Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1910 — The Quest of Betty Lancey [ARTICLE]

The Quest of Betty Lancey

By MAGDA F. WEST

I Cowrrfslit. 1909. by W. 0. Chapman. Copyright la Gnat Britain |

(CHAPTER Xl.—(Continued.)

Tyoga hesitated. Then, "Alright," ■be said shortly, and led the way down the\hatchway to the laboratory where Betty had regained conscioasness that first remembered morning. Since then Betty had never been there. She had •t dell-baby suite ot rooms well forward, hardly tenable for one so tall and athletic as Betty. While most of her time, even in stormy weather, was ■pent on deck, still many of her meals were served in the tiny sitting room, all gay with blue and gold—blue 'the color of Betty’s eyes, and gold like the ■un In June weather. Betty stumbled along the unfamiliar passageway. Tyoga knocked twice at a bolted door and after a little wait the portal swung inward and Tyoga thrust Betty within. "She wanted to see you," she announced, brusquely. ‘Tve got to get dinner.” Le Malheureux bowed low. “I’m' glad as your company,” he said. "I have a lonely life, and sufeh an Interruption la a pleasant one.” “Well, if you appreciate my coming ao much, show your appreciation,” suggested Betty, “do tell me why 1 am here, and who you are?" "I will do neither,” answered Le Malheureux. "Do not ask me. I dislike to be compelled to be''so discourteous as to refuse you, but I must You have been very ill, but health is returning to you, and when you return home you will think of this Journey only as a pleasant dream. You have had no cause to complain of your treatment here, save you?” “No,” faltered Betty. “Only I’m accustomed to knowing why and wherefore, that’s all.’.’ ‘“That’s all,’ you say,” said Le Malheureux. “Don’t you know that ‘Why’s’ and ‘wherefore’s’ are the sum total of existence? Don’t ask me about them. Ask me anything else!” “Then I shall prom gate a ‘who,’" chanced Betty, desperately. “Tell me, do you know who murdered Cerisse Wayne ?V She was unprepared for the reply, yet intuitively knew that it was what ■he had anticipated. "Yes,” assented Le Malheureux. “What is more,” he continued, watching a Swift question form on Betty’s Ups, “I saw the deed whan it was donej” Betty shrunk from him with eyes dilated, mouth agape. “Then you ” she began. *‘l did not,” promptly retorted Le Malheureux. “I did not kill her. I would have saved her if I could. Bui It was - impossible. The tragedy was Inevitable, it was foreordained and it i bad to happen. Nobody can ever clinch with Destiny. The first few days you were aboard this boat you tried it, my dear Miss Lancey. The result? You nearly had a second attack of fever and nervous prostration. When you resigned yourself to events as they course, you commenced to feel better, as you must admit. To dismiss the unattainable, and to welcome what may come, is the right doctrine of living. Why do you worry with what you cannet affect?” _ “I don’t dare to think," said Betty. "But since you, whoever you are, have hauled me off in this high-handed fashion, I consider there’s some largess coming to me. If you knew who murdered Cerisse Wayne, why don’t you tell me? That is, unless you’re In duty bound to protect the murderer! Come, tell mb, do.” "What benefit would that be to you?” questioned Le Malheureux. “You forget I’m a newspaper womanu,” argued Betty, “and I draw salary for gathering the news and turning it In to my city editor.” “Some distance from your city editor now, aren’t you?” suggested Le Malheureux. “Well, couldn’t I send my paper a Wireless?" flashed Letty. “You’ve an Instrument there!” “Ho, ho!” laughed Le Malheureux. “So that’s why you wanted to come Into my laboratory, is it? You heard the clicking, recognized it, and thought If you dared enough you might communicate with your friends. A great Idea, that! And I must confess you are a plucky girl, Miss Betty, but I warn you, If you tamper with these Instruments in here, you'll tamper with eternity, and I’d advise you to let these apparatuses alone.” "Bah! I'm not afraid," sneered Betty, r "Neither has any troublemaker ever bebh afraid of the trouble she started till it’s too late to stop it You’re a woman, and of course you’ll do as you please, but”—he shrugged himself again—“you’d better be warned.” ‘Til promise not to meddle if you’ll tell me one thing,” persisted Betty. “You should have been a corporation lobbyist,” responded Le Malheur«ux; “still I shall be generous! But what Is it?” "Who did kill Cerisse Wayne?" "A man who loved her,” replied Le Malheureux, laconically. "Come here and see what I have done to this geranium leaf. It is magnified and remagnlfled. Look how its eyes have re«ponded ta the influence of these convergent rays—a new ray I have discovered myself. I have found the eyes ® f Plants sad their souls! Some- day I shall uncover the human soui’ Itself, •ot only the physically corporate, but those that tide, as Omar says, ‘naked on the air of heaven.’ ” Betty looked into the globe he held out before her. Within she saw a pulpy green substance, throwing out

dozens of the most minute of antennae. 'These writhed and fluttered most weirdly. “Oh, I can’t stand this,” she declared, "nor the air in here. Tyogal Tyoga! come and take me upstairs.” When the old nbgress had led her back to her ahady seat on deck Betty Lancey sat and scanned the offing for a sail, and wondered how she could get word to Larry where she was, ans how in the world she could send the news she had to the “Inquirer” office. Somehow her hunger for Larry was far worse than her desire to satisfy the newspaper appetite of delivering her portion of the solution to the Wayne murder mystery. Betty, selfreliant Betty, weakened by the first severe illness she had ever known; Betty, stripped of the practical routine adjuncts of the daily life to which she was accustomed; Betty, who had openly flouted at poetry and romanticism, this same Betty plunged into a fire of mystery, murder and death, convalescing from a malignant attack of brain fever, was beginning to discover that a woman is a weakling after all, and that when she needs a strong arm to lean on, she wants it sadly. And in the mist and mirage of thp life from which she had so suddenly been taken away, it was Larry Morris, his face, his figure and his personality that Betty’s heart and soul reached out for vainly. If she could have found an empty bottle anywhere she would have chanced that old pastime of the mariner and last refuge of the shipwrecked—a note in a bottle. But bottles there were none, nor anything else feasible, and Betty plunged into despair. With returnihg health, however, came a renewed interest in life. She had good food, the weather was fine, and Betty a splendid sailor. She possessed the exuberance of youth and all of a newspaper woman’s curiosity for the what is to happen next. Le Malheureux, though extremely repulsive, was also decidedly interesting, and their conversations and intimacy grew with the voyage. , Le Malheureux was well read, courteous, a polished gentleman, gracious, and a delightful companion when he so chose. But he never saw her for more than an hour a day, and was reticent about himself and his people. Betty gathered that he had long lived in Africa, though he had been educated in England, France and Germany. By education he was a physician, by fortune independent, and by occupation a research worker in the extensive fields of electro-therapy. But there were three things he never did—he never removed or shifted any of his somber draplngs, his hands were always gloved, and the thick veil of full green was never lifted from his face. CHAPTER XII. At the close of a long, hot day, the enchanted yacht sighted land—a blur of gray and green to the left. As the night deepened this Verged into a splash of tropic green, washed with a spendthrift moon. Betty begged to be allowed to stop on deck to watch this dawning beauty, and Tyoga, muffled in a long white cloak, stood beside her. As they approached the harbor, Betty saw it was the Jettying mouth of a river, the banks lined with mosshung palms, springing from a matted growth of reeds, entwined vines, rushes and lush grass. Straight up the river they went in the moonlight, through a current so slow that the stream appeared stagnant. No sign of habitation met the eye, and the Jungles to either side were still as death save for the occasional roar of a lion, or snarl of home angered panther. The river verged into a lake, black and forbidding, withm bleak beaches of yellow sand, and from there they rushed into another river roofed with entangled trees through which filtered a blood-red sunrise. All day they followed this river, pimpled at Intervals with lakes, small or large, and clear or muddled. The white heron and the atom watched them unheeding. A crocodile or two sidled after them, and at Intervals some huge snake, untwining from a long hanging bough, would stretch its slimy length across the snowy deck. Twice they passed a herd of elephants coming down to drink, and often sent an affrighted lioness hurrying back from the water’s edge to her mewing kittens. The purple lotus spread itself despairingly over some of the slimiest pools as if to patch up black hldeodsness with perfect bloom. All this tropical splendor finally wearied even Betty’s rapt eyes, and she clung gratefully to Tyoga’s arm as the negress said: “We are at our journey’s end." And with it had come the night The yaoht had swung through an archway, and shot into a roofed passage, water dripping from the stones and moss above them, and a raven cawed as they stopped at a stubby wharf, from which led up a dizzy flight of dimly lighted granite steps. The stairs ended in a vaulted corridor hung with a few antique brass lamps. Placed at intervals along the sides were low stone couches covered with leopard skins., To one ot these Tyoga motioned Betty, and then pursing her thick black lips she emitted a peculiar whistle. Instantly there darted forward from one of the dusk-hung niche# a comely young negro girl, her glistening body, satiny as ebony, nude save for a kilt of ■triped silk,, and a short tunic of gauze. She bowed low before Tyoga, who addressed to her a few half audible remarks in a strange dialect. The girl sodded her head In the as-

finnatlve, stealing occasional surreptitious glances at Betty, and then taking up\one of smoking brass lamps she led the way-toward the end hong hajL Here more steps, two flights of them, of time-harried stone, mosakrown In the corners, greeted them. There were more corridors and more stairs In a dizzying never-ending sequence, till them came upon a hall longer, lighter and lower than the rest. A hundred archways with tapestry hangings opened upon this hallway and in the center arch the slave girl bowed low again and, pushing aside the draperies, stood apart for them to enter. The room was furnished in skins, ivory, ebony and gold. The couch of ebony had no springs, but to Betty’s later surprise the down cushions and skins piled upon it made it the softest bed she had ever rested upon. There were stone stools, chairs of oddly twisted tropic woods, ani a great mirror of ebony, ivory and gold, studded with hundreds of precious stones. Swinging from the ceiling was an ornate lamp of filigree and jewels, and this burned low and dull. ‘'You will be glad to rest, I know,” said Tyoga. “Meta there will bring you a glass of warm milk, and then you must rest. Rest the sweetest you have ever done, my lady. To-night I shall not be with you; I have other duties; but Meta will sleep here on a pallet by your side. Goodnight Be unafraid.” She stooped low and kissed Betty 8 hand, and Betty could have sworn a tear fell upon it Tyoga spoke truly. Meta brought the milk as deliciously warm and fragrant as if roses had been steeped within its limpid depths. The cool linen garment the slave wrapped around Betty rested her fevered skin, and the pillows were magic wings that bore her away to Forgetfulness Land. Sleep came, just sleep, no dreams, and the sun was topping the heavens when blue-eyed Betty Tyoga was not yet returned, but Meta, faithful and silent, stood by the couch gently waving a huso palm branch. A modern Cleopatra; but where is my Antony?” smiled Betty to herself, snuggling comfortably back into her nest She stretched her feet luxuriously back and forth under the silken coverlids, then roused to full consciousness with a start "A sorry newspaper woman, I,” she scolded, mentally; “here am I with a whole live mystery between my thumb and forefinger and doing never a thing to solve it! Ah, Betty, Betty!” She rose hurriedly, in paptomime beseeching Meta to hasten with her garments. For the shoes Betty had kicked oft and left on the floor of the Directory Hotel the night of her illfated vislfc to the Harcourt apartments Tyoga had substituted a quaint pair of high-heeled slippers, as unlike Betty s usual substantial footgear as a rose la like a radish. And in place of her strictly tailored waist Betty was now gearing soft draperies of varicolored silk. What had become of her clothes she didn't know, and Tyoga had successfully resisted all importuning that might tell Betty the why and wherefore of her present incarnation. (To be continued.)