Madge Morton's Victory Part 18

"And that horrid Philip Holt isn't along," declared Madge delightedly, "so I can tell her about poor little Tania."

Mrs. Curtis caught Madge, who had run out to meet her, by the hand. "My dear child, what is the matter with you?" the older woman asked immediately. "Even in this half-light I can see that your face is pale as death and you look utterly worn out. If one of you is ill, why have you not sent for me?"

When Madge faltered out her story of the lost Tania Mrs. Curtis hugged her to her in the old sympathetic way that the little captain knew and loved.

"I am so sorry, dear," soothed Mrs. Curtis, "but I am sure than Tom and Philip Holt will find her. I suppose that is why they have both been away all day."

"Philip Holt!" exclaimed Tom in surprise. "He hasn't been with us. I thought he was at home with you."

Mrs. Curtis shook her head indifferently. "No; he hasn't been at the cottage all day. Have any of you thought to send word to Captain Jules to ask him about Tania? It may be that the child is with him. In any event, I know Captain Jules would give us good advice."

"Bully for you, Mother!" cried Tom, glad to catch a straw as he saw the shadow on Madge's face lighten. "As soon as I have had a bite of supper with the girls I'll get hold of a boat and go after the captain."

Tom did not have to make his journey up the bay to "The Anchorage" that night. While he and his mother were at supper with the girls they heard the sound of Captain Jules's voice calling to them over the water. He had to come ash.o.r.e lower down the bay, where the water was deeper than it was near the houseboat, but he always hallooed as he approached.

"O Jenny Ann!" faltered Madge, trembling like a leaf, "it is our captain.

Perhaps he has brought Tania back with him. I--I--hope nothing dreadful has happened to her."

Without a word Tom fled off the houseboat. A moment later he espied Captain Jules coming toward him, alone!

"Halloo, son!" called out Captain Jules cheerfully. "Glad to know that you are down here with the girls. Funny thing, but I've had these girls on my mind all day. It seemed to me that they needed me, and I couldn't go to bed without finding out that everything was well with them. What's wrong?" Captain Jules had caught a fleeting glimpse of Tom's hara.s.sed face. "Is it--is it Madge?" he asked anxiously. "Is anything the matter with my girl?"

Tom shook his head rea.s.suringly. It took very few words to make the captain understand that the trouble was over Tania and not Madge.

When, a moment later, the captain went aboard the "Merry Maid" he was able to smile bravely at the discouraged women.

"Here, here!" he cried gruffly, while Madge clung to one of his h.o.r.n.y hands for support and Eleanor to the other, "what is all this nonsense I hear? Tania is not really lost, of course. I'll bet you we find the little witch in no time. She has just gone off somewhere in these New Jersey woods to join the fairies she talks so much about. They are sure to take good care of her. We can't do much more looking for her to-night, but I'll find her first thing in the morning."

Both Captain Jules and Mrs. Curtis insisted that the girls and Miss Jenny Ann go early to bed. Just as Captain Jules was saying good night it occurred to Miss Jenny Ann that she would rather turn over to the old sailor the box of coins and jewelry. While Tania was lost there would be so many persons in and out of the houseboat that Miss Jenny Ann feared something might happen to the valuables.

She went to the drawer in the sideboard in the saloon cabin without thinking of the key under her pillow, and took hold of the k.n.o.b. To her surprise the drawer opened readily. There was no iron safe inside it.

Miss Jenny Ann ran to her bed and felt under her pillow. The key was still there as though it had never been disturbed.

Captain Jules and Tom decided that the simple lock to the houseboat sideboard had been easily broken open. When, or how, or by whom, n.o.body knew, but it was certain that the jewels and money were gone. Fortune, the fickle jade, who had brought the houseboat girls such good luck only a short time before, had now cruelly stolen it away from them.

CHAPTER XIX

THE WICKED GENII

Tania had been aroused in the night by seeing a dark figure standing with his back to her only a few feet from her bed. Involuntarily the child stirred. In that instant a black-masked face turned toward her and Tania gave the single, terrified scream that Madge had heard. Before Tania could call out again, a handkerchief was tied so closely around her mouth that she could make no further sound.

A moment later the mysterious, sinister visitor picked the child up in his arms and bore her swiftly and quietly away from the shelter of the houseboat and her beloved friends. The little girl was very slender, yet her abductor staggered as he walked. He had something besides Tania that he was carrying.

About a quarter of a mile from the houseboat Tania was dumped into the rear end of an automobile and covered with a heavy steamer blanket. Then the automobile started off through the night, going faster and faster, it seemed to her, with each hour of darkness that remained.

At times the little prisoner slept. When she awakened she cried softly to herself, wondering who had stolen away with her and what was now to become of her. But Tania was only a child of the streets and she had been reared in a harder school than other happier children, so she made no effort to cry out or escape. She knew there was no one near to hear her, and the motor car was moving so swiftly that she could not possibly escape from it.

Tania and her unknown companion must have ridden all night. Evidently the driver of the car had not cared about the roads. He had pushed through heavy sand and ploughed over deep holes regardless of his machine. Speed was the only thing he thought of.

By and by the automobile stopped, after a particularly bad piece of traveling. The driver got down, lifted Tania, still wrapped in her blanket, in his arms and carried her inside a house. The child first saw the light in an old room, up several flights of steps, which was drearier and more miserable than anything she had ever beheld in her life in the tenements. It was big and mouldy, and dark with cobwebs swinging like dusty curtains over the windows that had not been washed for years. The windows looked out over a swamp that was thick with old trees.

But Tania saw none of these things when the blanket was first lifted from her head. She gave a gasp of fright and horror. For the first time she now realized that her captor was her childhood's enemy and evil genius, Philip Holt.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, with a long-drawn sigh that was almost a sob, "it is _you_! Why have you brought me here? What have I done?" Then a look of unearthly wisdom came into Tania's solemn, black eyes. She continued to stare at the young man so silently and gravely that Philip Holt's blonde face twitched with nervousness.

"Didn't you recognize me before?" he asked fiercely. "You were quite likely to shriek out in the night and spoil everything, so I had to carry you off with me, little nuisance that you are! You can just make up your mind, young woman, that you will stay right here in this room until I can take you to that nice inst.i.tution for bad children that I have been telling you about for such a long time. You'll never see your houseboat friends again."

Tania made no answer, and Philip Holt left her sitting on the floor of the gloomy room wide-eyed and silent.

For three days Tania stayed alone in that cheerless room. She saw no one but an old, half-foolish man who came to her three times a day to bring her food. He gave Tania a few rough garments to dress herself in and treated the little prisoner kindly, but Tania found it was quite useless to ask the old man questions. She was a wise, silent child, with considerable knowledge of life, and she understood that there was nothing to be gained by talking to her jailer, who would now and then grin foolishly and tell her that she was to be good and everything would soon be all right. Her nice, kind brother was going to take her away to school as soon as he could. The wicked people who had been trying to steal her away from her own brother should never find her if her brother could help it.

So the long nights pa.s.sed and the longer days, and little Tania would have been very miserable indeed except for her fairies and her dreams. It is never possible to be unhappy all the time, if you own a dream world of your own. Still, Tania found it much harder to pretend things, now that she had tasted real happiness with her houseboat girls, than she had when she lived with old Sal. It wasn't much fun to play at being an enchanted princess when you knew what it was to feel like a really happy little girl. And no one would care to be taken away to the most wonderful castle in fairyland if she had to leave the darling houseboat and Madge and Miss Jenny Ann and the other girls behind.

So all through the daylight Tania sat with her small, pale face pressed against the dirty window pane, waiting for Madge to come and find her.

She even hoped that a stranger might walk along close enough to the house for her to call for aid. But a dreary rain set in and all the countryside near Tania's prison house looked desolate. More than anything Tania feared the return of Philip Holt. Once he got hold of her again, she knew he would fulfill his threats.

During this dreadful time Tania had no human companion, but she was not like other children. She was part little girl and the rest of her an elf or a fay. The trees, the birds, and flowers were almost as real to her as human beings. For, until Madge and Eleanor had found her dancing on the New York City street corner, she had never had anybody to be kind to her, or whom she could love.

Just outside Tania's window there was a tall old cedar tree. Its long arms reached quite up to her window sill, and when the wind blew it used to wave her its greetings. Inside the comfortable branches of the tree there was a regular apartment house of birds, the nests rising one above the other to the topmost limbs.

Tania held long conversations with these birds in the mornings and in the late afternoons. She told them all her troubles, and how very much she would like to get away from the place where she was now staying. However, the birds were great gad-abouts during the day, and Tania could hardly blame them.

There was one fat, fatherly robin that became Tania's particular friend.

He used to hop about near her window and nod and chirp to her as though to rea.s.sure her. "Your friends will come for you to-day, I am quite sure of it," he used to say, until one day Tania really spoke aloud to him and was startled at the sound of her own voice.

"I don't believe you are a robin at all," she announced. "I just believe you are a nice, fat father of a whole lot of funny little boys and girls.

I believe you are enchanted, like me. Oh, dear! I was just beginning to believe that I wasn't a fairy after all but a real little girl with pretty clothes and friends to kiss me good night." Tania sighed. "I suppose I must be a fairy princess after all, for if I was a real little girl no one would have cast another wicked spell over me and shut me up in this dungeon in the woods, which is a whole lot worse than living with old Sal."

Yet playing and pretending, and, worse than anything, waiting, grew very tiresome to Tania. On the morning of the fourth day of her imprisonment Tania awoke with a start. Something had knocked on her window pane. It was only the old cedar tree, and Tania turned over in bed with a sob. But the tapping went on. She got up and went to her window. Quick as a flash Tania made up her mind to run away. Why had she never thought of it before? It was true, her bedroom door was always locked, but here were the branches of the cedar tree reaching close up to her window. Really, this morning they seemed to speak quite distinctly to Tania:

"Why in the world don't you come to me? I shall hold you quite safe! You can climb down through all my arms to the warm earth and then run away to your friends."

It was just after dawn. The pink sky was showing against the earlier grayness when Tania slipped into her coa.r.s.e clothes and, like a small elf, crept out of her window into the friendly branches of the old tree.

She was silent and swift as a squirrel as she clambered down. But she need not have feared. No one in the lonely country place was awake but the child.

Once on the ground, Tania ran on and on, without thinking where she was going. She only wished to get far away from the dreary house where Philip Holt had hidden her. There was a thick woods about a mile or so from Tania's starting place. No one would find her there. Once she was through it Tania hoped to find a town, or at least a farm, where she could ask for help. In spite of her queer, unchildlike ways, Tania knew enough to understand that if she could only find some one to telegraph to her friends they would soon come to her.

But the forest through which Tania hoped to pa.s.s was a dreadful cedar swamp, and in trying to cross it Tania wandered far into it and found herself hopelessly lost.

CHAPTER XX