That Friday—gee, shall I ever forget it!—opening so quiet and natural
and suddenly bang, in the middle of it, the sort of thing you read in
the yellow press.
It was a holiday for me and I was sitting in the upper hall alcove
making a blouse and handy to the extension ’phone. Now and then it would
ring and I’d pull it over with a weary sigh and hear a female voice full
of cultivation and airs ask if Mrs. Janney’d take a hand at bridge, or a
male one want to know what Mr. Janney thought about eighteen holes at
golf.
It was on for one when it rang again and with a smothered groan—for I
was putting on the collar—I jerked it over. _Believe me_, I forgot that
blouse! Stiff, like I was turned to stone, I sat there listening,
hearing them come, one after another, getting every word of it. When
they were through I got up, feeling sort of gone in the middle, and lit
out for the stairs. I couldn’t have kept away—Bébita disappeared!
"Kidnapped!" I said to myself as I ran along the hall. "Kidnapped!
that’s what it is—it’s only poor children that get lost."
On the stairs I met Mrs. Janney coming up on the run. It wasn’t the
speed that made her breath short; but she was on the job, the grand old
Roman, with her mouth as straight as the slit in a post box and her face
as hard as if it was cut out of granite.
"Go down there," she said, giving a jerk of her head toward the hall
below. "Sit there and wait. Something’s happened and you may be useful."
I went on down and took a seat. Outside on the balcony I could see Mr.
Janney, wandering about with a hunted look. From the telephone closet
came Ferguson’s voice telling his chauffeur to bring his car to
Grasslands, now, this minute, and enough gasoline for a long run. Then
he came out, hooked an armful of coats off the hall rack, and ran past
me on to the balcony. He gave the coats to Mr. Janney, who stood holding
them, looking after Ferguson wherever he went and quavering questions at
him. I don’t think Ferguson answered them, but he pulled one of the
coats out of the old man’s arms and put him into it, quick and
efficient. When the motor came up he tried to make Mr. Janney get in,
but he wouldn’t, standing there, helpless and pitiful, and calling out
for Mrs. Janney.
"I’m here, Sam," came her voice from the stairs and she scudded by where
I was sitting, tying her motor veil over her hat. She seemed to have
forgotten me and I followed her out on to the balcony, not knowing what
she wanted me to do. As I stood there Ferguson’s big car came shooting
up the drive.
She climbed quickly into her own motor, waiting at the bottom of the
steps, Mr. Janney scrambled in after her and Ferguson threw a rug over
them. They were just starting when she looked up and saw me.
"Oh," she cried, leaning across the old man, "we’ll want you—you must
come."
Mr. Janney stared bewildered at her and said:
"Why—why should _she_ come?"
"Keep quiet, Sam," then over her shoulder to Ferguson as the car began
to move, "Bring Mrs. Babbitts, Dick. Take her with you."
The car glided off, Mr. Janney’s voice floating back:
"But why, why—why do you want _her_?"
Ferguson’s motor swung round the oval and came to a halt. The chauffeur
jumped out, and, told he wasn’t wanted, disappeared. The young man
turned to me, not a smile out of him now.
"Come on, get in," he said and then giving a nod at one of the coats
lying over a chair, "and bring that with you—it may blow up cold and
it’s a long run."
I did as I was told—there was something about him that made you do what
he said—and jumped in. He came on my heels, snapped the door and we
started. Before we got to the gates he speeded the machine up and in a
few minutes we were close on the Janney motor which was flying along the
woody road at a pace that would have strained the heart of a bicycle
cop. Their dust came over us in a cloud, and Mr. Ferguson slowed down,
and, his hand resting easy on the wheel, said:
"What does Mrs. Janney want you for?"
I’d hoped he hadn’t noticed that, but in case he had I’d an answer
ready.
"Maybe she thought I might have noticed if any one was hanging round
lately—hanging round to size up the habits of the family and Bébita’s
movements."
"Oh," he said, looking at me very pointed, "then you know what’s
happened to Bébita."
I hadn’t any answer ready for _that_. I had to get hold of something
quick and as you will do when you’re taken off your guard, I got hold of
a lie:
"I met Mrs. Janney on the stairs and she told me."
"That’s funny," he says, sort of thoughtful. "Before she went she told
both Mr. Janney and myself that no one in the house must hear a word of
it."
I began to get red, and for a moment, stared at my feet pressed side by
side on the wood in front of me. It didn’t make it any pleasanter to
know that Ferguson was looking at me, intent and narrow, out of the tail
of his eye.
"I guess she was so excited she forgot and just blabbed it out."
It was the best I could do, but it was poor stuff. If you knew Mrs.
Janney you’d see why.
"Um," said Ferguson, and took a look ahead at the cloud of dust that hid
the other car. Then he comes out with another:
"I wonder if that was the reason she called you Mrs. Babbitts?"
I took a good breath from the bottom of my lungs and said:
"I shouldn’t be surprised. Having your grandchild lost is enough to mix
up any woman."
He didn’t answer and we ran on some way, out of the woods on to a long
straight stretch of road. The motor in front was going at a tremendous
clip, Mrs. Janney’s veil lashing out like a wild hand beckoning us on.
"Look here," says Ferguson, soft and gentle right into my ear, "what
_are_ you, anyway?"
"Me?" I bounced round and gave him a baby stare. "I’m a governess. What
do you think I am?"
"You may be a good governess but you’re a poor liar. I was in the
telephone closet and heard what Mrs. Janney said to you on the stairs.
And I don’t think you’re a governess at all—you’re a detective."
I thought a minute but what was the use, he had me. So I raised up my
chin and met him, eye for eye:
"All right, I am. What of it?"
"Oh, lots of it. I’ve had my suspicions for some time. You tapped that
'phone message from New York?"
"I did—it’s my job. I have to do it."
"Don’t apologize—it wastes time and we haven’t any to lose. Now just
tell me Miss Rogers, or Mrs. Babbitts, what have you found out about the
robbery; where were you getting to before this hideous mess to-day?"
"Well, you’ve got your nerve with you!" I snorted.
"I have, right here handy. I’m a friend of the Janneys, I’m a—" he
stopped. His nerve was handy all right but he hadn’t enough to tell me
it was because of Esther Maitland he was so keen.
"Go on," I said sarcastic. "I’m interested to hear what _you_ are now
you’ve found out what I am."
"I’m almost a member of the household. I can help. I want to help—and I
want to know."
"Maybe you do," I said. "We often want things in this world that we
can’t get. Don’t think you have the monopoly of that complaint."
The motor rose over the crest of a hill, flashed by a farm and slid down
an incline. Before us stretched a white line of road, with the forward
car racing along it in a blur of dust.
"You mean you won’t tell me?"
"You got me."
We suddenly began to slow up, the car swung off sideways from the
roadbed, ran toward the bushes on the right, and came to a halt.
Ferguson dropped against the back of the seat, stretched his legs and
said:
"This is a nice shady place to stop in."
"Stop!" I cried. "Forget it! What do you want to stop for?"
"I don’t—it’s you. I’m going to rest here quietly while you tell me."
"Young man," I said, fixing him with a cold eye, "this is no time to be
funny."
"I entirely agree with you. Therefore as we’re of the same mind it
behooves you to get busy and give me the information I want."
The coolness of him would have riled a hen. It did me; I gave a stamp on
the footboard and angrily said:
"Start up this machine. I was ordered to go to New York and I’ve got to
get there."
"You will as soon as you tell me. But I won’t move until you do. We’ll
stay here all day, all night if necessary. There’s just one thing
certain: we’ll stay till I hear what I want to know."
I was beaten and it made me mad straight through. I was helpless too and
that made me madder. If I’d had the least notion of how you started the
dinged machine I was angry enough to have tried to do it, though it
wouldn’t have been any use with Ferguson there to frustrate me.
"You’re losing time," said he. "There’ll be trouble if you don’t show
up."
"Do you think it’s a high class thing," I snapped out, "to put a girl in
a position like this?"
"Don’t _you_ think you can trust me?" he answered very quiet.
I looked at him, a long, slow survey, and as I did it my anger simmered
down. It’s part of my business to read faces and what I saw in his made
me say sort of reluctant:
"Well, maybe I can."
He leaned forward and put his hand on mine.
"Miss Rogers, if you’ll stand in with me, trust me and let me help, you
won’t make any mistake. For I’ll stand in with you, not now, not just
for this thing, but for always. You’ve my word on it and I don’t break
my word."
That ended it—not what he said but the look of him while he said it.
Almost without knowing it my hand turned under his and they clasped.
Solemn as a pair of images we shook. Any one passing would have thought
we were crazy, backed into the brushwood, side by side on the front
seat, shaking hands as if we’d just been introduced.
I told him the whole story and he never said a word. When I came to Miss
Maitland’s part in it, I couldn’t but look at him. He drew his eyebrows
down in a frown and fiddled with his fingers on the wheel. Even when I
told him what they thought about her and Chapman Price he didn’t made a
sound, but he straightened up, and drew a deep breath like he wanted
more air in his lungs. I got it some way then—I can’t exactly say
how—that he was a good deal more of a person than I’d guessed—a lot more
iron in his make-up than I’d thought when I liked his laugh and his
boyish, jolly ways.
When I finished he said, easy and cool:
"Thank you—that gives me just what I wanted. You won’t regret having
told me. As for Whitney & Whitney, they won’t say anything. They’re my
lawyers—known ’em all my life. I’ll take care of that."
He took hold of the wheel and the car backed out into the road.
"Can we ever catch them up?" I asked.
"I guess so—this car can make seventy-five miles an hour. Are you game
for a race?"
"I’m game for anything that’ll land me where I belong."
"All right—hold on to your hat."
I guess the Lord protects those who are bent on His own business. Anyway
I don’t know why else we weren’t killed. We ate up that road like a dago
eating macaroni; it ran under the car like a white ribbon fastened to a
spindle somewhere behind us. The woods were two green streaks on either
side, and now and then a chuck hole would send me bouncing, landing
anywhere—on the floor once.
"Hold on to something," he shouted at me. "I don’t want to lose you."
And I shouted back:
"You couldn’t. I’m wished on to this motor till death do us part or it
lands me somewhere alive."
Through the villages we had to slow up. Gliding dignified along the
tree-shaded streets put me into a fever and I guess it wore on him for
more than once I heard him muttering to himself, and believe me, he
wasn’t saying his prayers. I glimpsed sideways at him, and saw his
tanned face, with the hair loose and tousled by the wind, looking
changed, hardened and older, all the gay expression gone. The news he’d
forced out of me had hit him a body blow, struck him in the heart. And I
was sorry, awfully sorry. You can hurt a mean person or a criminal and
not care, but it’s no lady’s job to have to wound a decent man. That’s
why I’d never make a good professional—the people get as big as the case
to me, and if you’re the real thing it’s only the case that counts.
We were almost in Long Island City when we caught up with the Janneys,
Mrs. Janney’s veil still waving like a hand beckoning us to hurry.