CHAPTER VIII

A STRANGE GAME OF HIDE-AND-GO-SEEK

The next short chapter in the story of the mystery of the blue candlestick followed closely upon Florence's visit to the new museum.

It was on the following morning, as she and Lucile were strapping up their books preparatory to leaving the O Moo, that they heard a sudden loud rapping on the hull of the yacht.

"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 fashion 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 blushing 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 quantity 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!"

Marian was the first one up in the morning. It was her turn for making toast and coffee. As she passed Lucile's desk she glanced at the stock of paper and unconsciously read the title, "The Cruise of the O Moo."

Gladly would she have read the pages which followed but loyalty to her cousin forbade.

"To-day," said Lucile at breakfast, "I am going to have my story typed, and next day I shall take it to the office of the Literary Monthly."

"I hope the editor treats you kindly," smiled Marian. "You must remember, though, that we are only freshmen."

But Lucile's faith in her product, her first real "creation," was not to be daunted. "I did it just as Professor Storris said it should be done, so I know it must be good," she affirmed stoutly.

That night Lucile spent an hour working over the typewritten copy of her story. Tracing in a word here, marking one out there, punctuating, comparing, rearranging, she made it as perfect as her limited knowledge of the story writing art would permit her.

"There now," she sighed, tossing back the loose-flung hair which tumbled down over her shapely shoulders, "I will take you to ye editor in ye morning. And here's hoping he treats you well." She patted the manuscript affectionately, then stowed it away in a pigeon-hole.

If the truth were to be told, she was due for something of a surprise regarding that manuscript. But all that lay in the future.

Florence and Marian were away. They had gone for a spin on the lagoon before retiring. She was alone on the O Moo. Tossing her dressing-gown lightly from her she proceeded to put herself through a series of exercises such as are calculated to bring color to the cheek and sparkle to the eye of a modern American girl.

Coming out of this with glowing face and heaving chest, she threw on her dressing-gown and leaped out of the cabin and into the moonlight which flooded a narrow open spot on deck.

Away at the left she saw the ice on the lake shore stand out in irregular piles. Here was a huge pile twenty feet high and there a single cake on end. There was a whole forest of jagged, bayonet-like edges and here again pile after pile lay scattered like shocks of grain in the field.

"For all the world like the Arctic!" she breathed. "What sport it would be to play hide-and-go-seek with oneself out there in the moonlight."

She paused a moment in thought. Then, clapping her hands she exclaimed, "I'll do it. It will be like going back to good old Cape Prince of Wales, in Alaska." Hastening inside, she twisted her hair in a knot on the top of her head, drew on some warm garments, crowned herself with a stocking-cap, and was away toward the beach.

Since the O Moo was on the track nearest to the shore, she was but a moment reaching the edge of the ice which, packed thick between two breakwaters, lay glistening away in the moonlight. Here she hesitated. She was not sure it was quite safe. The wind had been blowing on shore for days. It had brought the ice-packs in. Under similar conditions in the Arctic, the ice would have been solidly frozen together by this time, but she was not acquainted with lake ice; it might be treacherous.

"Pooh!" she exclaimed at last. "Wind's still onshore; I'll try it."

Stepping out upon the first flat cake, she hurried across it to dodge into the shadow of a towering pile of broken fragments.

"Catch me!" she exclaimed joyously aloud. "Catch me if you can!"

She had reverted to the days of her childhood and was playing hide-and-go-seek with herself. First behind this pile, then that, she flitted in the moonlight like a ghost. On and on, in a zigzag course, she went until a glance back brought from her lips an exclamation of surprise: "How far I am from the shore!" For a moment she stood quite still. Then the startled exclamation came again.

"That cake of ice tips. It moves! I must go back."

Springing from the cake, she leaped upon another and another. She had just succeeded in reaching a spot where the rise and fall of the ice in response to the swells which swept in from the lake, was lessening, when something caused her heart to flutter wildly.

Had she seen a dark form disappear behind that ice-pile off to her right?

In an instant she was hugging the shadow of a great, up-ended cake. No, she had not been mistaken. Out of the silence there came the pat-pat of footsteps.

"What can it mean?" she whispered.

Locating as best she could the position of the intruder, she sprang away in the opposite direction. She was engaged in a game of hide-and-go-seek, not with herself, but with some other person, a stranger probably. What the outcome of that game would be she could not tell.