"Fancy knowing God--as you would your other friends! How
dreadful! Let's go to bed!"
Opal began to get out her lovely brushes and toilet paraphernalia and
Lynn let down her wonderful golden mane and began to brush it, looking
exquisite in a little blue dimity kimona delicately edged with'
valenciennes. Opal made herself radiant in a rose-chiffon and old-point
negligee and went through numerous gyrations relating to the
complexion, complaining meanwhile of the lack of a maid.
But after the lights were out, and Lynn kneeling silently by her bed in
the moonlight, Opal lay on the other bed and watched her wonderingly,
and when a few minutes later, Marilyn rose softly and crept into bed as
quietly as possible lest she disturb her guest, Opal spoke: "I wonder what you would do if a man--the man you liked best in all the
world,--had got killed doing something to please you. It makes you go
crazy when you think of it--someone you've danced with lying
dead that way all alone. I wonder what you'd do!"
Lynn brought her mind back from her own sorrows and prayers with a jerk
to the problem of this strange guest. She did not answer for a moment,
then she said very slowly: "I think--I don't know--but I think I should go right to God and
ask Him what to do. I think nobody else could show what ought to be
done. There wouldn't be anything else to do!"
"Oh, murder!" said Opal turning over in bed quickly, and hiding
her face in the pillow, and there was in the end of her breath just the
suggestion of a shriek of fear.
But far, far into the night Marilyn lay on her sleepless pillow, her
heart crying out to God: "Oh, save Mark! Take care of Mark! Show him
the way back again!"
Afar in the great city a message stole on a wire through the night, and
presently the great presses were hot with its import, printing
thousands and thousands of extras for early morning consumption, with
headlines in enormous letters across the front page: "LAURENCE SHAFTON, SON OF WILLIAM J. SHAFTON, KIDNAPPED!"
"Mrs. Shafton is lying in nervous collapse as the result of threats from
kidnappers who boldly called her up on the phone and demanded a king's
ransom, threatening death to the son if the plot was revealed before
ten o'clock this morning. The faithful mother gathered her treasures
which included the famous Shafton Emeralds, and a string of pearls
worth a hundred thousand dollars, and let them down from her window as
directed, and then fainted, knowing nothing more till her maid hearing
her fall, rushed into the room and found her unconscious. When roused
she became hysterical and told what had happened. Then remembering the
threat of death for telling ahead of time she became crazy with grief,
and it was almost impossible to soothe her. The maid called her family
physician, explaining all she knew, and the matter was at once put into
the hands of capable detectives who are doing all they know how to
locate the missing son, who has been gone only since Saturday evening;
and also to find the missing jewels and other property, and it is hoped
that before evening the young man will be found."