The Perils of Pauline Part 7

Owen watched a moment and then slunk away; his schemes had been for nothing. Pauline was alive and happy in her lover's arms, and the secretary was no nearer his goal of permanent control of her estate than before. He walked to the entrance of' the tent and tried to learn from the nurses and doctors who were hurrying in and out whether the French aviator would live or die. n.o.body would stop to give him a satisfactory answer. There was a flap in the back of the tent, and through this Owen cautiously peered. He saw a nurse with something that looked like wet absorbent cotton dabbing at a round black object.

Presently he saw that the round object was the head of a man blackened by fire. Just then the nurse looked up, saw Owen's guilty face and gave a little exclamation of dismay. At the same instant Owen felt a hand grasp his elbow. Withdrawing his head from the tent, he turned quickly and was confronted by the red face of Hicks, the blackmailer, counselor and dream messenger.

The secretary backed away from Hicks with a face of terror.

"Don't be scared," said Hicks in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "I feel as if I were in this thing as deep as you are."

"In what thing?" asked Owen.

"Don't bluff, old man," said Hicks. "Didn't you dream about me last night?"

"Well, what have my dreams to do with you?"

"Stop bluffing," replied Hicks. "Didn't you see me in a dream last night? And didn't I leave a black, s.h.i.+ning stone on the table when I left?"

Owen did not deny these questions, and the red-visaged man went on:

"I see you took my advice--that is, his advice, whoever he is, and you fixed the wire."

"Look here, Hicks, in heaven's name, tell me what this means. I did dream about you; you told me to do the thing, and it's your fault. You admit you are in it. Now, what is it?"

"Owen," said Hicks, "you and I are a couple of pikers in a big game-- bigger than we understand. We hold the cards, but somebody else is playing the hand for us. He is an old guy and a wise one, four thousand years old, he tells me, and, though it scares me out of my boots to think who I am trailing along with, I'm going to stick and you'd better stick, too, and let him play our hand to the end."

"Who is it?" asked Owen, wondering if the morphine had gotten the better of him again or if Hicks were playing some uncanny deceit on him.

"I don't know," replied Hicks. "He's somebody who has been dead 4,000 years, and he wants to have this girl Pauline killed so he can get her back. I suppose he's some kind of ghostly white slaver. It isn't our business what he is as long as he takes care of us. If we'll help him he'll help us."

"Well, he didn't manage very well today," objected Owen.

"He planned all right," rejoined Hicks. "The machine fell, and if she'd been in it she'd have been killed. But the other side played a card. I don't know what the card was, but it took the trick and she didn't go up in the machine. That's all. But don't worry, we'll have better luck some other time."

Owen shook his head. He could make nothing of this battle of unseen forces. It was clear to him that he had grasped at the one big chance to get Pauline's estate and had missed it. He told Hicks so frankly.

"That's where you're wrong again," insisted Hicks. "If that girl had been killed today it would have been a big blunder."

"A blunder?" queried Owen. "Didn't you say that Pauline must be put out of the way before we can get hold of her fortune?"

"Listen," said Hicks glancing cautiously about, "come over here away from these people."

"What do you mean by saying that it would have been a big blunder if Pauline had been killed in that flying machine?" demanded Owen.

"Yes, an almighty big blunder--that's what I said, and I can tell you why. We were pretty stupid not to think of it before. Now here's what's got to happen to Miss Pauline--"

Hicks placed his mouth close to Owen's car and whispered.

CHAPTER V

THE PIRATE AND PAULINE

A sort of false quiet, like the calm that broods between storms, kept all serene at the Marvin mansion for a week after the aeroplane catastrophe. Little had been seen of Harry, who was busy with directors' meetings and visits to the factories. Owen had read with alarm of rumors that some one had tampered with a wire of the wrecked biplane. But if the authorities were investigating he saw no signs of it, and suspicion pointed no finger at him.

What puzzled and worried Owen more than anything else was his own mind and behavior. Having no belief in the supernatural, he could not account for the dream which had thrown him into a criminal partners.h.i.+p with Hicks. Hicks had blackmailed him in the past, and there was n.o.body he had feared and hated more than this vulgar and disreputable race track man. Yet Hicks had appeared to him in a dream, and Owen had promptly done his bidding, involving himself in what would probably turn out to be murder. The newspapers reported the French aviator as barely living from day to day.

Owen suffered the torment of a lost soul, but, at least he had no more dreams, or spectral visitations. Hicks called him on the telephone once or twice, but the secretary refused to talk.

Pauline, too, had a busy week. Besides her usual social activities, she rewrote and finished her new story. It seemed to her even better than the one in the Cosmopolitan Magazine.

"This will surely be taken," Pauline thought with a little sigh of regret, "and that means the end of my year of adventures--"

She had determined on this course the night after the accident. It was after midnight, and Pauline was trying to marshal the exciting recollections of the day into the orderly mental procession that leads to sleep. Very faintly she heard what sounded like the music of a distant mandolin. Pauline knew it was Harry, went to the open window and looked down on the dark lawn. There he was playing with a bit of straw instead of a pick that his music might not disturb the sleepers in the house.

Pauline wanted to throw her arms around him and promise not to cause any more worry. But she didn't, because she couldn't reach him from the window. After Harry had gone Pauline decided to finish her story, send it to a publisher and let his decision be hers.

"If they accept it, you stay home and marry Harry," she told the pretty face under the filmy night cap which smiled at her from the mirror.

"But if they dare reject it, Harry will have to worry, dear boy though he is."

So Pauline lost no time in finis.h.i.+ng and submitting her ma.n.u.script, inclosing a special delivery stamp and a request please to let her know at once.

On Sat.u.r.day Pauline received a bulky letter in the morning's mail. It was her neatly typed ma.n.u.script and a short letter declining her story. The editor thought it charming, showed wonderful imagination, gave great promise of future success, but there was a lack of experience evident throughout--a little unreal, he added. He ventured to suggest that the author would do well to travel around and see the world from different angles. During the afternoon Harvey Schieffelin dropped in for a call. He had found her story in the Cosmopolitan and complimented her then he began to laugh.

"Polly, that's a bully story of yours, but you ought to have gone down and watched some stokers do work before you described that scene."

"What was wrong in my description?" demanded the young auth.o.r.ess.

"Well, you told of a stoker laying his grimy hand on the fire door and pulling it open to rake the fire."

"Well, couldn't he do that?"

"Oh, yes," laughed Harvey, "he could, but he wouldn't do it more than once. Those doors are almost red hot and would b.u.m the flesh off the stoker's hand, whether it were grimy or not. I'll show you on my yacht some time. What you need is--?"

"Harvey, don't you dare tell me I need experience," interrupted Pauline with unexpected heat. Young Schieffelin saw that tears were almost in her eyes.

"Well," thought Schieffelin, "this vein leads too close to water," and he hurried to s.h.i.+ft the course of the conversation.

But the damage was done. Pauline took her story to the little open fireplace in her room and destroyed it. At the same time she destroyed, her resolution to give up the year of adventure. There could be no question, she needed experience. Her adopted father had admitted it, the editor had said it, and even an empty-headed young man like Schieffelin could see it. She was sorry for Harry, but it couldn't be helped. She picked up a copy of "Treasure Island" and soon wished fervently that the days of pirates were back again.

Owen gave up his fight against morphine late Friday night. Sat.u.r.day he was at peace with the world. Gone were all the nerve clamorings and with them went his scruples. All day he kept a furtive watch upon Pauline, and even heard her envious remarks about pirates to Harry when he returned for a weekend at home. Owen sympathized with Pauline in her regret that pirates were extinct. A pirate would have been very useful to the secretary just then.

However, there were other cut-throats, plenty of them, and perhaps some other kind would do. There were gunmen, for instance, but, an honest District Attorney had lately made these murderous gentlemen of the underworld almost as quiet as pirates. He was still pondering when Hicks called again on the telephone. This time the secretary responded and made an immediate appointment in a cafe near Forty-second street.

Owen related the events of the week, ending with Pauline's hankering for pirates. The two men got their heads together and rapidly evolved a plan.

From the cafe they took a taxi and rode along the water front, first on one side of the island of Manhattan and then on the other. The cab stopped near the worst-looking saloons, while the two schemers entered and looked over the sailors and longsh.o.r.emen refres.h.i.+ng themselves at the bars. After covering several miles of water front they had collected as many as a dozen abominable barroom cigars and a few equally dubious drinks, but had not yet found what they were looking for.