Traffic In Souls Part 38

"Ha, ha! Ralph read it, and he's gone. He wouldn't marry me now, he said,--ha, ha! Father! Who cares? Oh, it's so funny!" She broke from her father's hold and ran into the big dining room, pursued by the sobbing maids.

"She's gone crazy as a loon," whispered one of the policemen to the other.

"Where is my wife?" timidly asked Trubus, as he supported himself with one hand on a table near the door. The frightened butler, with choleric red face, pointed upward.

Trubus drew himself up and started for the broad stairway.

Just then a revolver shot smote the ears of the excited men. It came from above.

"Great G.o.d!" uttered Trubus, clasping his hand to his heart. He ran for the stairs, followed by the two patrolmen, while the lawyer sank weakly into a chair and buried his face in his hands. He guessed only too well what had happened.

The policemen were slower than the panic-stricken Trubus.

They found him in his magnificent boudoir, kneeling and sobbing by the side of his dead wife; a revolver had fallen to the floor from her limp hand. It was still smoking. The exquisite lace coverlet was even now drinking up the red stains, and the bluecoats stopped at the doorway, dropping their heads as they instinctively doffed their caps.

Gruff Roundsman Murphy crossed himself, while White wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He remembered a verse from the old days when he went to Sunday-school in the Jersey town where he was born.

"'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord."

The blossoms of late May were tinting the greensward beneath the trees of Central Park as Bobbie Burke and Mary strolled along one of the winding paths. They had just walked up the Avenue from their last shopping expedition.

"I hated to bid the boys at the station house good-bye this afternoon, Mary. Yet after to-night we'll be away from New York for a wonderful month in the country. And then no more police duty, is there?"

"No, Bob. You and father will be the busiest partners in New York and you will have to report for duty at our new little apartment every evening before six. I'm so glad that you can leave all those dangers, and gladder still because of my own selfish gratifications. After to-night."

"Well, I'm scared of to-night more than I was of that police parade on May Day, with all that fuss about the medal. Here I've got to face a minister, and you know that's not as easy as it seems."

They reached the new home which the advance royalties for old Barton's days of realization had made possible. It was a handsome apartment on Central Park West, and the weeks of preparation had turned it into a wonderful bower for this night of nights.

"Look, Mary," cried Lorna, as they came in. "Here are two more presents. One must weigh a ton and the other is in this funny old bandbox."

They opened the big bundle first; it was a silver service of elaborate, ornate design. It had cost hundreds of dollars.

On a long paper Bobbie saw the names of a hundred men, all familiar and memory-stirring. The list was headed with the simple dedication in the full, round hand which Burke recognized as that of Captain Sawyer:

"To the Prince of all the Rookies and his Princess, from his brother cops. G.o.d bless you, Bobbie Burke, and Mrs. Bobbie."

Ex-officer 4434 Burke blinked and hugged his happy fiancee delightedly.

"What's in that old bandbox, Bob?" asked Lorna. "It's marked 'Gla.s.s--Handle with care.' I wonder how it ever held together. Some country fellow left it at the door this afternoon, but wouldn't come in."

They opened it, and Mary gasped.

"Why, look at the flowers!"

The box seemed full of old-fas.h.i.+oned country blossoms, as Mary dipped her hand into it. Then she deftly reached to the bottom of the big bandbox and lifted its contents. Wrapped in a sheathing of oiled tissue paper was a monstrous cake, layer on layer, like a Chinese paG.o.da. It was covered with that rustic triumph of multi-colored icing which only grandmothers seem able to compound in these degenerate days of machine-made pastry of the city bakeries.

A wedding ring of yellow icing was molded in the center, while on either side were red candy hearts, joined by whirly sugar streamers of pink and blue.

A card pinned in the center said:

"From Henrietta and Joe."

"That's all we needed," said Mary with a sob in her happy voice, "to make our wedding supper end right. Wasn't it, Officer 4434?"

THE END