Blacksheep! Blacksheep! Part 20

"Nothing of the kind. I brought the children to the park just for an outing and with no thought that anything so horrible could happen."

It was incredible that any one could lie with so convincing an air. He was satisfied that she was Mrs. Putney Congdon, and that the child she had called Edith was the original of the photograph he had seen at Bailey Harbor. And the stealing of the child was in itself but the actual carrying out of her husband's threat. He knew far too much about the Congdons for his own peace of mind, but he was unwilling to desert her in her perplexities. When the owners of several machines offered to take her home, she glanced about uncertainly and her eyes falling upon him seemed to invite his a.s.sistance.

"Pardon me, but if I can serve you in any way--"

"Thank you," she said with relief. "I must get away from this; it's unbearable."

He put her and the boy into a taxi, whose driver had been early on the scene, and drove away with them, with a final promise to the sergeant to report later at the park station.

"Brooklyn!" he ordered.

For a few minutes she was busy comforting the child and Archie deep in thought turned to meet the searching gaze of her gray eyes.

"You are a gentleman; I am sure of that; and I feel that I can trust you."

That the wife of a man he had tried to kill and possibly had slain should be paving the way for confidences, gave him a bewildered sense of being whisked through some undiscovered country where the impossible had become the real.

"I'm in a strange predicament, and I'm forced to ask your help. The name and address I gave the police were fict.i.tious. I know it has a queer look; but I had to do it. I know perfectly well who carried away my little girl. The man and woman you saw at the car were servants employed by my father-in-law, who cordially dislikes me. There had been trouble--"

With a shrug she expressed her impatience of her troubles, and bent over the boy who was demanding to be taken to Edith.

"You'll see Edith soon, dear, so don't trouble any more," she said kindly.

Having quieted the child, she returned to her own affairs, glancing out to note the direction of the car. She had done some quick thinking in making her decision to hide her ident.i.ty from the police. There was fight in her eyes and Archie realized that he had to do with a woman of spirit. He waited eagerly for a hint as to her plans.

"Of course I'm not going to Brooklyn," she said, as the taxi swung into Fifth Avenue. "Please tell the man to drive to the Altmore, ladies'

entrance. I'll walk through to the main door and take another taxi. I mean to lose myself," she went on, after Archie had given the instructions. "I have every intention of keeping away from policemen and reporters, but there's no reason why you should bother any further. I'm only sorry your name had to be brought into it. The moment they find I've deceived them they'll be after you for further information, and I regret that exceedingly. I wish to avoid publicity and keep my domestic affairs out of the newspapers; but this of course will only center attention the more on you. If there's anything I could do--"

"You needn't bother about that at all," replied Archie with a rea.s.suring smile. "The name and address I gave were both false."

"You mean that really!"

"I mean that; just that! My reasons are of importance to no one but myself, and have nothing to do with the loss of your child, I a.s.sure you. I give you my word that neither the police nor the reporters will ever find me. I know nothing about you and of course it is quite unnecessary for me to know."

"Thank you; you are very kind," she murmured.

It struck him as highly amusing that he should be conspiring with the wife of a gentleman he had shot. In every aspect it was ridiculous and not since boyhood had he felt so much like giggling. And Mrs. Congdon was wonderful; it was a delight to be the repository of the confidences of so handsome a young matron and one who met so difficult a situation so courageously. They were both liars; both were practising a deceit that could hardly fail to bring them under sharp scrutiny if they should be caught.

Women were far from being the simple creatures he had believed them to be. The heart of woman was a labyrinth of mystery. Mrs. Congdon, altogether lovely and bearing all the marks of breeding, had lied quite as convincingly as Sally Walker. The ways of Isabel were beyond all human understanding; and yet her contradictions only added to her charm.

Isabel's agitation over the affairs of the Congdons led him close to the point of mentioning her name to note its effect upon Mrs. Congdon, but to do this might be an act of betrayal that would only confirm Isabel's opinion of him as a stupid, meddlesome person. Nothing was to be gained by attempting to hasten the culmination of the fate that flung him about like a chip on a turbulent stream. Fiends and angels might be battling for his soul, and Lucifer might take him in the end, but meanwhile he was having a jolly good time.

He looked at her covertly and they laughed with the mirth of children planning mischief in secret.

"The little girl," he ventured; "you are not apprehensive about her?"

"Not in the slightest. My father-in-law is most disagreeably eccentric, but he is very fond of my children. It was quite like him to attempt to carry off the little girl, always a particular pet of his. I was shocked, of course, when it happened. I thought I should be safe in the park for a few hours until I could catch a train. I meant to put the children quite out of my husband's way. I didn't know he was in town; in fact, I don't know now that he is or anything about him. But he's undoubtedly in communication with his father. It's rather a complicated business, you see."

It was much more complex than she knew, and not, all things considered, a laughing matter. He spent an uncomfortable moment pondering a situation which he viewed with the mingled joy and awe of a child watching the fire in a fuse approach a fire-cracker.

"I shall be glad to a.s.sist you if I can aid you in any way. You will try to recover the child--?" he suggested.

"It's generous of you to offer, but I think you had better keep out of it. Of course I shall have Edith back; you may be sure of that."

"You have some idea of where they are taking her--?"

"No, I really haven't. But she will be safe, though I hate to think of her being subjected to so hideous an experience. It's rather odd, as I think of it, that my husband didn't personally try to take the child from me."

This, uttered musingly, gave Archie a perturbed moment. But the car had reached the Altmore. He lifted out the boy and accompanied them to the door.

"Thank you, very much," she said in a tone that dismissed him.

Archie drove to another hostelry for a superficial cleaning up, explaining to the brush boy who sc.r.a.ped the oily mud from his trousers that he had been in an automobile accident. He rode downtown in the subway, strolled past the skysc.r.a.per in which his office was situated and returned to the Governor's house feeling on the whole well pleased with himself.

IV

Refreshed by a nap and a shower he was dressed and waiting for the Governor at seven. On his way through the hall he ran into a man whose sudden appearance gave him a start. He was not one of the servants but a rough-looking stranger with drooping shoulders and a smear of dirt across his cheek. He would have pa.s.sed him in the street as a laborer returning from a hard day's work. The man did not lift his eyes but shuffled on to the door of the Governor's room which he opened and then, flinging round, stood erect and laughed aloud.

"Pardon me, Archie, for giving you a scare! I couldn't resist the impulse to test this makeup!"

"You!" cried Archie, blinking as the Governor switched on the light.

"I went and came in these togs; not for a lark, I a.s.sure you, but because I had to go clear down under the crust today. Turn the water on in my tub and I'll be slipping into decent duds in a jiffy. Here's an extra I picked up downtown. The scream of the evening is a kidnaping--most deplorable line of business! Have you ever noticed a certain periodicity in child stealing? About every so often you hear of such a case. Despicable; a foul crime hardly second to murder. Hanging is not too severe a punishment. Clear out now, for if we begin talking I'll never get dressed!"

The account of the kidnaping in the park was little more than a bulletin, but Archie soon had it committed to memory. The police had not yet learned that the two most important witnesses had given fict.i.tious names, for both pseudonyms appeared in the article.

In spite of the Governor's frequently avowed a.s.sertion that he wished to know nothing about him, Archie felt strongly impelled to make a clean breast of the Bailey Harbor affair, the two encounters with Isabel and his meeting with Mrs. Congdon. His resolution strengthened when the Governor appeared, dressed with his usual care and exhilarated by his day's adventures. At the table the Governor threw a remark now and then at the butler as to the whereabouts and recent performances of some of that functionary's old pals. Baring received this information soberly with only the most deferential murmurs of pleasure or dismay at the successes or failures of the old comrades. Baring retired after the dinner had been served, and the Governor, in cozy accord with his cigar, remarked suddenly:

"Odd; you might almost say singular! I've crossed old man Congdon's trail again! You recall him--the old boy we left to the tender mercies of Seebrook and Walters?"

"Yes; go on!" exclaimed Archie so impatiently that the Governor eyed him in surprise.

"It's remarkable how my theory that every man is a potential crook finds fresh proof all the time. Now old Congdon is rich and there's no reason on earth why he shouldn't live straight; but, bless you, it's quite otherwise! He's a victim of the same aberration that prompts people apparently as upright as a flagstaff to drop hotel towels into their trunks, collect coffee spoons in popular restaurants, or steal flowers in public gardens when they have expensive conservatories at home. You never can tell, Archie."

Archie, with the Congdons looming large on his horizon, was not interested in the philosophical aspects of petty pilfering.

"Stick to Eliphalet," he suggested.

"Oh, yes! Well, I met today one of the most remarkable of all the men I know who camp outside the pale. Perky is his name in Who's Who in No Man's Land. A jeweler by trade, he fell from his high estate and went on the road as a yegg. The work was too rough for him for one thing, and for another it was too much of a gamble. Opening safes only to find that they contained a few dollars in stamps and the postmaster's carpet slippers vexed him extremely and he then entered into the game of boring neat holes in the rim of twenty-dollar gold pieces, leaving only the outer sh.e.l.l and filling 'em up with a composition he invented that made the coin ring like a marriage bell. While he was still experimenting he ran into old Eliphalet sitting with his famous umbrella on a bench in Boston Common. Perky thought Eliphalet was a stool pigeon for a con outfit, but explanations followed and it was a case of infatuation on both sides. The old man was as tickled with the scheme as a boy with a new dog. He now a.s.sists Perky to circulate the spurious medium of exchange. Perky says he's a wonderful ally, endowed with all the qualities of a first cla.s.s crook."

"You'll appreciate that better," said Archie, "when you hear what I know about the Congdon family. You've been mighty decent in not pressing me for any account of myself but you've got to hear my story now. We'll probably both be more comfortable if I don't tell you my name, but you shall have that, too, if you care for it. So many things have happened since I left Bailey Harbor that you don't know about, things that I haven't dared tell you, that I'm going to spout it all now and here. If you want to chuck me when you've heard it, well enough; but I don't mind saying that to part with you would hurt me terribly. I never felt so dependent on any man as I do on you; and I've grown mighty fond of you, old man."

"Thank you, lad," said the Governor.

He listened patiently, nodding occasionally or throwing in a question.

When Archie finished he rose and clapped him on the shoulder.

"By Jove, you've tossed my stars around like so many dice! I've got to consult the oracles immediately."