The main road had been bad enough, but these side roads full of deep wagon ruts and mud holes were ten times worse. It would have been a problem to drive through there by daylight, but after dark it was a nightmare. Our electric head lamps were dim that night for some reason or other and only partly showed up the bad places, and several times I thought we were going to upset. The drizzling rain was still falling and we were soaked and uncomfortable. After a time we gave up trying to find another bridge to cross the stream and get back on the main road and frankly owned that we were lost. Once in a while we saw the dark outline of a farmhouse far back from the road, but we hesitated to wake up the people at that time of night and ask our way.
Margery complained of the feeling of her wet coat and Sahwah suggested that we all sing "How Dry I Am", and see if there was anything in mental suggestion. So we stopped still at the cross-roads and sang hoa.r.s.ely in the rain and darkness like disconsolate frogs. The starter refused to work when we wanted to go on again and Nyoda had to get out in the mud and crank the engine.
"She stoops to crank her," said Sahwah, but none of us had the ambition to pinch her for making a pun.
We were apparently traveling through the country in a sort of Roman key pattern, up one road and down another without getting any nearer to the town for which we imagined we were headed. Suddenly something white loomed up before us which proved to be the gate of a fence; we were evidently on private property. Sahwah got out to open it but she could not do it alone, so both Nakwisi and I jumped out to help her. The mud was piled up so high under the gate that it was all we could do to swing it back. The Glow-worm pa.s.sed through slowly and we closed the gate again. Just then a gust of wind sent down a heavy shower of drops from a near-by tree and we ran hastily for the shelter of the car.
Nyoda started immediately and we found ourselves in the main road once more. The gust of wind continued and blew our veils into our faces and made us screw our eyes shut. In such fashion did we travel down the king"s highway, and if ever my ardor for automobile touring was dampened, it was then. For a long time n.o.body had a word to say, not even irrepressible Sahwah. Each one of us sat apart wrapped in our own gloomy thoughts. Finally Nakwisi spoke.
"Does the water run down over the tip of your nose if your nose turns up? Sahwah, yours turns up, will you look and see which way the rain- drops are going?"
There was no answer.
"Well, don"t answer, if you don"t want to," said Nakwisi, rather crossly. We took our veils down from our eyes and looked around to see the cause of this unusual silence on Sahwah"s part. Then we got the second big shock of the evening. _Sahwah was not in the car!_ She had vanished utterly, silently, mysteriously, into the rainy darkness!
CHAPTER VIII.
If I were an experienced writer of fiction I would know how to weave all the various odds and ends of my story into the telling so as to keep the action moving forward all the time, with all parts nicely balanced. But as it is, I am afraid that I have been trying to tell it all at once and am getting it rather one-sided. So far I have told only what happened to us girls in the Glow-worm, and I fear that the reader will have forgotten by this time that there were eight girls who started out on the trip instead of four. So now I am going to carry you back to a point almost at the beginning of the story; the point where we almost struck the old woman and where the Striped Beetle vanished from sight. As I said before, I am going to tell the story just as if I had been along and seen everything, without stopping to quote Gladys or Hinpoha or Medmangi or Chapa.
You will remember that we were proceeding westward through Toledo at the time and the Striped Beetle was in the lead. Hinpoha sat in the front seat with Gladys, holding Mr. Bob in her lap. The street was crowded with vehicles and Gladys was driving carefully. A wagon loaded almost to the sky with barrels threatened to fall over on them and they had a narrow squeeze to get through between it and the curb. Some small boys on the sidewalk shouted at the driver of the wagon and he shouted back; a street car trying to make headway on a track from which a sand wagon refused to move itself raised an ear-splitting racket with its alarm bell; the noise was so deafening that the girls put their hands over their ears and did not take them down again until Gladys had turned a corner into a quieter street. They had turned another corner before they discovered that the Glow-worm was not right behind them.
Gladys merely stopped the car and waited for us to come up.
"They"re probably caught in that line of wagons and trucks on T---- Street," said Gladys, when we did not come immediately. "I hope their engine didn"t stall on that corner."
The minutes pa.s.sed and we did not appear.
"Run down to the corner and see what is keeping them," said Gladys to Chapa and Medmangi. The two girls got out and retraced their steps. But nowhere did they see the Glow-worm. Puzzled, they returned to Gladys and she promptly turned the Striped Beetle around and drove back through the streets the way she had come. The Glow-worm had apparently vanished off the face of the earth. Inquiry at frequent points brought out the fact that the Glow-worm had knocked down an old woman (that is the way such things are exaggerated) and had gone on again. Their asking which way it had gone started an argument which ended in a fist fight, for the two small boys they asked each maintained stoutly that it had gone in a different direction. Then the mother of the boys ran out from a grocery store to see what the racket was about and seizing them by the back of their necks she shook them apart, boxing their ears. When the cause of the argument was made known to her she settled it in an emphatic manner by pointing with a fat forefinger down the street.
"They went that way," she declared. "Four girls in tan suits and green veils just like yours."
They took her word for it and started in pursuit of the Glow-worm, expecting to come upon it at every turn, their wonder growing momentarily. They could not understand why Nyoda had ceased to follow them and was taking a route which was not marked in the route book.
They inquired at numerous places and found that we had pa.s.sed just ahead of them.
"I don"t blame Nyoda for going this way," said Gladys, "it"s lots quieter than the other way; sort of back streets. She probably turned off when the jam occurred on T---- Street and thought we saw her and followed. It seems a little strange that she didn"t wait for us to come up, though."
Mr. Bob, our long-eared mascot, had a most angelic disposition, but nevertheless, he knew when he was outraged, and when a yellow cur of no special breed and no breeding at all snarled impudently at him from the curb he jumped through Hinpoha"s restraining arms with the intention of chewing up the insolent one. The yellow dog saw him coming and, turning tail, he fled yelping up a side street. Hinpoha shouted commands in vain; Mr. Bob had set out to put his teeth into that yellow dog and he would not be turned aside from his purpose. Gladys stopped the car and Hinpoha ran after Mr. Bob. The yellow cur knew his neighborhood and turned into an alley just as Mr. Bob nearly had him. Mr. Bob, with Hinpoha hard after him, also turned into the alley. The back door of an empty store offered the fugitive a safe refuge and he darted inside. So did Mr. Bob, growling ferociously, and so did Hinpoha, panting for breath and holding her hand to her side. From the back room of the store the dogs pa.s.sed to the front and Mr. Bob caught the yellow dog in a tight corner behind a counter. For all he had run in such a cowardly fashion the yellow dog was a good fighter and the battle which occurred when the two clinched frightened Hinpoha out of her wits. She seized an old broom which was standing against the wall and ran behind the counter to beat them apart. In the darkness behind the counter she almost fell over something on the floor, and the broom clattered out of her hand. In her astonishment she forgot the fighting dogs. The thing she had fallen over and which she had, at first, thought was a sack of something, stirred and huddled up against the wall and Hinpoha heard the sharp intaking of a breath. Then she made out the form of a girl; a girl in a blue suit sitting on the floor with her hands over her face.
"Did--did the dogs frighten you?" asked Hinpoha. The girl dropped her hands and looked up quickly. Just then the yellow dog broke away from Mr. Bob and retreated through the back door. Mr. Bob, who had evidently derived honorable satisfaction from the encounter, came over to Hinpoha and subsided at her feet. With a look of wonder Hinpoha turned to the girl crouching on the floor. She had moved into the light from a window and Hinpoha could see that fear was written all over her face. It was a girl about eighteen years old with a round cherubic countenance, framed in fluffy light hair, wide open guileless blue eyes, with an expression as innocent as a baby"s. Just now the eyes were swimming in tears.
"You are in trouble?" asked Hinpoha, with ready sympathy.
The girl reached out her hand and took hold of Hinpoha"s jacket as a child holds on to its mother, in spite of the fact that she was evidently older than Hinpoha. Hinpoha caught her hand and held it tightly.
"Tell me about it," she said, gently.
The girl gulped down a big sob and wiped her eyes. "I"m--I"m hiding,"
she said, in a shaky voice.
"Hiding from what?" asked Hinpoha.
"From--from the man I work for," said the girl. "He said I stole something and I didn"t, and he says he can have me arrested," she said with fresh sobs.
"But how can anyone have you arrested if you didn"t steal anything?"
asked Hinpoha.
"I don"t know," answered the girl, "but I"m afraid he will." She cried for a moment and then collected herself and went on. "My name is Pearl Baxter," she said. "I used to live on a farm down state with my mother and then she died and I came here to the city and went to work in an office. I was the only girl in the office and I knew the combination of the safe. A few days ago Mr. Sawyer, that"s one of the men I work for, asked me to get certain papers out of the safe, and when I went there I couldn"t find them. He made an awful fuss and said I had taken them.
They were bonds, if you know what they are. He said he would have me arrested. I believe his son took them because he knew they were there.
When the other partner of the firm found they were gone he insisted on having the office searched and the bonds were found in my desk drawer.
They would not believe me when I said I did not put them there. That was yesterday and I ran away and hid here all night and I"m afraid to go out for fear they will get me."
She broke down again and wept into her handkerchief. Tender-hearted Hinpoha was ready to weep in sympathy. "You poor thing!" she exclaimed.
"Have you no friends who would help you?" she asked.
The girl shook her head. "I don"t know anybody up here," she said.
"I"ve only been working here three months."
For Hinpoha there was always one court of last resort. That was Nyoda.
"You come along with me," she said. "I know somebody who can tell you what to do."
She led the girl out to the Striped Beetle and told her story to the other girls. They all agreed that the only thing to do was to take her to Nyoda as quickly as possible. She sat in the tonneau of the car between Chapa and Medmangi with her veil tied down over her face, through which she peered nervously to the right and left as the car moved on through the streets. Gladys"s brow was drawn up into a frown of perplexity as corner after corner was turned and they still did not come upon the Glow-worm. Boys playing in the street told them that it had gone past over fifteen minutes before. Hinpoha anxiously wished for a sight of the familiar car so that Pearl could be turned over to Nyoda very soon.
"It"s like a game of Hare and Hounds," said Chapa from the back seat "Nyoda is the hare and we are the hounds. She"s probably doing it on purpose to see how well we can trail her to the city limits. You know how fond she is of putting us to unexpected tests."
"I"ll make it," said Gladys, determinedly.
Several times she consulted her route book and then she laughed. "The joke is on Nyoda after all," she said. "This way leads to the southern route and not the northern, and they"ll have the pleasure of crossing the city again. Won"t we have the laugh on them, though, when we meet them at the city limits?"
But the Glow-worm was not waiting for them at the city limits and they were much surprised to learn that it had traveled on over the road to the west. "The southern route?" asked Gladys, wonderingly, "I can"t imagine what Nyoda is doing. I"m sure she understood we were to take the northern. It"s all right, of course, because there is no great difference in the routes, they each lead to Ft. Wayne, but I can"t imagine why she changed without telling us."
"Maybe she couldn"t stop the car," said Hinpoha, beginning to giggle.
"It"s happened before. The fellow next door to us bought a motorcycle and got it started and couldn"t stop it again and he whizzed up and down the city until the gas gave out, and there were eleven policemen chasing him before he got through."
The picture of the Glow-worm traveling across country with the bit between its teeth, carrying its pa.s.sengers w.i.l.l.y-nilly over the wrong road, was so funny that they all laughed aloud, in spite of the improbability of it.
"Maybe she"ll make us trail her all the way to Ft. Wayne," said Gladys, musingly. "It"s really our fault for losing her; we should have kept a better lookout. But it"s a cold day when the Striped Beetle can"t catch up with the Glow-worm." And Gladys put on full speed ahead.
Hinpoha was not worrying much about us and our disappearance; her thoughts were taken up with Pearl and her night in the empty storeroom.
Hinpoha always takes other people"s troubles so to heart.
At Napoleon they stopped for gasoline and learned that the Glow-worm had pa.s.sed some time before and had also stopped for gasoline.
For the most part Pearl sat silent, turning her head every little while to watch the road behind them. She was that pink-and-white-doll-baby- helpless-in-emergency type of girl who ought never be allowed away from home without a guardian. After they had been traveling awhile she leaned back against the seat and looked so white and faint that the girls became alarmed.
"Do you feel ill?" asked Medmangi, feeling her pulse with a practised hand. Medmangi is going to be a doctor and is in her element when she has a patient to attend to. Pearl opened her big blue eyes languidly.