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Show I I . i ; Mary Roberts Rinehart jj ill 1 1 1 1 M I I tltt'"""'' pyrlglit, by McClure Publications, Ino.) ""glDNEY IS MADE THE VIC TM OF FOUL REVENGE AND LITTLE JOHNNY,, ROSENFELD NEARLY DIES AT A MURDERER'S MURDER-ER'S HANDS. K. LeMoyne, a mysterious stranger, takes a room jit the Page' home, presided over by Sidney, lier mother Aunn mid her Aunt Harriet, a fashionable dressmaker. Through the influence in-fluence of Dr. Max Wilson, n brilliant young surgeon smitten with her charm, Sidney becomes a hospitnl nurse. K. loves her from a distance; so does Joe Druuimond, an old high-school chum. At the hospital Sidney makes the acquaintance of Carlotta Harrison, who has been over-intimate with Doctor ! Wilson, and who is jealous of the Innocent newcomer. Sidney's Sid-ney's chum, Christine Lorenz, marries Palmer Howe, a society rake, and they take rooms with tie Pages. Howe is untrue to his bride. His arm is broken In a joy-riding accident, and Johnny John-ny Kosenfeld, his chauffeur, is mortally Injured. All these people are neighbors, so there is a sort of common interest among them. Doctor Wilson discovers that LeMoyne is a famous fa-mous Doctor Edwardes living incognito, in-cognito, and keeps the secret. CHAPTER XIV Continued. 12 "I believe it is." Wilson smiled at her. "And yet, you continue to tempt me atd expect me to yield," Sidney replied. "One of the most delightful things about temptation is yielding now and then." After all, the situation seemed ab-mrd. ab-mrd. Here was her old friend and neighbor asking to take her out for a daylight ride. The swift rebellion of youth against authority surged up in Sidney. "Very well ; I'll go." Carlotta had gone by that time , prae with hate In her heart and black despair. She knew very well what the Is'ue would be. Sidney would drive with him, and he would tell her how lovely she looked with the air on her face and the snow about her. The lerby motion of the little sleigirwould throw them close together. How well she knew it all! He would touch Sid-My'svhand Sid-My'svhand daringly and smile in her eyes. That was his method : to play at love-making like an' audacious boy, until un-til quite suddenly the cloak dropped lad the danger was there. If she could get Sidney out of the hoi?pitaI, it would simplify things. She surmised shrewdly that on the Street Heir interests were wide apart. It was here that they met on common ground. Carlotta gave the five-o'clock medl-nes. medl-nes. Then she sat down at the table &ar the door, with the tray in front of ber. There are certain thoughts that lfe at first functions of the brain; "for a long time the spinal cord takes them up and converts them into acts "Ifflost automatically. Perhaps because w the last month she had done the " so often in her mind, Its actual Performance was almost without congous con-gous thought. Carlotta took a bottle from her medicine cupboard, and, writing a new e for It, pasted it over the old one. en she exchanged It for one of the !!me size on the medicine tray. Throughout the dining room busy WJ competent young women came and te, hastlly or leisureIy ag tbeir oppor. uty was, and went on their way sain. in hands tney hed JJS, not always of, life and death per-PS, per-PS, but of ease from pain, of tenderer tender-er of smooth pillows, and cups of a w to thirsty lips. In their eyes, Ice. rrldney s' burne3 the light of service! serv-ice! suPPer room was filled with skirt Sft volce8- the rustle of thelr caps g'eam 0f thelr stifE whlte Je Carlotta came In, she greeted " of them. They did not like her, M she knew It Per? we her' lnstead of the tidy sup-wole, sup-wole, she was seeing the medicine "y as she had left it. herse 6SS 1 Ve her'" she 6aId t0 wr !ery soul sick with fear of waat she had done. CHAPTER XV. At something nfter two o'clock that night, K. put down his pipe and listened. lis-tened. He had not been able to sleep since midnight. In his dressing gown lie hnd sat by the small fire, thinking I The content of his first few months oii the Street was rapidly giving way to i unrest. He who had meant to cut himself him-self off from iir0 found himself again In close touch with it; his eddy was deep with It. And there was a new clement, ne had thought, at first, that he could fight down this love for Sidney. But It was increasingly hard. The Innocent touch of her hand on his arm, the moment : when lie had held her In his arms nfter her mother's death, the thousand small contacts of her returns to the little house nil these set his blood on fire. And it was fighting blood. Under his quiet exterior K. fought many coutliets those winter clays over his desk and ledger nt the office, in his room alone, with Harriet planning fresh triumphs beyond the partition, even by Christine's fire, with Christine just across, sitting in silence and watching his grave profile nnd steady eyes. He had a little picture of Sidney a snap-shot that he had taken himself, her hair blowing about her, eyes looking look-ing out, tender lips smiling. When she was not at home, it sat on K.'s dresser, propped against his collar-box. When she was In the house, it lay under the pin-cushion. Two o'clock in the morning, then, and K. in Ids dressing gown, with the picture propped, not against the collar-box, but against his lamp, where he could see It. He sat forward in his chair, his hands folded around his knee, and looked at it. He was trying to picture the Sidney of the photograph in his old life trying to find a place for her. But it was difficult. There had been few women in his old life. His mother had died many years before. There had been women who had cared for him, but he put them Impatiently out of his mind. Then the bell rang. Christine was moving about below. He could hear her quick steps. Almost before he had heaved his long legs out of the chair, she was tapping at his door outside. "It's Mrs. Rosenfeld. . She says she wants to see you." He went down the stairs. Mrs. Rosenfeld Ro-senfeld was standing In the lower hall, a shawl about her shoulders. Her face was white nnd drawn above It. "I've had word to go to the hospital," she said. "I thought maybe you'd go with me. It seems as If I can't stand It alone. Oh, Johnny, Johnny!" "Where's Palmer?" K. demanded of Christine. "He's not in yet." "Are you afraid to stay in the house alone?" "No ; please go." He ran up the staircase to his room and Dung on some clothing. In the lower hall, Mrs. Rosenfeld's sobs had become low moans. Christine stood helplessly over her. "I am terribly sorry," she said "terribly sorry! When I. think whose fault all this is!" Mrs. Itoseufeld put out a work-hardened hand and caught Christine's fingers. fin-gers. "Never mind that," she said. "Ton didn't do It. I guess you nnd I understand under-stand each other. Only pray God you never have a child.'' K. never forgot the scene in the small emergency ward to which Johnny had been taken. Under the white lights his boyish figure looked strangely long. There was a group around the bed Max Wilson, two or three internes, the night nurse on duty, and the Head. Sitting just inside the door on a straight chair was Sidney such a Sidney Sid-ney as he never had seen before, her face colorless, her eyes wide and unseeing, un-seeing, her hands clenched in her lap. When he stood beside her; she did not move or look up. The group around the bed had parted to admit Mrs. Rosenfeld, Ro-senfeld, and closed again. Only Sidney Sid-ney and K. remained by the door, isolated, iso-lated, alone. "You must not take it like that, dear. It's sad,, of course. But, after all, In that condition" It was her first knowledge that he was there. But she did not turn. "They say I poisoned him." Her voice was dreary, lnflectlonless. "You what?" "They say I gave him the wrong medicine; that he's dying; that I murdered mur-dered him." She shivered. K. touched her hands. They were ice-cold. "Tell me about it." "There is nothing to tell. I came on duty at six o'clock and gave the medicines. medi-cines. When the night nurse came on at seven, everything was all right. The medicine tray was just as tt should be. Johnny was asleep. I went to say good-night to him and he he was asleep. I didn't give him anything but what was on the tray," she finished plteously. "I looked at the label ; I always al-ways look." By a shifting of the group around the bed K.'s eyes looked for a moment directly into Carlotta's. Just for a moment mo-ment then the crowd closed up again. It was well for Carlotta that it did. She looked as if she had seen a ghost closed her eyes, even reeled. "Miss Harrison Is worn out," Doctor Wilson said brusquely. "Get someone some-one to take her place." But Carlotta rallied. After all, the presence of this man in this room at such a time meant nothing. He was Sidney's friend, that was all. But her nerve was shaken. The thing had gone beyond her. She had not meant to kill. It was the boy's weakened weak-ened condition that was turning her revenge into tragedy. "I am all right," she pleaded across the lied to the Head. "Let me stay, please. He's from my ward. I I am responsible." Wilson was at his wits' end. He had done everything he knew without result. The boy, rousing for an instant, would lapse again into stupor. With a healthy man they could have tried more vigorous measures could have forced him to his feet and walked him about, could have beaten him with knotted towels dipped in ice water. But the wrecked body on the bed could stand no such heroic treatment It was Le Moyue, after all, who saved Johnny Kosenfeid's life. For, when staff and nurses had exhausted all their resources, he stepped forwnrd with a quiet word that brought the internes in-ternes to their feet astonished. There was a new treatment for such cases it had been tried abroad. He looked at Max. Max had never heard of it He threw out his hands. "Try it, for heaven's sake," he said. "I'm all in." The apparatus was not in the house must be extemporized, indeed, at last, of odds and ends from the operating operat-ing room. K. did the work, his long fingers deft and skillful while' Mrs. Rosenfeld knelt by the bed with her face buried ; while Sidney sut, dazed and bewildered, on her little chnir inside in-side the door; while night nurses tiptoed tip-toed along the corridor, and the night watchman stared 4ncredulous from outside out-side the door. When the two great rectangles that were the emergencyward windows had turned from mirrors reflecting the room to gray rectangles in the morning morn-ing light, Johnny Rosenfeld opened his eyes and spoke the first words that marked his return from the dark valley. val-ley. "Gee, this is the life!" he said, and smiled Into K.'s watchful face. When It was clear that the boy would live, K. rose stiffly from the bedside bed-side and went over to Sidney's chair. "He's all right now," he said "as all right as he can be, poor lad !" "You did it you I How strange that you should know such a thing. How am I to thank youY' The internes, talking among themselves, them-selves, had wandered down to the dining din-ing room for early coffee. Wilson was giving a few last instructions as to the boy's care. Quite unexpectedly, Sidney Sid-ney caught K.'s hand and held it to her lips. The iron repression of the night, of mouths indeed, fell away before be-fore her simple caress. "My dear, my dear," he said huskily. "Anything I can do-for you at any time " It was after Sidney had crept like a broken thing to her room that Carlotta Harrison nnd K. came face to face. Johnny was quite conscious by that time, a little blue around the lips, but valiantly cheerful. "More things can happen to a fellow than I ever knew there was !" he said to his mother, and submitted rather sheepishly to her tears and caresses. "You were always a good boy, Johnny," John-ny," she said. "Just you get well enough to come home. I'll take care of you the rest of my life. We will get you a wheel-chair when you can be about, and I can take you out in the park when I come from work." "I'll be passenger and you'll be chauffeur, ma." "Mr. Le Moyne is going to get your father sent up again. With sixty-five cents a day and what I make, we'll get along." "You bet we will !" "Oh, Johnny, if I could see you coming com-ing in the door again and yelling 'mother' and 'supper' in one breath!" The meeting between Carlotta and Le Moyne was very quiet. She had been making a sort of subconscious impression im-pression on the retina of his mind during dur-ing all the night. It would be difficult to tell when he actually knew her. When the preparations for moving Johnny back to the big ward had been made, the other nurses left the room, and Carlotta and the boy were together. to-gether. K. stopped her on her way to the door. "Miss Harrison!" "Yes, Doctor Edwardes." "I am not Doctor Edwardes here; my name is Le Moyne." "Ah 1" "I have not seen you since yem left St. John's." "No ; I I rested for a few months." "I suppose they do not know that you were that you have had any previous pre-vious hospital experience." "No. Are you going to tell them?" "I shall not tell them, of course." And thus, by simple mutual consent, it was arranged that each should respect re-spect the other's confidence. Carlotta staggered to her room. There had been a time, just before dawn, when she had had one of those swift revelations that sometimes come at the end of a long night. She had seen herself as she was. The boy was very low, hardly breathing. Her past stretched before her, a series of small revenges and passionate outbursts, swift yleldings, slow remorse. She dared not look ahead. She would have given every hope she had In the world, just then, for Sidney's stainless past. She hated herself with that deadliest deadli-est loathing that comes with complete self-revelation. And she carried to her room the knowledge that the night's struggle had been In vain that, although Johnny John-ny Rosenfeld would live, she had gained nothing by what he had suffered. suf-fered. The whole night had shown her the hopelessness of any stratagem to win Wilson from his new allegiance. She had surprised him in the hallway, watching Sidney's slender figure as she made her way upstairs to her room. Never, in all his past overtures to her, had she seen that look in his eyes. CHAPTER XVI. To HarrietKennedy, Sidney'ssentence of thirty days' suspension came as a blow. K. broke the news to her that evening before the time for Sidney's nrrival. The little household was sharing in Harriet's prosperity. Katie had a helper now, a little Austrian girl named Miml. And Harriet had established estab-lished on the street the Innovation of nfter-dinner coffee. It was over the after-dinner coffee that K. made his announcement. "What do you mean by saying she Is coming home for thirty days? Is the child ill?" , "Not ill, although she is not quite well. There was a mistake about the medicine, and she was blamed ; that's all" "She'd better come home and stay home," said Harriet shortly. "I hope it doesn't get in the papers. This dressmaking business is a funny sort of thing. One word against you or any of your family, and the crowd's off somewhere else." "There's nothing against Sidney," K. reminded her. "Nothing in the world. I saw the superintendent myself this afternoon. It seems it's a mere matter mat-ter of discipline. Somebody made a mistake, and they cannot let such a thing go by. But he believes, as I do, that it was not Sidney." However Harriet had hardened herself her-self against the girl's arrival, all she had meant to say fled when she saw Sidney's circled eyes and pathetic mouth. "You child !" she said. "You poor little girl!" And took her to her corseted cor-seted bosom. For the time nt least, Sidney's world had gone to pieces about her. All her brave vaunt of service faded before her disgrace. When Christine would have seen her, she kept her door locked and asked for just that one evening alone. But after Harriet had retired, Sidney 'unbolted her door and listened in the little upper up-per hall. Harriet, her head in a towel, her face carefully cold-creamed, had gone to bed ; but K.'s light, as usual, was shining over the transom. Sidney Sid-ney tiptoed to the door. "K. !" Almost immediately he opened the door. "May I come in and talk to you?" He turned, took a quick survey of the room, and held the door wide. Sidney Sid-ney came in and sat down by the fire. "I've been thinking things over," she said. "It seems to me I'd better not go back." He had left the door carefully open. Men are always more conventional than women. What do you think is the real secret about K. LeMoyne? Why has he given up his promising career? What does Carlotta Harrison know about him that is damaging? Some interesting developments will be recorded in the next Installment. (TO BE CONTINUED.) I |