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Show 'What business was that ol yours?" Mrs. Carscadden demanded demand-ed unsympathetically. "You'd do much better 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. "The Mc Canns did!" IRIS Eli EH7 EES 1x0 O KATHLEEN NOiUUS WNU SEKVICB j CHAPTER VIII Continued "I was up at Tiller's Eeach with some people this year," Sheila volunteered, vol-unteered, "and I met Peter there. We liked each other, all right. Then I didn't meet him aijain until last until I guess It was Friday night It seems years ago." "And you and him made a date, hay?" ouked Ken. "Well, he wanted to see me. To explain " "Explain why he threw you I down" "Yes, they were so worried about Peter. He had half a dozen appointments 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 Peter Pe-ter had told his mother and Gertrude Ger-trude that he had known you up at Tiller's Beach last summer, and he 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 maybe may-be living over in Astoria or somewhere, some-where, where Ma could have vegetables vege-tables and everything!" Angela lamented. la-mented. "And now now they'll never 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." i "You wouldn't think It was so funny, fun-ny, Sheila Carscadden," Angela re- "I think you would be lucky if you could." "Oh, I could, all right!" Ken boasted, gloomily. He went to get her a drink of water, and she stood drinking it and laughing, and panting pant-ing against the background of snowy hills and bared trees and blue, high winter sky. The truck came duly chugging down the new road a few minutes later, the men hanging on like monkeys, mon-keys, watching the track as the great toboggan tires flattened the snow. To them the gently rolling, snowy hills all about, the occasional distant dis-tant cluster of roofs and farmhouse columns of smoke, the road deep in dry white shining powder, were exactly 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. 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 blanket 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 Junction"; Junc-tion"; there was no house near by. But toward the middle of the after- ty were coming nearer every second. sec-ond. The beloved eld dirty doorway with children straggling about it in the dark, the welcoming rush of thick air from the house, air scented with cooking and living and the ominous om-inous note of carbolic, met her like familiar voices. Sheila was up the four flights like a flying swallow; she filing open the kitchen door and her cry of, "Ma! I'm back!" rang through the place. Then everything took on the feeling feel-ing and appearance of a nightmare. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table with Angela at one side of her. "Joe's dead!" Sheila thought, and her heart failed her. "Well, you came back," Mrs. Carscadden presently observed out of the most 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 sorrowful, 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 matter!" Sheila demanded again, looking up A silence. "He didn't throw me down," Sheila said mildly, ending it. "He wanted tne 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 you?" Ken said, in dissatisfaction. Sheila made no answer, and he mumbled once or twice, "Sure, he's yeller," before settling down into silence again. After another interval the man began be-gan again, with his air of superiority: superi-ority: "You know there isn't anyone who has anything on me!" "lias?" 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 organization," organiza-tion," Sheila observed mildly, recalling 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 manage 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- nobn a rickety train did rattle by, and Sheila and Peter boarded it The conductor sleepily informed them that they were in northern Connecticut Con-necticut and obliged them with tickets tick-ets to New York. There was no diner din-er on the train, but when they transferred trans-ferred to a roaring leviathan farther far-ther on, they thankfully went into a brightly lighted buffet-car and had club sandwiches and coffee. CHAPTER IX When they were finally approaching approach-ing the city, and the theater advertisements 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 through tear-soaked eyelashes. "What's happened?" "Where's your husband?" Mrs. Carscadden demanded, steadily. "Where ? Where's my what?" "Where's Mr. Mc Cann, Sheila?" Angela asked, weeping. "Peter!" "The the fellow you ran away with, Sheila." Angela began to hiccup, but anger an-ger dried Sheila's tears and made her voice hard. "You don't think I ran away with Peter Mc Cann?" "We had your wire. Sheila," Angela An-gela said. "Mamma, you don't think I ran off with Peter Mc Cann!" "An' his mother as hear'rt-broke 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. I I wasnea bodies and unwashed clothing, cloth-ing, Sheila felt suddenly unbearably tired and stiff and sleepy. It was Ken who briefly suggested that she take possession of a very small room off the kitchen; perhaps once a servant's room, or an old grandfather's grand-father's room but furnished with only a desolate-looking 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 croaking of the old rocker. Gradually Gradu-ally all these sounds blended and faded, loomed loud again, and were gone. She slept until winter sunshine, sun-shine, striking through the dirty, uncurtained un-curtained farmhouse window, sent a brilliant glitter from the snow about the discolored walls of the little lit-tle kitchen chamber. Yesterday's experience of thawing 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 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!" 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 laughing, laugh-ing, the girl worked enthusiastically if with small results. She and Peter Pe-ter and Ken shouted at each other in the invigorating sunshine as they dug. "You own this place?" Peter asked. "I never seen it before yesterday," 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 and asked about it, once. They said the owner was an old lady, and lived in Florida, Flor-ida, and sometimes her nieces used it summers. They're artists, or teachers or something, from Boston." Bos-ton." "But but anyone going by j neighbors." Sheila exclaimed, "wouldn't they see smoke, and motor mo-tor tracks?" "There ain't many neighbors," Ken observed, unalarmed. When Peter had worked his way to some distance, Ken said suddenly to Shei-'t, Shei-'t, "So you think I ought to get out of this racket while the getting's good, do you?" "Indade, I'll grant you that!" she said, bitterly. "Indade you're not married to him you an' your dis-thrict dis-thrict attorney or justice of the p'ace or whativer! An' let but Peter Mc Cann put his head in my door, an' 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 ye, was that it?" "Well, they did. Mother. We couldn't." "You cudden't?" "No, ma'am, because" Sheila hesitated. "We were being kidnaped," kid-naped," she explained. "I see," said her mother. "And this morning they drove us to some place called Capitol Junction, Junc-tion, and we came down on the train." "I see." There was a silence. Sheila did not move. She sat looking look-ing at her mother and sister fixedly, the red deepening in her cheeks, her lip bitten. "Sheila, they're such lovely people 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 getting married to Peter they were so happy about it! They were going to have a nuptial mass and everything!" every-thing!" "Well, what of it?" Sheila challenged 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 desperately. desperate-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 exclaimed, 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." "Begin at the beginning Sheila," Joe said. proached her, with spirit, "if you could have seen the crying and goings-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 yesterday. 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 terribly terri-bly sick," Angela went on in the accusing, tender tone she had used all through the conversation, "she's simply prostrated " 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 peace. Ma." "What marriage?" Sheila exclaimed, ex-claimed, very white. "Yours, dear. It was the only way " "But, Joe Joe we're not married!" 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 Connecticut, Con-necticut, or somewhere, we don't know where " "Wait a minute," Joe said, impressed 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 COMTIKUED) When the men returned wished that it was over. She dreaded dread-ed the explanations It seemed odd to see the night streets bustling as usual, down under un-der the train; curb carts surrounded 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 you can catch them!" "I know darned well we can catch them. We know where they started from, don't we? We can send 'em right to that fake studio where we found 'em, can't we? It'll only take 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 quiet of a police station, answering the questions of a kindly sergeant, with only another old officer for audience, except for a sympathetic young man who observed excitedly that he would bet it was Olla's gang, and who, with a sort of tinseled light globe held aloft, took a snapshot snap-shot of the latest victims of a gang mystery. And then the familiar streets were rushing by Sheila's taxi, and her heart was thumping harder and faster, and Ma, and home, and safe- |