Speed Nell
Molly Brown's College Friends

CHAPTER XX
GERMS

As the two quietly-dressed, intelligent looking men were in the act of going through a desk, they saw from the window the slow and painful approach of M. Misel. Without a word they let themselves out of a back window, left open for emergencies, and before the master had opened the front door the detectives were over the back fence and out of sight. They were desirous of catching more than the Misels in their net and did not want to act too quickly.

Had they peeped through the window, they would have seen Misel with an impatient gesture sling his crutch in one direction, his cane in another.

“Lena!” he called, in anything but a gentle tone. “Lena!” And then with muttered curses, when he found his wife to be absent, he settled himself to look over the bunch of mail he had just obtained at the post-office. One letter he examined very critically before opening. It was an inoffensive enough looking envelope, addressed on a typewriter and with a postmark from New York. It had the appearance of a circular or advertisement of some sort, being made of cheap, greyish-white paper, the kind of letter one would wait until last to open in a pile of mail, being sure it was of no especial interest or importance. Misel seemed to find it very interesting, however. It was the one he chose from all the letters and papers, and as he examined it, he scowled darkly.

“Lena!” he called as Madame Misel hurriedly entered the cottage, “Lena, some fool has been meddling with my mail!”

“Perhaps not such a big fool as you are!” she answered tartly.

“Look! The envelope has been opened before. Of course it is the letter from Fritz von Lestes, the one we have been awaiting.” He tore it open and read aloud: “‘The paint which you have ordered will be delivered immediately. Am sorry there should have been any delay. I am sending a light grey, as agreed upon.’ Umm – I don’t see how they could make much out of that.”

“Let me see the letter. – Of course they can make much out of it as there is no address, – you men bungle things so! Why should a man who is in the paint business write a letter with no address and sign his name so illegibly that no one could make it out? He should have had a letter head and a business envelope.”

“And speaking of bungling, – why did you go and leave the house with no one in it? Can’t you see that is imprudent?”

“Mrs. Green came for me and I had no excuse. – Besides, I am sure if I am by when the dressings are handed in that no one will inspect my work. I have been packing all morning and have seen to it that my labor has not been in vain.”

“Oh, peerless woman!” he said sarcastically.

Madame Misel said nothing but busied herself over the luncheon. Suddenly she gave a little cry, half distress, half indignation. Misel hastened to her.

“What is it?”

“Look! This back window is not quite closed! Did you open it?”

“No! I have not been here in the kitchen.”

“Then someone has been in the house,” she announced in a dead tone.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course! I left the windows locked, stupid! Look about and see if all is in order.”

The detectives had worked as neatly as detectives can work, but the Misels found several traces of them. In one room a chair had been moved; in another a drawer had not been shut as close as Madame was confident she had left it; papers had been turned over in the desk, Misel was sure, although none were missing.

“Someone has been in the laboratory, too! Look at this crucible! I always place them so, – and this has been turned.”

The pair faced each other with despair on their countenances.

“What now?” they gasped.

“We must make a flitting this very night!” exclaimed the woman. “Thank goodness, nobody dreams that you are not crippled nor that I am anything but the homely hausfrau I appear. The dressings will be off this very afternoon, too, so my work is completed in that line, at least. If you could boast as much, no doubt you would not mind leaving. I told you to begin the teaching at Exmoor sooner.”

“The youths were not ripe for it. I have begun in a way, but not much has been accomplished. Perhaps the person who has been here is just some prying neighbor and we are not really being watched. Go out and see if you can discover anything!”

When Madame Misel peeped through the windows of the old church she saw enough to make her turn pale. Andy McLean was there with two strange men and Professor and Mrs. Green. Molly was weeping bitter tears as she untied the carefully packed surgical dressings. Madame saw at a glance that it was her work that was being examined by the men. She did not stop to make sure what they found on her beautifully made dressings, but turned and fled towards the cottage that she called home.

“Why is she weeping?” she asked herself, and there was woman enough in her to know that Molly wept because one of her own sex had proved faithless.

Blinds were pulled down in the cottage with the lovely old garden, and the activities that ensued could only be equaled by a circus breaking up to leave town. Madame Misel moved with a quiet precision that showed she was an adept at making a quick get-away. Misel worked with a fury of impatience. He went through his desk, scattering papers hither and yon and burning everything of no value. Other documents he stowed carefully away in his breast pocket. The laboratory was dismantled and small, mysterious-looking vials packed in boxes and placed in the huge suit-case that seemed to hold most of their belongings.

A letter was written to the landlord informing him that his tenants had been called out of Wellington by the illness of a fictitious sister. A month’s rent was enclosed. Another letter was written to the postmaster asking that mail be forwarded to an entirely imaginary address. The work proceeded rapidly. The cottage was always in apple-pie order, as Madame Misel was certainly an excellent housekeeper.

“You must write to the president of the college,” commanded Madame.

“Naturally! Must I use the same sister?”

“Of course! Why two lies when one will suffice?”

A letter to Miss Walker was dispatched forthwith.

“And now for our disguises, – or rather the time has come to discard our disguises!” cried Madame almost joyfully. “I hate to appear as such a frump!”

Misel’s disguise was composed principally of cane and crutch, but at his wife’s instigation he shaved his mustache. With the help of a checked suit and red necktie and a brown derby hat a trifle too small for him, the pathetic and interesting teacher of the French language was transformed into the type of man one sees hanging around a race track. With a clever brush Madame put a quirk in his eyebrows that completed the portrait. Then a bit of court plaster was stuck on one of the perfect teeth which gave the handsome Misel a sinister look and suggested to the beholder former battles and fisticuffs in which he had been struck in the mouth.

“Even your dying sister will not recognize you!” exclaimed his wife.

Madame’s transformation was even more startling than her husband’s. First she shook out her smoothly brushed hair and with the help of curling tongs soon had a wave that the finest hair dresser in New York could not have exceeded. She piled her abundant hair up in curls and twists and coils, pulling out puffs over her ears. Then with pencil and rouge pot and powder puff she went to work on her countenance. A raging beauty was the outcome, but rather fast and loud looking. A lavender suit lined and slashed with corn-colored silk was then donned, with many rings and bracelets. The flat-heeled shoes were packed away in the suit-case with the sober costume, and high-heeled French boots were fitted on in their stead. A plentiful sprinkling of musk was added so that the nostrils were assailed as soon as the eyes.

“Tough sports!” would have been the verdict of anyone meeting the Misels. They had decided on the night train to New York. The cottage was carefully locked, the key enclosed in the letter to the landlord, which they posted on their way to the station. Everything was going smoothly. The station was empty when the pair stepped upon the platform and in a moment the New York train came steaming around the curve.

“Thank God, we are getting away unnoticed!” gasped Misel.

“Thank God if you choose, but it would be more to the point if you thanked me. I can’t see that anyone has helped you but me.”

“Oh, well! Have it your own way!” said the spurious bookmaker as they boarded the train.

“Someone got left,” he laughed as they took their seats in the chair car. “I saw a man and woman running down the road just as we got aboard. I am glad they got left. Whoever it is might have recognized us.”

“Nonsense! Didn’t I tell you your own dying sister would not know you?” and Madame Misel smoothed her lavender draperies and jangled her many bracelets and rings, peeping in the mirror meantime to adjust her large beplumed hat. There was a commotion in the end of the Pullman and she heard a familiar voice. In the mirror she espied a familiar face, and under the heavily laid on rouge, the woman paled and the hand that adjusted her hat shook. Misel buried his face in the evening paper some traveler had left in his seat, while the innocent cause of their perturbation found a seat with the help of the porter.

CHAPTER XXI
HER FATHER’S OWN DAUGHTER

“I don’t see why you take it so hard, Molly darling,” said Judy as Molly told her of the detectives’ findings and of the perfidy they had unearthed.

“Why, I fancy I am grieving that such wickedness can be in this world,” sighed Molly. “I liked Madame Misel so much.”

“Well, I never did like her,” declared Judy.

Molly smiled, well remembering Judy’s enthusiasm on arriving at Wellington and telling of the interesting couple she had met on the train.

“I know what you are thinking about – of course I said they were interesting, but I never did like the woman much – she was too catty for me.”

This conversation was interrupted by the loud ringing of the telephone bell, which proved to be a long distance call for Judy from Mr. Kean in New York. His marching orders had come and he was to sail for France in a few days, and for the first time on record he could not take his little wife with him. Building roads and bridges in war time was very different from times of peace, and France at that time was no place for delicate little ladies.

“You had better come right up to New York on the next train,” was his ringing command. “Your mother needs you and I must see you, too.”

“All right, Bobby! Meet me at the Pennsylvania Station. I’ll take the 12.45 – I am not going to let Kent come. He must be with his mother one more day, – his mother and Molly. So long! Be sure and meet me!”

Then such a scrambling ensued! Kent must be persuaded he was neither wanted nor needed, a few things hurled into a bag, her sketch book tucked in her jacket pocket, and Judy was off like a whirlwind. She and Kent ran all the way to the station only to see the train pulling out as they stepped upon the platform.

“I can get it! Keep the old bag!” cried that young woman as she sprinted down the track, her young husband running lightly by her side, laughing in spite of himself. If you have never run after a train and caught it you cannot realize the triumphant feeling Judy had as she grasped the rail and swung herself up on the rear coach. Fortunately it was not a vestibule train or she would have been shut out. Kent slung the bag up after her and then stood in the middle of the track until his Judy was lost in the darkness.

“What a girl she is!” he laughed to himself. “What a dear girl!”

The dear girl was rescued by a rather indignant brakeman and led through the empty coach that happened to be hitched on to the train and finally installed in the chair car, after many explanations and excuses had been made to train conductor and then Pullman conductor.

Young women have no business on night trains with no tickets – certainly no business in boarding those trains from the rear, thereby risking their own necks and making the railroads liable to damage suits.

“But you see my father telephoned me from New York,” she confided to the train conductor, a grizzled looking old fellow with a decidedly military bearing. “He is going to France next week and he simply had to see me. – Perhaps you know my father,” she added with a certain assurance that everybody connected with railroads ought to know Bobby.

“More than likely!” was the grim reply. The conductor had no idea of being cajoled into good humor by this daring girl.

“He is Mr. Robert Kean, – Bobby!”

The conductor was suddenly a changed creature.

“Know him! I should say I did! Bless my soul, if you don’t look like him – same eyes – same mouth! Ha, ha! See Bob Kean missing a train! Not much!” and the erstwhile stern captain of the train now grasped Judy’s hand. “Come on, I’ll see that you get a chair, Miss Kean. I’m certainly pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“I’m not Miss Kean any more, – I’m Mrs. Kent Brown now. – It was my husband who pitched me and my luggage on the back end of the train.”

“Married! By jiminy! I can’t believe Bob Kean has a married daughter! And your husband aided and abetted you in jumping on the back of fast trains, did he?” and the once grim captain laughed aloud. “Well, I’m glad you got a game husband. I don’t know what your father would have done with a ’fraid cat.”

Judy’s entrance in the Pullman caused some commotion. The old conductor was laughing heartily and the brakeman was in a much pleasanter frame of mind as he handed over Judy’s bag to the grinning porter. There were about eight persons in the chair car as Judy entered and Judy-like, she immediately became intensely interested in them.

Of course, the spot of color made by a flashy dame in lavender attracted her attention first, and then her companion in loud checks cried out to be noticed. What a couple! Race track written all over both of them! Even from three seats off Judy could smell the musk on the woman. The man’s face was hidden by the newspaper and the woman seemed to be engaged in rapt contemplation of her beauty in the narrow little mirror by her chair. To Judy’s disappointment the gaudy dame whirled her chair around so she could not see her face.

“I bet she’s a peacherino!” she said to herself.

There were other persons in the train that proved interesting, too: among them a mother and child who appealed to Judy’s artistic sense; a G. A. R. veteran who was sure he had been in worse battles than the Marne; an ancient lady from Louisiana who made our young artist wild to paint her white hair and patrician nose. Opposite Judy’s chair was a young man, (or was he a young man?) At least he was not an old man! There were a few tiny lines around his twinkling bright blue eyes, but his movements were as alert as a college athlete’s, and his mouth, though very firm, had the saucy expression of a street boy. Judy was sure she had seen his face before. The way his hair grew on his forehead in a so-called widow’s peak reminded her vaguely of someone, – the cleft chin she was sure she had known somewhere. He was interested in her, too, she could plainly see. He had a pleasant, dependable expression, the kind of look one felt meant that in time of trouble he would be a good person to call on. He was making himself generally useful to the madonna-like mother and child; he had assisted the ancient lady from Louisiana to get up and sit down several times since Judy had so unceremoniously boarded the car.

“I wish I knew where I had known him. His face is as familiar to me as my own.”

She felt in her jacket pocket for her sketch book. She must get an impression of the mother and child, and the old lady was destined to be sketched in, too. She longed to do the youngish-oldish person opposite, but he was too close for her to permit herself such a familiarity. She turned over the leaves of her book and suddenly came upon the page given up to the Tucker twins and their friend Page Allison. What delightful girls they were! Suddenly she could place the resemblance seen in the gentleman across the aisle. Of course his forehead and widow’s peak were the same that Dum Tucker owned, and his cleft chin was the identical one belonging to Dee Tucker. Could he be their father?

She remembered what the girls had told her of their delightful father. He was a newspaper man in Richmond, Virginia, and according to the twins was just about the most wonderful person in the world. Page Allison, too, had given him praise, although not quite so wildly unstinted as his daughters.

“I think I’ll drop something and let him pick it up for me and get in a conversation with him,” Judy laughed to herself. “He is such a squire of dames, he is sure to pick it up.”

She turned the pages of her sketch book until she came to the quick impressions she had made of Madame Misel at the war relief rooms.

“The wretch!” was her inward comment, and her thoughts went back to the last days at Wellington. She looked up; her eye was again chained by the gaudy lavender spot and she suddenly became conscious that she could see the woman’s face in the large mirror at the end of the Pullman. Her eyes were down as she perused the pages of a magazine.

Another familiar face! Where under Heaven had she seen just that chin and nose? Her eyes fell again on the open sketch book. Why, it is Madame Misel – no other! With quick strokes she copied the sketch and then cleverly added the beplumed hat, fluffy collar and fashionably cut coat. The woman stood up for a moment to get something from the pocket of her great coat, hanging on the hook at one side, and then Judy took in her general contours standing, and added some draperies to the full length figure she had also obtained of Madame Misel in the work room. High heels were put on the flat, unstylish shoes. The straight severe dress and basque were transformed into the fashionable, if gaudy, creation. Judy was careful not to erase any of the original lines and all of the new parts she sketched in in dots and dashes.

The gentleman opposite was plainly interested in what she was doing and it evidently required all his self-control to keep from asking to be allowed to see.

“They are the Misels and they are running away!” flashed into Judy’s mind. “It is up to me to stop them – but how? The gent in checks is undoubtedly Misel. They can’t fool me; I remember his ears too well and the way his hands held things.”

She glanced across the aisle and her eyes met the bright blue ones belonging to the widow’s peak and cleft chin.

“What would Bobby do in this case?” she asked herself.

“Use the sense God gave him and get help if he couldn’t cope with a thing single-handed,” she answered herself.

She accordingly let her sketch book slide from her lap, rubber and pencil hopping gaily after it.

“Oh, thank you so much!” she exclaimed as the squire of dames immediately dived for the belongings and restored them to her. “I would not loose my sketch book for worlds.”

“I should say not! I have a daughter who is very much interested in art, – in fact, she is studying in New York now, – her specialty is sculpture, though.”

“Yes, I know her! She is Dum Tucker!”

“You know my Dum! How wonderful! And how did you know she was – I was her father?”

“By your widow’s peak! I also know you are Dee’s father by your chin.”

Mr. Tucker changed his seat, taking the one by Judy.

“By Jove! You artists are a clever lot. You would make a great detective, Mrs. Brown. You must excuse me for knowing your name, but I heard you tell the captain what it was, – Mrs. Kent Brown. My girls have written me how kind you have been to them and I have been dying to make myself known to you, but was waiting for some kind of opening wedge.”

“And I, too, Mr. Tucker, have been wondering where I had seen you, when I found your girls’ pictures in my little book. See! Here they are!”

“And little Page, too!” He exclaimed eagerly scanning the sketches. “You are wonderfully clever at a likeness.”

“Do you think so? I – Mr. Tucker – I deliberately scraped up an acquaintance with you because I want you to do something for me,” and Judy looked frankly into the honest eyes of her new acquaintance.

“Why, Mrs. Brown, you know I am at your service.”

“I was sure of you somehow, even if I had not been almost certain you were related in some way to Dum and Dee Tucker. My little sketch book told me that and it told me something else, too, but I must begin at the beginning.”

Judy, whispering, began with her meeting of the Misels, of her interesting the Greens at Wellington, of Misel’s substituting in French at the college and of Madame’s work in the war relief. Jeffrey Tucker’s eyes flashed as the newspaper man in him scented a rousing good story. When Judy got to the part where she and her friends went out in the night to hunt for adventure and found it in the manly shape of Misel taking strenuous exercise for a cripple, he beamed with joy and felt in his pocket for a pencil. Judy rapidly told him of the puppy’s wounded leg and of the tetanus germs as well as ground glass being found in the dressings. He set his square jaw and looked as though he could eat the kaiser and all his crew at one mouthful.

“And now I have come to the dénouement!” gasped Judy, excitement making her breathless. “If I could recognize you by your likeness to my sketches, I fancy I could also recognize Madame Misel by sketches of herself. I got two of her this morning at the war relief. The detectives did not arrest them, as they want to get others in their dragnet, but in some way the spies must have caught on to the fact that they were under suspicion, as they sneaked away.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure as shooting! In fact they are on this train.”

“No!” excitedly.

“Now, Mr. Tucker, you must compose yourself if we mean to catch the creatures!”

“Certainly!” and the eager man sank back in his seat and tried to look as though he were having a mild conversation with the attractive young woman who had jumped on the back of the moving train.

“Now that is better! Keep that nonchalant expression for what I am going to tell you – ”

“All right, fire away!”

“They are on this coach, just three seats down. – Good boy, not to jump out of your skin! Now I am going to show you my sketch of the woman before and after. See, there is no doubt about her! You walk to the smoker and on the way back get a good look at her face and I bet you will be convinced.”

Jeffrey Tucker did as he was bid, giving Madame Misel such a casual look that he aroused no suspicion in her mind.

“Gee! This is great! I’d rather bag some of these spies than do big hunting in the African Jungle. Now, most wise of all female detectives, what do you advise? We must act quickly.”

“I think you should take the conductors, both train and Pullman, into your confidence, and then send telegrams to New York to have the spies met with the proper reception. You can telegraph Bobby, I mean my father, if you think it best, and he can get in cahoots with the Secret Service people in New York. Bobby is the kind of man who doesn’t let things go wrong. When he bores a hole in the mountain it comes out on the opposite side just exactly where he meant it to, – when he swings a bridge across a river it stays swung, – there is no giving way of supports and undermining from washings, – Bobby knows. If you telegraph him, he’ll have detectives there all right and they will have the necessary warrants and handcuffs, too.”

“Well then, Bobby it is!” and Jeffrey Tucker quickly took Mr. Kean’s address. Next the conductors were interviewed, and those good Americans quickly complied with any and every request. A long and explicit telegram was written to the gentleman who did not let mistakes happen, another one sent to the chief of police, in case Mr. Kean should not be at home to receive the telegram, (Jeffrey Tucker being the kind of man who did not let mistakes occur, either,) and then there was nothing to do but sit quietly in the Pullman and wait for the train to steam into New York.

It seemed to Judy to be hours and hours, although the time certainly passed pleasantly with the friends she made on the train. She and Mr. Tucker talked to everybody except the two sporty looking individuals, and they would have had the audacity to talk with them if they had been given the slightest encouragement. But the Misels kept their backs studiously turned to their fellow travelers and did not court sociability.