Officer 666 Part 3

"Of course, we were only school girls when he made that wonderful rescue at Narragansett Pier. Don't you remember how we rushed down to the beach to see him, but got there just too late? He had gone out to his yacht or something. Oh, it was just splendid, Sadie. And he is so wonderfully modest about it. Why, when I reminded him of his heroism he pretended to have forgotten all about it. Just imagine Mr. Hogg forgetting a thing like that! Do you know what Jabez Hogg would do under similar circ.u.mstances, Sadie Burton? Well, I'll tell you--he'd hire the biggest hall in Omaha and reproduce the whole thing with moving pictures as an advertis.e.m.e.nt for his beef canneries."

The young girl had worked herself into a pa.s.sion and was making savage little gestures with her clenched fists.

"But what I can't understand, Helen dear, is why a man like Travers Gladwin should make such a mystery of himself and try to avoid introducing you to his friends. I am sure," persisted Sadie, despite the gathering anger in her companion's eyes, "that Aunt Elvira would not object to him. You know she is just crazy to break into the swim here in New York, and the Gladwins are the very best of people. I think it wouldn't take much to urge her even to throw over Mr. Hogg for Gladwin, if you'd only let her take charge of the wedding."

"Nothing of the sort," denied Helen hotly. "Aunt Elvira is bound on her solemn word of honor to Mr. Hogg. She will fight for him to the last ditch, though she knows I hate him."

"Don't you think, Helen," said the younger girl, more soberly, "that you are simply trying to make yourself look at it that way? I know Mr.

Hogg isn't a pretty man and he has an awful name, but"----

"There is no but about it, Sadie Burton. I have given my word to Travers Gladwin and I am going to elope with him to-night. I packed my trunk this morning and gave the porter $10 to take it secretly to the Grand Central Station. Travers told me just how to arrange it. Oh, there's his house now, Sadie; the big white one on the corner. It just thrills me to go by it. On our way back from Riverside Drive we must stop there. I must leave word that auntie insists on our going to the opera and that I won't be able to get to him at the time we agreed."

"Oh, I _do_ wish something would turn up and prevent it," cried Sadie, almost in tears.

"You horrid little thing!" retorted Helen. "It is dreadful of you to talk like that when you know how much I care for him."

"It isn't that I don't think you care for him," returned Sadie with trembling lip. "It's something inside of me that warns me. All this secrecy frightens me. I can't understand why a man of Travers Gladwin's wealth and social position would want to do such a thing."

"But we both have tried to tell you," insisted Helen, "that there is an important business reason for it."

"He didn't tell what that reason was," persisted the tearfully stubborn cousin. "You admitted he didn't give you any definite reason at all."

Helen Burton stamped her foot and bit her lip. By this time the big touring car was gliding through the East Drive of Central Park with the swift, noiseless motion that denotes the highest development of the modern motor vehicle. Fully a mile of the curving roadway had slid under the wheels of the car before Helen resumed the conversation with the sudden outburst:

"You don't doubt for an instant, Sadie, that he is a gentleman!"

Sadie made no reply.

"His knowledge of painting and art is simply wonderful. At that art sale, where we met, he knew every painting at a glance. He didn't even have to look for the signatures. You know, if it hadn't been for him I would have bought that awful imitation Fragonard and just thrown away two months of my allowance. Sadie Burton, he is the cleverest man I ever met. He has travelled everywhere and knows everything, and I love him, I love him, I love him!" In proof of which the charming young woman burst into tears and took refuge in her vast m.u.f.f.

This sentimental explosion was too much for tender-hearted Sadie. She gave way completely and swore not to breathe another word in opposition to the elopement. And as she felt her beloved cousin's body shaken with sobs, she forced herself to go into ecstasies over Travers Gladwin's manly beauty and G.o.d-like intellect. In her haste to soothe she went to extravagant lengths and cried:

"And he must have looked heavenly in his bathing suit when he made that wonderful rescue."

Down fell Helen's m.u.f.f with as much of a crash as a m.u.f.f could make and she turned upon her companion the most profoundly shocked expression of a bride-about-to-be.

"Sadie," she reproved stiffly, "you have gone far enough."

Whereupon it was Sadie's turn to seek the sanctuary of tears.

CHAPTER V.

WHITNEY BARNES TELEPHONES TO THE RITZ.

Glancing up into the solemn face of an unusually good-looking young man who wore his silk hat at a jaunty angle and whose every detail of attire suggested that he was of that singularly blessed cla.s.s who toil not neither do they spin, Miss Mamie McCorkle, public telephone operator in the tallest-but-one skysc.r.a.per below the Fulton street dead line, expected to be asked to look up some number in the telephone book and be generously rewarded for the trifling exertion.

It wasn't any wonder, then, that she broke the connections of two captains of industry and one get-rich-quick millionaire when this was what she got:

"Suppose, my dear young lady, that you had a premonition--a hunch, I might say--that you were destined this current day of the calendar week to meet your Kismet in petticoats, wouldn't it make you feel a bit hollow inside and justify you in taking your first drink before your customary hour for absorbing the same?"

Usually a live wire at repartee, Mamie McCorkle was stumped. With a captain of industry swearing in each ear and the get-rich-quick millionaire trying to break in with his more artistic specialties in profanity, she was for a moment frozen into silence. When she did come to the surface, she set the captains of industry down where they belonged, retorted upon the get-rich-quick millionaire that he was no gentleman and she hoped he would inform the manager she said so and then raised her eyebrows at the interrogator who leaned against her desk.

"If that's an invitation to lunch, _No_! I'm already dated," she said.

"If you're trying to kid me, ring off, the line is busy."

"All of which," said the young man, in the same slow, sober voice, "is sage counsel for the frivolous. I am not. As you look like a very sensible young woman, I put a sensible question to you. Perhaps my language was vague. What I meant to convey was: do you think I would be justified in taking a drink at this early hour of the day to brace me for the ordeal of falling in love with an unknown affinity?"

"If your language is personal," replied Miss McCorkle, with a sarcastic laugh, "my advice is to take six drinks. I'm in love with a chauffeur."

"Good," said the young man, brightly, "and may I ask if it was a sudden or a swift affair?"

"Swift," snapped Miss McCorkle. "He ran over my stepmother, then brought her home. I let him in. We were engaged next day. Here's the ring, one and one-half carats, white!--now, what number do you want?"

"A thousand thanks--get me the Ritz-Carlton, please, and don't break this ten-dollar bill. I hate change, it spoils the set of one's pockets."

As Whitney Barnes squeezed himself into the booth, Miss McCorkle squinted one eye at the crisp bill he had laid before her and smiled.

"There's more than one way," she thought, "of being asked not to listen to dove talk, and I like this method best."

The shrewd h.e.l.lo girl, however, had erred in the case of Whitney Barnes, for this is the way his end of the conversation in booth No. 7 ran:

--This the Ritz? Yes. Kindly connect me with Mr. Smith.

--What Smith? Newest one you got. Forget the first name. Thomas Smith, you say. Well, give me Tom.

--h.e.l.lo, there, Trav--that is, Tom, or do you prefer Thomas?

--What's that? Came in by way of Boston on a Cunarder? What's all the row? Read you were in Egypt, doing the pyramids.

--Can't explain over the wire, eh. Hope it isn't a divorce case; they're beastly.

--Ought to know you better than that. Say, what's the matter with your little angora?

--Be serious; it's no joking matter. Well, if it wasn't serious how could I joke about it? You can't joke about a joke.

--I'm a fool! I wonder where I heard that before. Oh, yes--a few minutes ago. My paternal parent said the same thing.

--Can I meet you at your house? Where is it? I ought to know? I don't see why, you keep building it over all the time and then go way and leave it for two years at a stretch. Then when you do come home you go and live under the----

--Cut that out! My glory, but there is a mystery here.

--Certainly, I don't want to spoil everything.

--Have I an engagement? I should say I have. Just you call up Joshua Barnes and ask for the dope on it--a whole flock of engagements bunched into one large contract, the biggest I ever tackled.

--No, I guess it won't prevent me from meeting you. Not unless I happen to see her on the way uptown.