Indianapolis Times, Volume 40, Number 220, Indianapolis, Marion County, 1 February 1929 — Page 13

FEB. 1, 3929-

THIS lAS HAPPENED ROTH LESTER, private secretary, conceals her blond loveliness behind .veliow spectacles and ill-flttlng clothes and skins back her curls In order to escape the attentions ol flirtatious employers. But lor this disguise she could r.ot have worked unmolested four month* /or "HANDSOME HARRY" BORDEN, promoter of dubious stock s companies and notorious for his aflairs with beautiful women. Ruth, suspecting him of shady dealings. would resign, bu* for a romance which springs up between hor and JACK HAYWARD, young inrurance broker, whose office In Just actoss the narrow airshaft from Borden's p'lvate office on the seventh floor of ,he Starbrldge . building. Ruth and Jack become engaged on a Friday night in January and Ruth darts to come to the office next morning with her disguise removed. In her office. Ruth greets BENNY SMITH, office boy. who Is astonished at her transformation and who Instantly becomes Infatuated. He hates Borden and begs Ruth to don her disguise before his return. Bhe U Interrupted by a phone call. It Is "the woman with the contralto voice" whom Borden has previously refused to talk to. Ruth has time to put on her spectacles before Borden's arrival. Borden finds an orchid-tinted envelope in the mail and thrusts it in his pocket with an oath. Ruth la sent to the bank with Instructions to get SSOO in cash and to the station for two round-trip tickets and a drawing-room for Winter Haven on the 2:15 train. As she returns to the office she wonders whom the second ticket Is for. NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY CHAPTER 111 HUL-LO, Miss Lester! Is God's gift to yomen in his office? I phoned and he’s expecting me. Oh, pardon me! I thought it was Miss Lester! But I guess Handsome Harry canned her, the poor little scared bunny! Can't say I blame him—-why!—what—?” Ruth turned in the little swivel chair and faced the girl who had announced herself so nonchalantly. So it was Rita Dubois who was going to winter Haven with Borden. Ruth was hardly surprised, but a little sorry, for she liked the vivacious, dark-eyed, black-haired little singer and dancer from the noisiest, most garish nigh, club in the city. “I’ve just turned my hair loose,’ 1 Ruth smiled, putting on her timid, scared-bunny manner and peering upward at Rita through her enormous horn-rimmed spectacles. "Attagirl!” Ritta applauded, as she touched up her already vividly rouged lips. “So you’re fallen for Handsome Harry, too, you poor little simp! Been to the movies and got a few hot tips on how to vamp your boss? . . .

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“Well, Bunny, don’t be jealous of little Rita.no matter what you hear! You c-n have him—next week! But, listen, don’t you toddle in and tell him I said so, after I’m gone, or I’ll snatch those golden curls of yours out by the roots. . . . Pretty stuff!” And Rita, finished with her lips, lifted one of Ruth’s curls and fingered its yellow silk almost tenderly. Ruth laughed, then glanced apprehensively toward Harry Borden’s closed door. “The curls are out in someone else’s honor, Miss Dubois. And don’t you tell Mr. Borden, but—l’m engaged to be married. It just happened last night. You’re the second person I’ve told—” “Good child! Wise little baby!” Rita approved, her voice curiously gentle and low. Then she stooped and laid her heavily rouged and scented lips against the rose and ivory of Ruth s cheek. “That’s the only way, infant! Lasso ’em with a wedding ring when you’re young and—oh,hul-10, Harry! The top of the morning to you, darling!” Harry Borden held his door wide, and, regardless of Ruth’s presence, his arms, too. “Glad to see you, sw r eet heart! Miss Hester’s just bought the tickets. Drawing room, too, if you’re c, good girl!” As Harry Borden, laughed indulgently, was about to close the door, Rita Dubois turned her head and gave Ruth a confidential, mocking grin, along with a slow, significant wink. Ruth’s fingers were flying over the typewriter keys again when Benny Smith’s voice, sullen and Indignant, Interrupted her. “Hunh! Thought it was a secret —you getting engaged!” he flung at her from his own desk in the corner. “ ’Nen you go and tell everybody!” “I haven’t told any one but Miss Dubois and you, Benny,” Ruth protested. “Well, if you gotta whisper your little secret, looks like you’d pick out somebody besides one of Handsome Harry’s dames,” the boy persisted sullenly. “I thought you just told me ’cause you—you sorta liked me—”

STARTLED, Ruth let her hands lie Idle on the keys. So that was it! Benny, too! Well, thank goodness, he was too young to want to gobble her up. She must be very careful not to hurt him, never to let him see her smile with amusement at his adolescent tumbling Into love. . . . “I do like you, Benny—lots,” she said gently. “Now be a darling and don’t Interrupt me any more. I want to be through by one.” “Then I guess you don’t want to be told that Handsome Harry’s frau is coming for her alimony this morning,” the boy retorted, grinning again. “Oh, I’d forgotten that today’s the fifteenth!” Ruth cried. “Does Mr. Borden know she’s coming?” Benny chuckled. “I didn’t tell him. He was talking to this Dubois dame on the other line when his missus called up, and then you come back and I forgot to mention it. I’m going to be forgetting a lot o’ things if you don’t slick back them curls again.” “Benny, remember that I’m an engaged woman!” Ruth laughed. “But what am I going to do if Mrs. Borden comes while—” There was a faint rat-tat upon the outer door and Benny sprang to answer, knowing who it was, for no one but Harry Borden’s wife bothered to knock when she came to his offices. “Morning, Mrs. Borden,” Benny mumbled, as he opened the door wide. “Say, Ruth, I gotta beat it to the postoffice for them stamps. Anything else you need?” “No thanks, Benny. Fifty twos, a hundred ones, and ten specials. . . . Good morning, Mrs. Borden." Ruth had risen as 6he spoke, and now faced Mrs. Borden nervously, but smiling the little timid smile which Mrs. Borden would expect of her, for it had greeted her once a month for four months. A rather faded, tired 38, as dgainst Harry Borden’s triumphant .40. Soft, fins skin, going a little lax beneath high, aristocratic cheek bones, and v.'-inkling faintly around tragic eyes and a patient but bitter mouth. Leaf-brown eyes, no longer glowing with the fire of spring.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

Os all the varied duties which she was called upon to perform as Harry Borden’s confidential secretary, none was so painful to Ruth as this monthly encounter with Mrs. Borden. For Borden forced his wife to come to his offices that he might humiliate her. There had been a legal separation, but no divroce, and Borden had arrogantly stipulated that he would pay the court allotment of SSOO a month for the support of his wife and two children, a boy of 12 and a of 7, only if Elizabeth Borden came to him each month and asked for it. And Ruth knew that if Elizabeth Borden had had only herself to consider, she would have died rather than so humiliate herself before him. a a a "TJENNY told me Mr. Borden was JLJ in," Mrs. Borden answered Ruth’s greeting in a hesitant, gentle voice. Ruth glanced miserably toward the closed door, behind which Harry Borden and Rita Dubois were arranging details of their week-end trip to Winter Haven. “Yes, he’s in, Mrs. Borden, but he—he’s in conference.” A burst of high-pitched laughter penetrated that plosed door, and Mrs. Borden flinched, her nostrils quivering, her gloved hands clenching upon the handbag she held. Ruth did not consciously notice the discarded wife’s reaction then, but

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later, when every tiny thing was of so much importance, she remembered—and wished she could forget. “I—then I—” Mrs. Borden stammered. “Shall I ceme back a little later, Miss Lester? I brought the children downtown with *me, and they’re waiting in the rest room of a department store. I—you know it is—necessary that I—that I ask —that I see Mr. Borden today.” “Yes,” Ruth nodded. Harry Borden’s ultimatum was that the monthly SSOO would be paid on the fifteenth day of the month and on no other. If Lis wife did not call for it then, and ask in so many words for what was hers and the children’s by right, she would have to wait until the same date the next month. “I suggest, Mrs. Borden, that you come back in about an hour. I am sure he will be out of—conference—by then.” Mrs. Borden flushed. “The children have a dentist’s appointment at 12, and then I’m to take them to lunch. I wonder if Mr. Borden will be here about 1:30?” Ruth agreed eagerly. She was glad she would not have to see poor Mrs. Borden again on that, her own happy day. “Yes. He will be here until nearly 2. He told me so just a few minutes ago. I’m sure 1:30 will be fine.” “Thank you.” Mrs. Borden was turning toward the door, when another burst of laughter treble

127-129 East Washington Street;

wedded to bass—shook the groundglass panel in the door between the outer and Inner offices. Ruth saw the slight, frail body sway, sprang to put her ferm about the older woman. “Please sit down just a minute, Mrs. Borden. Here! In my chair. And lay your head on the desk. “It’s the heat—they keep these offices stifling. 171 get you a’drink of water. There! Feeling better?” she asked, as she helped Harry Barden’s wife to the little swivel chair. Ruth darted to the water cooler in the corner near Benny’s desk, then discovered that the paper cup' container was empty. But there was a tube of them in the bottom drawer of her desk She ran, frightened a little, for Mrs. Borden looked terribly white and 111. The drawer stuck a bit, and the older woman was leaning downward to help, with trembling hands. “Don’t bother, dear Mrs. Borden,” Ruth begged. “There! It often sticks. . . . The cups are here somewhere. . . . Oh!” She snatched her hand from the pulled-out drawer as if she had touched a snake. Then she laughed, shakily. “What a goose I am! Please don’t be frightened, Mrs. Borden. I keep forgetting that the gun is in there —”

Mrs. Borden quavered, Li shrinking away from the drawer, her hand going to her throat. Ruth laughed nervously. “Yes—an automatic pistol. Isn’t It ridiculous—m; having a pistol? But there were so many holdups In the building last month that a—friend of mine—” she -could not yet toss off jack Hayward’s name nonchalantly—"bought one for me, and for himself, too. “He has offices in this building, and he was terribly in earnest about my keeping the thing here in case of another holdup. As if I’d touch It! I’m more afraid of it than lam of a bandit! Here are the cups. Sorry to be so long.” Five minutes later just four minutes after Mrs. Borden had left, looking so strange and ill that Ruth was genuinely frightened—the door of Harry Borden’s private office opened and he emerged, or rather was pulled along, for Rita Dubois, in high good humor, was tugging at his hand. “Don’t worry! “I’ll be at the station on time,” the dancer was reassuring him gaily. “I can do more shopping in a couple of hours than most girls could do in a day. And mind you don’t call up the stores and limit these charge accounts, old dear!” “Mind you don’t fail to keep your part of the bargain!” Harry Borden reminded her, as they reached the

PAGE 13

door. “171 keep mine—all til it! But—no double-crossing. Rita!" Ruth glanced up. her spectacled eyes taking in the laughing but mutually suspicious couple. She saw Harry Borden wave goodby to Rita, and many hours later she was to try to recall every detail of that picture, though now she only noted, idly, that the man seemed to be waving a torn banknote, and that Rita’s finger-tip kiss was for the torn bill rather than for Harry’ Borden. (To be continued) In the next chapter—motive for a murder. rocklt to save lives Briton Invents Apparatus to Throw Lines in Sea Disaster. Bu United Press LONDON, Feb. I.—A life-saving rocket apparatus which, it is claimed, will throw a rope line accurately at 325 yards, has been invented and patented by Coastguard W. G. Knight of Scarborough. “With the Vid gun,” said Coastguard Knight, “it never has been possible to fire a rocket and throw a line accurately, but with rr.v gun I can fire into the eye of the wind at any elevation and hit the mark." The gun, three rockets, three sets of wires and 325 yards of inch rope weight only eighty pounds.