by Anne Nesbet
Sauntering toward the streetcar from the opposite direction were two men who must themselves have just come off the ferry, right before the girls, and had been waiting a distance away, smoking cigarettes.
There was no doubt at all about it: one of these men was the very kidnapper who had driven the motorcar. And the other had a shock of blond hair under his hat.
“Oh, no!” said Darleen.
It was him. Jasper Lukes. So he was mixed up with these kidnappers somehow!
The men were sunk deep into their coats, like men who did not want to be noticed, and yet they seemed to be bitterly disagreeing about something, to judge from the words that washed back here and there toward the girls:
From Jasper came a mix of complaint and fury: “Just because you messed things up, now you’re wanting me to get my hands dirty. . . . I’m not like the rest of you. . . . I’m family.”
And from the kidnapper, an icy murmur that left no question who was in charge here: “Fambly, fambly — watch me shed a tear! . . . Nah, don’t you go waving that at me. . . . Boss says you’re the one who knows who’s who and what’s what. . . . Gotta find the girl, or everyone’s gonna pay. . . . Better get some news out of that dame you’ve been mentioning.”
“We’ll go see Shirley. I guess she’ll know where Darleen’s gotten to,” said Jasper Lukes, sounding very glum indeed. “If anyone does.”
And then they swung themselves onto the streetcar and out of earshot while Dar and Victorine stayed in the shadows and out of sight as much as they could manage.
“They were on that ferry too!” said Darleen. She and Victorine looked at each other in horror, sharing one terrible thought: How did they not see us? What a close call!
The streetcar was jangling off up the road, while Dar and Victorine kept themselves flat against the wall, their hearts beating so fast it was a wonder the wall could withstand the pressure.
“Darleen, didn’t you say you know that golden-haired man there? The one who came up the street last night? Why is he cozying up with kidnappers, do you think?”
Darleen shook her head. “I’d sure like to know,” she said. “That’s Jasper Lukes. Don’t you recognize him? He plays the villain in The Dangers of Darleen, so I guess perhaps even you may have seen him before.”
“Oh, but with a mask on!” said Victorine. “I had no idea. Some people look so very different in different disguises, you know. Never mind that. But what do we do now?”
They stared at each other, both trying to think clearly about all of these unclear but clearly awful things.
“We have to get ourselves up the hill right away!” said Darleen. “Oh, where’s the next streetcar? We simply have to get to my father before that wicked kidnapper does. Papa must already be frantic with worry! And they were talking about Aunt Shirley too. At least if they go to see her, then we’ll have a few more minutes to get to Papa. Oh, but Victorine —”
A helpless giggle came wriggling out of Darleen’s mouth, taking her entirely by surprise.
“Can you believe we were worried for a moment about a snake?”
“A harmless eastern indigo, at that,” said Victorine. “Well, we’ve learned our lesson now.”
“I’ll say,” said Darleen. “Compared with kidnappers, a snake, Victorine, is truly a picnic.”
On the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, bluffs rose up above the waterway, and the roads that carried people up to the top of those bluffs, where the little towns and the woods and the farmlands and the movie studios were, zigzagged steeply up the slopes.
“So wonderful!” said Victorine, her eyes glowing, and Darleen couldn’t quite tell whether it was the view of New York City across the river or the jangling, clattering streetcar itself that most amazed her.
Darleen was too nervous to enjoy the view. The streetcar trundled along the top of the bluff for what felt to Darleen like some very long minutes, and then finally it turned that last corner.
“Here we are,” said Darleen to Victorine. “Quick! Let’s get ourselves to my Papa.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Victorine, looking around at sleepy little Fort Lee with its unpaved streets. “Don’t see any kidnappers either. Although, honestly, Darleen, it doesn’t seem like the sort of place that would ever have kidnappers!”
Darleen could appreciate that to someone who had not been here before, Fort Lee might seem an odd sort of place. There were little houses around, such as you might see in any small town, but they were interrupted here and there by large, square, barn-like structures eating up most of a town block. And it was quiet here, apart from the sound of chickens coming from somebody’s backyard coop.
All in all, it was hard to believe it was just a river’s width away from the modern bustle of New York City.
“Come this way,” said Darleen, leading Victorine rather quickly now, toward — oh, her inner eye was squinting a little, trying to imagine what this place must look like seen through Victorine’s eyes — one of the smaller and shabbier little houses on that street. It could not brag, that little house, about the condition of its paint, which was ancient and flaking off, leaving dark patches and streaks on the white walls. It could not boast about its structural soundness, because there was a distinct sag in the wood of the front porch. It could only claim that once a very happy small family had lived there, and now the shipwrecked remnants of that family did the best they could under this slightly leaky old roof. And that it was very conveniently located for people who spent many daylight hours working at the Matchless studios, just right there, a stone’s throw away down the street.
“Goodness, what will we say to him?” said Darleen, hurrying Victorine up the path.
“The plain truth, if we can,” said Victorine, as if that were the obvious answer to everything.
“Hmm,” said Darleen. “Since we don’t want to frighten him too much, perhaps I’d better do most of the talking. He’ll have been worrying terribly.”
It was oddly quiet inside Darleen’s house, however, and Victorine’s face became solemn as she looked around.
“This is your home?” she said.
“Well, um, yes,” said Darleen, as her inner eye noticed the way the wallpaper in the front hall peeled and curled. And, yes, her inner ear immediately heard the defensiveness peppering her voice, but once one is growing defensive, it is very hard to change course. “Actually, Papa and I are very happy here.”
“Of course,” said Victorine sadly, and oh, Dar’s heart smote her! Because Victorine sounded not at all like an heiress looking down her fine nose at the way people live in Fort Lee when they are not heiresses in any respect. Victorine sounded like someone thinking it must be lovely to have a father.
Papa! Where was he, though?
“Oh, Papa!” called Darleen. “I’m home!”
But the words bounced aimlessly down the hall: the little house stayed silent.
“Maybe he’s asleep,” said Dar. “Wait right here, Victorine.”
She peeked into the kitchen: nobody. (She popped a couple of apples into her pockets, though, because you never know when apples will come in handy.) Then Darleen ran up the stairs and looked in her father’s room and in her own little attic corner: still nobody. And finally she came back downstairs to where Victorine stood on tiptoe, examining the decrepit old grandfather clock in the shadowy hall.
“That’s strange,” said Darleen. “He’s not here, and it’s Sunday. We always take the morning so nice and slow when it’s Sunday.”
“But you weren’t at home,” Victorine pointed out. “He’ll have gone somewhere to look for you.”
Of course!
“Aunt Shirley’s house!” said Darleen. That was where any and all Darlings went whenever there was trouble of some sort. “Oh, my! But that’s where those villains have gone! We’ve got to get ourselves to Aunt Shirley’s place right away. Come on. Fast!”
The clock was muttering along happily now, tick tick tick. Victorine must have wound it, Darleen realized, w
hile she was looking for her Papa upstairs and down.
“What if the kidnappers see us coming?” said Victorine.
“They won’t,” said Darleen. “This is my town, and I know all the sneakiest ways from everywhere to everywhere. Just you follow me.”
Impatience was springing up in her: she wanted to hurry, hurry. What must her father be thinking? He would be thinking . . . Well, whatever he was thinking, it was probably both better and worse than the actual truth.
They slipped like shadows out into the streets of Fort Lee — or rather, alongside those streets. Early on a Sunday morning, there was no one about to see them, but that also meant they themselves would be more obvious to anyone who happened to look their way, so Darleen made sure they stayed behind fences and the trunks of trees as much as possible, and of course they kept their eyes peeled for villains.
There was a pleasant smell of wet grass and of woodsmoke from kitchens where people who had not been running from kidnappers all night were cooking up nice breakfasts.
The earlier, braver birds were chattering about how glad they were the snow was all gone: spring, spring, spring!
“There’s Aunt Shirley’s house,” said Darleen quietly as they hovered behind a chicken coop nearby. “Oh, but look!”
Jasper Lukes had just popped out the door of that house and was walking down the steps. While the girls froze in place, the hens inside the coop began commenting to one another, probably wondering (as Darleen and Victorine were also wondering), What is going on here?
“Where’s the other one?” said Darleen. It was like seeing a spider wandering in your room and then looking away for a moment, only to discover that the spider has moved to somewhere your eye has not followed. A spider that might be anywhere was a spider that was more or less everywhere, as far as Darleen was concerned.
But in this case, the missing spider came out of hiding quite fast; the kidnapper emerged from where he had been lurking behind the house on the other side of Aunt Shirley’s place, and Jasper Lukes and the kidnapper walked rapidly away together and eventually turned a corner out of sight.
“You’d better stay here,” said Darleen to Victorine. “Stay out of sight while I go in. Maybe Papa’s there. I hope! Anyway, I’ll come back out as soon as I can and fetch you.”
Victorine hummed and nodded, but her hum was about as quiet as a hum could possibly be.
Darleen slipped around behind Aunt Shirley’s house and sneaked right in through the back door that she had skipped through so many times before. It was then easy enough to follow the voices to where her Aunt Shirley and her uncles were having sort of wild and desperate conversation, the kind one has when it looks like your niece and Only Sprig has gotten herself into some serious trouble.
“Better tell Bill,” Uncle Charlie was saying in a voice stretched very thin, as Darleen came tumbling into the room. Her aunt and uncles variously sprang to their feet (Aunt Shirley and Uncle Dan) or fell into an armchair in apparent shock (Uncle Charlie), and all of them said out loud, “Darleen!”
“Where’s Papa?” said Darleen, finding it hard to catch her breath. “Is my Papa all right?”
“Worried to death about you, you thoughtless girl!” said Aunt Shirley, folding Darleen into arms that were a good bit kinder than her words. “How could you frighten us this way? Why, that Jasper looked so fretful! He was saying such upsetting things — wanting to know where you were — questions to ask you — saying that you didn’t get kidnapped by the right people at all and might have gotten mixed up in a crime. What can any of that mean? And when we went to the police, they laughed!”
“You went to the police?” said Darleen. “And where is my Papa? Isn’t he here?”
“He went home,” said Uncle Dan. “I guess. Or to the laboratory.”
The laboratory! Oh, why had Darleen wasted time coming over here?
“We certainly did go to the police,” said Aunt Shirley. “When Dan and Charlie got back, and there was no sign of you, and they said something strange had happened at the filming, that the actors had shown up late, and yet you were already gone with who-knows-who — Darleen! How could you make such a mistake? You’ve taken years off my life, I do promise you. But the police laughed. Not nicely either. They said we told them to stay away, didn’t we? Said it was just a stunt we were pulling, they knew.”
“Well, to be fair,” said Uncle Charlie, “it was supposed to be a stunt, wasn’t it? But what did happen to you, Darleen? We were setting up to film you, and there was all sorts of commotion at the side entrance, so we thought maybe you had gone to the wrong place. And then when we came back, there you were, and the kidnappers too, and Dan caught it just fine in his camera.”
“I hope I did,” said Uncle Dan. “Tricky lighting.”
“But then you were gone, and another car came by, with our kidnappers — the actors, you know. They were a little late, so they missed you. So there we are, beginning to worry, and then —”
“Police,” said Uncle Dan. “Lots.”
Uncle Charlie put his hand on Darleen’s arm as if to steady her.
“Because — I don’t like to be the one to break bad news to you, Darleen, but there was another girl taken, poor thing.”
“Well, yes: Miss Victorine Berryman!” said Darleen, absolutely glittering with impatience. “Oh, I know. That’s why they took me, those other kidnappers — because they thought I was her.”
“Richest girl in the world, say the papers!” said Aunt Shirley. “The same papers that won’t write a peep now about Daring Darleen being kidnapped, just because that spoiled rich girl had the bad manners to go missing at the same place and the same time. Guess she never worries about where the money’s coming from to pay the next round of wages!”
“Big ransom,” said Uncle Dan. “Millions.”
“More or less her weight in gold, hmm?” said Uncle Charlie, running a hand through his shaggy red-gray hair so it would stick up from his head the way he liked it.
There was a momentary hush, in which most of the people in that room were thinking about how much money a million dollars was. It was too much money even to imagine, to be honest. A million dollars didn’t even seem like an actual real quantity; it felt like something more extravagant than a number. Like the very spirit of exaggeration itself turned into a couple of words. The hush crested over their heads like a wave and then suddenly broke.
“Wait!” said Aunt Shirley, spinning back to Darleen. “They took you, thinking you were the little rich girl? But then, where is she? Did they give you even the slightest clue where she might be? Because you know there’s a big reward out for information.”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” said Uncle Dan. “The papers said.”
“Can you imagine?” said Aunt Shirley. “Twenty-five thousand! That would be like a miracle for Matchless studios, wouldn’t it now? All our debts paid off just like that! So think a moment: Did you see any sign of that girl, Darleen? She’d be worth a whole lot of money to us.”
Darleen felt a flicker of fire in her that wasn’t entirely unlike what she had felt the night before on the face of that building, and what she had felt not so long ago on the Palisades above the Hudson. How strange that joy and fury should feel so similar when they sprang up in your belly!
“But, Aunt Shirley,” she said, with a voice that was already slightly on fire. “What if that girl’s guardians are wicked, greedy people who just want her fortune? We wouldn’t send someone back to people who don’t care one whit about her. And who might be evil to boot. Would we?”
There was a stunned silence in Aunt Shirley’s parlor, and then Aunt Shirley actually laughed.
“Don’t be absurd, child!” she said. “That’s none of our business, any of it. You’re spinning nonsensical stories.”
“So you’re saying, even if you knew her guardians were wicked people, you would ship that poor Miss Berryman right back to them?”
“For twenty-five thousand dollars,” said Aunt Sh
irley, with utter and complete conviction, “I certainly would.”
Darleen gulped some air; her uncles shifted slightly; Aunt Shirley looked very stubborn and determined. Darleen considered saying something more and then decided she’d better not.
“Well, I’ll go find Papa, then,” she said instead. “Don’t want him worrying more than he has to.”
And she turned on her heel and ran into the hall, ignoring the voices that trailed after her, saying things like:
“Wait!”
and
“Darleen!”
She sprinted out the door and then sped to the back of the house to get to Victorine before her relatives could make her any angrier than she already was.
Victorine, waiting behind the chicken coop, took one look at Darleen’s face and shook her head.
“Oh, dear. You look like you have just been having a very heated discussion with somebody,” she said.
“We have to go find Papa in the lab,” said Darleen, fidgeting from foot to foot and desperately trying to think. “Oh! Who even knows what kind of nonsense that Jasper Lukes was just saying to my aunt, and now she’s got her mind set on the stupid reward money, so they can’t know you’re here. We’ve got to hide you safely away. And I’m sure you are tired and hungry both. I’m so sorry, Victorine. I love my Aunt Shirley, but sometimes she’s impossible.”
And then Victorine put her hand on Darleen’s arm.
“Ah, Darleen, I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I’ve been wondering, while I waited for you out here, whether perhaps I should simply move on out West somewhere, you know, beginning right now, this very minute.”
“What kind of a plan is that?” said Darleen. “What do you think you’re going to do out West?”
“What do people do when they’re left alone in the world? They go somewhere new to make their fortune. I suppose I don’t have many useful skills yet, but I can read and write and ride a horse, and thanks to Grandmama’s strong interest in the biological sciences, I do know a little something about insects —”