What Susan next recalls is an intense blare of light, rousing her from
her nothingness, like trumpets. Her immediate confused notion was that
the gates of hell had been flung wide for her; and when a tall black
figure presently cut across the merciless rays and towered before her,
she thought it must be the devil. But the intense blare came from the
head lights of my touring car, and the tall black devil was I. A greatly
puzzled and compassionate devil I was too! Maltby Phar--that exquisite
anarchist--was staying with me, and we had run down to the shore for
dinner, hoping to mitigate the heat by the ride, and my new sensation of
frustrate middle-age by broiled live lobsters. It was past eleven. I had
just dropped Maltby at the house and had run my car round to the garage
where Bob worked, meaning to leave it there overnight so Bob could begin
patching at it the first thing in the morning. It had been bucking its
way along on three cylinders or less all day.
Bob's garage lay back from the street down a narrow alley. Judge, then,
of my astonishment as I nosed my car up to its shut double doors! There,
on the concrete incline before the doors, lay a small crumpled figure,
half-curled, like an unearthed cut-worm, about a shining dinner pail. I
brought the car to a sudden dead stop. The small figure partly
uncrumpled, and a white, blinded little face lifted toward me. It was
Bob's youngster! What was she up to, lying there on the ribbed concrete
at this time of night? And in heaven's name--why the dinner pail? I
jumped down to investigate.
"You're Susan Blake, aren't you?"
"Yes"--with a whispered gasp--"your Royal Highness."
Susan says she doesn't know just why she addressed the devil in that
way, unless she was trying to flatter him and so get round him.
"I'm not so awfully bad," she went on, "if you don't count thinking
things too much!"
The right cheek of her otherwise delicately modeled child's face was a
swollen lump of purple and green. I dropped down on one knee beside her.
"Why, you poor little lady! You're hurt!"
Instantly she sprang to her feet, wild-eyed.
"No, no! It's not me--it's Pearl! Oh, quick--please! He had a razor!"
"Razor? _Who_ did?" I seized her hands. "I'm Mr. Hunt, dear. Your father
often works on my car. Tell me what's wrong!"
She was still half dazed. "I--I can't see why I'm down here--with
papa's dinner pail. Pearl was upstairs, and I tried to stop him from
going." Then she began to whimper like a whipped puppy. "It's all mixed.
I'm scared."
"Of course--of course you are; but it's going to be all right." I led
her to the car and lifted her to the front seat. "Hold on a minute,
Susan. I'll be back with you in less than no time!"
I sounded my horn impatiently. After an interval, a slow-footed car
washer inside the garage began trundling the doors back to admit me. I
ran to him.
No. Bob, he left at six, same as usual. He hadn't been round since....
His kid, eh? Mebbe the heat had turned her queer. Nuff to addle most
folks, the heat was....
I saw that he knew nothing, and snapped him off with a sharp request to
crank the car for me. As he did so, I jumped in beside Susan.
"Where do you live, Susan? Oh, yes, of course--Birch Street. Bob told me
that.... Eh? You don't want to go home?"
"Never, please. Never, never! I _won't_!" Proclaiming this, she flung
Bob's dinner pail from her and it bounced and clattered down the
asphalt. "It's too late," she added, in a frightened whisper: "I know it
is!"
Then she seized my arm--thereby almost wrecking us against a fire
hydrant--and clung to me, sobbing. I was puzzled and--yes--alarmed. Bob
was a bad customer. The child's bruised face ... something she had said
about a razor----? And instantly I made up my mind.
"I'll take you to my house, Susan. Mrs. Parrot"--Mrs. Parrot was my
housekeeper--"will fix you up for to-night. Then I'll go round and see
Bob; see what's wrong." I felt her thin fingers dig into my arm
convulsively. "Yes," I reassured her, taking a corner perilously at full
speed, "that will be much better. You'll like Mrs. Parrot."
Rather recklessly, I hoped this might prove to be true; for Mrs. Parrot
was a little difficult at times....
It was Maltby Phar who saw me coming up the steps with a limp child in
my arms, and who opened the screen door for me. "Aha!" he exclaimed.
"Done it this time, eh! Always knew you would, sooner or later. You're
too damned absent-minded to drive a car. You----"
"Nonsense!" I struck in. "Tell Mrs. Parrot to ring up Doctor Stevens.
Then send her to me." And I continued on upstairs with Susan.
When Mrs. Parrot came, Susan was lying with closed eyes in the middle of
a great white embroidered coverlet, upon which her shoes had smeared
greasy, permanent-looking stains.
"Mercy," sighed Mrs. Parrot, "if you've killed the poor creature,
nobody's sorrier than I am! But why couldn't you have laid her down on
the floor? She wouldn't have known."
In certain respects Mrs. Parrot was invaluable to me; but then and there
I suspected that Mrs. Parrot would, in the not-too-distant future, have
to go.
Within five minutes Doctor Stevens arrived, and, after hurried
explanations, Maltby and I left him in charge--and then made twenty-five
an hour to Birch Street.
However, Susan's intuitions had been correct. We found Bob's four-room
house quite easily. It was the house with the crowd in front of it....
We were an hour too late.
"Cut her throat clean acrost; and his own after," shrilled Mrs. Perkins
to us--Mrs. Perkins, who lived three doors nearer the right end of Birch
Street. "But it's only what was to be looked for, and I guess it'll be a
lesson to some. You can't expect no better end than that," perorated
Mrs. Perkins to us and her excited neighbors, while her small gray-green
eyes snapped with electric malice, "you can't expect no better end than
that to sech _brazen_ immorality!"
"My God," groaned Maltby, as we sped away, "How they have enjoyed it
all! Why, you almost ruined the evening for them when you told them
you'd found the child! They were hoping to discover her body in the
cellar or down the well. Ugh! What a world!
"By the way," he added, as we turned once more into the dignified
breadth of Hillhouse Avenue, "what'll you do with the homely little
brat? Put her in some kind of awful institution?"
The bland tone of his assumption irritated me. I ground on the brakes.
"Certainly not! I like her. If she returns the compliment, and her
relatives don't claim her, she'll stay on here with me."
"Hum. Bravo.... About two weeks," said Maltby Phar.