Chapter 10 MR. STANLOCK AMUSED.

"I understand now how a mathematician could write 'Alice in Wonderland'," Helen Nash remarked to Marion after Mr. Stanlock had withdrawn to the diningroom and his belated meal.

"How is that?" the hostess inquired, looking curiously at her friend.

"Why, your father, I suppose, has been thinking in terms of tons of coal all day-"

"Carloads," Marion corrected, with a toss of levity.

"Well, make it carloads," Helen assented. "That's better to my purpose, more like a multiplication table, instead of addition. But it must be about as dry as mathematics."

"Oh, I get you," Marion exclaimed delightedly. "You mean that it is quite as remarkable for a coal operator, with carloads of coal and soot weighing down his imagination all day, to come home in the evening and spin off a lot of nonsense like a comedian as it is for a mathematician to have written 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'."

"Precisely," answered Helen.

"Well, I don't know but you're right. Anyway, I wouldn't detract from such a nice compliment paid to the dearest daddy on earth. Still, after leaving the atmosphere of his carloads of coal he had experienced the diversion of being held up."

"By two masked men with guns on a lonely highway," supplemented Helen.

"Yes."

"And later found that his driver had turned traitor and planned to deliver him into the hands of the enemy."

"Yes."

"I don't see any diversion or inspiration in that sort of experience. Many a man would have come home in a very depressed state of mind after such an adventure. And yet he came home, found everybody scared to death, and before he even began his story had us all laughing just as Alice would at some of the contortions behind the looking glass. And he kept us smiling even when he told of the masked would-be kidnappers standing in the middle of the road and pointing pistols at the driver of his automobile."

"Kidnappers," repeated Marion in puzzled surprise. "Why do you say kidnappers?"

The two girls were alone in the library when this conversation took place. All of the other guests, feeling that the members of the family would prefer to be left alone following the startling occurrences of the evening, had withdrawn to their rooms. Helen was about to bid her friend good-night when her remark regarding Mr. Stanlock's happy personal faculties opened the discussion as here recorded. She hesitated a few moments before answering the last inquiry; then she said:

"Don't you think that those men intended to kidnap your father? What other explanation can you find for their actions?"

"I hadn't tried to figure out their motive," Marion replied thoughtfully. "Father called it a hold-up and I took his word for it."

"But he had no money with him, did he?"

"No, I think not. He seldom carries much money."

"And it is hardly reasonable to suppose that this plot between the chauffeur and the two highwaymen was for the purpose of murder. They would have gone about it in some other way. This one leaves too many traces behind."

"Yes," Marion admitted.

"Well, the only reasonable conclusion you can reach with the robbery and murder motives out of the way, is that the plotters wished to take your father prisoner and hold him some place until they got what they wanted."

"But what did they want?" asked the bewildered Marion.

"That's for your father to suspect and the police to find out," said Helen shrewdly. "Personally, I haven't a doubt that the strike has everything to do with it."

"What makes you think so?"

"The threatening letter that you received at the Institute. Show that to your father tonight and suggest that he turn it over to the police."

"I will," Marion promised. "In this new excitement I forgot all about it. I didn't even show it to mother. Just as soon as papa finishes his dinner, I'm going to show that letter to him. I'll go upstairs now and get it. You wait here and be present when we talk it over, Helen. You're so good at offering suggestions that maybe with you present we can all work out some kind of solution of what has been going on."

Marion hastened up to her room and returned presently with both of the anonymous letters she had received in Westmoreland. A few minutes later her father and mother both entered the library with the evident purpose in mind of holding a lengthy conference on the problems growing out of Mr. Stanlock's business troubles.

"Papa, do you think those men tried to kidnap you?" Marion inquired by way of introducing the subject.

Mr. Stanlock laughed heartily.

"Kidnap me!" he exclaimed. "Well, that's a good one. I thought they only kidnapped kids."

"Father," the girl pleaded; "do be serious with me. I've got something very important to show you, something I forgot all about until Helen reminded me. Helen thinks those men tried to kidnap you, and she's a pretty wise girl, as I've had occasion to find out."

"If Helen said that, she surely must be a wise girl or else she has made a pretty accurate guess," was the mine owner's reply.

"Then they did want to kidnap you?"

"Absolutely no doubt of it. They've got some kind of retreat in the mountains, and planned to carry me off there and keep me prisoner."

"What for?"

"Why, to force me to yield to some of their demands, which are utterly impossible and unreasonable. First, they demand an increase of wages that would force us into a receivership sooner or later and again they demand the adoption of a cooperative plan which eventually would make them owners of the mines, if there were any possibility of it working, and there isn't. It's a most ridiculous hold-up, the responsibility for which rests with a few fanatical leaders of doubtful integrity."

"What do you think of these letters?" Marion asked, handing the two anonymous missives to her father. "I received them by mail at the Institute last night, but neglected to read them until we were all on the train this morning."

As Mr. Stanlock read them, his brow contracted sternly. He could treat lightly any hostile attack on himself, but when danger threatened members of his family or their intimate friends, all signs of levity disappeared from his manner and he was ready at once to meet with all his energy the source of the danger, whether it be human or an element of inanimate nature.

"This" he said, as he finished reading and held up the letter signed with a skull and cross-bones, "undoubtedly came from the source where the plot to kidnap me originated. They are pretty well organized and determined to go the limit. Of course, you girls must give up your plans to work among the strikers' families. It would be foolhardy and probably would result in somebody's getting hurt."

"How about the other letter?" Marion asked.

"I don't know," was the reply. "It doesn't seem to amount to much. I hardly think it is to be taken as a threat. Have you no idea who sent it?"

"Some of the girls think it was sent by some of the Boy Scouts at Spring Lake. You see they came up in full force to Hiawatha on the night when we held our Grand Council Fire. It was a complete surprise on us, exceedingly well done and about as clever as you could expect from the cleverest boys. Before they left, several of them boasted openly that they were planning another surprise for some of us, and they dared us to find out in advance what it was."

"No doubt that is what this note means," Mr. Stanlock declared so positively and such a gleam of interest in his eyes that Marion could not help wondering just a little.

"What makes you so certain about it?" she inquired. "I don't see any real proof in those words as to what they mean or who wrote them."

"No, no, of course not," agreed Mr. Stanlock with seemingly uncalled for glibness; "but then, you see, it is more reasonable to suspect that this note came from the boys than from the strikers. If it is between the two,-the boys and the strikers,-I say forget the strikers and be sure that the boys sent this note."

"I wish that the boys would spring their surprise tonight and settle the question of that note," said Marion.

"Why?" inquired her father with the faint light of a smile in his eyes.

"Because I don't like the uncertainty of the thing. Uncertainty always bothers me, and this is a more than ordinary case."

"But how could the boys spring their surprise without coming to Hollyhill?" her father asked.

"That's just it," she returned with a quick glance of suspicion toward both her father and her mother. "Do you know, I found myself wondering several times if Clifford wouldn't bring some of those boys down here some time during the holidays."

Mr. Stanlock laughed, but he would have given a good deal to be able to recall the noise he made. It was really a noise, as he must have admitted himself, and so hollow as to indicate something decidedly unlike spontaneous amusement.

Marion caught herself in a brown study several times over these circumstances and her father's manner before she went to sleep that night.

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