“

Busy, Mr. Carshaw?” inquired some one when an impatient young man got in touch with Mulberry Street after an exasperating delay.

“Not too busy to try and defeat the scoundrels who are plotting against a defenseless girl,” he cried.

“Well, come down-town. We’ll expect you in half an hour.”

“But, Mr. Clancy asked me—”

“Better come,” said the voice, and Carshaw, though fuming, bowed to authority.

It is good for the idle rich that they should be brought occasionally into sharp contact with life’s realities. During his twenty-seven years Rex Carshaw had hardly ever known what it meant to have a purpose balked. Luckily for him, he was of good stock and had been well reared.

The instinct of sport, fostered by triumphs at Harvard, had developed an innate quality of self-reliance and given him a physical hardihood which revelled in conquest over difficulties. Each winter, instead of lounging in flannels at the Poinciana, he was out with guides and dogs in the Northwest after moose and caribou.

He preferred polo to tennis. He would rather pass a fortnight in oilskins with the rough and ready fisher-folk of the Maine coast than don the white ducks and smart caps of his wealthy yachting friends. In a word, society and riches had not spoiled him. But he did like to have his own way, and the suspicion that he might be thwarted in his desire to help Winifred Bartlett cut him now like a sword. So he chafed against the seeming slowness of the Subway, and fuel was added to the fire when he was kept waiting five minutes on arriving at police headquarters.

He found Clancy closeted with a big man who had just lighted a fat cigar, and this fact in itself betokened official callousness as to Winifred’s fate. Hot words leaped from his lips.

“Why have you allowed Miss Bartlett to be spirited away? Is there no law in this State, nor any one who cares whether or not the law is obeyed? She’s gone—taken by force. I’m certain of it.”

“And we also are certain of it, Mr. Carshaw,” said Steingall placidly. “Sit down. Do you smoke? You’ll find these cigars in good shape,” and he pushed forward a box.

“But, is nothing being done?” Nevertheless, Carshaw sat down and took a cigar. He had sufficient sense to see that bluster was useless and only meant loss of dignity.

“Sure. That’s why I asked you to come along.”

“You see,” put in Clancy, “you short-circuited the connections the night before last, so we let you cool your heels in the rain this evening. We want no ‘first I will and then I won’t’ helpers in this business.”

Carshaw met those beady brown eyes steadily. “I deserved that,” he said. “Now, perhaps, you’ll forget a passing mood. I have come to like Winifred.”

Clancy stared suddenly at a clock.

“Tick, tick!” he said. “Eight fifteen. Nom d’un pipe, now I understand.”

For the first time the true explanation of Senator Meiklejohn’s covert glance at the clock the previous morning had occurred to him. That wily gentleman wanted Winifred out of the house for her day’s work before the police interviewed Rachel Craik. He had fought hard to gain even a few hours in the effort to hinder inquiry.

“What’s bitten you, Frog?” inquired the chief.

Probably—who knows?—but there was some reasonable likelihood that the Senator’s name might have reached Carshaw’s ears had not the telephone bell jangled. Steingall picked up the receiver.

“Long-distance call. This is it, I guess,” and his free hand enjoined silence. The talk was brief and one-sided. Steingall smiled as he replaced the instrument.

“Now, we’re ready for you, Mr. Carshaw,” he said, lolling back in his chair again. “The Misses Craik and Bartlett have arrived for the night at the Maples Inn, Fairfield, Connecticut. Thanks to you, we knew that some one was desperately anxious that Winifred should leave New York. Thanks to you, too, she has gone. Neither her aunt nor the other interested people cared to have her strolling in Central Park with an eligible and fairly intelligent bachelor like Mr. Rex Carshaw.”

Carshaw’s lips parted eagerly, but a gesture stayed him.

“Yes. Of course, I know you’re straining at the leash, but please don’t go off on false trails. You never lose time casting about for the true line. This is the actual position of affairs: A man known as Ralph V. Voles, assisted by an amiable person named Mick the Wolf—he was so christened in Leadville, where they sum up a tough accurately—hauled Mr. Ronald Tower into the river. For some reason best known to himself, Mr. Tower treats the matter rather as a joke, so the police can carry it no further. But Voles is associated with Rachel Craik, and was in her house during several hours on the night of the river incident and the night following. It is almost safe to assume that he counseled the girl’s removal from New York because she is ‘the image of her mother.’ One asks why this very natural fact should render Winifred Bartlett an undesirable resident of New York. There is a ready answer. She might be recognized. Such recognition would be awkward for somebody. But the girl has lived in almost total seclusion. She is nineteen. If she is so like her mother as to be recognized, her mother must have been a person of no small consequence, a lady known to and admired by a very large circle of friends. The daughter of any other woman, presumably long since dead, who was not of social importance, could hardly be recognized. You follow this?”

“Perfectly.” Carshaw was beginning to remodel his opinion of the Bureau generally, and of its easy-going, genial-looking chief in particular.

“This fear of recognition, with its certain consequences,” went on Steingall, pausing to flick the ash off his cigar, “is the dominant factor in Winifred’s career as directed by Rachel Craik. This woman, swayed by some lingering shreds of decent thought, had the child well educated, but the instant she approaches maturity, Winifred is set to earn a living in a bookbinding factory. Why? Social New York does not visit wholesale trade houses, nor travel on the elevated during rush hours. But it does go to the big stores and fashionable milliners where a pretty, well proportioned girl can obtain employment readily. Moreover, Rachel Craik would never ‘hear of’ the stage, though Winifred can sing, and believes she could dance. And how prompt recognition might be in a theater. It all comes to this, Mr. Carshaw: the Bureau’s hands are tied, but it can and will assist an outsider, whom it trusts, who means rescuing Miss Bartlett from the exile which threatens her. We have looked you over carefully, and think you are trustworthy—”

“The Lord help you if you’re not!” broke in Clancy. “I like the girl. It will be a bad day for the man who works her evil.”

Carshaw’s eyes clashed with Clancy’s, as rapiers rasp in thrust and parry. From that instant the two men became firm friends, for the young millionaire said quietly:

“I have her promise to call for help on me, first, Mr. Clancy.”

“You’ll follow her to Fairfield then?” and Steingall sat up suddenly.

“Yes. Please advise me.”

“That’s the way to talk. I wish there was a heap more boys like you among the Four Hundred. But I can’t advise you. I’m an official. Suppose, however, I were a young gentleman of leisure who wanted to befriend a deserving young lady in Winifred Bartlett’s very peculiar circumstances. I’d persuade her to leave a highly undesirable ‘aunt,’ and strike out for herself. I’d ask my mother, or some other lady of good standing, to take the girl under her wing, and see that she was cared for until a place was found in some business or profession suited to her talents. And that’s as far as I care to go at this sitting. As for the ways and means, in these days of fast cars and dare-devil drivers who are in daily danger of losing their licenses—”

“By gad, I’ll do it,” and Carshaw’s emphatic fist thumped the table.

“Steady! This Voles is a tremendous fellow. In a personal encounter you would stand no chance. And he’s the sort that shoots at sight. Mick the Wolf, too, is a bad man from the wild and woolly West. The type exists, even to-day. We have gunmen here in New York who’d clean up a whole saloonful of modern cowboys. Voles and Mick are in Fairfield, but I’ve a notion they’ll not stay in the same hotel as Winifred and her aunt. I think, too, that they may lie low for a day or two. You’ll observe, of course, that Rachel Craik, so poverty-stricken that Winifred had to earn eight dollars a week to eke out the housekeeping, can now afford to travel and live in expensive hotels. All this means that Winifred ought to be urged to break loose and come back to New York. The police will protect her if she gives them the opportunity, but the law won’t let us butt in between relatives, even supposed ones, without sufficient justification. One last word—you must forget everything I’ve said.”

“And another last word,” cried Clancy. “The Bureau is a regular old woman for tittle-tattle. We listen to all sorts of gossip. Some of it is real news.”

“And, by jing, I was nearly omitting one bit of scandal,” said Steingall. “It seems that Mick the Wolf and a fellow named Fowle met in a corner saloon round about One Hundred and Twelfth Street the night before last. They soon grew thick as thieves, and Fowle, it appears, watched a certain young couple stroll off into the gloaming last night.”

“Next time I happen on Fowle!” growled Carshaw.

“You’ll leave him alone. Brains are better than brawn. Ask Clancy.”

“Sure thing!” chuckled the little man. “Look at us two!”

“Anyhow, I’d hate to have the combination working against me,” and with this deft rejoinder Carshaw hurried away to a garage where he was known. At dawn he was hooting an open passage along the Boston Post Road in a car which temporarily replaced his own damaged cruiser.

Within three hours he was seated in the dining-room of the Maples Inn and reading a newspaper. It was the off season, and the hotel contained hardly any guests, but he had ascertained that Winifred and her aunt were certainly there. For a long time, however, none but a couple of German waiters broke his vigil, for this thing happened before the war. One stout fellow went away. The other, a mere boy, remained and flecked dust with a napkin, wondering, no doubt, why the motorist sat hours at the table. At last, near noon, Rachel Craik, with a plaid shawl draped around her angular shoulders, and Winifred, in a new dress of French gray, came in.

Winifred started and cast down her eyes on seeing who was there. Carshaw, on his part, apparently had no eyes for her, but kept a look over the top of his newspaper at Rachel Craik, to see whether she recognized him, supposing it to be a fact that he had been seen with Winifred. She seemed, however, hardly to be aware of his presence.

The girl and the woman sat some distance from him—the room was large—near a window, looking out, and anon exchanging a remark in quiet voices. Then a lunch was brought into them, Carshaw meantime buried in the newspaper except when he stole a glance at Winifred.

His hope was that the woman would leave the girl alone, if only for one minute, for he had a note ready to slip into Winifred’s hand, beseeching her to meet him that evening at seven in the lane behind the church for some talk “on a matter of high importance.”

But fortune was against him. Rachel Craik, after her meal, sat again at the window, took up some knitting, and plied needles like a slow machine. The afternoon wore on. Finally, Carshaw rang to order his own late lunch, and the German boy brought it in. He rose to go to table; but, as if the mere act of rising spurred him to further action, he walked straight to Winifred. The hours left him were few, and his impatience had grown to the point of desperateness now. He bowed and held out the paper, saying:

“Perhaps you have not seen this morning’s newspaper?” At the same time he presented her the note.

Miss Craik was sitting two yards away, half-turned from Winifred, but at this afternoon offer of the morning’s paper she glanced round fully at Winifred, and saw, that as Winifred took the newspaper, she tried to grasp with it a note also which lay on it—tried, but failed, for the note escaped, slipped down on Winifred’s lap, and lay there exposed.

Miss Craik’s eyebrows lifted a little, but she did not cease her knitting. Winifred’s face was painfully red, and in another moment pale. Carshaw was not often at his wits’ end, but now for some seconds he stood embarrassed.

Rachel Craik, however, saved him by saying quickly: “The gentleman has dropped something in your lap, Winifred.” Whereupon Winifred handed back the unfortunate note.

What was he to do now? If he wrote to Winifred through the ordinary channels of the hotel she might, indeed, soon receive the letter, but the risks of this course were many and obvious. He ate, puzzling his brains, spurring all his power of invention. The time for action was growing short.

Suddenly he noticed the German boy, and had a thought. He could speak German well, and, guessing that Rachel Craik probably did not understand a word of it, he said in a natural voice to the boy in German:

“Fond of American dollars, boy?”

“Ja, mein Herr,” answered the boy.

“I’m going to give you five.”

“You are very good, mein Herr,” said the boy, “beautiful thanks!”

“But you have to earn them. Will you do just what I tell you, without asking for any reason?”

“If I can, mein Herr.”

“Nothing very difficult. You have only to go over yonder by that chair where I was sitting, throw yourself suddenly on the floor, and begin to kick and wriggle as though you had a fit. Keep it up for two minutes, and I will give you not five but ten. Will you do this?”

“From the heart willingly, mein Herr,” answered the boy, who had a solemn face and a complete lack of humor.

“Wait, then, three minutes, and then—suddenly—do it.”

The three minutes passed in silence; no sound in the room, save the clicking of Carshaw’s knife and fork, and the ply of Rachel Craik’s knitting-needles. Then the boy lounged away to the farther end of the room; and suddenly, with a bump, he was on the floor and in the promised fit.

“Halloo!” cried Carshaw, while from both Winifred and Rachel came little cries of alarm—for a fit has the same effect as a mouse on the nerves of women.

“He’s in a fit!” screamed the aunt.

“Please do something for him!” cried Winifred to Carshaw, with a face of distress. But he would not stir from his seat. The boy still kicked and writhed, lying on his face and uttering blood-curdling sounds. This was easy. He had only to make bitter plaint in the German tongue.

“Oh, aunt,” said Winifred, half risen, yet hesitating for fear, “do help that poor fellow!”

Whereupon Miss Craik leaped up, caught the water-jug from the table with a rather withering look at Carshaw, and hurried toward the boy. Winifred went after her and Carshaw went after Winifred.

The older woman turned the boy over, bent down, dipped her fingers in the water, and sprinkled his forehead. Winifred stood a little behind her, bending also. Near her, too, Carshaw bent over the now quiet form of the boy.

A piece of paper touched Winifred’s palm—the note again. This time her fingers closed on it and quickly stole into her pocket.