Before the desk sergeant of a metropolitan police station friendship
usually ceases. It did tonight in the Arsenal, otherwise the 33rd
Precinct. By not so much as the ghost of a grin could the be-mustached
official in a uniform striped by decades of service have detected even a
speaking acquaintance between captors and prisoners.
The "case" was Pudge O'Shay's and he made the arraignment, Moore having
subsided into a wooden arm-chair tilted against the wall.
"These are the grub worms that the 'phone message was about," announced
the sparrow cop.
"Mind telling me who sent in that get-your-gun alarm?" Pape asked with a
naivete that masked the effrontery of his request.
The sergeant stared at him in amazement. "None of your business, you
human mole."
"Then I'll tell you," was his easy-manner counter. "A sharp-faced little
crook named Swinton Welch."
"Easy there with the hard names, young fellow! Swin Welch is a friend of
mine and no person's going to call him a crook to my face, much less a
prisoner."
"Thought so," said Pape with a grin. "If he ain't a crook, how about the
folks he's working for?"
Ignoring him, the sergeant opened the blotter.
"Name?"
"Peter Stansbury----"
"Never heard about a little rule of ladies first, I reckon," interrupted
the officer. "If the ship was sinking you'd make the first boat, I bet.
Answer up, mother."
For the first time the poke-bonneted head of the less aggressive
prisoner lifted sufficiently to show the face within.
"Well, I'll be----"
He was--struck dumb, if that was what he had been about to say. Next
minute, however, he must have remembered that sergeants are supposed to
be superior to shock. At any rate, he began the routine questions.
The red, soft-curved lips of youth answered readily from the shadow of
the antiquated headgear. Even "How old are you?" had no terrors for one
who had voted at the last election. Her "more than twenty-one" suggested
the folly of pressing the point.
"Are you armed?" asked the officer in charge when the skeleton biography
was completed.
Jane's startled glance at Pape told him at least that now she understood
the commandeering of her automatic--that some penalty was imposed for
the bearing of weapons without permit. With a word and wag of chin she
replied in the negative.
"Not having a matron here to search you, I'll have to take your say-so."
The sergeant, after a meditative tug at his gray mustache, waved her
back.
Pape was pedigreed with scant ceremony and his answers recorded as he
gave them, even to "Hotel Astor, residence."
"Frisk him, Pudge!" was the concluding order.
Because Jane's automatic was first found and placed upon the desk the
more personal "hardware," a 45 Colt snugly fitted into its arm-pit
holster, was almost overlooked. The sparrow cop's triumph on drawing it
forth was weighty as his figure.
"You go right well heeled for a guest of the hoity-toity," remarked the
sergeant, also pleasurably excited. "We'll just book you for a double
felony under the Sullivan law."
At the threat, "mother" took a step toward her companion, evidently
appreciating that this last charge was due to the service rendered in
fore-disarming without fore-warning her. She looked ready to confess her
ownership of the black gun, as she was trying to get the sergeant's
attention around the interposed bulk of Pudge O'Shay. But she paused
when she saw Pape hand a yellow pig-skin card-case to the officer.
"Before you 'phone your friend Welch the glad news that you've got a
double-barreled Sullivan on me," he requested, "calm yourself by a look
at this."
The sergeant obliged; aloud read sketchily from the filled-in courtesy
card signed by his chief, the commissioner of police.
"Peter S. Pape, deputy sheriff, Snowshoe County, Montana. Permitted to
carry arms while in pursuit of fugitives from justice."
His pleased expression faded; rather, appeared to pass from his face to
that of the prisoner. And indeed, Pape felt that he had reason to be
pleased. Only that week, in preparation for any trail's-end contretemps,
he had taken the precaution of presenting at Police Headquarters his
credentials from the home county sheriff. Sooner than expected, if
somewhat otherwise, preparedness had won.
"You're not going to tell me you thought them fugitives was buried on
the far side of the park?" the sergeant grumbled.
"Wish they were. Say, if you think there's any chance of your friend
Welch dropping in for a social call, I'd like to swap a few words with
him."
"Leave up on Swin Welch! He's harmless--ain't been west of Weehawken in
his life. Where does this old--that is to say, young lady come in?"
"She came in merely as a spectator to cheer me whilst I did my digging
exercise. You can have nothing against her."
Obviously the sergeant was troubled.
"Wish the lieutenant was here," he was heard to mutter.
Adonis Moore made his way to the desk. "The sheriff is giving you the
right dope, serg. All the while Pudge and I was watching, his lady
friend didn't move as much as a clod."
"She wouldn't need to move more'n a clod if she'd take that bonnet off
her head," his superior commented. "We can't let her out now. She's
already booked. But likely she'll make short shrift of the magistrate in
the morning. The sheriff I've gotta hold on the park despoliation
charge. There ain't nothing in his card allowing for that. He's entitled
to have his guns back, but----"
"But how about a thousand dollars cash bail for the two of us on the
misdemeanor?" Pape stepped forward to propose, his hand suggestively
seeking the inner pocket of his corduroy coat. "The price is a bit high
just for the practice of my daily physical culture, still I'll pay."
His confident expression faded the next moment when his hand came out
empty of his well-stocked wallet. In changing to rough-and-readies, he
had forgotten to transfer from his tweeds the price of adventure in a
great city. Except for several crumpled small bills and certain loose
change in his trouser pocket, he was without financial resource. His
attempt at a hopeful glance in Jane's direction weakened under the
thought that, even were she not a self-declared poor relation, she
wouldn't be carrying ten century notes on her person.
"I've got telephone and war-tax money, anyhow," he observed cheerfully.
"Lead me to a booth and I'll have Mr. Astor chip in the ante. Sorry on
mother's account about the delay. She ain't used to late hours in police
stations."
"It might take quite a while to convince the hotel that you are you,"
Jane demurred.
"As it did you, Jane?"
She ignored his _sotto voce_ aside. "Why not let me send for collateral,
Mr. Sergeant? I live just across the avenue."
"Oh, you do, eh?"
"That is, my aunt does. They wouldn't have a thousand dollars in the
house, but you'd take jewelry, wouldn't you, if it was worth several
times the amount?"
Assuming his consent and thanking him with a radiant smile, she motioned
Adonis Moore to one side and advised with him a moment in an undertone.
"Be sure to ask for Miss Sturgis, not Mrs." Her final direction held
over Pape's protest. "Under no circumstance alarm my aunt. And don't say
who is in trouble--just that a good friend of hers needs jewelry bail.
She'll be thrilled by the mystery. She'll manage."
The ensuing wait seemed to try the chief culprit more than his young-old
lady "friend." While she sat at comparative ease in the absent
lieutenant's desk chair behind the railing, he paced outside. His
interest in the sergeant had lapsed on that worthy's refusal to discuss
Swinton Welch's connection with the case and he leant only half an ear
to the preferred discussion of the latest crime wave which had dashed up
to park shores from the ocean of post-war inactivity.
The entrance of Irene Sturgis was "staged"--anticipated, timed,
well-lit. After her first burst into the room, she stopped short beneath
the electric glare, unbelievably lovely in a blush-pink evening wrap
over a gown of vari-tinted tulle. Her back-thrown curls, her heightened
color, her parted lips and wide eyes--all proclaimed her utter
astonishment at the scene before her. Her surveying glance began with
the "costumed" Westerner standing before the high oaken desk of
arraignment, swept to the bent old lady in black, on to the
gray-mustached sergeant and the pompous arresting officer, then back to
its starting point.
"Oh, don't you look dar-rling in those clothes?" she exclaimed on her
way to Pape, "I never saw _anything_ quite so heroic. I didn't _dream_,
Why-Not, that you were the 'good friend' in need of bail. I am just too
_happy_ about it for anything--oh, not that you are in trouble, of
course, but that you'd send for me. I've always been _crazy_ to see the
inside of this Arsenal. Police courts and jails and insane asylums just
_fascinate_ me. Don't they you--or _do_ they? Maybe I have a morbid
tendency, but I enjoy it. It's always the unexpected that really
happens, isn't it? I wasn't in an expecting or hoping mood at all
to-night and here you, of all people, go and get yourself arrested and
send for me and--and _everything_! I forgive you for the past and love
you all the more in trouble. But that's as it should be, isn't it? How
could any true woman resist you in those clothes and in this----"
Of necessity she paused for breath--paused verbally, not materially.
Reaching Pape, she lifted a look of utter adoration that would have made
almost any man's heart do an Immerman flop--lifted also two bare,
soft-curved, elbow-dinted arms about his neck.
"I didn't mean a word of what I said this morning at the end of our
ride," she confessed in an aside voiced _a la_ the histrionics of
yesteryear. "Of course I couldn't seriously call you contemptible, when
my deeper nature knows there's a noble reason back of all that you do.
You'll forget it except as a lover's quarrel, won't you, dar-rling? It
is in need and affliction, don't you think, that one's real feelings
should come to the surface? I'm not one bit ashamed to tell you that
I've been perfectly _miserable_. Haven't you been, too, Why-Not?"
"I ain't just comfortable," he admitted, untieing the lover's knot at
the back of his neck.
"Mother," her blue eyes on the red flame of his countenance, looked as
though she believed him, but as though she didn't feel "just
comfortable" either. In truth, her heart, too, had done some sort of a
flop, then had dropped as if dead. She shrank further back into her
rusty mourning garb, but did not miss a movement of the two baby-soft
hands of her cousin, the one holding the Westerner's arm, the other
stroking the same member as though to limber up its strain.
"What dire deed have you done, dar-rling?" The girl's voice was intense
from the thrill of her rescue role. "Tell Rene all--at least all. It is
such a revelation that you should appeal to me first in trouble. You
_always_ will, won't you--or will you? But then, _of course_ you will."
With the eyes of three of the police upon him, Pape's situation would
have been trying enough. Faced also by the amaze which he could better
imagine than see in the shadow of that bonnet-brim, he felt desperate.
Truly, Jane's wish to avoid alarming her aunt had brought real trouble
upon him--more real than any he could explain to this child vampire.
"There ain't much to tell, Miss Sturgis," he began. "Not anything
serious enough to----"
_"Miss Sturgis!"_ she interrupted reproachfully. "After I've rifled my
jewel box to make up the hush money and after all that's been between
us! Are you _ashamed_ of the deeper feeling you showed this morning on
our ride? If you don't call me Irene instantly, I'll let them lock you
up in a deep, dark, dank dungeon and keep you there until you do."
With a laugh of tender cruelty, she tripped toward the desk in her
tip-tilted slippers; there laid upon its flat top a limp, beaded bag
which had been swinging from her arm.
"You look so kind, Mr. Chief, I don't see how you _can_ be so mean," she
coaxed him. "You really didn't know you were capturing and torturing an
innocent man, I feel sure. But you'll right the wrong now, won't you,
for _my_ sake if not for his? See what I've brought to assure you of his
worth."
The sergeant opened the bag, dumped its contents upon the desk before
him and took up a piece of jewelry for examination.
"The emerald drop on that fillet is a princely ransom in itself," Irene
assured him. "But I brought my mother's black pearls for good measure.
Just look at them--the platinum settings alone are more than the
thousand dollars' worth that the nice-looking policeman said you
required!"
Perhaps the sergeant found her pleading eyes and smile more inducing
bail than the valuables offered. But he began a perfunctory examination
of them. The while, the girl's gaze encompassed the bent, black figure
inside the rail. With an unsmothered exclamation, she started forward,
then stopped short.
"_Jane_--not _really?_" she cried. "Did he send for you, too? And how
did you happen--to come--in costume? I think when you were getting up
this party you _might_ have invited me. You know I _dote_ on fancy-dress
almost as much as police courts."
Jane came slowly through the gate and straightened before her young
relative.
"The 'party' was quite impromptu," she said, pushing back her bonnet to
show a smile more grave than gay. "It was I who sent for you, not Mr.
Pape. Part of the bail is for me. You see, dear, I am arrested, too."
"Arrested--_you?_ I guess I don't understand. How does it come that you
are here when you're visiting the Giffords in Southampton? And how in
the world did you and Why-Not--You two were hauled up--_together?_"
Her final utterance was in a tone fictionally describable as "tinged by
the bitterness of despair."
As Jane seemed disinclined to explain, Pape tried to ease the moment.
"We happened to meet near the Maine Monument. I was out for--for
exercise, you see. Your cousin here showed me some new ways of getting
the same."
"Sure, blame it on her, Adam," Pudge O'Shay made grumpy interposition.
"Remember, though, that this ain't the first evening I've caught you
trying new ways of exercising in the park."
Jane turned toward the sergeant. "Can't we settle about the bail and be
off, sir?"
He coughed, bent for a moment's scribbling; made answer direct to Irene.
"Here's a receipt for your jewelry, miss. I'll take a chance on its
value. While I don't congratulate anybody on getting pinched, I'm glad
that your friends, if they must cut capers, have you to help them out.
Thank you for breezing into this gloomy old place."
"Good for you, you nice old barking dog that don't bite!" enthused the
girl. "I _thought_ you weren't half as cross as you look. I don't know
what my friends have done to get the law down on them, but I _do_
believe in their innocence of motive and so may you. My cousin is the
stormy petrel sort, with the best intentions in the world, but _always_
getting herself and others into trouble. And Why-Not Pape--He's just
from the West, you know, and I haven't had time yet to teach him how to
behave in a city. In a way you have done me a favor in pinching them, as
you so cleverly put it. It is _something_ for a true woman to be given
the opportunity to show by her actions just how much she--You get what I
mean, don't you--or _do_ you?"
Others in the room got it rather more forcefully than he. Pape
suppressed a groan at the flush which had blotted the pallor of Jane's
face. Fast though he had worked, this infant fiend worked faster. Hard
though he had tried, she had upset all his gains with a laugh and a
sigh. Desperate though he felt to protest her claim on him, the fact
that she claimed him discounted any protestation he might make. His West
had schooled him in deeds, not words. By deeds he would--he _must_ prove
the truth.
Characteristically Irene rewarded Adonis Moore. He was a "dear" of a
horse cop and wore his uniform just "scrumptiously." He must keep an eye
out for her when next she rode over park bridle-paths. She thanked him
for her friends, therefore for her. It was these acts of simple human
kindness that made the world worth while. Didn't he agree with her--or
_did_ he? She only hoped that others were as appreciative of _her_
efforts as was she of his.
Even for Pudge O'Shay, whose case it was, she had a cordial _au revoir_.
She had noticed from first glance that he looked worried. But he mustn't
worry, not one tiny bit. Worry made one thin and he had such an imposing
appearance--so official--just as he was. He must rely on her. Surely he
could--or _couldn't_ he? She had taken the case in hand now and would
return the two out-on-bails to court if she had to carry them. He was
merely loaning them to her over night. Wouldn't he try to remember that?
"Good-night, you nice persons, one and all!"
She shook hands with the uniformed three before attaching herself,
dangle-wise, to Pape's weak right arm.
"Come along, crooks," she advised the "pinched" pair cheerfully. "This
paper declares me your custodian--says it will cost me the family jools
not to produce you in court at ten of to-morrow morn. No matter how
guilty you be or be not, I shall produce!"