



Produced by Darleen Dove, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed
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                          THE GIRL AT CENTRAL
                          BY GERALDINE BONNER




       Author of "The Emigrant Trail," "The Book of Evelyn," etc.




                             ILLUSTRATED BY
                          ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN




                          NEW YORK AND LONDON
                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
                                  1915




                          Copyright, 1915, by
                       _D. Appleton and Company_




       _Copyright, 1914, 1915, by The Curtis Publishing Company_




               _Printed in the United States of America_




[Illustration: _'Mark my words, there's going to be trouble at
Mapleshade'"_]




CONTENTS


  - LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
  - I
  - II
  - III
  - IV
  - V
  - VI
  - VII
  - VIII
  - IX
  - X
  - XI
  - XII
  - XIII
  - XIV
  - XV
  - XVI
  - XVII




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


'Mark my words, there's going to be trouble at Mapleshade'
Sylvia was in her riding dress, looking a picture
A day later he was arrested at Firehill and taken to Bloomington jail
I came down to the parlor where Babbitts was waiting




I


Poor Sylvia Hesketh! Even now, after this long time, I can't think of it
without a shudder, without a comeback of the horror of those days after
the murder. You remember it--the Hesketh mystery? And mystery it surely
was, baffling, as it did, the police and the populace of the whole
state. For who could guess why a girl like that, rich, beautiful,
without a care or an enemy, should be done to death as she was. Think of
it--at five o'clock sitting with her mother taking tea in the library at
Mapleshade and that same night found dead--murdered--by the side of a
lonesome country road, a hundred and eighteen miles away.

It's the story of this that I'm going to tell here, and as you'll get a
good deal of me before I'm through, I'd better, right now at the start,
introduce myself.

I'm Molly Morganthau, day operator in the telephone exchange at
Longwood, New Jersey, twenty-three years old, dark, slim, and as for my
looks--well, put them down as "medium" and let it go at that. My name's
Morganthau because my father was a Polish Jew--a piece worker on
pants--but my two front names, Mary McKenna, are after my mother, who
was from County Galway, Ireland. I was raised in an East Side tenement,
but I went steady to the Grammar school and through the High and I'm not
throwing bouquets at myself when I say I made a good record. That's how
I come to be nervy enough to write this story--but you'll see for
yourself. Only just keep in mind that I'm more at home in front of a
switchboard than at a desk.

I've supported myself since I was sixteen, my father dying then, and my
mother--God rest her blessed memory!--two years later. First I was in a
department store and then in the Telephone Company. I haven't a relation
in the country and if I had I wouldn't have asked a nickel off them. I'm
that kind, independent and--but that's enough about me.

Now for you to rightly get what I'm going to tell I'll have to begin
with a description of Longwood village and the country round about. I've
made a sort of diagram--it isn't drawn to scale but it gives the general
effect, all right--and with that and what I'll describe you can get an
idea of the lay of the land, which you have to have to understand
things.


Longwood's in New Jersey, a real picturesque village of a thousand
inhabitants. It's a little over an hour from New York by the main line
and here and there round it are country places, mostly fine ones owned
by rich people. There are some farms too, and along the railway and the
turnpike are other villages. My exchange is the central office for a
good radius of country, taking in Azalea, twenty-five miles above us on
the main line, and running its wires out in a big circle to the
scattered houses and the crossroad settlements. It's on Main Street,
opposite the station, and from my chair at the switchboard I can see the
platform and the trains as they come down from Cherry Junction or up
from New York. It's sixty miles from Longwood to the Junction where you
get the branch line that goes off to the North, stopping at other
stations, mostly for the farm people, and where, when you get to
Hazelmere, you can connect with an express for Philadelphia. Also you
can keep right on from the Junction and get to Philadelphia that way,
which is easier, having no changes and better trains.

When I was first transferred from New York--it's over two years now--I
thought I'd die of the lonesomeness of it. At night, looking out of my
window--I lived over Galway's Elite Millinery Parlors on Lincoln
Street--across those miles and miles of country with a few lights dotted
here and there, I felt like I was cast on a desert island. After a while
I got used to it and that first spring when the woods began to get a
faint greenish look and I'd wake up and hear birds twittering in the
elms along the street--hold on! I'm getting sidetracked. It's going to
be hard at first to keep myself out, but just be patient, I'll do it
better as I go along.

The county turnpike goes through Longwood, and then sweeps away over the
open country between the estates and the farms and now and then a
village--Huntley, Latourette, Corona--strung out along it like beads on
a string. A hundred and fifty miles off it reaches Bloomington, a big
town with hotels and factories and a jail. About twenty miles before it
gets to Bloomington it crosses the branch line near Cresset's Farm.
There's a little sort of station there--just an open shed--called
Cresset's Crossing, built for the Cresset Farm people, who own a good
deal of land in that vicinity. Not far from Cresset's Crossing, about a
half mile apart, the Riven Rock Road from the Junction and the Firehill
Road from Jack Reddy's estate run into the turnpike.

This is the place, I guess, where I'd better tell about Jack Reddy, who
was such an important figure in the Hesketh mystery and who--I get red
now when I write it--was such an important figure to me.

A good ways back--about the time of the Revolution--the Reddy family
owned most of the country round here. Bit by bit they sold it off till
in old Mr. Reddy's time--Jack's father--all they had left was the
Firehill property and Hochalaga Lake, a big body of water, back in the
hills beyond Huntley. Firehill is an old-fashioned, stone house, built
by Mr. Reddy's grandfather. It got its name from a grove of maples on
the top of a mound that in the autumn used to turn red and orange and
look like the hillock was in a blaze. The name, they say, came from the
Indian days and so did Hochalaga, though what that stands for I don't
know. The Reddys had had lots of offers for the lake but never would
sell it. They had a sort of little shack there and before Jack's time,
when there were no automobiles, used to make horseback excursions to
Hochalaga and stay for a few days. After the old people died and Jack
came into the property everybody thought he'd sell the lake--several
parties were after it for a summer resort--but he refused them all, had
the shack built over into an up-to-date bungalow, and through the summer
would have guests down from town, spending week-ends out there.

Now I'm telling everything truthful, for that's what I set out to do,
and if you think I'm a fool you're welcome to and no back talk from
me--but I was crazy about Jack Reddy. Not that he ever gave me cause;
he's not that kind and neither am I. And let me say right here that
there's not a soul ever knew it, he least of all. I guess no one would
have been more surprised than the owner of Firehill if he'd known that
the Longwood telephone girl most had heart failure every time he passed
the window of the Exchange.

I will say, to excuse myself, that there's few girls who wouldn't have
put their hats straight and walked their prettiest when they saw him
coming. Gee--he was a good looker! Like those advertisements for collars
and shirts you see in the back of the magazines--you know the ones. But
it wasn't that that got me. It was his ways, always polite, never fresh.
If he'd meet me in the street he'd raise his hat as if I was the Queen
of Sheba. And there wasn't any hanging round my switchboard and asking
me to make dates for dinner in town. He was always jolly, but--a girl in
a telephone exchange gets to know a lot--he was always a gentleman.

He lived at Firehill--forty miles from Longwood--with two old servants,
David Gilsey and his wife, who'd been with his mother and just doted on
him. But everybody liked him. There wasn't but one criticism I ever
heard passed on him and that was that he had a violent temper. Casey,
his chauffeur, told a story in the village of how one day, when they
were passing a farm, they saw an Italian laborer <DW8> a horse with a
pitchfork. Before he knew, Mr. Reddy was out of the car and over the
fence and mashing the life out of that <DW55>. It took Casey and the
farmer to pull him off and they thought the <DW55>'d be killed before they
could.

There was talk in Longwood that he hadn't much money--much, the way the
Reddys had always had it--and was going to study law for a living. But
he must have had some, for he kept up the house, and had two motors, one
just a common roadster and the other a long gray racing car that he'd
let out on the turnpike till he was twice arrested and once ran over a
dog.

My, how well I got to know that car! When I first came I only saw it at
long intervals. Then--just as if luck was on my side--I began to see it
oftener and oftener, slowing down as it came along Main Street, swinging
round the corner, jouncing across the tracks, and dropping out of sight
behind the houses at the head of Maple Lane.

"What's bringing Jack Reddy in this long way so often?" people would say
at first.

Then, after a while, when they'd see the gray car, they'd look sly at
each other and wink.

There's one good thing about having a crush on a party that's never
thought any more about you than if you were the peg he hangs his hat
on--it doesn't hurt so bad when he falls in love with his own kind of
girl.

And that brings me--as if I was in the gray car speeding down Maple
Lane--to Mapleshade and the Fowlers and Sylvia Hesketh.




II


About a mile from Longwood, standing among ancient, beautiful trees, is
Mapleshade, Dr. Dan Fowler's place.

It was once a farmhouse, over a century old, but two and a half years
ago when Dr. Fowler bought it he fixed it all up, raised the roof, built
on a servants' wing and a piazza with columns and turned the farm
buildings into a garage. Artists and such people say it's the prettiest
place in this part of the State, and it certainly is a picture,
especially in summer, with the lawns mown close as velvet and the
flower-beds like bits of carpet laid out to air.

The Doctor bought a big bit of land with it--I don't know how many
hundred acres--so the house, though it's not far from the village, is
kind of secluded and shut away. You get to it by Maple Lane, a little
winding road that runs between trees caught together with wild grape and
Virginia creeper. In summer they're like green walls all draped over
with the vines and in winter they turn into a rustling gray hedge, woven
so close it's hard to see through. About ten minutes' walk from the gate
of Mapleshade there's a pine that was struck by lightning and stands up
black and bare.

When the house was finished the Doctor, who was a bachelor, married Mrs.
Hesketh, a widow lady accounted rich, and he and she came there as bride
and groom with her daughter, Sylvia Hesketh. I hadn't come yet, but from
what I've heard, there was gossip about them from the start. What I can
say from my own experience is that I'd hardly got my grip unpacked when
I began to hear of the folks at Mapleshade.

They lived in great style with a housekeeper, a butler and a French maid
for the ladies. In the garage were three automobiles, Mrs. Fowler's
limousine, the Doctor's car and a dandy little roadster that belonged to
Miss Sylvia. Neither she nor the Doctor bothered much with the
chauffeur. They left him to take Mrs. Fowler round and drove themselves,
the joke going that if Miss Sylvia ever went broke she could qualify for
a chauffeur's job.

After a while the story came out that it wasn't Mrs. Fowler who was so
rich but Miss Hesketh. The late Mr. Hesketh had only left his wife a
small fortune, willing the rest--millions, it was said--to his daughter.
She was a minor--nineteen--and the trustees of the estate allowed her a
lot of money for her maintenance, thirty thousand a year they had it in
Longwood.

In spite of the grand way they lived there wasn't much company at
Mapleshade. Anne Hennessey, the housekeeper, told me Mrs. Fowler was so
dead in love with her husband she didn't want the bother of entertaining
people. And the Doctor liked a quiet life. He'd been a celebrated
surgeon in New York but had retired only for consultations and special
cases now and again. He was very good to the people round about, and
would come in and help when our little Dr. Pease, or Dr. Graham, at the
Junction, were up against something serious. I'll never forget when Mick
Donahue, the station agent's boy, got run over by Freight No. 22. But
I'm sidetracked again. Anyhow, the Doctor amputated the leg and little
Mick's stumping round on a wooden pin almost as good as ever.

But even so they weren't liked much. They held their heads very high,
Mrs. Fowler driving through the village like it was Fifth Avenue,
sending the chauffeur into the shops and not at all affable to the
tradespeople. The Doctor wouldn't trouble to give you so much as a nod,
just stride along looking straight ahead. When the story got about that
he'd lost most of the money he'd made doctoring I didn't bear any
resentment, seeing it was worry that made him that way.

But Miss Sylvia was made on a different measure. My, but she was a
winner! Even after I knew what brought Jack Reddy in from Firehill so
often I couldn't be set against her. Jealous I might be of a girl like
myself, but not of one who was the queen bee of the hive.

She was a beauty from the ground up--a blonde with hair like corn silk
that she wore in a loose, fluffy knot with little curly ends hanging on
her neck. Her face was pure pink and white, the only dark thing in it
her big brown eyes, that were as clear and soft as a baby's. And she was
a great dresser, always the latest novelty, and looking prettier in each
one. Mrs. Galway'd say to me, with her nose caught up, scornful,

"To my mind it's not refined to advertise your wealth on your back."

But I didn't worry, knowing Mrs. Galway'd have advertised hers if she'd
had the wealth or a decent shaped back to advertise it on, which she
hadn't, being round-shouldered.

There was none of the haughty ways of her parents about Miss Sylvia.
When she'd come into the exchange to send a call (a thing that puzzled
me first but I soon caught on) she'd always stop and have a pleasant
word with me. On bright afternoons I'd see her pass on horseback,
straight as an arrow, with a man's hat on her golden hair. She'd always
have a smile for everyone, touching her hat brim real sporty with the
end of her whip. Even when she was in her motor, speeding down Main
Street, she'd give you a hail as jolly as if she was your college chum.

Sometimes she'd be alone but generally there was a man along. There were
a lot of them hanging round her, which was natural, seeing she had
everything to draw them like a candle drawing moths. They'd come and go
from town and now and then stay over Sunday at the Longwood Inn--it's a
swell little place done up in the Colonial style--and you'd see them
riding and walking with her, very devoted. At first everybody thought
her parents were agreeable to all the attention she was getting. It
wasn't till the Mapleshade servants began to talk too much that we heard
the Fowlers, especially the Doctor, didn't like it.

I hadn't known her long before I began to notice something that
interested me. A telephone girl sees so many people and hears such a lot
of confidential things on the wire, that she