For a moment silence tortured. Then sounded an imperative tapping
against the locked door.
Pape, standing within arm-reach of the handle, felt something hard and
cold slipped into his grasp; realized that Jane had re-armed him;
appreciated her mute suggestion that it would be better, were they known
to be blocked within, to take his chance of overcoming a single enemy
than to wait until reenforcements arrived.
A second he considered the automatic, before placing it in his pocket
ready for emergency in case his arms and fists could not decide the
issue. To throw open the door and drag inside the disturber would be the
best beginning to fight's finish. He waved the girl toward the far wall;
soundlessly turned the latch; flung back with a jerk to admit----
Their pursuer was official, yes, although not so much so as they had
feared. With a bound he entered just below Pape's ready fists--and on
four feet instead of two.
"Kicko--you scoundrel!"--Pape, sternly.
"Precious pup!"--Jane, caressingly, from the floor seat into which she
had collapsed from very weakness of her relief.
Pape mounted the wobbly doorstep and peered outside. No accompanying
officers loomed through the fast-falling shadows. Either the dog had
outsped them or had deserted them temporarily for some reason canine and
less comprehensible. On relatching the door and facing about, he saw
that reason.
The Belgian, his tail waving like a feather fan, trotted toward the
girl, swinging from his mouth a shiny object which explained why he had
bumped against and scratched at the door, instead of barking for
admittance. In Jane's lap he deposited the tin lunch pail, to carry
which to his master at noon-time was his dearest duty and privilege.
More than curiosity as to its contents--an animal eagerness almost as
unrestrained as the dog's, returned Pape to his former seat upon the
cuff of his coat and hurried his removal of the lid. Three hovered
gratefully over the removed contents of that pail. Certainly two were
ready to believe that the errand of the third had been as innocent as it
now looked. They gave the quondam deserter benefit of every doubt, if
only the dog's share of the benefits he had brought.
"You've vindicated yourself, Towser," remarked Pape. "The lady in this
case was right. She looks to me like one of the perfect kind that always
is--right, you know. _She_ said, old side-Kick, that you'd gone to bring
a party. And you sure have brought one--some party, this! From the
depths of the heart of my inner man, I crave your pardon."
The Belgian's grant of grace was as prompt as moist. His anxiety
centered upon a less subtle exchange.
"Oh, I am _so_ hungry--that's mostly what made me collapse!" Jane
sighed. "You see, I've formed the bad habit of eating once in a while.
I'd quarrel over a crust of stale rye bread. But
boiled-tongue-and-mustard sandwiches, potato salad, apple pie--Peter,
let's _begin_!"
It did not take the three of them long to demonstrate that there was one
luncheon of which Shepherd Tom never should get a crumb. Between bites
Pape remembered aloud the herdsman's rather dubious admission of Kicko's
propensity at times to present the precious pail to the "wrong" person.
In this case, however, even he must have admitted that the wrong was the
right. As the edge of their hunger was dulled they deducted the
possibilities. Either the police dog had missed his master at the noon
hour or allowed himself to be distracted by some canine caprice.
Happening into the excitement of the posse, he had relinquished the pail
to join the chase. Afterward, having found preferred friends rather than
enemies to be the quarry, he had remembered duty neglected and broken
away to retrieve his pail.
The three-from-one meal ended, the girl took off her hat and settled
back against the stone wall with a smile the more aesthetic for its
physical content. The dog, although fuller of good-fellowship than of
food, emulated her smile in spirit if not in expression, stretched out
across their feet, gaped his mouth and flopped his tail. The man was
able to delight the more in that rare smile on Jane's reposeful features
because released from crasser cravings. He leaned low toward her in the
dusk, as though to be under its downshed radiance.
Her beauty seemed to intensify--to be taking the light and making the
darkness. Small wonder, he thought, that blind eyes ached again to
behold that face, pure as marble alive, tender of line, yet strong--eyes
the purple of a royal mystery, lips the color of life, hair a black,
lustrous veil draped to reveal, rather than conceal.
"You look," said he, "like the spirit of evening--the spirit that lures
a fellow away from the rest of the world and contents him with one warm
hearth-fire, one steady light, one complete companionship. Every man who
battles through his day hopes for that spirit at his eventide. I have
battled a bit to-day, Jane, and I--I can't help hoping----"
"You believe in spirits, then?" she asked as if to cover, even in that
sympathetic light, the suggestion of his broken words.
He nodded. "Assorted kinds--liquid, ghosts--and you."
"Then maybe you won't laugh at my fancy--" her voice lowered
superstitiously--"that Grandfather Lauderdale's spirit is hovering
around inside this block-house--_now_."
He did laugh, but softly. "Aren't you going to introduce us?"
"Oh, he wouldn't like any such formality! I can just see him sizing you
up for himself with one glance of those blue, cliff-browed eyes of his.
He used to tell me my inmost little-girl secrets before I could confide
them to him, he was so second-sighted. The first time he brought me here
was at one of his flag-raising dawns. I was very small, but I'll never
forget him, my tall, strong old fire-eater whom everybody but me thought
queer, with his magnificent head of thick, white, curling hair. A sort
of glory lit in his face from the rising sun and the tears staggered
through the furrows of his cheeks when the flag caught the
breeze--spread out its full assurance of the freedom he had fought to
win."
"Never mind that introduction. Already you have presented him to me.
Howdy, old-timer! Right glad to meet you."
Pape, his grin gone, reached forward and grasped and shook the empty
air.
"As I grew older," Jane continued, "I came with him often. One time was
when they planted a bronze tablet in the outer wall as a tribute to the
outpost service which this house rendered in the War of 1812."
"They did, eh? A tablet--for the War of----" More than before Pape
looked interested. "Maybe it ain't granddad's spirit, after all--maybe
only the ghost of association."
"No, I'm sure it is he. Wait. Perhaps he has a message for us." Still
with that vague smile on her lips, Jane closed her eyes and spoke
dreamily: "He _has_ a message. It is for me. He wants me to give you
what I've wanted to give you all along, my entire confidence--to tell
you that I've trusted you from first glance, no matter how I've
acted--to tell you just what is the improbable-sounding treasure that
we've been hunting so desperately, lest our enemies find and destroy
it--to tell you how and why the possession of it will clear my father's
name and restore us to that 'fortune forevermore' promised in his
cryptogram. You'll be incredulous at first, Peter Pape, but all will
work out once we have possession of--Listen, closely, now. That crock of
the first verse holds----"
Pape, despite her allegedly mystic instructions, interrupted: "Don't
want you to tell me! Won't hear it!"
"Why-Not Pape," her eyes flashed open, "you're a--At least, you _might_
be said to be mulish, the way you stick to a point."
"Did granddad's spirit dictate that?" he enquired mildly.
"No. That's thrown in on my own account. It is ridiculous for you to be
risking life and limb, reputation, money and comfort, for something
whose very nature you don't know."
"But I do know for what I'm risking all those little things."
"For what, then?"
"For you."
The pause that ensued may be utilized for the admission that Pape was
not as superior to curiosity as his stand would suggest. Indeed, he had
speculated, so far as his intelligence and knowledge would take him,
over the exact nature of the hidden hoard. He had heard of gold and
jewels buried by eccentrics of little faith in modern banks and presumed
that something such was deposited in the missing crock. Once Jane had
said that the buried treasure was "bigger than Central Park itself."
Just now she had declared the desperation of their hunt due to fear lest
their enemies "destroy" it. Destroy what was bigger than Central Park
itself? She had added a new and confusing touch to the mystery.
"I set out to give you the common or garden variety of service," he
explained his stand. "That's a kind that don't need to understand, that
digs ditches and wages wars and wins women. Don't load me down with
knowledge now. Let me go all the way to trail's-end--the crock--just
trusting that it will lead me to you."
He bent that she should not miss his promising smile--twilight was
mixing with starlight by now.
"Isn't faith best proved without words, dear?" he asked her. "If you
have any in me, this would seem a right good time to prove it. Cease
worrying. Trust me. Rest. Isn't everything snug and _au fait_? You have
most everything you need--even a chaperone."
"Meaning Kicko or that hoot-owl?"
"Meaning granddad's spirit."
"Oh ... all right ... I'll try."
After a time----
"Jane, tell the truth and shame the devil--don't you prefer me to that
wall?"
"Why--why----"
"Please prefer me."
Perhaps his arm did more than his words to persuade her. At any rate,
with her head resting against his shoulder, she made admission.
"I do--prefer you to a stone wall, you know."
"And aren't you going to prefer me to everybody and everything? I don't
wish to seem to be making love to you, Miss Lauderdale--not just yet.
You must admit that I have been very slow and steady."
"Slow and steady--_you_?"
"But it would help to get that settled now. Aren't you going to prefer
me, Jane?"
"I am. That is, I do now--did in fact from that first night when I
picked you out of a grand-tier of faces as the one man who----"
"Wait a minute! You say _you_ selected _me_?"
He took her by both shoulders; held her away from him; peered, startled,
into her eyes.
"Of course. But it was more instinct than reason that made me----"
"Well, if _you_ selected _me_--" and he replaced that head of hers,
veiled in soft, fragrant black, against the spot preferred to the
wall--"_I'm_ helpless."
"But not hopeless, I hope?"
"Hopeless, when I've kissed you once and have hopes that--? Say, I want
to be slow and steady, to give you time to realize without being told
that you're going to marry me. But if you self-selected me, Jane
Lauderdale, maybe you'll notify me as to the soonest possible moment
when I'm due to kiss you again."
She drew far enough away to peer into his eyes. Faint-smiling, yet
wholly serious, she considered. Then----
"Peter Pape, why not now?" she asked him.
Pape had other reasons than the girl's weariness for persuading her to
try for a snatch of the sleep she might need against possible strain on
her nerve and endurance ahead. He wished to weigh--well, several
interesting observations.
For long after she had accepted his knee as a pillow, the rock floor as
a bed, a live-fur rug for her feet and his coat for her coverlet, he
pulled on his pipe; returned the dark scowl of the down-drooping night;
thought. The while, out-loud observations which had seemed to soothe
Polkadot on that previous trip to the block-house recurred to him. More
or less monotonously he crooned them over her like a lullaby.
"Don't you hear the dog-wood yapping, dear?... Can't you just imagine
those old-fashioned pop-guns popping?... Nothing to break the silences
save the shriek of ten thousand auto sirens.... No one around but
people--millions of 'em! Don't it make you think of a little old home in
my great new West, where we're to go one day--so like and yet so
different?... And Friend Equus is to go along, my heart, all the more
appreciative after his clash with the tame.... Yes, and you too, Police
Pup--if Shepherd Tom can be persuaded to let you resign from the Force.
He just may be willing after to-day's mis-delivered lunch.
"Then list to the Nubian roar--much more like a lion it sounds than the
rumble of city streets.... List the whisper of poplars four--there would
be four, except that two have been white-circled into stumps.... Count
eighteen--twelve.... Take heart and delve.... Above the crock the block
will rock.... That block did rock--did rock--and rock----"
He leaned low; listened. Jane's gentle, even breathing reported her
asleep. He was more pleased than by any of the wonderful things she had
done while awake--even than by that voluntary kiss, so precious as
compared with her involuntary first. She did really trust him and rest
in his protectorate, else could she never have been lulled by his
murmurings into unconsciousness. She must indeed have been spent, when
the growls and spasmodic foot work of the live fur rug did not disturb
her. Kicko, evidently, had lapsed into dog dreams of chases and fights.
The moon must be rising. Into the block-house was shed a weird, indirect
light. Then more and more direct it grew until, over the top of one
wall, appeared a large, round inverted bowl of a candle-power that
dimmed the kilowatt signs along the Gay Way.
Earlier in the evening, when he had spoken of waiting for darkness,
under cover of which to attempt an escape afoot, Pape might have
complained at the illumination of the sky. Now he beamed back at the
moon. And his complacency waxed with her light, although he realized
that bold young Dawn would be up to flirt with the pale night queen long
before her departure; that any attempt to escape from the park would not
be blanketed that night.
Let Luna reach the steps of her throne, he bade himself in thought, that
each corner of the old refuge house might be lighted. Let Jane have out
her sleep--happy he to guard her gracious rest. Let the Nubian roar of
power that was not leonine grow faint and die. Let the city and the
city's Finest go off guard.
Time enough, then, to test application of the eccentric's cryptogram,
copper-plated line by line, to a locality unsuspected by their enemies
and chosen by themselves quite through chance. Not a doubt shadowed his
mind as he awaited the zero hour. The lines fitted, every one.
"List' to the Nubian roar"--to the night noises of the surrounding
metropolitan monster, uncaged in Zoo, never-sleeping, ever-pacing.
"And whisper of poplars four"--the branches of two staunch old rustlers
among the pines made silver lace of the moonlight just outside the wall.
Doubtless the two that had been sentenced to death had been very much
alive at the time of the cryptogram's composition.
"'Tis on a height"--where was one so high to the hoary-headed veteran as
this on which he delighted to raise his country's flag?
"Eighteen and twelve will show"--Jane had named these very figures as
the date on the memorial tablet placed in the wall without. Not rods,
not yards, not feet did they stand for, but a date.
"Begin below"--and below was a block that rocked "as rocks wrong's
overthrow!"
Not until the inverted bowl of the moon was a central ceiling light did
Why Not Pape move to answer the queer questions in his mind. Gently he
then lifted the coat-coverlet off the woman below; wrapped it into a
roll; with it replaced the pillow of his knee. A low command he gave the
police dog to lie still. Swiftly he crossed to the threshold stone,
tilted it far enough to one side to assure himself it was a thin slab
and muttered in a sort of ecstacy:
"Count eighteen--twelve,
Take heart and delve."
His maximum of strength was required to turn the stone upon its back on
the floor of the block-house. Across the earth upon which it so long had
lain scurried the crawling things that thrive in under-rock dampness.
Down on his knees dropped Pape and, with a slate-like fragment of rock
which had broken off in the fall, began to remove the soft soil. Soon
the emergency implement met obstruction. No longer needing advice to
"take heart," he cast aside the slate and began scooping out the earth
around this object with bare hands.
A heavy touch upon his arm shocked him into an over-shoulder glance. The
Belgian stood bristling just behind him; had tapped him with a paw
insistent for a share in the digging job. Willingly enough Pape accepted
his efficient aid down to the top of an earthen pot of the Boston bean
variety. More excited than in past hunts for seldom-found gold pockets
of his early prospecting days, the Westerner pushed aside the dog;
worked his two nail-torn hands down and down the smooth-curved sides.
With a slow tug, he lifted what he could no longer doubt was the crock
of the crypt. Reverently as though he were an acolyte bearing some holy
vessel to an altar, he carried it across the room and placed it at the
feet of the low-seated high-priestess drawn up against the wall.
"Am I dreaming?" she wondered aloud.
"Am I?" he answered by asking. "Or do I see a tall, strong old man, with
a shock of white hair and a laugh on his lips, raising a flag on yonder
pole?"
He removed the lid and she the contents of that crock of "fortune
forevermore."
And thus was fulfilled one of the wild Westerner's wishes--that he
should not know until he had found the object of his search. Thus,
through deeds and not words, he learned the nature of Granddad
Lauderdale's buried hoard.
No helping of "a thousand on a plate," as doughboy might have expected,
did Jane serve from the pot. No stream of gold fell through her fingers,
to puddle between them on the stone-flagged floor. No packets of
bank-notes crinkled in her grasp. No king's-ransom jewels blinked in the
night-light after their long interment. Yet was the girl's prediction
proved true that he scarcely could believe at first the nature of their
find. Stupidly he stared. Only slowly could his mind, face its surprise
and its enormity.