OCR Text |
Show IRISH EYES ft I "What business was that of yours?" Mrs. Carscadden demand-e-unsympathctically. "You'd do much bettor to kape out of police stations as things are." "Well, if I don't think I'm in a bad dream!" said Sheila. "The Mc Canns reported it to the police," her sister said. wlyou WOUId be luck, if bowirt 1 iCUli- - 8,1 right!" Ken drink of water, and she stood drinking lt and laughing, and pant-'n- g agamst the h Us background of snowy and bared trees and blue, high ftlnter sky. driS? ,.trUCk Came my OuRglng ,i'e nCW rad 8 few minut later, men hanging on like mon- - wys. watching the track as the great toboggan tires flattened the "The Mc Canns did!" "Yes, they were so worried about Peter. He had half a dozen appoint-ments for Saturday and he didn't keep one of them. And there was a big party Saturday night" "I know. The Cahills." "Well, wherever it was. And when he didn't get home to dress for that they all got perfectly crazy and they telephoned around everywhere. And at about ten o'clock Mr. Frank Mc Cann came out here." "Frank Mc Cann did!" "Yes. Because it seems that Pe-ter had told his mother and Ger-trude that he had known you up at Tiller's Beach last summer, and he '1 ty were coming nearer every sec-ond. The beloved old dirty doorway with children straggling about it in the dark, the welcoming rush ol thick air from the house, air scented with cooking and living and tne om-inous note of carbolic, met her like familiar voices. Sheila was up the four flights like a flying swallow; she flung open the kitchen door and her cry of, "Mai I'm back!" rang through the place. Then everything took on the feel-ing and appearance of a nightmare. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table with Angela at one side of her. CHAPTER VHI-Conti- nued 8 "I was up at Tiller's Beach with some people this year," Sheila vo-lunteered, "and I met Peter there ,ilked each other, all right. Then dldn meet him again until last until- -I guess it was Friday night It seems years ago." "And you and him made a date hay?" asked Ken, "Well, he wanted to see me. To explain" "Explain why he threw you down?" A silence. "He didn't throw me down." Sheila said mildly, ending it. "He wanted me to know that he hadn't run out on me. He'd lost the number of my house." "You know he's yeller. don't yon?" Ken said, in dissatisfaction. Sheila made no answer, and he mumbled once or twice, "Sure, he's yeller," before settling down into silence again. lo them the gently rolling, snowy n'"s all about, the occasional dis- tant cluster of roofs and farmhouse columns of smoke, the road deep in dry white shining powder, were ex-actly what they had been seeing for the past two hours. But Ken was now bidding them good-by- . "Walk to the top of that hill there, and there ought to be a village about a mile below. On your way!" he said. had even talked to them about you after he got home " "And we didn't know anything, of course, except that you weren't home. Ma didn't take her clothes off that night did you. Ma?" "I did not," said Ma. "Mrs. Mc Cann talked to Ma Saturday afternoon about our may-be living over in Astoria or some-where, where Ma could have vege-tables and everything!" Angela la-mented. "And now now they'll nev-er want to see us again! She seemed so different yesterday, so sad and quiet, and she'd been crying, and he looked as if he had been, too, and everything was terrible Joe got so mad, and he stood up for you" "Well." Sheila said with irony, "you all had a swell time." "You wouldn't think lt was so fun-ny. Sheila Carscadden," Angela re- - "Joe's dead!" Sheila thought, and her heart failed her. "Well, you came back," Mrs. Carscadden presently observed out of the mast terrible silence that in all the days of Sheila's life had ever existed between herself and her mother. Sheila stood still, growing pale. She swallowed with a dry throat. "What what's the matter?" she whispered. Neither mother nor sister spoke; they regarded her steadily with sor-rowful, quiet eyes. Sheila, after another stammered question, which was choked with sobs, sat down at the table and burst Into wild crying, her hands over her face. "Oh, don't, Sis," Angela now said, whimpering. "But but what's the matterl" Sheila demanded again, looking up through tear-soake- d eyelashes. "What's happened?" "Where'a your husband?" Mrs. Carscadden demanded, steadily. "Where? Where's my what?" "Where's Mr. Mc Cann, Sheila?" Angela asked, weeping. "Peterl" "The the fellow you ran away with. Sheila." Angela began to hiccup, but an-ger dried Sheila's tears and made her voice hard. "You don't think I ran away with Peter Mc Cann?" After another interval the man be-gan again, with his air of superi-ority: "You know there isn't anyone who has anything on me!" "Has?" Sheila echoed alertly. "Hasn't." "You mean the police?" "There isn't one of them could pin anything on me." Sheila pondered this. "You mean because there isn't anything to pin, or Just because you're lucky?" she asked simply. "I mean that they haven't got anything on me. I never pulled a gun on anyone," he said. "I carry one; that's all right But I don't get Into the rackets. I Just think things out for the boys, and then Renn and I talk 'em over." "You're the brains of the organlza- - He did not look at Sheila. He walked about the truck in the snow and climbed up on the front seat, and she saw one of the other men get down upon the rough floor of the vehicle and roll himself up in a blan-ket there. The rest was a floundering walk in the snow, more like three miles than two, and a long, dreary, empty wait at an empty station. The sign over the station said "Capitol Junc-tion"; there was no house near by. But toward the middle of the after-noon a rickety train did rattle by, and Sheila and Peter boarded it The conductor sleepily Informed them that they were In northern Con-necticut and obliged them with tick-ets to New York. There was no din-er on the train, but when they trans-ferred to a roaring leviathan far-ther on, they thankfully went into a brightly lighted buffet-ca- r and had club sandwiches and coffee. S tlon," Sheila observed mildly, re-calling another favorite phrase of young Sig, the vice president's son. "I don't know what you call it" he said, offended. "I should think," Sheila mused aloud, "of course I don't know. But I should think that the person who did the planning would be the very one the police would want to get!" "And what could they do to him when they did get him?" Ken asked. "Oh, leave it to them, they'd man-age that!" Sheila assured him with a laugh. Shortly afterward, when the men returned, and the kitchen became suddenly filled with the odor of their drying boots, their pipes, their un-washed bodies and unwashed cloth-ing, Sheila felt suddenly unbearably tired and stiff and sleepy. It was Ken who briefly suggested that she CHAPTER IX When they were finally approach-ing the city, and the theater ad-vertisements and the multiplying apartment houses warned them that their long trip was almost over, Sheila was conscious of a sudden lassitude, a weariness that seemed to have as much to do with the soul as the body. Wonderful as it would be to get home to Ma and Angela and Joe and have the first thrilling conversation with them, she "We had your wire, Sheila," An-gela said. "Mamma, you don't think I ran off with Peter Mc Cann!" "An his mother as hear'rt-brok- e as me!" Mrs. Carscadden observed irrelevantly. "I'm no more married to him listen to me, Mother! I say I'm no more married to him than you are!" A light suddenly narrowed the mother's eyes. "Indade, I'll grant you that!" she said, bitterly. "Indade you're not married to him you an' your dis-thri-attorney or justice of the p'ace or whativerl An' let but Peter Mc Cann put his head in my door, an' "Begin at the beginning Sheila," Joe said. take possession of a very small room off the kitchen; perhaps once a servant's room, or an old grand-father's room but furnished with only s. desolate-lookin- g iron bed like those in the larger room. She closed her door, but she could hear the voices in the kitchen, hear the shuffling of the men's feet, the creaking of the old rocker. Gradu-ally all these sounds blended and faded, loomed loud again, and were gone. She slept until winter sun-shine, striking through the dirty, un-curtained farmhouse window, sent a brilliant glitter from the snow about the discolored walls of the lit- - j tie kitchen chamber. j i proached her, with spirit, "if you could have seen the crying and goi-ngs- on if you could have known how we all felt! Ma was up all night, and Joe kept coming in and out it was something awful! "And then yesterday Ma, that was only yesterday! then yester-day, Judge and Mrs. Mc Cann came." "Well," Sheila said, with a hard little laugh, "it seems that you mustn't let yourself get kidnaped by bootleggers these days." "Gertrude Keane has been terri-bly sick," Angela went on in the accusing, tender tone she had used all through the conversation, "she's simply prostrated " I'll disthrict attorney himl Taking a fine ger'rl that never done a mane ' thing in her life, although she might scald the hear'rt out of me wit' her nonsense " "Ma, don't talk like well, like an idiot! I tell you that Peter Mc Cann and I were kidnaped kidnaped by bootleggers, and taken 'way up into the country " "You didn't send the tiligram, I suppose?" "Certainly I sent you a telegram! I didn't want you to die of fright, did I?" "And he the man he sint his folks one, too?" "Peter? Well, of course he did! Saturday night. After we got caught in the library. That is, they sent them for us." "The bootleggers sint thim for ve. was that it?" Yesterday's experience of thaw-ing and limping, yesterday's brief, unrefreshing toilet preceded a kitchen breakfast but even then the bright promise of the day made Sheila's heart lighter, and when Ken said lazily, over his coffee, "Well, you folks ought to be home about eight o'clock tonight," she felt that she could have danced for joy. "We got to dig out of here, first," he observed. And after the meal, when Sheila would have fallen upon When the men returned "Well, they did, Mother. We couldn't." "You cudden't?" "No, ma'am, because" Sheila hesitated. "We were being kid-naped," she explained. "I see," said her mother. "And this morning they drove us to some place called Capitol Junc-tion, and we came down on the train." "I see." wished that it was over. She dread-ed the explanations- -It seemed odd to see the night streets bustling as usual, down un-der the train; curb carts surrounded her obvious task of clearing the kitchen, he said. "Let all that go, Sister, and get out here for a while. It'll do you good!" Her brother Joe came quietly in; she was in his arms, crying and laughing. "Joe, Joe, you're not against me, are you? They said you stood to me, Joe! You don't think I'm bad; you believe me, don't you?" He looked worried and serious, pushed the silky fringe of hair from her forehead, keeping a brotherly arm about her, but not smiling, not kissing her. "Of course I'll stand to you, dear. But my God, what you've put us through, Sheila!" He sat down, and she dragged a chair near his, still clinging to his hand. "Frank Mc Cann and I gave the marriage to the papers this, noon, Ma," he said, sighing. "It seemed the best way. Even Judge Mc Cann advised it though it broke his heart." "Disthrict attorney and all?" the mother demanded fearfully. "Everything. It was a justice of The truck that had brought them to the lonely old farmhouse in the hills was bedded deep in snow; the men were digging busily about it. Sheila and Ken began to clear some sort of track for it about the corner of the barn that had hidden it, down past the house and so to the road. Handling her shovel, flinging the snow about, breathless and laugh-ing, the girl worked enthusiastically if with small results. She and Pe-ter and Ken shouted at each other in the invigorating sunshine as they dug. "You own this place?" Peter asked. by shoppers, children racing and screaming in the dirty snow. "I get out at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth- , Peter." He roused himself from a sort of dream at the window. "Nix!" he protested. "We've got to go home first. We've got to turn in a report at a police station." "I don't," she said. "I'm going straight home to my mother." "I'll get out with you, it's just as near for me. But we ve got to go to a station, right off the bat!" What for?" To catch them. The police won't want to lose a minute." "You don't think for one minute There was a silence. Sheila did not move. She sat look-ing at her mother and sister fixedly, the red deepening In her cheeks, her lip bitten. "Sheila, they're such lovely peo-ple the Mc Canns," Angela burst out. "Mrs. Mc Cann came to see Ma on Saturday, and she was so sweet, and she said such lovely things of you, and she told us all about her ward's that's Gertrude-gett-ing married to Peter they were so happy about it! They were going to have a nuptial mass and every-thing!" the peace, Ma." "What marriage?" Sheila ex-claimed, very white. "Yours, dear. It was the only way" "But Joe Joe we're not mar-ried!" "Not by the Church, no. But you will be" "We aren't married at all, Joe! We never were married! You'll have to stop the papers!" "Listen, Joe! We were kidnaped. Kidnaped by bootleggers, do you see? And they took us up to Con-necticut, or somewhere, we don't know where " "Well, what of it?" Sheila chal-lenged her defiantly. "Oh, well. Sheila, how can they, now!" "Why can't they?" "You know full well," said her mother. "Well, I must say I think this is wonderful!" Sheila said desperate-- vou can catch tnemi -- I know darned well we can catch them We know where they started from don't we? We can send 'em studio where we rieht to that fake It'll only take found 'em. can't we? a minute, and then I'll run you home in a taxi." Peter argued In the end she actually did find herself in the Monday evening ouiet of a police station, answering the questions of a kindly sergeant. "I never seen it before yester-day," Ken answered. "Then who does own it?" "I don't know." the man said. "One of the boys found it a while back. They use it, off and on. Monk went into the real estate office-- in Worcester. I think it was-a- nd asked They said the owner about it once. and lived in Flor-ida, was an old lady, and sometimes her nieces used artists or it summers. They're from Bos-ton." teachers or something, "But but anyone going by icighbors." Sheila exclaimed, wouldn't they see srnoke, and mo-or tracks?" "There ain't many neighbors. unalarmed. When en observed, 'eter had worked his way to some tistance, Ken said suddenly to She!- - "So you think I ought to get out f' this racket while the getting s ood. Jo you?" ' ly. "I never heard anything like it! I wish now that I hadn't come home. I couldn't wait to get here I thought you'd be so worried I didn't even want to stop at the police station" "At the police station! That's all we needed!" Mrs. Carscadden ex-claimed, her eyes raised. "For heaven's sake, Sheila, what did you go to a police station for?" "To report the bootleggers, of course." With only another old omcer xor audience, except for a sympathetic voung man who observed excitedly he would bet it was Olla s gang, id who. with a sort of tinseled hcht globe held aloft, took a snap-shot of the latest victims of a gang mystery. And then the familiar streets were rushing by Sheila's taxi, and her thumping harder and heart was faster and Ma. and home, and sife-- "Wait a minute, Joe said, im-pressed in spite of himself by her desperate earnestness. "Begin at the beginning, Sheila. Where did you and Peter Mc Cann meet on Saturday?" Sheila gulped. "At a law library on Broadway Joe!" (TO BE COSTIWED) large Woman Xv wraparound style, fastened in the back, i' Kress is the practical, I nto kind that you need I J; every day of your 9 has a comfortable, Le and, as you see it consists of iagram, Wees to sew together, Straight seams, so that it in a few hours. Xmatters even easier, )1; includes a step-by-ste- p 1 edging, which bright-I- d accents the length of Inning down the front HOP?. SEW Ruth Wyeth Spears IN THIS column we have shown how to make useful, attractive things out of everything most from spools to tin cans, but sev-eral readers have reminded me lately that I have neglected or-ange crates. Here is a pair of tables to match a smart new bed-spread. The spread is made of green and white checked gingham ILJ trimmed In bands, monogram and frills of white muslin. The bed is an old iron one that has been cut down and then padded and covered with the gingham (de-tailed directions are in Book 3). The orange crates for the tables are lined with green oil cloth and each wears a green and white checked skirt; and a top cover frilled in white. The lamps are white and the shades are old ones covered with a plain ruffle of white held in around the top with a band and a bow of green cut from the check material. NOTE: Directions for making lamp shades and bedspread are in Book No. 1 ; complete alphabet for monograms in Book 2; streamlin-ing old style bed in Book 3; and Book 4 contains 32 pages of origi-nal homemaking ideas. Books are 10 cents each. With each order for four books will be sent FREE a set of three Early American Quilt Block patterns. MHS. RUTH WYETII SPEARS Bedford Hills New York Drawer 10 Enclose 10 cents for one book, or 40 cents for books 1. 2. 3 and 4 and set of quilt block patterns. Name Address Repeated on the sleeve ijaround the pocket. Half mfortable, good-lookin- g j;e this, in gingham, for percale, will see you $e spring and summer, iyour pattern right now i them speedily made. much prettier, and fit ler, than any routine resses you buy. Ko. 8673 is designed for 3, 40, 42, 44, 46, 48, 50 :e 38 requires yards material without nap; braid. Send order to: , riRfl-- PATTERN DEPT. I'W Montgomery Ave. I - - Calif. rfjlj cents in coins for f Size i'-'- H r ,V4S.H lit r-:- - :A 'a.-.-' ' l-- r lOv ' - f W , v I Yf ' i) t - v See how you're helped ; ' t bv rJelirinuc nrnnnocl X ..,., tr n '$ a Good Reason A 4reConstipated ! fcere's something wrong f. the first rule is: get at e.Ifyou are constipated, it first and "cure" it JlFind out what's giving (trouble. N are it's simple if you FJper-refin- foods most f0: meat, white bread, f,,",? likely you don't get IMt'And-bulk-does- n't rotof food. Ifsafcind of fjlsnt consumed in the F leaves a soft "bulky" I e intestines and helps Ittovement f is your trouble, you P; natural "bulk" a one as the I wasted, ready-t- o -- eat ffaogg's n. Eat lt fJ4 plenty of water, and ftJffWars." All-Br- la sin Battle Creek. C 0n ls chronl. is a physician.' J pULL FLIES wmffiji- i- maot spin 5Sr. ii B''n- - 200 at all Hardly one family in two now gets enough vitamins and minerals to per-mit radiant good health. So enjoy oranges liberally daily I Just peel and eat them for healthful refreshment. Or keep ready a big pitcher of fresh orangeade. An glass of fresh orange juice gives you all the vitamin C you normally need each day-a- nd one-thir- d of the vitamin Bi. It also supplies vitamins A and G, and the minerals calcium, phosphorus and iron. Sunkist brings you the pick of California's finest-eve- r crop of summer Oranges. Buy Some today. Copyright. 1940, California Fruit Crewan Exchange Gfaai feo toss samS&mftsmP you many a j ill'ipe you if j Gems of Wisdom "po WATCH the corn grow and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over plow-share or spade; to read; to think; to love; to pray; these are the things that make men happy. Ruskin. It is a barren kind of criti-cism which tells you what a thing is not. It. W. C.riswold. You can't scold people into agreeing with you, or exhort them into liking you. John Erskine. pray Thee, O Cot, thai I may be bemilijul u ilhin. Sttcratvs. There are sadder hearts than yours; go and comfort them, and that will comfort you. I zeal First fle zeal without knowl--1 Knowledge without zeal. |