Blacksheep! Blacksheep! Part 19

III

Archie learned from Baring, who brought up his breakfast, that the Governor had left the house.

"It was our orders to take good care of you, sir; if there's any way we can serve you--"

"A morning paper; that will be all, thank you. I shall be going out presently."

"Very good, sir. The master thought it likely you would spend the day out. He will hardly be in himself before six."

Here again was an opportunity to abandon the Governor, but keen now for new experiences and sensations, Archie dismissed the idea. The appeal of the Governor's sister had imposed a new burden upon him, and the Governor's voluble prattle about fate and the inevitable drawing of destiny had impressed him. He could depart for Banff and take the chance of never being molested for any of his crimes, but to do this would be cowardice, just that fear of his fate that Isabel had twitted him about.

He chose a stick with care from a rack at the front door, walked to the Avenue and turned determinedly cityward, walking jauntily. Beyond Forty-second Street he pa.s.sed several acquaintances, who nodded, just as the Governor had predicted, little dreaming that he was a reckless criminal, a man with an _alias_ and a fortnight's record that would make a lively story for the newspapers.

He was rather disappointed that no one followed him, no hand was clapped on his shoulder. He reached Madison Square unwearied, wondering whether the obliteration of his moral sense had destroyed also his old fears about his health. He climbed to the front seat of a bus and rode up the Avenue, a conspicuous figure.

He grinned as he saw seated in the upper window of the most conservative of all his clubs one of his several prosperous uncles, an old gentleman who for years was to be found in that same spot at this same hour of the day.

Having sufficiently exposed himself to the eyes of the world he determined to eat luncheon in the park restaurant. His appet.i.te demanded an amount of food that he would have been incapable of consuming a month earlier, and having given his order he surveyed the pavilion tranquilly.

Women and children were the chief patrons, with a sprinkling of sightseers resting from their contemplation of the city's wonders.

He watched idly a young woman with two children who occupied a table directly in his line of vision. He was sure she was their mother, and not a governess; she was smartly dressed, and her manner with the youngsters was charming. She occasionally glanced about nervously, and he detected several times a troubled look in her face. The children chattered gaily, but it was evidently with an effort that she answered their questions or entered into their talk. Children always interested him, and the boy was a handsome little fellow, but it was the girl who held Archie's attention, first as the embodiment of the beauty and innocence of youth, and then with a perplexed sense that he had seen her before. She suddenly turned toward him, her fair curls tumbling about her shoulders, and glanced idly across the pavilion. The fine oval face, the eyes dancing with merriment at something her brother had directed her attention to, sent his thoughts flying to Bailey Harbor. As though consciously aiding his memory, she fell into the relaxed pose so happily caught by the photograph, with the same childish archness and captivating smile.

Their luncheon had just been served and he continued to inspect them with a deepening conviction that the woman was Mrs. Congdon and these the children mentioned in the telegram he had found tucked under the plate of the Bailey Harbor house. The resemblance between the young woman and the child with the roguish smile was unmistakable. She might on occasion present the same smiling countenance, though in unguarded moments a tense, worried look came into her face, and she continued her anxious survey of her neighbors.

It was a dispiriting thought that there under his eyes, so close that the babble of the children occasionally reached him across the intervening tables, was the family of the man he had shot.

Their ignorance of that dark transaction gave him little comfort, nor was there any extenuation of his sin in the fact that the wife had fled to escape from her husband's brutality. He tried to console himself with the reflection that the thing had a ludicrous side. He might walk over to Mrs. Congdon and say: "Pardon me, madam, but it may interest you to know that I shot your husband at Bailey Harbor and you have nothing further to fear from him. I am unable to state at the moment whether the wound was a mortal one, but from my knowledge of your family affairs I judge that you would hardly be grieved if you never saw him again."

He was shocked at his own levity. The thing was not in any aspect a laughing matter. Amid other experiences he had freed himself for a few days of the thought of Putney Congdon lying dead in a lonely cleft of the Maine rocks, but meeting the man's family in this fas.h.i.+on was almost as disconcerting as a visit from Congdon's ghost.

The Congdons had eaten their meal hurriedly and were already paying their check. He watched them move away toward the interior of the park, marked their direction and chose a parallel course with a view to keeping them in sight.

Occasionally he caught glimpses of the children dancing ahead of their mother. The remote paths she chose for the ramble confirmed his suspicion that she was on guard against the threatened seizure of the youngsters by their father, and having been driven from Bailey Harbor was now in town to formulate her plans for the future, or perhaps only whiling away the hours until she could escape to some other place in the country. Unable to argue himself out of a feeling that Mrs. Congdon's troubles were no affair of his he was beset by the fear that he might be doomed for the rest of his life to follow them, to view them from afar off, never speaking to them, but led on by the guilty knowledge that he was a dark factor in their lives.

He became so engrossed that he lost track of them for a time; then a turn of the path brought him close upon them. Mrs. Congdon was sitting on a bench under a big elm and the children were joyously romping on the lawn in front of her, playing with a toy balloon to which a bit of bark had been fastened. They would toss it in the air and jump and catch it while the weight prevented its escape. A gust of wind caught it as Archie pa.s.sed and drove it across his path, while the children with screams of glee pursued it. The string caught under his hat brim and he seized it just as the girl, outdistancing her brother, plunged into him.

"Edith!" called the mother, rising quickly. "Children, you mustn't go into the path. There's plenty of room here for you to play."

"The wind was a little too much for you that time!" laughed Archie, as the children, panting from their run, waited for the restoration of their plaything. He measured the buoyancy of the balloon against the ballast, and let go of it with a little toss that seemed to free it, then he sprang up and caught it amid their excited cries.

The little girl curtsied as he put the string in her hand.

"Thank you very much!" they chorused.

Mrs. Congdon had walked a little way toward the path but now that the children were again scampering over the lawn she paused and made a slight, the slightest, inclination of the head as Archie lifted his hat and continued on his way.

Edith was the name used in the telegram he had found in the Bailey Harbor house, and this coupled with his closer view of the child disposed of Archie's last hope that after all it might not be Mrs.

Congdon and her children he had stumbled upon. She had no business to throw herself across his path, he fumed. The appearance of Putney Congdon's father at Cornford had shaken him sufficiently, but that he should be haunted by the man's wife and children angered him. He wanted to fly from the park and hide himself again in his room at the Governor's house, but he was without will to leave. The decent thing for him to do was to take the first train for Bailey, and begin diligent search for Putney Congdon, dead or alive. He had no right to a.s.sume that the man's serious injury or death would be any consolation to the wife and children. And the quarrel between husband and wife might have been only a tiff, something that would have been adjusted without further bitterness but for his interference. There was no joy in the fate that kept continually bringing his crime to his attention. Thoroughly miserable, he threw himself upon a bench and lapsed into gloomy meditations. The light-hearted laughter of the children--Putney Congdon's children--was borne to him fitfully to add to his discomfiture, but he was held to the spot. There was something weirdly fascinating in their propinquity, and in the thought that he alone of all men on earth could ever tell them just what had happened in their house when their father went there to search for them.

He sat half an hour pensively, noting an occasional pedestrian or the flash of a motor that rolled through the unfrequented driveway. But for the hum of the cars the deep calm of a June afternoon lay upon the landscape.

Then a piercing scream, the shrill cry of a child in terror, brought him to his feet.

"Help! Help! Oh, Edith! _Edith!_"

The cries sent him at a run toward the place in which he had left the Congdons.

Rounding a curve in the path he saw a man rus.h.i.+ng down the road with Edith in his arms. The mother was racing after him, while the little boy lay wailing where he had fallen in his frantic effort to follow. In the distance stood a car, with a woman waiting beside the open door.

Archie redoubled his pace, pa.s.sed Mrs. Congdon and gained the car as the man with the child in his arms jumped into it. The woman, who had evidently been acting as watcher, stumbled as she attempted to spring in after them and delayed flight for an instant. The door slammed viciously on Archie's arm as he landed on the running board. The car was moving rapidly and a man's voice bade the driver hurry. Within the child's screams were suddenly stifled, the door swung open for an instant and a blow, delivered full in the face, sent Archie reeling into the road.

When he gained his feet Mrs. Congdon stood beside him moaning and wringing her hands. A mounted policeman rode upon the scene, listened for an instant to Archie's explanations and, sounding his whistle, set off after the car at a gallop. A dozen of the park police were on the spot immediately, followed by a crowd of excited spectators. Mrs.

Congdon had fainted and several women were ministering to her. The little boy, sobbing plaintively, tried to answer the questions of the sergeant who took charge and despatched men in every direction to search for the kidnapers and send the alarm through the city.

Archie's nose bled from the rap in the face and his back ached where he had struck the earth. The sergeant plied him with questions which he answered carefully, knowing that in all the circ.u.mstances of his having loitered in the vicinity he might not unnaturally be suspected of complicity. When his name was asked, he answered promptly.

"John B. Wright, Boston; stopping at the Hotel Ganymede."

"Business?"

"Broker, Nanonet Building, Boston."

These items officially written down, he described truthfully how he had first seen the woman and her children in the pavilion, the subsequent walk, and the episode of the balloon. He pointed out just where he had been sitting when the screams attracted his attention.

"This is a serious case and you will be wanted as a witness," said the officer. "You didn't know these people--never saw them before?"

"No. I had come to the park to kill time until four o'clock, when I have an engagement at the Plaza Hotel."

The officer noted carefully his description of the woman who had a.s.sisted in the kidnaping and such meager facts as he was able to give as to the man who had carried off the little girl under the very eyes of her mother.

The sergeant glanced at Archie's ruddy handkerchief and grinned.

"Guess that let's you out! You didn't get the number of the taxi? That would help a little."

"There wasn't time for that. I was trying to hang on till help came, but this smash in the face spoiled that."

To the jostling crowd anxious to hear his story Archie was a hero, or very nearly one. He heard their murmurs of admiration as he described the manner in which he had attempted to board the car. There were enormous hazards in the whole situation and every consideration of personal security demanded that he leave the park at once, but Mrs.

Congdon was now recovering, and he was reluctant to abandon her and the frightened boy to the mercies of the park police and staring spectators.

She had recovered sufficiently to tell her story, and to Archie's relief corroborated his own version in a manner to dispose of any question as to his innocence.

The woman's composure struck Archie as remarkable and her replies to the officer's questions were brief and exact. Several times she appealed to him for confirmation on some point, and he edged closer and stood beside her defensively. Her inquisitor had neglected to ask her name and address in his eagerness for information as to the appearance of the kidnapers. Her reply gave Archie a distinct shock.

"Mrs. George W. Kendall, 117 E. Corning Street, Brooklyn."

"Have you been threatened in any way? Have you any enemy who might have attempted to steal the child?"