At seven-twenty-nine Susie eluded the vigilance of the wondering lions
and ran up the Burgess steps.
Burgess met her in the hall, where she stepped out of her wrap and
stood forth rather taller than he remembered her, by reason of her
high-heeled slippers.
Mrs. Burgess, proud of her reputation for meeting emergencies, did
not wait for her guest to be presented. Her quick scrutiny discovered
nothing alarming in this young person. With a quick eye she appraised
the three-year-old gown, correctly placed its vintage and said:
“So nice that you could come.”
Pendleton, who knew a great many girls in different parts of the world,
saw nothing disquieting in this Miss Parker. She was merely another
girl. Billy Merrill, who was forty, wondered whether there would be
champagne or only sauterne besides the cocktail. He had never heard
of Pendleton, any more than he had heard of Miss Parker, and he was
speculating as to whether he had ever really been in love with Floy
Wilkinson, and whether he should venture to propose to her again just
after Christmas. Proposing to Floy was a habit with Billy.
At the round table the forks for the caviar had been overlooked, and
this gave the dinner a bad start. Mrs. Burgess was annoyed, and to
cover her annoyance she related an anecdote, at which the guest of
honor only smiled wanly. He did not seem happy. He barely tasted his
soup, and when Burgess addressed a question to him directly Pendleton
did not hear it until it had been repeated. Things were not going well.
Then Billy Merrill asked Pendleton if he was related to some Pendletons
he knew in St Louis. Almost every one knew that Brown Pendleton
belonged to an old Rhode Island family--and Merrill should have known
it. Mrs. Burgess was enraged by the fleeting grin she detected on her
husband’s face. Web was always so unsympathetic. Burgess was conversing
tranquilly with Susie; he never grasped the idea that his wife gave
small dinners to encourage general conversation. And this strange girl
would not contribute to the conversation; she seemed to be making
curious remarks to Webster in a kind of baby talk that made him choke
with mirth. “An underbred, uncultivated person!” thought Mrs. Burgess.
Mrs. Burgess decided that it would not be amiss to take soundings in
the unknown’s past and immediate present.
“You don’t usually come back to town so early, do you, Miss Parker?”
she asked sweetly.
“No; but Newport was rather slow this year--so many of the houses
weren’t open.”
Mrs. Burgess and her sister exchanged a glance of startled surprise.
Brown Pendleton’s thoughts came back from Babylon. Merrill looked at
Miss Parker with open-eyed admiration.
“Dear old Newport!” Pendleton remarked with feeling. “It has rather
lost tone. I’m not surprised that you didn’t care for it.”
He examined Susie with deliberation.
“The Niedlingers and the Parquetries didn’t show up at all; and the
Ossingtons are said to have cut it out for good,” observed Susie.
“Yes; I saw Fred Ossington in London in the spring, and he said he had
enough. Nice chap, Fred.”
“Too bad he had to give up polo,” said Susie, advancing her pickets
daringly; “but I fancy his arm will never be fit again.”
“He’s going in for balloons. Can you believe it? Amusing fellow! Said
he preferred falling on the earth to having it fall on him. And,
besides, a balloon couldn’t kick when it had him down.”
The conversation was picking up, and quite clearly it was the unknown
who was giving it momentum. Fish had been disposed of satisfactorily
and Mrs. Burgess began to regain confidence. The unknown must be
checked. It would not do for the girl to go further with this light,
casual discussion, conveying as she did all sorts of implications of
knowledge of the great in lofty places. The vintage of the dinner
gown testified unimpeachably against her having any real knowledge of
Newport, a place where Mrs. Burgess had once spent a day at a hotel.
Mrs. Burgess resolved to squelch the impostor. Such presumption should
not go unrebuked even at one’s own table. Pendleton was now discussing
aviation with this impertinent Susie, who brought to the subject
the same light touch of apparent sophistication she had employed in
speaking of Newport and polo. She asked him if he had read an account
of a new steering device for dirigibles; she thought she had seen
it in _L’Illustration_. Pendleton was interested, and scribbled the
approximate date of the journal on the back of his namecard.
“I suppose you came back ahead of your family, Miss Parker? I really
don’t know who’s in town.”
“Yes; I’m quite alone, Mrs. Burgess. You see,” and Susie tilted her
head Susily and spoke directly to Mrs. Burgess, “one never really knows
anything about one’s neighbors.”
“Ah--you live close by?” asked Pendleton.
Susie answered with an imperceptible movement of the head:
“Oh, just next door, you know.”
“How charming! At the sign of the lions? I noticed them as we came up.
I must have another look at them. Rather good, as near as I could make
out.”
“They are rather nice, I think,” said Susie as one who would not boast
of her possessions. “Ernestenoff did them--one of Barye’s pupils.”
Burgess wondered how far she would go. Merrill’s face wore the look of
a man who is dying of worry. He had lived in town all his life, and
it was inconceivable that this was one of Logan’s daughters. He had
forgotten the girl’s name, and he resolved to pay attention in future
when people were introduced.
Mrs. Burgess was too far at sea herself to bother with his
perplexities. Thoroughly alarmed, she threw the conversation back three
thousand years and shifted its playground from the Wabash Valley to the
left bank of the Euphrates, confident that the temerarious person with
the yellow hair and blue eyes would be dislodged.
“When you first began your excavations in Assyria, Mr. Pendleton, I
suppose you didn’t realize how important your work would be to the
world.”
The table listened. Merrill groped for light. This Pendleton was,
then, a digger among ancient ruins! Miss Wilkinson’s eyes were ready
to meet Pendleton’s responsively and sympathetically: her interest in
archæology was recent and superficial, but this was only the more
reason for yielding ungrudging admiration to the eminent digger.
Pendleton did not reply at once to Mrs. Burgess’s question, and instead
of appearing pleased by its ingratiating flattery he frowned and played
with his wine-glass nervously. When he broke the silence it was to say
in a hard tone that was wholly unlike his usual manner of speech:
“I’m not at all sure that it has been of importance; I’m inclined to
think I wasted five years on those jobs.”
His depression was undeniable and he made no effort to conceal it. And
Mrs. Burgess was angry to find that she had clumsily touched the wrong
chord, and one that seemed to be vibrating endlessly. She had always
flattered herself that she had mastered the delicate art of drawing
out highbrows. Scores of distinguished visitors to the Hoosier capital
had gone forth to publish her charm and wit; and this was the first
cloud that had ever rested above a dinner table where a Chinese prince
had been made to feel at home, and whence poets, bishops, novelists,
scientists and statesmen had departed radiant. She had not only struck
the wrong note but one that boomed monotonously down the long corridors
of time.
Burgess mildly sought to inject a needleful of bromide into the
situation.
“You’re probably not a good judge of that, Mr. Pendleton. The world has
already set its seal of approval upon your investigations.”
“It’s not the world’s praise we want,” said Pendleton; “it’s the praise
of the men who know.”
This was not tactful; it apparently brushed aside his host’s approval
as negligible. Miss Wilkinson flashed Pendleton one of her brilliant
smiles, remarking:
“You are altogether too modest, Mr. Pendleton. Every one says that
your ‘Brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar’ is the last word on that subject.”
And then a chill seized Mrs. Burgess. The yellow-haired, blue-eyed
unknown moved her head slightly to one side, bit an almond in two with
neatness, and said:
“If I were you, Mr. Pendleton, I shouldn’t let a faker like
Geisendanner annoy me.”
Susie regarded the remaining half of the almond indifferently and then
ate it musingly. At the mention of Geisendanner Pendleton flushed, and
his head lifted as though he heard trumpets calling to action. Then he
bent toward Susie. The salad had just been removed. Mrs. Burgess beat
the table with her fingers and awaited the earthquake. Her only relief
at the moment was in the consciousness that her husband, from the
look of his face, at last realized the heinousness of his conduct in
bringing just any little whipper-snapper to her table. And Susie seemed
to be the only member of the company who was wholly tranquil. Mrs.
Burgess wondered whether she could be more than twenty, so complete had
been the reinvestiture of the girl in the robes of her Susiness. She
had spoken of Geisendanner as though he lived round the corner and were
a person that every one with any sort of decent bringing up knew or
should know. The effect of the name upon Pendleton was not pleasant to
see, and Mrs. Burgess shuddered. After the first shock of surprise he
seemed wonderfully subdued. Clearly this Geisendanner was an enemy or a
man he feared. The eminent Babylonian met Susie’s eyes apprehensively.
He said in a low tone of dejection:
“So you know then?” As though of course she did, and that a dark
understanding had thus been established by their common knowledge.
Susie nodded.
“Rather absurd, on the whole, when you consider----”
Her plate was being changed and she drew back during the interruption.
Pendleton shook his head impatiently at the delay.
“Absurd! How absurd? If it’s absurd to have the results of years of
hard work chucked into the rubbish heap, then----”
“But no!” Susie felt for her fork without breaking the contact of their
eyes. She was smiling as though quite the mistress of the occasion
and waiting merely to prolong the agony of the sufferers about her.
She was not insensible to their sufferings; it was pleasant rather
than otherwise to inflict torture. Still her attitude toward the
distressed scientist was kindly--but she would make him wait. Her
bearing toward Pendleton at the moment was slightly maternal. It was
only a matter of bricks anyhow; and trifles like the chronological
arrangement of bricks, where, one toppling, all went down, were not
only to the young person’s liking but quite within the range of her
powers of manipulation. “As I remember,” she continued, “Geisendanner
first attacked the results of the Deutsche Orientgesellschaft; but, of
course, that was disposed of.”
“Yes,” assented Pendleton eagerly; “Auchengloss did that.”
It seemed preposterous that the small mouth of this young person could
utter such names at all, much less with an air of familiarity, as
though they were the names of streets or of articles of commerce.
“It was Glosbrenner, however, who paved the way for you by disposing of
Geisendanner--absolutely.”
“The excavations they made in their absurd search for treasure in the
ruins confused everything; but Glosbrenner’s exposé was lost--burnt up
in a printing-office fire in Berlin. There’s not an assertion in my
‘Brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar’ that isn’t weakened by that bronze-gate
rubbish, for Geisendanner was a scholar of some reputation. After the
failure of his hidden-treasure scheme he faked his book on the Bronze
Gates of Babylon as a pot boiler, and died leaving it behind him--one
of the most plausible frauds ever perpetrated. They went in on top of
my excavations of the brickyard--thought because I was an American I
must have been looking for gold images. Glosbrenner was an American
student; and seeing that his fellow-adventurer’s book was taken
seriously he wrote his exposé, swore to it before the American consul
at Berlin and then started for Tibet to sell an automobile to the Grand
Lama--and never came back.”
Pendleton’s depression had increased; gloom settled upon the
company--or upon all but this demure young skeleton at the feast, who
had thus outrageously brought to the table the one topic of all topics
in the world that was the most ungrateful to the man Mrs. Burgess most
particularly wished to please. She sought without avail to break in
upon a dialogue that excluded the rest of the company as completely as
though they were in the kitchen.
“I was just reading that thing in the Seven Seas’ Review; but you can
see that the reviewer swallowed Geisendanner whole. He takes your
brickyards away from Nebuchadnezzar and gives them to Nabopolassar,
which seems v-e-r-y c-a-r-e-l-e-s-s!”
This concluding phrase, drawled most Susesquely, brought a laugh from
Burgess, and Pendleton’s own face relaxed.
“They’re all flinging Geisendanner at me!” continued Pendleton with
renewed animation. “It’s humiliating to find the English and Germans
alike throwing this impostor at my head. Those fellows began their
excavations secretly and without authority, in a superstitious
belief that they’d find gold images of heathen gods and all manner
of loot there. And it’s hard luck that the confession of one of the
conspirators is lost forever and the man himself dead.”
“It certainly is most unfortunate!” mourned Mrs. Burgess, anxious to
pour balm upon his wounds.
“It’s curious, however, Mr. Pendleton,” said Susie casually, “that I
happen to know of the existence of a copy of that Glosbrenner pamphlet.”
“A copy---- You mustn’t chaff me about that!”
“Yes,” said Susie; “it’s really quite the funniest thing that ever
happened.”
“This seems to be an important matter, Miss Parker. You have no right
to play upon Mr. Pendleton’s credulity, his hopes!” said Mrs. Burgess
icily.
“Nothing like that, Mrs. Burgess!” chirruped Susie. “I can tell Mr.
Pendleton exactly where one copy of that pamphlet, and probably the
only one in the world, may be found. And a small investment in a night
message to Poughkeepsie will verify what I say. There is a copy of
that pamphlet at Vassar College that was picked up in Berlin by one
of the professors, who gave it to the library. It had a grayish cover
and looked like a thesis for a doctorate--that sort of thing. It was
a little burned on the edges, and that was one reason why it caught
my eye one day when I was poking about looking for something among
a lot of German treatises with the most amusing long titles. And it
was a perfectly dee-li-cious story--how they dug and mixed up those
dynasties there; and then one of them wrote a book about it, just for
the money he could get out of it. It was all a fake, but they knew
enough to make it look like real goods. It was a kind of Huckleberry
Finn and Tom Sawyer joke, muddying the water that way.”
The conjunction of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer with Nebuchadnezzar
caused even Merrill to laugh.
“I must wire tonight for a confirmation of this--or, perhaps, if you
are an alumna of the college you would do it for me.”
“I think,” said Susie, “they still remember me at college. I was the
limit!”
“If what you say is right,” Pendleton resumed, “I can smash those
Germans and make that Seven Seas’ reviewer eat his words! I really
believe it would be better for you to wire for me to the librarian for
confirmation; I’d rather not publish my anxiety to the world. If you
will do this I shall look upon it as the greatest possible favor.”
“Delighted!” said Susie, crumpling her napkin.
Mrs. Burgess showed signs of rising, but delayed a moment.
“Miss Parker, you rather implied that there was more than one reason
why you happened to notice a singed document in a strange language,
bearing upon a subject usually left to scientists and hardly within the
range of a young girl’s interests. Would you mind enlightening us just
a little further in the matter?”
“I thought it was so funny,” said Susie, smiling upon them all,
“because of my papa.”
“Your father?” gasped Mrs. Burgess.
“Yes, Mrs. Burgess. Anything about bricks always seemed to me so
amusing, because papa used to own a brickyard.”
V
A packet of newspaper clippings forwarded with other mail for Pendleton
did not add to the joy of the Burgess breakfast table the next morning.
The archæologist murmured an apology and scanned the cuttings with knit
brows.
“How early,” he asked, “do you imagine Miss Parker can have a
confirmation of her impression about that thing of Glosbrenner’s?”
“By noon, I should think,” answered Burgess.
The husband of Mrs. Burgess had passed a bad night, and he was fully
persuaded of the grievousness of his most grievous sin. Never again,
he had solemnly sworn, would he attempt any such playfulness as had
wrought this catastrophe--never again would he expose himself to the
witchery of Susans prone to Susinesses!
“Unless I have corroboration of Miss Parker’s impression before three
o’clock I shall break my engagement at the state university. With this
article in the Seven Seas’ Review lying on every college library table,
citing Geisendanner against me and discrediting me as the discoverer of
the brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar, I shall never stand upon a platform
again--and I must withdraw my book. My reputation, in other words,
hangs upon a telegram,” concluded the archæologist gloomily.
“It is inconceivable,” said Mrs. Burgess in a cheerful tone that far
from represented her true feelings, “that Miss Parker would have
spoken as she did if she hadn’t been reasonably confident. Still it is
always best to be prepared for disappointments. I think you and Floy
had better take the motor for a run into the country and forget the
telegram until it arrives. I dare say Miss Parker will send it over at
once when it comes.”
“Thanks, very much,” muttered Pendleton, not highly elated at the
thought of motoring with Miss Wilkinson, whose efforts to enliven the
breakfast table by talking of things as far removed as possible from
the brickyards of oblivion had palled upon the wealthy archæologist. He
was an earnest chap, this Pendleton; and the fact that his eligibility
as a bachelor was not, in certain eyes, greatly diminished by the
failure of his efforts to reëstablish the brick industries of Babylon
had not occurred to him. Floy and the Burgesses bored him; but he was
dazed by the threatened collapse of his reputation. He declined his
host’s invitation to walk downtown; and in an equally absent-minded
fashion he refused an invitation to luncheon at the University Club, to
meet certain prominent citizens. Whereupon, finding the air too tense
for his nerves, Burgess left for the bank.
Pendleton moved restlessly about the house, moodily smoking, while
the two women pecked at him occasionally with conversation and then
withdrew for consultation. His legs seemed to be drawn to those windows
of the Burgess drawing room that looked toward the Logans’. In a few
minutes Pendleton picked up his hat and stick and left the house,
merely saying to the maid he saw clearing up the dining room that
he was going for a walk. It is wholly possible he meant to go for a
walk quite alone, but at the precise moment at which he reached the
Logans’ iron gates the Logan door opened suddenly, as though his foot
had released a spring, and Susie, in hat and coat, surveyed the world
from between the lions. Mrs. Burgess and Floy, established in an upper
window, saw Susie wave a hand to Brown Pendleton. For a woman to wave
her hand to a man she hasn’t known twenty-four hours, particularly
when he is wealthy and otherwise distinguished, is the least bit open
to criticism. Susie did not escape criticism, but Susie was happily
unmindful of it. And it seemed that as she fluttered down between the
lions Pendleton grasped her hand anxiously, as though fearing she
meditated flight; whereas nothing was further from Susie’s mind.
“Good news!” she cried. “They have just telephoned me the answer from
the telegraph office. I think telephoned messages are so annoying; and,
as they take forever to send one out, I was just going to the office to
get it and send it up to you.”
“Then,” cried Pendleton with fervor, “you must let me go with you. It’s
a fine morning for a walk.”
At the telegraph office he read the message from Susie’s friend, the
librarian, which was official and final. Whereupon Pendleton became a
man of action. To the professor of archæology at Vassar, whom he knew,
Pendleton wrote a long message referring to the Seven Seas’ Review’s
attack, and requesting that the precious Glosbrenner confession be
carefully guarded until he could examine it personally at the college.
He wrote also a cable to the American consul at Berlin, requesting that
Geisendanner’s whole record be thoroughly investigated.
“Why,” asked Susie, an awed witness of this reckless expenditure for
telegrams, “why don’t you ask the State Department to back up your
cable? They must know you in Washington.”
“By Jove!” ejaculated Pendleton, staring at Susie as though frightened
by her precociousness; “that’s a bully idea! Phillips, the second
assistant secretary, is an old friend of mine, and he’ll tear up the
earth for me!”
As they strolled back uptown through the long street, with its arching
maples, they seemed altogether like the oldest of friends. Pendleton
did not appear to mind at all, if he were conscious of the fact, that
Susie’s hat was not one of the new fall models, or that her coat was
not in the least smart. The strain was over and he submitted himself
in high good humor to the Susiness of Susie. It was when they were
passing the Public Library that a mood of remorse seized her. There
was, she reflected, such a thing as carrying a joke too far. She salved
her conscience with the reflection that if she had not yielded to the
temptations of her own Susiness and accepted Mr. Burgess’s invitation
she would not have been able to point this big, earnest student to the
particular alcove and shelf where reposed the one copy in all the world
of the only document that would rout the critics of the Brickyards of
Nebuchadnezzar.
“That Geisendanner,” said Susie, rather more soberly than he had yet
heard her speak, “was, beyond doubt, an awful liar and a great fraud;
but I am a much greater.”
“You!” exclaimed Pendleton, leaning for a moment on his stick and
staring at her.
“Even so! In the first place, I went to Mrs. Burgess’s house for
dinner last night through a mistake; she had never seen or heard of me
before, and Mr. Burgess asked me merely because he had exhausted the
other possibilities and was desperate for some one to fill a chink at
his wife’s table. And the worst thing I did was to make you think I
knew all about Newport, when I was never there in my life--and never
saw any of the people I mentioned. Everything I said I got out of
the newspapers. It was all just acting, and I put it on a little more
because I saw that Mrs. Burgess and her sister didn’t like me; they
didn’t think it was a joke at all, my trying to be Susie again--just
once more in my life before I settled back to being called Miss Susan
forever. And the way I come to be living in that fine house is simply
that I’m borrowed from the library for so much a week to catalogue the
Logans’ library and push a paperknife through the books. Now you see
that Geisendanner isn’t in it with me for downright wickedness and most
s-h-o-c-k-i-n-g m-e-n-d-a-c-i-t-y!”
“But if you hadn’t done all those terrible things where should I be?”
demanded Pendleton. “But, before dismissing your confession, would you
mind telling me just how you came to know--well, anything about me?”
“I’m almost afraid to go that far,” laughed Susie, who, as a matter of
fact, did not fear this big, good-natured man at all.
“Tell me that,” encouraged Pendleton, “and we will consider the
confession closed.”
“Well, I think I’ll be happier to tell you, and then the slate will
be cleaned off a little bit anyhow. A sample copy of the Seven Seas’
Review had strayed into the house; and, in glancing over the list of
book reviews on the cover, I saw the Brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar among
the books noticed. I spent ten minutes reading the review; and then I
grabbed the Britannica--four minutes more! And then in Who’s Who I saw
that you were a Newporter. It’s remarkable how educated one can become
in fifteen minutes! And, as I said last night when Mrs. Burgess asked
me how I came to be interested in that sort of thing, my father ran a
brickyard!”
She was looking straight ahead, but the Babylonian expert saw
that there were tears in her eyes, as though called forth by the
recollection of other and happier times.
“Thank you,” he said gravely; “and now let us forget all about this.”
They walked in silence for several minutes, not looking at each other,
until she said as they neared the Burgess gate:
“After all, I’m the foolishest little Susie in the world; and it’s a
lot better for me to go back and be Susan again, and not go to dinner
parties where I’m not expected.”
And what Pendleton seemed to say, though she was not sure of it, was:
“Never!--not if I know myself!”
* * * * *
“Do you suppose,” Mrs. Burgess asked her sister as they saw Susie
tripping along beside Pendleton, “that she has carried it through?”
“From Brown Pendleton’s looks,” said Floy, “I should judge she had.
But--it can’t be possible that she’s coming in here again!”
Susie and Pendleton lingered at the gate for an instant, in which he
seemed to be talking earnestly. Then together they entered; and in a
moment Mrs. Burgess and Floy faced them in the drawing room, where
Pendleton announced with undeniable relief and satisfaction the good
news from Poughkeepsie.
“Then I suppose you will make the address at the university after all?”
said Mrs. Burgess. “I find that so many matters are pressing here
that I shall have to forego the pleasure of joining you; and Floy, of
course, will have to be excused also.”
“On the other hand,” said Pendleton with the most engaging of smiles,
“I must beg you not to abandon me. Our party of last night was so
perfect, and the results of it so important to me, that I shall greatly
regret losing any member of it. I propose in my address tonight to
assert my claims to the discovery of the brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar
as against all the assertions that contradict me in Geisendanner’s
romantic fiction about the bronze gates of Babylon. I should like you
all to be present, and I am going to beg you, as a particular favor,
Mrs. Burgess, to invite Miss Parker to accompany us; for, without
her helpful hint as to the existence of that copy of Glosbrenner’s
confession, where, I should like to know, would I be?”
Mrs. Burgess prided herself upon being able to meet just such
situations; and Susie was so demure--there was about the child
something so appealing and winning--that Mrs. Burgess dipped her colors.
“Certainly, Mr. Pendleton. I’m sure that Mr. Merrill will feel honored
to be included. And I shall be delighted to chaperon Miss Parker.”
“Miss Parker has agreed to help me run down some obscure authorities on
the mound-builders a little later, and the trip will give her a chance
to see what they have in the university library. I can’t afford to take
any more chances with so much doubtful scientific lore floating about.”
“I should think,” remarked Floy carelessly, “you would find help of
some kind almost essential in your future work.”
“I think, myself,” said Susie with an uncontrollable resurgence of her
Susiness, “that it would save an a-w-f-u-l l-o-t o-f t-r-o-u-b-l-e!”