Coming Through the Rye (6 page)

She was a heavy woman with a strong tread, and creases of habitual anxiety on her broad, sagging face. She had a dreary sorrow in her eyes as she looked around on the girls with their gaudy little frocks, her own daughter in their midst. Her sad, keen eyes searched her daughter's face.

Frances had snatched off the little silver hat with its nasturtium facing and was swinging it nervously in her hand.

“I was just coming out to hunt you, Mamma,” she explained, looking apologetically down at her bright dress.

“H'm! I don't know as you had any call to go out in a rig like that to hunt fer me!” said her mother witheringly.

She sat down heavily in the nearest chair, however, as though she was too weary to pursue the subject further. She drew out two long black-headed hatpins and removed her rusty black hat, smoothing her graying hair with a work-roughened hand. Frances hoped the girls had not noticed how old-fashioned her mother was. She cast a furtive glance at Sybil chewing away at her gum indifferently. She half-expected Sybil to be angry about the cigarette. Sybil was considered a sort of leader in their set. She wondered tremulously what her mother would do in case Sybil broke forth into one of her tirades.

But Mrs. Judson did not seem to have noticed any of the girls, or to realize which girls they were. She looked about on them drearily, or rather over them, and continued to talk to her daughter.

“Well, I've been to see the lawyer,” she said in that same sort of hopeless voice. “He says there ain't much hope ‘ithout yer father is willing t'turn state's evidence an' help the Sherwood bunch. He says they've got things in their own hands fer a while now, till the whiskey folks can get organized. He says they've got to lay low, and the Sherwood gang has some men who are helping them that'll do a good turn fer your father if he'll just say where he got the liquor.”

She paused and looked impersonally around on the gum-chewing group.

“I ben to see your father, too,” she went on, “an' he says he'll do it. He ain't got no compunctions about tellin' where he got it—they weren't no friends of his'n. He seems real sorry—yer father!”

She sat stolidly a moment, gazing off at nothing, her loose, sorrowful cheeks sagging more than usual, the little pouch of flesh under her chin quivering. Then two large slow tears most unexpectedly rolled out and down her face. They looked as out of place as a steamroller going down a church aisle. She was not the kind of woman who cried. One didn't know that she had tears. She seemed unaware that she was weeping. She sat a moment longer, looking into space across the little tawdry room with its golden oak furniture and its portraits, and then she rose heavily, gathered her two old-fashioned hatpins and her rusty hat, and trod wearily out of the room and up the stairs.

The four girls sat still for a moment, even their jaws arrested in their regular rhythm, in a strange new embarrassment. Was it possible there had been a kind of dignity in that fat, homely, stolid woman? Had she ever been a pretty girl with bright frocks, going out with the boys? And it had come to this!

Would it ever end in something like this with any of them?

There was a stillness in the room for a moment while they turned this new idea over in what they had left of a mind. Then suddenly they all four started into alert guarded attitudes, as a loud knock sounded on the door!

T
he startled silence lasted until Mrs. Judson came heavily to the top of the stairs and called, “Frances! Why don't you open that door?”

The stentorian voice seemed at once to lay bare the four shamed girls sitting in breathless silence, seemed to reveal to the one outside the door that they had been afraid to open it. Just what they were afraid of they did not quite know, only that there had been so many unforeseen happenings, so many startling events during that day that they hardly knew what was coming next. Then, too, there was in their countenances a confession of the many things in their lives that they would not care to have revealed. And admission, to themselves at least, that they were open to unpleasant investigation as well as the ones who had been that day arrested.

Not that there was any such open admission. Oh no. Each girl straightened her frills and ruffled her bob and went on chewing indifferently as though that knock were nothing to her.

Frances hurried into the hall with a belated and breathless “Oh, yes'm. Did somebody knock? I didn't notice!”

She made a time wrestling with the latch, although her mother had not locked the door. Then she opened it a crack with her foot behind it and looked out, chewing her gum nervously, with an assumed indifference.

A man stood outside with some papers in his hand, which he seemed to have been trying to read by the fitful light of the street. He looked up at Frances and asked sharply, “Is Mr. Lawrence Ransom here?”

Francis was past master in delaying on attack.

“Mr. Who?” she asked stupidly.

“Mr. Ransom—Mr. Lawrence Ransom. I was told I would find him here.”

“This is Judsons',” stated Frances with finality. “I don't know any Mr. Ransom.”

“You're Frances Judson, aren't you?”

Frances was frightened, but she put on a bold face.

“Well, what's that got to do with the man you was talking about?”

“You're the girl that was with him the other night when I stopped him on the road, up by the roadhouse. You remember. You were trying to make a getaway.”

Frances cast a frightened glance up toward the stairs and, stepping out the door, hurriedly drew it to, lowering her voice.

“Oh, you mean Larry!” she whispered. “He's just a kid I met that night. I didn't know his name. He was taking me to ride. I don't know him, honest I don't. A friend of mine introduced us—”

“You can't pull that off with me!” said the man gruffly. “I want to see Lawrence Ransom, and I mean to do it! You had both been drinking that night, and you had a whole case of liquor in the car—”

“Don't talk so loud!” pleaded Frances in a whisper. “I've got a little sick sister, and they don't know if she's going to live or not. They had a consultation t'day—they said she must be kep' quiet—”

“Very well,” said the man, lowering his voice a trifle. “I'll be quiet if you'll step aside and let me in. But you can't put anything over on me.”

“You needn't bother to keep quiet,” said a calm, stern voice over their heads. “He isn't here, but I'll come down and show you through the house. Frances, you come in the house and go to bed.”

Frances cringed at her mother's voice from the window above, and ducked into the house as her mother withdrew her head from the window and came heavily down the stairs. The girl hastily reviewed the interview and wondered how long her mother had been listening. There had been an ominous sound to her voice. She slid into the parlor with a defiant fright in her eyes and tried to look nonchalant before the girls, hoping they had not heard. But Sybil left no rag of doubt about that.

“I wouldn't stand fer that, Fran! Now's the time ta get out!”

But with strange suddenness Mrs. Judson stood beside her.

“Yes, now's the time ta get out!” she repeated. “You girls better run right home ta yer mothers! Frances! There's the stairs!”

Then she turned her attention to the man who had entered in Frances's wake.

“Will you have a chair?” Her tone was sad and formal. Then to the girls: “You girls run along!”

With defiant malice in their eyes the three visitors, chins up, sidled along the wall toward the hall, under the grilling gaze of the stranger. Suddenly the man pointed his pencil at Sybil.

“Wait! You're another!”

His words were like sharp scissors snipping off the words.

Sybil lifted her chin, and her eyes grew hard and wicked. The sad eyes of Mrs. Judson looked at her for an instant, startled, and then glanced toward her own child with sudden understanding. She had thought these creatures were little children, and here—suddenly! What would come next? Her eyes went sternly to the frightened Frances standing huddled in her corner like a draggled nasturtium in her bright cheap draperies, and Frances quivered and slunk toward the door. But the bold black eyes of Sybil jeered at her, and Frances was forced to put up a feeble fight.

“I ain'ta going upstairs now, Ma. I got company!” she said, trying to make her voice both conciliatory and defiant, although she could see from her mother's face that her stand would be short-lived. When her mother was really roused, there was no gainsaying her.

“Let her stay, will you, Mrs. Judson? I want to ask her some questions. And you three, you stay, too. There's another one I want to see!”

He was pointing at Sybil. Gladys and Vivian huddled behind her with furtive glances toward the door.

Mrs. Judson sat down heavily, her stolid face blank with burden and despair. She was looking straight at Sybil as if a revelation was slowly dawning upon her.

Sybil leaned back nonchalantly against the doorframe, took out her cigarette, and lighted a match with an air of supreme contempt of the whole scene. She eyed the officer with an assumed amusement.

Then, with surprising agility for one who seemed so massive, Mrs. Judson was upon her feet and standing close to the bold-eyed girl, speaking in a calm low tone of command.

“Stop that!” she said. “You can't do that in my house! I may be old-fashioned and ugly, but I still know what's right, and there ain't no little huzzy like you goin' to overstep me. You c'n blow out that match and put that box in your pocket, but you can't stand there and smoke in my house. I've always been respectable, if my husband is in jail, and I intend to keep so!”

And, strange to say, Sybil obeyed her. She did it with an air of contempt, but she did it. Frances was amazed. She drooped in her corner and wondered what awful thing would come next.

Then spoke the officer.

“You kids had better look out,” he warned. “If you keep up the pace you're going, you'll all be landed in jail in another week. I know what I'm talking about, and you're headed straight downhill!”

The girls were frightened. Frances's face grew white, and she watched her mother with a sideways glance, but Sybil stood her ground contemptuously.

“It's none of your business what we do,” she said to the man boldly. “And you've got no right to make us stay here. I don't know anything about your Mister Ransom, if that's what you call him, and I'm going where there's some fun.”

“You're not going until you've answered me a few questions,” said the man firmly, and he flashed a badge from under his coat. “You're the girl that was in that seven-passenger Cadillac that was stolen from Seventh and Broad the other night. You got away then by lying, but you don't get away now. I've got this house watched back and front, and it won't do any good for you to try to slip out. If you answer my questions straight, you can go where you like, but if you try to put something over on me I'll have you taken to headquarters. Now, what's your full name?”

“Sybil Mary Johnston,” answered the girl sullenly.

“Where do you live?”

“Thirty-two Maple Street.”

“Is that your parents' home?”

“No. I live with my grandmother.”

“I see. And where do you go to school?”

“Oh, I quit school ages ago. I work in the silk fac'try.” There was a swagger to Sybil Mary's voice now. She felt that she was going to “get by” after all.

“I see. And do you go out every evening in the week? Does your grandmother approve?”

“Oh, sure! Nobody can't keep me in. Let 'em try. I never ast her could I go. I just go.”

“I see. And how early do you leave home?”

“It seems to me you're mighty nosey. I'm sure I don't know. I go when I like!”

“And where you like, I suppose. Well, do you happen to remember just what time you started out last Thursday night and where you went?”

“I don't recall,” said the girl insolently.

“Well,
recall
!” said the officer in a compelling tone. “You left your home somewhere about seven-thirty and went to the drugstore at the corner of Third and Pine Streets. You had several sodas and a sundae, and then walked down the street toward Fourth in company with the two girls who stand behind you, where you met this other girl”—he looked toward the shrinking Frances—“and all of you stood on the corner until four boys came along. Now, from there, Miss Johnston, will you continue?”

Sybil Mary's eyes had been getting less and less bold as he told crisply the tale of her doings, and the other three girls were plainly shaking with fright and looking at one another aghast. Frances put her face down on her arm and began to cry. She did not dare look at her mother. Sybil looked from one to the other of her partners in crime, helplessly, like a wild thing suddenly cornered. Then her eyes glinted hardly, and she tossed up her chin.

“Why, one of the fellas said his uncle left his car round the corner a little piece and said he might use it for the evening, and he ast us if we didn't all wantta go fer a ride. Ain't that so, girls?”

The girls hurriedly chorused, “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed! That was so.”

“Which of the boys was it said that?” asked the officer, his keen eyes taking in each girl with surprising understanding.

“Oh, I couldn't say,” said Sybil Mary airily. “I really don't remember. Do you, Fran? Was it Bob or Timmy? I didn't pay attention. I just heard the word
ride
, and that was all I cared.” She laughed jauntily.

“It wasn't Lawrence Ransom, was it?” quizzed the officer.

“Lawrence Ransom?” repeated Sybil thoughtfully. “I don't think I know him. Mebbe he was one of the strange fellas that was along with Bob and Timmy. I really didn't pay attention to their names. I never do when I'm introduced. It's too much trouble. We always give them nicknames anyway.”