them until an old man, in possession of all that was once my father’s, I used to sit of an evening looking off at the fading hills at eventide with one of those books in my lap.
“Then came the war.” Again his hand went up to dispel the imaginary mist. “The war took my two sons. They never came back. It took my three grandsons. We gave gladly, for was it not our beloved France that was in danger? They, too, never returned.”
The old man’s hand trembled as he brushed away the imaginary mist.
“I borrowed money to give to France. I mortgaged my land, my cattle, my chateau; only my treasure of books I gave no man a chance to take. They must be mine until I died. They of all the treasures I must keep.
“One night,” his voice grew husky, “one night there came a terrible explosion. The earth rocked. Stones of the castle fell all about the yard. The chateau was in ruins. It was a bomb from an airplane.
“Someway the library was not touched. It alone was safe. How thankful I was that it was so. It was now all that was left.
“I took my library to a small lodging in the village. Then, when the war was ended, I packed all my books in strong boxes and started for Paris.”
He paused. His head sank upon his breast. His lips quivered. It was as if he were enduring over again some great sorrow.
“Perhaps,” he said after a long time, “one is foolish to grieve over what some would say is a trifle compared to other losses. But one comes to love books. They are his very dear friends. With them he shares his great pleasures. In times of sorrow they console him. Ah, yes, how wonderful they are, these books?” His eyes turned toward the shelves.
Then, suddenly, his voice changed. He hastened on. He seemed to desire to have done with it. One might have believed that there was something he was keeping back which he was afraid his lips might speak.
“I came to America,” he said hoarsely, “and here I am in your great city, alone save for this blessed child, and—and my books—some of my books—most of my books.”
Again he was silent. The
room fell into such a silence that the very breathing of the old man sounded out like the exhaust of an engine. Somewhere in another room a clock ticked. It was ghostly.
Shaking herself free from the spell of it, Lucile said, “I—I think I must go.”
“No! No!” cried the old man. “Not until you have seen some of my treasures, my books.”
Leading her to the shelves, he took down volume after volume. He placed them in her hands with all the care of a salesman displaying rare and fragile china.
She looked at the outside of some; then made bold to open the covers and peep within. They were all beyond doubt very old and valuable. But one fact stood out in her mind as she finally bade them good night, stood out as if embossed upon her very soul: In the inside upper corner of the cover of every volume, done on expensive, age-browned paper, there was the same gargoyle, the same letter L as had been in the other mysterious volumes.
“The gargoyle’s secret,” she whispered as she came out upon the dark, damp streets. “The gargoyle’s secret. I wonder what it is!”
Then she started as if in fear that the gargoyle were behind her, about to spring at her from the dark.
CHAPTER XIV
A STRANGE REQUEST
“But, Lucile!” exclaimed Florence in an excited whisper, springing up in her bed after she had heard Lucile’s story. “How did the police know that something was going wrong in that house? How did they come to be right there when you needed them most?”
“That’s just what I asked the sergeant,” answered Lucile, “and he just shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Somebody tipped it off.’”
“Which meant, I suppose, that someone reported the fact to police headquarters that something was wrong in that house.”
“I suppose so.”
“Is that all you know about it?”
“Why, I—I thought I heard someone hurrying away on the sidewalk just as I was going to enter.”
“You don’t suppose—”
“Oh, I don’t know what to suppose,” Lucile gave a short, hysterical laugh. “It is getting to be much too complicated for me. I can’t stand it much longer. Something’s going to burst. I think all the time that someone is dogging my tracks. I think someone must suspect me of being in league with this old man and the child.”
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