by Roy J. Snell
The man sprang back in fear--Chapter XII.]
Adventure Stories for Girls
THE SECRET MARK
by
ROY J. SNELL
The Reilly & Lee Co.Chicago
Printed in the United States of America
Copyright, 1923byThe Reilly & Lee Co.All Rights Reserved
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE I A Mysterious Visitor 7 II Elusive Shakespeare 19 III The Gargoyle 30 IV What the Gargoyle Might Tell 40 V The Papier-Mache Lunch Box 50 VI "One Can Never Tell" 62 VII The Vanishing Portland Chart 73 VIII What Was In the Papier-Mache Lunch Box 81 IX Shadowed 94 X Mysteries of the Sea 102 XI Lucile Shares Her Secret 111 XII The Trial By Fire 121 XIII In the Mystery Room at Night 131 XIV A Strange Request 138 XV A Strange Journey 143 XVI Night Visitors 155 XVII A Battle in the Night 166 XVIII Frank Morrow Joins in the Hunt 176 XIX Lucile Solves No Mystery 190 XX "That Was the Man" 199 XXI A Theft in the Night 211 XXII Many Mysteries 218 XXIII Inside the Lines 228 XXIV Secrets Revealed 235 XXV Better Days 242
The Secret Mark
CHAPTER I A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
Lucile Tucker's slim, tapered fingers trembled slightly as she restedthem against a steel-framed bookcase. She had paused to steady her shakennerves, to collect her wits, to determine what her next move should be.
"Who can it be?" her madly thumping heart kept asking her.
And, indeed, who, besides herself, could be in the book stacks at thishour of the night?
About her, ranging tier on tier, towering from floor to ceiling, werebooks, thousands on thousands of books. The two floors above were full ofbooks. The two below were the same. This place was a perfect maze ofbooks. It was one of the sections of a great library, the library of oneof the finest universities of the United States.
In all this vast "city of books" she had thought herself quite alone.
It was a ghostly hour. Midnight. In the towers the great clock had slowlystruck. Besides the striking of the clock there had been but a singlesound: the click of an electric light snapped on. There had instantlygleamed at her feet a single ray of light. That light had traveledbeneath many tiers of books to reach her. She thought it must be four butwas not quite sure.
She had been preparing to leave the "maze," as she often called thestacks of books which loomed all about her. So familiar was she with theinterior of this building that she needed no light to guide her. To herright was a spiral stairway which like an auger bored its way to theground four stories below. Straight ahead, twenty tiers of books away,was a small electric elevator, used only for lifting or lowering piles ofbooks. Fourteen tiers back was a straight stairway. To a personunfamiliar with it, the stacks presented a bewildering labyrinth, but toLucile they were an open book.
She had intended making her way back to the straight stairway which ledto the door by which she must leave. But now she clutched at her heart asshe asked herself once more:
"Who can it be? And what does he want?"
Only one thing stood out clearly in her bewildered brain: Since she wasconnected with the stacks as one of their keepers, it was plainly herduty to discover who this intruder might be and, if occasion seemed towarrant, to report the case to her superiors.
The university owned many rare and valuable books. She had often wonderedthat so many of these were kept, not in vaults, but in open shelves.
Her heart gave a new bound of terror as she remembered that some ofthese, the most valuable of all, were at the very spot from which thelight came.
"Oh! Shame! Why be so foolish?" she whispered to herself suddenly."Probably some professor with a pass-key. Probably--but what's the use?I've got to find out."
With that she began moving stealthily along the narrow passageway whichlay between the stacks. Tiptoeing along, with her heart thumping soloudly she could not help feeling it might be heard, she advanced step bystep until she stood beside the end of the stack nearest the strangeintruder. There for a few seconds she stuck. The last ounce of couragehad oozed out. She must await its return.
Then with a sudden burst of courage she swung round the corner.
The next instant she was obliged to exert all her available energy tosuppress a laugh. Standing in the circle of light was not some burlyrobber, but a child, a very small and innocent looking child.
Yet a second glance told her that the child was older than she looked.Her face showed that. Old as the face was, the body of the child appearedtiny as a sparrow's. A green velvet blouse of some strangely foreignweave, a coarse skirt, a pair of heavy shoes, unnoticeable stockings andthat face--all this flashed into her vision for a second. Then all wasdarkness; the light had been snapped out.
The action was so sudden and unexpected that for a few seconds the younglibrarian stood where she was, motionless. Wild questions raced throughher mind: Who was the child? What was she doing in the library at thisunearthly hour? How had she gotten in? How did she expect to get out?
She had a vaguely uneasy feeling that the child carried a package. Whatcould that be other than books? A second question suddenly disturbed her:Who was this child? Had she seen her before? She felt sure she had. Butwhere? Where?
All this questioning took but seconds. The next turn found her mindfocused on the one important question: Which way had the child gone? Asif in answer to her question, her alert ears caught the soft pit-pat offootsteps.
"She's going on to my right," she whispered to herself. "That's good.There is no exit in that direction, only windows and an impossible dropof fifty feet. I'll tiptoe along, throw on the general switch, catch herat that end and find out why she is here. Probably accepting a dare orgoing through with some childish prank."
Hastily she tiptoed down the aisle between the stacks. Then, turning toher left, she put out her hand, touched a switch and released a flood oflight. At first its brightness blinded her. The next instant she staredabout her in astonishment. The place was empty.
"Deserted as a tomb," she whispered.
And so it was. Not a trace of the child was to be seen.
"As if I hadn't seen her at all!" she murmured. "I don't believe inghosts, but--where have I seen that face before? You'd never forget it,once you'd seen it. And I have seen it. But where?"
Meditatively she walked to the dummy elevator which carried books up anddown. She started as her glance fell upon it. The carrier had been onthis floor when she left it not fifteen minutes before. Now it was gone.The button that released it was pressed in for the ground floor.
"She couldn't have," she murmured. "The compartment isn't over two feetsquare."
She stared again. Then she pressed the button for the return of theelevator. The car moved
silently upward to stop at her door. There wasnothing about it to show that it had been used for unusual purposes.
"And yet she might have," she mused. "She was so tiny. She might havepressed herself into it and ridden down."
Suddenly she switched off the lights and hurried to a window. Did shecatch a glimpse of a retreating figure at the far side of the campus? Shecould not be sure. The lights were flickering, uncertain.
"Well," she shook herself, then shivered, "I guess that's about all ofthat. Ought to report it, but I won't. They'd only laugh at me."
Again she shivered, then turning, tiptoed down the narrow passageway tocarry out her original intention of going out of the building by way ofthe back stairs.
Her room was only a half block away in a dormitory on the corner of thecampus nearest the library. Having reached the dormitory, she went to herroom and began disrobing for the night. In the bed near her own, wrappedin profound sleep, lay her roommate. She wished to waken her, to tell herof 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 beenworking hard lately and needs the sleep."
At last, clad in her dream robes, with her abundant hair streaming downher back and her white arms gleaming in the moonlight, she sat down bythe open window to think and dream.
It was a wonderful picture that lay spread out before her, a vista ofmagnificent Gothic structures of gray sandstone framed in lawns ofperfectly kept green. Sidewalks wound here, there, everywhere. Swarmingwith students during the waking hours, they were silent now. Her bosomswelled with a strange, inexpressible emotion as she realized that she, amere girl, was a part of it all.
Like her roommate, she was one of the thousands of girls who to-dayattend the splendid universities of our land. With little money, ofhumble parentage, they are yet given an opportunity to make their waytoward a higher and broader understanding of the meaning of life throughstudy in the university.
The thought that this university was possessed of fifty millions ofdollars' worth of property, yet had time and patience to make a place forher, both awed and inspired her.
The very thought of her position sobered her. Four hours each week dayshe worked in the stacks at the library. Books that had been read andreturned came down to her and by her hands were placed in theirparticular niches of the labyrinth of stacks.
The work was not work to her but recreation, play. She was a lover ofbooks. Just to touch them was a delight. To handle them, to work withthem, to keep them in their places, accessible to all, this was joyindeed. Yet this work, which was play to her, went far toward paying herway in the university.
And at this thought her brow clouded. She recalled once more theoccurrence of a short time before and the strange little face among thestacks. She knew that she ought to tell the head of her section of thelibrary, Mr. Downers, of the incident. Should anything happen, shouldsome book be missing, she would then be free from suspicion. Shouldsuspicion fall upon her, she might be deprived of her position and, fromlack of funds, be obliged to give up her cherished dream, a universityeducation.
"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 strongerreason than her fear of derision that held her back from telling.
"It's the face," she told herself. "That poor little kiddie's face. Itwasn't beautiful, no, not quite that, but appealing, frankly, fearlesslyappealing. If I saw her take a book I couldn't believe that she meant tosteal it, or at least that it was she who willed it.
"But fi-fum," she laughed a low laugh, throwing back her head until herhair danced over her white shoulders like a golden shower, "why borrowtrouble? She probably took nothing. It was but a childish prank."
At that she threw back the covers of her bed, thrust her feet deep downbeneath them and lay down to rest. To-morrow was Sunday; no work, nostudy. There would be plenty of time to think.
She believed that she had dismissed the scene in the library from hermind, yet even as she fell asleep something seemed to tell her that shewas mistaken, that the child had really stolen a book, that there werebreakers ahead.
And that something whispered truth, for this little incident was but thebeginning of a series of adventures such as a college girl seldom iscalled upon to experience. Being ignorant of all this, she fell asleep todream sweet dreams while the moon out of a cloudless sky, beaming downupon the faultless campus, seemed at times to take one look in at heropen window.