A BLOW
There was no one but Mrs. Winter to welcome the colonel when, jaded,
warm and dusty, he tapped on Aunt Rebecca’s parlor door. Mrs.
Millicent was bristling with a sense of injury; one couldn’t touch her
conversationally without risk of a scratch. The colonel put up the
shield of his unsuitable appearance, his fatigue and his deplorable
need of a bath, and escaped into his own apartment. But he made his
toilet with reckless haste. All the time he was questioning his recent
experience, trying to sort over his theories, which had been plunged
into confusion by Mercer’s confession. “I suppose,” he reflected, “that
I had no right to give Mercer that hint at the door.” The hint had been
given just as they parted. It was in a single sentence:
“By the way, Mercer, if that pillar in the _patio_ is of importance in
your combination, you would better keep an eye on it; it has a trick of
cracking.”
“The devil it has!” grunted Mercer. Then he thanked him, with a kind
of reluctant admiration in his tone.
“You are sure you don’t object to my detective’s staying?” questioned
the colonel.
“No, suh; prefer to have him. You told him to have his men in and
overhaul the house?”
“I did. I warned you I should have to. You promise there shall be no
racket? But I--I think I’ll take Haley.”
“Thank you. That’s right kind of you, suh. Good-by, suh.”
This had been the manner of their parting--assuredly a singular one,
after the sinister suspicions and the violent promises which the
soldier had made himself in regard to this very man. After leaving,
he had motored into town, down to the police courts, to discover no
records of the arrest and no trace of Archie. Thence, discouraged,
perplexed and more worried than he liked to admit, he had repaired
to the hotel. His aunt was gone, Miss Smith was gone, and Randall
could only relate how Mrs. Winter “had flewed like a bird, sir, into
a big red motor-car and gone off, and then Miss Smith and a lady and
gentleman had got into a white car and gone off in the same direction.”
He was meditating on his next step, when Birdsall was announced below.
The detective looked as warm and as tired as the colonel had felt
an hour before. Rupert was not eager to see him, but neither was he
anxious for the tête-à-tête with Millicent which awaited him in the
parlor. Between the two he chose Birdsall.
“Well,” he greeted him, “did you find any trace of the boy?”
“Of course I did,” growled Birdsall. “They didn’t try to hide ’im.
They had him lodged in a dandy room with his own bath. Of course, he
left his tooth-brush. They’d got him some automobile togs, too, and
he’d left some leggings when he packed, and a letter begun on a pad to
Miss Smith--‘Dear Miss Janet,’ it begins, ‘I am having a bully time. I
can steer the machine, only I can’t back’--that’s all. Say, the young
dog has been having it fat while we were in the frying-pan for fear
somebody was bothering him.”
“But he is not in the house now?”
“No, nor nothing else.”
“_Nobody_ hidden away? Where did the groans you heard come from?”
queried the colonel politely.
Birdsall flushed. “I do believe that slick deceiver you call Mercer
put up a game on us out of meanness--just to git me guessing.”
“That sort of thing looks more like the college boys.”
“Say, it might have been. This thing is giving me nervous prostration.
Say, why didn’t you see the thing out with me?”
The colonel shamelessly told the truth to deceive. “I was called here.
I was told that Mrs. Winter, my aunt, had seen Archie in the street.”
“She was just getting out of a machine as I came up. Miss Smith was
with her, and they had their hands full of candy boxes. They were
laughing. I made sure the boy had been found.”
“Not to my knowledge,” said the colonel. But in some excitement he
walked into the parlor. The ladies had arrived; they stood in the
center of the room while Randall took away the boxes.
“Candy for Archie,” explained Aunt Rebecca, and these were the first
words to reach Rupert Winter’s ears. “I expect him to dinner.”
“Aunt Rebecca,” proclaimed Millicent, “I never have been one
to complain, but there _are_ limits to human endurance. I am a
modern person, a civilized Episcopalian, accustomed to a regular
and well-ordered life, and for the last few days I seem to have
been living in a kind of medieval mystery, with kidnappers, and
blood-stains, and, for anything I know, somebody ready to stick a
knife into any one of us any time! You people may enjoy this sort of
thing--_you seem to_--but I don’t. And I tell you frankly that I am
going to apply to the police, not to any private detective inquiry
office, as like as not in league with the criminals”--thus ungratefully
did Mrs. Millicent slur the motives of her only truly interested
auditor--“but _real_ policemen. I shall apply--”
She did not tell where she should apply, the words being snapped out of
her mouth by the sharp tinkle of the telephone bell.
Aunt Rebecca responded to the call. “Send him up,” was her answer to
the inaudible questioner.
She laid down the receiver. Then she put it back. Then she stood up,
her silver head in the air, her erect little figure held motionless.
Janet Smith’s dark eyes sought hers; her lips parted only to close
firmly again.
Even the detective perceived the electric intensity of the moment, and
Rupert shut his fists tight, with a quickened beating of the heart; but
emotional vibrations did not disturb Mrs. Melville Winter’s poise. She
continued her plaint.
“This present situation is unbearable, unprecedented and
un--un--unexpected,” she declaimed, rather groping for a climax which
escaped her. Aunt Rebecca raised her hand.
“Would you be so very kind, Millicent,” said she, “as to wait a moment?
I am trying to listen.”
Like a response to her words, the knob of the door was turned, the door
swung, and Archie entered the room, smiling his odd little chewed-up
smile.
Janet uttered a faint cry and took a single step, but, as if
recognizing a superior right, hung back while the boy put his arm about
his great-aunt’s waist and rather bashfully kissed her cheek.
She received the salute with entire composure, except for a tiny splash
of red which crept up to each cheek-bone. “Is it really you, Archie?”
said she. “You are a little late for dinner day before yesterday, but
quite in time for to-day. Sit down and tell us where you have been.”
“Quite so!” exclaimed Mrs. Millicent. “Good heavens! Do you know how we
have suffered? _Where_ have you been? _Why_ did you run away?”
But Archie, who had surrendered one-half of him to be hugged by Miss
Smith and the other to be clapped on the shoulder by his uncle, seemed
to think a vaguely polite “How-de-do, Aunt Millicent; I’m sorry to have
worried you!” to be answer enough. Only when the question was repeated
by Mrs. Winter herself did he reply: “I’m awfully sorry, Aunt Rebecca,
but I’ve promised not to say anything about it. But, truly, I didn’t
mean to bother you.”
Millicent exploded in an access of indignation: “And do you mean that
you expect us to accept such a ridiculous promise--after all we have
been through?”
“Quite so,” remarked Aunt Rebecca, with a precise echo of her niece’s
most Anglican utterance--the gift of mimicry had been one of Mrs.
Winter’s most admired and distrusted social gifts from her youth.
Rupert Winter hastened to distract Millicent’s attention by saying
decisively: “If the boy has promised, that ends it; he can’t break his
parole. Anyhow, they don’t seem to have hurt you, old son?”
“Oh, they treated me dandy, those fellows,” said Archie. “Miss Janet, I
know how to run an electric motor-car, except backing.”
“I’ll bet you do,” muttered the detective.
Here the colonel came to the boy’s relief a second time and drew
Birdsall aside. “Best let me pump the chap a little. You get
down-stairs and see how he got here, who brought him. They’ll get clean
away. It is late for that as it is. You can report to-morrow.”
It was the colonel, also, who eliminated Mrs. Millicent by the masterly
stratagem of suggesting that she pass the news to Mrs. Wigglesworth. He
artfully added that it would require tact to let the lady from Boston
understand that the lad had been found without in any way gratifying
her natural curiosity in regard to the manner of finding or the cause
of disappearance. “I’ll have to leave _that_ to you,” he concluded.
“Maybe you can see a way out; I confess my hands are in the air.”
Millicent thus relegated to the ambassador’s shelf, the colonel
slipped comfortably into his pet arm-chair facing his nephew on the
lounge between Aunt Rebecca and Miss Smith. Miss Smith looked frankly,
charmingly happy. Aunt Rebecca looked rather tired.
“Of course,” remarked he, “I understand, old man, that you have
promised secrecy to--well, to the Fireless Stove gang, as we’ll call
them; but the _other_ kidnappers, the crowd that held up your car
and then switched you off on a side track while young Fireless was
detained--they haven’t any hold on you?”
“No, sir,” said Archie; “but--you see, that strange gentleman and Aunt
Millicent--I was scared lest I’d give something away.”
“They’re not here now. All friends here. Suppose you make a clean
breast of your second kidnapping. It may be important you should.”
Nothing loath, Archie told his story. Left outside while Tracy went
into the office with a policeman, to whom he gave his assumed name, he
remained for hardly two minutes before a gentleman and a “cop” came up
to him, and the latter ordered him to descend from the machine--but not
until they had found it impossible to move the vehicle. When they did
discover that the key was out and gone, the man in citizen’s clothes
hailed a cab and the officer curtly informed Archie that Gardiner
(Tracy’s traveling name) had been taken to another court and he was to
follow. He didn’t suspect anything beyond a collision with the speed
regulations of the city, but had he seen a chance to dive under his
escort’s arm the boy would have taken it. Such chance was not afforded
him, and all he was able to do was to lean out suddenly as they passed
the Palace and to wave at Randall. “I wanted them to stop and let me
get some one to pay my fine,” said Archie, “but they said I was only
a witness. They wouldn’t let me stop; they run down the curtain--at
least so far as it would run. It was like all those hack curtains, you
know--all out of order.”
“Archie,” the colonel interjected here, “was one of the men a little
fellow, clean-shaven, with a round black head, blue eyes--one of his
eyes winks a little faster than the other?”
“Yes, sir. How did you know?”
“I didn’t know; I guessed. Well, get on; they wanted to pump you when
they got you safely out of sight?”
“Yes,” Archie said, “they put me into the sweat-box, all right.”
“Did you tell them anything?” asked Mrs. Winter.
Archie looked at her reproachfully. Did she think that he had gone to
boarding-school for nothing? He explained that, being a stranger in
the town, he could not tell anything about where he’d been. There was
an agent at the house trying to sell stoves, and they let him take him
off back to the hotel. The man seemed to know all about who he (Archie)
was, and about his having gone away. The men asked him an awful lot of
questions about how he was taken away. He said he didn’t know, and he’d
promised not to tell. He couldn’t tell. They said he would have to go
to jail if he didn’t tell, because the men who had him were such bad
men. But he didn’t tell.
“Did they try to frighten you--to make you tell?” said Mrs. Winter.
“Oh, they bluffed a little,” returned Archie carelessly, yet the
keen eyes on him--eyes both worldly-wise and shrewd--noted that the
lad’s color shifted and he winced the least in the world over some
remembrance.
“But they didn’t hurt you? They didn’t burn you or cut you or twist
your arms, or try any other of their playful ways?” Mrs. Winter
demanded; and Janet began feeling the boy’s arms, breathing more
quickly. The colonel only looked.
“No, they didn’t do a thing. I knew they wouldn’t, too,” Archie assured
her earnestly. “I told them if they did anything, Uncle Rupert and you
would make them pay.”
“And you weren’t frightened, away from every one--in that hideous
quarter?” cried Miss Smith. “Oh, my dear!” She choked.
“Well, maybe I was a little scared. I kept thinking of a rotten yarn
of Kipling’s; something happened to _him_, down in the underground
quarter, in just such a hot, nasty-smelling hole, I guess, as I was
in; you remember, Miss Janet, about the game of cards and the Mexican
stabbing a Chink for cheating, and how Kipling jumped up and ran for
his life, never looked around; and don’t you remember that nasty bit,
how he felt sure they had dealt with the greaser their own way and he’d
never get up to the light again--”
“I’ve been remembering that story all this afternoon,” answered Miss
Smith with a shudder.
“Agreeable little tale,” said Aunt Rebecca dryly. “Archie, you must
have had a right nasty quarter of an hour; what stopped it?”
“Why, a Chink came and called the little man off; and there was a lot
of talking which I couldn’t hear, and the cop was swearing; I think
they didn’t like it. But, in a minute the Chinaman--he was an awful
nice little feller--he came up to me and took me out, led me all sorts
of ways, not a bit like the way I came in, and got me out to the
street. The other fellows were very polite; they told me that they were
my friends and only wanted to find a clue to my kidnappers; and the
burning holes in me was only a joke to give me an excuse to break my
word under compulsion--why, _they_ wouldn’t hurt me for the world! I
pretended to be fooled, and said it was all right, and looked pleasant;
but--I’d like to scare them the same way, once, all the same.”
The boy caught at his lip which was trembling, and ended with a shaky
laugh. Miss Smith clenched the fist by her side; but she dropped the
arm near Archie, and said in a matter-of-fact, sprightly tone: “Archie,
you really ought to go dress--and wash for dinner; excuse me for
mentioning it, but you have no idea how grimy you are.”
The commonplace turn of thought did its errand. Archie, who had been
bracing himself anew against the horror which he remembered, dropped
back into his familiar habits and jumped up consciously. “It’s the
dust, motoring,” he offered bashfully. “I ought to have washed before I
came up. Well, that’s all; we came straight here. Now, may I go take a
bath?”
Aunt Rebecca was fingering a curious jade locket on her neck. She
watched the boy run to the open door.
“I wish you’d go into your room, Colonel,” said Miss Smith, “and see
that nothing happens to him. It’s silly, but I am expecting to see him
vanish again!”
The sentence affected the colonel unpleasantly; why need she be
posing before him, as if that first disappearance had had any real
fright in it? Of course she didn’t know yet (although Aunt Rebecca
might have told her--she _ought_ to have told her and stopped this
unnecessary deceit) that he was on to the game; but--he didn’t like it.
Unconsciously, his inward criticism made his tone drier as he replied
with a little bow that he imagined Archie was quite safe, now, and he
would ask to be excused, as he had to attend to something before dinner.
Was it his fancy that her face changed and her eyes looked wistful?
It must have been. He walked stiffly away. Hardly had he entered his
room and turned his mind on the changed situation before the telephone
apprised him that a gentleman, Mr. Gardiner, who represented the
Fireless Cook Stove, said that he had an appointment with Colonel
Winter to explain the stove; should he be sent up?
Directly, Endicott Tracy entered, smiling. “Where’s the kid? I know
he’s back,” were his first words; and he explained that he had been
hunting the kidnappers to no purpose. “Except that I learned enough to
know they put up a job with the justice, all right; I got next to that
game without any Machiavellian exertions. But they got away. Who is it?
Any of Keatcham’s gang?”
“Atkins,” said the colonel concisely.
Tracy whistled and apologized. “It’s a blow,” he confessed. “That
little wretch! He has brains to burn and not an ounce of conscience.
You know he has been mousing round at the hotels after Keatcham’s
mail--”
“He didn’t get it?”
“No, Cary had covered that point. Cary has thought this all out very
carefully, but Atkins has got on to the fact that Cary was here in this
hotel with Keatcham. But he doesn’t know where we come in; whether
Keatcham’s gang is just lying low for some game of its own, or whether
_we’ve_ got him. At least, I don’t believe he knows.”
“You ought not to be talking so freely to me; I haven’t promised you
anything, you know,” warned the colonel.
“But you’ve got your nephew back all right; we have been on the square
with _you_; why should you butt in? I know you won’t.”
“I don’t seem to have a fair call to,” observed the colonel.
“And I think the old boy is going to give in; he has made signals of
distress, to my thinking. Wanted his mail; and wanted to write; and
informed Cary--he saw him for the first time to-day--that he had bigger
things on deck than the Midland; and wanted to get at them. We’re going
to win out all right.”
“Unless Atkins gets at him to-night,” the colonel suggested. “You
oughtn’t to have come here, Gardiner. Don’t go home, now. Wait until
later, and let me rig you up in another lot of togs and give you my own
motor-car. Better.”
Tracy was more than impressed by the proposal; he was plainly grateful.
He entered with enthusiasm into the soldier’s masquerade--Tracy had
always had a weakness for theatricals and some of his Hasty Pudding
_Portraits of Unknown People We Know_ had won him fame at Cambridge.
Ten minutes later, there sat opposite the colonel a florid-faced,
mustached, western commercial traveler whose plaided tweeds, being an
ill-advised venture of Haley’s which the colonel had taken off his
hands and found no subject of charity quite obnoxious enough to deserve
them, naturally did not fit the present wearer, but suited his inane
complacence of bearing and might pass for a bad case of ready-made
purchase.
“Now,” said the adviser, “I’ll notify Haley to have my own hired
motor ready for you and you can slip out and take it after you’ve had
something to eat. Here’s the restaurant card. Haley will be there.
Leave it at the drug store on Van Ness Street--Haley will give you
the number--and get home as unobtrusively as possible. You can peel
off these togs in the motor if necessary. You’ve your own underneath
except your coat. Wrap that in a newspaper and carry it. I don’t know
that Atkins has any one on guard at the hotel, but I think it more than
likely he suspects some connection between our party and Keatcham’s.
But first, tell me about Atkins; what do you know about him? It’s an
American name.”
“America can take all the glory of him, I fancy,” said Tracy. “He’s
been Keatcham’s secretary for six years. He seems awfully mild and
useful and timid. He’s not a bit timid. He’s full of resource;
he’s sidled suggestions into Keatcham’s ear and has been gradually
working to make himself absolutely necessary. I think he aimed at a
partnership; but Keatcham wouldn’t stand for it. I think it was in
revenge that he sold out some of Keatcham’s secrets. Cary got on to
that and has a score of his own to settle with him, besides. I don’t
know how he managed, but he showed him up; and Keatcham gave him the
sack in his own cold-blooded way. I know him only casually. But my
cousin, Ralph Schuyler, went to prep. school with him, so I got his
character straight off the bat. His father was a patent-medicine man
from Mississippi, who made a fair pile, a couple of hundred thousand
which looked good to that section, you know. I don’t know anything
about his people except that his father made the ‘Celebrated Atkins’
Ague Busters’; and that Atkins was ashamed of his people and shook
his married sisters who came to see him, in rather a brutal fashion;
but I know a thing or two about him; he was one of those bounders who
curry favor with the faculty and the popular boys and never break
rules apparently, but go off and have sly little bats by themselves.
He never was popular, yet, somehow, he got into things; he knew where
to lend money; and he was simply sickeningly clever; in math. he was
a wonder. Ralph hated him. For one thing, he caught him in a dirty
lie. Atkins hated him back and contrived to prevent his being elected
class president, and when he couldn’t prevent Ralph’s making his senior
society the happy thought struck Atkins to get on the initiation
committee. They had a cheery little branding game to make the fellows
quite sure they belonged, you know, and he rammed his cigar stump into
Ralph’s arm so that Ralph had blood-poisoning and a narrow squeak for
his life. You see that I’m not prepossessed in the fellow’s favor. He’s
got too vivid an imagination for me!”
“Seems to have,” acquiesced the colonel.
“I think, you know”--Tracy made an effort to be just--“I think Atkins
was rather soured. Some of the fellows made fun of the ‘Ague Busters’;
he had a notion that the reason it was such uphill work for him in
the school, was his father’s trade. No doubt he did get nasty licks,
at first; and he’s revengeful. He hasn’t got on in society outside,
either--this he lays to his not being a university man. You see his
father lost some of his money and put him to work instead of in
college. He was willing enough at the time--I think he wanted to get
married--but afterward, when he was getting a good salary and piling up
money on his tips, he began to think that he had lost more than he had
bargained for. Altogether, he’s soured. Now, what he wants is to make a
thundering big strike and to pull out of Wall Street, buy what he calls
‘a seat on the James’ and set-up for a Southern gentleman. He’s trying
to marry a Southern girl, they say, who is kin to the Carters and the
Byrds and the Lees and the Carys--why, _you_ know her, she’s Mrs.
Winter’s secretary.”
“Does--does she care for him?” The colonel suddenly felt his mouth
parched; he was savagely conscious of his mounting color. What a
fiendish trick of fate! he had never dreamed of this! Well, whether she
cared for him or not, the man was a brute; he shouldn’t get her. That
was one certainty in the colonel’s mind.
“Why, Cary vows she doesn’t, that it was only a girlish bit of nonsense
up in Virginia, that time he was prospecting, you know. But I don’t
feel so safe. She’s too nice for such a cur. But you know what women
are; the nicest of them seem to be awfully queer about men. There’s no
betting on them.”
“I’m afraid not,” remarked the colonel lightly. But he put his fingers
inside his collar and loosened it, as if he felt choked.
Because he had a dozen questions quarreling for precedence in his head,
he asked not one. He only inquired regarding the situation; discovering
that both Mercer and Tracy were equally in the dark with himself as to
Atkins’ plans, Atkins’ store of information, Atkins’ resources. How he
could have waylaid Tracy and the boy without knowing whence they came
was puzzling; it was quite as puzzling, however, assuming that he did
know their whereabouts, to decide why he was so keen to interrogate the
boy. In fact, it was, as Tracy said, “too much like Professor Santa
Anna’s description of a German definition of metaphysics, ‘A blind man
hunting in a dark room for a black cat that isn’t there.’”
“In any event, you would better keep away from _me_,” was the colonel’s
summing up of the situation; “I don’t want to be inhospitable, but
the sooner you are off, and out of the hotel, the safer for your
speculation.”
“Friends will please accept the intimation,” said Tracy good-humoredly.
“Very well, it’s twenty-three for me. I’m hoping you’ll see your way
clear to run over as soon as the old man has surrendered; I’m going to
invite him to make us a proper visit, then, and see the country. I’m
always for letting the conquered keep their side-arms.”
He went away smiling his flashing smile, and turned it up at the hotel
as he walked out; the colonel made no sign of recognition from the
window whence he observed him. Instead, he drew back quickly, frowning;
it might be a mere accident that only a hand’s-breadth of space from
the young Harvard man was a dapper little shape in evening clothes, a
man still young, with a round black head; if so, it was an accident not
to the colonel’s liking.
“Damn you!” whispered Rupert Winter very softly. “What is your little
game?”
At once he descended, having telephoned Haley to meet him at the court.
When he entered and sent his glance rapidly among the little tables, by
this time filled with diners, he experienced a disagreeable surprise.
It did not come from the sight of Sergeant Haley in his Sunday civilian
clothes, stolidly reading the _Call_; it came from a vision of Atkins
standing, bowing, animatedly talking with Janet Smith.
Instead of approaching Haley, Winter fell back and scribbled a few
words on a page of his note-book, while safely shielded by a great
palm. The note he despatched to Haley, who promptly joined him. While
they stood, talking on apparently indifferent subjects, Miss Smith
passed them. Whether because he was become suspicious or because she
had come upon him suddenly, she colored slightly. But she smiled as she
saluted him and spoke in her usual tranquil tone. “You are going to
dine with us, aren’t you, Colonel?” said she. “I think dinner is just
about to be served.”
The colonel would be with them directly.
Haley’s eyes followed her; he had returned her nod and inquiry for his
wife and little Nora with a military salute and the assurance that they
were both wonderfully well and pleased with the country.
“Sure, ain’t it remarkable the way that lady do keep names in her
mind?” cried he. “An’ don’t she walk foine and straight? Oi’ve been
always towld thim Southern ladies had the gran’ way wid ’em; Oi see now
’tis thrue.” The unusual richness of Haley’s brogue was a sure sign of
feeling. The colonel only looked grim. After he had taken Haley to a
safe nook for his confidence, a nook where there were neither ears nor
eyes to be feared, he would have made his way up-stairs; but half-way
down the office he was hailed by the manager. The manager was glad
to hear that the young gentleman was safely back. He let the faint
radiance of an intelligent, respectfully tactful smile illumine his
words and intimate that his listener would have no awkward questions to
parry from him. The colonel felt an ungrateful wrath, a reprehensible
snare of temper which did not show in his confidentially lowered
voice, as he replied: “Mighty lucky, too, we are; the boy’s all right;
but San Francisco is no place for an innocent kid even to take the
safest-looking walk. What sort of a police system have you, anyhow?”
The manager shook his head. “I’m not bragging about it; nor about
the Chinese quarter, either. I confess I’ve felt particularly
uncomfortable, myself, the last day. Well--if you’ll excuse the
advice--least said, you know.”
The colonel nodded. He proffered his cigar-case; the manager
complimented its contents, as he selected a cigar; and both gentlemen
bowed. A wandering, homesick Frenchman, who viewed their parting,
felt refreshed as by a breath from his own land of admirable manners.
Meanwhile, the colonel was fuming within: “Confound his insinuating
curiosity! but I reckon I headed him off. And who would have thought,”
he wondered forlornly, “that I could be going to dine with the boy safe
and sound and be feeling so like a whipped hound!”
But none of this showed during the dinner at which Millicent was in
high good humor, having obtained information about most astounding
bargains in the Chinese quarter from Mrs. Wigglesworth. Her good humor
extended even to Miss Smith, who received it without enthusiasm, albeit
courteously; and who readily consented to be her companion for the
morning sally on the distressed Orientals, whose difficulties with the
customs had reduced them to the necessity of sales at any cost. Aunt
Rebecca listened with an absent smile, while Archie laughed at every
feeblest joke of his uncle in a boyish interest so little like his
former apathy that often Miss Smith’s eyes brightened and half timidly
sought the uncle’s, as if calling his attention to the change. Only a
few hours back, his would have brightened gratefully in answer; now,
he avoided her glances. Yet somehow, his heart felt heavier when they
ceased. For his part, he was thankful to have his aunt request his
company in a little promenade around the “loggia,” as she termed it,
overlooking the great court.
She took him aside to tell him her afternoon experience, and to ask
his opinion of the enigmatical appearance of Atkins. He was strongly
tempted, in return, to question her frankly about Miss Smith, to tell
her of seeing the latter with Atkins only that evening. He knew that
it was the sensible thing to do--but he simply could not do it. To
frame his suspicions past or present of the woman he loved; to discuss
the chances of her affection for a man loathsomely unworthy of her;
worse, to balance the possibilities of her turning betrayer in her turn
and chancing any damage to her benefactress and her kinsman for this
fellow’s sake--no, it was beyond him. He had intended to discuss his
aunt’s part in the waylaying of Keatcham, with calmness and with the
deference due her, but unsparingly; he meant to show her the legal if
not moral obliquity of her course, to point out to her the pitfalls
besetting it, to warn her how hideous might be the consequences of a
misstep. Somehow, however, his miserable new anxiety about Miss Smith
had disturbed all his calculations and upset his wits; and he could not
rally any of the poignant phrases which he had prepared. All he was
able to say was something about the rashness of the business; it was
like the Filipinos with their bows and arrows fighting machine-guns.
“Or David with his ridiculous little sling going against Goliath,”
added she. “Very well put, Bertie; only the good advice comes too late;
the question now is, how to get out with a whole skin. Surprising as it
may be, I expect to--with your help.”
“Honored, I’m sure,” growled Bertie.
“There is one thing I meant to ask you--I haven’t, but I shall now.
Instead of making it impossible for me to sleep to-night, as you
virtuously intended in order to clear your conscience before you tried
to pull me out of the trap I’ve set for myself, suppose you do me a
favor, right now.”
“You put it so well, you make me ashamed of my moral sense, Aunt Becky;
what is it you want?”
“Oh, nothing unbefitting a soldier and a gentleman, dear boy; just
this: Cary has to have some money. I meant to give it to Stoves, but
you hustled him off in such a rush that I didn’t get at him. You know
where he is, don’t you? You haven’t sent him straight back?”
“I can find him, I reckon.”
“Then I’ll give _you_ the money, at once.”
How weak a thing is man! Here was an eminently cool-headed, reasonable
man of affairs who knew that paws which had escaped from the fire
unsinged had no excuse to venture back for other people’s chestnuts;
he had expressed himself clearly to this effect to young Tracy; now,
behold him as unable to resist the temptation of a conflict and the
chance to baffle Atkins as if he were a hot-headed boy in plain
shoulder-straps!
“I’ll do better for you, Aunt Rebecca,” said he. “I’ll not only take
Fireless the money, I’ll go with him to the house. I can make a sneak
from here; and Atkins is safely down-stairs at this moment. He may be
shadowing Fireless; if he is, perhaps I can throw him off the track.”
Thus it befell that not an hour later Rupert Winter was guiding the
shabby and noisy runabout a second time toward the haunted house.
“Nothing doin’,” said the joyous apprentice to crime; “I called old
Cary up and got a furious slating for doing it; but he said there
wasn’t a watch-dog in sight; and the old man had surrendered. He was
going to let him into the library on parole.”
“You need a guardian,” growled the colonel; “where did you telephone?
_Not_ in the drug store?”
“Oh, dear, no, not in such a public place; I’ve a shrinking nature that
never did intrude its private, personal affairs on the curious world.
I used the ’phone of that nice quiet little restaurant where they gave
me a lovely meal but were so long preparing it, I used up all the
literature in sight, which was the _Ladies’ Home Journal_ and a tract
on the virtues of Knox’s Gelatine. When I couldn’t think of anything
else to do I routed out Cary--I’d smoked all my cigarettes and all my
cigars but one which I was keeping for after dinner. And Cary rowed me
good and plenty. There wasn’t a soul in the room.”
“Has any one followed you?”
“Not a man, woman or child, not even a yellow dog. I kept looking
round, too.”
“It was a dreadfully risky thing to do; you don’t deserve to escape;
but perhaps you did. Atkins may have come to the Palace for some other
purpose and never have noticed you.”
“My own father wouldn’t have got on to me in that dinky rig.”
Winter was not so easy in his mind. But he hoped for the best, since
there was nothing else for him to do. They were in sight of the house
now, which loomed against the dim horizon, darker, grimmer than ever.
Where the upper stories were pierced with semicircular arches, the
star-sown sky shone through with an extraordinary effect of depth and
mystery. All the lighter features of the architecture, carving on
pediment or lintel or archivolt, delicate iron tracery of _rejas_,
relief of arcature and colonnade--all these the dusk blurred if it
did not obliterate; the great dark bulk of the house with its massive
buttresses, its pyramidal copings and receding upper stories, was the
more boldly silhouetted on the violet sky; yet because of the very
flatness of the picture, the very lack of shadow and projection, it
seemed unsubstantial, hardly more of reality than the giant shadow it
cast upon the hillside. Electric lights wavered and bristled dazzling
beams on either side of the street; not a gleam, red, white or yellow,
leaked through the shuttered windows of the house. In its blackness,
its silence, its determined isolation it renewed, but with a greater
force, the first sinister thrill which the sight of it had given the
man who came to rifle it of its secrets.
“Lonesome-looking old shanty, isn’t it?” said the Harvard boy; “seems
almost indecorous to speak out loud. Here’s where we _cache_ the car
and make a gentle detour by aid of the shrubbery up the arroyo to the
north side of the _patio_. See?”
He directed the colonel’s course through an almost imperceptible
opening in the hedge along sharp turns and oblique and narrow ways into
a small vacant space where the vines covered an adobe hut. Jumping
out, Tracy unlocked the door of this tiny building so that the colonel
could run the car inside; and after Winter had emerged again, he
re-locked the door. As there was no window, the purpose of the hut was
effectually concealed.
“Very neat,” the colonel approved; whereat Tracy flashed his smile at
him in the moonlight and owned with ingenuous pride that he himself was
the contriver of this reticent garage.
From this point he took the lead. Neither spoke. They toiled up the
hill, in this part of the grounds less of the nature of a hill than of
an arroyo or ravine through which rocks had thrust their rugged sides
and over which spiked semi-tropical cacti had sprawled, and purple
and white flowered vines had made their own untended tangle. Before
they reached the level the colonel was breathing hard, every breath
a stab. Tracy, a famous track man who had won his H in a wonderful
cross-country run, felt no distress--until he heard his companion gasp.
“Jove! But that hill’s fierce!” he breathed explosively. “Do you mind
resting a minute?”
“Hardly,”--the colonel was just able to hold his voice steady--“I have
a Filipino bullet in my leg somewhere which the X-ray has never been
able to account for; and I’m not exactly a mountain goat!”
“Why, of course, I’m a brute not to let you run up the drive in the
machine. Not a rat watching us to-night, either; but I wanted you to
see the place; and you seem so fit--”
“You oughtn’t to give away your secrets to me, an outsider--”
“You’re no outsider; I consider you the treasurer of the band,” laughed
Tracy. They had somehow come to an unexpressed but perfectly understood
footing of sympathy. The colonel even let the younger man help him up
the last stiff clamber of the path. He forgot his first chill, as of
a witness approaching a tragedy; there was a smile on his lips when
the two of them passed into the _patio_. It lingered there as he stood
in the flower-scented gloom. It was there as Tracy stumbled to a
half-remembered push-button, wondering aloud what had become of Cary
and Kito that they shouldn’t have answered his whistle; it was there,
still, when Tracy slipped, and grumbled: “What sticky stuff has Kito
spilled on this floor?”--and instantly flooded the court with light.
Then--he saw the black, slimy pool and the long slide of Tracy’s nailed
sole in it; and just to one side, almost pressing against his own foot,
he saw a man in a gray suit huddled into the shape of a crooked U, with
his arms limp at his side and his head of iron-gray fallen back askew.
The light shone on the broad bald dome of the forehead. He had been
stabbed between the shoulders, in the back; and one side of the gray
coat was ugly to see.
“Good God!” whispered Tracy, growing white. “It’s Keatcham! they’ve
killed him! Oh, why didn’t I come back before!”