not. Just a stupid plan to frighten you. Pay no attention to it. No" – she folded the letter as the girl put out her hand – "I'll take charge of this. Now you'd better hurry and get ready. The car will be waiting for you at nine, and Mr. Edwards expects to start that new picture to-day, doesn't he?"
"Yes." The girl rose. "It's a beautiful part. I'm the daughter of an old music teacher, who dies in Brooklyn, and leaves me in poverty. And later on, it turns out he was the heir to the throne of Moravia, and I'm a princess. Lots of adventures, and spies, and all that. Ralph Turner is the lover. He's awfully good-looking, don't you think?"
Mrs. Morton assented in rather a preoccupied way, as her daughter left the room. She was still thinking of the brutal threat which the girl had just received, and of the possible dangers to which she might as a result be exposed. Mrs. Morton by no means felt the matter to be a joke, in spite of the assurances she had given Ruth. The tone of the letter, the evident care which had been taken to prevent the identity of the writer from becoming known, filled her with the gravest alarm.
As she sat pondering the matter, Nora came into the room, with Ruth's dust coat and parasol in her hands. Mrs. Morton beckoned to the girl, then spoke to her in a low voice.
"Nora," she said, "Miss Ruth received a letter this morning, from somebody who is envious of her beauty and success. I pretended to make light of the matter, but there may be something back of it. I want you to watch her carefully while you are away from the house. Be on your guard every moment of the time. Don't let anyone come near her. They might try to throw acid, or something of the sort. I shan't feel safe until she is home again."
The maid's face lit up with a significant smile. From her manner it was clear that she fairly worshiped her young mistress.
"I'll not let anyone do her any harm, Mrs. Morton," she said, earnestly. "You may be sure of that."
"And don't let her know," Mrs. Morton added hastily, in a low voice, as she saw Ruth come to the door, "that I am at all worried. She must not have a threat like that on her mind."
The maid nodded, then turned toward the door where Ruth stood.
"Well, mother, good-by," the latter exclaimed with a laugh. "You can open all the rest of the letters, and if you come across any more like that last one, please keep them. I think I'll begin a collection."
Mrs. Morton forced herself to join in the girl's laughter.
"There won't be any more, dear," she said, kissing the girl fondly. "Don't bother your head about such things. They're not worth it. And come home as soon as you get through."
"All right, mother. We're going to the theater to-night, aren't we? Don't forget to get the tickets." With a smile she left the room, and a few moments later Mrs. Morton heard the rumble of the descending elevator.
She sat in silence for a long time, thinking, a great fear clutching at her heart. Her life, she reflected, had held, until recently, but little of happiness. The long, weary days of poverty, when her husband, incapacitated by a paralytic stroke, had seen his savings slowly dwindle away; the death of her son, and then that of Mr. Morton himself passed before her mental vision. Only Ruth had been left to her, and in the girl's happiness and success lay Mrs. Morton's whole life and being. Now, that things had at last taken a turn, and the future seemed clear and assured ahead of her, was some dreadful tragedy to change all her joy to sorrow? She turned to the pile of still unopened letters with a sigh, afraid, almost to proceed with the task of reading them. Yet, an hour later, when they had all been disposed of without further threats against Ruth having been discovered, she breathed more easily. Perhaps, after all, the horrible letter was merely a silly joke. She took it out and examined it again with the greatest care, but no clue to the identity of the writer rewarded her scrutiny. The message remained clear, terrible, full of sinister meaning. "Within thirty days it shall be destroyed, and you will be hideous!" The grinning death's head seal stared up at her, fascinatingly horrible. Mrs. Morton quickly placed the letter in her bosom.
Rising, she left the room, and proceeded to that occupied by Ruth. It pleased her, notwithstanding the servants, to take care of it herself. Mrs. Morton was passionately devoted to her beautiful daughter. In her, the sun rose and set.
She glanced about the daintily furnished room with a smile. The appointments were simple, almost girlish, in spite of their owner's large salary. Mrs. Morton began to set the room to rights. She had finished making the bed, and had gone over to the dressing table to arrange the articles upon it, when a square of white upon the floor attracted her attention.
It lay upon the rug in front of the dressing table, and appeared to be a letter of some sort.
Supposing it to be something that the girl had dropped in the hurry of leaving, Mrs. Morton stooped and picked it up. Then a queer feeling of dismay came over her. The large square white envelope, the typewritten address, bore a singular and disquieting resemblance to the one in which the threatening letter had been received so short a time before.
With trembling hands, Mrs. Morton tore the envelope open and removed the folded sheet of paper within. When her eyes fell upon the contents of the latter, she shuddered, and stood white with fear.
There was a message in typewritten characters upon the sheet, and Mrs. Morton read it with a groan of despair.
"Only twenty-nine days more!" the message said. "We shall not fail." Below the words grinned the frightful death's head seal.
CHAPTER II
Mrs. Harriet Morton was a courageous woman, but when she read the second threat against her daughter, she was filled with instant indignation and horror. The thing was so appallingly mysterious, so utterly without reasonable explanation.
Ruth had left the room but a few moments before. Certainly the letter was not upon the floor then. The maid, Nora, had gone with her. That removed her from any suspicion, even had such a thought been reasonable or possible, and Mrs. Morton felt it was not. The only other person in the apartment was Mary, their old cook, a negro from the south, who had been a faithful and patient member of the Morton household for over ten years. That she could have had a hand in placing this mysterious message in Ruth's bedroom seemed incredible, not to be entertained for a moment. And yet, there was the message, appallingly simple, direct, threatening. "Only twenty-nine days more!" Mrs. Morton shuddered.
She glanced about the room. How had the letter come there? Certainly not by means of the door. Yet it seemed equally out of the question that it could have been brought in through one of the windows.
There were two in the room, one facing to the front, and opening upon a court, the other in the rear, overlooking the yards of the houses on the next street. She went to the front window, which was raised only a few inches, and gazed out.
Below her stretched the wide court, flanked on one hand by the side of the apartment building, on the other by the blank wall of an adjoining house. The latter was some ten feet from where she stood, and there were no windows in it! She turned to the window at the other side of the room.
Here a fire escape led down to an alley at the rear of the building. Could it have been in this way that the letter had been delivered? The thing seemed impossible. Not only was the window closed, but she knew that the ladders did not reach all the way to the ground, the last section being pulled up, to be dropped only in case of fire. With a mystified look she returned to the center of the room.
The letter grinned at her from the dresser, on which she had left it. Ruth must never hear of the matter, she knew. Taking it up, she placed it in the bosom of her dress along with the one which had arrived earlier in the day. Then she sat down to decide what she had best do next.
To trifle with so dangerous a situation was no longer to be thought of. One message, the first, might have been a foolish joke. The second proved that the danger threatening her daughter was real, imminent.
At first she thought of placing the matter in the hands of the postal authorities, but would they, she wondered, concern themselves with threats delivered in other ways than by mail? This second message had not come through any such channels. In desperation she put on her hat, placed the two letters in her handbag and set out to seek the advice of one