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Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp by Alice B. Emerson

A >> Alice B. Emerson >> Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp




His business card helped get them past the inspectors. It is not easy to
board a ship nowadays to bid good-bye to a sailing friend. But in ten
minutes or so they stood before the great singer.

She was a tall and handsome woman. Betty at first glance saw that Ida, the
niece, would very likely grow into a very close resemblance to Madam
Bellethorne.

The woman looked swiftly from Betty to Ida and made no mistake in her
identification of her brother's daughter. Ida was crying just a little,
but when she realized how close and kindly was her aunt's embrace she
shook the drops out of her eyes and smiled.

"Father wanted I should find you, Aunt Ida," she said. "He wrote a letter
to you and I have it. I think it was the principal thing he thought of
during his last illness--his misunderstanding with you."

"My fault as much as his," Madam Bellethorne said sadly. "We were both
proud and high-tempered. But no more of this now. Something in this
gentleman's long telegram to me----"

She bowed to Mr. Gordon. He quickly stated the matter of the black mare's
ownership to the singer.

"If you will come to the British consulate where Ida's passport must be
vised, and sign there a paper empowering me to act in your behalf, you
assuming the guardianship of Ida, I can start lawyers on the trail of this
swindle."

Miss Bellethorne was a woman of prompt decision and of a business mind,
and immediately agreed. She likewise saw that her niece had made powerful
friends during the weeks she had been in America and she was content to
allow Mr. Gordon to do the girl this kindness.

It was a busy time; but the delay in the sailing of the _San Salvador_
made it possible for everything necessary to be accomplished. Uncle Dick
and Betty and Bob accompanied the Bellethornes aboard the ship again and
had luncheon with them. Ida cried when she parted with Betty; but it would
be only for the winter. When the opera company returned to New York it was
already planned that the younger Ida Bellethorne should join the friends
of her own age she had so recently made at Shadyside School.

It was an astonishing sight for Betty and Bob to see the great ship
worried out of her dock by the fussy little tugs. It was growing dark by
that time and the great steamship was brilliantly lighted. They watched
until she was in midstream and was headed down the harbor under her own
steam.

"There! It's over!" sighed Betty. "I feel as if a great load had been
lifted from my mind. Dear me, Bob! do you suppose we can ever again have
so much excitement crowded into a few hours?"

As Betty was no seeress and could not see into the future she of course
did not dream that in a very few weeks, and in very different
surroundings, she would experience adventures quite as interesting as any
which had already come into her life. These will be published in the next
volume of this series, entitled: "Betty Gordon at Ocean Park; or, Gay
Doings on the Boardwalk."

Bob shook his head at Betty's last observation. "Does seem as though we
manage to get hooked up to lots of strange folks and strange happenings.
Certain metals attract lightning, Betty, and I think you attract
adventures. What do you say, Uncle Dick?"

Mr. Gordon only laughed. "I say that you young folks had better have
supper and a long night's rest. I shall not let you go on to school until
to-morrow. For once you will be a day late; but I will chance explaining
the circumstances to your instructors."

They got into the taxicab again and bowled away up town. The lights came
up like rows of fireflies in the cross streets. When they struck into the
foot of Fifth Avenue at the Washington Arch the globes on that
thoroughfare were all alight. It was late enough for the traffic to have
thinned out and their driver could travel at good speed save when the red
lights flashed up on the traffic towers.

"Isn't this wonderful?" said Betty. "Libbie is always enthusing about
pretty views and fairylike landscapes. What would she and Timothy say to
this?"

"Something silly, I bet," grumbled Bob. "Cricky! but I'm hungry," proving
by this speech that he had a soul at this moment very little above mundane
things.

Uncle Dick chuckled in his corner of the car, and made no comment. And
Betty said nothing further just then. The brilliant lights of the avenue
were shining full in her face, but her thoughts were far away, with Ida
Bellethorne on that ocean-going steamer bound for South America. What a
wonderful winter of adventures it had been!

"And the best of it is, it all came out right in the end," murmured the
girl softly to herself.

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

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Murder One closing so did we commit this crime?
Articles published by guardian.co.uk Books

Poetry Workshop creature features

For many years my local corner shop displayed a large sign in its window telling local residents to "use us or lose us!" It always looked a rather toothless threat to me. After all, if I didn't use them, what difference would it make to me if they weren't there? And surely a corner shop, one that had been there for years, would have enough customers to survive without recourse to such apocalyptic warning? But it didn't and was soon converted into flats.

This community shop was destroyed not so much by the pressures of the supermarkets or people's commuting patterns, but simply by customer apathy. It's something to think about as crime writers and readers across the world mourn the imminent passing of Maxim Jakubowski's celebrated Charing Cross Road bookshop in London, Murder One.

Apathy is a strange word to connect to a bookstore that thrives on passion. It's noticeable when you walk through the door, when you speak to the friendly, knowledgeable staff, when you look at the shelves and see the vast range of titles on offer. This isn't your regular kind of bookstore: the first time I visited spent a whole lunch break looking up and down, from floor to ceiling from table to table; it was an hour that changed my perception of both crime writing and of bookselling.

Murder One was – and for a few weeks will remain – a shop that took crime seriously. Not in the sense that it intellectualised it, or made unsubstantiated claims for its importance, but in the way that it treated crime writing with the respect it was due. With a genre that has so many off-shoots, branches and sub-genres, it took a shop of Murder One's calibre to show just how diverse, interesting and mentally stimulating crime could be – far more than the guilty pleasure I had, until then, considered it.

Thanks to judicious recommendations, enticing table displays and hours of foraging among the stacks, I discovered writers that I would never have picked up, let alone read. You could always get the latest blockbuster, but delve a little deeper and you'd find books that were not stocked anywhere else, novels that, like the perfect crime, were hidden from public view. The Martin Beck novels by Sjöwall & Wahlöö – probably my favourite sequence of novels in any genre – were introduced to me via Murder One, as were Kem Nunn, Sue Grafton, and Henning Mankell. It's also the staff of Murder One who piqued my interest in the inimitable Fred Vargas, and I can't thank them enough for the introduction.

Inclusive and without snobbery, Murder One amply demonstrated that the best bookshops are places not just of commerce, but of community; places that make feel you belong. It's the kind of store that bibliophiles dream about: well-stocked, well-staffed and shabby enough to lose days browsing within. It's just unfortunate that such shops don't have enough paying customers to keep them afloat, or that these customers visit all too infrequently – something of which I'm certainly guilty.

These kinds of shops are facing a long, bloody battle – and one which, without significant reinforcements, they are likely to lose. As we hear of the travesty of another brilliant independent going down, we'll mourn the loss, wring our hands and damn Amazon and the supermarkets and Waterstone's. Yet perhaps the most important detail we'll probably keep under wraps: the last time we actually spent any money there.

Murder One closing its doors for the final time is undoubtedly a .38 shell for independent bookshops, but whether it's body blow or a warning shot all depends upon us, the consumers. No one, no matter how iconic or established, can exist on fond memories alone: just ask Woolworths. Use these shops now, because it doesn't take a master sleuth to deduce what will happen if we don't.

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