Winifred was not discontented with her lot--the ichor of youth and good health flowed too strongly in her veins. But at times she was bewildered by a sense of aloofness from the rest of humanity.
Above all did she suffer from the girls she met in the warehouse.
Some were coa.r.s.e, nearly every one was frivolous. Their talk, their thinly-veiled allusions to a night life in which she bore no part, puzzled and disturbed her. True, the wild revels of which they boasted did not sound either marvelous or attractive when a.n.a.lyzed. A couple of hours at the movies, a frolic in a dance hall, a quarrel about some youthful gallant, violent fluctuations from arm-laced friendship to sparkling-eyed hatred and back again to tears and kisses--these joys and cankers formed the limited gamut of their emotions.
For all that, Winifred could not help asking herself with ever increasing insistence why she alone, among a crude, noisy sisterhood of a hundred young women of her own age, should be with them yet not of them. She realized that her education fitted her for a higher place in the army of New York workers than a bookbinder"s bench. She could soon have acquired proficiency as a stenographer. Pleasant, well-paid situations abounded in the stores and wholesale houses. There was even some alluring profession called "the stage," where a girl might actually earn a living by singing and dancing, and Winifred could certainly sing and was certain she could dance if taught.
What queer trick of fate, then, had brought her to Brown, Son & Brown"s in the spring of that year, and kept her there? She could not tell. She could not even guess why she dwelt so far up-town, while every other girl in the establishment had a home either in or near Greenwich Village.
Heigho! Life was a riddle. Surely some day she would solve it.
Her mind ran on this problem more strongly than usual that morning.
Still pondering it, she diverged for a moment at the Soldiers" and Sailors" Monument, and stood on the stone terrace which commands such a magnificent stretch of the silvery Hudson, with the green heights of the New Jersey sh.o.r.e directly opposite, and the Palisades rearing their lofty crests away to the north.
Suddenly she became aware that a small group of men had gathered there, and were displaying a lively interest in two motor boats on the river.
Something out of the common had stirred them; voices were loud and gestures animated.
"Look!" said one, "they"ve gotten that boat!"
"You can"t be sure," doubted another, though his manner showed that he wanted only to be convinced.
"D"ye think a police launch "ud be foolin" around with a tow at this time o" day if it wasn"t something special?" persisted the first speaker. "Can"t yer see it"s empty? There"s a cop pointin" now to the clubhouse."
"Good for you," p.r.o.nounced the doubtful one. The pointing cop had clinched the argument.
"An" they"re headin" that way," came the cry.
Off raced the men. Winifred found that people on top of motor-omnibuses scurrying down-town were also watching the two craft. Opposite the end of Eighty-sixth Street such a crowd a.s.sembled as though by magic that she could not see over the railings. She could not imagine why people should be so worked up by the mere finding of an empty boat. She heard allusions to names, but they evoked no echo in her mind. At last, approaching a girl among the sightseers, she put a timid question:
"Can you tell me what is the matter?" she said.
"They"ve found the boat," came the ready answer.
"Yes, but what boat? Why any boat?"
"Haven"t you read about the murder last night. Mr. Van Hofen, who owns that yacht there, the _San Sowsy_, had a party of friends on board, an"
one of "em was dragged into the river an" drowned. Nice goin"s on. _San Sowsy_--it"s a good name for the whole bunch, I guess."
Winifred did not understand why the girl laughed.
"What a terrible thing!" she said. "Perhaps it was only an accident; and sad enough at that if some poor man lost his life."
"Oh, no. It"s a murder right enough. The papers are full of it. I was walkin" here at nine o"clock with a fellow. It might ha" been done under me very nose. What d"ye know about that?"
"It"s very sad," repeated Winifred. "Such dreadful things seem to be almost impossible under this blue sky and in bright sunshine. Even the river does not look cruel."
She went on, having no time for further dawdling. Her informant glanced after her curiously, for Winifred"s cheap clothing and worn shoes were oddly at variance with her voice and manner.
At Seventy-second Street Winifred bought a newspaper, which she read instead of the tiny volume of Browning"s poems carried in her hand-bag.
She always contrived to have a book or periodical for the train journeys, since men had a way of catching her eye when she glanced around thoughtlessly, and such incidents were annoying. She soon learned the main details of "The Yacht Mystery." The account of Ronald Tower"s dramatic end was substantially accurate. It contained, of course, no allusion to Senator Meiklejohn"s singular connection with the affair, but Clancy had taken care that a disturbing paragraph should appear with the rest of a lurid write-up.
"Sinister rumors are current in clubland," read Winifred. "These warrant the belief that others beside the thugs in the boat are implicated in the tragedy. Indeed, it is whispered that a man high in the political world can, if he chooses, throw light on what is, at this writing, an inexplicable crime, a crime which would be incredible if it had not actually taken place."
The reporter did not know, and Clancy did not tell him, just what this innuendo meant. The detective was anxious that Senator Meiklejohn should realize the folly of refusing all information to the authorities, and this thinly-veiled threat of publicity was one way of bringing him to his senses.
Winifred had never before come into touch, so to speak, with any deed of criminal violence. She was so absorbed in the story of the junketing at a fashionable club, with its astounding sequel in a locality familiar to her eyes, that she hardly noticed a delay on the line.
She did not even know that she would be ten minutes late until she saw a clock at Fourteenth Street. Then she raced to the door of a big, many-storied building. A timekeeper shook his head at her, but, punctual as a rule, on wet mornings she was invariably the first to arrive, so the watch-dog compromised on the give-and-take principle. When she emerged from the elevator at the ninth floor her cheeks were still suffused with color, her eyes were alight, her lips parted under the spell of excitement and haste. In a word, she looked positively bewitching.
Two people evidently took this view of her as she advanced into the workroom after hanging up her hat and coat.
"You"re late again, Bartlett," snapped Miss Agatha Sugg, a forewoman, whose initials suggested an obvious nickname among the set of flippant girls she ruled with a severity that was also ungracious. "I"ll not speak to you any more on the matter. Next time you"ll be fired. See?"
Winifred"s high color fled before this dire threat. Even the few dollars a week she earned by binding books was essential to the up-keep of her home. At any rate this fact was dinned into her ears constantly, and formed a ready argument against any change of employment.
"I"m sorry, Miss Sugg," she stammered. "I didn"t think I had lost any time. Indeed, I started out earlier than usual."
"Rubbish!" snorted Miss Sugg. "What"re givin" me? It"s a fine day."
"Yes," said Winifred timidly, "but unfortunately I stopped a while on Riverside Drive to watch the police bringing in the boat from which Mr.
Tower was mur--pulled into the river last night."
"Riverside Drive!" snapped the forewoman. "Your address is East One Hundred and Twelfth Street, ain"t it? What were you doing on Riverside Drive?"
"I walk that way every morning unless it is raining."
Miss Sugg looked incredulous, but felt that she was traveling outside her own territory.
"Anyhow," she said, "that"s your affair, not mine, an" it"s no excuse for bein" late."
"Oh, come now," intervened a man"s voice, "this young lady is not so far behind time as to cause such a row. She can pull out a bit and make up for it."
Miss Sugg wheeled wrathfully to find Mr. Fowle, manager on that floor, gazing at Winifred with marked approval. Fowle, a shifty-eyed man of thirty, compactly built, and somewhat of a dandy, seldom gave heed to any of the girls employed by Brown, Son & Brown. His benevolent att.i.tude toward Winifred was a new departure.
"Young lady!" gasped the forewoman. She was in such a temper that other words failed.
"Yes, she isn"t an old one," smirked Fowle. "That"s all right, Miss Bartlett, get on with your work. Miss Sugg"s bark is worse than her bite."
Though he had poured oil on the troubled waters his air was not altogether rea.s.suring. Winifred went to her bench in a flurry of trepidation. She dreaded the vixenish Miss Sugg less than the too complaisant manager. Somehow, she fancied that he would soon speak to her again; when, a few minutes later, he drew near, and she felt rather than saw that he was staring at her boldly, she flushed to the nape of her graceful neck.
Yet he put a quite orthodox question.
"Did I get your story right when you came in?" he said. "I think you told Miss Sugg that the harbor police had picked up the motor-boat in that yacht case."
"So I heard," said Winifred. She was in charge of a wire-st.i.tching machine, and her deft fingers were busy. Moreover, she was resolved not to give Fowle any pretext for prolonging the conversation.
"Who told you?"
The manager"s tone grew a trifle less cordial. He was not accustomed to being held at arm"s length by any young woman in the establishment whom he condescended to notice.