At one o'clock West Dempster lay dark and silent before them. As they
crossed a bridge into the town Hood began to move cautiously.
"Remember that we give up without a struggle: there's too much at stake
to risk a bullet now, and these country lumpkins shoot first, and hand
you their cards afterward."
He dived into an alley, and emerged midway of a block where a number of
barrels under a shed awning advertised a grocery.
"Admirable!" whispered Hood, throwing his arms about his comrades. "We
will now arouse the watch."
With this he kicked a barrel into the gutter, and jumped back like a
mischievous boy into the shelter of the alley. Footsteps were heard in a
moment, far down the street.
"These country cops are sometimes shrewd, but often the silly children of
convention like the rest of us. West Dempster has an evil reputation in
the underworld. The pinching of joy-riders is purely incidental; they run
in anybody they catch after the curfew sounds from the coffin factory."
A window overhead opened with a bang, and a blast from a police whistle
pierced the air shrilly. Deering started to run, but Hood upset him with
a thrust of his foot. Two men were already creeping up behind them in the
alley; the owner of the grocery stole out of the front door in a long
nightgown and began howling dismally for help.
"Throw up your hands, boys; it's no use!" cried Hood in mock despair.
Then the man in the nightgown, after menacing Hood with a pistol, stuck
the barrel of it into Deering's mouth, opened inopportunely to protest
his innocence. The policemen threw themselves upon Hood and Cassowary,
toppled them over, and flashed electric lamps in their faces.
"More o' them yeggs," announced one of the officers with satisfaction as
he snapped a pair of handcuffs on Cassowary's wrists. "Don't you fellows
try any monkey-shines or we'll plug you full o' lead. Trot along now."
The gentleman in the night-robe wished to detain the party for a recital
of his own prowess in giving warning of the attempted burglary. The
police were disposed to make light of his assistance, while Hood hung
back to support the grocer's cause, a generosity on his part that was
received ill-temperedly by the officers of the law. They bade the grocer
report to the magistrate Monday morning, and they parted, but only after
Hood had shaken the crestfallen grocer warmly by the hand, warning him
with the greatest solicitude against further exposure to the night air.
Two other policemen appeared; the whole force was doing them honor, Hood
declared proudly. He lifted his voice in song, but the lyrical impulse
was hushed by a prod from a revolver. He continued to talk, however,
assuring his captors of his heartiest admiration for their efficiency. He
meant to recommend them for positions in the secret service--men of their
genius were wasted upon a country town.
[Illustration: "Throw up your hands, boys; it's no use!" cried Hood
in mock despair.]
When they reached the town hall a melancholy jailer roused himself and
conducted them to the lockup in the rear of the building. Careful search
revealed nothing but a mass of crumpled clippings and a pipe and tobacco
in Hood's pockets.
"Guess they dropped their tools somewhere," muttered one of the officers.
"My dear boy," explained Hood, "the gentleman in the nightie, whom I take
to be a citizen and merchant of standing in your metropolis, may be able
to assist you in finding them. We left our safe-blowing apparatus in a
chicken-coop in his back yard."
They were entered on the blotter as R. Hood, F. Tuck, and Cass
O'Weary--the last Hood spelled with the utmost care for the scowling
turnkey--and charged with attempt to commit burglary and arson.
Hood grumbled; he had hoped it would be murder or piracy on the high
seas; burglary and arson were so commonplace, he remarked with a sigh.
The door closed upon them with an echoing clang, and they found
themselves in a large coop, bare save for several benches ranged along
the walls. Two of these were occupied by prisoners, one of whom, a short,
thick-set man, snored vociferously. Hood noted his presence with
interest.
"Fogarty!" he whispered with a triumphant wave of his hand.
A tall man who had chosen a cot as remote as possible from his fellow
prisoner sat up and, seeing the newcomers, stalked majestically to the
door and yelled dismally for the keeper, who lounged indifferently to the
cage, puffing a cigar.
"This is an outrage!" roared the prisoner. "Locking me up with these
felons--these common convicts! I demand counsel; I'm going to have a writ
of habeas corpus! When I get out of here I'm going to go to the governor
of your damned State and complain of this. All Connecticut shall know of
it! All America shall hear of it! To be locked up with one safe-blower is
enough, and now you've stuck three murderers into this rotten hole. I
tell you I can give bail. I tell you----"
The jailer snarled and bade him be quiet. In the tone of a man who is
careful of his words he threatened the direst punishment for any further
expression of the gentleman's opinions. Whereupon the gentleman seized
the bars and shook them violently, and then, as though satisfied that
they were steel of the best quality, dropped his arms to his sides with a
gesture of impotent despair.
"Father!"
In spite of Constance's assertion, confirmed by Cassowary, Deering had
not believed that his father was in jail; but the outraged gentleman who
had demanded the writ of habeas corpus was, beyond question, Samuel J.
Deering, head of the banking-house of Deering, Gaylord & Co. Mr. Deering
was striding toward his bench with the sulky droop of a premium batter
who has struck out with the bases full.
Scorning to glance at the creature in rags who had flung himself in his
path, Samuel J. Deering lunged at him fiercely with his right arm. Billy,
ducking opportunely, saved his indignant parent from tumbling upon the
floor by catching him in his arms. Feeling that he had been attacked by a
ruffian, Mr. Deering yelled that he was being murdered.
"I'm Billy! For God's sake, be quiet!"
The senior Deering tottered to the wall.
"Billy! What are _you_ in for?" he demanded finally.
"Burglary, arson, and little things like that," Billy answered with a
jauntiness that surprised him as much as it pained his father, who
continued to stare uncomprehendingly.
"You've been reading that damned book, too, have you?" he whispered
hoarsely in his son's ear. "You've gone crazy like everybody else, have
you?"
"I've been kidnapped, if that's what you mean," Billy answered with a
meaningful glance over his shoulder, and then with a fine attempt at
bravado: "I'm Friar Tuck, and that chap smoking a pipe is Robin Hood."
Ordinarily his father's sense of humor could be trusted to respond to an
intelligent appeal. A slow grin had overspread Mr. Deering's face as
Friar Tuck was mentioned, but when Billy added Robin Hood his father's
countenance underwent changes indicative of hope, fear, and chagrin.
Clinging to Billy's shoulder, he peered through the gloom of the cage
toward Hood, who lay on a bench, his coat rolled up for a pillow,
tranquilly smoking, with his eyes fixed upon the steel roof.
"Hood!" Mr. Deering walked slowly toward Hood's bench.
Hood sat up, took his pipe from his mouth, and nodded.
"Hood, this is my father," said Billy.
"A great pleasure, I'm sure," Hood responded courteously, extending his
hand. "I suppose it was inevitable that we should meet sooner or later,
Mr. Deering."
"You--you _are_ Bob--Bob--Tyringham?" asked Deering anxiously.
"Right!" cried Hood in his usual assured manner. "And I will say for you
that you have given me a good chase. I confess that I didn't think you
capable of it; I swear I didn't! Tuck, I congratulate you; your father is
one of the true brotherhood of the stars. He's been chasing me for a
month and, by Jove, he's kept me guessing! But when I heard that he'd
been jailed for speeding, with a prospect of spending Sunday in this
hole, I decided that it was time to throw down the mask."
Lights began to dance in the remote recesses of Billy's mind. Hood was
Robert Tyringham, for whom his father held as trustee two million
dollars. Tyringham had not been heard of in years. The only son of a most
practical father, he had been from youth a victim of the _wanderlust_,
absenting himself from home for long periods. For ten years he had been
on the list of the missing. That Hood should be this man was
unbelievable. But the senior Deering seemed not to question his identity.
He sat down with a deep sigh and then began to laugh.
"If I hadn't found you by next Wednesday, I should have had to turn your
property over to a dozen charitable institutions provided for by your
father's will--and, by George, I've been fighting a temptation to steal
it!" His arms clasped Billy's shoulder convulsively. "It's been horrible,
ghastly! I've been afraid I might find you and afraid I wouldn't! I tell
you it's been hell. I've spent thousands of dollars trying to find you,
fearing one day you might turn up, and the next day afraid you wouldn't.
And, you know, Tyringham, your father was my dearest friend; that's what
made it all so horrible. I want you to know about it, Billy; I want you
to know the worst about me; I'm not the man you thought me. When I
started away with Constance and told you I was going to California I
decided to make a last effort to find Tyringham. I read a damned novel
that acted on me like a poison; that's why I've made a fool of myself in
a thousand ways, thinking that by masquerading over the country I might
catch Tyringham at his own game. And now you know what I might have been;
you see what I was trying to be--a common thief, a betrayer of a sacred
trust."
"Don't talk like that, father," began Billy, shaken by his father's
humility. "I guess we're in the same hole, only I'm in deeper. I tried to
rob _you_. I tried to steal some of that Tyringham money myself,
but--but----"
Hood, wishing to leave the two alone for their further confidences,
walked to the recumbent Fogarty, roused him with a dig in the ribs, and
conferred with him in low tones.
"You took the stuff from my box, Billy?" Mr. Deering asked.
Billy waited apprehensively for what might follow. It was possible that
his father had already robbed the Tyringham estate; the thought chilled
him into dejection.
"I _had_ stolen it. My God, I couldn't help it!" Deering groaned. "I left
that waste paper in the box to fool myself, and put the real stuff in
another place. I hoped--yes, that was it, I hoped--I'd never find
Tyringham and I could keep those bonds. But all the time I kept looking
for him. You see, Billy, I couldn't be as bad as I wanted to be; and
yet----"
He drew his hand across his face as though to shut out the picture he saw
of himself as a felon.
"Oh, you wouldn't have done it; you couldn't have done it!" cried Billy,
anxious to mitigate his father's misery. "If you hadn't hidden the real
bonds, I'd have been a thief! Ned Ranscomb was trying to corner Mizpah
and needed my help. I put in all I had--that two hundred thousand you
gave me my last birthday, and then he skipped. When I get hold of
_him_----!"
"You put two hundred thousand in Mizpah?"
"I did, like a fool, and, of course, it's lost! Ned went daffy about a
girl and dropped Mizpah--and my money!"
Mr. Deering was once more a business man. "What did Ranscomb buy at?" he
asked curtly.
"Seven and a quarter."
"Then you needn't kick Ned! The Ranscombs put through their deal and
Mizpah's gone to forty!"
Hood rejoined them, and they talked till daylight. He told them much of
himself. The responsibility of a great fortune had not appealed to him;
he had been honest in his preference for the vagabond life, but realized,
now that he was well launched upon middle age, that it was only becoming
and decent for him to alter his ways. Billy's liking for him, that had
struggled so rebelliously against impatience and distrust, warmed to the
heartiest admiration.
"Of course I knew you were married," the senior Deering remarked for
Billy's enlightenment, "and now and then I got glimpses of you in your
gypsy life. Your wife had a fortune of her own--she was one of Augustus
Davis's daughters--so of course she hasn't suffered from your
foolishness."
"My wife shared my tastes; there has never been the slightest trouble
between us. Our daughter is just like us. But now Mrs. Tyringham thinks
we ought to settle down and be respectable."
"I knew your wife and daughter had come home. I had got that far," Mr.
Deering resumed. "And after I began to suspect that you and Hood were the
same person I put my own daughter into your house on the Dempster road as
a spy to watch for you."
"My wife wasn't fooled for a minute," Hood chuckled. "We were having our
last fling before we settled down for the rest of our days. We all have
the same weakness for a springtime lark: my wife, my daughter, and I."
Billy ran his hands through his hair. "Pierrette! Pierrette is your
daughter!"
"Certainly," replied Hood; "and Columbine, the dearest woman in the
world, is my wife, and Pantaloon my father-in-law. In my affair with you
there was only one coincidence: everything else was planned. It was
Pierrette, whose real name is Roberta--Bobby for short, when we're not
playing a game of some sort--Bobby really did lift your suitcase by
mistake. And it was stowed away in Cassowary's car when I came to your
house intending to return it. But when I saw that you needed diversion I
decided to give you a whirl. It was an easy matter for Cassowary to move
the suitcase to the bungalow, where you found it. I steered you to the
house on purpose to see how you and Bobby would hit it off. The result
seems to have been satisfactory!"
Cassowary turned uneasily on his bench.
"And before we quit all this foolishness," Hood resumed with a glance at
the chauffeur, "there's one thing I want to ask you, Mr. Deering, as a
special favor. That chap lying over there is Tommy Torrence, whom you
kicked off your door-step for daring to love your daughter. He's one of
the best fellows in the world. Just because his father, the old senator,
didn't quite hit it off with you in a railroad deal before Tommy was born
is no reason why you should take it out on the boy. He started for the
bad after you made a row over his attentions to your daughter, but he's
been with me six months and he's as right and true a chap as ever lived.
You've got to fix it up with him or I'll--I'll--well, I'll be pretty hard
on your boy if he ever wants to break into my family!"
With this Hood rose and drew from his pocket a handful of newspaper
clippings which he threw into the air and watched flutter to the floor.
"Those are some of your advertisements offering handsome rewards for news
of me dead or alive. In collecting them I've had a mighty good time.
Let's all go to sleep; to-morrow night the genial Fogarty will get us out
of this. He's over there now sawing the first bar of that window!"
X
A year has passed and it is May again and the last day of that month of
enchantment. There has been a house-party at the Deering place at Radford
Hills. Constance came from Wyoming to spend May with her father, bringing
with her, of course, her husband, sometime known as Cassowary, who has
been elected to the legislature of his State and, may, it is reported, be
governor one of these days. The Tyringhams are there, and this includes
Robert Tyringham, _alias_ R. Hood, and his wife (whose authorship of "The
Madness of May," has not yet been acknowledged) and also her father,
Augustus Davis, who continues to find recreation in frequent attacks upon
any inoffensive piano that gets in his way. Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ranscomb,
too, have shared Mr. Deering's hospitality. Marriage has not interrupted
Mrs. Ranscomb's career as an artist, though she has dropped illustrating,
and is specializing in children's portraits with distinguished success.
The senior Deering, wholly at peace with his conscience, does not work as
hard as he used to before his taste of adventurous life gained in the
pursuit of Hood. He is very proud of his daughter-in-law, whose brown
eyes bring constant cheer and happiness to his table. If she does not
hang moons in trees any more, she is still quite capable of doing so, and
has no idea of permitting her husband to wear himself out in the
banking-house. They are going to keep some time every year for play, she
declares, to the very end of their lives.
Hood had been devoting himself assiduously to mastering the details of
his business affairs, living as other men do, keeping regular office
hours in a tall building with an outlook toward the sea, and taking his
recreation on the golf-links every other afternoon.
"Mamma has been nervous all this month about papa," Roberta (known
otherwise as Pierrette or Bobby) was saying as she and Billy slowly paced
the veranda. "But now May is over and he hasn't shown any disposition to
run away. I suppose he's really cured." There was a tinge of regret in
her last words.
"Yes," Billy replied carelessly. "He hasn't mentioned his old roving days
lately. I think he's even sensitive about having them referred to."
"But even if he should want to go, mamma wouldn't break her heart about
it. She feels that it's really something fine in him: his love of the
out-of-doors, and adventures, and knowing all sorts and conditions of
men. And he has really helped lots of people, just as he helped you. And
he always had so much fun when we all played gypsy, or he went off alone
and came back with no end of good stories. I'm just a little sorry----"
They paused, clasping hands and looking off at the starry canopy.
Suddenly from the side of the house a man walked slowly, hesitatingly. He
stopped, turned, glanced at the veranda, and then, sniffing the air,
walked rapidly toward the gate, swinging a stick, his face lifted to the
stars.
Bobby's hand clasped Billy's more tightly as they watched in silence.
"It's papa; he's taking to the road again!" she murmured.
"But he'll come back; it won't be for long this time. I haven't the heart
to stop him!"
"No," she said softly, "it would be cruel to do that."
The lamps at the gate shone upon Robert Tyringham as he paused and then,
with a characteristic flourish of his stick, turned westward and strode
away into the night.