The Flower Brides (65 page)

“That may not be genuine, you know,” he said in a quiet businesslike tone. “And even if it is there will be a way to protect her.”

“But I haven’t any money to put out there under the stone!” His voice was piteous. “And I don’t know where I can get any! I was going to telephone my bank president, but I’m afraid it’s too late to catch him now. He always—goes away—over weekends. And I’m not sure—he would do it for me—even if I got him. My—money is—
gone
! I’m on the verge of
bankruptcy
!”

“Well, God isn’t!” said Gordon with assurance. “You lie there and pray to Him, and I’ll see what can be done. Where did you find this note?”

“Tied to the doorknob as I was trying to fit in the key. I stopped to read it, and I must have got dizzy! I fell and struck my head.” He put his hand up feebly and Gordon, looking, found a lump and a gash where the blood was seeping out and matting the hair.

“So you have! Well, we’ll soon look after that.” Gordon motioned to his mother, who came in just then. “Mother, we need some water and clean cloths. I wonder if you could rustle them together. Tea! That’s good. That will hearten you, Mr. Disston. Let me give you a few teaspoonfuls before you try to talk anymore.”

“But I must get up!” said the sick man. “The time is going! I cannot stop to drink tea.”

“Look here, Mr. Disston, will you trust me with this thing? I’ll do my best. I’ll do whatever you want done if you know what that is, but anyhow, I’ll do something. I’ll search for your daughter as if she were my—sister,” he added. “Now, drink this tea!”

He slipped his arm under the man’s head and lifted him slightly so that he could drink from the cup he held.

Stephen Disston drank and looked at his young comforter with his heart in his eyes.

“You have been a good friend to me. I shall never forget it,” he murmured. “But I could not let you undertake all this for me. But, oh, I don’t know what to do! Where can I get the money? I never thought I would get to a place where I would have
nothing
, no means to rescue my child!”

He covered his face with his hands for an instant, and then making a supreme effort he raised himself to a sitting posture and tried to rise to his feet. But suddenly he dropped back again, his face growing white.

“I
can’t
—do—it—!” he said, and then, “but—I—
must
!”

He tried to rise once more, but Gordon caught him and made him lie down again.

“Now look here, friend,” said Gordon, “you’ll only complicate matters if you lose consciousness again. We
need you
if we are going to clear this thing up. I take it you have had no time to call the police?”

“Do you think—I should? The letter warns against that, you know.”

“I think the police are better fitted to cope with a thing like this than you and I are, and the quicker they know about it, the quicker they can do something. I think they should be the ones to deal with the matter of what is put under a stone—if any.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said the sad voice, and the lids dropped over tortured eyes.

“Does Maggie know where that stone is located?”

The man opened his eyes again. “Is Maggie here? Oh, that is good! Yes, she knows. You can trust her absolutely.”

“I thought so. Well, I’ll have an interview with the police. Shall I take the letter? And then I’m going out to find your daughter! You be resting—and praying!” he added.

A hopeless look swept over the face of the sick man.

“You can’t find her,” he said despairingly. “I’ve had one of the best detectives in the state out hunting her for three weeks, and there isn’t a trace of her.”

“That’s all right. I’m asking the Lord to lead me to her. Will you ask Him, too? You know Him, don’t you?”

Disston nodded diffidently as if he were embarrassed. “I haven’t been—much—along that line lately!”

“Then get back to Him,” said the young man cheerfully. “Your strength is in Him, you know. There comes the doctor! Is there anything else I should know?”

Gordon gave a brief explanation to the doctor of how he had found the sick man, and the doctor looked troubled.

“He has a rather serious heart complication,” he said in a low tone. “A shock like that is bad. We should have a nurse, and I’ll stay here tonight as much as possible. Can you stay?”

“I have to go out for a little while on an errand for Mr. Disston,” explained Gordon. “I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

“That’s good. We may need you. If we could only get hold of Diana that would be the best medicine possible,” said the doctor anxiously.

“I’m going out to get her!” said the young man with assurance.

“Maggie’s got a nice little bite of supper for you,” whispered Gordon’s mother as he came down from the bedroom where they had carried the sick man.

“Sorry, Mother, but I can’t stop now. I’m going after the little lady. You and Maggie will have to carry on here till I get back. We’ve sent for a nurse, and she ought to be here soon. Mother, Mr. Disston had a note saying his daughter is being held for ransom. I’m taking it to the police; some of them may be here soon, probably not in uniform. Where is Maggie?”

“Here!” said Maggie from the shadows.

“Well, Maggie, can you show the police where there would be a stone in the spring house where ransom money could be put? They’ll want to know.”

“I can, sir!” said Maggie eagerly from out of a shower of anxious tears.

“Well, that’s all. Don’t get frightened, and
pray
! All the time!”

“That we will, sir,” said Maggie, with a strong look in her blue eyes.

“But won’t you take just a bite, Gordon?” urged his mother.

“No time, Mother dear!” He smiled at her. “Plenty of time to eat afterward.”

He walked briskly away into the night, and his mother heard the little car cough and start on its way.

The night went on, and all was quiet in the great house. The nurse arrived and fell into her place in the scheme of things; several policemen arrived silently and entered the house rubber shod. They conversed very little. They peered out into the darkness in the direction of the spring house and prepared a neat bundle. They asked Maggie a few keen questions, and she answered them as keenly. Presently one of them was missing, and a shadow drifted out behind the house as if he had been a wraith. By and by another one was missing from the dark room at the back of the house where they had chosen to sit, and then another, until there were only two left inside on guard. At their direction all but the lights in the sickroom were extinguished, and Mrs. MacCarroll and Maggie sat side by side on the couch in the dark living room, silently, praying, and visualizing what might be happening off in the vague distance where Gordon MacCarroll had gone. And Gordon’s mother tried to keep her fears back, tried to rest her faith on the almighty God, and did succeed in keeping back the tears.
Oh, God, keep him. Don’t let him do anything rash! You’ve always guarded us. Keep us now! Raise up the sick, Father, and help Gordon to find the little lady
. Over and over she prayed.

So they sat there and listened with ears attuned to the darkness outside and the meadows down behind the spring house. That would be where the kidnappers would creep sometime in the night to get their money. They wondered what had been demanded and whether the father had had enough, and what was it that the grim policemen had wrapped up in a little bundle. They were glad of the presence of those silent policemen. It made it easier to breathe.

The hours crept slowly by, silent save for the moaning of the sick man overhead.

And sometimes Mother MacCarroll would glance out the window down across the lawn to where her own little kitchen glowed and take heart of hope. Gordon had left that light burning for her. It seemed to reassure her.

D
iana had just finished her second cracker when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. She sat staring at the door. It was locked she knew, but the thought of the manager of the restaurant came to her. He could break down the door as easily as he would crush an eggshell if he cared to. Of course, she was crazy to think of him. He wouldn’t leave the restaurant and come after her, but if he should, what should she do? She had no one,
no one
to protect her.

Then like a flash came a verse that she had read only that morning before she went out to her work:
The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms
.

That was it. She must trust in that.
God, help, help!
she cried out in her heart even as the tap sounded on the door.

She hesitated a moment and then said, “Who is it, please?” Her voice sounded frightened even to herself, and she was suddenly conscious of her eyes that were heavy with weeping.

“It’s me!” said Mrs. Lundy, and there was a pleased sound to her voice, not like her usual gruff tones.

Diana snapped off the bright light and went to the door.

There stood Mrs. Lundy with a big box in her arms.

“Well, they’ve come again!” she announced triumphantly, “and he’s a
regular
guy. He bring ’em himself. You ain’t gone to bed, have you? ’Cause you better get yourself togged out in your best. He’s down there in the parlor waitin’ for you, and he seemed like he was in a hurry.”

Diana’s eyes were filled with quick fear again.

“I don’t understand what you mean, Mrs. Lundy. There is nobody who would come to call upon me here or bring me flowers. Those flowers that came in the past were from my old home.”

“Well, here they are, anyhow, and he’s downstairs. And if I was you I wouldn’t keep him waitin’ very long. He’s some classy guy, he is. I says to my daughter as I come through the kitchen on my way up, to see the meat didn’t burn, I says, ‘Tilly, I always said that third-story back was different, and now I know it.’”

“But really, Mrs. Lundy,” said Diana, drawing back and brushing away the dampness from her eyelashes, “I don’t in the least know who this is, and I’m afraid there’s some mistake.”

“Well, have it your own way,” said the landlady grumpily. “It’s your mistake, not mine, anyway. And I must say I don’t see the point of you keeping on saying you don’t know him. I got eyes in my head, ain’t I? Whether you know him or not, you march down there and settle it with him! I gotta cook my meat!” And Mrs. Lundy deposited the box on the floor with a thump and sailed away downstairs.

With her heart palpitating like a trip hammer Diana picked up the box. With excited fingers she tore open the wrappings, lifted the cover, and that heavenly fragrance of spicy sweetness wafted through the room.

The flowers had come again! The mystery flowers. God sent them every time in her need! But now must she go down there and have the mystery and beauty torn from them by having the giver turn out to be somebody she didn’t like?

She dashed cold water on her face, smoothed her hair, and then with sudden impulse she scooped the flowers from their box and took them in her arms, carrying them in a sheaf before her to shield her.

Downstairs the doorbell was pealing through the house once more, and Mrs. Lundy ungraciously left her meat again to answer it. She eyed the creature with disdain who slid inside before she could stop him. His hair was unkempt, his face and hands were dirty, and his clothes were ragged. Mrs. Lundy herself was not beyond being untidy, but this creature was of another world than even hers.

“What you want?” She frowned at him.

He blinked in the flickering light of the hall like a creature at bay and demanded, “I wantta see the party on the third floor back.”

“Whatcha want her for?” demanded the landlady.

“That’s my business!” he growled.

“Awwright, you can stand there. She’s comin’ down in a minute!”

The man lifted his little unholy eyes toward the stairs, his mouth stretched in a diabolical grin that showed the spaces between the rotten teeth where some were missing, and he kept one hand in the pocket of his tattered coat.

Diana came down slowly, rounding the head of the stairs on the second floor, her flowers before her.

“God! Take care of me!” she breathed as she stood a minute dreading to go on. Then it occurred to her that the manager of the cheap little restaurant where she had worked would never bring her gorgeous, expensive flowers, and she had really nothing to fear in that way. It must, of course, be one of her old friends who had found out where she was and had taken this tactful way to show her homage.

So she gathered courage and continued on, dreading most of all to have the romance taken from her lovely spirit-flowers. Well, whatever came she would always say that God sent them, anyway.

The cringing man at the foot gazed up at her for an instant, his hand gripping that something inside his pocket. Then he lowered his head with a Uriah Heep motion and spoke in a whine.

“You’re Diana Disston!” he charged as if it were a crime.

Diana stopped, startled, new fear coming into her eyes, her heart suddenly sinking. Was this creature the sender of her wonderful mystery flowers? Her arms grew suddenly heavy, like lead, and the flowers slid from her grasp and fell in a heap before her on the step. Her knees were weak. She felt as if she were going to sink down with the flowers. But she must not give way. She must not!

“I useta go ta school with you. You remember me?”

“No!”
said Diana from a throat that was dry and lips that were trembling.
“No!”
She tried to scream it, but the sound was only an anguished whisper.

“My mother useta sew fer your mother,” he whined on. “I got her outside now in a taxi. She’s on her way to the hospital fer an operation, an’ she wants ta see ya. She’s got somepin’ ta tell ya ta yer advantage. ’Cause she may die, that’s why she wants ta tell ya. You come out ta the taxi an’ talk ta her.”

Diana gripped the stair railing and tried to back away. She must not fall! She
must not
! Oh, if Mrs. Lundy would only come, or somebody.

“But I
don
’
t know
you!” she pled with that note of fright in her voice. “I
can
’
t
go out there now!”