WHEREIN SEVERAL LARGE DIFFICULTIES ARE SMOOTHED AWAY
He had sat upright, his hands over his chair-arms, his mind and muscle
tense; but at that unbelievable sight, he fell back in his chair
relaxed, staring and dazed like one who sees a goddess in a vision.
"Good evening," said this goddess, looking decidedly embarrassed and
remarkably pretty. "I--I am so glad that we've found you."
"You were looking for _me_?" he said incredulous, utterly mystified; and
the instinct of long training, working on with no guidance from him,
impelled him to rise with a stiff and somewhat belated bow.
"Yes. And there are two men with me who are anxious to help...."
Her fragrant presence seemed to fill and transform the dingy office; and
he was at once aware that her manner had lost that cool remoteness which
at their last meeting had set him so far away.
He pulled himself sharply together, entirely missing the implication in
her speech, and struck abruptly to the one point that mattered.
"Some one has convinced you since last night that I am not that man."
"Yes," she answered, looking away from him with faintly heightened
color. "I--I must ask you to forgive me for--last night."
He bowed stiffly from behind the table.
"But who--if I may know--persuaded you, where I appeared so--"
"My mother," she said, simply. "She caught a glimpse of you on the
street yesterday. I did not know of it till to-day--never dreamed that
she knew you. I'm glad," she added hurriedly, resolutely contrite, "of
the chance to--to say this--"
"It is extraordinarily kind," said Varney. He looked at her steadily, as
far from understanding the mystery of her coming as ever.
"But I came," she went on at once, as though reading the question in his
eyes, "for quite another reason. We happened to stop just now at poor
Jim Hackley's."
The name riveted his attention. A quality in her voice had already told
him that something troubled her.
"At Hackley's?"
She stood just behind Peter's deserted chair and rested her ungloved
right hand upon it. He noticed, as though it were a matter which was
going to be vital to him later on, that she wore no rings, and that
there was a tiny white spot on the nail of her thumb.
"Some men are waiting on this dark street somewhere, Mr. Varney," she
began hurriedly, "waiting, I'm afraid, for you to come out--four or
five--I don't know how many. You know--what that means. But oh, it isn't
their fault!--they don't know any better, you see!--"
The sudden anxiety in her voice cleared his wits and braced him like a
tonic: and so he came front to front with the fact that it was to help
him--to help _him_--that Uncle Elbert's daughter had come to the
_Gazette_ office that night.
"I appreciate that perfectly, of course. But--the rest is not so clear.
I don't quite understand--how did you happen to learn of this?"
"I? Oh, my learning about it was the purest chance. It was told me two
minutes ago by a visitor here, a Mr. Higginson, whom I met last night.
He is outside in the car now, and--"
"Mr. Higginson!" echoed Varney, astounded.
"You know him, perhaps?"
"I? Oh, no--no. But I interrupted you. Do go on and tell me--"
She began to speak rapidly and earnestly:
"This afternoon I went motoring, I and a friend of mine--Mr. John
Richards. We took a wrong turn coming back, and of course were horribly
late. But at the edge of the square we stopped a minute to inquire about
Mrs. Hackley, who was taken quite ill yesterday afternoon. Just as I was
getting back into the car, up ran this Mr. Higginson, very much
flustered and excited. You see, he had just found out about all
this--this plot--even to knowing where you were; he had seen poor Jim
Hackley, it seems, not at all himself, and overheard him talking. Of
course, we saw that you must be warned at once, so we took him in the
car, and all three of us ran back here."
She paused a moment, and he prompted her with a close-clipped: "Yes?"
"I wanted him to--come in and tell you about it," she said
hesitatingly--"but he wouldn't do it. He is a most agreeable old man,
but, I imagine--of a very nervous temperament. So," she added with a
hurried little laugh, "as I was the only one who--knew you, I said that
I would come in and tell you myself."
"It was most kind--most kind of you all."
He turned away sharply to hide his sudden rush of indignation and
resentment. Turbulently he longed to get his hands upon the sly
Higginson, who had had the effrontery to dispatch a woman to protect
him, and this woman of all others that lived in Hunston.... Protect
him? Hardly. That an attack had been planned against his person was,
indeed, likely enough, but not that any hireling of Ryan's should rush
forward hysterically to pluck him from his peril. What move in that
mysterious game, what strange plot within a plot was here?...
"Did Mr. Higginson happen to explain why he took such a generous, and I
fear very troublesome, interest in my welfare?"
Genuinely anxious for light, he tried to iron all suggestion of a sneer
out of his voice, but evidently he did not quite succeed.
"Oh, I don't think you ought to speak that way! Surely he has done only
what anybody would do for any stranger who was in danger and didn't know
it."
"And you?"
She looked at him rather shyly out of her somewhat spectacular eyes.
"That explains me, too--if you wish."
"Maginnis and I," said Varney immediately, "are not going out for some
time yet. Oh, a long, long time! These poor fellows you speak of will
tire of waiting long before that. And when we do go--"
"You must not go together."
"I don't think I understand you."
"Don't you see," she said, speaking very earnestly, "that that is
exactly what they are hoping for? This ambuscade didn't just happen--it
is manufactured--it is politics. Men like these haven't the initiative,
or whatever you call it, to get up a thing of this sort. Some one has
done it for them. Don't you know why? _They want to get rid of Mr.
Maginnis_. But they can't hurt him _alone_--without having it brought
right home to them--to the politicians. With you--it is--different--"
"Yes, yes--I see. But forgive my asking--did Mr. Higginson explain the
situation to you in just this way?"
"Mr. Higginson?" she said, plainly surprised at his harking back to
that. "It was not necessary. I understood the situation very well, from
what Mr. Hare has told me. Mr. Higginson simply gave us the facts about
these men hiding out there--there was no time for anything more."
He was staring at her with unconscious steadiness, and now his face took
on a slow faint smile, which she was very far from understanding. Blurry
as it all still was, light was beginning to break through upon him. Of
course, that was all that Mr. Higginson had told her. Of course. The
last thing desired by that clever rogue, who used petticoats for
stalking-horses and was not above hiding behind them for the safety of
his own skin, was for the engineered "attack" to go off prematurely,
landing only Varney and failing to "get" Maginnis. Warnings that the two
should _not_ go out together from Higginson? Hardly.
"I understand perfectly. Maginnis is quite safe without me, but not at
all safe with me. You may count upon me absolutely. I'll give him the
slip and leave here alone."
"You mustn't do anything of the kind," said Mary sharply.
She looked at him, unsmiling, eye to eye like a man; but she looked from
under a fantastic and exceedingly becoming little hat, swathed all about
with a wholly fascinating gray veil. Her skin was of an exquisite
freshness, which threw into sharp relief the vivid coloring of her lips;
the modeling of her cheek and throat was consummate, beyond improvement;
and her eyes--he told himself that they could have no match anywhere.
Varney laughed shortly. "I am not to go out with Maginnis. I am not to
go out without him. May I ask if I am expected to spend thnight
prudently curled up under the office table here?"
The situation was odious to him; he knew that his manner betrayed it;
but if she was aware of this she gave no sign. On the contrary her face
all at once became miraculously sweet.
"You aren't thinking that there's any question of courage mixed up in
this, Mr. Varney? Indeed, indeed, there is not. They would fight in the
dark; they would fight from behind. The very _bravest_ men would have no
chance, and very brave men don't take foolish risks, do they? I know by
Mr. Hare. Mr. Varney, I have a little plan."
"Indeed? Do tell me."
"Our car is at the door, you know--Mr. Richards's car. We'd both like it
very much if you would come with us."
"Where?"
"Well--I thought that perhaps you'd come to my house. Only to get rid of
these men and not to--get them into any trouble. Of course, no one in
Hunston would annoy you when you were with me."
If he had hated the thought of accepting protection from Mary Carstairs
less intensely, he might have laughed aloud. As Higginson's catspaw, she
was certainly the most screaming failure that the whole world could have
yielded. What, oh what, would the old gum-shoe have said if he could
have heard that invitation?
"Thank you, but that is quite impossible."
"I am awfully sorry."
There was a faint stiffening in her manner. She began to draw on her
right glove, slowly tucking out of sight the thumb with the tiny white
spot on the nail.
"I hoped that perhaps you might come to dinner with us. I haven't had
any yet. May I--suggest another way out of all this, then? There is a
back gate to this place, leading into a kind of alley, you know. I am
sure that they--these poor men--haven't thought of that. Couldn't you
please go out--"
"Certainly," said Varney. "Certainly. Yes, indeed. I'll do
anything--anything in the wide world to avoid getting thumped on the
head with Mr. Hackley's walking-stick."
Her face told him that she found his tone and manner somewhat
disconcerting, but she took no notice of it otherwise.
"I hope it won't be necessary to do anything more than that. But if it
should be, I hope you'll do it. I'm afraid I've failed to make you see
that this is really serious. Good-night."
But Varney, having a question to ask her, could not let her go yet.
"But--but," he said, hastily, "you must allow me to thank you--you and
Mr. Higginson--"
"The thanks are all Mr. Higginson's. I'm only a messenger--and besides,
you aren't grateful at all, you know! You think we've all been
_extremely_ intrusive!" She smiled brightly, bowed, and then was
suddenly checked by a new thought. "Oh--I wonder if you would tell me
something before I go?"
"By all means," said Varney, having no idea whether he would or not.
But the loud jangling whir of a telephone bell from the adjoining room
cut into the air, drowning out conversation; and it rang on and on and
on as though Central had had her orders.
"I suppose I'll have to answer that to shut them up," he said. "Excuse
me for the merest second, won't you?"
He passed through into the brightly-lit business office beyond, and
found the telephone, still ringing away on a desk at the farther end.
Behind him the door swung shut, a circumstance for which he later had
reason to be glad.
"Well?" he called impatiently.
"You, Larry?" asked a familiar voice.
"Yes. What's the matter?"
"Matter enough," said Peter in a guarded undertone. "Hammerton's loose."
"_What_!"
"It's a fact. God knows how he did it; but he's just phoned in here from
a house a long way down the road. Wanted to let the city editor know he
was flying in with the one best bet of the year. Luckily he gave no
details."
Varney's lips tightened; he spoke in a low voice. "He mustn't
arrive--not till I've seen him first. Did you find out how he's
coming--river or road?"
"Trust Uncle Dudley. He's borrowed a bicycle and is burning up the River
road with it."
"Good. How soon will you be through?"
"About three minutes."
"You've hired a motor, you said? Get it and run back here as soon as you
can, will you?"
He rapidly explained the situation, though making no mention of
Higginson: how somebody had plotted to get them together in the darkness
of Main Street, how Miss Carstairs and her friend had kindly stopped to
warn them, and how he had humored her by promising to take all sorts of
precautions.
"Right-O," said Peter. "I'll be in the alley at the back in no time.
Come quick when I honk three times."
Varney came back into the little office where Mary Carstairs waited,
fresh from more cheap plotting in which she was the innocent central
figure; and faced her, uncomfortable, ill at ease, disquieted inwardly
as a conspirator taken red-handed.
"It was Maginnis--upstairs," he explained awkwardly.
"Yes?" she said indifferently, and resumed the buttoning of her glove.
"And will you tell me something now? It has been on my mind since last
night."
"Certainly."
"Who was it that spoke of me to you and made you think that I was a
little girl?"
He was entirely taken aback by the question; but he could have parried
it easily, and he knew it. However, he was heartily sick of subterfuge
for that night.
"It was your father," he said bluntly.
"My father!" She stood silent a moment, slim hands interlocked before
her, heavily fringed eyes lowered. "So you know them both--my mother and
my father. Then--the mistake--about my age," she added with something of
an effort, "was natural enough. I have not seen my father for many
years."
"I see him," said he, "constantly. Your father and I are great chums." A
sudden insane hope overwhelmed him, and he went on with a rush: "You
know, or rather probably you don't know, that he and my mother were old
friends; and I am proud to have fallen heir to the friendship. You say
that you have not seen him for some time? He is growing older very fast
this last year or two; he is much changed of late. And then, Miss
Carstairs, he is desperately lonely, all by himself in that great house
of his--"
"_Stop_!" cried Mary Carstairs, with quick passionateness. "Stop! You
are trying to make me feel sorry for my father."
"Well," he said, as stormy as she, "_you ought to_! But your friends are
waiting. I must not detain you any longer."
At the curtness of his speech a very faint wave of color ran up her
cheek; and when he saw this he was sorry and glad in a single breath. At
least, she could not say afterwards that he had ever tried to make
himself falsely civil and lyingly agreeable. "Yes, I have stayed very
much too long already. You've promised that you will be careful, haven't
you? I'm really too sorry," she said, from the door, "that your visit to
Hunston should have been made disagreeable in all these ways."
"In the name of heaven," he said, stung into momentary recklessness,
"you don't suppose that I came here expecting any _fun_!"
"Why--I had understood that it was purely a pleasure-trip that brought
you here!"
He made no answer to this, but stepped forward and swung open the door
for her.
"Maginnis," he said, "is to call for me immediately in a motor. We
shall leave by the unobtrusive back alley. Two men, a motor, and a dark
rear exit. You will scarcely imagine that there is any danger now. But
may I thank you again for giving us warning when there _was_, perhaps,
some danger?"
"So you think there is a 'perhaps'? If you take precautions, it is only
to humor a--"
"I withdraw that 'perhaps,'" he broke out in a rush. "I blot it out,
annihilate it. Who am I to catch at tatters of self-respect? Are you
blind? Can't you see that every fiber of me is tingling with the
knowledge that there was real danger, and that you saved me from it?"
The quick bitterness in his voice, which there was no missing, was the
last straw, breaking through her reserve, demolishing her dainty
aloofness. She shook the swinging gray veil back out of her eyes and
looked up at him, openly and frankly bewildered, looking very young and
immeasurably alluring.
"Will you tell me why you speak in that way? Will you tell me why it is
the worst thing that has happened to you in Hunston to have been helped
a little by me?"
They faced each other at the open door, not an arm's length between
them; and the moment of his reckoning for the quarter of an hour he had
spent with her that night was suddenly upon him. He met her eyes, which
were darkly blue, stared down into them; and as he did so, the spell of
her beauty treacherously closed round him, piping away his self-control,
deadening him to the iron fact of who she was and who he was, shutting
out all knowledge except that of her fragrant nearness.
"It is absurd," he answered her suddenly, "but to save my life I can't
decide whether you are tall or short."
The front door came open with a bang; the noise brought him sharply to
himself; and the next moment a pleasant impatient masculine voice called
out:
"I say, Miss Carstairs! Er--everything all right?"
"Oh!--yes, Mr. Richards!" she called penitently. "I'm coming this
minute. No, please don't go out with me, Mr. Varney. Don't let anybody
see that you are here."
"Certainly not," said he, struggling for a poise which he could not
quite recapture. "Then will you be good enough to convey my gratitude to
Mr. Higginson and say that I hope to have the opportunity of thanking
him personally to-morrow?"
"Yes, of course. Good-night once more--and good luck!"
But he detained her long enough to put the plain business question which
had been torturing his soul for the last twenty-four hours.
"We shall see you at luncheon to-morrow?"
He strove to give his remark the air of a mere commonplace of farewell;
but at it, he saw her look break away from his and the warm color stream
into her face.
"Why--I--I'll come with pleasure. We don't get the chance to lunch on
yachts every day in Hunston. Oh, but please," she exclaimed, her
embarrassment suddenly melting in a very natural and charming
smile--"never let my mother _dream_ that we've _not been introduced!_"
He bowed low so that she might not see the burlesque of polite pleasure
on his face.
* * * * *
The back alley exit proved all that the most timorous could have
desired. Peter approached it by an elusive detour; Varney appeared
promptly at the sound of his three honks; and the rendezvous was
effected in a black darkness which they seemed to have entirely to
themselves. Not a hand was raised to them, not a threatening figure
sprang up to dispute their going, not a fierce curse cursed them. The
would-be assassins, if such there were, presumably still lurked in some
Main Street cranny, patiently and stupidly waiting, entirely unaware
that they had been neatly outwitted by the clever strategies of Miss
Mary Carstairs.
The car rolled noiselessly out of the alley, skimmed off through the
southern quarter of the town and bowled into the rough and rutty River
road toward the yacht. Once there, since a sharp lookout for the
reporter was necessary, they slowed down and down until the smooth
little car, with all lights out, crawled along no faster than a vigorous
man will walk.
"What're you going to do when we catch him?" asked Peter. "Want to haul
him on back to the yacht?"
"No. I'm--only going to talk to him a little. Go on with the story."
"Well," resumed Peter, taking one hand from the driving-wheel to remove
a genuine Connecticut Havana, "the first thing was a wire from the
_Daily_ firing Hammerton. That assisted a little, of course. Then, they
asked us to give them a new, good man at once, and meantime to push
along all the story we had. We answered with a wire that was a beauty,
if I do mention it myself, telling them exactly how they'd been sold a
second-hand gold brick by a corrupt paper which was trying to play
politics. It simply knocked the pins from under them. It took 'em quite
a while to come back with inquiries about the name off the yacht,
Varney's air of mystery and all that line of slush. My response was
vigorous, yet gentlemanly, straining the truth for all she'd stand, and
even bu'sting her open here and there, I gravely fear. However, it was a
clincher. It crimped them right. Not a peep have we had from 'em since."
"I suppose they'll run four lines on the thirteenth page to-morrow
explaining it was all a mistake."
"But that wasn't the serious part of the thing--not by a mile-walk,"
continued Peter, the shine of victory in his honest eyes. "Am I still in
the road? Sing out if you see me taking to the woods, will you? The more
I think of what you and I have missed by a shave, the more I'm likely to
feel sick in the stomach. You know those rascals had already begun
asking for orders all over the country--they were so sure they'd have a
hot story to send out. Not only that, but a lot of papers wired for it
without being asked. It looked as if every newspaper office in America
that had got a glimpse at the _Daily_ this morning instantly got dead
stuck on that story. I stood at the telegraph desk and watched the
accursed things come in, like this: '500 words story involving Stanhope,
Rochester _Tribune_.' 'No. 3.--' That was the number of our story on the
query list.--'No. 3.--Full details, Chicago _Ledger_.' 'No. 3--1000
words, Philadelphia _Journal_.' And so on and on. It looked uncanny, I
tell you--all those far-away people calling for information about our
affairs just like old friends. Will you kindly let your mind play about
that a minute, Laurence? Will you kindly think of a situation like that
with Ryan and Coligny Smith handling it as their little whimseys
dictated?"
"I'd rather not. You wired those papers that the story was a canard and
all that, I suppose?"
"No!" roared Peter, "I did something a whole lot better than that. I had
one of the men write a hot political story about the _Gazette_ and the
change of management and the sudden rise of Reform. There's _news_ in
that, don't you see?--and it was the Stanhope-Varney story, too--the
real one. When I left the office, they were selling it like hot cakes,
all over the country--all over the world--"
"Hold on!" said Varney, sharply. "Here's Hammerton, I think--bringing in
a whole lot better story than yours!"
The road here was straight as a string stretched tight. Far down it,
they saw a single small light, dancing towards them a foot or two above
the ground.
Peter threw off his clutch, clapped on his brakes and stopped short.
Varney slid out of the seat and stood waiting in the black inkiness
beside the unlighted car. In the sudden stillness they could hear the
rattle of the bicycle chain and even the crunch of the hard-blown tires,
spinning rapidly over the road. Now the light was perhaps a hundred
yards away.
"Blow!" hispered Varney.
The horn's honk cut the silent air hoarsely. Instantly the speed of the
oncoming light was checked. It advanced steadily, but much more slowly,
as though the rider sensed that his road might be blocked, but could not
yet determine where the hidden obstacle might be.
"Hello!" called a lusty young voice suddenly. "Who's there?"
There was no answer. The light came on more slowly still. Now it was
fifty yards away, now twenty, now ten. Varney stepped out of the
blackness, directly in front of it, and seized both handle-bars in
fingers that gripped like a vise. The shock of the sudden stopping all
but cost the rider his seat.
"May I detain you one moment, please, Mr. Hammerton?"
The little light of the bicycle lamp was all concentrated downward.
Above that round yellow ray, faces were unrecognizable in the pitchy
blackness. The voice, however, was unmistakable. Hammerton was off the
back of his wheel in the wink of an eye, on a sudden desperate bolt for
the woods.
Peter, still on the driver's seat, and seeing neither his friend nor his
enemy, saw the light with the bicycle behind it go over with a crash.
That was when Varney's hands let go of the handle-bars. The next instant
they fell upon Hammerton's withdrawing figure and brought it up with a
sharp jerk.
Peter heard the ensuing struggle, but saw nothing. He paid Varney the
tribute of sitting still in his seat and saying not a word. The contest
was bitter, but brief. Hammerton fought wildly, but Varney's arms
presently closed round him, squeezing the life out of him. Locked fast
in each other's arms, they fell heavily, Hammerton underneath. Varney
freed his legs with a swift wrench, swung round and came up riding upon
the other's chest.
Charlie Hammerton was beaten and knew it. His body lay along the rocky
road, inert and unresisting. He breathed in convulsive gasps, but apart
from that, now that he was down, he never moved. He was as tired as a
man well could be. Varney sitting closely upon him, holding him fast,
felt that the reporter's clothes were wringing wet. However, he had him,
and the _Cypriani's_ great secret was once more in captivity.
The eyes of the two men strained into the dark where each other's faces
must be, but they saw nothing.
"It's all up with you, Hammerton," said Varney presently. "The _Daily_
fired you an hour ago."
"Thanks to you," said Hammerton doggedly. "But if you think that lets
_you_ out, you're a bigger fool than I thought."
"That is not all," said Varney slowly. "The _Gazette_ has fired you,
too."
The reporter swore bitterly beneath his breath: curiously enough, he
did not seem to question the statement for a moment. "What of it?" he
cried. "You don't think that'll stop my mouth, do you--you _devil_!"
"There is still something more. Maginnis has bought the _Gazette_. He
and I own the news of this town now. Coligny Smith is fired, too. The
_Gazette_ starts an honest life to-morrow, and the old dirty regime is
over forever."
"Liar!" cried Hammerton, hoarsely. "Liar!" but there was no conviction
in the mad resentment of his voice.
"No," said Varney, without anger. "I am telling you the truth and you
know it."
"Well--there are other papers,--other towns," cried Hammerton
passionately. "What I've got on you will sell anywhere. Why, damn you,
_damn you, damn you_--don't you know you'll have to kill me to hush this
up?"
"No," said Varney, "I'm going to do better than that. I'm going to make
a friend of you. I'm going to make you editor of the _Gazette_ in
Smith's place with double your present salary and an interest in the
paper."
There was black silence, more thrilling than any speech.
"Will you take it?" asked Varney.
Then the boy's overstrained self-command snapped like a bow-string and
his breast shook with sudden hysteria. "Will I take it?" he cried with a
gasping laugh that was rather more like a sob. "Will I take the Court
of St. James? Will I take money from home? Oh, my God, will I take it!"
"Hooray!" rang Peter's great voice out of the gloom. "Hip, hip, hooray
for Editor Hammerton!"
Peter's tribute, in reality, was not so much for Hammerton's acceptance
as for the astonishing neatness with which Varney had disposed of the
editorship of _his_ paper. But to Varney, rising limply from Hammerton's
chest at the edge of the dark road, that cheer meant only that he had
kicked the last obstacle out of his path and that he and Mary were going
to New York to-morrow.