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Show BINSMORE'S FOLLY! $ 8YNOPSI8 That her grandfather left her the architectural monstrosity known as "Dinsmore's Folly" Is, for esthetic reasons, by no means pleasing to Ethel Dlnsmore, modern mod-ern "flapper." she would refuse the bequest, but her father will not allow It. Edith visits the place. Perkins, the caretaker, Is the victim of a matrimonial mishap, mis-hap, his wife having left him. Fred James, newspaper reporter, comes. Mr. Paul, Dinsmore's rlKht-handed man, proposes to Edith and Is rejected. He takes the rejection In a melodramatic manner. Edith sees a connection between Perkins' runaway wife and Mr. Paul. Riding with Fred James, Edith's horse bolts. The runaway Is stored by a stranger who does not give his name. Edith hereafter calls him M. P. (My Preserver). With her sister, Josephine, and Fred James, Edith attends a prize fight. Police raid f the place. The girl Is saved from the Indignity of arrest by the same man who had stopped her runaway horse. She learns his name Is Braxton, and allows him to think Bhe Is a poor relation of the Dinsmores. Telling her father she is In love with Fred James, the old gentleman arranges for Josephine and Edith to take a trip to Japan, with their Aunt Candice. On the pier, as the ship is about to Ball, the girls hear I newsboys calling "All About the uinsmore indictment, excited, they allow the vessel to sail without them, but with Aunt Candice. CHAPTER IV Continued My first Idea, of course, was to go to Father's office. But on the way 1 changed my mind. We wouldn't find Father there, of course: and we would finds shoals of reporters who would probably make a headline of us: "Darling daughters dart to the defense of their dad," or something of that sort, that would make Father mad. Father hated the newspapers, except when he wanted to use them. All we could do at the office would be to find out where Father had beep taken; and we could, or so I thought, find that out Just as well over the telephone. So I leaned forward and told the chauffeur to take us home. Josephine looked up at this. Along about Thirty-fourth street she begun to sniffle softly behind her veil, and I though she had ceased to' pay attention atten-tion to anything. But my changing the orders roused her. "Aren't we going to the J-jail?" she , asked. "The jail V Of course not," 1 ex- 'tirKn Trtconhtn- nincmnrpl ClUlUiCU, ll "J, uwi,w."w . - You know perfectly well that Father wouldn't stand for our coming to the jail. I never dreamed of going there. Besides, we don't know where the jail is " Josephine glanced around. "Can't we ask somebody?" she faltered. "The chauffeur looks as If he ought to know" "Ssh. Don't let him hear. Do you want to get into Town Tattle? Besides, Be-sides, it doesn't matter. It would never nev-er do for us to go to jail. I did mean to go to the office, but I ve mougui i over, and I'm sure we'd better go home and telephone from there." Josephine considered this for a moment mo-ment Then she brightened. We can send Father a bundle of underclothes and things and" I bit my lips to keep from screaming scream-ing "Underclothes!" I gasped. "Underclothes. "Un-derclothes. You talk of underclothes at a time like this. You-Stop the car quick " I leaned forward and caught the chauffeur's arm. "We want to get out here." Of course 1 oughtn't to have caught bis arml I know that perfectly well . . tA m opt out and I didn t have time to think up any other way to stop him. And he needn't have gotten got-ten so mad. He didn't run into anybody. any-body. Be came near It, of course; bu a miss is as good as a mile. I don t think our chauffeur could have been very brave, for he turned quite white and didn't speak for a minute-not till he had brought the car up to the curb. "Get outl" be grated. "What?" -Get out! You wanted to get out, didn't you? Well, then, get! And Tank your stars you don't have to Z-Su-you-" . sputtered. . wag so mad I couldn't talk. So I ot 111 Josephine flowed more slowly. She handed" the man a banknote. -I m snrrv." she said. The man took the money. Ihunk i,p said "No harm done you, miss fiSCl)Se nie aay. ?, "so yo 'd netUer keep an eye on e "the? young lady. Miss." lie start-ed start-ed before I could find my voice. And t ritrln't clve Josephine any change, ""jo Shine seemed to understand i . i felt for she caught my arm Hurried, "We came very fas,, didn't hwUer she asked. "P.u. why d.d you Ttop a block from home, hdie? The question brought me hack to 7th "Good gracious!" I exclaimed earth. oon h Look?" I Can't you t"l ' PA block away, in front of our house. the.Swae h.ack with people. -Our the 8lrc" , ve rei,d Hie papers. fwUT om'ond have come to stare knew they would. Maybe we ran L T without being notlced-mnch fvL couldn't have if wed arrived in a By Crittenden Marriott Illustrations by lrwln Myers Copyright WNU Service bors, unless -neighbors Include everybody every-body in New York. They seemed angry, too. 1 dropped my veil and motioned to Josephine to do the same. "1 don't know one of them," I whis pered. "But some of them may know us." Decidedly, the waiting people were argry very angry. They were humming hum-ming like bees. I could not understand it at first. "What the matter?" I asked a woman in a shawl who stood waiting. She glared at me. "What's the matter?" she echoed. "What's the matter, Is it? It's ruin and destruction, that's the matter, so it Is. That thafe of the world Dins-more Dins-more has stolen every cent I had laid up for me old age, that's what's the matter." "Mr. EMnsmore? Stolen? It's not true," I gasped. "Not true, is it? It's me that wishes to God it wasn't true! He's stolen all me savings and run away with them." She thrust a newspaper beneath my nose. It was another and apparently a later naner than the one I had bought on the steamyr. That had been chiefly headlines and text that repeated the headlines; tills I saw at a glance contained con-tained columns of detail. I snatched it from the woman's hands and ran my eye down it It was awful. The paper seemed to have thrown restraint to the winds. According to It, Father had dune everything wrecked railroads, robbed banks, gambled in stocks, ruined thousands thou-sands of widows and children and had then disappeared. But he would be found soon; the railroads and ferries fer-ries were all watched and I read no more. At least Father wasn't in jail. I turned on the woman. wom-an. "I don't believe a word of it," I cried. "Father" Josephine clutched my arm abruptly and I stopped. It was the first time in all her life that Josephine had done anything abruptly; and I stopped and turned to see what was the matter. I thought that perhaps she had seen Father Fa-ther approaching. I couldn't Imagine her clutching me for any less startling cause. "What's the matter?" 1 gasped. Josephine hesitated. "Don't you think Don't you think" she began "That that " I didn't know what she meant. But the woman was speaking and 1 turned back to her. "Father" I began again. But she did not allow me to finish. "An' what does your father know?" she broke In. "It Is himself that knows more than the grand jury that indicted Dinsmore? It is himself that knows where Dinsmore got the money to build the foine house yonder all fer himself and his two daughters? The hussies 1 It's tearing their clothes off'n thelt backs I'd like to be, so I would. I'd" von vou." 1 spluttered. And again Josephine clutched my arm. 1 knew what she meant now, but was too furious to listen. No one could call Father names in my presence pres-ence without my speaking up. "You you" i raved. "You" "Whist!" The Irishwoman turned away. "Yonder they come. An' I hope they've got him." She turned toward the house. My eyes followed hers, and for the first time that morning I really looked at the house. Then I gasped. I scarcely scarce-ly recognized it. The upper windows were all blanked by blinds that were pulled down to the very bottom; and the lower windows and trie aoor were hidden behind the fiat wooden frames that we always put up when we went away from town In the summer. Father Fa-ther had said nothing about putting them up; he had let us think that he was going to live at home while we wore gone. And he must have set the servants to work on them as soon as we started for the boat But at the moment I had no time to think of that The small door In the big entrance frame was open and through It three men were coming. Two were policemen, and one was wus--Thark Heaven, it wasn't Father! It was Harker, the caretaker who always al-ways lived In the house while we were away. He peered out and then dodged back and closed the door. The two policemen came down to the pavement and to the patrol wagon that was waiting at the curb. As the second one climbed In he turned and spoke to a man who questioned blm. "Naw!" he said gruffly. "There won't be nothin' doiu'. Dinsmore ain't here; and it's a safe bet be won't be. Cls daughters have sailed for somewhere; some-where; and there's nobody here but a caretaker. There's no use waiiln'." Ue spoke to the one man, but his big voice boomed over the street so that everybody heard It Then he Jumped Into the wagon and It clattered clat-tered away. The crowd seemed satisfied, for It began to disperse, drifting away by ones and twos till no one was left except ex-cept Josephine and me and an officer, whom I had not noticed before, who stood watching at the corner of the alley just beyond the house. As soon as I saw him I guessed that tie had been stationed there to arrest or follow fol-low anybody who came to the house, nnd I made up my mind that he should not see Josephine or me. If the papers and the police thought that Josephine j and I had sailed for Japan I would not undeceive them. We could hide and wait till Father turned up. Perhaps Per-haps I even I could do something toward clearing away the cloud that rested on Father's name. I turned to Josephine. "Come!" I said, turning away from the house. Josephine stared at me. "Come where?" she asked. "Aren't you going home?" "No !" 1 said. "We can't." 1 explained ex-plained why we couldn't. "We can't go home. We've got to go to Dinsmore's Folly." Josephine looked so amazed that 1 did not wait for her to speak. "1 don't wonder you're surprised," 1 said "But we've got to go there. We've nowhere no-where else to go. Perhaps you've for gotten j nau iorgoueii, iuu, uuu me fact made me a little sarcastic "perhaps "per-haps you have forgotten that Aunt Candice carried the money and that you and I are nearly busted unless we go to the office and give ourselves dead away." Josephine considered this for a moment mo-ment "Then," she said, "we can't afford af-ford to take a taxi out to Dinsmore." "That's nothing." I wasn't going to admit that I had forgotten nnything. "We don't need any taxi. We'll go In the subway. Come on." I started and Josephine followed. For three blocks she followed In silence. si-lence. Then just at the subway entrance en-trance she halted. "I've been thinking," think-ing," she began. I stopped and faced her. 1 had great respect for the result of Josephine's thoughts when she reached them. She was slow but she was sure often pain-fnltu pain-fnltu so "Well?" I nnpstioned. Josephine opened ber big eyes wider. "I believe Father is on board the steamer," she said. "1 believe that was why he sent us on her. I believe be-lieve he expected to meet us on her after she got to sea." "Good Lord !" My eyes popped wide and my mouth fell open. "If" But ( there was no time for "its" Just them. "Come along," I cried, clutching Josephine's Jo-sephine's arm. "We'll talk all that over at Dinsmore." CHAPTER V "Oh ! h 1," said the duchess, who till then had taken no part In the conversation. Fred says that any story that Is a story ought to start with some such expression as the above. I couldn't work anything of the kind In at the beginning of this story. But If not at the beginning of a story, why not at the beginning of a chapter? Not that there is any duchess In this chapter or even In this story. But the state of mind that the quotation connotes certainly does portray the feelings of pretty nearly everybody that appears In this chapter and of a lot of people who do not appear. At least, It portrays their feelings a little lit-tle later when they heard of the events that took place in this chapter. And if eventually, why not now? Anyway, it goes double for me! Josephine and 1 started for Dinsmore's Dins-more's Folly on the subway; anon we took a trolley car ; some more anon we walked; and finally we arrived, after traveling for two hours without stopping, except for ten minutes that Josephine insisted on spending in a drug store at the end of the subway, while I stood beside a trolley car and begged the conductor not to start till my sister could Join me. The con- I ductor wouldn't promise, but he did wait And then, after Josephine had come, lie waited for a good five mln utes longer. Brute I (TO BE CONTINUED.) |