Dorothy's Travels Part 3

It was her chance! In another moment he would have left the boat and she would miss him. She would run up to him and ask him if he remembered about the purses--Quick, quick! He must have forgotten--

He was going. Everybody was going. She kept her eyes fixed upon him, unmindful of the fact that somebody else was crowding her apart from Molly and Miss Greatorex, or that, as the throng pressed outward, they were getting further and further away.

The "s.h.i.+ny man" wasn't three feet ahead of her when they at last gained the gang-plank and surged forward to the wharf. She could almost touch his shoulder--she would in a minute--she was gaining--

No she wasn't! He had slipped aside and was hurrying away with the agility of youth! It couldn't be the cripple and yet--there was the point of his crutch sticking out behind! Well, she reckoned she could run as fast as he did and she promptly set out to try!

It was a strange race in a strange place. West street in New York is a very crowded, dirty thoroughfare. An endless, unbroken line of drays, beer-wagons, vehicles of every sort, moves up one side and down the other of the hurrying street cars which claim the centre roadway. The pavement is always slippery with slime, the air always full of hoa.r.s.e shouts, cries and distracting whistles. Car bells jangle, policemen yell their warnings to unwary foot pa.s.sengers, hackmen screech their demands for patronage, and hurrying crowds move to and fro between the ferries and the city. A place that speedily set Dorothy's nerves a-tingle with fear, yet never once diverted her from her purpose.

As she had once followed poor Peter Piper in a mad race over the fields, "just for fun," so now she followed her "s.h.i.+ny man," to regain her lost property. She had become convinced that he had it. He looked, at last, exactly like a person who would rob little girls of their last five dollars! Their own whole monthly allowance and a most liberal one.

"But he shall not keep it! He--shall--not!" cried Dorothy aloud, and redoubling her speed, if that were possible.

He darted between wagons where the horses' noses of the hinder one touched the tail-boards of the forward; so did she. He bobbed under drays; so did she. He seemed bent upon nothing but escape; she upon nothing but pursuit and capture. She believed that he must have seen her though she had not caught him turning once around to look her way.

They had cleared the street; they were upon the further sidewalk; a policeman was screaming a "halt" to her but she paid no attention. In that medley of sounds one harsh cry more or less was of small account.

What was of account, the only thing that now remained clear in her eager brain was the fact that the fugitive had--turned a corner! A corner leading into a street at right angles with this broad one, a street somewhat narrower, a fraction quieter, and even dirtier. She followed; she also flashed around that dingy, saloon-infested corner, bounded forward, breathless and exultant, because surely she could come up to him here. Then she paused for just one breath, dashed her hand across her straining eyes, and peered ahead.

The "s.h.i.+ny man" had disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up; and there Dorothy stood alone in the most unsavory of alleys, with a sudden, dreadful realization of the fact that--she was lost.

CHAPTER III

ADRIFT IN THE GREAT CITY

"My darling! My darling!" cried Judge Breckenridge, clasping his daughter close to his breast, then holding her off at arm's length, the better to scan her beloved face and to observe the changes a few months of absence had wrought. "My darling Molly! More like the other Molly than ever! Now my vacation has indeed begun!"

"Papa, Papa! You sweetest, dearest, beautifullest Papa ever lived! How good it is to see you! And, yes Auntie Lu, you're dear too; but a body's father--Why, he's her father and n.o.body like him, n.o.body!"

In her enthusiastic greeting of and by her relatives Molly forgot everything and everybody else. She had crossed the gang-plank as swiftly as the people crowding behind and before her would permit, her feet restlessly dancing up and down in the limited s.p.a.ce; and now that she was upon the solid wharf to which the steamer was moored she bore them along with her by an arm linked to each, eager to be free of that throng and in some quiet spot where she could perch upon her father's knee and talk, talk, talk!

Had any of the trio thought about it for a moment they would have observed Miss Greatorex lingering close to the plank and staring at everyone who crossed it, searching for Dorothy.

"Strange! She certainly was right here a minute ago! I thought she had gone off the boat ahead of me, but she couldn't have done so, for she's nowhere in sight;" she murmured to herself.

When all had crossed and still Dorothy did not appear, the anxious teacher returned to the boat and renewed her search there: asking of all the employees she met if they had seen her missing charge. But one of them had noticed the girl at all; that was a workman who had helped to drag the gang-plank into place upon the wharf and against whom Dorothy had rudely dashed in her pursuit of the "s.h.i.+ny man."

He remembered her excited manner, her swift apology to himself for the accident, and her frantic rush across the wharf. He had looked after her with curiosity and had remarked to a bystander:

"That little pa.s.senger is afraid she'll get left! Maybe she doesn't know we lie alongside this dock till mid-afternoon."

Then he had gone about his own affairs and dismissed her from his mind till, thus recalled by Miss Greatorex's question, he wished he had watched her more closely. He was afraid she might have been hurt among the heavy wagons moving about, and that was the poor comfort which he expressed to the now thoroughly frightened lady.

Meanwhile the Breckenridge party had crossed the street, under conveyance of a waiting policeman, and had paused upon the further curb while Molly explained:

"Miss Greatorex is dreadful slow, Papa dear. But she'll be here in a minute. She's sure to be and Dolly with her. Oh! she is the very sweetest, dearest, bravest girl I ever knew! If I had a sister I should want her to be exactly like Dorothy. I wonder what does keep them! And I'm so hungry, so terribly hungry and we lost our purses--couldn't be she'd linger to search for them again when we've already ransacked the whole boat! Why, Papa, look! Miss Greatorex is on the boat again, herself. Running, fairly running around the deck and acting as if she, too, had lost something. How queer that is!"

Both the gentleman and lady now fixed their attention upon the teacher, until that moment unknown to them. She certainly was conducting herself in a strange, half-bewildered manner and the Judge realized that there was something wrong. Bidding his sister and child:

"Stay right here on this corner. Don't leave it. I'll step back to the steamer and see what's amiss;" and to the hackman he had summoned, he added: "Keep your rig right on the spot and an eye upon these fares!

I'll be back in a minute."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ARE YOU A POLICEMAN?"

_Dorothy's Travels._]

But he wasn't. When he did come, after Mrs. Hungerford and Molly had had ample time to grow anxious themselves, it was with a woe-begone Miss Greatorex upon his arm and a very disturbed expression on his own face.

"Why, Papa, where's Dolly? Why didn't she come, too?" cried Molly, darting to meet him.

"That, my dear, is exactly what this lady and I would like to know. I was in hopes she might have seen you standing here and crossed to join you. Well, she's been in too great haste, likely, and started by herself to go--I wonder where! Anyway, the best thing to be done is for you three to get into this carriage and drive to the Astor House and order dinner for all of us. It's an old-time hotel where my father and I used to go when I was a boy myself, and I patronized it for old a.s.sociation's sake. You, small daughter, had fixed your mind on nothing less than the Waldorf-Astoria, I expect! Never mind; you'll get as good food in one place as the other."

"But, Papa, aren't you coming with us?"

"Not just yet. I'll stop behind a bit and set a few policemen or small boys in search for Miss Dorothy. Tell me something by which we can recognize her when found. New York is pretty full of little girls, you know, and I might miss her among so many."

The Judge tried to make his tone a careless one but there was real anxiety in it as his sister promptly understood; but she also felt it best to treat the matter lightly, for already poor Miss Isobel was on the point of collapse. So she answered readily enough:

"Very well, brother, so we'll do. I reckon I know your tastes so that I can cater for you and--is there any limit to what we may order? I'm a bit hungry myself and always do crave the most expensive dishes on the menu. Good-by, for a little while."

The Judge bade the driver: "To the Astor House;" lifted his hat to those within the carriage, and it moved away.

Then he summoned a policeman and asked that scouts be sent out all through that neighborhood, to search for a "thirteen-year-old girl, in a brown linen dress, dark curly hair, brown eyes, and--'Oh! just too stylish for words!'" which was the description his daughter had given him. Indeed, he felt that this very "stylishness" might be a clue to the right person; since denizens of that locality, girls or women, are not apt to have that characteristic about them.

He was a weary man. He had been up late the night before, and previous to his journey hither had been extremely busy leaving matters right in his southern home for a prolonged absence. He had counted upon the hour or two before sailing in which to procure some additions to his sportsman's outfit, and sorely begrudged this unexpected demand upon his time. Yet he could do no less than try to find the runaway, and to make the search as thorough as if it had been his own child's case.

It was more than an hour later that he appeared in the dining-room of the hotel where his family awaited him. They had still delayed their own dinner, though Molly's hunger had almost compelled her to enjoy hers.

Only the thought of "eating with Papa," had restrained her, because she had little fear that Dorothy would not be promptly found, or that she had done more than go a few blocks out of the way. She had often been in that city before, though only in its better parts, and it all seemed simple enough to her. It had been explained that the upper part was laid out in squares, with the avenues running north and south, the cross-streets easily told by their numbers. How then could anybody who could count be lost?

"No news, Schuyler?" asked Aunt Lucretia.

"Not yet. Not quite yet. But there will be, of course there will be.

I've set a lot of people hunting that extremely 'stylish' young maiden, so I thought I'd best come down and get my dinner and let you know that all's being done that can be. Don't worry, Miss Greatorex. A capable girl like Dorothy isn't easy to lose in a city full of policemen, if she'll only use her tongue and ask for guidance. Probably she has gone back to the 'Powell' already, hoping to find us all there. Before I eat I'll telephone again and inquire, although I did so just a little while ago, as I came in."

The more he talked the less he convinced his listeners that it would be that "all right" he had so valiantly a.s.serted. Even Molly's hunger suddenly deserted her and she pushed away a plate of especially enticing dessert with a shake of her head and an exclamation:

"Papa's talking--just talking! Like he always does when he takes me to the dentist's! His voice doesn't ring true, Auntie Lu, and you know it.

You needn't smile and try to look happy, for you can't. Dorothy is lost!

My precious Dolly Doodles is lost--is LOST!"

For a moment n.o.body answered. Miss Greatorex echoed the exclamation in her own sinking heart, realizing at last how fully she had depended upon the Judge's ability to find the girl, until he had once more appeared without her. He had promptly sent a messenger to telephone again and awaiting the reply made a feint of taking his soup. Mrs. Hungerford kept her eyes fixed upon her plate, not daring just then to lift them to Miss Greatorex's white face; and altogether it was a very anxious party which sat at table then instead of the merry one which all had antic.i.p.ated.

When their pretence of a meal was over and they rose, the Judge looked at his watch. Then he said:

"We have only time left to reach the 'Prince' in comfort. It is a long way up and across town to the dock on East river. You three must start for it at once. I'll step into a store near by for a few things I need and follow you. Of course, Dorothy knew all about her trip, the steamer she would sail by, and its landing place. Even if she didn't know that most of the officers would know and direct her.

"I now think that having missed us at the 'Powell' she has gone straight to the other boat and you will find her there. I'll follow you in time for sailing and till then, good-by. A hack is ready for you at the door."