Chapter XXII: Many Mysteries

One might have supposed that, considering she was now late into the night of the most exacting and exciting day of her whole life, Lucile, once she was safely stowed away in her berth on the train, would immediately fall asleep. This, however, was not the case. Her active brain was still at work, still struggling to untangle the many mysteries that, during the past weeks, had woven themselves into what seemed an inseparable tangle. So, after a half hour of vain attempt to sleep, she sat bolt upright in her berth and snapped on the light, prepared if need be to spend the few remaining hours of that night satisfying the demands of that irreconcilable mind of hers.

The train had already started. The heavy green curtains which hid her from the little outside world about her waved gently to and fro. Her white arms and shoulders gleamed in the light. Her hair hung tumbled in a mass about her. As the train took a curve, she was swung against the hammock in which her heavy coat rested. Her bare shoulder touched something hard.

"The books," she said. "Wonder what my new acquirement is like?"

She drew the new book from her pocket and, brushing her hair out of her eyes, scanned it curiously.

"French," she whispered. "Very old French and hard to read." As she thumbed the pages she saw quaint woodcuts of soldiers and officers. Here was a single officer seated impressively upon a horse; here a group of soldiers scanning the horizon; and there a whole battalion charging a very ancient fieldpiece.

"Something about war," she told herself. "That's about all I can make out." She was ready to close the book when her eye was caught by an inscription written upon the fly leaf.

"Looks sort of distinguished," she told herself. "Shouldn't wonder if the book were valuable because of that writing if for nothing else." In this surmise she was more right than she knew.

She put the book carefully away but was unable to banish the questions which the sight of it had brought up. Automatically her mind went over the incidents which had led up to this precise moment. She saw the child in the university library, saw her take down the book and flee, saw her later in the mystery cottage on Tyler street. She fought again the battle with the hardened foster mother of the child and again endured the torturing moments in that evil woman's abode. She thought of the mysterious person who had followed her and had saved her from unknown terrors by notifying the police. Had that person been the same as he who had followed her this very night in an attempt to regain possession of the two books? No, surely not. She could not conceive of his doing her an act of kindness. She thought of the person who had followed them to the wall of the summer cottage out at the dunes and wondered vaguely if he could have been the same person who had followed them on Tyler street at one time and at that other saved her from the clutches of the child's foster parents. She wondered who he could be. Was he a detective who had been set to dog her trail or was he some friend? The latter seemed impossible. If he was a detective, how had she escaped him on this trip? Or, after all, had she? It gave her a little thrill to think that perhaps in the excitement of the day his presence near her had not been noticed and that he might at this very moment be traveling with her in this car. Involuntarily she seized the green curtains and tried to button them more tightly, then she threw back her head and laughed at herself.

"But how," she asked herself, "is all this tangle to be straightened out? Take that one little book, 'The Compleat Angler.' The child apparently stole it from Frank Morrow; I have it from her by a mere accident; Frank Morrow has it from one New York book shop; that shop from another; the other from a theologian; he from a third book shop; and that shop more than likely from a thief, for if he would attempt to steal it from me to-night, he more than likely stole it in the first place and was attempting to get it from me to destroy my evidence against him. Now if the book was stolen in the first place and all of us have had stolen property in our possession, in the form of this book, what's going to happen to the bunch of us and how are we ever to square ourselves? Last of all," she smiled, "where does our friend, the aged Frenchman, the godfather of that precious child, come in on it? And what is the meaning of the secret mark?"

With all these problems stated and none of them solved, she at last found a drowsy sensation about to overcome her, so settling back upon her pillow and drawing the blankets about her, she allowed herself to drift off into slumber.

The train she had taken was not as speedy as the one which had taken her to New York. Darkness of another day had fallen when at last she recognized the welcome sound of the train rumbling over hollow spaces at regular intervals and knew that she was passing over the streets of her own city. Florence would be there to meet her. Lucile had wired her the time of her arrival. It certainly would seem good to meet someone she knew once more.

As the train at last rattled into the heart of the city, she caught an unusual red glow against the sky.

"Fire somewhere," she told herself without giving it much thought, for in a city of millions one thinks little of a single blaze.

It was only after she and Florence had left the depot that she noted again that red glow with a start.

The first indication that something unusual was happening in that section of the city was the large amount of traffic which passed the street car they had taken. Automobiles, trucks and delivery cars rattled rapidly past them.

"That's strange!" she told herself. "The street is usually deserted at this time of night. I wonder if the fire could be over this way; but surely it would be out by now."

At last the traffic became so crowded that their car, like a bit of debris in a clogged stream, was caught and held in the middle of it all.

"What's the trouble?" she asked the conductor.

"Bad fire up ahead, just across the river."

"Across the river? Why--that's where Tyler street is."

"Yes'm, in that direction."

"Come on," she said, seizing Florence by the arm; "the fire's down toward Tyler street. I think we ought to try to get to the cottage if we can. What could that child and the old Frenchman do if the fire reached their cottage? He'd burn rather than leave his books and the child wouldn't leave him; besides there are the books that belong to other people and that I'm partly responsible for. C'm'on."

For fifteen minutes they struggled down a street that was thronged with excited people.

"One wouldn't believe that there could be such a crowd on the streets at this hour of the night," panted Florence, as she elbowed her way forward. "Lucile, you hang to my waist. We must not be separated."

They came to a dead stop at last. At the end of the river bridge a rope had been thrown across the street. At paces of ten feet this rope was guarded by policemen. None could pass save the firemen.

The fire was across the river but sent forth a red glare that was startling. By dint of ten minutes of crawling Florence succeeded in securing for them a position against the rope.

A large fire in a city at night is a grand and terrible spectacle. This fire was no exception. Indeed, it was destined to become the worst fire the city had experienced in more than forty years.

Starting in some low, ancient structures that lay along the river, it soon climbed to a series of brick buildings occupied by garment makers. The flames, like red dragons' tongues, darted in and out of windows. With a great burst they leaped through a tar-covered roof to mount hundreds of feet in air. Burning fragments, all ablaze, leaped to soar away in the hot currents of air.

The firemen, all but powerless, fought bravely. Here a fire tower reared itself to dizzy heights in air. Here and there fire hose, like a thousand entwined serpents, writhed and twisted. Here a whole battery of fire engines smoked and there two powerful gasoline driven engines kept up a constant heavy throbbing. Roofs and walls crumbled, water tanks tottered and fell, steel pillars writhed and twisted in the intense heat, chimneys came crashing in heaps.

The fire had all but consumed the row of four-story buildings. Then with a fresh dash of air from the lake it burst forth in earnest, a real and terrible conflagration.

Lucile, as she stood there watching it, felt a thousand hitherto unexperienced emotions sweep over her. But at last she came to rest with one terrible fact bearing down upon her very soul. Tyler street was just beyond this conflagration. Who could tell when the fire would reach the mysterious tumble-down cottage with its aged occupant? She thought of something else, of the books she might long since have returned to their rightful owners and had not.

"Now they will burn and I will never be able to explain," she told herself. "Somehow I must get through!"

In her excitement she lifted the rope and started forward. A heavy hand was instantly laid on her shoulders.

"Y' can't go over there."

"I must."

"Y' can't."

The policeman thrust her gently back behind the rope and drew it down before her.

"I must go," she told herself. "Oh, I must! I must!"