A CONTRIBUTION TO THE SALVATION ARMY
While Beatrice Whitford waited in the little library for the Arizonan
to join her, she sat in a deep chair, chin in hand, eyes fixed on the
jetting flames of the gas-log. A little flush had crept into the oval
face. In her blood there tingled the stimulus of excitement. For into
her life an adventure had come from faraway Cattleland.
A crisp, strong footstep sounded in the hall. Her fingers flew to pat
into place the soft golden hair coiled low at the nape of the neck. At
times she had a boylike unconcern of sex; again, a spirit wholly
feminine.
The clothes of her father fitted Lindsay loosely, for Colin Whitford
had begun to take on the flesh of middle age and Clay was lean and
clean of build as an elk. But the Westerner was one of those to whom
clothes are unimportant. The splendid youth of him would have shone
through the rags of a beggar.
"My name is Clay Lindsay," he told her by way of introduction.
"Mine is Beatrice Whitford," she answered.
They shook hands.
"I'm to wait here till my clothes dry, yore man says."
"Then you'd better sit down," she suggested.
Within five minutes she knew that he had been in New York less than
three hours. His impressions of the city amused and entertained her.
He was quite simple. She could look into his mind as though it were a
deep, clear well. There was something inextinguishably boyish and
buoyant about him. But in his bronzed face and steady, humorous eyes
were strength and shrewdness. He was the last man in the world a
bunco-steerer could play for a sucker. She felt that. Yet he made no
pretenses of a worldly wisdom he did not have.
A voice reached them from the top of the stairs.
"Do you know where Miss Whitford is, Jenkins?"
"Hin the Red Room, sir." The answer was in the even, colorless voice
of a servant.
The girl rose at once. "If you'll excuse me," she said, and stepped
out of the room.
"Hello, Bee. What do you think? I never saw such idiots as the police
of this town are. They're watching this house for a desperado who
assaulted some one outside. I met a sergeant on our steps. Says he
doesn't think the man's here, but there's just a chance he slipped into
the basement. It's absurd."
"Of course it is." There was a ripple of mirth in the girl's voice.
"He didn't come in by the basement at all, but walked in at the front
door."
"Who are you talking about?"
"The desperado, Dad."
"The front door!" exploded her father. "What do you mean? Who let him
in?"
"I did. He came as my guest, at my invitation."
"What?"
"Don't shout, Dad," she advised. "I thought I had brought you up
better."
"But--but--but--what do you mean?" he sputtered. "Is this ruffian in
the house now?"
"Oh, yes. He's in the Red Room here--and unless he's very deaf he
hears everything we are saying," the girl answered calmly, much amused
at the amazement of her father. "Won't you come in and see him? He
doesn't seem very desperate."
Clay rose, pinpoints of laughter dancing in his eyes. He liked the gay
audacity of this young woman, just as he liked the unconventional pluck
with which she had intruded herself into his affairs as a rescuer and
the businesslike efficiency that had got him out of his wet rags into
comfortable clothes.
A moment later he was offering a brown hand to Colin Whitford, who took
it reluctantly, with the same wariness a boxer does that of his
opponent in the ring. His eyes said plainly, "What the deuce are you
doing here, sitting in my favorite chair, smoking one of my imported
cigars, wearing my clothes, and talking to my daughter?"
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Whitford. Yore daughter has just saved my life
from the police," the Westerner said, and his friendly smile was very
much in evidence.
"You make yourself at home," answered the owner of a large per cent of
the stock of the famous Bird Cage mine.
"My guests do, Dad. It's the proof that I'm a perfect hostess,"
retorted Beatrice, her dainty, provocative face flashing to mirth.
"Hmp!" grunted her father dryly. "I'd like to know, young man, why the
police are shadowing this house?"
"I expect they're lookin' for me."
"I expect they are, and I'm not sure I won't help them find you.
You'll have to show cause if I don't."
"His bark is much worse than his bite," the girl explained to Clay,
just as though her father were not present.
"Hmp!" exploded the mining magnate a second time. "Get busy, young
fellow."
Clay told the story of the fifty-five-dollar suit that I. Bernstein had
wished on him with near-tears of regret at parting from it. The
cowpuncher dramatized the situation with some native talent for
mimicry. His arms gestured like the lifted wings of a startled
cockerel. "A man gets a chance at a garment like that only once in a
while occasionally. Which you can take it from me that when I.
Bernstein sells a suit of clothes it is shust like he is dealing with
his own brother. Qvality, my friendts, qvality! Why, I got anyhow a
suit which I might be married in without shame, un'erstan' me."
Colin Whitford was of the West himself. He had lived its
rough-and-tumble life for years before he made his lucky strike in the
Bird Cage. He had moved from Colorado to New York only ten years
before. The sound of Clay's drawling voice was like a message from
home. He began to grin in spite of himself. This man was too good to
be true. It wasn't possible that anybody could come to the big town
and import into it so naively such a genuine touch of the outdoor West.
It was not possible, but it had happened just the same. Of course
Manhattan would soon take the color out of him. It always did out of
everybody. The city was so big, so overpowering, so individual itself,
that it tolerated no individuality in its citizens. Whitford had long
since become a conformist. He was willing to bet a hat that this big
brown Arizonan would eat out of the city's hand within a week. In the
meantime he wanted to be among those present while the process of
taming the wild man took place. Long before the cowpuncher had
finished his story of hog-tying the Swede to a hitching-post with his
own hose, the mining man was sealed of the large tribe of Clay
Lindsay's admirers. He was ready to hide him from all the police in
New York.
Whitford told Stevens to bring in the fifty-five-dollar suit so that he
could gloat over it. He let out a whoop of delight at sight of its
still sodden appearance. He examined its sickly hue with chuckles of
mirth.
"Guaranteed not to fade or shrink," murmured Clay sadly.
He managed to get the coat on with difficulty. The sleeves reached
just below his elbows.
"You look like a lifer from Sing Sing," pronounced Whitford joyously.
"Get a hair-cut, and you won't have a chance on earth to fool the
police."
"The color did run and fade some," admitted Clay.
"Worth every cent of nine ninety-eight at a bargain sale before the
Swede got busy with it--and he let you have it at a sacrifice for
fifty-five dollars!" The millionaire wept happy tears as a climax of
his rapture. He swallowed his cigar smoke and had to be pounded on the
back by his daughter.
"Would you mind getting yore man to wrop it up for me? I'm goin' to
have a few pleasant words with I. Bernstein," said Clay with mock
mournfulness.
"When?" asked Whitford promptly.
"Never you mind when, sah. I'm not issuin' any tickets of admission.
It's goin' to be a strictly private entertainment."
"Are you going to take a water hose along?"
"That's right," reproached Clay. "Make fun of me because I'm a
stranger and come right from the alfalfa country." He turned to
Beatrice cheerfully. "O' course he bit me good and proper. I'm green.
But I'll bet he loses that smile awful quick when he sees me again."
"You're not going to--"
"Me, I'm the gentlest citizen in Arizona. Never in trouble. Always
peaceable and quiet. Don't you get to thinkin' me a bad-man, for I
ain't."
Jenkins came to the door and announced "Mr. Bromfield."
Almost on his heels a young man in immaculate riding-clothes sauntered
into the room. He had the assured ease of one who has the run of the
house. Miss Whitford introduced the two young men and Bromfield looked
the Westerner over with a suave insolence in his dark, handsome eyes.
Clay recognized him immediately. He had shaken hands once before with
this well-satisfied young man, and on that occasion a fifty-dollar bill
had passed from one to the other. The New Yorker evidently did not
know him.
It became apparent at once that Bromfield had called to go riding in
the Park with Miss Whitford. That young woman came up to say good-bye
to her new acquaintance.
"Will you be here when I get back?"
"Not if our friends outside give me a chance for a getaway," he told
her.
Her bright, unflinching eyes looked into his. "You'll come again and
let us know how you escaped," she invited.
"I'll ce'tainly do that, Miss Whitford."
"Then we'll look for you Thursday afternoon, say."
"I'll be here."
"If the police don't get you."
"They won't," he promised serenely.
"When you're quite ready, Bee," suggested Bromfield in a bored voice.
She nodded casually and walked out of the room like a young Diana,
straight as a dart in her trim slenderness.
Clay slipped out of the house by the back way, cut across to the
subway, and took a downtown train. He got out at Forty-Second Street
and made his way back to the clothing establishment of I. Bernstein.
That gentleman was in his office in the rear of the store. Lindsay
walked back to it, opened and closed the door, locked it, and put the
key in his pocket.
The owner of the place rose in alarm from the stool where he was
sitting. "What right do you got to lock that door?" he demanded.
"I don't want to be interrupted while I'm sellin' you this suit, Mr.
Bernstein," the cowpuncher told him easily, and he proceeded to unwrap
the damp package under his arm. "It's a pippin of a suit. The color
won't run or fade, and it's absolutely unshrinkable. You won't often
get a chance at a suit like this. Notice the style, the cut, the
quality of the goods. And it's only goin' to cost you fifty-five
dollars."
The clothing man looked at the misshapen thing with eyes that bulged.
"Where is it you been with this suit--in the East River, my friendt?"
he wanted to know.
"I took a walk along Riverside Drive. That's all. I got a strong
guarantee with this suit when I bought it. I'm goin' to give you the
same one I got. It won't shrink or fade and it will wear to beat a
'Pache pup. Oh, you won't make any mistake buyin' this suit."
"You take from me an advice. Unlock that door and get out."
"I can give you better advice than that. Buy this suit right away.
You'll find it's a bargain."
The steady eyes of the Westerner daunted the merchant, but he did not
intend to give up fifty-five dollars without a murmur.
"If you don't right avay soon open that door I call the police. Then
you go to jail, ain't it?"
"How's yore heart, Mr. Bernstein?" asked Clay tenderly.
"What?"
"I'm askin' about yore heart. I don't know as you're hardly strong
enough to stand what I'll do to you if you let a single yelp out of
you. I kinda hate to hurry yore funeral," he added regretfully, still
in his accustomed soft drawl.
The man beside the stool attempted one shout. Instantly Clay filled
his mouth with a bunch of suit samples that had been lying on the desk.
With one arm he held the struggling little man close to his body. With
his foot and the other hand he broke in two a yardstick and fitted the
two parts together.
"Here's the programme," he said by way of explanation. "I'm goin' to
put you over my knee and paddle you real thorough. When you make up
yore mind that you want to buy that suit for fifty-five dollars, it
will be up to you to let me know. Take yore own time about it. Don't
let me hurry you."
Before the programme had more than well started, the victim of it
signified his willingness to treat with the foe. To part with
fifty-five dollars was a painful business, but not to part with it was
going to hurt a good deal more. He chose the lesser of two evils.
While he was counting out the bills Clay bragged up the suit. He
praised its merits fluently and cheerfully. When he left he locked the
door of the office behind him and handed the key to one of the clerks.
"I've got a kinda notion Mr. Bernstein wants to get out of his office.
He's actin' sort o' restless, seems like."
Restless was hardly the word. He was banging on the door like a wild
man. "Police! Murder! Help!" he shouted in a high falsetto.
Clay wasted no time. He and the fifty-five dollars vanished into the
street. In his haste he bumped into a Salvation Army lassie with a
tambourine.
She held it out to him for a donation, and was given the shock of her
life. For into that tambourine the big brown man crammed a fistful of
bills. He waited for no thanks, but cut round the corner toward
Broadway in a hurry.
When the girl reached headquarters and counted the contribution she
found it amounted to just fifty-five dollars.