Evening Star Newspaper, August 8, 1937, Page 78

10 HILD VIPER] THIS WEEK When a lady is driven to dropping her dignity, Heaven help the wretch she drops it on! Another adventure of Isabelle Cummings by PATTERSON DIAL ER mind filled with the pleasant con- fasion of the Charity Bazaar, a new evening dress, Jim Rainey and Kenneth Taylor, Isabelle Cummings strolled homeward down the tree-shadowed street. The Charity Bazaar for the Orphanage was always one of the big affairs of the year — lanterns, booths, a band and a tent over the floor for dancing on Mrs. Fallon’s lawn. And Mrs. Fallon had given Isabelle the booth everyone wanted — the Booth Moderne. Isa- belle had overheard the débutantes saying that of course Mrs. Fallon was eccentric; but giving Isabelle Cummings the Booth Moderne was verging on absolute dotage. The best booth to a mere sixteen-year-old who ran around with boys home from their first year at college! Isabelle had ignored this envy with the proper scorn. Those old débutantes wearied her; calling Mrs. Fallon eccentric just because Mrs. Fallen was sort of vague and absent- minded and would drive around in that old electric automobile she’d owned since she was a bride. Although she had a limousine and a chauffeur sitting in the garage, Mrs. Fallon said it kept her feeling young to drive the electric. Isabelle’s father said it kept the town young, jumping out of the electric’s way; no- body was safe when Mrs. F., like a wax figure under glass, caromed through the streets. Isabelle forgot about Mrs. Fallon and thought about herself as she would be at the Bazaar, presiding over the Booth Moderne. She would be wearing her new white dress. It was to be cut severe and tight, sort of like the mood of the Booth with its shelves of severe little animals, flowers and ashtrays and things of glass and chromium. And neither Jim Rainey nor Kenneth Tay- lor had ever seen her in an evening dress! Though they’d both always lived in town, they were new in the crowd because Kenneth had always been too shy and Jim had been too proud. Of course none of the boys, Clifford, Wally and all the rest, had ever seen her in such a setting as the Booth Moderne would be. She could imagine their expressions when they discovered her. Yet, somehow, Kenneth was the one she could imagine most vividly. Of course she thought Jim Rainey was simply too marvei- ous; he was what the boys called him, “a regular guy.” That was just it: Jim was awfully down to earth and calm and cool about everything. When he saw her, all he’d say -JG&!YI laughing and kidding with the boys and be- having as if the Bazaar wasn’t anything par- ticularly wonderful. But Kenneth . . . Kenneth Taylor was the most imaginative person with the best manners she'd ever known. He'd feel the way she did about the Bazaar. She was sure because of the way he discussed movies and radio programs and things. For her and Kenneth the evening would be sort of breathless and foreign and glamorous. European, like a fete. She couldn’t define fete right out in words but she could feel it and live up to it, and she wanted some- one who could live up to it with her. Other- wise it wouldn’t be a fete —it would be merely the Bazaar. She sighed, imagining how Kenneth would look when he first saw her gay and scintillat- ing, a perfect foil for all the gaiety and glitter surrounding her. He’d probably sort of swal- low hard and say, ‘“Why — why, Isabelle!” She would smile and pretend she didn’t know what he meant. But her heart — it would turn right over because everything would suddenly be too heavenly and European to be endured. Even now, as she walked down the street, her heart quickened delightfully. The horn of an automobile sounded three short squawks behind her. She turned, ex- pecting to see somebody belonging to her own crowd. Instead, she saw a decrepit flivver load of “mere High School kids.” They were as thick as bees inside the sedan and one young gentleman lay on the running-board with the curve of a front fender serving as a pillow. The driver leaned an elbow on the wheel and smirked at her. Buster Dixon! Isabelle considered Buster “the child viper of the world.” And with reason; for fifteen- year-old Buster had once almost toppled her from her throne as queen of the younger set. *1 BELIEVE,” SHE CONTINUED, *“THERE IS SOME LAW ABOUT TAKING MONEY UN- LAWFULLY"™ lllustrated by Leslie L. Benson In fact, he had come very near to driving the younger set away from her entirely with his “vile showings-off.” Those had been days of real suffering for Isabelle. Then she had found a way to be rid of Buster — forever she had thought. She went in search of Buster the next morning and found him in the Dixon garage, cleaning the concrete floor. His overalls, arms, and face smeared with black oil, he looked up to see Isabelle, immaculate in white linen, regarding him. “Buster,” she began in a manner she thought fitting for such a mere child, “will you kindly tell me what prompted you to be- have like you did yesterday? You and” —-she knew this was going to annihilate him — “and your little friends?” “Aw, you make me tired!” He seemed not to have heard the “little friends.” He set his brush to rotating on a large spot of oil. “Indeed!” She raised her eyebrows. ‘‘Per- haps I can make you tireder yet if you and your little friends don’t learn better manners.” As best he could he assumed her lofty tone: ““And how can you — if I may ask?” ““You know how,” she said. *“You know just what I mean. You know what I can tell.” “Well, go on and tell it.” He threw down his brush. *“See if I care.” This defiance stunned Isabelle. She gasped: “Not care when everybody in this town finds out what I did to you? Finds out that when you were going around pretending what a great big man you were, I practically kid- naped you and left you at night miles from town to walk home like a girl! Thatll sound fine! You being made a monkey of by a girl!” “Aw, who'd believe a story like that? What witness you got to prove it?” “Witness?””” she began heatedly, and stopped. It was true she had no witness. It was her word against Buster’s. Magoazine Section may,” Isabelle forced her voice to an icy com- mand, “you and your little friends had better behave yourselves.” “Me and my ‘little friends,”” he mi- micked her, “‘don’t take our orders from you. We'll behave as we darn please!” She pretended that his words were beneath . her notice and, turning, walked haughtily down the driveway. There was no ground beneath her feet. The world was whirling and upside down with that Buster menace loose again. Oh, heavens! Why, why had she come over here and, as it were, bearded him in his lair? If she’d left him alone he might have forgotten all about her. But now — as soon as he’d finished with the garage floor he’d gather up those other awful boys and they’d all start after her. They started after her that afternoon. She was up in her bedroom with Susie Clayton. - “Darling,” Susie drawled as she sank down on the chaise longue, “I am practicallya corpse in human form. I got out of my car on the street side and a tribe of creatures in a flivver, with that Dixon brat at the wheel, practically crushed me to the ground.” Susie then dismissed Buster and his friends for more important matters. She announced bitterly: “‘Old Mrs. Fallon has devastated the Bazaar so far as I am concerned. I, my sweet, have been changed from the Booth of All Nations to the Flower Bower. I am to mingle coyly among the daisies and delphinium, call- ing, ‘Who’ll buy my violets?’ “Violets?”’ Isabelle asked faintly, fear a cold lump in her throat; for, outside in the street, she had heard an automobile horn squawk three times. That sound followed her through the next few days. She never saw Buster or his friends; but, at home, or walking, or riding in an automobile, she would hear from time to time the three squawks in the not-far distance. When she slept she dreamed of the sound and in her waking hours she did not know whether she suffered more when she heard it or when she waited to hear it again. If they didn’t stop this lurking around her — why, she’d expire utterly and completely. If they would just come out in the open and face her she could stand it, maybe. But she could not go on living like a character in a horror picture, haunted by an unseen mon- ster in the shape of an automobile’s horn. Buster and his friends, finally bored with (Continved on next page) “Be that as it