CHAPTER XIXWHAT DASHLEIGH SAW.
The cab-driver stared.
“Well, it’s this way, you see,” Bert tarried to explain. “I’m overdue at some Mrs. Whitlock’s—Mrs. Marcellene Whitlock’s, I think—for dinner this evening. Big feed and all that, you understand. I was to have been there at eight sharp, and it’s now hurrying along toward nine. I don’t know where they live—forgot the number—and can’t find it in the directory. The best way, I suppose, is to take them in turn and chase the right one down in that way. Slow process, but I don’t know anything better.”
The driver grinned.
“P’r’aps ’twasn’t Whitlock!” he ventured. “I heard that there was to be a big dinner at Mrs. Warlock’s, on Whitney Avenue, this evening.”
“Warlock? Well, that may be the name. Hanged if I know! Drive me to Mrs. Warlock’s, as fast as you can.”
He tumbled himself and his mandolin into the vehicle, and the driver springing to the box, they were soon rattling away.
There was a “party” at Mrs. Warlock’s; Bert could not doubt that, for when he jumped out in front of the house he heard the unmistakable sounds of merriment and music.
“Wait a minute!” he asked of the driver, and darted up the steps.
In answer to his rather nervous ring, a white-aproned servant appeared.
“Yes, we have a party here to-night,” was the answer to his question.
Bert felt so much better that he was about to pass into the house, when the driver called to him:
“Forgot something, didn’t you?”
Bert reddened again; and, dropping his mandolin on the steps, rushed down to the street and paid for the use of the cab. Then he tore up the steps again, and, hurrying past the wondering servant, left his coat and hat and mandolin in the hall, and, without further questions, strode into what he took to be the dining-room.
He stopped on the threshold in amazement. Some couples were on the floor dancing. But they were all strangers to him. Not a face there had he ever seen before. The hostess came forward with a gracious smile.
“I guess I have made a mistake,” Bert stammered. “I am due at a dinner-party at Mrs. Whitlock’s.”
“This is Mrs. Warlock’s.”
“Yes, yes, I know; but I—I——”
He was retreating, covered with confusion.
“I beg your pardon!” he managed to stammer, then dived for the outer air, picking up his hat, coat, and mandolin as he ran.
The cab was a third of a block away, but it stopped in answer to the bellowing hail which he gave as he jumped down the steps, and turned round and drove back.
“Wasn’t the place!” said Bert, in some confusion, as he met the cab. “We’ll have to make another try. It was a Whitney—no, I mean a Whitlock where the party is that I am trying to reach. That was Warlock’s.”
“I told you it was Warlock’s.”
“I know you did. Take me to a Whitney Avenue of Whitlocks, I mean to a Whitlock’s of Whitney Avenue.”
He looked at his watch again and saw that the hour was nearly nine.
“Heavens! I won’t dare to tell Dick of this!” he thought, as he again stowed himself in the cab.
The driver took Bert to the first Whitlock’s of that avenue, and it was not the place.
“Go right ahead,” Bert commanded, as he descended from his fruitless search. “We’ve got to find that old number, if it’s in New Haven. I’m going to swear off on accepting invitations for myself and the mandolin after this.”
The cab tore away again, finally stopping in front of a house which Bert felt sure could not be the place.
“Yes, it must be,” he thought, “for there goes Amos Belton, of the juniors.”
A dark-complexioned man, who looked young and springy as he mounted the steps, had drawn Bert’s attention.
“Just wait a minute till I know that I’m right,” Bert begged of the driver, for he had learned caution. “I’ll be down in a minute, whether it’s right or wrong!”
Then he made a dash for the house that he hoped was Mrs. Marcellene Whitlock’s.
The young man whom he took to be Amos Belton disappeared in the building; and Bert, following closely after him, gave the bell a tug.
It was evidently out of repair, for no ring could be heard. Time was too precious to wait long in uncertainty, and when no one appeared in answer to his rap, he pushed open the door and looked in.
He saw a light in a room at the farther end of a long hall; and, thinking to gain information, if nothing else, Bert put down his mandolin and advanced toward the illumination. As he walked along the carpeted hall, his feet making little noise, he reached a point which enabled him to see a large part of the interior of the room.
He stopped in bewildered surprise. In the room was one whom at first sight he took to be Inza Burrage. In a bewildering way there came to him a memory of some talk he had heard that Amos Belton, the junior, was madly in love with Miss Burrage. Then it occurred to him that this must be Mrs. Whitlock’s, and that Inza was one of the guests. Perhaps Merriwell was there?
He was about to advance and speak, when the person whom he took to be Inza turned round from the mirror, and he had a good look at the face. It was surprisingly like Inza’s, so much so that at first he was sure it was Inza; but he saw a moment later that, while the face looked so much like that of Miss Burrage, there was a distinct difference. It was as if some girl had tried to “make up” to look like Inza.
Then his bewilderment increased, for it came to him that the face on which he was looking was that of the young man who had inquired of him and Ready in the suburbs that afternoon when the hockey-match was to be held.
“It can’t be, though!” Bert gasped, beginning to feel that he must be dreaming. “Perhaps this is the fellow’s sister. Yes, that must be it.”
He had unintentionally made a noise, whereupon the girl—if it was a girl—turned, saw him in the hall, and, immediately drawing back, disappeared.
A moment later he heard voices; then all was still.
“I guess I’ve lost my head completely this evening!” thought the astounded freshman. “Anyway, this isn’t Mrs. Whitlock’s; and, as no one has hurried to give me the glad hand, I’ll get out as quickly as I can.”
His watch told him that it was after nine when he again reached the street, where he found the cabman patiently awaiting his return.
“Wrong place again?” questioned cabbie.
“Yes. Make another try!”
Again the cab containing Bert and his mandolin rattled away.
“I’ll be arrested soon as a lunatic or dangerous person!” he groaned. “Makes me want to go home and manufacture some lie that will let me out of the thing easily. I might say that I had a touch of fever or something. Well, I’m in a pretty pickle! And who in thunder could that have been? That couldn’t have been Inza, and it couldn’t have been the fellow that Ready and I saw this afternoon. I shall have to tell Ready about that.”
Two other houses which the driver said were occupied by Whitlocks were visited. At the last of these unhappy Bert secured a clue.
“Perhaps you are looking for the people who moved into 141,” suggested the lady of the house. “I think that’s the name—Whitlock, and as I came by there this evening I heard sounds which indicated that they were having some kind of a party.”
“Just moved in?” Bert gasped. “Then that’s it. That’s the reason I couldn’t find the name in the directory.”
Then he made another dive for the cab, asking himself why folks who had just moved into a new neighborhood didn’t say so on their cards, or in some other manner notify people.
“No. 141,” he said to the jehu. “We’ll try that; and, if we don’t dig up the right place this time, we’ll give it up as a bad job.”
But it was the right place; and, although he was “desperately late,” as he admitted, he was graciously received. After he had feasted as well as could be expected at that late hour, he found that there was still an hour or more in which he and his mandolin would be very welcome.
When Bert reached his room that night he found Dick Starbright just turning in, and he hastily told his chum his story, for he had decided that he must ask him what he thought of the counterpart of Inza Burrage he had beheld in that house on Whitney Avenue.
“I knew you’d be late,” said Starbright. “You always are.”
“But I wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t forgotten the number,” Bert insisted. “But I don’t want a sermon; I want to know what you think about that young woman who looked so much like Inza Burrage that at first I could have sworn it was she?”
Dick sat down and deliberately looked his chum over.
“You haven’t been drinking?”
“Honor bright, not a thing, except a glass of wine at Mrs. Whitlock’s. But I hadn’t even smelled the wine when I saw that girl.”
“I shouldn’t think anything about it if it hadn’t been for Amos Belton,” declared the big freshman. “His presence there makes the thing a mystery to me, though, of course, there is no mystery in it. Perhaps he called on some young lady there who remarkably resembles Inza Burrage. You say yourself it was not Inza Burrage, but only looked like her.”
“That doesn’t explain anything.”
“No, perhaps not. But, as you know, it’s been reported that he is wildly in love with Inza. She doesn’t care anything for him, of course, for she’s crazy about Merriwell.”
“Lucky dog, too!” nodded Bert.
“Yes, that’s what I think myself. Well, now, does it strike you as possible that Belton, being unable to get any encouragement from Inza, may have turned to this girl, who looks so much like her? Seems to me there may be your explanation.”
“But what made them disappear so strangely when she discovered me?”
“You scared her, probably,” grinned Dick. “Perhaps she took you for a burglar. I’ve an idea that you looked rather wild-eyed about that time. You were excited, and, no doubt, your face showed it. Seeing a man standing in the hall, which she supposed unoccupied, she was naturally frightened. Any girl would have been.”
“But what became of Belton?”
“Well, now, ask me something easy. How do I know?”
Dashleigh sat down in a chair. He was not satisfied.
“I heard the other day that Belton is soon to quit Yale,” Dick volunteered.
“That doesn’t explain anything!”
“Who said it did? I merely made the remark. He has fallen so low in his exams that he can go no farther. Seems to me that was what I heard. Either that or money matters forces him out of Yale. But probably it isn’t money matters, for he could find something to do to keep himself up.”
“Yes, if he was willing to work like a horse and live like a hermit. That’s about the only way for a fellow to go through Yale, or any other college, without money.”
“And wasn’t it Horace Greeley who said that if a man is to succeed in anything he must live like a hermit and work like a horse? Anyway, he said something like that.”
“Belton is from the South, isn’t he?” Dashleigh asked. “Scarcely probable he’d work like a horse to get through college.”
“From Washington, I think. Do you know, that fellow looks almost like a negro to me. I don’t wonder that Inza Burrage has never given him any encouragement.”
“I believe you’re getting struck in that direction yourself,” Dashleigh laughed.
Starbright flushed and looked uncomfortable.
“You’re off! But there aren’t many nicer girls than Inza.”
When Dashleigh fell asleep, his dreams placed him in a cab, in which, throughout the remainder of the night, he pursued Mrs. Whitlock, of Whitney Avenue, with the relentlessness of a detective, suddenly to find her standing before him in the person of his instructor in mathematics, who naively assured him that what he had really been searching for was the elusive.
“Get up!” came in the voice of Dick Starbright. “You’re flouncing there like a fish.”
“Is it morning?” Bert asked, suddenly rousing.
“Yes, and a beautiful day. A better one for that hockey-match this afternoon couldn’t have been made to order!”