CAN IT BE POSSIBLE?
CHAPTER XIV
JEALOUSY
Jessie Norwood had not much personal desire to "beat" either Belle Ringold or any other worker for the bazaar; but she confessed to a hope that the radio show had helped largely to make up the deficit in church income for which the bazaar had been intended.
Miss Seymour had added up after each show the amount taken in at the door of the tent. Before the lights were put out and the booths were dismantled she was ready to announce to the committee the sum total of the radio tent"s earnings.
"Goody! That will beat Belle, sure as you live," Amy cried when she heard it, and dragged Jessie away across the lawn to hear the report of the sum taken from the cash-drawer under the orangeade counter.
Groups of young people milled around the "concession" which served the delicious cooling drinks.
"Walk right up, ladies and gentlemen--and anybody else that"s with you--and buy the last of the chilled nectar served by these masked G.o.ddesses. In other words, buy us out so we can all go home." It was Darry Drew up on a stool ballyhooing for the soft drink booth.
"Did you ever?" gasped the young collegian"s sister. "He is helping that Belle Ringold. I am amazed at Darry!"
"He is helping the church society," said Jessie, composedly.
But she could easily believe that Belle had deliberately entangled Darry in this thing. He never would have chosen to help Belle in closing out her supply of orangeade.
There she stood behind her counter, scarcely helping wait on the trade herself, but aided by three of her most intimate girl friends. Belle gave her attention to Darry Drew. She seemed to consider it necessary to steady him upon the stool while he acted as "barker."
"Come away, do!" sniffed Amy to Jessie. "That brother of mine is as weak as water. Any girl, if she wants to, can wind him right around her finger."
But Jessie did not wholly believe that. She knew Darry"s character pretty well, perhaps better than Amy did. He would be altogether too easy-going to refuse to help Belle, especially in a good cause. Belle Ringold was very shrewd, young as she was, in the arts of gaining and holding the attention of young men.
But Darry saw his sister coming and knew that Amy disapproved. He flushed and jumped down from the stool.
"Oh, Mr. Drew! Darrington!" cried Belle, languishingly, "you won"t leave us?" Then she, too, saw Amy and Jessie approaching. "Oh, well,"
Belle sneered, "if the children need you, I suppose you have to go."
Burd, who stood by, developed a spasm of laughter when he saw Amy"s expression of countenance, but Jessie got her chum away before there came any further explosion.
"Never you mind!" muttered Amy. "I know you"ve got her beaten with your radio show. You see!"
It proved to be true--this prophecy of Amy"s. The committee, adding up the intake of the various booths, reported that the radio tent had been by far the most profitable of any of the various money-making schemes. By that time the booths were entirely dismantled and almost everybody had gone home.
Belle and her friends had lingered on the Norwood veranda, however, to hear the report. It seemed that Belle had not achieved all that she had desired, although with the restaurant department, her stand had won a splendid profit. Of course, the money taken in at the radio tent was almost all profit.
"She just thought of that wireless thing so as to make the rest of us look cheap," Belle was heard to say to her friends. "Isn"t that always the way when we come up here to the Norwoods"? Jess skims the cream of everything. I"ll never break my back working for a church entertainment again if the Norwoods have anything to do with it!"
Unfortunately Jessie heard this. It really spoiled the satisfaction she had taken in the fact that her idea, and her radio set, had made much money for a good cause. She stole away from her chum and the other young people and went rather tearfully to bed.
Of course, she should not have minded so keenly the foolish talk of an impertinent and unkind girl. But she could not help wondering if other people felt as Belle said she felt about the Norwoods. Jessie had really thought that she and Daddy and Momsy were very popular people, and she had innocently congratulated herself upon that fact.
The morning brought to Jessie Norwood more contentment. When Momsy told her how the ladies of the bazaar committee had praised Jessie"s thoughtfulness and ingenuity in supplying the radio entertainment, she forgot Belle Ringold"s jealousy and went cheerfully to work to help clear up the grounds and the house. Her radio set was moved back to her room and she restrung the wires and connected up the receiver without help from anybody.
When Mr. Norwood came home that evening both she and Momsy noticed at once that he was grave and apparently much troubled. Perhaps, if their thought had not been given so entirely to the bazaar during the last few days, the lawyer"s wife and daughter would before this have noticed his worriment of mind.
"Is it that Ellison case, Robert?" Mrs. Norwood asked, at the dinner table.
"It is the bane of my existence," declared the lawyer, with exasperation. "Those women are determined to obtain a much greater share of the estate than belongs to them or than the testator ever intended. Their testimony, I believe, is false. But as the apportionment of the property of the deceased Mr. Ellison must be decided by verbal rather than written evidence, the story those women tell--and stick to--bears weight with the Surrogate."
"Your clients are likely to lose their share, then?" his wife asked.
"Unless we can get at the truth. I fear that neither of those women knows what the truth means. Ha! If we could find the one witness, the one who was present when the old man dictated his will at the last!
Well!"
"Can"t you find her?" asked Momsy, who had, it seemed, known something about the puzzling case before.
"Not a trace. The old man, Abel Ellison, died suddenly in Martha Poole"s house. She and the other woman are cousins and were distantly related to Ellison. He had a shock or a stroke, or something, while he was calling on Mrs. Poole. It did not affect his brain at all. The physicians are sure of that. Their testimony is clear.
"But neither of them heard what the old man said to the lawyer that Mrs. Poole sent for. McCracken is a scaly pract.i.tioner. He has been bought over, body and soul, by the two women. You see, they are a sporty crowd--race track habitues, and all that. The other woman--her name is Bothwell--has driven automobiles in races. She is a regular speed fiend, they tell me.
"Anyhow, they are all of a kind, the two women and McCracken. As Ellison had never made a will that anybody knows of, and this affidavit regarding his dictated wishes is the only instrument brought into court, the Surrogate is inclined to give the thing weight.
"Here comes in our missing witness, a young girl who worked for Mrs.
Poole. She was examined by my chief clerk and admitted she heard all that was said in the room where Ellison died. Her testimony diametrically opposes several items which McCracken has written into the unsigned testament of the deceased.
"You see what we are up against when I tell you that the young girl has disappeared. Martha Poole says she has run away and that she does not know where she went to. The girl seems to have no relatives or friends. But I have my doubts about her having run away. I think she has been hidden away in some place by the two women or by the lawyer."
"Oh, Daddy!" exclaimed Jessie, who had been listening with interest.
"That is just like the girl I tried to tell you about the other night--little Henrietta"s cousin. _She_ was carried off by two women in an automobile. What do you think, Daddy? Could Bertha be the girl you are looking for?"
CHAPTER XV
CAN IT BE POSSIBLE?
"What is this?" Mr. Norwood asked, staring at his eager daughter.
"Have I heard anything before about a girl being carried away?"
"Why, don"t you remember, Daddy, about Henrietta who lives over in Dogtown, and her cousin, Bertha, and how Bertha has disappeared, and--and----"
"And Henrietta is the champion snake killer of all this region?"
chuckled Mr. Norwood. "I certainly have a vivid remembrance of the snakes, at any rate."
"Dear me!" cried Momsy. "This is all new to me. Where are the snakes, Jessie?"
"Gone to that bourne where both good and bad snakes go," rejoined her husband. "Come, Jessie! It is evident I did not get all that you wanted to tell me the other evening. And, it seems to me, if I remember rightly, you got so excited over your radio business before you were through that you quite forgot the snakes--I mean forgot the girl you say was run away with."
"Don"t joke her any more, Robert," advised Momsy. "I can see she is in earnest."