



Produced by Darleen Dove, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.

This file was produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.



                          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