Mr. Bill, with Joe Cary at his heels, dashed into the Evergreen and through the crowd of shoppers to the elevator. A car was just about to go up. Mr. Bill reached in and plucked out one of the pa.s.sengers.

"La.r.s.en," he said breathlessly to the employment manager, "have you taken on any new people to-day?"

"Wha--what?" spluttered La.r.s.en, too startled at being plucked from the ascending elevator to do more than splutter--"what do you mean?"

"Just what I say!" exclaimed Mr. Bill. "Have you taken on any new people to-day? Hurry up the answer! I haven't any time to spare."

His eagerness and his determination impressed La.r.s.en as soon as La.r.s.en could recover from his surprise. "Yes," he said then, "I took on three new people."

Mr. Bill sent a triumphant glance at Joe Cary. "Any girls?" he demanded even more eagerly.

La.r.s.en regarded him curiously. Mr. Bill had never showed any interest in the girls employed in the Evergreen, they had never seemed to be any more to Mr. Bill than so many bolts of midnight blue serge, or so many electric washing-machines, but now Mr. Bill acted as if he knew that the girls were human beings, real flesh-and-blood little creatures.

"There was one girl," La.r.s.en remembered slowly.

Mr. Bill caught his shoulder and gave him a little shake. "What was she like? Where is she?" The words fairly dashed over each other in their haste to be spoken. "What was she like?" he repeated impatiently.

"Nothing!" La.r.s.en described the new salesgirl in one vivid word. "She wasn't like anything! And she's down in the bas.e.m.e.nt in the hardware.

Her name?" in answer to another shake from Mr. Bill. "Her name was Mary Smith." And to the best of La.r.s.en's recollection she was nineteen years old, a high-school girl, an orphan, and she had wanted to go to work at once. Mr. Walker was short-handed so he had taken her down at once, and she would receive the minimum wage of----

But Mr. Bill did not wait to hear about the minimum wage. "Come on, Joe!" he called over his shoulder and hurried away, not to his father's office where Joe thought they were bound, but to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

The elevator was full of shoppers and Mr. Bill was separated from Joe by a blue serge suit and a plaid gingham frock, so that Joe could not ask Mr. Bill what on earth was eating him, but an inkling of Mr. Bill's suspicion had crept into his mind. He was as eager as Mr. Bill to learn if there was anything in that suspicion.

When they reached the bas.e.m.e.nt, Mr. Bill made a dash for the hardware and stood for a moment surveying the department with eager searching eyes. Half a dozen customers were hesitating over various pans and kettles, and as many clerks were waiting, with more or less patience, for them to make their decisions. Mr. Bill and Joe had never seen those customers before but they had seen the clerks. They recognized each one of the half dozen. But La.r.s.en had said there was a new girl. Joe turned to ask Mr. Walker where she was when Mr. Bill pulled his sleeve, and pointed a shaking finger toward the corner where the brooms and mops were. A girl was standing beside them, the brooms concealing fully half of her black frock.

"There she is!" hissed Mr. Bill.

Joe swung around and stared. There she was, the Mary Smith Mr. La.r.s.en had mentioned, the new employee. She was small and dressed in black in accordance with the rule of the store. Her hair was pulled back from her forehead and twisted in a hard knot on her neck. She wore gla.s.ses, and so far as Joe could tell, she did not look like any one he had ever seen before.

"Huh!" muttered Mr. Bill in deep disgust. "La.r.s.en was right. She does look like nothing, doesn't she? My hunch wasn't worth much, but just to make sure let's have a word with old Walker."

When they found Mr. Walker in the rear of the department, he agreed that Mary Smith had no style, that she would never be noticed in a crowd, but he insisted that as a salesgirl she already showed promise.

"Only have to tell her once," he declared. "And brains are of more use than style in this department. I think she'll make good!" As if Mr. Bill cared what she would make. "But since I made such a bad guess about little Miss Gilfooly I haven't had as much confidence in my psychology.

I never in the world would have taken her for a queen, so I won't say too much about this Mary Smith. Say," he begged, as Mr. Bill would have darted off, "have they found Miss Gilfooly yet? There's romance! Can you believe it? I declare, I was just about ready to think that there wasn't any in the world when along came that frizzle-headed black man and bang!

we were off! It was a good stunt for the department. You'd never believe how our sales jumped. Too bad about the little queen! I hope she's all right!" Tessie would have been surprised to hear how worried he seemed to be about her.

"I hope she is!" agreed Mr. Bill, his eyes following Mary Smith as she moved from the brooms to the carpet-sweepers.

Joe nudged him sharply, and asked him if he were going to his father's office or should Joe go alone?

"It might be just as well for you to come along," he said significantly.

"I've several things to say to your father that it might be just as well for you to hear."

"Just as you say!" But Mr. Bill showed no interest in a visit to his father's office, nor in what Joe was going to say to his father. He was as flat as a p.r.i.c.ked balloon. A moment before, he had been floating high in the sky, a round rosy ball, and now he lay on the dirty pavement, nothing but a bit of dingy red rubber. He took another look at Mary Smith, but she had disappeared around the carpet-sweepers, and he followed Joe to the elevator and to the office.

Mr. Kingley looked up as they entered. "Huh!" he grunted, and they could regard themselves as welcome or not as they pleased. Joe walked over until he stood in front of the flat desk where Mr. Kingley would have to look at him if he looked at anything.

"Mr. Kingley," he began, but Mr. Kingley preferred to lead the discussion.

"Have you found our queen?" he asked, and there really was an interest, an anxiety, in his voice.

"No, we haven't!" exclaimed Mr. Bill before Joe could gather breath to repeat with crushing sarcasm the phrase "our queen" which so irritated him. "Just for a moment, when we were at her old home, I had a hunch that she might be hiding herself from those darned Sunshine Sons and that she would think there would be no place as safe as her old job in the Evergreen bas.e.m.e.nt, but she isn't there."

"My soul!" interrupted Mr. Kingley, and his eyes fairly stood on his cheeks. "Are you sure! That would make a striking story. The little queen driven back to the Evergreen where she was found!" He smacked his lips as he voiced the headline he quickly composed. "Are you sure, Bill?" He hoped that Mr. Bill would not be sure.

"You don't think of anything but headlines, do you, Mr. Kingley?" Joe broke in rudely. "You never think of Tessie as a young girl, a human being? You only think of her as publicity for the Evergreen!"

"Well, but--but--" spluttered Mr. Kingley, staring at Joe indignantly.

Didn't Joe know that the welfare department of the Evergreen was the best in the Northwest? That didn't look as if he failed to regard his employees as human beings. As for publicity, even the Kingleys furnished publicity for the Evergreen. Every time Mrs. Kingley went east or Ethel had a friend in for a cup of tea, there was a notice in the _Gazette_.

To be sure, the notice did not always mention the Evergreen, but in the Waloo mind, the name of Kingley meant Evergreen. The two were synonymous. Joe should remember that. Really Joe was impossible. He should remember all that Mr. Kingley had done for Tessie since she became a queen, clothed her, introduced her to Waloo and aided her in every way. He had a perfect right to be indignant at Joe and to glare at him hotly.

"What I want to know is, how much the Evergreen is responsible for this kidnaping?" went on Joe, as cold as Mr. Kingley was hot. They might have been the two extremities of a dinner--hot soup and frozen pudding. Joe did not seem to care a pin if Mr. Kingley did sputter and glare at him.

"Joe!" Both Mr. Kingley and Mr. Bill were on their feet and their exclamations were full of genuine and righteous indignation.

"What do you mean?" Mr. Bill found his tongue first. "What do you mean, Cary? What has father to do with the Sons of Sunshine?"

"That's what I want him to tell us," Joe said, while Mr. Kingley continued to imitate a soda-water bottle. "There are things which must be cleared up. I don't know much, but I suspect a lot." He turned his back on the soda-water bottle and spoke directly to Mr. Bill. "You remember the way your father acted when this darned news came to Tessie, how he framed a big publicity campaign for the Evergreen, the exhibition of the clothes he sold Tessie, the aluminum sale for the poor children of the Sunshine Islands, the moving picture he had made of her, oh, the whole business? It was all over the front page of the newspapers every day. And it made the Evergreen famous from New York to San Francisco.

People who came to town asked the way to the Evergreen instead of to the Art Museum or the new post office. It put the Evergreen on the world map, and made it the most-talked-of store in the country. No matter what came up, Mr. Kingley considered the Evergreen before he did Tessie. And what I want to know now is how much of the thing is fake and how much is true?"

"And what I want to know now," declared Mr. Bill standing shoulder to shoulder with Joe and facing this choking parent, "is where Tessie Gilfooly is. If half what Joe says is true, then you know where she is, and you've got to tell me!"

Mr. Kingley turned his bulging eyes from one determined young face only to see another determined young face. He could not entrench himself behind glittering generalities another minute. They would know what he knew, and he might as well tell them at once.

"Boys," he began slowly, "sit down and I'll tell you what I know. Sit down!" he roared, as they failed to obey his first order but stood facing him with a watchfulness which was very annoying. "You make me nervous standing there, and looking at me as if I were a criminal. No, Bill," as Mr. Bill impatiently shifted his weight from one brown shoe to the other, "I don't know anything about the kidnaping of Miss Gilfooly! But Joe is right in his statement that I made use of the strange things that have happened here to advertise the Evergreen. I only did what any red-blooded man would have done. It would have been blind stupid folly to have refused to use such material. And a store never had such publicity. Joe is right when he says the Evergreen is the most famous store in the world. People do come from all over the country, and our mail-order business is doubled, trebled, because of the romance we found in our bas.e.m.e.nt."

"Get down to bra.s.s tacks, Dad," rudely interrupted Mr. Bill. "Never mind a speech. Just tell us in a few simple words whether you originated the whole stunt? Are there any Sunshine Islands? Did Tessie Gilfooly ever have an Uncle Pete? Did----"

"Bill!" exclaimed Mr. Kingley, looking incurably injured. "How can you think that I would stoop to such unscrupulous methods!"

"But did you?" insisted Mr. Bill. He walked over to stand beside his father as if to remind him that there might be more than one way to obtain a direct answer to a simple question.

Before Mr. Kingley could say whether he did or didn't, Norah Lee burst unceremoniously into the room.

"Oh, Mr. Kingley!" she exclaimed quickly. "Ka-kee-ta has come back! He came half an hour ago, and he is perfectly furious because the queen and the Tear of G.o.d have disappeared!"

"Ka-kee-ta!" The exclamation was an incredulous trio. The motif was full of unbelief.

"Where has he been?" demanded Joe, one eye on Mr. Kingley and the other on pink-cheeked, breathless Norah. "Where was he?"

"He doesn't seem to know," Norah said. She was eager to tell her story.

"He actually says he doesn't know. He went to get the chocolates for Tessie, and when he came back, he had a five-pound box under his arm.

But where he was and what he was doing he can't, or won't say! He mumbles a lot of native gibberish, but of course I can't understand that. It's maddening! He declares he will find Tessie before night. And Pracht, too. And he mumbles a lot about sharks!"

"He would!" muttered Joe, a puzzled frown cutting his forehead from his face.

"I hope he does find her!" exclaimed Mr. Bill, staring at his father, who seemed pleased that Ka-kee-ta had returned.