FullReads

Until daylight and after she lay there planning a course of action until finally she had it completed. True, it was a grasping at feeble straws, but even so she meant to follow along the only course which seemed open to her.

First she did some long-distance telephoning. Then immediately after breakfast she sent to the garage round the corner for her runabout and in it she rode up through the city and on into Westchester, now beginning to flaunt the circus colors of a gorgeous Indian summer. An hour and a half of steady driving brought her to the village of Pleasantdale. She found it a place well named, seeing that it was tucked down in a cove among the hills between the Hudson on the one side and the Sound on the other.

Following the directions given her by a lone policeman on duty in the tiny public square, she ran two blocks along the main street and drew up where a window sign giving name and hours advertised that James P. McGlore, M.D., here professionally received patients in his office on the lower floor of his place of residence. A maidservant answered the caller’s knock, and showing her into a chamber furnished like a parlor which had started out to be a reception room and then had tried–too late–to change back again into a parlor, bade her wait. She did not have long to wait. Almost immediately an inner door opened and in the opening appeared the short and blocky figure of a somewhat elderly, old-fashioned-looking man with a square homely face–a face which instantly she classified as belonging to a rather stupid, very dogmatic and utterly honest man. He had outjutting, belligerent eyebrows and a stubborn underjaw that was badly undershot. He spoke as he entered and his tone was noticeably not cordial.

“The girl tells me your name is Smith. I suppose from that you’re the young person that the district attorney telephoned me about an hour or so ago. Well, how can I serve you?”

“Perhaps, doctor, the district attorney told you I had interested myself in the case of the Vinsolving girl–Margaret Vinsolving,” she began. “I had intended to call also upon your associate, Doctor Malt, over at Wincorah, but I learn he is away.”

“Yes, yes,” he said with a sort of hurried petulance. “Know all about that. Malt’s like a lot of these young new physicians–always running off on vacations. Mustn’t hold me responsible for his absences. Got no time to think about the other fellow. Own affairs are enough–keep me busy. Well, go on, why don’t you? You were speaking of the Vinsolving girl. Well, what of her?”

“I was saying that I had interested myself in her case and–“

He snapped in: “One moment. Let’s get this all straightened out before we start. May I inquire if you are closely related to the young person in question?”

“I am not. I never saw her but once.”

“Are you by any chance a close friend of the young woman?”

He towered over her, for she was seated and he had not offered to sit down. Indeed throughout the interview he remained standing.

Looking up at him, where he glowered above her, she answered back promptly:

“As I was saying, I never saw her but once–that was on the day she was carried away to be placed in confinement. So I cannot call myself her friend exactly, though I would like to be her friend. It was because of the sympathy which her position–and I might add, her personality–roused in me that I have taken the liberty of coming here to see you about her.”

Under his breath he growled and grunted and puffed certain sounds. She caught the purport of at least two of the words.

“Pardon me, doctor,” she said briskly, “but I am not an amateur philanthropist. I trust I’m not an amateur anything. I am a business woman earning my own living by my own labors and I pay taxes and for the past year or so I have been a citizen and a voter. Please do not regard me merely as an officious meddler–a busybody with nothing to do except to mind other people’s affairs. It was quite by chance that I came upon this poor child and learned something of her unhappy state.”