Under Cover Part 19

He looked across at Denby and sighed. His friend's serene countenance and absence of nerves was always a source of wonderment to him.

Hereafter, he swore, a life in consonance with his country's laws. And if the first few days of the voyage had made him nervous, it was small comfort to think that the really risky part had yet to be gone through.

In eliminating Alice Harrington as a fellow smuggler Monty saw extraordinary cunning. "Well," he thought, "if anyone can carry it through it will be old Steve," and rose obediently at Alice's behest and brought back a wireless form on which he indited a message to the absent Michael.

Monty Vaughan had crossed the ocean often, and each time had been cheered to see in the distance the long flat coast-line of his native land. There had always been a sense of pleasurable excitement in the halt at Quarantine and the taking on board the harbor and other officials.

But this time they clambered aboard--the most vindictive set of mortals he had ever laid eyes on--and each one of them seemed to look at Monty as though he recognized a law breaker and a desperado. Incontinently he fled to the smoking-room and ran into the arms of G.o.dfrey Hazen.

"Never mind, my boy," said that genial broker, "you'll soon be out of your misery. Brace up and have a drink. I know how you feel. I've felt like that myself."

"Did you get caught?" Monty gasped.

"No," he said, for he was a bachelor, "but I've had some mighty narrow squeaks and once I thought I was gone."

He watched Monty gulp down his drink with unaccustomed rapidity. "That's right," he said commendingly. "Have another?"

"It would choke me," the younger answered, and fled.

Hazen shook his head pityingly. He had never been as afflicted as the heir to his old friend Vaughan. Poets might understand love and its symptoms but such manifestations were beyond him.

When Steven Denby opened his trunks to a somewhat uninterested inspector and answered his casual questions without hesitation, Monty stood at his side. It cost him something to do so but underneath his apparent timorous nature was a strength and loyalty which would not fail at need.

And when the jaded Customs official made chalk hieroglyphics and stamped the trunks as free from further examination Monty felt a relief such as he had never known. As a poet has happily phrased it, "he chortled in his joy."

"What's the matter?" he demanded of Denby when he observed that his own hilarity was not shared by his companion in danger. "Why not celebrate?"

"We're not off the dock yet," Denby said in a low voice. "They've been too easy for my liking."

"A lot we care," Monty returned, "so long as they're finished with us."

"That's just it," he was warned, "I don't believe they have. It's a bit suspicious to me. Better attend to your own things now, old man."

Monty opened his trunks in a lordly manner. So elaborate was his gesture that an inspector was distrustful and explored every crevice of his baggage with pertinacity. He unearthed with glee a pair of military hair-brushes with backs of sterling silver that Monty had bought in Bond street for Michael Harrington as he pa.s.sed through London and forgotten in his alarm for bigger things.

"It pays to be honest," said Mrs. Harrington, who had declared her dutiable importations and felt more than ordinarily virtuous. "Monty, you bring suspicion on us all. I'm surprised at you. Just a pair of brushes, too. If you had smuggled in a diamond necklace for Nora there would be some excuse!"

The word necklace made him tremble and he did not trust himself to say a word.

"He's too ashamed for utterance," Denby commented, helping him to repack his trunk.

There were two Harrington motors waiting, both big cars that would carry a lot of baggage. When they were ready it was plain that only two pa.s.sengers could be carried in one and the third in the second car.

"How shall we manage it?" Mrs. Harrington asked.

"If you don't mind I'll let you two go on," Denby suggested, "and when I've sent off a telegram to my mother, I'll follow."

"I see," she laughed, "you want the stage set for your entrance. Very well. Au revoir."

Monty surprised her by shaking his friend's hand. "Good-by, old man,"

said Monty sorrowfully. He was not sure that he would ever see Steven again.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Michael Harrington walked up and down the big hall of his Long Island home looking at the clock and his own watch as if to detect them in the act of refusing to register the correct time of day. Although it was probable his wife, Monty and the guest of whose coming a wireless message had apprised him, would not be home for another hour, he was always anxious at such a moment.

He was a man of fifty-eight, exceedingly good-tempered, and very much in love with his wife. When Alice had married a man twenty-four years her senior there had been prophecies that it would not last long. But the two Harringtons had confounded such dismal predictions and lived--to their own vast amus.e.m.e.nt--to be held up as exemplars of matrimonial felicity in a set where such a state was not too frequent.

His perambulations were interrupted by the entrance of Lambart, a butler with a genius for his service, who bore on a silver tray a siphon of seltzer water, a decanter of Scotch whiskey and a pint bottle of fine champagne.

Lambart had, previously to his importation, valeted the late lamented Marquis of St. Mervyn, an eccentric peer who had broken his n.o.ble neck in a steeplechase. Like most English house-servants he was profoundly conservative; and after two positions which he had left because his employers treated him almost as an equal, he had come to the Harringtons and taken a warm but perfectly respectful liking to his millionaire employer. Lambart was a remarkably useful person and it was his proud boast that none had ever beheld him slumbering. Certain it was that a bell summoned him at any hour of the day or night, and he had never grumbled at such calls.

Harrington looked at the refreshment inquiringly. "Did I order this?" he demanded.

"No, sir," Lambart answered, "but my late employer Lord St. Mervyn always said that when he was waiting like you are, sir, it steadied his nerves to have a little refreshment."

"I should have liked the Marquis if I'd known him," Michael Harrington observed when his thirst was quenched. "I think I could have paid him no prettier compliment than to have named a Rocksand colt after him, Lambart. The colt won at Deauville last week, by the way."

"Yes, sir," Lambart returned, "I took the liberty of putting a bit on him; I won, too."

"Good," said his employer, "I'm glad. He ought to have a good season in France. I like France for two things--racing and what they call the _heure de l'aperitif_. When I go to Rome I do as the Romans do, and I have the pleasantest recollections of my afternoons in France."

He noticed that Lambart, bringing over to him a box of cigars, turned his head as though to listen. "I believe, sir," said the butler, "that the car is coming up the drive."

He hurried to the open French window and looked out. "Yes, sir," he cried, "it is one of our cars and Mrs. Harrington is in it."

Michael Harrington rose hastily to his feet. "Great Scott, my wife! The boat must have docked early." He pointed to the whiskey and champagne.

"Get rid of these; and not a word, Lambart, not a word."

"Certainly not, sir," Lambart answered; "I couldn't make a mistake of that sort after being with the Marquis of St. Mervyn for seven years."

He took up the tray quickly and carried it off as Nora Rutledge--the girl for whose sake poor Monty had pa.s.sed hours of alternate misery and hope--came in to tell her host the news.

"Alice is here," she cried, "and Monty Vaughan with her."

Nora was a pretty, clever girl of two and twenty with the up-to-date habit of slangy smartness fully developed and the customary lack of reticence over her love-affairs or those of anyone else in whom she was interested. But for all her pert sayings few girls were more generally liked than she, for the reason that she was genuine and wholesome.

"Fine," Michael said heartily. "Where are they? How is she? Was it a good voyage?"

A moment later his wife had rushed into his arms.

"You dear old thing," she exclaimed affectionately.

"By George! I'm glad to see you," he said, "you've been away for ages."

"You seem to have survived it well enough," she laughed.