"Of course I'm not worried about Tessie since she telephoned that she was all right," went on Norah. She could feel that there was a tension in the office atmosphere, and as she did not understand it she talked nervously. "I know she is all right, but----"

"How do you know she is all right?" burst forth Mr. Bill. "She may have been forced to send that message. You don't know that she is all right at all!" He contradicted Norah flatly and rudely.

Joe looked at him in surprise. "She was all right when she left the cottage," he impatiently reminded Mr. Bill. "She was right enough to eat some breakfast and change her clothes. Of course she is all right, and,"

he turned his eyes on Mr. Kingley, who squirmed uneasily. "I'm inclined to think that Ka-kee-ta is right, that Tessie will be found before the morning edition of the _Gazette_ goes to press. How about it, Mr.

Kingley? Do you agree with me?"

"I hope so. I sincerely hope so," stuttered Mr. Kingley, who found it very disagreeable to be singled out as Joe had singled him. "I do hope she will be found long before then."

"Ka-kee-ta's looking for her now," Norah went on. "He didn't wait a second, but went off with the candy under one arm and his ax under the other."

"Mr. Douglas wants to see Mr. Kingley," broke in the office boy from the doorway.

"Douglas?" Mr. Kingley looked as if he had never heard of any Mr.

Douglas.

"Bert Douglas from Marvin, Phelps & Stokes," Mr. Bill told him. "Send him in," he said to the boy. "Perhaps he can tell us something."

Bert came in with much dignity and importance. He glanced at the little group--Norah and Mr. Bill and Joe--which had formed in front of Mr.

Kingley, and he explained at once why he was there.

"Mr. Marvin sent me over to tell you, Mr. Kingley, that the special representative from the Sunshine Islands, Mr. Pitts, has arrived to confer with Queen Teresa. As you have taken the queen under your protection, he thought you should know at once."

There was not a sound, but the air was heavy with significance. They all felt it. Joe Cary stepped forward.

"Then there really are Sunshine Islands?" He sounded as if he had never really believed that there were any Sunshine Islands.

Bert looked at him in surprise. "Of course!" he said. "The special representative is a white man--James Pitts. He has had charge of King Pete's business affairs. He was on the islands when King Pete died, and then, just as he was ready to leave, the radicals, Sons of Sunshine, they call themselves, you know, locked him up. But he had sent Ka-kee-ta with a lot of important papers to a lawyer in Honolulu, and the lawyer brought him here. Pitts managed to escape and has just arrived. We were glad to see him, for we had so many contradictory messages from him and about him, that we scarcely knew what to think. I suppose they were sent by the radicals."

Joe stared at him before he drew a long breath, and turned away. "Mr.

Kingley," he said impulsively, "I beg your pardon!"

"I should think you would," Mr. Kingley told him gruffly.

"All we have to do now," went on Bert, still rather overfull of importance, "is to find Queen Teresa, and then we can settle everything up. Mr. Marvin thought perhaps--" He looked suggestively at Mr. Kingley, who hurriedly shook his head and fairly bellowed his reply.

"No, I don't! I don't know where she is! You go right back and tell Mr.

Marvin I don't know! This is all very interesting and very romantic, but it doesn't do my work. If there is nothing I can do for you, I would suggest that I have the morning mail to look over. Send in Miss Jenson,"

he curtly told the boy who ran in to answer his buzzer.

Joe, stalking out behind the others, could not refrain from a last word.

He would have choked if he had not spoken. "You mean Mr. Gray, don't you?" He grinned sarcastically. "The _Gazette_ should be told of the arrival of James Pitts, special representative of the Sunshine Islands, whose queen was found in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Evergreen."

Mr. Kingley regarded him with cold eyes. "Will you kindly shut the door behind you?" he said so frostily that any thermometer would have registered his temperature as far, far below zero.

XXIV

They held a conference in the ante-room, Joe, Mr. Bill, Bert and Norah.

"This Pitts is a real man, is he, Bert?" asked Joe.

"I should say he was! Big as the side of a house and quicker than chain lightning. He knew all about this Pracht brute and understood at once why he stole the Gilfooly marriage record. He says the Sons of Sunshine are only the tools of a syndicate that is trying to get possession of the islands to sell them to j.a.pan, so that j.a.pan can have an aeroplane base near the United States. Sounds like an old-fashioned melodrama, doesn't it? The beautiful heroine and the wicked villain and everything!"

"Everything but the n.o.ble hero," sighed Norah. "He should find the queen. Poor little girl! I wonder where she is!"

"Poor Queen Teresa!" They all wondered.

"Say," exclaimed Mr. Bill suddenly. "I'm not satisfied! I'm going back to the aluminum!" And he dashed into a descending elevator.

They were close at his heels, and when they left the cage at the bas.e.m.e.nt, they met Mr. La.r.s.en waiting to go up. He put out his hand and caught Mr. Bill's arm.

"Did you find the girl you were looking for?" he asked quickly. "You were in such a hurry you didn't wait for me to remember that there was another one. I sent her to the crockery!" He nodded toward the crockery which was a neighbor of the hardware. "She was an old girl," he explained, "and that was why----"

But Mr. Bill did not wait to hear "why," he was hurrying to a pile of blue-and-white mixing bowls which half concealed a little clerk in the required black sateen. Her back was toward them, but they could see that her hair was pulled from her forehead into a tight knot at her neck and that she wore big amber goggles. She looked as if she might be a near relative to the Mary Smith they had found in the hardware. Joe Cary shook his head. That girl wasn't Tessie. Here was just another disappointment for Mr. Bill.

"He's only wasting time," Joe grumbled to Norah Lee, for if that girl was Tessie of course Joe would recognize her at once, and Joe could not see that she resembled Tessie in anything but size. Tessie never wore her hair like that. And Tessie did not have amber goggles.

"I beg your pardon," Mr. Bill said breathlessly, when he reached the black sateen back, "but would you be kind enough to remove your gla.s.ses?" But before the girl could remove her gla.s.ses, before she could do more than swing around and shrink away and blush and stammer, he had her hands in his. "Tessie!" he cried. "Tessie Gilfooly! I knew you were here!" His hands held her fingers tight as he repeated, "I knew you were here!"

"Tessie!" It was plain that Joe had never really thought that she would be there.

"Queen Teresa?" Bert peered over Joe's shoulder and wondered if this odd-looking girl could be pretty Tessie Gilfooly.

"Oh, Tessie Gilfooly!" Norah was as sure as Mr. Bill. "We have been so worried about you!"

"How did you know I was here?" Tessie tore off the disguising gla.s.ses and let them see her big blue eyes.

"I knew!" Mr. Bill told her quickly. "I had a hunch you would feel safer in your old job than anywhere else in Waloo. And you disguised yourself as a salesgirl!" He laughed chokingly. "And came back right next to the old job? That's a good one on Walker! He never recognized you?"

"You didn't recognize her at first, either, Mr. Bill," reminded the mortified Mr. Walker, who was hovering near. "And the crockery isn't in my department."

"I knew she was here!" declared Mr. Bill. "But it did take me a minute or two to find her. I never thought she would hide herself behind amber goggles. We hunted for you all night," he told Tessie simply.

Tessie flushed. "I'm sorry," she said just as simply. "I was so scared, and so mad," she explained. And she told them how she had gone to find Ka-kee-ta, and had been locked in an upstairs room in the old brick house. And when she had escaped, owing to Joe's insistence on her regular attendance at the Y. W. C. A. gymnasium cla.s.ses, she had gone back to the old home and fallen asleep. It was morning when she wakened, and she had changed her clothes, found a nickel in the baking powder can, and telephoned to Granny that she was all right. Then she had gone to the Evergreen. "It was awfully good of Mr. La.r.s.en to take me. I guess he was short-handed. I knew no one would look for me here. And if I pulled my hair back," she put her hand up and pulled her hair looser around her face, "and put on these big amber gla.s.ses, I knew no one would recognize me. And no one did!" she finished triumphantly.

"I did!" contradicted Mr. Bill proudly. "I recognized you!"

"I'm glad you did!" Tessie told him softly. "I'm glad you found me!" She felt so safe with Mr. Bill. Mr. Bill would never let any one harm her.

She became aware that Mr. Bill was holding tight to her hand, and that the people in the department, customers and clerks were staring at her.

She tried to release her fingers, but Mr. Bill would not let them go.

"What's this? What's this?" Mr. Kingley himself was coming toward them.

Customers and clerks fell back to make a gangway. "So Queen Teresa has been found in the Evergreen bas.e.m.e.nt a second time!" He smiled until he saw Joe Cary, when he stopped smiling and looked as foolish and as self-conscious as a fat, bald-headed, elderly man could look.

"A strange coincidence," Joe murmured impudently.