E-text prepared by
Stephen Hutcheson, Rod Crawford, Dave Morgan,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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The man sprang back in fear—[Chapter XII.]

Adventure Stories for Girls

The
Secret Mark

By
ROY J. SNELL

The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago

Printed in the United States of America

Copyright, 1923
by
The Reilly & Lee Co.
All Rights Reserved

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE [I A Mysterious Visitor] 7 [II Elusive Shakespeare] 19 [III The Gargoyle] 30 [IV What the Gargoyle Might Tell] 40 [V The Papier-Mache Lunch Box] 50 [VI “One Can Never Tell”] 62 [VII The Vanishing Portland Chart] 73 [VIII What Was In the Papier-Mache Lunch Box] 81 [IX Shadowed] 94 [X Mysteries of the Sea] 102 [XI Lucile Shares Her Secret] 111 [XII The Trial By Fire] 121 [XIII In the Mystery Room at Night] 131 [XIV A Strange Request] 138 [XV A Strange Journey] 143 [XVI Night Visitors] 155 [XVII A Battle in the Night] 166 [XVIII Frank Morrow Joins in the Hunt] 176 [XIX Lucile Solves No Mystery] 190 [XX “That Was the Man”] 199 [XXI A Theft in the Night] 211 [XXII Many Mysteries] 218 [XXIII Inside the Lines] 228 [XXIV Secrets Revealed] 235 [XXV Better Days] 242

The Secret Mark

CHAPTER I
A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR

Lucile Tucker’s slim, tapered fingers trembled slightly as she rested them against a steel-framed bookcase. She had paused to steady her shaken nerves, to collect her wits, to determine what her next move should be.

“Who can it be?” her madly thumping heart kept asking her.

And, indeed, who, besides herself, could be in the book stacks at this hour of the night?

About her, ranging tier on tier, towering from floor to ceiling, were books, thousands on thousands of books. The two floors above were full of books. The two below were the same. This place was a perfect maze of books. It was one of the sections of a great library, the library of one of the finest universities of the United States.

In all this vast “city of books” she had thought herself quite alone.

It was a ghostly hour. Midnight. In the towers the great clock had slowly struck. Besides the striking of the clock there had been but a single sound: the click of an electric light snapped on. There had instantly gleamed at her feet a single ray of light. That light had traveled beneath many tiers of books to reach her. She thought it must be four but was not quite sure.

She had been preparing to leave the “maze,” as she often called the stacks of books which loomed all about her. So familiar was she with the interior of this building that she needed no light to guide her. To her right was a spiral stairway which like an auger bored its way to the ground four stories below. Straight ahead, twenty tiers of books away, was a small electric elevator, used only for lifting or lowering piles of books. Fourteen tiers back was a straight stairway. To a person unfamiliar with it, the stacks presented a bewildering labyrinth, but to Lucile they were an open book.

She had intended making her way back to the straight stairway which led to the door by which she must leave. But now she clutched at her heart as she asked herself once more:

“Who can it be? And what does he want?”

Only one thing stood out clearly in her bewildered brain: Since she was connected with the stacks as one of their keepers, it was plainly her duty to discover who this intruder might be and, if occasion seemed to warrant, to report the case to her superiors.

The university owned many rare and valuable books. She had often wondered that so many of these were kept, not in vaults, but in open shelves.

Her heart gave a new bound of terror as she remembered that some of these, the most valuable of all, were at the very spot from which the light came.

“Oh! Shame! Why be so foolish?” she whispered to herself suddenly. “Probably some professor with a pass-key. Probably—but what’s the use? I’ve got to find out.”

With that she began moving stealthily along the narrow passageway which lay between the stacks. Tiptoeing along, with her heart thumping so loudly she could not help feeling it might be heard, she advanced step by step until she stood beside the end of the stack nearest the strange intruder. There for a few seconds she stuck. The last ounce of courage had oozed out. She must await its return.

Then with a sudden burst of courage she swung round the corner.

The next instant she was obliged to exert all her available energy to suppress a laugh. Standing in the circle of light was not some burly robber, but a child, a very small and innocent looking child.

Yet a second glance told her that the child was older than she looked. Her face showed that. Old as the face was, the body of the child appeared tiny as a sparrow’s. A green velvet blouse of some strangely foreign weave, a coarse skirt, a pair of heavy shoes, unnoticeable stockings and that face—all this flashed into her vision for a second. Then all was darkness; the light had been snapped out.

The action was so sudden and unexpected that for a few seconds the young librarian stood where she was, motionless. Wild questions raced through her mind: Who was the child? What was she doing in the library at this unearthly hour? How had she gotten in? How did she expect to get out?

She had a vaguely uneasy feeling that the child carried a package. What could that be other than books? A second question suddenly disturbed her: Who was this child? Had she seen her before? She felt sure she had. But where? Where?

All this questioning took but seconds. The next turn found her mind focused on the one important question: Which way had the child gone? As if in answer to her question, her alert ears caught the soft pit-pat of footsteps.

“She’s going on to my right,” she whispered to herself. “That’s good. There is no exit in that direction, only windows and an impossible drop of fifty feet. I’ll tiptoe along, throw on the general switch, catch her at that end and find out why she is here. Probably accepting a dare or going through with some childish prank.”

Hastily she tiptoed down the aisle between the stacks. Then, turning to her left, she put out her hand, touched a switch and released a flood of light. At first its brightness blinded her. The next instant she stared about her in astonishment. The place was empty.

“Deserted as a tomb,” she whispered.

And so it was. Not a trace of the child was to be seen.

“As if I hadn’t seen her at all!” she murmured. “I don’t believe in ghosts, but—where have I seen that face before? You’d never forget it, once you’d seen it. And I have seen it. But where?”

Meditatively she walked to the dummy elevator which carried books up and down. She started as her glance fell upon it. The carrier had been on this floor when she left it not fifteen minutes before. Now it was gone. The button that released it was pressed in for the ground floor.

“She couldn’t have,” she murmured. “The compartment isn’t over two feet square.”

She stared again. Then she pressed the button for the return of the elevator. The car moved silently upward to stop at her door. There was nothing about it to show that it had been used for unusual purposes.

“And yet she might have,” she mused. “She was so tiny. She might have pressed herself into it and ridden down.”

Suddenly she switched off the lights and hurried to a window. Did she catch a glimpse of a retreating figure at the far side of the campus? She could not be sure. The lights were flickering, uncertain.

“Well,” she shook herself, then shivered, “I guess that’s about all of that. Ought to report it, but I won’t. They’d only laugh at me.”

Again she shivered, then turning, tiptoed down the narrow passageway to carry out her original intention of going out of the building by way of the back stairs.

Her room was only a half block away in a dormitory on the corner of the campus nearest the library. Having reached the dormitory, she went to her room and began disrobing for the night. In the bed near her own, wrapped in profound sleep, lay her roommate. She wished to waken her, to tell her of the strange event of the night. For a moment she stood with the name “Florence” quivering on her lips.

The word died unspoken. “No use to trouble her,” she decided. “She’s been working hard lately and needs the sleep.”

At last, clad in her dream robes, with her abundant hair streaming down her back and her white arms gleaming in the moonlight, she sat down by the open window to think and dream.

It was a wonderful picture that lay spread out before her, a vista of magnificent Gothic structures of gray sandstone framed in lawns of perfectly kept green. Sidewalks wound here, there, everywhere. Swarming with students during the waking hours, they were silent now. Her bosom swelled with a strange, inexpressible emotion as she realized that she, a mere girl, was a part of it all.

Like her roommate, she was one of the thousands of girls who to-day attend the splendid universities of our land. With little money, of humble parentage, they are yet given an opportunity to make their way toward a higher and broader understanding of the meaning of life through study in the university.

The thought that this university was possessed of fifty millions of dollars’ worth of property, yet had time and patience to make a place for her, both awed and inspired her.

The very thought of her position sobered her. Four hours each week day she worked in the stacks at the library. Books that had been read and returned came down to her and by her hands were placed in their particular niches of the labyrinth of stacks.

The work was not work to her but recreation, play. She was a lover of books. Just to touch them was a delight. To handle them, to work with them, to keep them in their places, accessible to all, this was joy indeed. Yet this work, which was play to her, went far toward paying her way in the university.

And at this thought her brow clouded. She recalled once more the occurrence of a short time before and the strange little face among the stacks. She knew that she ought to tell the head of her section of the library, Mr. Downers, of the incident. Should anything happen, should some book be missing, she would then be free from suspicion. Should suspicion fall upon her, she might be deprived of her position and, from lack of funds, be obliged to give up her cherished dream, a university education.

“But I don’t want to tell,” she whispered to the library tower which, like some kindly, long-bearded old gentleman, seemed to be accusing her. “I don’t want to.”

Hardly had she said this than she realized that there was a stronger reason than her fear of derision that held her back from telling.

“It’s the face,” she told herself. “That poor little kiddie’s face. It wasn’t beautiful, no, not quite that, but appealing, frankly, fearlessly appealing. If I saw her take a book I couldn’t believe that she meant to steal it, or at least that it was she who willed it.

“But fi-fum,” she laughed a low laugh, throwing back her head until her hair danced over her white shoulders like a golden shower, “why borrow trouble? She probably took nothing. It was but a childish prank.”

At that she threw back the covers of her bed, thrust her feet deep down beneath them and lay down to rest. To-morrow was Sunday; no work, no study. There would be plenty of time to think.

She believed that she had dismissed the scene in the library from her mind, yet even as she fell asleep something seemed to tell her that she was mistaken, that the child had really stolen a book, that there were breakers ahead.

And that something whispered truth, for this little incident was but the beginning of a series of adventures such as a college girl seldom is called upon to experience. Being ignorant of all this, she fell asleep to dream sweet dreams while the moon out of a cloudless sky, beaming down upon the faultless campus, seemed at times to take one look in at her open window.

CHAPTER II
ELUSIVE SHAKESPEARE

The sun had been up for more than an hour when on the following morning Lucile lifted her head sleepily and looked at the clock.

“Sunday morning. I’m glad!” she exclaimed as she leaped out of bed and raced away for a cold shower.

As she dressed she experienced a sensation of something unfinished and at the same time a desire to hide something, to defend someone. At first she could not understand what it all meant. Then, like a flash, the occurrence of the previous night flashed upon her.

“Oh, that,” she breathed.

She was surprised to find that her desire to shield the child had gained tremendously in strength while she slept. Perhaps there are forces we know nothing of, which work on the inner, hidden chambers of our mind while we sleep, and having worked there, leave impressions which determine our very destinies.

Lucile was not enough of a philosopher to reason this all out. She merely knew that she did not want to tell anyone of the strange incident, no not even her roommate. And in the end that was just what happened. She told no one.

When she went back to her work on Monday night a whole busy day had passed in the library. Thousands of books had shot up the dummy elevator to have their cards stamped and to be given out. Thousands had been returned to their places on their shelves. Was a single book missing? Were two or three missing? Lucile had no way of knowing. Every book that had gone out had been recorded, but to look over these records, then to check back and see if others were missing, would be the work of weeks. She could only await developments.

She was surprised at the speed with which these developments came. Mr. Downers, the superintendent, was noted for his exact knowledge regarding the whereabouts of the books which were under his care. She had not been working an hour when a quiet voice spoke to her and with a little start she turned to face her superior.

“Miss Tucker,” the librarian smiled, “do you chance to have any knowledge of the whereabouts of the first volume of our early edition of Shakespeare?”

“Why, no,” the girl replied quickly. “Why—er”—there was a catch in her throat—“is it gone?”

Mr. Downers nodded as he replied:

“Seems temporarily so to be. Misplaced, no doubt. Will show up later.” He was still smiling but there were wrinkles in his usually placid brow.

“I missed it just now,” he went on. “Strange, too. I saw it there only Saturday. The set was to be removed from the library to be placed in the Noyes museum. Considered too valuable to be kept in the library. Very early edition, you know.

“Strange!” he puzzled. “It could not have been taken out on the car, as it was used only in the reference reading room. It’s not there. I just phoned. However, it will turn up. Don’t worry about it.”

He turned on his heel and was gone.

Lucile stared after him. She wanted to call him back, to tell him that it was not all right, that it would not turn up, that the strangely quaint little person she had seen in the library at midnight had carried it away. Yet she said not a word; merely allowed him to pass away. It was as if there was a hand over her mouth forbidding her to speak.

“There can’t be a bit of doubt about it,” she told herself. “That girl was standing right by the shelf where the ancient Shakespeare was kept. She took it. I wonder why? I wonder if she’ll come back. Why, of course she will! For the other volume, or to return the one she has. Perhaps to-night. Two volumes were too heavy for those slim shoulders. She’ll come back and then she shan’t escape me. I’ll catch her in the act. Then I’ll find out the reason why.”

So great was her faith in this bit of reasoning that she resolved that, without telling a single person about the affair, she would set a watch that very night for the mysterious child and the elusive Shakespeare. She must solve the puzzle.

That night as she sat in the darkened library, listening, waiting, she allowed her mind to recall in a dim and dreamy way the face and form of the mysterious child. As she dreamed thus there suddenly flashed into the foreground from the deepest depths of her memory the time and circumstance on which she had first seen that child. She saw it all as in a dream. The girl had been dressed just as she was Saturday at midnight. She had entered the stacks. That had been a month before. She had appeared leading an exceedingly old man. Bent with the weight of years, leaning upon a cane, all but blind, the old man had moved with a strangely youthful eagerness.

He had been allowed to enter the stacks only by special request. He was an aged Frenchman, a lover of books. He wished to come near the books, to sense them, to see them with his age-dimmed eyes, to touch them with his faltering hands.

So the little girl had guided him forward. From time to time he had asked that he be allowed to handle certain volumes. He had touched each with a reverent hand. His touch had resembled a caress. Some few he had opened and had felt along the covers.

“I wonder why he did that,” Lucile had thought to herself.

She paused. A sudden thought had flashed into her mind. At the risk of missing her quarry, she groped her way to the shelf where the companion to the stolen volume lay and took it down. Slowly she ran her fingers over the inner part of the cover.

“Yes,” she whispered, “there is something.”

She dared not flash on the light. To do so might betray her presence in the building. To-morrow she would see. Replacing the volume in its accustomed niche, she again tiptoed to her post of waiting.

As she thought of it now, she began to realize what a large part her unconscious memory had played in her longing to shield the child. She had seen the child render a service to a feeble and all but helpless old man. Her memory had been trying to tell her of this but had only now broken through into her wakeful mind. Lucile was aroused by the thought.

“I must save her,” she told herself. “I must. I must!”

Even with this resolve came a perplexing problem. Why had the child taken the book? Had she done so at the old man’s direction? That seemed incredible. Could an old man, tottering to his grave, revealing in spite of his shabby clothing a one-time more than common intellect and a breeding above the average, stoop to theft, the theft of a book? And could he, above all, induce an innocent child to join him in the deed? It was unthinkable.

“That man,” she thought to herself, “why he had a noble bearing, like a soldier, almost, certainly like a gentleman. He reminded me of that great old general of his own nation who said to his men when the enemy were all but upon Paris: ‘They must not pass.’ Could he stoop to stealing?”

These problems remained all unsolved, for on that night no slightest footfall was heard in the silent labyrinth.

The next night was the same, and the next. Lucile was growing weary, hollow-eyed with her vigil. She had told Florence nothing, yet she had surprised her roommate often looking at her in a way which said, “Why are you out so late every night? Why don’t you share things with your pal?”

And she wanted to, but something held her back.

Thursday night came with a raging torrent of rain. It was not her night at the library. She would gladly have remained in her cozy room, wrapped in a kimono, studying, yet, as the chimes pealed out the notes of Auld Lang Syne, telling that the hour of ten had arrived, she hurried into her rubbers and ulster to face the tempest.

Wild streaks of lightning faced her at the threshold. A gust of wind seized her and hurried her along for an instant, then in a wild, freakish turn all but threw her upon the pavement. A deluge of rain, seeming to extinguish the very street light, beat down upon her.

“How foolish I am!” she muttered. “She would not come on a night like this.”

And yet she did come. Lucile had not been in her hiding place more than a half hour when she caught the familiar pit-pat of footsteps.

“This time she shall not escape me,” she whispered, as with bated breath and cushioned footstep she tiptoed toward the spot where the remaining Shakespeare rested.

Now she was three stacks away. As she paused to listen she knew the child was at the same distance in the opposite direction. She moved one stack nearer, then listened again.

She heard nothing. What had happened?—the child had paused. Had she heard? Lucile’s first impulse was to snap on a light. She hesitated and in hesitating lost.

There came a sudden glare of light. A child’s face was framed in it, a puzzled, frightened face. A slender hand went out and up. A book came down. The light went out. And all this happened with such incredible speed that Lucile stood glued to her tracks through it all.

She leaped toward the dummy elevator, only to hear the faint click which told that it was descending. She could not stop it. The child was gone.

She dashed to a window which was on the elevated station side. A few seconds of waiting and the lightning rewarded her. In the midst of a blinding flash, she caught sight of a tiny figure crossing a broad stretch of rain-soaked green.

The next instant, with rubbers in one hand and ulster in the other, she dashed down the stairs.

“I’ll get her yet,” she breathed. “She belongs down town. She’ll take the elevated. There is a car in seven minutes. I’ll make it, too. Then we shall see.”

CHAPTER III
THE GARGOYLE

Down a long stretch of sidewalk, across a sunken patch of green where the water was to her ankles, down a rain-drenched street, through pools of black water where sewers were choked, Lucile dashed. With no thought for health or safety she exposed herself to the blinding tempest and dashed before skidding autos, to arrive at last panting at the foot of the rusted iron stairs that led to the elevated railway platform.

Pausing only long enough to catch her breath and arrange her garments that the child might not be frightened away by her appearance, she hurried up the stairs. The train came thundering in. There was just time to thrust a dime through the wicker window and to bound for the door.

Catching a fleeting glimpse of the dripping figure of the child, she made a dash for that car and made it. A moment later, with her ulster thrown over on the seat beside her, she found herself facing the child.

Sitting there curled up in a corner, as she now was, hugging a bulky package wrapped in oilcloth, the child seemed older and tinier than ever.

“How could she do it?” was Lucile’s unspoken question as she watched the water oozing from her shoes to drip-drip to the floor below. With the question came a blind resolve to see the thing through to the end. This child was not the real culprit. Cost what it might, she would find who was behind her strange actions.

There is no place in all the world where a thunderstorm seems more terrible than in the deserted streets in the heart of a great city at night. Echoing and re-echoing between the towering walls of buildings, the thunder seems to be speaking to the universe. Flashing from a thousand windows to ten thousand others, the lightning seems to be searching the haunts and homes of men. The whole wild fury of it seems but the voice of nature defying man in his great stronghold, the city. It is as if in thundering tones she would tell him that great as he may imagine himself, he is not a law unto himself and can never be.

Into the heart of a great city on a night like this the elevated train carried Lucile and the child.

On the face of the child, thief as she undoubtedly was, and with the stolen goods in her possession, there flashed not one tremor, not a falling of an eyelash, which might be thought of as a sign of fear of laws of nature, man or God. Was she hardened or completely innocent of guilt? Who at that moment could tell?

It would be hard to imagine a more desolate spot than that in which the car discharged its two passengers. As Lucile’s eye saw the sea of dreary, water-soaked tenements and tumbledown cottages that, like cattle left out in the storm, hovered beside the elevated tracks, she shivered and was tempted to turn back—yet she went on.

A half block from the station she passed a policeman. Again she hesitated. The child was but a half block before her. She suspected nothing. It would be so easy to say to the policeman, “Stop that child. She is a thief. She has stolen property concealed beneath her cape.” The law would then take its course and Lucile’s hands would be free.

Yet something urged her past the policeman, down a narrow street, round a corner, up a second street, down a third, still narrower, and up to the door of the smallest, shabbiest cottage of the whole tumble-down lot.

The child had entered here. Lucile paused to consider and, while considering, caught the gleam of light through a torn window shade. The cottage was one story and a garret. The window was within her range of vision. After a glance from left to right, she stepped beneath the porch, which gave her an opportunity to peer through the opening. Here, deep in the shadows, she might look on at the scene within without herself being observed by those within or by passers-by on the street.

The picture which came to her through the hole in the shade was so different from that which one might expect that she barely suppressed a gasp. In the room, which was scrupulously clean and tidy, there were but two persons, the child and the old man who had visited the library. Through the grate of a small stove a fire gleamed. Before this fire, all unabashed, the child stripped the water-soaked clothing from her meager body, then stood chafing her limbs, which were purple with cold.

The old man appeared all absorbed in his inspection of the book just placed in his hands. Lucile was not surprised to recognize it as the second Shakespeare. From turning it over and over, he paused to open it and peer at its inside cover. Not satisfied with this, he ran his finger over the upper, outside corner.

It was then that Lucile saw for the first time the thing she had felt while in the library in the dark. A small square of paper, yellow with age, was in that corner, and in its center was a picture of a gargoyle. A strange looking creation was this gargoyle. It was with such as these the ancients were wont to decorate their mansions. With a savage face that was half man and half lion, he possessed the paws of a beast and the wings of a great bird. About two sides of this picture was a letter L.

“So that was it,” she breathed.

The next moment her attention was attracted by a set of shelves. These ran across one entire end of the room and, save for a single foot of space, were entirely filled with books. The striking fact to be noted was that, if one were able to judge from the appearance of their books, they must all of them be of great age.

“A miser of books,” she breathed.

Searching these shelves, she felt sure she located the other missing volume of Shakespeare. This decision was confirmed at last as the tottering old man made his way to the shelf and filled some two inches of the remaining vacant shelf-space by placing the newly-acquired book beside its mate.

After this he stood there for a moment looking at the two books. The expression on his face was startling. In the twinkling of an eye, it appeared to prove her charge of book miser to be false. This was not the look of a Shylock.

“More like a father glorying over the return of a long-lost child,” she told herself.

As she stood there puzzling over this, the room went suddenly dark. The occupants of the house had doubtless gone to another part of the cottage to retire for the night. She was left with two alternatives: to call a policeman and have the place raided or to return quietly to the university and think the thing through. She chose the latter course.

After discovering the number of the house and fixing certain landmarks in her mind, she returned to the elevated station.

“They’ll not dispose of the books, that’s certain,” she told herself. “The course to be taken in the future will come to me.”

Stealing silently into her room on her return, she was surprised to find her roommate awake, robed in a kimono and pacing the floor.

“Why, Florence!” she breathed.

“Why, yourself!” Florence turned upon her. “Where’ve you been in all this storm? Five minutes more and I should have called the matron. She would have notified the police and then things would have been fine. Grand! Can you see it in the morning papers? ‘Beautiful co-ed mysteriously disappears from university dormitory in storm. No trace of her yet found. Roommate says no cause for suicide.’”

“Oh!” gasped Lucile, “you wouldn’t have!”

“What else could I do? How was I to know what had happened? You hadn’t breathed a word. You—”

Florence sat down upon her bed, dug her bare toes into the rug and stared at her roommate. For once in her life, strong, dependable, imperturbable Florence was excited.

“I know,” said Lucile, removing her watersoaked dress and stockings and chafing her benumbed feet. “I—I guess I should have told you about it, but it was something I was quite sure you wouldn’t understand, so I didn’t, that’s all. But now—now I’ve got to tell someone or I’ll burst, and I’d rather tell you than anyone else I know.”

“Thanks,” Florence smiled. “Just for that I’ll help you into dry clothes, then you can tell me in comfort.”

The clock struck three and the girls were still deep in the discussion of the mystery.

“One thing is important,” said Florence. “That is the value of the Shakespeare. Perhaps it’s not worth so terribly much after all.”

“Perhaps not,” Lucile wrinkled her brow, “but I am awfully afraid it is. Let’s see—who could tell me? Oh, I know—Frank Morrow!”

“Who’s Frank Morrow?”

“He’s the best authority on old books there is in the United States to-day. He’s right here in this city. Got a cute little shop on the fifteenth floor of the Marshal Annex building. He’s an old friend of my father. He’ll tell me anything I need to know about books.”

“All right, you’d better see him to-morrow, or I mean to-day. And now for three winks.”

Florence threw off her kimono and leaped into bed. Lucile followed her example and the next instant the room was dark.

CHAPTER IV
WHAT THE GARGOYLE MIGHT TELL

Frank Morrow was the type of man any girl might be glad to claim as a friend. He had passed his sixty-fifth birthday and for thirty-five years he had been a dealer in old books, yet he was neither stooped nor near-sighted. A man of broad shoulders and robust frame, he delighted as much in a low morning score at golf as he did in the discovery of a rare old book. His hair was white but his cheeks retained much of their ruddy glow. His quiet smile gave to all who visited his shop a feeling of genuine welcome which they did not soon forget.

His shop, like himself, reflected the new era which has dawned in the old book business. Men have come to realize that age lends worth to books that possessed real worth in the beginning and they are coming to house them well. On one of the upper floors of a modern business block Frank Morrow’s shop was flooded with sunshine and fresh air. A potted plant bloomed on his desk. The books, arranged neatly without a painful effort at order, presented the appearance of some rich gentleman’s library. A darker corner, a room by itself, to the right and back, suggested privacy and seclusion and here Frank Morrow’s finds were kept. Many of them were richly bound and autographed.

The wise and the rich of the world passed through Frank Morrow’s shop, for in his brain there rested knowledge which no other living man could impart. Did a bishop wish to purchase an out-of-print book for his ecclesiastical library, he came to Frank Morrow to ask where it might be found. Did the prince of the steel market wish a folio edition of Audubon’s “Birds of America”? He came to Frank and somewhere, in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Frank found it for him. Authors came to him and artists as well, not so much for what he could find for them as for what he might impart in the way of genial friendship and the lore of books.

It was to this man and this shop that Lucile made her way next morning. She was not prepared to confide in him to the extent of telling him the whole story of her mystery, for she did not know him well. He was her father’s friend, that was all. She did wish to tell him that she was in trouble and to ask his opinion of the probable value of the set of Shakespeare which had been removed from the university library.

“Well, now,” he smiled as he adjusted his glasses after she had asked her question, “I’ll be glad to help you if I can, but I’m not sure that I can. There are Shakespeares and other Shakespeares. I don’t know the university set—didn’t buy it for them. Probably a donation from some rich man. It might be a folio edition. In that case—well”—he paused and smiled again—“I trust you haven’t burned this Shakespeare by mistake nor had it stolen from your room or anything like that?”

“No! Oh, no! Not—nothing like that!” exclaimed Lucile.

“Well, as I was about to say, I found a very nice folio edition for a rich friend of mine not so very long ago. The sale of it I think was the record for this city. It cost him eighteen thousand dollars.”

Lucile gasped, then sat staring at him in astonishment.

“Eighteen thousand dollars!” she managed to murmur at last.

“Of course you understand that was a folio edition, very rare. There are other old editions that are cheaper, much cheaper.”

“I—I hope so,” murmured Lucile.

“Would you like to see some old books and get a notion of their value?” he asked.

“Indeed I would.”

“Step in here.” He led the way into the mysterious dark room. There he switched on a light to reveal walls packed with books.

“Here’s a little thing,” he smiled, taking down a volume which would fit comfortably into a man’s coat pocket; “Walton’s Compleat Angler. It’s a first edition. Bound in temporary binding, vellum. What would you say it was worth?”

“I—I couldn’t guess. Please don’t make me,” Lucile pleaded.

“Sixteen hundred dollars.”

Again Lucile stared at him in astonishment. “That little book!”

“You see,” he said, motioning her a seat, “rare books, like many other rare things, derive their value from their scarcity. The first edition of this book was very small. Being small and comparatively cheap, the larger number of the books were worn out, destroyed or lost. So the remaining books have come to possess great value. The story—”

He came to an abrupt pause, arrested by a look of astonishment on the girl’s face, as she gazed at the book he held.

“Why, what—” he began.

“That,” Lucile pointed to a raised monogram in the upper inside cover of the book.

“A private mark,” explained Morrow. “Many rich men and men of noble birth in the past had private marks which they put in their books. The custom seems to be as old as books themselves. Men do it still. Let’s see, what is that one?”

“An embossed ‘L’ around two sides of the picture of a gargoyle,” said Lucile in as steady a tone as she could command.

“Ah! yes, a very unusual one. In all my experience I have seen but five books with that mark in them. All have passed through my hands during the past two years. And yet this mark is a very old one. See how yellow the paper is. Probably some foreign library. Many rare books came across the sea during the war. I believe—”

He paused to reflect, then said with a tone of certainty, “Yes, I know that mark was in the folio edition of Shakespeare which I sold last year.”

His words caught Lucile’s breath. For the moment she could neither move nor speak. The thought that the set of Shakespeare taken from the library might be the very set sold to the rich man, and worth eighteen thousand dollars, struck her dumb.

Fortunately the dealer did not notice her distress but pointing to the bookmark went on: “If that gargoyle could talk now, if it could tell its story and the story of the book it marks, what a yarn it might spin.

“For instance,” his eyes half closed as the theme gripped him, “this mark is unmistakably continental—French or German. French, I’d say, from the form of the ‘L’ and the type of gargoyle. Many men of wealth and of noble birth on the continent have had large collections of books printed in English. This little book with the gargoyle on the inside of its cover is a hundred years old. It’s a young book as ancient books go, yet what things have happened in its day. It has seen wars and bloodshed. The library in which it has reposed may have been the plotting place of kings, knights and dukes or of rebels and regicides.

“It may have witnessed domestic tragedies. What great man may have contemplated the destruction of his wife? What noble lady may have whispered in its presence of some secret love? What youths and maids may have slipped away into its quiet corner to utter murmurs of eternal devotion?

“It may have been stolen, been carried away as booty in war, been pawned with its mates to secure a nobleman’s ransom.

“Oh, I tell you,” he smiled as he read the interest in her face, “there is romance in old books, thrilling romance. Whole libraries have been stolen and secretly disposed of. Chests of books have been captured by pirates.

“Here is a book, a copy of Marco Polo’s travels, a first edition copy which, tradition tells us, was once owned by the renowned pirate, Captain Kidd. I am told he was fond of reading. However that may be, there certainly were men of learning among his crew. There never was a successful gang of thieves that did not have at least one college man in it.”

He chuckled at his own witticism and Lucile smiled with him.

“Well,” he said rising, “if there is anything I can do for you at any time, drop in and ask me. I am always at the service of fair young ladies. One never grows too old for that; besides, your father was my very good friend.”

Lucile thanked him, took a last look at the pocket volume worth sixteen hundred dollars, made a mental note of the form of its gargoyle, then handed it to him and left the room. She little dreamed how soon and under what strange circumstances she would see that book again.

She left the shop of Frank Morrow in a strange state of mind. She felt that she should turn the facts in her possession over to the officials of the library and allow them to deal with the child and the old man. Yet there was something mysterious about it all. That collector of books, doubtless worth a fortune, in surroundings which betokened poverty, the strange book mark, the look on the old man’s face as he fingered the volume of Shakespeare, how explain all these? If the university authorities or the police handled the case, would they take time to solve these mysteries, to handle the case in such a way as would not hasten the death of this feeble old man nor blight the future of this strange child? She feared not.

“Life, the life of a child, is of greater importance than is an ancient volume,” she told herself at last. “And with the help of Florence and perhaps of Frank Morrow I will solve the mystery myself. Yes, even if it costs me my position and my hope for an education!” She paused to stamp the pavement, then hurried away toward the university.

CHAPTER V
THE PAPIER-MACHE LUNCH BOX

“But, Lucile!” exclaimed Florence after she had heard the latest development in the mystery. “If the books are worth all that money, how dare you take the risk of leaving things as they are for a single hour?”

“We don’t know that they are that identical edition.”

“But you say the gargoyle was there.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t prove anything. There might have been a whole family of gargoyle libraries for all we know. Besides, what if it is? What are two books compared to the marring of a human life? What right has a university, or anyone else for that matter, to have books worth thousands of dollars? Books are just tools or playthings. That’s all they are. Men use them to shape their intellects just as a carpenter uses a plane, or they use them for amusement. What would be the sense of having a wood plane worth eighteen thousand dollars when a five dollar one would do just as good work?”

“But what do you mean to do about it?” asked Florence.

“I’m going down there by that mysterious cottage and watch what happens to-night and you are going with me. We’ll go as many nights as we have to. If it’s necessary we’ll walk in upon our mysterious friends and make them tell why they took the books. Maybe they won’t tell but they’ll give them back to us and unless I’m mistaken that will at least be better for the girl than dragging her into court.”

“Oh, all right,” laughed Florence, rising and throwing back her shoulders. “I suppose you’re taking me along as a sort of bodyguard. I don’t mind. Life’s been a trifle dull of late. A little adventure won’t go so bad and since it is endured in what you choose to consider a righteous cause, it’s all the better. But please let’s make it short. I do love to sleep.”

Had she known what the nature of their adventure was to be, she might at least have paused to consider, but since the things we don’t know don’t hurt us, she set to work planning this, their first nightly escapade.

Reared as they had been in the far West and the great white North, the two girls had been accustomed to wildernesses of mountains, forest and vast expanses of ice and snow. One might fancy that for them, even at night, a great city would possess no terrors. This was not true. The quiet life at the university, eight miles from the heart of the city, had done little to rid them of their terror of city streets at night. To them every street was a canyon, the end of each alley an entrance to a den where beasts of prey might lurk. Not a footfall sounded behind them but sent terror to their hearts.

Lucile had gone on that first adventure alone in the rain on sudden impulse. The second was premeditated. They coolly plotted the return to the narrow street where the mysterious cottage stood. Nothing short of a desire to serve someone younger and weaker than herself could have induced Lucile to return to that region, the very thought of which sent a cold shiver running down her spine.

As for Florence, she was a devoted chum of Lucile. It was enough that Lucile wished her to go. Other interests might develop later; for the present, this was enough.

So, on the following night, a night dark and cloudy but with no rain, they stole forth from the hall to make their way down town.

They had decided that they would go to the window of the torn shade and see what they might discover, but, on arriving at the scene, decided that there was too much chance of detection.

“We’ll just walk up and down the street,” suggested Lucile. “If she comes out we’ll follow her and see what happens. She may go back to the university for more books.”

“You don’t think she’d dare?” whispered Florence.

“She returned once, why not again?”

“There are no more Shakespeares.”

“But there are other books.”

“Yes.”

They fell into silence. The streets were dark. It grew cold. It was a cheerless task. Now and again a person passed them. Two of them were men, noisy and drunken.

“I—I don’t like it,” shivered Lucile, “but what else is there to do?”

“Go in and tell them they have our books and must give them up.”

“That wouldn’t solve anything.”

“It would get our books back.”

“Yes, but—”

Suddenly Lucile paused, to place a hand on her companion’s arm. A slight figure had emerged from the cottage.

“It’s the child,” she whispered. “We must not seem to follow. Let’s cross the street.”

They expected the child to enter the elevated station as she had done before, but this she did not do. Walking at a rapid pace, she led them directly toward the very heart of the city. After covering five blocks, she began to slow down.

“Getting tired,” was Florence’s comment. “More people here. We could catch up with her and not be suspected.”

This they did. Much to their surprise, they found the child dressed in the cheap blue calico of a working woman’s daughter.

“What’s that for?” whispered Lucile.

“Disguise,” Florence whispered. “She’s going into some office building. See, she is carrying a pressed paper lunch box. She’ll get in anywhere with that; just tell them she’s bringing a hot midnight lunch to her mother.

“It’s strange,” she mused, “when you think of it, how many people work while we sleep. Every morning hundreds of thousands of people swarm to their work or their shopping in the heart of the city and they find all the carpets swept, desks and tables dusted, floors and stairs scrubbed, and I’ll bet that not one in a hundred of them ever pauses to wonder how it all comes about. Not one in a thousand gives a passing thought to the poor women who toil on hands and knees with rag and brush during the dark hours of night that everything may be spick and span in the morning. I tell you, Lucile, we ought to be thankful that we’re young and that opportunities lie before us. I tell you—”

She was stopped by a grip on her arm.

“Wha—where has she gone?” stammered Lucille.

“She vanished!”

“And she was not twenty feet before us a second ago.”

The two girls stood staring at each other in astonishment The child had disappeared.

“Well,” said Lucile ruefully, “I guess that about ends this night’s adventure.”

“I guess so,” admitted Florence.

The lights of an all-night drug store burned brightly across the street.

“That calls for hot chocolate,” said Florence. “It’s what I get for moralizing. If I hadn’t been going on at such a rate we would have kept sight of her.”

They lingered for some time over hot chocolate and wafers. They were waiting for a surface car to carry them home when, on hearing low but excited words, they turned about to behold to their vast astonishment their little mystery child being led along by the collar of her dress. The person dragging her forward was an evil looking woman who appeared slightly the worse for drink.

“So that’s the trick,” they heard her snarl. “So you would run away! Such an ungratefulness. After all we done for you. Now you shall beg harder than ever.”

“No, I won’t beg,” the girl answered in a small but determined voice. “And I shan’t steal either. You can kill me first.”

“Well, we’ll see, my fine lady,” growled the woman.

All this time the child was being dragged forward. As she came opposite the two girls, the woman gave a harder tug than before and the girl almost fell. Something dropped to the sidewalk, but the woman did not notice it, and the child evidently did not care, for they passed on.

Lucile stooped and picked it up. It was the paper lunch box they had seen the child carrying earlier in the evening.

“Something in it,” she said, shaking it.

“Lucile,” said Florence in a tense whisper, “are we going to let that beast of a woman get that child? She doesn’t belong to her, or if she does, she oughtn’t to. I’m good for a fight.”

Lucile’s face blanched.

“Here in this city wilderness,” she breathed.

“Anywhere for the good of a child. Come on.”

Florence was away after the woman and child at a rapid rate.

“We’ll get the child free. Then we’ll get out,” breathed Florence. “We don’t want any publicity.”

Fortune favored their plan. The woman, still dragging the child, who was by now silently weeping, hurried into a narrow dismal alley.

Suddenly as she looked about at sound of a footstep behind her, she was seized in two vises and hurled by some mechanism of steel and bronze a dozen feet in air, to land in an alley doorway. At least so it seemed to her, nor was it far from the truth. For Florence’s months of gymnasium work had turned her muscles into things of steel and bronze. It was she who had seized the woman.

It was all done so swiftly that the woman had no time to cry out. When she rose to her feet, the alley was deserted. The child had fled in one direction, while the two girls had stepped quietly out into the street in the other direction and, apparently quite unperturbed, were waiting for a car.

“Look,” said Lucile, “I’ve still got it. It’s the child’s lunch basket. There’s something in it.”

“There’s our car,” said Florence in a relieved tone. The next moment they were rattling homeward.

“We solved no mystery to-night,” murmured Lucile sleepily.

“Added one more to the rest,” smiled Florence. “But now I am interested. We must see it through.”

“Did you hear what the child said, that she’d rather die than steal?”

“Wonder what she calls the taking of our Shakespeare?”

“That’s part of our problem. Continued in our next,” smiled Lucile.

She set the dilapidated papier-mache lunch box which she had picked up in the street after the child had dropped it, in the corner beneath the cloak rack. Before she fell asleep she thought of it and wondered what had been thumping round inside of it.

“Probably just an old, dried-up sandwich,” she told herself. “Anyway, I’m too weary to get up and look now. I’ll look in the morning.”

One other thought entered her consciousness before she fell asleep. Or was it a thought? Perhaps just one or two mental pictures. The buildings, the street, the electric signs that had encountered her gaze as they first saw the child and the half-drunk woman passed before her mind’s eye. Then, almost instantly, the picture of the street on which the building in which Frank Morrow’s book shop was located flashed before her.

“That’s queer!” she murmured. “I do believe they were the same!”

“And indeed,” she thought dreamily, “why should they not be? They are both down in the heart of the city and I am forever losing my sense of location down there.”

At that she fell asleep.

CHAPTER VI
“ONE CAN NEVER TELL”

When Lucile awoke in the morning she remembered the occurrence of the night before as some sort of bad dream. It seemed inconceivable that she and Florence, a couple of co-eds, should have thrown themselves upon a rough-looking woman in the heart of the city on a street with which they were totally unfamiliar. Had they done this to free a child about whom they knew nothing save that she had stolen two valuable books?

“Did we?” she asked sleepily.

“Did we what?” smiled Florence, drawing the comb through her hair.

“Did we rescue that child from that woman?”

“I guess we did.”

“Why did we do it?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering.”

Lucile sat up in bed and thought for a moment. She gazed out of the window at the lovely green and the magnificent Gothic architecture spread out before her. She thought of the wretched alleys and tumble-down tenements which would greet the eye of that mysterious child when she awoke.

“Anyway,” she told herself, “we saved her from something even worse, I do believe. We sent her back to her little old tottering man. I do think she loves him, though who he is, her grandfather or what, I haven’t the faintest notion.

“Anyway I’m glad we did it,” she said.

“Did what?” panted Florence, who by this time was going through her morning exercises.

“Saved the child.”

“Yes, so am I.”

The papier-mache lunch box remained in its place in the dark corner when they went to breakfast Both girls had completely forgotten it. Had Lucile dreamed what it contained she would not have passed it up for a thousand breakfasts. Since she didn’t, she stepped out into the bright morning sunshine, and drinking in deep breaths of God’s fresh air, gave thanks that she was alive.

The day passed as all schooldays pass, with study, lectures, laboratory work, then dinner as evening comes. In the evening paper an advertisement in the “Lost, Strayed or Stolen” column caught her eye. It read:

“REWARD

“Will pay $100.00 reward for the return of small copy of The Compleat Angler which disappeared from the Morrow Book Shop on November 3.”

It was signed by Frank Morrow.

“Why, that’s strange!” she murmured. “I do believe that was the book he showed me only yesterday, the little first edition which was worth sixteen hundred dollars. How strange!”

A queer sinking sensation came over her.

“I—I wonder if she could have taken it,” she whispered, “that child?

“No, no,” she whispered emphatically after a moment’s thought. “And, yet, there was the gargoyle bookmark in the inside cover, the same as in our Shakespeare. How strange! It might be—and, yet, one can never tell.”

That evening was Lucile’s regular period at the library, so, much as she should have liked delving more deeply into the mystery which had all but taken possession of her, she was obliged to bend over a desk checking off books.

Working with her was Harry Brock, a fellow student. Harry was the kind of fellow one speaks of oftenest as a “nice boy.” Clean, clear-cut, carefully dressed, studious, energetic and accurate, he set an example which was hard to follow. He had taken a brotherly interest in Lucile from the start and had helped her over many hard places in the library until she learned her duties.

Shortly after she had come in he paused by her desk and said in a quiet tone:

“Do you know, I’m worried about the disappearance of that set of Shakespeare. Sort of gives our section a long black mark. Can’t see where it’s disappeared to.”

Lucile drew in a long breath. What was he driving at? Did he suspect? Did he—

“If I wasn’t so sure our records were perfect,” he broke in on her mental questioning, “I’d say it was tucked away somewhere and would turn up. But we’ve all been careful. It just can’t be here.”

He paused as if in reflection, then said suddenly:

“Do you think one would ever be justified in protecting a person whom he knew had stolen something?”

Lucile started. What did he mean? Did he suspect something? Had he perhaps seen her enter the library on one of those nights of her watching? Did he suspect her? For a second the color rushed flaming to her cheeks. But, fortunately, he was looking away. The next second she was her usual calm self.

“Why, yes,” she said steadily, “I think one might, if one felt that there were circumstances about the apparent theft which were not clearly understood.

“You know,” she said as a sudden inspiration seized her, “we’ve just finished reading Victor Hugo’s story of Jean Valjean in French. Translating a great story a little each day, bit by bit, is such a wonderful way of doing it. And that is the greatest story that ever was written. Have you read it?”

He nodded.

“Well, then you remember how that poor fellow stole a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s hungry children and how, without trying to find out about things and be just, they put him in prison. Then, because he tried to get out, they kept him there years and years. Then when they at last let him out, in spite of it all, after he had come into contact with a beautiful, unselfish old man, he became one of the most wonderful characters the world may hope to know. Just think how wonderful his earlier years, wasted in prison, might have been if someone had only tried a little to understand.”

“You’re good,” smiled Harry. “When I get arrested I’ll have you for my lawyer.”

Lucile, once more quite herself, laughed heartily. Then she suddenly sobered.

“If I were you,” she said in a low tone, “I shouldn’t worry too much about that set of Shakespeare. Someway I have an idea that it will show up in its own good time.”

Harry shot her a quick look, then as he turned to walk away, said in a tone of forced lightness:

“Oh! All right.”

The following night they were free to return to the scene of the mystery, the cottage on dreary Tyler street where the old man and the strange child lived. A light shone out of the window with the torn shade as they loitered along in front of the place as before. Much to their surprise, not ten minutes had passed when the child stole forth.