CHAPTER II PECULIAR MESSAGES

Benny Ranley was busy for some time guiding the big car through the heavy traffic. He did not have many opportunities to look at the young woman beside him, and conversation was carried on in monosyllables. But finally he turned into a speedway, and after a time reached a country road, and left the city behind. And then he slackened speed and gave some attention to the girl at his side.

“I’m sure glad you finally made a date with me,” said Benny Ranley. “I’ve been trying to get a date with you for more than three months. I’d just about decided that there wasn’t any sense trying, and all at once you get kind and promise to meet me and take a ride. Got your heart melted at last, have I?”

Marie Dolge turned toward him and smiled.

“Don’t get mad if I say that you’re looking tired,” Benny went on. “You sure are, girl. Been working too hard, or is it just the weather?”

“A little of both, I think. Do I look so bad?”

“Your face looks rather pale. I hate to see a pretty girl like you feeling bad. It’s not natural.”

“I don’t work at the pleasantest place in town,” said Marie. “I’m going to leave Mrs. Lennek as soon as I can get another good place. She’s not human at times.”

“Cranky?”

“Yes. And she’s unfair, too. She tried to get me to give up this afternoon off, and there wasn’t a bit of sense in it. I told her that I had an engagement, and I just dressed and came away.”

“And I’m sure glad that you did.” said Benny Ranley. “Now it is up to you, girl, what we do with the afternoon. I don’t have to be back until ten o’clock, to go to the depot.”

“I must be back by seven,” Marie said.

“All right. Where shall we go and what shall we do? I’ll leave it to you.”

“It — it won’t be much fun for you, Benny, but I’d rather just go to some nice, shady place and rest. That’s the way I feel,” the girl said.

“Suits me,” Ranley said. “I may mention that I have a lunch in the back of this boat. And I know a dandy shady place a few miles from here, right beside a creek.”

“Take me there,” she said. “And don’t be mad if I don’t talk much. I’m not feeling any too well. I like to rest when I get a chance.”

“You’re my style, girl. Most girls would want to go to some amusement park and dance their heads off. Of course, I stand ready to take you some place like that, if you want to change your mind.”

“You drive to that shady place,” she said. “I want to rest and forget Mrs. Lennek.”

“Terror, is she? She doesn’t look it.”

“Huh! You never can tell by a woman’s looks how she treats her servants,” Marie declared. “You know old Peter Podd?”

“Sure!”

“She complained about him — and for nothing at all, I’m sure. And Peter Podd is going to lose his job. She’s not human sometimes, I tell you. I— I hate her!”

“Poor old Podd!” Ranley exclaimed.

“I met him in the hall as I came away. He was thinking of asking her to tell the superintendent to let him stay. But I told him she was having a fit of temper and to stay away from her until she cooled off. I hope he did!”

Benny Ranley drove on along the tree-bordered country road, intent upon reaching his destination, and Marie Dolge leaned back against the cushions and thought of Peter Podd.

Podd had been undergoing a mental struggle. After Marie Dolge had gone down the alley, Podd had watched the rear stairs, and half a dozen times he had been on the verge of going up to the Lennek apartment and presenting his case.

But he remembered what Marie Dolge had said. Still, he did not want to wait too long. Mrs. Lennek might have visitors — Podd might not get a chance to speak to her at all that day. He watched the clock on the wall, waited until half past three, and then approached the stairs again, gulped, and started up them.

When he came to the top and started along the hall, he began to feel fear again. He hated to face Mrs. Lennek and make a request of her. Peter Podd was afraid that he would be repulsed with hard words, and he did not feel that he could endure hard words just at the moment. Podd had endured about all that he could.

But he went on slowly along the hall toward the door of the Lennek apartment. He had to make the attempt, he told himself. Perhaps, through some good chance, he would catch Mrs. Lennek in an amiable mood.

It was about this time that Madison Purden came strolling down the avenue and turned in at the apartment house. He did not use the elevator, but walked up the wide marble stairs in front, after nodding toward the clerk in the lobby.

Purden reached the head of the stairs and started along the, hall. He came to the turning and saw Peter Podd. Podd was just outside the door of the Lennek suite.

Purden hurried on toward the door, and Peter Podd passed him with a nod of his head and went to the front of the hall, where he fussed around with some potted plants, opened a window, and in other ways made himself useful. He glanced back along the hall and saw that Madison Purden had disappeared.

A tenant came from a suite and held Peter Podd in conversation wishing to know how certain furniture could be moved. Peter Podd talked to the tenant for about ten minutes. Then he went back along the hall.

He passed the door of the Lennek suite and continued toward the rear of the building. A short distance past the door, he happened to turn around. He saw Madison Purden come from the Lennek suite and hurry toward the front. Purden’s face, Podd saw, was white, and the man was evidently nervous. He carried his hat in his hand, and he did not put it on until he reached the top of the stairs. Peter Podd looked after him and curled his lips in a sneer, then went on down the back stairs. Mr. Purden, he observed, had called at three-thirty precisely, and had remained less than fifteen minutes.

About three-thirty a scene was being enacted in the apartment of Mrs. Howard Crend in a building some four blocks away.

Mrs. Howard Crend was artificial in every thought, word, and deed, a specimen of the hothouse sort of woman. She liked to be thought ultrarefined, delicate, helpless, and managed to demonstrate to the knowing that she was quite a distance from true refinement indeed.

At three-thirty she was pacing back and forth in the living room of her apartment, her face aflame, her hands doubled at her sides, breathing stertorously. Her husband was sprawled across the foot of a divan, puffing a cigarette and watching his wife. He was listening to her tirade, too, because he could not help himself.

Mrs. Howard Crend was the sister of Mrs. Madge Lennek, who had been a widow for a little more than a year. She was three years the older and formerly had dominated her younger sister to a great extent. But Madge had married Lennek, the millionaire shoe man, who had a hundred dollars where Crend had a cent, and that had changed things.

While Lennek was alive, his wife lorded it over her elder sister, and Mrs. Crend felt that she should tolerate it. But when Lennek died, she attempted to become the domineering elder sister again and deluged Madge Lennek with advice, not all of which was good.

But Madge Lennek had learned the lesson of independence and refused to allow her elder sister to manage her as she had before her marriage. Hence, there was a continual turmoil, almost a warfare.

And on this Sunday afternoon she paced the floor in a state of excitement and anger, until her meek husband felt called upon to protest.

“Quit it!” he advised. “You’ll be a nervous wreck!”

“I am a nervous wreck already,” his wife informed him. “Quit it, indeed. Stand idly by and let things go to the dogs, I suppose!”

“I fail to see how you can better things,” Crend retorted.

“Something must be done about it! Are you spineless? Haven’t you brains that can be put to some use?”

“What can I do?” Crend asked. “Do you want Madison Purden for a brother-in-law?”

“Not if it can be avoided,” Crend admitted. “Madison Purden isn’t quite my idea of a man. But what can I do about it? Can I go to Madge and demand that she cease receiving Purden? That would be the surest way of driving her into the scoundrel’s arms — and her fortune with her.”

“I am glad that you finally thought of the fortune,” his wife said with some sarcasm in her voice. “If Madge does not marry again, I shall inherit her money. If he marries Madison Purden, we’ll not get a cent of it.”

“Seems to me you’re shooting rather wild,” Crend observed. “Madge is a bit younger than you and is in excellent health. The chance are that she’ll outlive you by ten years or more.”

“Accidents may happen,” Mrs. Crend reminded him. “A person never can tell.”

“That is true, of course. But I do not anticipate any accident of a serious nature happening to Madge. She is the sort that always dodges accidents.”

“That man, Madison Purden, has infatuated her,” Mrs. Crend declared. “He began to attract her before Lennek had been dead a month. He played on her sympathy. She’ll not listen to me any more. I told her the truth about Madison Purden — that he’s a schemer and a scoundrel, and that decent men won’t have anything at all to do with him. And she told me to attend to my own business, that she was capable of picking her friends without any outside assistance. Outside assistance! Her own sister!”

“If you ask me what to do, I say drop the whole thing,” Crend said. “Ignore her little affair with Purden, or laugh at it. Kill it with ridicule. Let her get over it. Madge is a sensible woman. Purden will make some fool break that will show her just what kind of man he is. Leave it to Madge!”

“She’ll marry him — that’s what she’ll do!” Mrs. Crend declared. “I’m a woman, and I can read the workings of another woman’s mind. Don’t you suppose that I can see how things are going? She’ll marry him — and he’ll run through her fortune. We’ll not get a cent of it.”

“We haven’t a chance, anyway,” Crend assured her. “I’d just drop the whole thing.”

“She is my sister, and I want to save her, aside from any thoughts of the money.”

“That is very noble of you,” Crend replied sarcastically.

The telephone rang. Since the maid had gone out for the afternoon, Mrs. Crend answered the call herself. The anger was gone suddenly from her voice. She did not know who might be at the other end of the line.

“Hello?” she called.

“Is that you, Laura?”

“Yes, Madge.”

“I just called you up to — to say good-by.”

“Good-by? Madge, what do you mean?” Mrs. Crend cried.

“That’s all — good-by!”

The receiver at the other end of the line was snapped into place. Mrs. Crend whirled toward her husband.

“Now, what do you make of that?” she asked, excited again. “That was Madge. She said she called up to say good-by.”

“What?” Crend cried.

“That’s all she said — and then she hung up. You — you don’t suppose she’s eloping with Madison Purden? That would be the last straw. Get your hat — we’re going right over there.”

She rushed for her own hat. A little clock in the corner of the room chimed the half hour. Howard Crend glanced at it — half past three!

A few moments later, Attorney Milton Garder, a successful man of fifty-five, sat in his library reading of an interesting case before the supreme court of the State. Attorney Garder handled but big things now, among others the fortune left by the late Mr. Lennek. A buzzer sounded, and Attorney Milton Garder put down the pamphlet he had been reading and reached for the telephone.

“Hello!” he said.

“Mr. Garder?”

“Yes. That you, Mrs. Lennek?”

“Mrs. Lennek — yes! I— I wish you would come to my apartment, Mr. Garder — at once.”

“My dear lady! Is it something that cannot wait until to-morrow?” the attorney asked.

“It — it is very important, Mr. Garder. Please come at once. It is a matter of — of life and death.”

“My dear lady! What on earth—”

Attorney Milton Garder realized at that instant that he was talking into a dead telephone. He grunted his disgust and returned the receiver to the hook. There had been something tragic in the words that had come to him over the wire, and in the tone in which they had been spoken. Mrs. Lennek, the attorney reflected, was not much given to tragic utterances.

Attorney Garder punched a button that notified his chauffeur to get the car in front of the house as speedily as possible. He got up and hurried from the library toward the front of the house. From force of habit he glanced at his watch.

It was three minutes after half past three.

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