Lonesome Town Part 26

"Arrested-_you?_ I guess I don't understand. How does it come that you are here when you're visiting the Giffords in Southampton? And how in the world did you and Why-Not-You two were hauled up-_together?_"

Her final utterance was in a tone fictionally describable as "tinged by the bitterness of despair."

As Jane seemed disinclined to explain, Pape tried to ease the moment.

"We happened to meet near the Maine Monument. I was out for-for exercise, you see. Your cousin here showed me some new ways of getting the same."

"Sure, blame it on her, Adam," Pudge O'Shay made grumpy interposition.

"Remember, though, that this ain't the first evening I've caught you trying new ways of exercising in the park."

Jane turned toward the sergeant. "Can't we settle about the bail and be off, sir?"

He coughed, bent for a moment's scribbling; made answer direct to Irene.

"Here's a receipt for your jewelry, miss. I'll take a chance on its value. While I don't congratulate anybody on getting pinched, I'm glad that your friends, if they must cut capers, have you to help them out.

Thank you for breezing into this gloomy old place."

"Good for you, you nice old barking dog that don't bite!" enthused the girl. "I _thought_ you weren't half as cross as you look. I don't know what my friends have done to get the law down on them, but I _do_ believe in their innocence of motive and so may you. My cousin is the stormy petrel sort, with the best intentions in the world, but _always_ getting herself and others into trouble. And Why-Not Pape-He's just from the West, you know, and I haven't had time yet to teach him how to behave in a city. In a way you have done me a favor in pinching them, as you so cleverly put it. It is _something_ for a true woman to be given the opportunity to show by her actions just how much she-You get what I mean, don't you-or _do_ you?"

Others in the room got it rather more forcefully than he. Pape suppressed a groan at the flush which had blotted the pallor of Jane's face. Fast though he had worked, this infant fiend worked faster. Hard though he had tried, she had upset all his gains with a laugh and a sigh. Desperate though he felt to protest her claim on him, the fact that she claimed him discounted any protestation he might make. His West had schooled him in deeds, not words. By deeds he would-he _must_ prove the truth.

Characteristically Irene rewarded Adonis Moore. He was a "dear" of a horse cop and wore his uniform just "scrumptiously." He must keep an eye out for her when next she rode over park bridle-paths. She thanked him for her friends, therefore for her. It was these acts of simple human kindness that made the world worth while. Didn't he agree with her-or _did_ he? She only hoped that others were as appreciative of _her_ efforts as was she of his.

Even for Pudge O'Shay, whose case it was, she had a cordial _au revoir_.

She had noticed from first glance that he looked worried. But he mustn't worry, not one tiny bit. Worry made one thin and he had such an imposing appearance-so official-just as he was. He must rely on her. Surely he could-or _couldn't_ he? She had taken the case in hand now and would return the two out-on-bails to court if she had to carry them. He was merely loaning them to her over night. Wouldn't he try to remember that?

"Good-night, you nice persons, one and all!"

She shook hands with the uniformed three before attaching herself, dangle-wise, to Pape's weak right arm.

"Come along, crooks," she advised the "pinched" pair cheerfully. "This paper declares me your custodian-says it will cost me the family jools not to produce you in court at ten of to-morrow morn. No matter how guilty you be or be not, I shall produce!"

CHAPTER XIX-TEN OF TO-MORROW MORN

Not until the police court arraignment, held shortly after the prescribed hour next morning, had Peter Pape been impressed by the personality and power of ex-Judge Samuel Allen. Pinkish were the little jurist's cheeks, modest his mustaches and by no means commanding his chubby, under-height figure. Yet at that bar of "justice" in the magistrate's court, he had proved a powerful ally.

Mrs. Sturgis' first act after Irene's return home with her out-on-bails the evening before had been to send for the judge. He had pointed that the truth must not come out in open court-that the romance of a new search for Granddad Lauderdale's mysterious legacy would be seized upon by reporters and given undesirable newspaper publicity. Personally, he appeared more amused by the escapade than shocked, as was the matron, and had refused to take it seriously for a moment. He had undertaken to fix things along the lines of "silence, secrecy and suppression" if the two culprits would promise to go and sin no more.

And with a neatness and dispatch that made his nondescript looks and mild manner seem a disguise, he had made good his promise. The complicity of Miss Jane Lauderdale had been dismissed in a whisper and a wave of the hand. Caught at digging in sacred ground on a bet, her companion's case was only one more ill.u.s.tration of the efficiency of the park police. This plea, to the utter astonishment of Peter Pape, had been briefly outlined by the jurist and a fine of ten dollars set. A word from the magistrate had persuaded the press representative present to crumple his sheet of notes and promise not even a brevity of a case which, less expertly suppressed, would have been worth headlines. By the magic of political affiliations between attorney and magistrate, Irene was returned the ransom jewelry and her two prisoners were freed.

Not until the chief culprit found himself standing alone on the curb before the antiquated court-house did he appreciate the serious consequences to himself of the contretemps. The two girls, with whom he had not accomplished a single word aside, had just driven off in Judge Allen's soft-sirened car. He had not been offered a lift, not even by Irene. As for Jane, she had given no sign of recognizing his existence beyond her two rather abstracted nods of "good-morning" and "good-by."

Until now he had tried to ascribe this manner to her idea of propriety in court proceedings, as also Irene's mercifully subdued air. That both should desert him the moment they were free was enough of a shock to hold him on the spot, pondering. The cut had been unanimous, as though foreplanned. So smoothly had it seemed to sever all connection between them that he did not realize it until staring after the numerals on the tail-plate of the automobile.

She had "quit him cold," his self-selected lady. True, she had done so several times before. But it mattered more now. He had declared his fealty; to some extent, had proved it; had hoped that he was gaining in her esteem. Now he was dropped, like a superfluous cat, in a strange alley. He felt as flattened-out as the cement of the pavement on which he stood. Into it, through the soles of his boots, his heart seemed to sink from its weight ... down ... down.

But as his heart sank, his mind rose in a malediction strong as his pulse was weak:

"To h.e.l.l with the perquisites of our young ladies of to-day! Do I say so-or _don't_ I?"

His plans for the morning, which had included a start at that "round and round" stroll in search of four poplars within earshot of the park menagerie, were scrambled as had been his breakfast eggs. Not even the sh.e.l.l of a plan was left. The divine triumvirate was reduced to its original separateness-a blind father over in the East Side yellow brick, a daughter luxuriously ensconced on the avenue, a Western stray-about-town, lonely and alone.

And the worst of it was that he could not see just how to right himself; could not blame Jane any more than Irene or himself. Loyalty was a thing to live, not to talk about. After his statements to Jane, both direct and through her father, he looked, in the light of cousinly disclosures, an arrant philanderer-the sort of man who was willing, in Montana sport parlance, "to play both ends against the middle."

The tongue of the bobbed-haired youngling had run according to form. Her belief in her own desirability had put him at a serious disadvantage. He could not follow the cousins, demand a hearing and a.s.sert unmanfully that he didn't love the one who said he did, but did love her who now believed that he did not.

Just as a peach was as much the down on its cheek as the pit, the response he craved from Jane must have a delicate, adhering confidence over its heart and soul. If she did not know the one-woman-ness of his feeling for her, then the time had not come to tell her. He wouldn't have wished to talk her into caring for him, even were he given to verbal suasion. Trust was not a thing to be added afterward. It must be component, delicate, adhering-part of the peach. She did-she must already trust him. But she must have her own time for realization.

As for Irene, he'd have to boomerang the extravagant utterances and acts of that perquisitory young admirer back to their source as little like a cad as possible. He felt sure she would not have seized on him had she known the havoc she wrought. She must not be unduly humiliated.

If only folks were wholly good or wholly bad, therefore deserving of absolute punishment or absolute reward as in the movies, life and its living would be less of a strain. So philosophized Peter Pape. If, for instance, Jane were a perfect heroine, she would have loved and trusted him at first sight, as he had her. If he were a _reel_ hero, either caveman or domesticated, he'd have conquered her by brawn or brain long ere this pitiable pa.s.s. Mills Harford, as rival, would have been ulteriorly and interiorly bad, rather than a likeable, fine chap much more worthy the girl, no doubt, than himself. Judge Allen, as builder of barriers between them, should be a long-nosed, hard-voiced, scintillating personage, instead of the rosy, round, restrained little man he was. And "the young lady of to-day"-There would be needed a long explanatory sub-t.i.tle between a close-up of that guilelessly guilty, tender torment and one of her prototype, the histrionic, hectic vamp of yesteryear.

Still stationed on the curb, Pape gained strength from these theories to advance into consideration of his most effective and immediate course toward the end of his present adventure. He had decided that he must continue his attempt to serve in the disintegrated triumvirate, that he must again force his presence upon Jane if she did not send for him soon, that he must fail absolutely to recognize the insidious claims of Irene, when he became conscious of the purring approach of a sport car.

On hearing himself hailed by name, he looked up and saw that the man behind the wheel was Mills Harford.

"Have they come or gone?" the real-estater asked.

"Both." Pape's mind still was somewhat afield.

"Just my luck to be too late. Mrs. Sturgis might have 'phoned me sooner.

Seems to me I should have been sent for first, whatever the sc.r.a.pe. Tell me, she got off all right-Miss Lauderdale?"

"Why not?" Pape nodded, his mental eye upon the good and bad in this rival to whom the baby vamp in the cast had erroneously a.s.signed the successful suitor role. "We both are loose," he added. "She got off scot-free and I, fortunately, was able to pay my fine. Mr. Allen fixed everything. He's a capable somebody, the judge, a valuable acquaintance for anybody restricted to life in an overgrown town like N' York. He has a new client if anything else happens to me."

At these a.s.sorted remarks Harford's manner changed. The concern on his handsome face made way for a positive glare as he leaned over the side of the car toward his informant.

"Can't say I'm greatly concerned in what may or may not happen to you in the near or far future, Pape, but I'll contribute gratis a word or two of advice. Remember that you are in the semi-civilization of N' York Town, not the wild and woolly. Be a bit more careful."

"Ain't used to being careful for my own sake." The Westerner all at once felt inspired that the occasion was one for a show of good-cheer. "Like as not, though, I'd better take your advices to heart, especially as they're gratis, for the sake of my friends and playmates."

Harford snapped him up. "At any rate, in the future don't involve women.

If you must run amuck, run it and muck it alone. If you make any more disturbance around Miss Lauderdale, you'll hear from me."

Now, this sounded more like "legitimate" than the movies. The potential villain's sneer and tone of superiority brought out the regular impulses of a hero like a rash on Pape. Only with effort did he guard his tongue.

"Wouldn't take any bets on my being in a listening mood, Harfy," he made remark.

"You'll listen to what I have to say, I guess, mood or no mood," Harford continued. "Your debut into a circle where you never can belong was amusing at first. But any joke may be overplayed. This one is getting too tiresome to be practical. I've tried to keep to myself what I think about an oil-stock shark like you catapulting himself into such a family as the Sturgis', but if you want me to ill.u.s.trate--"

He had slid over on the seat from behind the steering wheel. Now he half rose, his hand upon the latch of the car door, as though about to descend to the pavement. But he did not turn the handle.

With synchronous movements Pape stepped to the running board, clapped two heavy hands upon the real-estater's immaculately tailored shoulders and sat his would-be social mentor down upon the seat with what must have been a tooth-toddling jar. That mention of oil stock had been several syllables too many in strictures to which he was not accustomed.

Only Jane and Curtis Lauderdale had direct knowledge of his wrong-righting mission to the East and they, he felt certain, had not spoken with Harford since he with them. The question was pertinent how this handsome, fiery-pated young metropolitan, so frankly and unexpectedly showing himself as an out-and-out enemy, had happened on the connection. To wring the facts out of him then and there would have been a treat. Yet neither the time nor set was propitious for measures as drastic as their slump to type in character and motivation made imminent.

"Having just been before the august court, I ain't homesick to return,"

Pape said, easing, but not foregoing his shoulder hold. "So if you'll just postpone that ill.u.s.tration until a more suitable time and place for me to ill.u.s.trate back what I think of your dam' impudence, I won't get hauled in again and you hauled out of a reg'lar back-home bas.h.i.+ng up."