  It was five-thirty when the partner-detectives left the quiet park, where long shadows were lying on the grass and where birds were calling softly from one rustling tree to another. “It seems like a different world, doesn’t it?” Bobs said, as she smiled in her friendliest way at the lad at the wheel. She had felt a real tenderness for her companion since he had told her about Desmond, and she was glad that an old friend of hers had been a comfort to him. “It does, indeed,” he declared with a last glance back at the park. “I like trees better than I do many people. We have some wonderful old elms around our summer home in the Orange Hills. When my mother returns I shall ask her to invite you four girls to one of her week-ends, or to one that she will plan just for me, after Dick comes.” Then, as they were again on the thronged East Side, the lad said: “Seventy-sixth Street, beyond Second, you said, didn’t you?” “Yes. There is the Boys’ Club House just ahead,” Roberta exclaimed. Then as they drew up at the curb, she added: “Good! The door is open and so Mr. Hardinian probably is here.” The young man whom they sought was still there, and as they entered the low wooden temporary structure which covered a vacant lot between two rickety old tenements, they saw him smiling down at a group of excited newsies, who were evidently relating to him some occurrence of their day. He at once recognized Roberta and made his way toward her, while the boys to whom he had spoken a few words of dismissal departed through a side door, leaving the big room empty. Bobs held out her hand as she said: “Mr. Hardinian, this is my friend, Mr. Caldwaller-Cory, and we have come, I do believe, on a wild goose chase.” Ralph at once liked the young man with the lithe, wiry build and the dark face that was so wonderfully expressive. He looked to be about twenty-four years of age, although he might have been even a year or two older. An amused smile accompanied his question: “Miss Vandergrift, am I the wild goose?” The girl laughed. “That wasn’t a very graceful way of stating our errand,” she said, “so I will begin again. The truth of the matter is that Mr. Cory and I are amateur detectives.” Again Mr. Hardinian smiled, and, with a swinging gesture that seemed to include the entire place, he said: “Search where you will, but I doubt if you will detect here a hidden wild goose.” Then, more seriously, he added: “Come, let us be seated in the library corner, for I am sure that your visit has some real purpose.” Mr. Hardinian listened to the story of the Pensinger mystery, which, as little was really known about it, took but a brief moment to tell. At its conclusion he said: “Did you think. Miss Vandergrift, that I might know something about all this? I truly do not. Although I was born in Hungary, while I was still an infant my parents went to England, where I was educated, and only last year the need of my own people brought me here where so many of them come, believing that they are to find freedom and fortune. But how soon they are disillusioned, for they find poverty, suffering and conditions to which they are unused and with which they know not how to cope. Many of the older ones lose out and their children are left waifs all alone in this great city. I found when I reached here that they needed me most, the homeless boys who, many of them, slept huddled over some grating through which heat came, or in hallways crowded together for warmth, until they were told to move on. And so the first thing that I did was to rent this vacant lot and build a temporary wooden structure. Now with these walls lined with bunks, as you see, I can make many of the boys fairly comfortable at night.” “I say, Mr. Hardinian,” Ralph exclaimed, “this is a splendid work that you are doing! I’m coming over some night soon, if I may. I want to see the place in full swing.” “Come whenever you wish,” was the reply. And then, as Roberta had risen, the young men did also. The girl smiled as she said: “Honestly, Mr. Hardinian, I knew in my bones that you would not be able to help us solve the mystery, but you were the only Hungarian with whom I had even the slightest speaking acquaintance, and so we thought that we would tell you the story and, if you ever hear anything that might be a clue, let us know, won’t you?” “Indeed I will, and gladly. Good-bye! Come over Sunday afternoon at four, if you have no other plans. We have a little service then and the boys conduct it entirely.” When they were again in the small car, Ralph was enthusiastic. “I like that chap!” he exclaimed. “I wish detectives could plan to have things turn out the way an author can. If I had the say of it, I’d make Mr. Hardinian into a descendant of Marilyn Pensinger and then he could inherit all of that fortune and use it for his homeless waifs.” It was after six when the small car stopped in front of the Pensinger mansion, and Ralph declared that since he had a date with his dad, he could not stop to meet the other Vandergrift girls, as he greatly desired. That night, when Ralph returned from an evening affair which he had attended with his father, he did not retire at once. Instead, he seated himself at his desk and for half an hour his pen scratched rapidly over a large sheet of white paper. He was writing a letter to Dick De Laney, his close-as-a-brother friend, telling him that at last the only girl in the world had appeared in his life. “I always told you, old pal, that I’d know the girl who was meant for me the minute that I met her. But I do believe that she is going to be hard to win.” |
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