The Topeka State Journal

EVENING STORY
The Victim Below Stairs.
(By Jane Osborn.)
It was with a strong spirit of filial affection, mingled with just a shade of regret, that Baldwin Stone determined to spend the two weeks of his vacation with his mother in her small city apartment. He might have joined one of his partners at the yacht club, where there would have been outdoor recreation, self-forgetfulness and feminine society, all of which would have come as part of a welcome change to Baldwin after the confining winter in his law office. But these temptations he put aside. It had about been determined that he was to go to South America in the autumn, and if he did he might not return home for a year. Perhaps a much longer period would elapse before he saw the mother again. Hence his determination to spend his entire vacation with her.
After the first elatement over seeing this big man-boy of hers there was dinner in the spruce little dining-room, that was cool and airy in spite of the fact that it looked out only on the small court of the apartment. Then after dinner, as they lingered for a little while over their coffee, Mrs. Stone showed a strange preoccupation-traces of which her son had caught before during the few hours he had been home.
He queried with his eyes.
"Yes, I am worried, Baldwin," she answered, divining his meaning. "It is beginning to get on my nerves, I think your knowledge of Spanish is going to help me solve the problem. Of course, I don't allow myself to brood over it, but the strangest wails come up to these windows sometimes. I think it is Spanish, tho I cannot tell. I am sure you could. Suppose we stay here and see if they will begin."
"Cries from the apartment below?" Baldwin was inclined to make light of the matter. "Anything of that sort should be referred to the janitor, the superintendent or the police. You shouldn't allow yourself to be distressed."
"But I did ask the elevator man and he looked so strange-at least I thought he did. I asked him who lived in the apartment below and he said, in that drawling voice of his: 'Miss and Mrs. Martin.' I asked him if either of them was ill and he said: 'N' indeed, ma'am.' Just that way, and when I told him about the voices he laughed and wouldn't do anything about it. I suppose if it is a case-one of those horrible cases where the girl is held against her will-the people will have bribed him into secrecy. But I can't help but think about it."
"Don't you remember what the voice said?"
A low expressionless voice from the court interrupted Martin, who stopped short.
"There it is," whispered Mrs. Stone and the mother and son drew near to the window and listened intently.
"Tengo mucho calor," came the voice in Spanish, " 'I am very warm,' interpreted Baldwin. "That's perfectly clear." "I feel much worse, a little water. please, A drop of water, I am thirsty!" came in Spanish in the same expressionless. soul-stirring woman's voice.
For a little while there was silence. Then the gruesome refrain broke out again. Baldwin shuddered and put his arm around his mother's shoulder.
"Let's adjourn to the living room," he said. "You haven't said anything to any one but the elevator man about your suspicions, have you?" he asked.
"No!" whispered his mother.
"Well, don't and don't tell any one what the voice says. Not even Mattie in the kitchen, I am not quite certain what I shall do. I suppose the--the people who are keeping the girl there figure that no one understands Spanish around here, and so they don't take the trouble to silence her, But they showed their dullness there. I didn't realize that I should make use of what little I know before going to South America in quite such a telling manner as this."
Adjourned to the living room in the front of the house, they heard no more of the voice. They talked of many things, but always there was the preoccupation. Clearly neither had forgotten--tho neither discussed it--the unpleasant event that had just focused their attention.
They. parted, to retire early.
"Aren't you going to do anything about it?" queried Mrs. Stone, who had long ago ceased to make open suggestions to. this grownup son of hers. No matter how much she hoped he would immediately report the matter to the police, all she would do was to let him go his own way.
"I am not quite sure what I shall do," Baldwin replied, "In the meantime you get to bed and trust me to do what is best. Good night, motherkins."
An hour later Baldwin, still dressed. stole from his room to the dining room. He knelt down by the window many minutes and then heard the voice, perhaps lower, as if the window had been partly closed: "I am faint," came in Spanish this time. "Water: a little water, please."
Quietly he opened the window and with a feline movement that hardly suited his broad frame he crept down the fire escape.
The window was partly closed below, but a soft, diffused green light was cast about inside. He crouched down beside the window, waiting for the wind to blow the curtain far enough from the window frame so that he might catch a glimpse of the person within.
What he saw was apparently a room that served by day for a living room and by night as a sleeping room. The green light came from a business-like reading lamp on the table. The wide couch at the side of the room was open, ready for its occupant.
Could it be that the victim slept there? At least the quarters were not those of a prisoner.
He watched for a few minutes, but no one entered the room. Back he climbed to his own apartment and then watched till he saw the light turned out below and again he made his descent.
The window was opened this time and he could see the starlit room within. It was practically the same, save that on the couch lay a girl sleeping soundly. Her face showed delicacy and a rather worn expression even in sleep. But she was clearly very pretty and of the golden haired type that Baldwin admired.
For the first moment he was tempted to enter and carry her out bodily, but he thought better of this plan. He had at least seen her, so he reclimbed to his apartment above and went to his own bed. When he did sleep it was to dream of rescuing the beautiful light-haired Spanish girl who was kept prisoner below.
How lucky that he spoke Spanish! Most remarkable, too, that a Spanish girl should have golden hair. No doubt the eyes that he had seen only closed were as dark and spirited as her hair was golden.
The next morning he thought of a more deliberate rescue . At breakfast he had this plan of action so well thought out, in fact, that to his mother he appeared not in the least agitated.
"I'm going to brave the lion in his den," he said. "I'll go right down this morning and tell them why I have come. I'll take the wind out of their sails a bit, I think."
Mrs. Stone turned pale. It was such a surprise to her to think of going about so delicate a piece of business in such a direct manner. Had it not been Baldwin who proposed it she would have thought the idea foolish.
When Baldwin reached the apartment below he was a little side-tracked from the first. The charming little woman with golden hair and blue eyes opened the door and disconcerted him by seizing his hand and shaking it cordially. : Then Baldwin recognized her, not so much as the girl he had seen sleeping on her couch the night before, but as the little sister Abby of Tod Martin, a one-time college room-mate of his. Only she had grown less of a child since the time four years before when he had met her at a dance.
"I knew the lady upstairs was your mother." she told him after she had ushered him into the small living-room, "because I heard her tell the elevator man that her son was coming home for his vacation and she called you Baldwin, I was hoping you would come to see me."
Yes, Baldwin assured himself, it was the "victim," but where was the Spanish accent? Where were the brown Spanish eyes he had pictured? And where were the signs of the suffering thru which she must have gone?
It was hard getting back to the problem he was trying to solve, for Abigail Martin was full of enthusiasm -enthusiasm over Baldwin and enthusiasm over herself. She managed to find out in five minutes just what he was doing as a lawyer and that that he was going to South America,
"How wonderful," she squealed, fairly dancing with joy. "Then we can talk Spanish together. You see I have been studying medicine. I get my degree this summer and I am going to be a sure-enough doctor. Isn't that wonderful? And I'm going to South America, too; mother and I together."
"You are studying medicine," Baldwin seized this as a possible cue. "Then," he faltered, "perhaps one of your patients is here now. I have heard the cries in the court. She seems to be in great distress.'
Abigail shouted with glee. "Oh, that is poor old 'Senorita Dolorita.' That is what we call the phonograph, you know. I taught myself Spanish with one of those phonograph arrangements that talk it to you, and as I was going to need to understand patients more than anything else I had a special set of records made with just the kind of things that patients say. And I didn't know any one would understand. I've been thinking," she suddenly diverted, "if you're going to South America and I am going why shouldn't our mothers go together. I know your mother will miss you dreadfully, and mine might be lonely when I am off on my practice. Wouldn't that be wonderful? You know you were awfully good to look me up the first thing. I always thought you thought I was a foolish infant. That's the way you used to treat me."
By this time the visions of the-dark-eyed Spaniard had vanished and Baldwin was assuring himself that in all the world there was nothing so beautiful, so lovely, so intoxicating as the blue depths of a blue-eyed woman's eyes.
And that is how it happened that when Baldwin Stone set up his shingle outside a pretentious white stone villa in Argentina there was a similar shingle on the opposite pillar. On his were the words, "Baldwin Stone, American lawyer," and on the smaller one, "Dr. Abigail Martin Stone."
(Copyright, 1917, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)