The Perils of Pauline Part 22

"And I guess that will be all," panted Harry in the taxi that took them home. "I don't think you'll ask for any more adventures after this one."

"Why didn't you pick up the Joss's head?" replied Pauline. "It would have looked so nice and dreadful in the library?"

But the glory of her golden hair nestled upon his torn shoulder and he knew that he would go through all the perils in the world for happiness like this.

CHAPTER X

KABOFF'S WILD HORSE

For several months after old Mr. Marvin's death, Owen had kept to his cubby-hole room adjoining the financier's small, plain-furnished, workaday office. But recently he had got the habit of doing his work in the library, where the tall, pure statues looked down upon his skulking head and the grand old books that had borne their messages of good from generation to generation, held their high thoughts in stately contrast to his skilled and cruel plots.

Above the bowed bald head that was planning the death of a young girl to gain her fortune stood a figure of Persephone-child of innocence and sunlight shadowed by black robes of Dis. Upon the coward who feared all but the darkest and most devious pa.s.sages of crime shone high, clear brows of Caesar and Aurelius. Gray folios of Shakespeare held up to the ambitious ingrate the warning t.i.tles of "Lear" and "Hamlet" and "Macbeth." And by his side brooded ever that mystic relic of the farther past--the Mummy, from whose case had stepped a daughter of the Pharaohs in the likeness of Pauline.

But Owen thought little of contrasts.

He was opening his mail on a morning in early May when he came across an envelope addressed in the awkward scrawl of Hicks. He tore it apart nervously, for if Hicks could be moved to write, it must be a matter of concern.

"Dear Owen, No doubt he suspects you of foul play. He has seen his attorneys and is about to take steps to have you removed from the trustee-s.h.i.+p."

The paper crackled in Owen's trembling hand. So the Baskinelli incident had gone a little too far. Harry Marvin had sense enough to know that he would not have to fight three murderous Italians and a rabble of Chinese unless there had been a plot behind Pauline's peril.

It might be best to go directly after Harry--to put him out of the way first. And yet, Owen pondered, there was no proof of anything wrong. Pauline was admittedly plunging into these adventures of her own free will. Nothing could be proved against him or Hicks.

He resumed his work. Among the letters lay an advertising dodger which had been dropped through the door. Owen glanced at it carelessly at first, then with keen interest. He read it over:

"BALLOON ASCENSION FROM PALISADES

"Signor Panatella, the famous Italian Aeronaut, will make parachute drop from height never before attempted."

The ascension was to be made that afternoon from one of the amus.e.m.e.nt parks on the New Jersey sh.o.r.e of the Hudson.

"This is Providence," he muttered to himself, catching up the dodger.

Slipping through the door and up the stairs, he tapped at the door of Pauline's room. When there came no answer he entered swiftly, laid a paper on the table and glided back to the hall, back to the library.

From there he called up Hicks.

Hicks' domiciles were so many and suddenly changeable that he claimed nothing so dignified as a regular telephone number. But he had scribbled on the bottom of his note the number of a saloon on the lower West Side.

He was there when Owen rang.

"h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo, . . . Is that you, Hicks? . . . I want to see you. . . .

What? . . . No, right away. . . . Broke? . . . you always are ....

you'll get the cash all right. . . . What's that? .... Come here? ....

Not on your life. I'll come to you .... Not half that time ....

I'll take the motorcycle. All right .... Good-by."

He hung up the receiver, went up to his room and got into cycling kit.

As he came down stairs he met Pauline, who was returning from a shopping trip.

"Good morning, Owen," she said brightly. "Do you know, I believe there is more peril in a dry goods store than on a pirate yacht. What parts of my new hat are left?"

"Only the becoming ones."

She sped on up the stairs. After her first imperative inquiries of the mirror concerning what she considered her wild appearance, she picked up the letters on her dressing table and began to run through them.

The large black type of an advertising dodger loomed among the letters.

Pauline tripped down the stairs. To Harry, seated on the steps enjoying the Spring suns.h.i.+ne and puffing a leisurely cigarette, appeared a mysterious vision.

He knew by the elaborate way in which she took her seat beside him and hid the piece of paper in her hand that she had some new whim in fermentation--something to ask him that she knew he wouldn't want to do.

"Yes," he said, moving along the step away from her. "I know you've just bought me the loveliest cravat, that I'm the nicest brother in the world, that I look so handsome in Springy things and--well, what it is?"

Pauline pouted at the other end of the step.

"I'm going up in a balloon and jump down," she announced, "from a height never before attempted."

"Polly I You are going to do nothing of the--"

"No, I wasn't going to, until you grew so great and grand. I just wanted to go over and see him fly."

She tossed the dodger over to him. He glanced at it.

"Well, if you promise you aren't plotting any more pranks, I'll take you."

"That's a worth-while brother. It's a pink one."

"Pink one?"

"Cravat, of course."

Harry groaned. "Give it to the cook," he pleaded. "He wears 'em alive. If that fellow goes up at 2:30, you'd better hurry."

"I'll be ready before you are."

She rose quickly, but Owen, looking, listening, had time to close the door unseen, unheard.

At the rear of a little West Side saloon, he signaled with his horn, and Hicks came out. He was a bit shabbier than usual, and he had been drinking, but he was not intoxicated.

Owen locked his machine and taking his arm walked him rapidly up the avenue.

"What do you mean by writing to me?" demanded Owen. "Haven't I told you never to put words on paper?"

"Oh, I guess you got that house wired so n.o.body'll catch you," grunted Hicks. "Live wires, too-clever butlers, footmen, maids, chauffeurs, cooks; you're safe enough."