“The villain!” she cried. “Come on, Bill, we’ll catch the express!” Literally throwing her clothes into a valise, and without stopping to pay the jocular clerk, she and the disreputable brother jumped into a taxi and sped to the station. They barely made the train, just as it was pulling out.
CHAPTER XXI
JOSIE O’GORMAN’S TRIUMPH
Obedient to Josie’s telegram, Ursula took the first train from Dorfield for Louisville. The Conants wanted her to leave Ben in their care, but she could not bear to be parted from him and he felt that he must take care of his sister and must be with her all the time.
“Josie wouldn’t have sent for me unless she felt sure it was necessary, and what is important to me is important to Ben,” she declared as she thanked her friends.
“Josie will meet us, I am sure,” she said to Ben as they neared their destination.
At a junction not far from Louisville, the coach from Dorfield was joined to the Cincinnati express. At the same junction the accommodation train that Josie and little Philip had boarded so hurriedly had been tied up for reasons best known to the train dispatchers and after a long, long wait, the passengers were transferred to the express.
“Plenty of room in the forward coach, miss,” the brakeman said to Josie, and the astute female detective, all unconscious of what waited her in the forward coach, walked innocently in, holding her charge by the hand, and there sat Ursula and Ben.
A love feast followed, Ursula smiling happily as she hugged little Philip to her bosom. It was such a wonderful denouement to the kidnaping that Josie was sorry to have to confess that she had not planned it.
“I never dreamed this was the Dorfield train,” she said. “Philip and I were dumped at this junction and all I knew was that we were on our way to Louisville and would get there sometime.”