Amy Drew once gave her mind to a thing she could be earnest enough. The little her chum had read her from the magazine article began to interest her. Besides, whatever Jessie was engaged in must of necessity hold the attention of Amy.
She laid aside the knitting and went to sit beside Jessie in the swing. They turned back to the beginning of the article and read it through together, their arms wound about each other in immemorial schoolgirl fashion.
Of course, as Amy pointed out, they were not exactly schoolgirls now. They were out of school – since two days before. The long summer vacation was ahead of them. Time might hang idly on their hands. So it behooved them to find something absorbing to keep their attention keyed up to the proper pitch.
“Tell you what,” Amy suggested. “Let’s go down town to the bookstore and see if they have laid in a stock of this radio stuff. We want one or two of the books mentioned here, Jess. We are two awfully smart girls, I know; we will both admit it. But some things we have positively got to learn.”
“Silly,” crooned Jessie, patting her chum on the cheek. “Let’s go. We’ll walk. Wait till I run and see if Momsy doesn’t want something from down town.”
“We won’t ask Mrs. Drew that question, for she will be pretty sure to want a dozen things, and I refuse – positively – to be a dray horse. I ‘have drew’ more than my share from the stores already. Cyprian in the car can run the dear, forgetful lady’s errands.”
Jessie scarcely listened to this. She ran in and ran out again. She was smiling.
“Momsy says all she wants is two George Washington sundaes, to be brought home in two separate parcels, one blonde and one brunette,” and she held up half a dollar before Amy’s eyes.
“Your mother, as I have always said, Jess, is of the salt of the earth. And she is well sugared, too. Let me carry the half dollar, honey. You’ll swallow it, or lose it, or something. Aren’t to be trusted yet with money,” and Amy marched down the steps in the lead.
She always took the lead, and usually acted as though she were the moving spirit of the pair. But, really, Jessie Norwood was the more practical, and it was usually her initiative that started the chums on a new thing and always her “sticktoitiveness” that carried them through to the end.
Bonwit Boulevard, beautifully laid out, shaded with elms, with a grass path in the middle, two oiled drives, and with a bridle path on one side, was one of the finest highways in the state. At this hour of the afternoon, before the return rush of the auto-commuters from the city, the road was almost empty.
The chums chatted of many things as they went along. But Jessie came back each time to radio. She had been very much interested in the wonder of it and in the possibility of rigging the necessary aerials and setting up a receiving set at her own house.
“We can get the books to tell us how to do it, and we can buy the wire for the antenna to-day,” she said.
“‘Antenna’! Is it an insect?” demanded Amy. “Sounds crawly.”
“Those are the aerials–”
“Listen!” interrupted Amy Drew.
A sound – a shrill and compelling voice – reached their ears. Amy’s hand clutched at Jessie’s arm and held her back. There was nobody in sight, and the nearest house was some way back from the road.
“What is it?” murmured Jessie.
“Help! He-e-elp!” repeated the voice, shrilly.
“Radio!” muttered Amy, sepulchrally. “It is a voice out of the air.”
There positively was nobody in sight. But Jessie Norwood was practical. She knew there was a street branching off the boulevard just a little way ahead. Besides, she heard the throbbing of an automobile engine.
“Help!” shrieked the unknown once more.
“It is a girl,” declared Jessie, beginning to run and half dragging Amy Drew with her. “She is in trouble! We must help her!”
CHAPTER II
A ROAD MYSTERY
Like a great many other beautiful streets, there was a poverty-stricken section, if sparsely inhabited, just behind Bonwit Boulevard. A group of shacks and squatters’ huts down in a grassy hollow, with a little brook flowing through it to the lake, and woods beyond. It would not have been an unsightly spot if the marks of the habitation of poor and careless folk had been wiped away.
But at the moment Jessie Norwood and her chum, Amy Drew, darted around from the broad boulevard into the narrow lane that led down to this poor hamlet, neither of the girls remembered “Dogtown,” as the group of huts was locally called. The real estate men who exploited Roselawn and Bonwit Boulevard as the most aristocratic suburban section of New Melford, never spoke of Dogtown.
“What do you suppose is the matter, Jess?” panted Amy.
“It’s a girl in trouble! Look at that!”
The chums did not have to go even as far as the brow of the hill overlooking the group of houses before mentioned. The scene of the action of this drama was not a hundred yards off the boulevard.
A big touring car stood in the narrow lane, headed toward the broad highway from which Jessie and Amy had come. It was a fine car, and the engine was running. A very unpleasant looking, narrow-shouldered woman sat behind the steering wheel, but was twisted around in her seat so that she could look behind her.
In the lane was another woman. Both were expensively dressed, though not tastefully; and this second woman was as billowy and as generously proportioned as the one behind the wheel was lean. She was red-faced, too, and panted from her exertions.
Those exertions, it was evident at once to Jessie and Amy, were connected with the capturing and the subsequent restraining of a very active and athletic girl of about the age of the chums. She was quite as red-faced as the fleshy woman, and she was struggling with all her might to get away, while now and then she emitted a shout for help that would have brought a crowd in almost no time in any place more closely built up.
“Oh! What is the matter?” repeated Amy.
“Bring her along, Martha!” exclaimed the woman already in the motor-car. “Here come a couple of rubber-necks.”
This expression, to Jessie’s mind, marked the driver of the automobile for exactly what she was. Nor did the face of the fat woman impress the girl as being any more refined.
As for the girl struggling with the second woman – the one called “Martha” – she was not very well dressed. But she looked neat and clean, and she certainly was determined not to enter the automobile if she could help it. Jessie doubted, although she had at first thought it possible, if either of these women were related to the girl they seemed so determined to capture.
“What are they – road pirates? Kidnapers?” demanded Amy. “What?”
The two chums stopped by the machine. They really did not know what to do. Should they help the screaming girl? Or should they aid the fleshy woman? It might be that the girl had run away from perfectly good guardians. Only, to Jessie’s mind, there was something of the refinement that pertained to the girl lacking in the appearance of these two women. She was not favorably impressed by them.
“What is the matter with the girl?” she asked the woman in the car.
Although she said it politely, the woman flashed her a scowling glance and said:
“Mind your own business!”
“My!” gasped Amy at this, her eyes opening very wide.
Jessie was not at all reassured. She turned to the fleshy woman, and repeated her question:
“What is the matter with the girl?”
“She’s crazy, that’s what she is!” cried the woman. “She doesn’t know what is good for her.”
“I’ll learn her!” rasped out the driver of the car.
“Don’t!”