The Vanishing Comrade: A Mystery Story for Girls

by Ethel Cook Eliot

Kate agreed with Elsie. She, too, was glad Elsie had gone to her friend in her sorrow, even if she had waited till the last minute for the courage.

Vacations had been spent either at camps or at Aunt Katherine’s. When they were spent at Aunt Katherine’s, her father was usually with her, having a vacation, too. And those were beautiful times.

Then, when she was twelve, came the terrible time. Nick had done badly in business. He confided this to Elsie because Gloria only wanted happy confidences, and besides, she was abroad, travelling with a party of friends. There was enough to pay his debts and leave him clear to start fresh, avoiding bankruptcy. But the debts paid, and his checking account reduced to zero, money must come from somewhere to go on with until business picked up. He knew a way in which two thousand dollars, if he only had it, could overnight be turned into ten thousand. He told Elsie about it, walking in Central Park, and said if he had only waited a little to pay his debts, and not acted so hastily in his fear of bankruptcy, everything would have been made right now. Aunt Katherine would loan him the two thousand, he felt sure, if he could only explain the nature of the speculation to her. But she was travelling somewhere in England, and there would never be time to get into touch with her. But he had the key to her safety vault in her Boston bank. He suddenly told Elsie that he was going to Boston and would not see her again until Sunday. She understood that he was going to borrow, on his own account, two thousand dollars from Aunt Katherine overnight, trusting to her unfailing generosity.

Nick wrote Aunt Katherine all about it on the train as he went. From the vault he took two thousand dollars’ worth of securities which could easily be replaced.

Aunt Katherine sailed for home before Nick’s troubled letter reached her in England, and the second letter, telling how the two thousand instead of blossoming into ten thousand had disappeared altogether, was never sent, because just as Nick was going out of his door to post it, the cablegram came announcing Gloria’s tragic death. That put all thoughts of the letter out of his mind, and when he did remember it he thought he had posted it as he meant to. It was found in the apartment months later by the people who sublet the place furnished, and simply dropped into a post box by them and sent to its address in England. It did not reach Miss Frazier until six months later.

Miss Frazier on her arrival in Boston, and after a visit to her bank, reported the missing securities to the police. Nick’s immediate apprehension followed. Miss Frazier was on a train bound for California when that most amazing bit of news reached her by telegram. She was shocked almost beyond reason, and so horrified that it was impossible for her to find any justification for her adopted nephew. She offered him no help and had no words for him that were not bitter ones, but she did write to offer his “innocent child” a home with her on the condition that she should not speak her father’s name for the term of his imprisonment, or correspond with him while she was in her care. That letter ended, “If I had been one half as level-headed as my niece Katherine or Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith about you, Nicholas, I should have protected you against such temptation, and we might have all been spared this catastrophe.”

In Elsie’s parting from her father he had shown her this letter. (Now Kate knew why Elsie had grown cold always at mention of Katherine!) He had begged her to accept her aunt’s conditions. Indeed there was nothing else she could do, for her mother’s relations were now more estranged from them than ever. They had not written one word, even bitter ones.

“Oh, Elsie! That must have been dreadful, not being allowed even to speak of your father, to act as though he were dead!”

Elsie looked at her, her eyes black with remembered grief. “It was. I was so lonely for him, Kate, I expected to die.”

In time Nick’s two letters about the “overnight loan,” forwarded and reforwarded, had arrived in Oakdale. Then Aunt Katherine began to understand a little how his deed had not been so pitchy black as it had seemed in the first shock. He had done what she had always wanted him to do, counted on her understanding and generosity. It had been a crime—even Nick had accepted that judgment from the very first—and an utterly foolish and desperate deed, but now Aunt Katherine was sorry she had not lifted a hand to keep him from paying the penalty of imprisonment. She looked about to see what could be done, and ultimately was able to set wheels in motion that brought about his release at the end of two years instead of three. But she had not told Elsie. She had not been able to bring herself to speak of Elsie’s father to her at all.