Lonesome Town Part 36

She felt herself deposited upon a wooden step. Looking up, she recognized the stone block-house literally "perched" upon the top of the precipitous granite hump up which they had come.

In the inspirational light of a refuge of to-day Pape had remembered that olden fortress which he had been surveying when detected by the "quail" cop, Pudge O'Shay.

Straightening to the sheet-iron door, he tried the k.n.o.b, then the comparative strength of his shoulder. But the protection so generously accorded park rovers of earlier wars seemed denied them. Investigating through one of the oblong loopholes, he saw that the door was fastened with a spring lock which could be opened without a key from inside.

Straightway he gave his consideration to the fifteen-foot stone wall.

Never had the Westerner aspired to plaudits as a human fly, yet no h.e.l.lroaring cliff had been sheer enough to forbid his ascent. Pulling off his boots, he essayed the latest in difficulties stocking-footed; after several slip-backs, went over the top. The door thrown wide, he gathered Jane up and stumbled with her over a slab-like doorsill that wobbled under their weight.

"Odd," murmured the girl looking about, "that I should be hiding from the law in this favorite relic of Grandfather Lauderdale! One of his foibles as a Grand Army veteran was to come here at sunrise on victory anniversaries and run up a flag on that staff. Some sentimental park commissioner gave him a key and he never missed an occasion."

"Might have left some furniture scattered about-a few _chaises longues_ and easy chairs," Pape complained. "Still, you ought to rest easy on the fact that those get-'em specialists will never think to look for us in here."

After making sure that the door had latched itself, he doffed his coat and spread it for her to sit on, with her back to a cleaner-than-most section of the wall. Although only the cuff of one out-flung sleeve formed his seat, he felt more comfortable, by contrast with recent rigors, than in all the long stretch of his past-or so he claimed to Jane.

The hour was the veribest of the whole twenty-four group, he reminded her. Wouldn't she enjoy it? Evening was lowering shadows into the park.

Didn't she feel sifting into the roofless block-house the atmosphere of rest-time and peace? Outside the trees were full of birds, as busy about going to bed as the families of any flat-house in the city. Couldn't she imagine with him that the dulled clatter rising from the streets was the rush of some great waterfall of the wild or of winds through a forest or of hoofed herds pounding over a distant plain?

Soothing was Pape's illusion that he was back in his limitless West, but rudely was it broken. Slowly, soundlessly he got to his feet; approached the sheet-iron door; with every sense alert, listened. A sharp knock had sounded from without. No illusion was this. Jane, too, had heard. She had straightened against the stone wall, in her wide eyes and tightened lips the reflex of his thought.

Peace, safety, rest-time? Evidently, not for them!

Had some member of The Finest outwitted them? Was the block-house to prove, not a refuge, but a trap?

CHAPTER XXVI-HOUSE OF BLOCKS

For a moment silence tortured. Then sounded an imperative tapping against the locked door.

Pape, standing within arm-reach of the handle, felt something hard and cold slipped into his grasp; realized that Jane had re-armed him; appreciated her mute suggestion that it would be better, were they known to be blocked within, to take his chance of overcoming a single enemy than to wait until reenforcements arrived.

A second he considered the automatic, before placing it in his pocket ready for emergency in case his arms and fists could not decide the issue. To throw open the door and drag inside the disturber would be the best beginning to fight's finish. He waved the girl toward the far wall; soundlessly turned the latch; flung back with a jerk to admit--

Their pursuer was official, yes, although not so much so as they had feared. With a bound he entered just below Pape's ready fists-and on four feet instead of two.

"Kicko-you scoundrel!"-Pape, sternly.

"Precious pup!"-Jane, caressingly, from the floor seat into which she had collapsed from very weakness of her relief.

Pape mounted the wobbly doorstep and peered outside. No accompanying officers loomed through the fast-falling shadows. Either the dog had outsped them or had deserted them temporarily for some reason canine and less comprehensible. On relatching the door and facing about, he saw that reason.

The Belgian, his tail waving like a feather fan, trotted toward the girl, swinging from his mouth a s.h.i.+ny object which explained why he had b.u.mped against and scratched at the door, instead of barking for admittance. In Jane's lap he deposited the tin lunch pail, to carry which to his master at noon-time was his dearest duty and privilege.

More than curiosity as to its contents-an animal eagerness almost as unrestrained as the dog's, returned Pape to his former seat upon the cuff of his coat and hurried his removal of the lid. Three hovered gratefully over the removed contents of that pail. Certainly two were ready to believe that the errand of the third had been as innocent as it now looked. They gave the quondam deserter benefit of every doubt, if only the dog's share of the benefits he had brought.

"You've vindicated yourself, Towser," remarked Pape. "The lady in this case was right. She looks to me like one of the perfect kind that always is-right, you know. _She_ said, old side-Kick, that you'd gone to bring a party. And you sure have brought one-some party, this! From the depths of the heart of my inner man, I crave your pardon."

The Belgian's grant of grace was as prompt as moist. His anxiety centered upon a less subtle exchange.

"Oh, I am _so_ hungry-that's mostly what made me collapse!" Jane sighed.

"You see, I've formed the bad habit of eating once in a while. I'd quarrel over a crust of stale rye bread. But boiled-tongue-and-mustard sandwiches, potato salad, apple pie-Peter, let's _begin_!"

It did not take the three of them long to demonstrate that there was one luncheon of which Shepherd Tom never should get a crumb. Between bites Pape remembered aloud the herdsman's rather dubious admission of Kicko's propensity at times to present the precious pail to the "wrong" person.

In this case, however, even he must have admitted that the wrong was the right. As the edge of their hunger was dulled they deducted the possibilities. Either the police dog had missed his master at the noon hour or allowed himself to be distracted by some canine caprice.

Happening into the excitement of the posse, he had relinquished the pail to join the chase. Afterward, having found preferred friends rather than enemies to be the quarry, he had remembered duty neglected and broken away to retrieve his pail.

The three-from-one meal ended, the girl took off her hat and settled back against the stone wall with a smile the more aesthetic for its physical content. The dog, although fuller of good-fellows.h.i.+p than of food, emulated her smile in spirit if not in expression, stretched out across their feet, gaped his mouth and flopped his tail. The man was able to delight the more in that rare smile on Jane's reposeful features because released from cra.s.ser cravings. He leaned low toward her in the dusk, as though to be under its downshed radiance.

Her beauty seemed to intensify-to be taking the light and making the darkness. Small wonder, he thought, that blind eyes ached again to behold that face, pure as marble alive, tender of line, yet strong-eyes the purple of a royal mystery, lips the color of life, hair a black, l.u.s.trous veil draped to reveal, rather than conceal.

"You look," said he, "like the spirit of evening-the spirit that lures a fellow away from the rest of the world and contents him with one warm hearth-fire, one steady light, one complete companions.h.i.+p. Every man who battles through his day hopes for that spirit at his eventide. I have battled a bit to-day, Jane, and I-I can't help hoping--"

"You believe in spirits, then?" she asked as if to cover, even in that sympathetic light, the suggestion of his broken words.

He nodded. "a.s.sorted kinds-liquid, ghosts-and you."

"Then maybe you won't laugh at my fancy-" her voice lowered superst.i.tiously-"that Grandfather Lauderdale's spirit is hovering around inside this block-house-_now_."

He did laugh, but softly. "Aren't you going to introduce us?"

"Oh, he wouldn't like any such formality! I can just see him sizing you up for himself with one glance of those blue, cliff-browed eyes of his.

He used to tell me my inmost little-girl secrets before I could confide them to him, he was so second-sighted. The first time he brought me here was at one of his flag-raising dawns. I was very small, but I'll never forget him, my tall, strong old fire-eater whom everybody but me thought queer, with his magnificent head of thick, white, curling hair. A sort of glory lit in his face from the rising sun and the tears staggered through the furrows of his cheeks when the flag caught the breeze-spread out its full a.s.surance of the freedom he had fought to win."

"Never mind that introduction. Already you have presented him to me.

Howdy, old-timer! Right glad to meet you."

Pape, his grin gone, reached forward and grasped and shook the empty air.

"As I grew older," Jane continued, "I came with him often. One time was when they planted a bronze tablet in the outer wall as a tribute to the outpost service which this house rendered in the War of 1812."

"They did, eh? A tablet-for the War of--" More than before Pape looked interested. "Maybe it ain't granddad's spirit, after all-maybe only the ghost of a.s.sociation."

"No, I'm sure it is he. Wait. Perhaps he has a message for us." Still with that vague smile on her lips, Jane closed her eyes and spoke dreamily: "He _has_ a message. It is for me. He wants me to give you what I've wanted to give you all along, my entire confidence-to tell you that I've trusted you from first glance, no matter how I've acted-to tell you just what is the improbable-sounding treasure that we've been hunting so desperately, lest our enemies find and destroy it-to tell you how and why the possession of it will clear my father's name and restore us to that 'fortune forevermore' promised in his cryptogram. You'll be incredulous at first, Peter Pape, but all will work out once we have possession of-Listen, closely, now. That crock of the first verse holds--"

Pape, despite her allegedly mystic instructions, interrupted: "Don't want you to tell me! Won't hear it!"

"Why-Not Pape," her eyes flashed open, "you're a-At least, you _might_ be said to be mulish, the way you stick to a point."

"Did granddad's spirit dictate that?" he enquired mildly.

"No. That's thrown in on my own account. It is ridiculous for you to be risking life and limb, reputation, money and comfort, for something whose very nature you don't know."

"But I do know for what I'm risking all those little things."

"For what, then?"

"For you."