I
Farrington read the note three times, fished the discarded envelope out
of his wastepaper basket, scrutinized it thoroughly, and then addressed
himself again to the neat vertical script. What he read was this:
If Mr. Farrington will appear at the Sorona Tea House, on Bayfield
Road, near Corydon, at four o’clock today--Tuesday--the matter
referred to in his reply to our advertisement may be discussed.
We serve only one client at a time and our consultations are all
strictly confidential.
The note was unsigned, and the paper, the taste and quality of which
were beyond criticism, bore no address. The envelope had not passed
through the post office, but had been thrust by a private messenger
into the R.F.D. box at Farrington’s gate.
Laurance Farrington had been established in the Berkshires for a
year, and his house in the hills back of Corydon, with the Housatonic
tumbling through his meadow, had been much described in newspapers
and literary journals as the ideal home for a bachelor author. He
had remodeled an old farmhouse to conform to his ideas of comfort,
and incidentally he maintained a riding horse, a touring car and a
runabout; and he had lately set up an Airedale kennel.
He was commonly spoken of as one of the most successful and prosperous
of American novelists. He not only satisfied the popular taste but he
was on cordial terms with the critics. He was thirty-one, and since
the publication of The Fate of Catherine Gaylord, in his twenty-fourth
year, he had produced five other novels and a score or more of short
stories of originality and power.
An enviable man was Laurance Farrington. When he went back to
college for commencement he shared attention with presidents and
ex-presidents; and governors of states were not cheered more lustily.
He was considered a very eligible young man and he had not lacked
opportunities to marry. His friends marveled that, with all his writing
of love and marriage, he had never, so far as any one knew, been in
love or anywhere near it.
As Farrington read his note in the quiet of his study on this
particular morning it was evident that his good fortune had not brought
him happiness. For the first time he was finding it difficult to write.
He had begun a novel that he believed would prove to be the best thing
he had done; but for three months he had been staring at blank paper.
The plot he had relied on proved, the moment he began to fit its parts
together, to be absurdly weak; and his characters had deteriorated
into feeble, spineless creatures over whom he had no control. It was
inconceivable that the mechanism of the imagination would suddenly
cease to work, or that the gift of expression would pass from him
without warning; and yet this had apparently happened.
Reading somewhere that Sir Walter Scott had found horseback riding
stimulating to the imagination, he galloped madly every afternoon,
only to return tired and idealess; and the invitations of his neighbors
to teas and dinners had been curtly refused or ignored. It was then
that he saw in a literary journal this advertisement:
PLOTS SUPPLIED. Authors in need of assistance served with discretion.
Address X Y Z, care of office, _The Quill_.
To put himself in a class of amateurs requiring help was absurd, but
the advertisement piqued his curiosity. Baker, the editor of The Quill,
wrote him just then to ask for an article on Tendencies in American
Fiction; and in declining this commission Farrington subjoined a
facetious inquiry as to the advertisement of X Y Z. In replying, Baker
said that copy for the ad had been left at the business office by a
stranger. A formal note accompanying it stated that a messenger would
call later for answers.
“Of course,” the editor added jocularly, “this is only another scheme
for extracting money from fledgling inkslingers--the struggling
geniuses of Peoria and Ypsilanti. You’re a lucky dog to be able to sit
on Olympus and look down at them.”
Farrington forced his unwilling pen to its task for another week,
hoping to compel the stubborn fountains to break loose with their old
abundance. His critical faculties were malevolently alert and keen, now
that his creative sense languished. He hated what he wrote and cursed
himself because he could do no better.
To add to his torture, the advertisement in The Quill recurred to
him persistently, until, in sheer frenzy, he framed a note to X Y
Z--an adroit feeler, which he hoped would save his face in case the
advertisement had not been put forth in good faith.
Plots--he wrote--were the best thing he did; and as X Y Z seemed to be
interested in the subject it might be amusing if not indeed profitable
for them to meet and confer. This was the cheapest bravado; he had not
had a decent idea of any sort for a year!
X Y Z was nothing if not prompt. The reply, naming the Sorona Tea
House as a rendezvous, could hardly have reached him sooner; and the
fact that it had been dipped into his mail box unofficially greatly
stimulated his interest.
The Sorona Tea House stood on a hilltop two miles from Farrington’s
home and a mile from Corydon, his post office and center of supplies.
It had been designed to lure motorists to the neighborhood in the hope
of interesting them in the purchase of property. It was off the main
thoroughfares and its prosperity had been meager; in fact, he vaguely
remembered that some one had told him the Sorona was closed. But this
was not important; if closed it would lend itself all the better to the
purposes of the conference.
He lighted his pipe and tramped over his fields with his favorite
Airedale until luncheon. It was good to be out-doors; good to be
anywhere, in fact, but nailed to a desk. The brisk October air, coupled
with the prospect of finding a solution of his problems before the day
ended, brought him to a better mood, and he sat down to his luncheon
with a good appetite.
When three o’clock arrived he had experienced a sharp reaction. He was
sure he was making a mistake; he was tempted to pack a suitcase and go
for a weekend with some friends on Long Island who had been teasing him
for a visit; but this would not be a decent way to treat X Y Z, who
might be making a long journey to reach the tea house.
The question of X Y Z’s sex now became obtrusive. Was the plot
specialist man or woman? The handwriting in the note seemed feminine
and yet it might have been penned by a secretary. The use of _our_
and _we_ rather pointed to more than one person. Very likely this
person who offered plots in so businesslike a fashion was a spectacled
professor who had gone through all existing fiction, analyzing devices
and making new combinations, and would prove an intolerable bore--a
crank probably; possibly an old maid who had spent her life reading
novels and was amusing herself in her old age by furnishing novelists
with ideas. He smoked and pondered. He was persuaded that he had made
an ass of himself in answering the advertisement and the sooner he was
through with the business the better.
He allowed himself an hour to walk to the Sorona, and set off rapidly.
He followed the road to the hilltop and found the tea house undeniably
there.
The place certainly had a forsaken look. The veranda was littered with
leaves, the doors and windows were closed, and no one was in sight.
Depression settled on him as he noted the chairs and tables piled
high in readiness for storing for the winter. He passed round to the
western side of the house, and his heart gave a thump as he beheld a
table drawn close to the veranda rail and set with a braver showing
of napery, crystal and silver than he recalled from his few visits to
the house in midsummer. A spirit lamp was just bringing the kettle to
the boiling point: it puffed steam furiously. There were plates of
sandwiches and cakes, cream and sugar, and cups--two cups!
“Good afternoon, Mr. Farrington! If you’re quite ready let’s sit down.”
He started, turned round and snatched off his hat.
A girl had appeared out of nowhere. She greeted him with a quick nod,
as though she had known him always--as though theirs was the most usual
and conventional of meetings. Then she walked to the table and surveyed
it musingly.
“Oh, don’t trouble,” she said as he sprang forward to draw out her
chair. “Let us be quite informal; and, besides, this is a business
conference.”
Nineteen, he guessed--twenty, perhaps; not a day more. She wore, well
back from her face, with its brim turned up boyishly, an unadorned
black velvet hat. Her hair was brown, and wisps of it had tumbled down
about her ears; and her eyes--they, too, were brown--a golden brown
which he had bestowed on his favorite heroine. They were meditative
eyes--just such eyes as he might have expected to find in a girl who
set up as a plot specialist. There was a dimple in her right cheek.
When he had dimpled a girl in a story he bestowed dimples in pairs. Now
he saw the superiority of the single dimple, which keeps the interested
student’s heart dancing as he waits for its appearance. Altogether she
was a wholesome and satisfying young person, who sent scampering all
his preconceived ideas of X Y Z.
“I’m so glad you were prompt! I always hate waiting for people,” she
said.
“I should always have hated myself if I had been late,” he replied.
“A neat and courteous retort! You see the tea house is closed. That’s
why I chose it. Rather more fun anyhow, bringing your own things.”
They were very nice things. He wondered how she had got them there.
“I hope,” he remarked leadingly, “you didn’t have to bring them far!”
She laughed merrily at his confusion as he realized that this was
equivalent to asking her where she lived.
“Let’s assume that the fairies set the table. Do you take yours strong?”
He delayed answering that she might poise the spoonful of tea over the
pot as long as possible. Hers was an unusual hand; in his tales he had
tried often to describe that particular hand without ever quite hitting
it. He liked its brownness--tennis probably; possibly she did golf too.
Whatever sports she affected, he was quite sure that she did them well.
“I knew you would like tea, for the people in your novels drink such
quarts; and that was a bully short story of yours, The Lost Tea
Basket--killingly funny--the real Farrington cleverness!”
He blinked, knowing how dead the real Farrington cleverness had become.
Her manner was that of any well-brought-up girl at a tea table, and her
attitude toward him continued to be that of an old acquaintance. She
took him as a matter of course; and though this was pleasant, it shut
the door on the thousand and one questions he wished to ask her.
Just now she was urging him to try the sandwiches; she had made them
herself, she averred, and he need not be afraid of them.
“Perhaps,” he suggested with an accession of courage, “you won’t mind
telling me your name.”
“It was nice of you to come,” she remarked dreamily, ignoring his
question, “without asking for credentials. I’ll be perfectly frank and
tell you that I couldn’t give you references if you asked for them;
you’re my first client! I almost said patient!” she added laughingly.
“If you had said patient you would have made no mistake! I’ve been out
of sorts--my wits not working for months.”
“I thought your last book sounded a little tired,” she replied. “There
were internal evidences of weariness. You rather worked the long arm
of coincidence overtime, for example--none of your earlier bounce and
zest. Even your last short story didn’t quite get over--a little too
self-conscious probably; and the heroine must have identified the hero
the first time she saw him in his canoe.”
She not only stated her criticisms frankly but she uttered them with
assurance, as though she had every right to pass judgment on his
performances. This was the least bit irritating. He was slightly
annoyed--as annoyed as any man of decent manners dare be at the
prettiest girl who has ever brightened his horizon. But this passed
quickly.
Not only was she a pretty girl but he became conscious of little graces
and gestures, and of a charming direct gaze, that fascinated him. And,
for all her youth, she was very wise; he was confident of that.
“I must tell you that though I had dozens of letters, yours was the
only one that appealed to me. A majority of them were frivolous, and
some were from writers whose work I dislike. I had a feeling that
if they were played out they never would be missed. But you were
different; you are Farrington, and to have you fail would be a calamity
to American literature.”
He murmured his thanks. Her sympathetic tone was grateful to his
bruised spirit. He had gone too far now to laugh away his appeal to
her. And as the moments passed his reliance on her grew.
They talked of the weather, the hills and the autumn foliage, while he
speculated as to her identity.
“Of course you know the Berkshires well, Miss----”
“A man who can’t play a better approach than that certainly needs
help!” she laughed.
He flushed and stammered.
“Of course I might have asked you directly if you lived in the Hills.
But let us be reasonable. I’m at least entitled to your name; without
that----”
“Without it you will be just as happy!”
“Oh, but you don’t mean that you won’t----”
“That’s exactly what I mean!” She smiled, her elbows on the table, the
slim brown fingers interlaced under her firm rounded chin.
“That isn’t fair. You know me; and yet I’m utterly in the dark as to
you----”
“Oh, names are not of the slightest importance. Of course X Y Z is
rather awkward. Let’s find another name--something you can call me by
as a matter of convenience if, indeed, we meet again.”
She bit into a macaroon dreamily while this took effect.
“Not meet again!” he exclaimed.
“Oh, of course it’s possible we may not. We haven’t discussed our
business yet; but when we reach it you may not care for another
interview.”
“On a strictly social basis I can’t imagine myself never seeing you
again. As for my business, let it go hang!”
She lifted a finger with a mockery of warning.
“No business, no more tea; no more anything! You would hardly call
the doctor or the lawyer merely to talk about the scenery. And by the
same token you can hardly take the time of a person in my occupation
without paying for it.”
“But, Miss----”
“There you go again! Well, if you must have a name, call me Arabella!
And never mind about ‘Miss-ing’ me.”
“You’re the first Arabella I’ve ever known!” he exclaimed fervidly.
“Then be sure I’m the last!” she returned mockingly; then she laughed
gayly. “Oh, rubbish! Let’s be sensible. I have a feeling that the girls
in your stories are painfully stiff, and they’re a little too much
alike. They’re always just coming down from Newport or Bar Harbor, and
we are introduced to them as they enter their marble palaces on Fifth
Avenue and ring for Walters to serve tea at once. You ought to cut out
those stately, impossible queens and go in for human interest. I’ll
be really brutal and say that I’m tired of having your heroine pale
slightly as her lover--the one she sent to bring her an orchid known
only to a cannibal tribe of the upper Amazon--appears suddenly at the
door of her box at the Metropolitan, just as Wolfram strikes up his
eulogy of love in Tannhauser. If one of the cannibals in his war dress
should appear at the box door carrying the lover’s head in a wicker
basket, that would be interesting; but for Mister Lover to come wearing
the orchid in his button-hole is commonplace. Do you follow me?”
She saw that he flinched. No one had ever said such things to his face
before.
“Oh, I know the critics praise you for your wonderful portrait gallery
of women, but your girls don’t strike me as being real spontaneous
American girls. Do you forgive me?”
He would have forgiven her if she had told him she had poisoned his tea
and that he would be a dead man in five minutes.
“Perhaps,” he remarked boldly, “the fact that I never saw you until
today will explain my failures!”
“A little obvious!” she commented serenely. “But we’ll overlook it this
time. You may smoke if you like.”
She lighted a match for him and held it to the tip of his cigarette.
This brought him closer to the brown eyes for an intoxicating instant.
Brief as that moment was, he had detected on each side of her nose
little patches of freckles that were wholly invisible across the table.
He was ashamed to have seen them, but the knowledge of their presence
made his heart go pitapat. His heart had always performed its physical
functions with the utmost regularity, but as a center of emotions he
did not know it at all. He must have a care. Arabella folded her hands
on the edge of the table.
“The question before us now is whether you wish to advise with me as
to plots. Before you answer you will have to determine whether you can
trust me. It would be foolish for us to proceed if you don’t think I
can help you. On the other hand, I can’t undertake a commission unless
you intrust your case to me fully. And it wouldn’t be fair for you
to allow me to proceed unless you mean to go through to the end. My
system is my own; I can’t afford to divulge it unless you’re willing to
confide in me.”
She turned her gaze upon the gold and scarlet foliage of the slope
below, to leave him free to consider. He was surprised that he
hesitated. As an excuse for tea-table frivolity this meeting was
well enough; as a business proposition it was ridiculous. But this
unaccountable Arabella appealed strongly to his imagination. If he
allowed her to escape, if he told her he had answered the advertisement
of X Y Z merely in jest, she was quite capable of telling him good-by
and slipping away into the nowhere out of which she had come. No--he
would not risk losing her; he would multiply opportunities for
conferences that he might prolong the delight of seeing her.
“I have every confidence,” he said in a moment, “that you can help me.
I can tell you in a word the whole of my trouble.”
“Very well, if you are quite sure of it,” she replied.
“The plain truth about me is,” he said earnestly--and the fear he had
known for days showed now in his eyes----“the fact about me is that
I’m a dead one! I’ve lost my stroke. To be concrete, I’ve broken down
in the third chapter of a book I promised to deliver in January, and I
can’t drag it a line further!”
“It’s as clear as daylight that you’re in a blue funk,” she remarked.
“You’re scared to death. And that will never do! You’ve got to brace up
and cheer up! And the first thing I would suggest is----”
“Yes, yes!” he whispered eagerly.
“Burn those three chapters and every note you’ve made for the book.”
“I’ve already burned them forty times!” he replied ruefully.
“Burn them again. Then in a week, say, if you follow my advice
explicitly, it’s quite likely you’ll find a new story calling you.”
“Just waiting won’t do it! I’ve tried that.”
“But not under my care,” she reminded him with one of her enthralling
smiles. “An eminent writer has declared that there are only nine basic
plots known to fiction; the rest are all variations. Let it be our
affair to find a new one--something that has never been tried before!”
“If you could do that you’d save my reputation. You’d pull me back from
the yawning pit of failure!”
“Cease firing! You’ve been making hard work of what ought to be the
grandest fun in the world. The Quill had a picture of you planted
beside a beautiful mahogany desk, waiting to be inspired. There’s not
much in this inspiration business. You’ve got to choose some real
people, mix them up and let them go to it!”
“But,” Farrington frowned, “how are you ever going to get them
together? You can’t pick out the interesting people you meet in the
street and ask them to work up a plot for you.”
“No,” she asserted, “you don’t ask them; you just make them do it.
You see”--taking up a cube of sugar and touching it to the tip of her
tongue--“every living man and woman, old or young, is bitten with the
idea that he or she is made for adventure.”
“Rocking-chair heroes,” he retorted, “who’d cry if they got their feet
wet going home from church!”
“The tamer they are, the more they pine to hear the silver trumpet of
romance under their windows,” she replied, her eyes dancing.
He was growing deeply interested. She was no ordinary person, this girl.
“I see one obstacle,” he replied dubiously. “Would you mind telling me
just how you’re going to effect these combinations--assemble the parts,
so to speak; or, in your more poetical manner, make the characters
harken to the silver horn?”
“That,” she replied readily, “is the easiest part of all! You’ve
already lost so much time that this is an emergency case and we’ll call
them by telegraph!”
“You don’t mean that--not really!”
“Just that! We’ll have to decide what combination would be the most
amusing. We should want to bring together the most utterly impossible
people--people who’d just naturally hate each other if they were left
in the same room. In that way you’d quicken the action.”
He laughed aloud at the possibilities; but she went on blithely:
“We ought to have a person of national distinction--a statesman
preferred; some one who figures a lot in the newspapers. Let’s begin,”
she suggested, “with the person in all the United States who has the
least sense of humor.”
“The competition would be keen for that honor,” said Farrington, “but I
suggest the Honorable Tracy B. Banning, the solemnest of all the United
States senators--Idaho or Rhode Island--I forget where he hails from.
It doesn’t matter.”
“I hoped you’d think of him,” she exclaimed, striking her hands
together delightedly.
“He owns a house--huge, ugly thing--on the other side of Corydon.”
“Um! I think I’ve heard of it,” she replied indifferently.
She drew from her sweater pocket and spread on the table these
articles: a tiny vanity box, a silver-backed memorandum book, two
caramels and the stub of a lead-pencil. There was a monogram on the
vanity box, and remembering this she returned it quickly to her
pocket. He watched her write the Senator’s name in her book, in the
same vertical hand in which the note making the appointment had been
written. She lifted her head, narrowing her eyes with the stress of
thought.
“If a man has a wife we ought to include her, perhaps.”
Farrington threw back his head and laughed.
“Seems to me his wife’s divorcing him--or the other way round. The
press has been featuring them lately.”
“Representative of regrettable tendency in American life,” she
murmured. “They go down as Mr. and Mrs.”
“Now it’s your turn,” he said.
“Suppose we put in a gay and cheerful character now to offset the
Senator. I was reading the other day about the eccentric Miss Sallie
Collingwood, of Portland, Maine; she’s rich enough to own a fleet of
yachts, but she cruises up and down the coast in a disreputable old
schooner--has a mariner’s license and smokes a pipe. Is she selected?”
“I can’t believe there’s anybody so worth while on earth!”
“That’s your trouble!” she exclaimed, as she wrote the name. “Your
characters never use the wrong fork for the fish course; they’re all
perfectly proper and stupid. Now it’s your turn.”
“It seems to me,” he suggested, “that you ought to name all the
others. As I think of it, I really don’t know any interesting people.
You’re right about the tameness of my characters, and my notebooks are
absolutely blank.”
She merely nodded.
“Very well; I suppose it’s only fair for me to supply the rest of the
eggs for the omelet. Let me see; there’s been a good deal in the papers
about Birdie Coningsby, the son of the copper king, one of the richest
young men in America. I’ve heard that he has red hair, and that will
brighten the color scheme.”
“Excellent!” murmured Farrington. “He was arrested last week for
running over a traffic cop in New Jersey. I judge that the adventurous
life appeals to him.”
“I suppose our Senator represents the state; the church also should be
represented. Why not a clergyman of some sort? A bishop rather appeals
to me; why not that Bishop of Tuscarora who’s been warning New York
against its sinful ways?”
“All right. He’s at least a man of courage; let’s give him a chance.”
“A detective always helps,” Arabella observed meditatively.
“Then by all means put in Gadsby! I’m tired of reading of his exploits.
I think he’s the most conceited ass now before the public.”
“Gadsby is enrolled!”
She held up the memorandum for his inspection.
“That’s about enough to start things,” she remarked. “It’s a mistake
to have too many characters in a novel. Of course others may be drawn
in--we can count on that.”
“But the heroine--a girl that realizes America’s finest and best----”
“I think she should be the unknown quantity--left up in the air. But if
you don’t agree with that----”
“I was thinking,” he said, meeting her eyes, “that possibly you----”
One of her most charming smiles rewarded this.
“As the chief plotter, I must stand on the sidelines and keep out of
it. But if you think----”
“I think,” he declared, “that the plot would be a failure if you
weren’t in it--very much in it.”
“Oh, we must pass that. But there might be a girl of some sort. What
would you think of Zaliska?”
“The dancer! To offset the bishop!”
The mirth in her eyes kindled a quick response in his. She laughingly
jotted down the name of the Servian dancer who had lately kicked her
way into fame on Broadway.
“But do you think,” he interposed, “that the call of the silver horn is
likely to appeal to her? She’d need a jazz band!”
“Oh, variety is the spice of adventure! We’ll give her a chance,”
she answered. “I think we have done well. One name more needs to be
inscribed--that of Laurance Farrington.”
She lifted her hand quickly as he demurred.
“You need experiences--adventures--to tone up your imagination. Perhaps
Zaliska will be your fate; but there’s always the unknown quantity.”
They debated this at length. He insisted that he would be able to
contribute nothing to the affair; that it was his lack of ideas which
had caused him to appeal to her for help, and that it would be best for
him to act the role of interested spectator.
“I’m sorry, but your objections don’t impress me, Mr. Farrington.
If you’re not in the game you won’t be able to watch it in all its
details. So down you go!”
For a moment she pondered, with a wrinkling of her pretty brows, the
memorandum before her; then she closed the book and dropped it into her
sweater pocket. He was immensely interested in her next step, wondering
whether she really meant to bring together the widely scattered and
unrelated people she had selected for parts in the drama that was to be
enacted for his benefit.
She rose so quickly that he was startled, gave a boyish tug at her
hat--there was something rather boyish about her in spite of her
girlishness--and said with an air of determination:
“How would Thursday strike you for the first rehearsal? Very well,
then. There may be some difficulty in reaching all of them by
telegraph; but that’s my trouble. Just where to hold the meeting
is a delicate question. We should have”--she bent her head for an
instant--“an empty house with large grounds; somewhere in these hills
there must be such a place. You know the country better than I.
Maybe----”
“To give a house party without the owner’s knowledge or consent is
going pretty far; there might be legal complications,” he suggested
seriously.
“Timidity doesn’t go in the adventurous life. And besides,” she added
calmly, “that matter doesn’t concern us in the least. If they all
get arrested it’s so much the better for the plot. We can’t hope for
anything as grand as that!”
“But how about you! What if you should be discovered and go to jail!
Imagine my feelings!”
“Oh, you’re not to worry about me. That’s my professional risk.”
“Then, as to the place, what objection is there to choosing Senator
Banning’s house? He’s in the cast anyhow. His place, I believe, hasn’t
been occupied for a couple of years. The gates were nailed up the last
time I passed there.”
She laughed at this suggestion rather more merrily than she had laughed
before.
“That’s a capital idea! Particularly as we’ve chosen him for his lack
of humor!”
“If he has any fun in him he’ll have a chance to show it,” said
Farrington, “when he finds his house filled with people he never saw
before.”
Questions of taste as to this procedure, hanging hazily at the back
of his consciousness, were dispelled by Arabella’s mirthful attitude
toward the plan. He could hardly tell this joyous young person that it
would be transcending the bounds of girlish naughtiness to telegraph a
lot of people she didn’t know to meet at the house of a gentleman who
enjoyed national fame for his lack of humor. Arabella would only laugh
at him. The delight that danced in her eyes was infectious and the
spirit of adventure possessed him. He was impatient for the outcome:
still, would she--dared she--do it?
She had drawn on a pair of tan gloves and struck her hands together
lightly.
“This has been the nicest of little parties! I thank you--the first of
my clients! But I must skip!”
He had been dreading the moment when she might take it into her head to
skip. They had lingered long and the sun had dropped like a golden ball
beyond the woodland.
“But you will let me help with the tea things?” he cried eagerly. “I
can telephone from the crossroads for my machine.”
She ignored his offer. A dreamy look came into her eyes.
“I wonder,” she said with the air of a child proposing a new game,
“whether anyone’s ever written a story about a person--man or girl--who
undertakes to find some one; who seeks and seeks until it’s a puzzling
and endless quest--and then finds that the quarry is himself--or
herself! Do you care for that? Think it over. I throw that in merely as
a sample. We can do a lot better than that.”
“Oh, you must put it in the bill!”
“Now,” she said, “please, when you leave, don’t look back; and don’t
try to find me! In this business who seeks shall never find. We
place everything on the knees of the gods. Thursday evening, at Mr.
Banning’s, at eight o’clock. Please be prompt.”
Then she lifted her arms toward the sky and cried out happily:
“There, sir, is the silver trumpet of romance! I make you a present of
it.”
He raised his eyes to the faint outline of the new moon that shone
clearly through the tremulous dusk.
As he looked she placed her hands on the veranda railing and vaulted
over it so lightly that he did not know she had gone until he heard her
laughing as she sprang away and darted through the shrubbery below.
From the instant Arabella disappeared Farrington tortured himself
with doubts. One hour he believed in her implicitly; the next he was
confident that she had been playing with him and that he would never
see her again.
He rose early Wednesday morning and set out in his runabout--a swift
scouring machine--and covered a large part of Western Massachusetts
before nightfall. Somewhere, he hoped, he might see her--this amazing
Arabella, who had handed him the moon and run away! He visited the tea
house; but every vestige of their conference had been removed. He was
even unable to identify the particular table and chairs they had used.
He drove to the Banning place, looked at the padlocked gates and the
heavily shuttered windows, and hurried on, torn again by doubts. He
cruised slowly through villages and past country clubs where girls
adorned the landscape, hoping for a glimpse of her. It was the darkest
day of his life, and when he crawled into bed at midnight he was
seriously questioning his own sanity.
A storm fell on the hills in the night and the fateful day dawned cold
and wet. He heard the rain on his windows gratefully. If the girl had
merely been making sport of him he wanted the weather to do its worst.
He cared nothing for his reputation now; the writing of novels was a
puerile business, better left to women anyhow. The receipt of three
letters from editors asking for serial rights to his next book enraged
him. Idiots, not to know that he was out of the running forever!
He dined early, fortified himself against the persistent downpour
by donning a corduroy suit and a heavy mackintosh, and set off for
the Banning place at seven o’clock. Once on his way he was beset by
a fear that he might arrive too early. As he was to be a spectator
of the effects of the gathering, it would be well not to be first on
the scene. As he passed through Corydon his engine changed its tune
ominously and he stopped at a garage to have it tinkered. This required
half an hour, but gave him an excuse for relieving his nervousness by
finishing the run at high speed.
A big touring car crowded close to him, and in response to fierce
honkings he made way for it. His headlights struck the muddy stern
of the flying car and hope rose in him. This was possibly one of the
adventurers hastening into the hills in response to Arabella’s summons.
A moment later a racing car, running like an express train, shot by
and his lamps played on the back of the driver huddled over his wheel.
When he neared the Banning grounds Farrington stopped his car,
extinguished the lights and drove it in close to the fence.
It was nearly eight-thirty and the danger of being first had now
passed. As he tramped along the muddy road he heard, somewhere ahead,
another car, evidently seeking an entrance. Some earlier arrival had
opened the gates, and as he passed in and followed the curving road he
saw that the house was brilliantly lighted.
As he reached the steps that led up to the broad main entrance he
became panic-stricken at the thought of entering a house the owner of
which he did not know from Adam, on an errand that he felt himself
incapable of explaining satisfactorily. He turned back and was moving
toward the gates when the short, burly figure of a man loomed before
him and heavy hands fell on his shoulders.
“I beg your pardon!” said Farrington breathlessly. An electric lamp
flashed in his face, mud-splashed from his drive, and his captor
demanded his business. “I was just passing,” he faltered, “and I
thought perhaps----”
“Well, if you thought perhaps, you can just come up to the house and
let us have a look at you,” said the stranger gruffly.
With a frantic effort Farrington wrenched himself free; but as he
started to run he was caught by the collar of his raincoat and jerked
back.
“None of that now! You climb right up to the house with me. You try
bolting again and I’ll plug you.”
To risk a bullet in the back was not to be considered in any view of
the matter, and Farrington set off with as much dignity as he could
assume, his collar tightly gripped by his captor.
As they crossed the veranda the front door was thrown open and a man
appeared at the threshold. Behind him hovered two other persons.
“Well, Gadsby, what have you found?”
“I think,” said Farrington’s captor with elation, “that we’ve got the
man we’re looking for!”
Farrington was thrust roughly through the door and into a broad,
brilliantly lighted hall.