Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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QLOP Darn T\r. ^r^lT\r3.] Novelized from the J Picture Play of the name by George Kleir C?(|m(Ki, 1916, bf AJt.A.4* M Huffcn SYNOPSIS. Thornont Staffordwith hi*? dnuirhtcr Gloria, it? wintering at Palm Reach. Gloria is a vivacious but willful young lady who chafes under the restraining hand of a governess from whom she repeatedly escapes. Her childish capers cause young Doctor Royce to fall in love with her. Becoming lost in the everglades she falls into the hands of the Seminole Indians. Gloria falls in love with her rescuer. Freneau. Five years later she leaves school and meets Freneau at the theater; lie has forgotten Gloria. loiter Freneau persuades her to forgive him. Gloria's sister-in-law, Lois, becomes intensely jealous and Doctor Royce discovers in her an ally. Freneau takes leuve of Gloria. She sees from her window an attack made upon him. Doctor Royce convinces her It is a delirium. A telegram followed by a letter, comes from Freneau. She replies but her telegrams are returned. She ucci lently sees the supposed suicide of Freneau reported in the paper. Gloria swears to find the murderer of her lover. Royce tells what lie knows of Freneau to Mr. Stafford. They seok to prevent scandal from enveloping Gloria. She accuses them of conspiracy against her. Gloria sets about to run down Freneau's murderer. Royce warns Mulry to tell Gloria nothing. Gloria calls on Mulry and there sees Lois who is also worried. Gloria's suspicions are aroused. Royce endeavors to show her the difficulty she fuees. Gloria goes to David's country home. She mete Mulry who flees at once. Gloria insists on going to Palm Beach. Again she sees Mulry there. He leaves for the North. She is recognized by her one-time captor, the young Indian chief. He tells her that Royce and not Freneau was lo-r rescuer at that time. Gloria attends night court; she sees Mulry there, also the tramp who attacked Freneau. But Judge Freeman releases him. She follows the tramp when lie leaves the court and falls into 111o hands of hold-up men. Site finds herself in a low saloon dance hall, and Is selected by one of the patrons as his partner. Doctor Royce. however, follows Iter and when lie attempts a rescue, calls down a riot on their heads. The hall is raided and t lie crowd, including Gloria and Rovce, is arrested and taken before j Judge Freeman. The newspapers foutur.Gloria's arrest. Reporters surround the I house. Casitnir arrives with the child Gloria promised to adopt. She orders Royce to take Casimir's wife to the Stafford home. She follows Trask and lands on a houseboat to hear him accused of Freneau's murder. FIFTEENTH EPISODE The Murderer at Bay. Plerpont Stafford cherished his majestic country place principally because It furnished him an ample sol- j itude. Me could wander about it for hours and never meet a soul. If he wanted company, there was room for it in the palace and in the formally ,i gardened grounds. And he could look down on the tremendous peace of the Hudson river, admiring its strength as one strong man does another, and complimenting it on the eillclency with which it did such u big business with so little fuss. He asked few persons to visit hlin, ' and those few only when the mood moved him. In his everyday life as a man of big affairs he met so many peo- , pie and was so pointed out when he walked the streets that he acquired a kind of shyness in his hours of leisure. | I Gloria Seized a Dish Towel and Gagged Him. He wna touched in a tender Ri>ot I when he heard that his scapegrace daughter Gloria hod Invited three guests to make his sacred retreat their more or less permanent home. She had not consulted him and the guests were the last people in the world he would have Invited. It was nice enough for Gloria to take pity on a poor waiter and his forlorn child. It was sweet of her to adopt the child. Plerpont had even forgiven her by now for compelling him to hunt employment for the waiter. But then what followed? Gloria Invited the boy's almost hopelessly invalid mother und the hoy and the father to muke themselves at home In Plerpont's own sanctuary 1 That move was far more than too 1 mm FCEr' Rxipertll^h^s same B^| | much. "This has pot to stop, and I'm poing ' to stop it," l'ierponf stormed to Doctor Koyce. who had. at (Jloria's coin- : mami. transported the three to Pier- : pout's country place. Koyce smiled. I'ierpont grew more furious. "Oh, I'm not afraid of her just because she is only a child. She's pot to obey me and pet rid of them." "Tell her so, sir," said Koyce, amused at the old man's helpless bluster. "Oh, I'll tell her!" I'lerpont swaggered. "Where Is she?" No one knew. Koyce suggested that she had probably gone to the country place to see her new playmates. So I'ierpont motored out with Koyce. lie told Koyce that he would really have .vr o. .1 . ?- i* i?> *;?-i i m hi iiu- uinvciniiiH' cufsih, il only to prove to Gloria that slie was not yet the absolute boss of the family. 'That victory will be worth going miles to see," said Uoyce. They reached the country place, only to find that Gloria had not been seen nor heard of. Her three quests were there, however, installed for a long stay. The butler was so horrilied at having a waiter's family to wait on that he offered his notice. Tierpont decided to evict the waiter's family and save the butler. Me! would do it at once, before Gloria got home, lie stalked forth like a constable with a writ of eviction. The boy Stas caught sight of him and ran and tlung his arms about his neck and began to tell him of the wonders of his own country place, of trees and dowers and birds and animals? commonplace things to Fierpont, but miracles to the boy from the slums. C'asimir had gathered an armload of flowers for his sick wife, and he was aglow with the feeling that she was better already. Fierpont had a great deal of Gloria's impulsiveness and a great deal of her abounding tenderness. He lost his temper in flashes, but his charity burned steadily and deeply, and now Stas had won bis heart. He could not unclasp that child's arms. In fact, he lifted Stas to his arm and held him there while he told the butler he could leave without notice if he did not like t the guests of the house. Also Pierpont told ltoyce that he must take particular care of Casimir's wife. Royce laughed at the old man's complete collapse and said: "It's a pity Gloria isn't here to see you. I wonder where on earth she is." , "She's somewhere she oughtn't to he, that's sure," Pierpont growled, as he stared at his section of the Hudson, where, lighting against the current, a little tug was visible, towing an old canal barge loaded to the water line. ! Then he added: "She's probably on that barge now, adopting the Inirge- . man's family." He could imagine nothing more extravagantly impossible to say than that. And yet, the truth kept pace with his extravagance. For Gloria was indeed even then on board just such a barge being towed upstream by just ' such a tug. Only Gloria was not adopting the bargeman's family. She was being adopted by it. She was a prisoner and her 1 ift; was in pawn. Gloria's curiosity as to one problem was solved. She had found out that her vision of Freneau's murder was not a delirium. She had seen the assassin and heard him accused by his own daughter. One trouble with satisfying curiosity is that every curiosity sutisticdQi opens up now curiosities. Gloria now was frantic to know why Gideon Trask killed Freneau and how Trasks' daughter was involved in the crime. -Next, she was curious to know how she was to escape with her know!- ' edge, once she had it. When Trask heard Gloria's voice over his shoulder accusing him of the crime he was denying, he whirled as | if an angel had spoken with the voice of conscience. An angel would have heen hardly more surprising then the look of Gloria on the stairway of the barge. Trask had no idea of Gloria's identity. He could not imagine who she was, whence she had come, or why she accused him. He stood transfixed a moment, then moved toward her with menace. Gloria retreated ap the steps, hut he leaped at her and dragged her down and seised her by ttie throat, as lie hud seized Freneaa. ! She tried to scream, hot she could Dot make a sound. Nell attempted to restrain her father, bat he turned on her with terror and wrath: "If he gets away, I go to the chair." He might hare throttled her then j and there, hut there was a Jolt, the barge shook as the towllne dragged it away, and down the hatchway ctune the voice of Trask's helper, Jed. Trask hurled Gloria against the wuv 9 THE BOUT HERA ????. % vv?VaftViy'> * *1 MH ^1> y?8g? ;j* " l|i|a K Gloria's Arguments Were and warned her that if she made a 1 wound It would be her last. He would wring her neck and throw her Info the river. Gloria cowered in utter dread of him and remembered the fate of her poor i - - ?- - - i? i ? ? hum- ucmi.v iue same stream had received and kept for days. When Trask stamped up the cabin stairs and banged the hatchway down f!lorin studied the girl. She hMl been beautiful, and still was pretty but too sad. Just now she was too angry. Nell had been lighting against her father till this unknown woman appeared from nowhere. Now Nell was till for her father against the world. Gloria spoke to her, questioned her about Frenenu. Nell did not answer at nil, only in grumbling monosyllables. Gloria tried to bribe Nell to let her escape. Gloria offered larger and larger sums till Nell would have been dazzled if she had been convinced. At last she spoke: "Say, who do you think you are? The Dime Savings hank? And who do % you think I am? I ain't on auction. If your father had nil the money you're makin' up he has, do you think you could buy my father with it? No!" Glora liked her better for that, hut she was none the less determined to es- j cape if she could. She talked no more. ! Hut she thought harder than ever be- ; fore. Nell went on getting her father's supper at the little stove, clattering the j pans and jabbing the fire with the pok- I er angrily. Gloria had often steamed up the ,Hudson on her father's yacht. This Jed Want Over With a Crash and Gloria Sidled Up the Stairs. was her tVrst voyage on a canal barge. The place was extremely unlike her father's yacht, but the savor of the frying pan made Gloria democratically hungry. When Trnsk came back, however, his cold eyes took her appetite away. Hut not his own. She watched liiin wolf his food; she felt that he was half Insane, a relentless fanatic on a wild eruswle. His eyes kept rolling In her direction. He found her so mysterious that he was half afraid of her. He remembered the loneliness of that win ter nignt t>y tne Soldiers' find Sailors' monument. He remembered the ap-* pea ranee ef Freneau alone and no ether human being In view. His very hands remembered the death grasp they took on Frenenu's throat. He smiled. That was one good deed, at least, he told himself. Hut he could not hnaglne how this girl could have seen him. How could he guess that she had sat at her window with binoculars to her eyes and watched the whole tragedy. He began to grow superstitious. Gloria was .LP. oomuft; s. o. ^^ v Jill /X * ?* Xw Ky/gfcxgw^ v:-^.-.-.v y^aKv:- vy'.^-;:.. :-^VO**.-v-.V.*.V.-.v*.-^^^bi gow afiffVijff^'X'Xv:jM^>>X^|^M^v^!;Xyy;v^ I ?? ??SHHI p|| (^^JjjjJ^ : > ^ H^H i |^HI li? ''i^ii #^ >. $ < ^R<< i^lH %3!bBK' '^HP^^HI .;:;:^:^S;:;^^-:::^::;:S:::$::V;>W;5:"<;:^:i;::5:^;l; :: |R : jHH BmmnBeI '-: I ;&?;*: ''' Bij^^H Bi < ^E'jH 153 ^^:s$M': K. : J:^^ i Pokes With the Poker. apparently able to perform miracles. She wore the invisible cloak. Perhaps slie would leave us mystically as she had come. Finally he ftrew brave enough to shout out at her: "Who are you? What was Freneau to you?" Gloria knew that anyone who blusters is likely to he weak, so she answered coldly: "Never mind who I am. The main thing is, who are you and what was Freneau to you?" The very name Frononu seemed to j madden Trash. He emitted a loud yelp of hate and derision and left the tsihle. He moved toward Gloria, hut changed , his mind or deferred hi: purpose and | went up the stairs, closin. the hatch j and fastening it above. There was mailing reassuring in his last look a Gloria. Nell was clearing up the table when she saw dliat Gloria was faint with hunger or terror. She offered Gloria the remnant of the supper. Gloria was glad to get it. She ate like another pauper. She felt that she would need what strength she would acquire. Her wits were dancing as she tried to think out a means of escape. She could not light Nell and her father and the big man, too. She could not overcome them with force, and she had no weapon but her live wits, and they hud never h<>4>n tl-iliiwwl In ciwli .1 V M V Utnvvi IV OU VII [UUUlVUJSt She was us helpless before them as j she hud been when she was u little j fifteen-year-old filly at I'ulin Bench and > her governess had given her a problem 1 In algebra (u-b)x(u-b) ? ? She had stared at that riddle as she stared ut this one. Doctor Royce had happened along then and smiled at the easy task, lie could probably solve this problem, too, but he was not here. She was alone ! and the solution depended solely on her. She thought and thought while Nell cleared the table. She offered to help Nell and was permitted to aid in the work. When the last dish was removed to the basin Gloriu and Nell took opposite ends of the coarse tablecloth. When it was folded twice the two girls began to bring the two ends together, as people do who ure folding tablecloths. Nell stopped short at the proper mo- j ment; Gloria went toward her. The solution came to her in a flash. Instead of putting the two ends of the ' tablecloth in Nell's lingers, she sudden- ' ly whipped the cloth over her head, j brought it down around her elbows; and, after a furious struggle, forced Nell back into a chair ami fcm?ttml I lIn? tablecloth corners under the arms, j .She snatched a pair ol' dish towels from the wall and tied Nell's feet to the legs of the chair. Nell fought like a maid woman in a xiraitjacket, hut the knots held. Gloria was out of breath, but she was proud as runch over her victory. She stood up panting and exclaimed: "Well!" So far so good. Rut there was still Trask to settle with, and Jed, also. She had not tablecloths enough for all three, and she doubted if she could hoodwink those giants in the same way. Another scheme occurred to her. Site had noticed Nell poking up the lire in the little stove. Now Nell was quieting down and it was safe to leave her. She ran to the store, lifted the lid and set the poker In the red coals. It was a grand Idea and she was tre-, mendously enthusiastic. Rut the pok- j cr was not. It was in no hnrrv what- I ever. They suy that a watched poker never glows. Gloria heard somebody working at the hatch before the poker had attained as much blush as & hard1 ened sinner feels en his cheek at a little mistake. She heurd Trunk's Bootateps. She could see his feet en the stairway. She stared at the poker and whispered : "Flurry up." The poker was in no hurry. Trunk paused to call Jed, then he began to come down the stairway. G}oriu wus stupefied to see how much there was of him. His face appeared last of ull and it appalled her. He carried a rope iu his hand. ^-JWU J[ There Was a Hissing Trask did not ki*o Gloria at first.! Hut lu? "III! irli 1 t-'i I'l. u? .... t ..%-.* .1 I .-M< ..v. vitu^ui oihiii VI uir UlllllltlIVU j bolster in the rocking chair and It frightened him. He stared hack. Hut a inutiled shriek came from the depths. , "Ha ! Ha ! It's me ! She did it!" Trask understood that the witch woman hud performed another of her feats and he was sure that he was under the voodoo. Then he saw Gloria standing by the stove. She looked so small and so timid that he regained courage. He roared at Gloria and ; moved toward Nell. Gloria cried: "Stand buck !" Trask was so astonished by her impudence that he laughed. "Why, you little llulTy pullet, I'll ti" you up and drop you in the river!" "Oh, you will?" said Gloria. She snatched the poker from the lire. Trask laughed at it. She hit the j table with it and sparks Hew. She j rubbed it on the wooden top of the j table and smoke arose. There was i a hissing sound. Trask shuddered. Gloria jabbed at him with her red-hot sword. He could feel the searing pain of it before it reached him. \Vl|en it arrived where he was he was not there. Gloria was a trilie conceited over her success. And now, what next? She saw the rope in his hand. lie had brought it to tie her with. The next idea came. | She gloated a trifle. "You thought you would tie me up, di<l you? Well, vou can iust ti?? v.aw. self up!" Trask could hardly believe that any- ! one would be cruel enough to inflict such an insulting Injury. Hut Gloria's arguments were pokes with the poker. If Trask had been more intelligent und less confused, and had known how, he might have tied himself up as the cabinet tricksters do?so that he could slip out easily. Hut this was beyond him at the time, und Gloriu was vigilant. She made him fasten the roj>e around a stanchion, then knot it about one wrist, then pass it around him till he looked like a package of Gloria's own tying. The last knots she attended to herself. She set the poker on a plate within eusy reach, and knotted, and knotted, and knotted. Trask gnashed his teeth with rage, but he could not budge. lie yelled just once, then she seized a dish towel, whirled it into a roll and gagged him so that he could not even gnash his teeth. Gloria heard footsteps along^^he deck overhead. lTobably Jtsl^^is coming down. The poker was cold. There was no time for reheating it. Something must l>e done at once. She put out the lamp that Nell had lighted, she set at the foot of the stairs a wicker rocker, she laid it on its side, and fell hack to await developments. Jed came down the stairs in the dark. As lie left the last step he put his foot in the wicker rocker as in a trap. Jed went on over with a crash that shook the barge. He was yelling that lie was heing bitten to death by a wildcat, when Gloria sidled past him, ran up the stairs and out on deck. She closed the hatch, fastened It and voted herself three cheers. She looked about her now and saw that she was in the middle of the Hudwon river and a great distance from either shore. The view was mugnllicent in the gloaming, but she had had enough of it and the hateful tug was furrowing the water and dragging the burge farther and farther north. She saw the tiller of the barge flopping idly, and it occurred to her that if she could get free from the tug she could steer the barge td shore herself. Somewhere below Was her father's home. Stas and his father and mother would be waiting for her. Perhaps her own father wus alarmed. It was time for her to go home. She would take her prisoners back to her father'and deliver them to whatever punishment seemed right. She had never steered a oanal barge, but she Imagined that It would he about the same as a motor boat in general principles. Fortunately, she had been carried so far north that the current would act as engine power. She was delighted with the scheme. She went forward and saw the big hawser sagged in the middle and cut the water. The tug had buckled down to Its work, churning up a noisy wake. She. could see the backs of the crew Sound. Trask Shuddered. I|l!u*'"' " ?^, of the tug where they sat smoking and! sol emu and bored to death. They would have had a goo<l lung!* if they had seen Gloria trying to lUftie' the knots in that hawser with her little hands. She was laughing to think how surprised they would he later when they discovered by chance that the barge had disappeared. When a parcel came home from a shop Gloria always tried to untie it* ;hen always went for the scissors. So now, when site saw that she could not quite unknot the hawser, she looked for the .-hears. She found an ax on deck and attacked the big rope. She hit everything hut the hawser, : j;d v.lun she hit that at last it was itke hitting a huge rubber hand. The ax bounced out of her hands and last escaped falling into the river. She picked it up and chopped at the hawser whore it was wound. ICver.v third or fourth blow hit the cable and severed a few strands. And finally the rope gave and Hew. The barge quivered at its release from the tension, and the tug, suddenly unhitched from its haul, jumped forward and sent the crew sprawling. Gloria ran to the tiller to steer iter prize home. She was greatly disappointed when she heard the yells from the tug and saw that the pilot already Suddenly Whipped the Cloth Over Her Head. v uo uiiiniiiK rt'uuy 10 recti pin re me barge as soon us he could take in the hawser. Also she could faintly hear the howls of her cabined and confused prisoners. If the tug men came aboard and released them, what would become of Gloria? Gloria wondered. (TO HE CONTINUED.) Much Water. Church?How are those lots you bought ? Gotham?You ought to try and find 'em. Why, they're half eovered with water. "Oh, well, you'rO not ?o badly off. VflH ? ?- *? ' * auu nm^i vt'UKMimer mat yz per cent? or nearly three-quarters?of the surface of the globe Is covered with water.** What tha PubKo Pays. Out of every dollar the public pay# the railroads for transportnlon the railroad employes receive 44 cents. The traveler who spends $100 a year for his tickets.Is paying $44 for railroad lal>or. The merchant whose freight bills amount to $1,000 contributes $440 to the railroad payroll. The merchant gets the money from his customers In the prices he charges for his wares. The public pays every dollar of the railroad bllL i