The Argosy, April 1916 — page 160: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

150 This sentiment her brother eagerly sec- onded. Griscom nodded, and wished them luck. “T’ll leave word at the Nealis place where I can be reached if you should want me,” he said, and with a wave of his hand, summoned a hack and drove away toward Thames street. Lansing turned to glance at his compan- ion, who shook his head gloomily. “T don’t understand it at all, Lansing,” Graham said. ‘Helen is one of God’s own creatures. I didn’t dare tell mother what had happened.” “We'll get her somehow, some way,” re- turned Lansing reassuringly. ‘The gods of chance have been playing for me all through this affair and they’re not going to desert me now; I feel it ” Lansing called a taxi and ordered the driver to take them to the Nealis home, his first desire being to change his evening clothes and have a bath. ‘““My head never works well,”’ he informed Granger, “until the shock of cold water starts me going.” Granger wanted to see Dorothy Nealis and, in fact, it was she who met them at the door as the cab rolled in under the porte cochere. “John,” she cried, “‘where have you been? And you, Stewart?” ‘““We’ve just come over from the fort,” Granger replied, and then stopped short as he saw the perturbed look in her face. ‘“‘What’s the matter, Dorothy?”’ “The matter! Then you haven’t heard? Helen is in the City Hospital—” “The hospital!’”’? Lansing swiftly turned toward the cab which was leaving. ‘Here you, wait a minute! The hospital! Is she —is she hurt?” “Oh, I don’t know,” the girl replied. “Not seriously, I think. The hospital peo- ple telephoned us and said Miss Granger had just been admitted; she was brought there in an ambulance and when she recov- ered consciousness gave our address. Ar- nold, who had overslept, as usual, went right down in his motor. He just tele- phoned he was bringing Helen here.” “Then she cannot be badly hurt,’”’ Gran- ger flushed with relief. | “YT know nothing,” Dorothy replied. hope you are right.” “T’ll go and meet him.”’ Lansing had a foot in the cab when a gesture of the girl’s made him pause. alt | THE ARGOSY. ‘Vou had better stay right here,” she ad- vised. ““You might miss Arnold, you know.” Lansing nodded and dismissed the cab. “You're right,” he said. The three paced up and down the veranda for five minutes when the sound of wheels came to them and Lansing, exclaiming eagerly, leaped over the railing and hurried down the driveway. It was Nealis’s car sure enough, but at the wheel sat a policeman in uniform. He stopped before reaching the porte cochére and looked down at Lansing. “Does any one here own this car?” he inquired. Lansing, his eyes blazing, did not stop to answer the question. “Where did you get that automobile?”’ he snapped, “‘and where are the people who were in it? Answer me, officer; don’t sit there like a gook. Where are the people who were in it?” The policeman shook his head in a dazed way. “Why don’t you answer him, officer?” asked Captain Granger, the sight of whose uniform served to restore the man’s lost faculties of speech. “Why, sir;” he said, ‘our traffic man found the car standing alone at the corner of Pelham and State Streets. There was no one in it at all, and after looking to see if some one might come, the officer drove it around to the station-house. It was on the wrong side. of the street. We looked up the records and found that Mr. Nealis owned it.” “Yes,” Lansing cried. ‘Mr. Nealis was driving a young woman home from the hos- pital; she had been injured slightly—” ‘‘You mean the girl that was found un- conscious in a motor-boat?” asked the po- liceman. ‘One of our precinct men got her at Champion’s wharf; the boat lay there with the girl in the bottom; some one had given her a belt on the jaw, and she was out for fair. I heard the report when the cop brought her around in the ambulance.” Miss Nealis began tottering and Granger caught her. “This is a rotten mess, Lansing,” he said. “Some one had a reason for getting hold of my sister. What is it? And now Nealis, too!” Lansing, whose eyes were shooting sparks, ran into the house, where he first rang up the hospital, found that Nealis had been there and got Helen, then called up Griscom at the Aquidneck. This last de- COmiclboo SS (C@