The Cruise Of The O Moo Part 10

"Who can that be?" exclaimed Lucile.

"I'll see," said Florence racing for the door.

Much to her astonishment, as she peered down over the rail she found herself looking into the blue eyes of a strapping police sergeant.

"Florence Huyler?" he questioned.

"Ye--yes," she stammered.

"How do I git up?" he asked. "Or do you prefer to come down? Gotta speak with you. Nothin' serious, not for you," he added as he saw the startled look on her face.

With trembling hand Florence threw the rope ladder over the rail. As the officer set the ladder groaning beneath his weight, questions flew through her mind. "What does he want? Will he forbid us living in the O Moo? What have we done to deserve a visit from the police?"

Then, like a flash Mr. Cole's words came back to her: "Someone else may wish to talk with you." That someone must be this policeman.

"Will you come in?" she asked, as the officer's foot touched the deck.

"If you please."

"You see," he began at once, while his keen eyes roamed from corner to corner of the cabin, "my visit has to do with a bit of a curio you found lately."

"The blue candlestick?" suggested Florence.

"Exactly, I--"

"We really don't know much--"

"You may know more than you think. Now sit down nice and easy and tell me all you do know and about all the queer things that have happened to you since you came to live in this here boat."

Florence seated herself on the edge of her chair, then told in dramatic fas.h.i.+on of her adventures in the old museum.

"Exactly!" said the officer emphatically when she had finished. "Queer!

Mighty queer, now, wasn't it? And now, is that all?"

"Lucile, my friend here, had a rather strange experience in the Spanish Mission. Perhaps she'll tell you of it."

Lucile's face went first white, then red.

"Oh, that! That was nothing. I--I went to sleep and dreamed, I guess. You see," she explained to the officer, "I had been out in the storm so long, I was sort of benumbed with the cold, and when I got inside I fell asleep."

"And then--" the officer prompted with an encouraging smile.

"It won't do any harm to tell," encouraged Florence.

Stammering and blus.h.i.+ng at first, Lucile launched into her story. Gaining in confidence as she went on, she succeeded in telling it very well.

When she came to the part about the blue face, in his eagerness to drink in every detail the officer leaned forward, half rising from his chair.

"Hold on," he exclaimed excitedly. "You say it was a blue face?"

"Yes, blue. I am sure of that."

"Blue like the candlestick?"

"Why, yes--yes, I think it was."

"Can't be any mistake," he mumbled to himself, as he settled back in his chair. "It's it, that's all. Wouldn't I like to have been there! All right," he urged, "go on."

Lucile finished her story.

"And is that all?" he repeated.

"All except something that happened the night Florence was caught in the old museum and didn't get home," said Lucile, "but what happened wasn't much. You see, we went out to search for her, and a boy named Mark Pence, who lives in a boat here too, joined us. We couldn't rouse anyone at the old scow where the Chinamen live, so he went in. He didn't find anyone, but when he came out he said it was such a queer sort of place. He said there was a winding stairway in it twenty feet high. But I guess he doesn't know much about winding stairways, because the scow is only ten feet high altogether. So the stairs couldn't be twenty feet deep, could they?"

The officer, who had again half risen from his chair, settled back.

"No," he said, "no, of course they couldn't."

But Florence, who had been studying his face, thought he attached far greater importance to this last incident than his words would seem to indicate.

"Well, if that's all," he said rising, "I'll be going. You've shed a lot of light upon a very mysterious subject; one which has been bothering the whole police force. I'm from the 63d street station. If anything further happens, let me know at once, will you? Call for Sergeant Malloney. And if ever you need any protection by day or night, the station's at your service. Good day and thank you."

"Now what do you think of that?" said Florence as the officer's broad back disappeared beyond the black bulk of a tug in dry dock.

"I--I don't know what to think," said Lucile. "One thing I'm awfully sure of, though, and that is that living on a boat is more exciting than one would imagine before trying it.

"I wish," said Lucile that night as she lay curled up in her favorite chair, "that I could create something. I wish I could write a story--a real story."

Then, for a long time she was silent. "Professor Storris," she began again, "told us just how a short story ought to be done. First you find an unusual setting for your story; something that hasn't been described before; then you imagine some very unusual events occurring in that setting. That makes a story, only you need a little technique. There must be three parts to the story. You look about in the story and find the very most dramatic point in the narrative--fearfully exciting and dramatic. You begin the story right there; don't tell how things come to be happening so, nor why the hero was there or anything; just plunge right into it like: 'Cold perspiration stood out upon his brow; a chill ran down his spine. His eyes were glued upon the two burning orbs of fire. He was paralyzed with fear'."

Florence looked up and laughed. "That ought to get them interested."

"Trouble is," said Lucile thoughtfully, "it's hard to find an unusual setting and the unusual incidents.

"After you've done two or three hundred words of thrill," she went on, "then you keep the hero in a most horrible plight while his mind runs like lightning back over the events which brought him to this dramatic moment in his career. Then you suddenly take up the thrill again and bring the story up to the climax with a bang. Simple, isn't it? All you have to do is do it; only you must concentrate, concentrate tremendously, all the while you're doing it."

For a long while after that she lay back in her chair quite silent, so silent indeed that her companions thought her asleep. But after nearly an hour she sprang to her feet with sudden enthusiasm.

"I have it. Three girls living in a yacht in dry dock. That's an unusual setting. And the unusual incident, I have that too but I shan't tell it.

That's to be the surprise."

The other girls were preparing to retire. Lucile took down her hair, slipped on a loose dressing-gown, arranged a dark shade over her lamp, then, having taken a quant.i.ty of paper from a drawer and sharpened six pencils, she sat down to write.

When she commenced it was ten by the clock built into the running board at the end of the cabin. When she came to an end and threw the last dulled pencil from her it was one o'clock.

For a moment she shuffled the papers into an oblong heap, then, throwing aside her dressing-gown and snapping off the light, she climbed to her berth and was soon fast asleep.

But even in her dreams, she appeared to be experiencing the incidents of her story, for now she moved restlessly murmuring, "How the boat pitches!" or "Listen to the wind howl!" A moment later she sat bolt upright, exclaiming in a shrill whisper, "It's ice! I tell you it's ice!"