The Penalty Part 10

Say that by a certain date you'll either succeed and quit, or fail and quit, and then see if you can't take a little more interest in your own people, in your own heart--even in me."

"Wilmot," she said seriously, "if I fail with my head of Blizzard, I think I _shall_ give up."

"Wouldn't it be better," he pleaded, "to give up now? And then, you know, you could always say if _only_ you'd kept on you would have made a masterpiece."

"And who would believe that?"

"_I!_" said Wilmot. "It's easy for me to believe anything wonderful of you. It always has been."

"And a moment ago," she smiled, "you called me a little fool and said you'd tell my father on me."

She rose, still smiling, and he followed her into the library.

"Are all the studios in your building occupied?" he asked.

"They are," said Barbara, "and they aren't. Kelting, who has the ground floor, has gone abroad. And Upd.y.k.e, who has the third floor, has been in Bermuda all winter." She sank into a deep leather chair that half swallowed her.

"There's a janitor?"

"No. There's a janitress, a friendly old lady, quite deaf. She has seen infinitely better days."

"To all intents and purposes, then," said Wilmot, and the trouble that he felt showed in his face, "it's an empty house, and you shut yourself up in it with some model or other that you happen to pick up in the streets, and you don't know enough to be afraid. You'll get yourself murdered one of these bright mornings."

"Oh, I think not!" said Barbara. "There's Bubbles, you know."

"Oh, Bubbles!" exclaimed Wilmot. "He doesn't weigh eighty pounds. This Blizzard--look here, get rid of him. I can't tell you what the man is."

He laughed. "I don't know you well enough. But take my word for it, if a crime appeals to him, he commits it. And the police can't touch him, Barbs."

"Why can't they?"

"He knows too much about them individually and collectively. They're afraid of him. Get rid of him, Barbs."

Wilmot Allen's voice was strongly appealing. The fact that he sat forward in his chair, instead of yielding to its deep and enjoyable embrace, proved that he was very much in earnest. But Barbara shook her lovely head.

"You ask too much, Wilmot. My heart's in the beginning I've made. I've got to go on. It's a test case. If I've got _anything_ in me, now is the chance for it to show. You see, when I made up my mind seriously to try to do worth-while things with my own hands, everybody was against me.

And the sympathy that I am going to receive if I fail to make good is of a kind that's almost impossible to face."

"Then do me a favor. It won't interfere with your work, and it may be very useful at a pinch." He drew from his hip pocket a small automatic pistol. "Accept this," he went on, "and keep it somewhere handy as a sort of guardian. It's much stronger than the strongest man."

"How absurd!" she said. "And what are you doing carrying concealed weapons? I'm beginning to think that you're a desperado yourself."

He rose, smiling imperturbably, and laid the pistol in her lap.

"At least," she said, "show me how it works."

He explained the mechanism clearly and with patience, not once, but several times. "Point it," he said, "as you would point your finger, and keep pulling the trigger until the enemy drops."

"One every two hours," Barbara commented, "until relieved."

"May you never need it," said Wilmot, earnestly.

"I never shall," said Barbara. "Must I really keep it?"

"Yes."

"But you," she exclaimed, "you will be quite unprotected all the way from here to the nearest shop where such things are sold."

"I shall be armed again," he smiled, "before I am threatened. Indeed, to know that you are armed has heartened me immensely. What are you doing this afternoon?"

"I don't know," she answered with provoking submissiveness; "you haven't told me."

"It's just possible," he said, "that the turf courts at the Westchester Country Club have been opened. I might telephone and find out. Then we could collect some clothes, jump into a taxi, and go out and open the season."

"You can't afford taxis, Wilmot. And you never let anybody else pay for anything."

"Oh," he pleaded, "I can afford a taxi this once, believe me."

"In that case," said Barbara, "I surrender."

"If you only would, Barbs."

"'Phone if you are going to, and don't be always slipping sentiment into a business proposition," She affected to look very stern and business-like.

"I shall engage the magic taxi," he affirmed.

"The what?"

"Don't you know? There's a magic taxi in the city--just one. You get in, you give your order, and lo and behold, rivers and seas are crossed, countries and continents, until finally you fetch up in the place where you would be, and when you look at the meter you find that it hasn't registered as much as a penny."

"Time," said Barbara, "flies even faster than a magic taxicab. So if you are going to 'phone--"

"Is there no drop of sentiment in that exquisite sh.e.l.l which the world knows as Barbara Ferris? Didn't any man ever mean anything to you, Barbs?"

She flushed slightly, for there had come into her thoughts quite unbidden the image of a certain young man in workman's clothes, kneeling at a door, and removing an old j.a.panned iron lock. She shook her head firmly, and smiled up at him insultingly.

"Men, Wilmot," she said, "are nothing to me but planes, angles, curves, ma.s.ses, lights, and shadows. They are either suited to sculpture or they aren't."

Wilmot laughed, and while he was busy with the telephone, Barbara tried to think of the secret-service agent in cold terms of planes, curves, ma.s.ses, etc., and found that she couldn't. Which discovery annoyed and perplexed her.

XI

The girls who plaited hats for Blizzard had just finished luncheon and were taking their places at the long work-table. The entrance door having clanged its bell, twenty heads bent earnestly over twenty hats in various stages of construction, and twenty pairs of hands leaped into skilful activity.

The master pa.s.sed up and down on his crutches, observing progress and despatch with slow-moving, introspective eyes. Presently he came to a halt and clapped his hands sharply together. Twenty pairs of eyes, some cringing, some with vestiges of boldness, some favor-currying, sought his, and twenty pairs of hands ceased work as when power is shut off from as many machines. Blizzard's eyes pa.s.sed slowly over the girls in a sort of appraising review, once, and a second time.