OCR Text |
Show -A THE 6TORY At a public dance Martin Forben, newspaper man. cuts In on Ithoda Wlilte'a dance with War Lew la, whom Martin instinctively in-stinctively dislikes. He overhears over-hears a converaatton between Lewis and a woman, whlnh he reallr.es concerns Rhoda. He recalls re-calls a -blind ad" Inquiring the whereabouts of "Rhoda M'-I-'ar-land" and Beiiaeo a newspaper story. He believes that Is Itho-da's Itho-da's real name. She ref um;h to deny or admit It. However, It recalls her childhood In California. Cali-fornia. Her mother dead, a he bad been happy until niiNfortune befell tier father, Proftaor Mc Farlttnd. A-iaoclated with the blow Is her uncle, William Itoyce. Thf-y move to Chicago, where her father 1h engaged In mysterious work. Rhoda taken up stenography. Her father dies suddenly, vainly trying to pive her a message about "papers" In a trunk. Ilhoda goes to live with a fellow- worker, "Ha he" Jen- nlnss. Their apartment is broken ! into and $,'100 of Khoda's money i tnken. Martin learns that "C. J." of the "blind ad" In Charles J. Former, uncle of Le wis. It hod a ndmita hor name Is MrFarland. A mysterious "Claire Cleveland" asks Rhoda for an interview, tih e asks ithoda for a certain paper belonging to her which. Bhe claims, was In McFarland'e possession. CHAPTER IV Continued 6 To Rhodn it was as if a buried tlilnt? Iiad reared lis liend nftor all these yours and slurod at licr. Ever since lior fnllior'3 death tliere'd been on uimrkiiowlodgctl fear in tlie bottom of her mind that this would happen something like this. It had taken its first vague nightmare form when, as a child of fourteen, she'd read in the paper about another trial under the Mann net. It bad been a fear of rinding rind-ing something Hint would give form and body to this nightmare that had kept her from going over the papers In the old leather trunk the day after her father died. One of the first things she had done after her flight from the hotel, up In the little hall bedroom of her first boarding house, had been to seal that trunk with strips of gummed paper ail around the lid. Her father's dying reference to his papers prevented her from destroying the thing. After the burglary she'd looked at It to make sure It was undisturbed, un-disturbed, but at that time, preoccupied preoccu-pied by the loss of her three hundred dollars, she hadn't thought much about It. Up to now, until she heard Claire Cleveland pronounce the word California, Cali-fornia, she'd been -able In her sensible moments to remind herself thnt all she'd ever seen in the trunk had been laboratory notes and diagrams, to argue ar-gue thnt In ail probability it contained nothing else, and to promise herself that some day she would open It np, go through It methodically, and make an end of her nightmare once and for all. But now the nightmare was true. These people certainly Claire, and probably Forster and his nephew had their connection with her father back In the days of the horror and for some unthinkable purpose of their own, wanted the thing dug up. She sat there frozen. It was seconds sec-onds before she could even turn her eyes from the woman's horrible face. "You know about It, don't you?" Claire was saying. "You must know something about It. Why, there wasn't hardly anything else In the papers at the time especially the San Francisco papers. You don't want to take a thing like that too hard, dearie." At that Ithoda managed to drag her hypnotized eyes away and turn them on her empty coffee cup. "Of course, to hear people talk dirty hypocrites you'd think a thing like that had never happened before. It's happening all the time, only they don't happen to get caught. You must know yourself that a good-looking girl could get any man If she wanted him; practically any man. They're funny that way most men are. But your father ... I thick they put something some-thing over on him. Of course," she hastened to add, "I wouldn't want to be held to anything I. couldu't prove, and naturally I couldn't prove one single sin-gle thing about this. But if there was a nigger In the woodpile, it was this man Forster. And you can play that right across the board. There's no way thnt you could get back at him that I can see, because It was all over and done with long ago. But there's one thing you can do, and that's layoff lay-off from him if he tries to come around.' Ilhoda heard her move her chair back a little and that broke the spell, dancing up she saw the woman gazing gaz-ing thoughtfully at her watch. "Well, I guess I've said my say,"' she concluded. "And I know you must be wanting to run along. I'm going to order a taxi. I can't take you anywhere any-where la It, can I?" She hadn't quite saWl her say, though, for as she rose to leave the table she added, "You won't forget to look up that paper of mine, will you, dearie?" Despite her panic, Ilhoda was able to note that this had been a clear afterthought, and not a complete one, either. Claire hadn't told her where she lived. Ehodu went home. She didn't know how she got there. Nor did she plan what sne a do when she did. She had no clear expectation of what she'd find. But by the time she had climbed the long flight of stairs and let herself Into the studio with her latchkey and flown straight up to her little bedroom la the lore ana looked under the bed. E'y E3cnry Eitcliell Wels4er Copyright by Ths Bobbs-Merrlll Co. WNTJ Service- she was not really surprised to see that the trunk was gone. CHAPTER V The Enemy's Lair Had Claire's Invitation to lunch been anything but a trick to Insure her absence ab-sence from the studio while It was being be-ing broken into? It wouldn't have been necessary to do that, and Claire probably knew It. Max Lewis knew It, anyhow, for Babe bad told him the night he brought her home that she and Ithoda worked all day at the News, and that Doris and Isabel were off on a tour with their ballet. No, Claire had asked her to lunch In order to find out something. What could she have found out? Not much, certainly. Ithoda was sure she hadn't told anything Important. Wait a minute, though! She had said that none of her father's papers had been destroyed. There was a whole trunk full of them, she'd said, and she had sealed up the trunk. In other words, she'd volunteered the fact fool ! Silly, babbling fool ! that a sealed-up trunk was the thing to look for. But had she said that It was In the studio? She couldn't remember having hav-ing said that In so many words, but she must have admitted it by Inference, Infer-ence, since Claire bad suggested coming home with her and helping in the search for the paper she wanted. Had Claire expected hor to accept an offer like that? I'robably not very serious-ly, serious-ly, but she might have regarded It as a chance worth taking. Anyhow, It hadn't been until after Rhoda had declined de-clined this offer giving away her own suspicion, no doubt, hand over Gst that Claire had remembered the friend who was waiting for her to telephone him. "Them," she'd said, though; not "him." Did that really mean there were two of them: Max and his uncle, Forster? Most likely not. Claire's hatred of old Forster had seemed real enough. It must have been Mai she'd telephoned to, waiting at a telephone somewhere for Claire's Instructions. His attempt yesterday to find the papers they wanted had been unsuccessful, unsuc-cessful, because he hadn't known what to look for. So he'd taken her three hundred dollars Instead. Did Claire know that? she wondered. That might be worth thinking about later, but she hadn't time to follow It out now. Max had tried again today, with better bet-ter information, remembering, likely enough, Just where he'd seen the sealed-up trunk the day before, and had succeeded without any trouble at all. It had Just happened, within the past hour, thanks to her own plain Imbecility In giving everything away. She bated the thought of telling Martin what had happened, even while she was wishing he were here at her elbow now telling her what to do. Well, couldn't she think of anything, do anything, for herself? Was she going to sit down and let that pair of crooks get away with It? They were probably up at Claire's fiat now gloating gloat-ing over their booty, grinning about how easy she'd been. She wouldn't call the police. She couldn't do that, with the story of her father's disgrace Involved In the matter, mat-ter, and they knew It. That's what they were counting on. They'd been too clever for ber; not Max, but Claire. Ona of the First Things She Had Done After Her Flight From the Hotel. The mere fatuous smirk on Max's beefy handsome face was enough to tell anybody thnt there was no Intelligence Intel-ligence behind it. He took Claire's orders, In spite of the rich uncle Martin Mar-tin thought he was afraid of. Forster! The old man who had given her and Babe the ride downtown down-town in his limousine that morning. That hadn't been chance, of course. He'd been trying to find her and he'd succeeded somehow. He was playing a hand of his own in this game. Her body stiffened under the impact of an idea. Could she use him as an ally against the other pair? Claire was afraid of him, too, she thought. She must be, to hate him like that. Anyhow, she'd done evtcyHas she I could to keep Rhoda from going to him. She'd warned her In the letter against answering his advertisement, and had rubbed the warning in today at lunch. Well then, why not go to him now, as quickly as a taxi could take her to the Worcester hotel? That was where Martin said he lived. Take Claire's letter along as a bit of documentary docu-mentary ovldence. She got the letter out of the drawer of the writing desk, crammed it Into her ulster pocket slammed the studio door behind her and darted down the two long flights of stairs to the street. "Worcester hotel," she said to the taxi driver, who pulled up to the curb when she signaled him. It was quite a ride the better part of a mile, at least and though she didn't want to chill with wet blankets the fine warm resolution that possessed pos-sessed her, she couldn't help doing It. Forster might not be a desirable ally even if Claire hated him. He might be as bad as she said he was. He might have been her father's archenemy. arch-enemy. There wouldn't be much satisfaction sat-isfaction In spoiling Claire's and Max's game if doing that involved delivering herself over, tied hand and foot, Into the power of a man like that. And could she spoil their game? Could she convince Forster that Claire and his nephew were conspiring against him? To what extent had Claire given herself away in the letter? She got it out to read it, but her gaze didn't go beyond the first two lines: Claire's address written across the top. Claire's flat or was it Max's? Was Claire his mistress? That was what the relation looked like certainly. cer-tainly. She was that sort of woman, all right, with her story of the wicked man who had ruined her when she was a mere girl, and the confession she'd extorted from him. And now she was thinking of getting married and wanted it. Rhoda froze again like a pointer getting get-ting wind of a prairie chicken. Had that statement been a careless bit of truth? Did she want to marry Max? And was she afraid that Forster would disinherit him If she did? With another plunge, physical as well as figurative, Rhoda opened the front window and spoke again to the chauffeur. "I've changed my mind," she said. "Here's the address I want you to go to." And she read him Claire's. She hadn't a doubt she'd find the pair of them there, up to the elbows in her father's papers. The building before which her taxi pulled up was an oldish, three-story stone house, remodeled, as Its two front doors Indicated, into flats. Rhoda was trembling a little as she got out, but she didn't feel afraid. And she made it sound almost like a Joke when she said to the taxi driver, "Walt, please. I don't think I'll be long. But if you do hear anybody screaming for help In there, come In and see who it is." There was a momentary delay after she rang Claire's bell hers was one of the top flats before the buzzer released re-leased the catch on the vestibule door, but Rhoda heard a door open at the top of the house the instant she started start-ed up the stairs. A little surprising, that was. She hadn't expected them to be eager to receive visitors Just now ; had wondered indeed whether they'd let her in at all. Perhaps they wouldn't when they saw who she was. The woman alone was waiting for her. Max wasn't in sight. "What do you want?" Claire asked sharply when she saw who it was. But almost in the same breath she tried to change her tactics, adding with an uneasy laugh, "Heavens, I didn't expect you to find my paper as quick as that !" Her color had changed under her make-up, though, in a sickly way that made Rhoda think of lead poisoning. She must get inside Claire's door, that was the first thing to do, so she replied, not to the question but to the succeeding remark. "Yes," she said, making her voice sound as innocent and as amiable as she could, "it must seem rather sudden." At that Claire stepped back unwillingly un-willingly from the doorway, and Rhoda followed her into the rather large room that seemed to be all there was to the apartment, except for an alcove that formed an L, which she couldn't see into. That was where Max was most likely. Rhoda herself shut the door behind her. "Well?" Claire asked. Her manner was openly hostile. Then as Rhoda, without speaking, took a deliberate look around the room, she asked ' again, "What do you want? What's the matter with you?" "I've come," said Rhoda, "to get my trunk." "Your trunk? Say, are you crazy? What makes you think I've got your trunk?" She tried to laugh, but It only showed how frightened she was. Rhoda hesitated a little ever her answer to the woman's question. If Max was in the alcove she wished he'd come out. It was hard to know where to begin unless she knew whether he was there or not. Her hesitation seemed to anger Claire, or to reassure her, she couldn't be sure which. "Look here," she went on truculently, "you can't get away with stuff like this. I don't even know what you're talking about. Are you trying to tell me you've lost a trunk and you think I've got it?" "Night before last, at the ALhambra, ? when Max Lewis told you that I was the girl all right, because my first name was Ithoda, you told him to find out where I lived." "1 told you that myself this noon," Claire broke In. "What's that got to do with it?" "And you told him," Rhoda went on, "not to waste any time about it, because be-cause I might see Mr. Forster's advertisement ad-vertisement any day and answer It." Rhoda could see that this bit of Information Infor-mation startled her and she went on a little more confidently. "He did find out where I lived by going home that night with Babe, and he found out that the studio was empty all day because be-cause she told him we both worked and the other girls were away. He tried to find out whether my name wasn't Rhoda McFarland, but she didn't tell him. Yesterday afternoon the studio was broken into. The burglar didn't find any papers, because he didn't know where to look. But he did find three hundred dollars of mine, and he took that. To-day," Ithoda went on, "after I'd told you that my father's papers were In the trunk and sealed up, and after you'd gone out and telephoned. . . ." "You think Max went and got the trunk, do you, and that he brought it here?" "Yes," Rhoda said. "And I think he's in that alcove with It now." The woman gave a vicious laugh. "All right." she said, "go and see for yourself. If you can find Max or the trunk, you're welcome to both of them. Go and look, and then get out. I've been insulted about long enough." This wasn't the way Rhoda had expected ex-pected the scene to work out. She was assailed by a sudden doubt that the trunk might not be in the alcove after all, nor Max either. She'd be In a hideously uncomfortable position If she v.ent and looked and nothing was there. Yet she couldn't go away without with-out looking. Tills might be nothing but a magnificent bluff by Claire. "Thank you," she said, "I will go and look." But It took all the resolution resolu-tion she had to set her legs in motion down the room. The alcove contained a bed, a tawdry, taw-dry, oriental-looking affair, too low for the trunk to be under, a couple of chairs and a dressing table, but no trunk, no litter of papers, and no Max. "Go as far as you like," said Claire who had followed her. "Perhaps they're hidden in my closet or In the bathroom." Rhoda was on the' point of giving it up. But the bathroom door stood ajar and Rhoda's glance had gone that way as Claire finished speaking. It looked like a rather large room for Its purpose. pur-pose. More than Just a bathroom. She'd take a look, anyhow, and make sure. She was in the act of going in, but not yet' clear of the door, and Claire was at her elbow, when the sharp Jingle of a bell somewhere In the apartment startled them both. That is to say, It startled Rhoda; it paralyzed Claire. Her hard blue eyes seemed to bulge right out of her head. But that lasted only an Instant. With a convulsive movement Claire gave her a tremendous push that sent her staggering stag-gering clear across the tiled floor to the farther wall, whipped the key out of the inner face of the door, slammed the door, and locked her in. The bell gave a second peal Just as the bolt clicked home. She heard Claire open the door the door she had come in by, Rhoda didn't doubt ; there was a betraying creak to one of its hinges but there was no sound of the heavy footsteps on the stairs that would have heralded her-alded the lugging in of her trunk. Claire must have thought it was the trunk coming, though, or she wouldn't have locked her up in the bathroom. The silence, which had lasted half a dozen seconds, perhaps, was again broken by the ring of the bell, persistent per-sistent this time and prolonged. It wasn't the doorbell at all : it was the telephone. Rhoda heard the door slam shut and the rush of Claire's feet across the room. It was odd that in her own flat she should have mistaken the bell. She'd been expecting the doorbell, that was why. The instrument was Just around the corner of the alcove. Claire said, "Hello?" and then a moment later, "Yes. Who is this? What is It you want?" An. unfamiliar voice, evidently asking ask-ing of this was Miss Claire Cleveland. The stranger must have said his say pretty concisely, for after quite a short pause Claire cried out in a tone of the liveliest astonishment, "What's that? What are you talking about? Who are you, anyway?" And again, after listening a little longer, "Say, are you trying to be funny?" Apparently, though. It wasn't a Joke. Certainly not from Claire's point of Tiew. For the next time she spoke her voice was raucous with anger, and what she said a mere incoherent Jumble Jum-ble of uncompleted questions. Right In the middle of this the person per-son on the other end of the line must have hung up. There was a silence; a dead unbroken silence. The woman couldu't still be standing there before the telephone, yet Rhoda hadn't heard her move away. When it had lasted as long as she could endure It she began be-gan pounding on the door. To her surprise Claire came at onct and unlocked It. She herself pulled It open and they stood fne to face. Whatever remonstrances Rrioda meant Sent Her Staggering Clear Across the Tiled Floor to the Farther Wall. to make were silenced by the woman's look. She looked as if she'd forgotten that Rhoda was there ; forgotten what she'd come for; forgotten almost who she was. She looked at her blankly for a moment and then with a kind of terrifying intentness, as If trying to decide whether she had, could possibly have, any connection with or knowledge knowl-edge of that mysterious message over the telephone. Evidently her conclusion was negative, nega-tive, for with a faint shrug she turned away. "You can come out now," she said, "if you like. And go I Go home I There's nothing here that's any business busi-ness of yours. lAnd God knows I don't want to keep you here." Bhoda didn't hesitate. The smoldering smolder-ing fury in the woman was not only formidable, it constituted a sort of guarantee of the truth of what she said. Rhoda went, with the best appearance ap-pearance of dignity she could muster. "Drive away from here," she said to the chauffeur, "but as slowly as you can, and not very far. I want to think." Before they'd gone half a block her thoughts resulted in a question. "Could you follow anybody?" she asked. "I could until It got too dark, unless they had too fast a car for me. Do you want to follow somebody?" "I think," Rhoda said, "that the woman I want to see Is coming out in a few minutes, and I want to know where she goes." "Well," he said, . "that's easy. I'll wait here with my flag up. You go back and slip Into one of the side vestibules In this flat building where you can keep an eye on her door. She may order a taxi by telephone, or she may walk down here and pick one up." Claire, It appeared, wasn't in a hurry. Time went pretty slowly for Rhoda, who felt like a sneak thief waiting in that vestibule, and she was on the point of giving It up when she saw another taxi drive up to Claire's door. But after that things happened swiftly. Claire came down almost at once, got into her taxi, drove to the boulevard boule-vard and turned south, down town. In another minute Rhoda, In her own taxi, was following at a safe distance. It was almost too easy to be exciting. Down the boulevard to the parkway, and then branching to the right down the park's western boundary, she saw the other taxi stop and Claire get out at the Worcester hotel. "All right," Rhoda said to the chauffeur of her taxi. "You can stop here, too. And this time you needn't wait." She didn't know what she was going to do, In there, but it was clearly the place where things were coming into focus. (TO BE CONTINUED.) |