CHAPTER VISOMETHING OF A MYSTERY
Tavia slept her usually sweet, sound sleep that night, despite the strange surroundings of the hotel and the happenings of a busy day; but Dorothy lay for a long time, unable to close her eyes.
In the morning, however, she was as deep in slumber as ever her chum was when a knock came on the door of their anteroom. Both girls sat up and said in chorus:
“Who’s there?”
“It’s jes’ me, Missy,” said the soft voice of the colored maid. “Did one o’ youse young ladies lost somethin’?”
“Oh, mercy me, yes!” shouted Tavia, jumping completely out of her bed and running toward the door.
“Nonsense, Tavia!” admonished Dorothy, likewise hopping out of bed. “She can’t have found your money.”
“Oh! what is it, please?” asked Tavia, opening the door just a trifle.
“Has you lost somethin’?” repeated the colored girl.
“I lost my handbag in a store yesterday,” said Tavia.
“Das it, Missy,” chuckled the maid. “De clark, he axed me to ax yo’ ’bout it. It’s done come back.”
“What’s come back?” demanded Dorothy, likewise appearing at the door and in the same dishabille as her friend.
“De bag. De clark tol’ me to tell yo’ ladies dat all de money is safe in it, too. Now yo’ kin go back to sleep again. He’s done got de bag in he’s safe;” and the girl went away chuckling.
Tavia fell up against the door and stared at Dorothy.
“Oh, Doro! Can it be?” she panted.
“Oh, Tavia! What luck!”
“There’s the telephone! I’m going to call up the office,” and Tavia darted for the instrument on the wall.
But there was something the matter with the wires; that was why the clerk had sent the maid to the room.
“Then I’m going to dress and go right down and see about it,” Tavia said.
“But it’s only six o’clock,” yawned Dorothy. “The maid was right. We should go back to bed.”
Her friend scorned the suggestion and she fairly “hopped” into her clothes.
“Be sure and powder your nose, dear,” laughed Dorothy. “But Iamglad for you, Tavia.”
“Bother my nose!” responded her friend, running out of her room and into the corridor.
She whisked back again before Dorothy was more than half dressed with the precious bag in her hands.
“Oh, it is! it is!” she cried, whirling about Dorothy’s room and her own and the bath and anteroom, in a dervish dance of joy. “Doro! Doro! I’m saved!”
“I don’t know whether you are saved or not, dear. But you plainly are delighted.”
“Every penny safe.”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes. I counted. I had to sign a receipt for the clerk, too. He is thedearestman.”
“Well, dear, I hope this will be a lesson to you,” Dorothy said.
“It will be!” declared the excited Tavia. “Do you know what I am going to do?”
“Spend your money more recklessly than ever, I suppose,” sighed her friend.
“Say! seems to me you’re awfully glum this morning. You’re not nice about my good luck—not a bit,” and Tavia stared at her in puzzlement.
“Of course I’m delighted that you should recoveryour bag,” Dorothy hastened to say. “How did it come back?”
“Why, the clerk gave it to me, I tell you.”
“What clerk? The one at the silk counter?”
“Goodness! The hotel clerk downstairs.”
“But how didhecome by it?”
Tavia slowly sat down and blinked. “Why—why,” she said, “I didn’t even think to ask him.”
“Well, Tavia!” exclaimed Dorothy, rather aghast at this admission of her flyaway friend.
“I do seem to have been awfully thoughtless again,” admitted Tavia, slowly. “I thanked him—the clerk, I mean! Oh, I did! I could have kissed him!”
“Tavia!”
“I could; but I didn’t,” said the wicked Tavia, her eyes sparkling once more. “But I never thought to ask how he came by it. Maybe some poor person found it and should be rewarded. Should I give a tithe of it, Doro, as a reward, as we give a tithe to the church? Let’s see! I had just eighty-nine dollars and thirty-seven cents, and an old copper penny for a pocket-piece. One-tenth of that would be——”
“Do be sensible!” exclaimed Dorothy, rather tartly for her. “You might at least have asked how the bag was sent here—whether by the store itself, or by some employee, or brought by some outside person.”
“Goodness! if it were your money would you have been so curious?” demanded Tavia. “I don’t believe it. You would have been just as excited as I was.”
“Perhaps,” admitted Dorothy, after a moment. “Anyway, I’m glad you have it back, dear.”
“And do you know what I am going to do? I am going to take that old man’s advice.”
“What old man, Tavia?”
“That Mr. Schuman—the head of the big store. I am going to go out right after breakfast and buy me a dog chain and chain that bag to my wrist.”
Dorothy laughed at this—yet she did not laugh happily. There was something wrong with her, and as soon as Tavia began to quiet down a bit she noticed it again.
“Doro,” she exclaimed, “I do believe something has happened to you!”
“What something?”
“I don’t know. But you are not—not happy. What is it?”
“Hungry,” said Dorothy, shortly. “Do stop primping now and come on down to breakfast.”
“Well, you must be savagely hungry then, if it makes you like this,” grumbled Tavia. “And it is an hour before our usual breakfast time.”
They went down in the elevator to the lowerfloor, Tavia carrying the precious bag. She would not trust it out of her sight again, she said, as long as a penny was left in it.
She attempted to go over to the clerk’s desk at the far side of the lobby to ask for the details of the recovery of her bag; but there were several men at the desk and Dorothy stopped her.
“Wait until he is more at leisure,” she advised Tavia. “And until there are not so many men about.”
“Oh, nonsense!” ejaculated Tavia, but she turned to follow Dorothy. Then she added: “Ah, there is one you won’t mind speaking to——”
“Where?” cried Dorothy, stopping instantly.
“Going into the dining-room,” said Tavia.
Dorothy then saw the gray back of Garford Knapp ahead of them. She turned swiftly for the exit of the hotel.
“Come!” she said, “let’s get a breath of air before breakfast. It—it will give us an appetite!” And she fairly dragged Tavia to the sidewalk.
“Well, I declare to goodness!” volleyed Tavia, staring at her. “And just now you were as hungry as a bear. And you still seem to have a bear’s nature. How rough! Don’t you want to see that young man?”
“Never!” snapped Dorothy, and started straight along toward the Hudson River.
Tavia was for the moment silenced. But after a bit she asked slyly:
“You’re not really going to walk clear home, are you, dear? North Birchland is a long, long walk—and the river intervenes.”
Dorothy had to laugh. But her face almost immediately fell into very serious lines. Tavia, for once, considered her chum’s feelings. She said nothing regarding Garry Knapp.
“Well,” she murmured. “Ineed no appetite—no more than I have. Aren’t you going to eat at all this morning, Dorothy?”
“Here is a restaurant; let us go in,” said her friend promptly.
They did so, and Dorothy lingered over the meal (which was nowhere as good as that they would have secured at the Fanuel) until she was positive that Mr. Knapp must have finished his own breakfast and left the hotel.
In fact, they saw him run out and catch a car in front of the hotel entrance while they were still some rods from the door. Dorothy at once became brisker of movement, hurrying Tavia along.
“We must really shop to-day,” she said with decision. “Not merely look and window-shop.”
“Surely,” agreed Tavia.
“And we’ll not come back to luncheon—it takes too much time,” Dorothy went on, as they hurried into the elevator. “Perhaps we can get ticketsfor that nice play Ned and Nat saw when they were down here last time. Then, if we do, we will stay uptown for dinner——”
“Mercy! All that time in the same clothes and without the prescribed ‘relax’?” groaned Tavia. “We’ll look as though we had been ground between the upper and the nether millstone.”
“Well——”
They had reached their rooms. Tavia turned upon her and suddenly seized Dorothy by both shoulders, looking accusingly into her friend’s eyes.
“I know what you are up to. You are running away from that man.”
“Oh! What——”
“Never mind trying to dodge the issue,” said Tavia, sternly. “That Garry Knapp. And it seems he must be a pretty nappy sort, sure enough. He probably knew that girl and was ashamed to have us see him speaking to one so shabby. Now! what do you care what he does?”
“I don’t,” denied Dorothy, hotly. “I’m only ashamed that we have been seen with him. And it is my fault.”
“I’d like to know why?”
“It was unnecessary for us to have become so friendly with him just because he did us a favor.”
“Yes—but——”
“It was I. I did it,” said Dorothy, almost intears. “We should never allow ourselves to become acquainted with strangers in any such way. Now you see what it means, Tavia. It is not your fault—it is mine. But it should teach you a lesson as well as me.”
“Goodness!” said the startled Tavia. “I don’t see that it is anything very terrible. The fellow is really nothing to us.”
“But people having seen us with him—and then seeing him with that common-acting girl——”
“Pooh! what do we care?” repeated Tavia. “Garry Knapp is nothing to us, and never would be.”
Dorothy said not another word, but turned quickly away from her friend. She was very quiet while they made ready for their shopping trip, and Tavia could not arouse her.
Careless and unobservant as Tavia was, anything seriously the matter with her chum always influenced her. She gradually “simmered down” herself, and when they started forth from their rooms both girls were morose.
As they passed through the lobby a bellhop was called to the desk, and then he charged after the two girls.
“Please, Miss! Which is Miss Dale?” he asked, looking at the letter in his hand.
Dorothy held out her hand and took it. It was written on the hotel stationery, and the handwritingwas strange to her. She tore it open at once. She read the line or two of the note, and then stopped, stunned.
“What is it?” asked Tavia, wonderingly.
Dorothy handed her the note. It was signed “G. Knapp” and read as follows:
“Dear Miss Dale:“Did your friend get her bag and money all right?”
“Dear Miss Dale:
“Did your friend get her bag and money all right?”