At exactly ten of the clock next morning Peter Stansbury Pape, Esquire,
garbed in the form prescribed by the chart on the wall of his Astor
suite, was admitted for the second time to the Sturgis brownstone. He
had awakened with the idea. His mind, which last night had felt
shell-shocked out of its normal functions by that "home-at-last-dear"
bomb, must have worked it out while he slept. The telephone, Jasper of
the jowls and a certain exuberant "young lady of to-day"--all seemed to
approve it. Even Aunt Helene, who received him, wore a manner that went
with her _ante-meridian_ negligee, pliable and gracious as its material
of rose-hued Georgette.
She was so glad to see him again, although he was a very naughty person
to have permitted her to believe him a detective the other night. Yes,
her niece had explained all about him after he had gone. Still, she
supposed that he meant well--her pet charity was to believe the best of
every one. And she was so relieved that all of them had lived through
the excitement that she could have forgiven a worse crime than his
effort to help under false pretense. She had narrowly saved herself a
complete nervous collapse by a few days absence from the scene of the
robbery--that robbery of nothing at all except a keepsake of such
inappreciable value that its loser would not name its name. Her niece,
Miss Lauderdale, always had been a rather secretive, sentimental girl,
and had since regretted, she felt sure, the worry she had caused them.
"We never permit ourselves to forget that she is an orphan, poor dear,"
added the matron. "Irene tries to make everything up to her. Really, she
is fonder of her cousin than she could be of any one short of a twin.
And I am very glad to have it so. Jane has such a good influence over
Irene. She is much older, you know."
"And has Miss Lauderdale no--no brothers or----" the visitor began.
"No near relative except ourselves, nor money enough to assure her
independence. But we are only too happy to have her need us, to love her
and provide for her. She is--" Mrs. Sturgis hesitated and seemed to be
choosing her words with a nice regard for the delicacy of the subject.
"She is perhaps just a bit strong-minded for the taste of men, our dear
Jane. But strength is a splendid quality in a woman if applied in the
right direction. Don't you think so? Perhaps you don't, though, being a
tower of strength yourself. Anyway, Jane Lauderdale is a dear girl--and
_so_ dependable."
Mrs. Sturgis _did_ hope he was enjoying to the full his stay in New
York. Yes, her daughter would be down directly and it _was_ nice of him
to ask the child riding. She did not often consent to her essaying the
park. Irene's daring was her real reason for keeping their horses in the
country, although she pretended that it was for the horses' sake. He,
being such a friend of her niece, came well recommended. Miss Lauderdale
had told state secrets about him--had admitted at Irene's demand that he
was the most superb horseman she had met in the West. That pronounced
him capable of taking care of a woman if any one could. Irene rode well,
to be sure. But there always was a risk about a rented mount. And there
were so many unexpected turns along the park bridle paths and such
whizzing of cars and shrieking of sirens. She hoped that he had selected
a safe mount for her child.
"I thought some, ma'am, of having Polkadot, my own friend horse, saddled
up feminine," Pape advised her. "But he ain't used even to the skirts of
a habit coat. Besides which, it might have put his Roman nose out of
joint to see me forking another. No telling what a jealous horse will
do."
"Any more than a jealous woman," she contributed.
"Can't say as to the women. But I reckon that, jealous, they ain't
agreeable or safe, either. I've made a practice of sloping along at the
first eye-flicker of that sort of trouble. But you cheer up, Mrs.
Sturgis. The filly I picked as a trailmate for my Dot this morning is as
reliable as the hobbies in the riding school."
Despite her manner--and, positively, she was treating him like an
eligible--the mother's black brows had lifted semi-occasionally during
his speech, he presumed at his choice of language. Although he jotted
down a mental note of the necessity of increased care to weed out his
unseasonable crop of hardy range vernacular, somehow her presence made
him worse. He remembered having read somewhere that the choice of topics
in a refined duet of mixed sexes should be left to the lady. The thought
proved restful; left him some spare time for self-communings.
Why hadn't Jane Lauderdale at the very start of the game told him that
she was married? Worse he wouldn't--couldn't--believe of her. To do her
justice, she hadn't exactly encouraged him, yet she scarcely could have
helped seeing with both eyes bandaged the weak state he was in.
When she had thrown open a top-floor-front window of that old, scaly,
painted-brick retreat of hers last night, had she observed him standing
in the shadow of the odorous gas tank opposite? If so, did she
understand the hard-dying hope which had kept him stationed there an
hour, with five minutes thrown in to benefit the sickening doubt which
had been tricked into certainty?
If she had seen and understood, did she pity or exult over his
observances and deductions? The building was four stories and an attic
high. The variance in window curtaining proclaimed it a "flat" house
containing at least four separate sets of tenants. As proof, a young
mother had emerged with a wailing infant onto the third floor
fire-escape landing; a party of four, shirt-sleeved and kimono-clad,
could be seen playing cards at a table just within the windows of the
second-floor front; the shades of the first were jerked down when the
gas was lit. And surely none who could afford the space of an entire
house would have endured the district.
That beneficial five minutes which failed to benefit he had thrown in
after the top floor lights had been suddenly turned out. He'd never have
known the stubbornness of his hope that she would reappear, except for
hope's slow death. Undoubtedly she who was known to him as Miss
Lauderdale had settled for the night in the home of the tall, blond man
who had kissed her in the doorway. He knew where one member of the
Sturgis family, at least, went for peace and quiet!
A question had been asked him; had been repeated with a slight crescendo
of the modulated voice which had played accompaniment to his tragic
reminiscence; recalled him to the here and now. From the matron's
surprised look and her wait for some sort of response, he realized that
automatic answers didn't always satisfy. What was it she had asked?
"You have a family tree, Mr. Pope--I mean Pape? Pape _is_ such an odd
name, isn't it?"
"Sure--that is to say, certainly, madam. A forest of the same."
She frowned in face of his attempt at elegant diction and intent to make
her smile.
"I fear you don't quite grasp my meaning. It is the Pape lineage I mean.
You can trace it back, I suppose?"
Just here was Peter Pape's cue to spread out all his Stansbury cards
upon the table, but in trying to match this mother in rose-hued
negligee, he overplayed the hand.
"Oh, we go back to the days long before kings and queens or even jacks,
Mrs. Sturgis--clear to Adam and Eve and the apple orchard."
This time she beamed. "Indeed! And you have an escutcheon?"
Before he could assure her, the daughter of the house clattered in
high-heeled boots through the doorway.
Irene wore white cloth breeches and a black suede coat, no hat at all
and a radiant freshness that took his breath. In the stress of recent
doings and undoings, he had forgotten the spectacular beauty of this
particular young lady of to-day. Crow-haired was she, bright-cheeked,
brighter-lipped. The slight unevenness of her dazzling display of teeth
but added piquancy to her smile. She was both strong-built and lithe of
body. And as to her mind, never an incipient doubt of her
super-desirability weakened that. Truly, she was a vital and vitalizing
creature, Irene.
It was not unpleasant to have a beautiful girl greet him with frank
cordiality. After recent roughnesses of his experience--Well, not since
that floral-wreathed sign first had blazed its reassurance into his
nostalgic gaze had he been made to feel so welcome.
"Oh, you poor man--you poor, dear, bored-to-death man!" she offered with
both her hands. "Has my maternal mamma been talking you to pieces about
my virtues? I'll bet you have, at that, you darling villainess!"
Freeing one hand, she shook her ivory-handled crop at her protesting
parent, then almost at once re-seized Pape's sunburned paw.
"It's your very own fault I took so long to get ready. Do I hear you
asking why, Why-Not? Because your groom rode up on the most satiny black
that ever stopped before our domicile, instead of the regular roan I
expected. I was all togged out in my new tan covert, but of course had
to change in order to be becoming to the black. I'm _never_ late!"
_"My dear!"_
There was incredulity in Mrs. Sturgis' voice.
"You mustn't get nasty, dar-rling. You know that I'm _almost_ never,
except to punish people. And of course Mr. Pape and I haven't got far
enough along for me to need to punish him--_not yet_."
Although nothing seemed to be expected of him, Pape sought for a seemly
retort. "Let us hope that we never get that far along."
"Let us hope that we get there soon," she corrected him. "Come, shan't
we be on our way?"
Mrs. Sturgis followed them to the street door; showed a becoming
anxiety; hoped, even prayed, that they'd return safely.
"Safely and anon--don't expect me sooner than anon."
Irene tossed the promise with a finger-flung kiss from the saddle into
which she had swung with scarcely a foot-touch upon the stirrup held for
her. Pape instructed the groom as to his return to stables on the other
side of the park. They were off on the most parade-effect ride in which
he, for one, ever had participated.
The girl pulled in close enough to keep talking during their necessarily
sedate pace down the avenue toward The Plaza entrance to the park.
"You were a dear to keep calling up while I was in the country. Oh,
don't look so innocent!"
Her charge made him hope he wasn't showing in his face the strange
something that happened to his spinal column each time she called him
"dear"--he felt so sure that she only was leading up to that adorably
Yankee-ized "dar-rling" of hers.
"I'm sorry if I--glad if I look innocent."
"You ought to be. Any modern man ought to be." She laughed more happily
than he could manage to do at the moment. "And don't you deny calling
me--don't you deny anything! It won't do a bit of good."
Believing that it wouldn't--not with Irene--he didn't.
"You see, Jasper's butlering job depends upon his accuracy," she
continued. "Well he knows if he lost me one single message from one
single only man I ever loved----"
"We trust that all your only-ever men are single?" he persiflaged into
her pause.
"Most. Never cared for the back-door and porch affairs--one has to be so
discreet. You don't yourself, do you, Why-Not?"
In her query Pape saw an opening for the idea which had wakened him up.
Not that he would have pried into the affairs of Jane Lauderdale through
her discreet-and-proud-of-it young cousin any more than he had crossed
the cobbles of that soiled East Side street last night to question her
fellow-tenants on the fire escape. No. He knew he couldn't and wouldn't
do anything so deliberately base as that. But if Irene must babble, it
was only fair that she babble upon a subject that interested the
semi-silent member of the colloquy. So----
"No, I don't like side-porch affairs," he admitted, "although I've got
the reputation of being discreet."
"That's why you're so nice-nice," enthused Irene. "The man's being good
gives the girl all the better chance to be bad. Oh, I _hope_ I've
shocked you! Come across, B. B.--that's short either for 'Blushing
Bachelor' or 'Brazen Benedict.' _Haven't_ I?
"You'll shock me worse if you don't hold in until that traffic cop blows
his horn."
With the warning, Pape reached over and himself curbed her black until
their crossing into the bridle path was whistle-advised.
Probably she considered that the time had come to start "punishing" him,
for, once in the park, she literally ran away from him along the East
Path which so far he had traveled alone. But Polkadot, asserting his
indignation in none too subtle snorts, soon overhauled the rented horse,
then showed his equine etiquette by settling to a companionable walk.
His man, too, after one look into the flushed, exultant, impish face
beneath the cloud of wind-tossed curls, forgave.
"The trouble with you, W. W., is simply this," he propounded, referring
to her late allegation in superior vein.
"W. W.'? Explanation!" she demanded.
Attempting a look of polite surprise, he obliged. "Inclusive for 'Wicked
Wife' and 'Wiley Wirgin.' I am here to say that, as your sex is run
nowadays, it is hard to tell which are which. In this woman's town none
of 'em seem to want to wear the marriage brand. Many a Mrs. calls
herself Miss. You keep too close to your mother, likely, to be yoked
without her knowing it. But how could an outsider know, for instance,
whether or not your cousin, Miss Lauderdale----"
"Jane married? What an idea!" As expected, Irene interrupted on getting
the general drift of his remarks. "Not but what she's plenty old enough.
She's _twenty-six_--think of it! Maybe I oughtn't to tell her age.
Still, any one can see it on her face, don't you think so--or _do_ you?
And it isn't as though you were interested in her instead of me. Jane is
considered still very attractive, though. A good many men have admired
her even since my day and degeneration. Do you know, I never can resist
adding that 'degeneration' to 'my day'! It's trite, I know, but it's
true--too-trite-true. Jane has a whole raft of women friends. She's
always off visiting them. She is down at Hempstead Plains now with one
of them."
Pape rose in his stirrups, as it turned out, merely to hold back a
low-hung bough which had threatened to brush the girl's artfully tousled
locks.
"Fortunately," she babbled on, "Mills Harford still wants to marry her.
Mother and I both think she ought to snap him up. Don't you? Harfy has
money and he isn't bad looking, although I myself shouldn't consider him
as a suitor. I guess he knows that." She transferred her glance from him
to the path ahead. "Here's the longest straight-away in Central Park,"
she cried. "I don't want to leave you again--better come along!"
Bombed again! Pape pressed one hand against his brow as he shook Dot's
rein, a signal to follow the spurt to which Irene had put the academy
mare. He wasn't given to headaches from any pace of his horse, but a
sudden hurting sensation had shot through his brain.
Jane Lauderdale wasn't, then, married so far as her relatives knew. And
she was covering her whereabouts from them as she had tried to cover
from him. By no tax of the imagination could he think of the peeling old
brick house on East Sixty-third Street as the "place" of any of those
elite "women friends" mentioned; yet even could he do so, why one with a
husband or other male attache who would wait and kiss their fair guest
at the door?
Incidentally, Polkadot won the brush over this tangent, coming up from
the rear at an "I'll-show-you" pace. Willingly enough he waited for the
black mare where the bridle path again became winding.
Irene, on catching up, looked him over with irritation that proved to
have nothing to do with the comparative speed of their mounts, as just
counted against her.
"I don't believe you were listening to me at all back there," she
charged. "I _dote_ on deep, dark natures, but this doesn't seem to me
the time or place to get mysterious. Come out of it and pay me
'tentions!"
He undertook to obey. "I'd be tickled pink to pay you anything that----"
"You're a deeper and darker color than pink already," she interrupted,
"but you don't look tickled at all. Here, see for yourself!"
From her breast-pocket she produced a flat vanity case covered with the
black suede of her coat; flipped open a small mirror; held it above the
horn of his saddle where he could look into it. His countenance was,
indeed, nearer beet-red than pink. After a wicked moue over his
discomfiture, she took out a "stick" and proceeded openly, calmly,
critically, to rouge her youth-ripe lips.
"I'll pay you," she proposed with a smile, "anything that you consider
fair for the thoughts that brought that blush."
"I was just wondering if--thinking that----" he floundered. "What a
similarity of coloring there is among you, your mother and your--your
cousin, you know, and yet how different you are."
"You're cheating, Why-Not. You know you weren't thinking anything so
banal. Do you expect me to pay for that?"
She pulled her trim little black closer to his rangy piebald and leaned
over toward him. And he bent toward her; somehow, couldn't help it. A
moment her eyes glittered close under his. Her blown black hair strove
toward his lips. A pout that would have tempted the palest-corpuscled of
men curved the lips so carefully prepared--for what?
Peter Pape's corpuscles, as happened, weren't pale. Then, too, he lately
had been bombed out of some few; traditions and restraints. He caught
his breath; caught the idea; caught her arm.
"Child, do you know that--Do you understand--"
"You _are_ nice-nice!"
With complete understanding, she awaited his pleasure and, possibly, her
own.
Irene had shown selectiveness in the set for the scene. The path at that
point was low-leaved and lone. Nothing broke the silence except the
siren-chorus of invisible cars. Nothing marred the woodsy fragrances
except the reek of gasoline. Nothing held Pape back except the
realization that, once he had kissed this almost irresistible young lady
of to-day----
At that, only Polkadot saved the situation. Whether intolerant of his
propinquity with a mere hireling, whether sensing the predicament of a
man-master who never had brushed stirrups with a woman unless on some
picnic ride with a crowd along, or whether too fed-up on stable fodder
to endure such inactivity one second longer, at any rate, the painted
pony forewent all equine etiquette; bolted.
Not until they had made a flying turn at Harlem Mere and started
cross-park toward the West Path did Pape's strong hand at the rein
dictate that they let the trailing black catch up. When again the two
horses, as nicely matched for contrast as were their riders, paced side
by side in form----
"You all right, dar-rling?" panted Irene, from excitement and exercise
beautiful as the favorite "still" of a picture queen.
"Right as--as you nearly had me wrong."
At his serious look, she laughed up at him shamelessly. "You missed your
chance that time. And a miss to me is as good as many miles."
"Don't you mean," he asked, "that a Miss is as bad as a Mrs.?"
The rest of the ride he insisted on playing the heavy respectful. He
wasn't to be baby-vamped into making love to any girl; to that he had
made up his mind flyingly but firmly. Tempting, indeed, was she. But
until he should commit himself to temptation, she should not over-tempt
him. Even in this, their "day and degeneration," he claimed the deciding
vote of the male. Why not?
After that _he_ chose the topics of conversation, favoring one
introduced that day by the girl's own mother--genealogy. Irene's answers
were considerably less animated than his questions.
Yes, "family" was the hobby-pace of her only mamma. She, herself, didn't
care a Russian kopeck from what a man came, so that he was present when
she wanted him. Still, if Pape aspired to get along with parent-Helene,
he'd have to trump her genealogical lead. Could he and would he produce
a family escutcheon?
If there was one to be had in town! So he promised with hand-on-heart.
He had been born and bred and all that, he declared. And he had reasons
for wishing to be properly installed as a friend of the Sturgis family.
Would an escutcheon really need to be laid within range of the maternal
lorgnette? If so, just what was an escutcheon most like?
Ha, he began to see! It was, then, an authenticated something which one
emblazoned on what he owned to show that he owned it, like the
interrogation point which he branded on his cattle back home? He
explained the significance of the name of the distant Queer Question
Ranch back in Hellroaring Valley, a name derived from his own whys and
why-nots. He'd see what he could do toward authenticating a creditable
escutcheon and exhibiting the same to mamma.
They had curved around North Meadow, had skirted the silver circle of
the receiving reservoir and were approaching The Green, before Pape's
absorption in this self-selected topic was broken. He had cast a
surreptitious glance toward a clump of poplars that disputed possession
of a hillock with an outcrop of granite. Beneath them he had seen what
caused his heart to take one quick flop, then stand still.
What next occurred was better understood by Friend Polkadot than Friend
Girl. The horse received a knee-pressed signal, the meaning of which was
clear, if not the particular reason therefor. Just why Why-Not should
wish to rid himself of a riding-mate he had seemed to find so
delightful----
However, Dot was enough of a soldier never to argue actual orders. He
promptly went lame. And he rather enjoyed doing so. The trick had been
dear to him ever since the petting lavished upon him during his recovery
from a real injury years ago. He slowed to a stop; up-held his
fore-hoof; himself demanded "'tentions."
"What's matter, old hoss?"
Perfect in his part of this play to retire from trail company no longer
congenial, the Westerner flung himself off-saddle, accepted and examined
the pitiful "paw." Even when the supposed victim winked and drew back
his upper lip in a wide horse grin, there showed no change in the poker
face of the Montana man.
"Is it a sprain? Does it hurt so much as all that?" Although Irene would
doubtless--and justly--have been furious to know it, her concern was the
one real factor in the incident.
"He may have slipped on that bolt of his back yonder." Pape wasn't used
even to suggesting lies and his voice sounded as unconvincing to himself
as though pitched from the vicinity of Washington Square. "Serve him
right if he did. At that, I'm afraid our ride's ended for to-day.
Fortunately----" He paused in a search of the surroundings, presumedly
to get their exact bearings; in fact, to convince himself that he had
seen what he had seen. "Fortunately the stable I'm using lies just over
there on Central Park West."
"And I was just about to propose that we make the reverse round." Irene
pouted like the spoiled child she was. "I'd set my heart on a real
sprint between my mare and your cocksure charger. It would have been so
sort of symbolic of life to-day, you know--a race of male versus
female."
Her heart for horses, however, soon softened in pity for Polkadot. Pape
liked her cordially as he hated himself for the endearments and
consolations she showered upon that supposed unfortunate.
"Don't you worry one little bit, Polkadot dar-rling," she urged, leaning
to one of the pinto's forward-flicking ears. "If it isn't all right by
to-morrow-day, Irene will come around herself and rub it well for you."
When Dot, having received no "cure" signal, limped more noticeably than
before as they neared his stable-hostelry, she added in her sweet-lisped
baby talk:
"Just a few steps more, booful boy. Don't 'oo care. You'll be all well
to-morrow-day."
Considering the tenderness of her mood toward the four-footed fakir, her
change was sudden and radical toward the biped of the pair when she
grasped that he intended to send her home in a taxi.
"You're not going to _take_ me?" she demanded through the down-dropped
sash of the door he had closed.
"If you'll excuse me, no, Miss Sturgis. I am very sorry to miss the
pleasure and sorrier if I seem discourteous. But I--I owe a duty to a
friend."
She looked with a hard glance straight into his eyes, her lips thinning.
"Then you think more of your _horse_ than you do of me?"
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," he temporized.
She pressed the point. "You may think I lack reserve, Mr. Pape.
Sometimes I myself feel that I am too impulsive and too--too honest."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," he repeated. It was the best he could offer
and he was in doubt about that.
"No, I suppose you wouldn't," she snapped. "But why don't you assume a
virtue if you have it not--why not be a little bit honest yourself? Why
not answer the truth? Heaven knows I might better learn it now than
later. Tell me, Why-Not, is it only Polkadot for whom you are deserting
me?"
Pape tried unobtrusively to give the chauffeur the start signal; shifted
his weight; cleared his throat.
"Well, it isn't exactly--not entirely on account of the horse, although
a man's cayuse is his cayuse and that's that. No, miss. You see, we were
kind of late starting, owing to your change of--of habits. And I have a
friend that I'm sort of committed to help because she--he----"
But his impromptu defense merged into her high-pitched scorn which, in
its turn, merged into tears before she was through.
"I knew it. I _divined_ it. And me meriting a man's whole soul! Kindly
tell the driver to start at once. As for you, Peter Stansbury Pape, I
think you're _contemptible_!"
Grooms were caring for the horses on Pape's return to the stable. The
"cripple" he miraculously cured by a word and a touch. In his dressing
room, he hurried into street clothes.
Out in the park, beneath that clump of poplars----
Talking was all very well in its way. But at last he had sighted
something to _do_!