OCR Text |
Show 1 MMfrfraM i . . . ' i v ' Jm V . p . . . i . :: Br :: i ' Mary Roberts Rinehart ! . tCopyrluul, by AlcClure I'UDllualloria, Inc.) SIDNEY IS MADE THE VICTIM VIC-TIM OF FOUL REVENGE AND LITTLE JOHNNY ROSENFELD NEARLY DIES AT A MURDERER'S MURDER-ER'S HANDS. K. LcMoyue, a mysterious stranger, takes a room at the Page home, presided over by Sidney, her mother Anna and her Aunt Harriet, u fashionable dressmaker. Through the lu-lliienco lu-lliienco of . Dr. Max Wilson, a brilliant young surgeon smitten Willi her eharm, Sidney becomes a hospital nurse. K. loves her from a distance; so does Joe Drummond, an old high-school chum. At the hospllal 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, the 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 thero Is a sort of common interest among them. Doctor Wilson discovers that LoMoyne is a famous fa-mous Doctor Edwardes living incognito, in-cognito, and keeps the secret. L J CHAPTER XIV Continued. 12 "I believe it is." Wilson smiled at her. "And yet, you continue to tempt me and expect me to yield," Sidney replied. "One of the most delightful things about temptation is yielding now and thou." After all, the situation seemed absurd. ab-surd. 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 gone with hate in her heart and black despair. She knew very well what the Issue 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 jerky motion of the little sleigh would throw them close together. How well she knew It all ! He would touch Sidney's Sid-ney's hnnd 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 and the danger was there. If she could get Sidney out of the hospital, It would simplify things. She surmised shrewdly that on the Street their interests were wide apart. It was here that they met on common ground. Carlotta gave the five-o'clock medicines. medi-cines. Then she sat down at the table near the door, with the tray In front of her. There are certain thoughts that are at first functions of the brain; after a long time the spinal cord takes them up and converts them into acts almost automatically. Tcrhaps because for the last month she had done the thing so often in her mind, its actual performance was almost without conscious con-scious thought. Carlotta took a bottle from her medicine cupboard, and, writing a new label for it, pasted it over the old one. Then she exchanged it for one of the same size on the medicine tray. Throughout the dining room busy and competent young women came and ate, hastily or leisurely as their opportunity oppor-tunity was, and went on their way again. In their hands they held the keys, not always of life and death perhaps, per-haps, but of ease from pain, of tenderness, tender-ness, of smooth pillows, and cups of water to thirsty lips. Ia their eyes, as in Sidney's, burned the light of service. serv-ice. The supper room was filled, with their soft voices, the rustle of their skirts, the gleam of their stilt white caps. When Carlotta came in, she greeted none of them. They did not like her, and she knew it. P.efore her, instead of the tidy supper sup-per table, she was seeing the medicine tray as she had left It. 'T guess I've fixed her," she said to herself. Her very soul was sick with fear of what she had done. CHAPTER XV. At something after two o'clock that night, K. put down his pipe and listened, lis-tened, lie had not been able to sleep since midnight. In his dressing gown he had sat by the small fire, thinking. The content of his first few months on the Street was rapidly giving way to Unrest. He who had meant to cut himself him-self off from life found himself again in close touch with it; his eddy was ilcc;' with it. And there was a new element, ne had thought, at first, that he could fight down this love for Sidney. P,ut it was Increasingly hard. The Innocent touch of her hand on his arm, the moiie-nt when he had held her in his anus after her mother's death, the thousand .small contacts of her returns to the little house all these set his blood on fire. And it wus lighting blood. Under his quiet exterior K. fought many eonllicts those winter days over his desk and ledger at 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 and 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 his 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. Hut 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 ho 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. Itosenfeld. She says she wants to see you." He went down the stairs. Mrs. Ro-senfeld Ro-senfeld was standing in the lower hall, a shawl about her shoulders. Her face was white and 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 flung 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. Rosenfeld put out a work-hardened hand and caught Christine's fingers. fin-gers. "Never mind that," she said. "You didn't do it. I guess you and 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. Ro- "They Say I Gave Him the Wrong Medicine." senfeld, and closed again. Only Sidney Sid-ney and K. remainedby 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, intlectionless. "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 tall. I came on duty at six o'clock and gave the medicines. medi-cines. When the night nurse came on i at seven, everything was all right. The ! medicine tray was Just as it 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 wus o:i the tray." she finished piteously. "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 (.'arietta'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 bed 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 Moyne, after all, who saved Johnny Rosenfeld's life. For, when staff and nurses had exhausted all their resources, he stepped forward 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 Mai. 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 operating operat-ing room. K. did the work, his long fingers deft and skillful while Mrs.-Rosenfeld Mrs.-Rosenfeld knelt by the bed with her face buried; while Sidney sat, dazed and bewildered, on her little chair inside in-side the door; while night nurses tiptoed tip-toed along the corridor, and the night watchman stared incredulous from outside out-side the door. When the two great rectangles that were the emergency ward 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 1" "You did it you ! How strange that you should know such a thing. How am I to thank you?" 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 months 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 and K. came face to face. Johnny was quite conscious by that time, a little blue around the Hps, 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 yoju'U 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 !" "I have not seen you since you 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 tocher room. I There had been a time, just before I 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, swifji yieldings, 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 arrival. i The little household was sharing In Harriet's prosperity. Katie had a helper now, a little Austrian girl named Mimi. And Harriet had estab- "It Seems to Me I'd Better Not Go Back." lished on the street the innovation of after-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. t For the time at 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." ne had ieft the door carefully open. Men are always more conventional than women. f. 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. ' 1 (TO BE CON-TLNUED.) |