67
“Please wait till I finish, Whitney. I followed her nowhere, though she interested me tremendously. I wish you could have seen her eat.”
“Eat?”
“Particularly the grapefruit. By Jove, Barnes, that girl certainly loves grapefruit! It was fascinating. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her.”
“And did she notice you?” quizzed Barnes, raising his eyebrows.
“She was too busy,” came the gloomy rejoinder. “I watched her steadily, fairly bored her with my eyes––tried to will her to look at me. They say you can do that, you know––mental telepathy, projecting thought waves or something of the sort.”
“Oh, rot!” cried Barnes, impatiently. “I tried that on a dog once and I’ve got the scar yet.”
“But I tell you, Whitney, it almost worked. After a time her eyelids began to flutter and the roses in her cheeks bloomed darker. But just as I felt sure she would look up and see me––splash! the grapefruit hit her in the eye!”
“What!” ejaculated Whitney Barnes, wheeling open-mouthed and facing his friend.
“The juice, I mean,” Gladwin laughed ruefully, “and, of course, the spell was broken. She never looked again. Dash it all, there’s some sort of a lemon in all my romances!”
“You certainly do play in tough luck,” sympathized Barnes. “I can see that you need bucking up,68and I think I’ve got the right kind of remedy for you. Wait, I’ll call Bateato.”
Whitney Barnes stepped briskly across the room and pressed a button. In a twinkling the little Jap appeared.
“Bateato,” said Barnes, “has your master any hunting clothes at the hotel?”
“Ees, sair!” responded the Jap. “Plenty hotel––plenty house. We no time pack all clothes––go sail too quick.”
“Plenty here––splendid!” enthused Barnes. “Pack a bag for him, Bateato, this instant––enough things to last a couple of weeks.”
“What’s all this?” cut in Gladwin. “What are you going to do?”
“Never you mind,” retorted Barnes, importantly; “you do as I say, Bateato––I’m going to show your master some excitement. He’ll never get it here in town.”
“Ees, sair! I pack him queeck,” and Bateato vanished noiselessly, seemingly to shoot through the doorway and up the broad staircase as if sucked up a flue.
“But see here”–––objected Travers Gladwin.
“Not a word now,” his friend choked him off. “If you don’t like it you don’t have to stay, but I’m going to take you in hand and show you a time you’re not used to.”
“But I don’t”–––
“Don’t let’s argue about it,” said Barnes, lightly.69“You called me in here to take charge of things and I’m taking charge. Just to change the subject, tell me something about your paintings. This one, for instance––who is that haughty looking old chap?”
Whitney Barnes had planted himself with legs spread wide apart in front of one of the largest portraits in the room, a life-size painting of an aristocratic looking old man who seemed on the point of strangling in his stock.
Travers Gladwin turned to the painting and said with an unmistakable note of pride:
“The original Gladwin, my great-grandfather. Painted more than a hundred years ago by Gilbert Stuart.”
“I guess you beat me, Travers––the original Barnes hadn’t discovered mustard a hundred years ago. But I say, here’s a Gainsborough, ‘The Blue Boy.’ By George! that’s a stunner! Worth a small fortune, I suppose.”
Whitney Barnes had crossed the room and stood before the most striking looking portrait in the collection, a tall, handsome boy in a vividly blue costume of the Gainsborough period.
The owner of “The Blue Boy” turned around, cast a fleeting glimpse at the portrait and turned away with a peculiar grimace.
“You suppose wrong, Whitney,” he said, shortly. “That isn’t––so––horribly––valuable.”
“What! A big painting like that, by a chap famous enough to have a hat named after him.”
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“That was just about the way it struck me at first,” answered Gladwin, “so I begged two old gentlemen in London to let me have it. Persuaded them to part with it for a mere five hundred pounds, on condition––close attention, Whitney––that I keep the matter a secret. I was delighted with my bargain––until I sawthe original.”
“The original?”
“Ah ha! the original. It was quite a shock for me to come face to face with that and realize that my ‘Blue Boy’ had a streak of yellow in him.”
“That sounds exciting,” cried Barnes. “What did you do? Put the case in the hands of the police?”
“Not much,” denied Gladwin emphatically. “That would have given the public a fine laugh. It deceived me, so I hung it up there to deceive others. It got you, you see. But you are the only one I’ve let into the secret––don’t repeat it, will you?”
“Never!” promised Barnes. “It’ll be too much of a lark to hear others rave over it.”
“Thank you,” acknowledged the bitten collector, curtly.
Barnes wandered from “The Blue Boy” and signalled out another painting.
“Who painted this?” he asked.
“That’s a Veber––but do you know, Whitney, the more I think of it––there’s something about that grapefruit girl, something gripping that”–––
“I like these two,” commented Barnes.
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“There’s something different about her––something”–––
“Who is this by?” inquired Barnes, lost in admiration of a Meissonier.
“A blonde”–––
“What?”
“And very young, and I know her smile”–––
“Look here, Travers, what are these two worth?”
Gladwin volplaned to earth, climbed out of his sky chariot and was back in the midst of his art treasures again.
“I beg your pardon,” he said hastily. “Which two?”
Barnes pointed to two of the smaller pictures.
“Guess,” suggested his host.
“Five thousand.”
“Multiply it by ten––then add something.”
“No, really.”
“Yes, really! That one on the left is a Rembrandt! and the other is a Corot!”
“My word; they’re corkers, eh!”
“Yes, when you know who painted them, and if you happen to have the eye of a connoisseur.”
“And what in creation is this?” exclaimed Barnes, as he stumbled against the great ornamental chest which stood against the wall just beneath the Rembrandt and Corot.
“Oh, let’s get the exhibition over,” said Gladwin, peevishly. “That’s a treasure chest. Cost me a barrel––picked it up in Egypt.”
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“You never picked it up in your life,” retorted Barnes, grasping the great metal bound chest and striving vainly to lift it. “Anything in it?” he asked, lifting the lid and answering himself in the negative.
“What’s the whole collection worth?” asked Barnes, as he returned to where his friend was standing, gazing ruefully at “The Blue Boy.”
“Oh, half a million or more. I really never kept track.”
“Half a million! And you go abroad and leave all these things unguarded? You certainly are fond of taking chances. It’s a marvel they haven’t been stolen before now.”
“Nonsense,” said Gladwin. “I have a burglar alarm set here, and I’ll wager there aren’t half a dozen persons who know the Gladwin collection is hung in this house.”
“Just the same––but I say, Travers, there’s the door bell. Were you expecting anybody else.”
Gladwin glanced about him nervously.
“No,” he said sharply. “On the contrary, I didn’t wish––what the deuce does it mean?”
“It means some one is at the door.”
73CHAPTER XII.APPROACHING A WORLD OF MYSTERY.
Gaston Brielle, the strawberry blonde French chauffeur who piloted the big, luxurious motor car Jabez Hogg of Omaha had placed at the service of Mrs. Elvira Burton and her two charming young nieces, did not have his mind entirely concentrated upon manipulating the wheel and throttle of the car as he swung around Grant’s Tomb and sped southward down the Drive. While his knowledge of English was confined to a few expletives of a profane nature and the mystic jargon of the garage, he was nevertheless thrilled by the belief that the two mademoiselles behind him were plotting some mysterious enterprise.
From time to time they had unconsciously dropped their voices to the low tones commonly used by conspirators, or at least that was the way Gaston had sensed it. Along the silent roads of Central Park and Riverside Drive, where even the taxis seemed to employ their mufflers and to resort less frequently to the warning racket of their exhausts, the Frenchman had been straining his ears to listen.
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He had heard on two occasions what he divined as a manifest sob, first when the emotional Sadie gave way to tears and again when Helen was aggravated to a petulant outburst of grief.
Later when he heard bright laughter and gay exclamations he could hardly believe his ears. He was profoundly troubled and completely bewildered––a dangerous state of mind for a man who has the power of seventy horses under the pressure of his thumb.
Nor was his mental turmoil in the least alleviated when, having turned south and being on the point of coasting down a precipitous hill he felt a touch on his shoulder and heard the elder of his two pretty passengers command him in worse French than his own poor English to go slow when he turned into Fifth avenue again and be prepared to stop.
Gaston knew that this was in direct violation of his orders from Mrs. Burton, but when he saw a yellow-backed bill flutter down over his shoulder his quick intelligence blazed with understanding. His first groping suspicions had been justified. There was romance in the wind. Steering easily with one hand, Gaston deftly seized the bill and caused it to vanish somewhere in his great fur coat.
Sadie Burton had been horror-stricken at this bold proffer of a bribe. Likewise she was alarmed that Helen should put so much trust in Gaston, who seemed to be in mortal terror of her aunt and to quake all through his body when he listened to her commands.
75
As Helen sank back beside her, after letting fall the bribe, the agitated Sadie whispered tremulously:
“Are you sure you can trust him, Helen? If he should tell Auntie El she would surely make you a prisoner. You will never get a chance to leave her side at the opera to-night.”
“Gaston is a Frenchman, my dear,” laughed Helen, confidently, “and most Frenchmen––even chauffeurs, I am sure––would cut their hearts out before they would oppose a barrier to the course of true love.”
But Helen’s gayety did not communicate itself to Sadie. That shy miss trembled apprehensively as she sought to picture herself in Helen’s place––on the verge of an elopement. Not that such a prospect did not have its alluring thrill even to such a shrinking maiden as the violet-eyed Sadie, but her fear of her aunt seemed to crush and obliterate these titillating sensations. As the car shot through Seventy-second street and headed for the entrance to the West Drive of Central Park, she ventured another word of caution.
“Wouldn’t it be better to send a messenger to Mr. Gladwin’s house, Helen? Suppose we should run into somebody there who knew auntie?”
“You ridiculously little fraid-cat,” Helen caught her up. “Of course there’ll be nobody there but Travers, or perhaps his man or some of the other servants. He has good reason for keeping very quiet now and sees absolutely nobody, not even––not even––not even his grandmother, if he has one.”
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“And didn’t he tell you whether or not he had a grandmother, Helen?” gasped Sadie.
But Helen disdained to reply, her heart suddenly filling with rapture at the prospect of an immediate meeting with her betrothed.
77CHAPTER VIII.TRAVERS GLADWIN GETS A THRILL.
A ring at the door bell should suggest to the ordinary mind that some person or persons clamored for admission, but Whitney Barnes’s announcement seemed to have difficulty in hammering its way into Travers Gladwin’s gray matter and thence downward into the white matter of his brain cells.
“What is some one at the door for?” he asked vacuously.
“To see you, of course,” snapped Barnes.
“Nonsense!” exclaimed the other with annoyance. “The house has been closed for ages and you are the only one who knows I am home. Why I”–––
Bateato skimmed in, grinning like a full moon.
“Well, what is it?” his master asked, shortly,
“Two ladies, sair!”
“Two––that’s good!” chimed in Barnes. “They must have got a wireless that I was here.”
“What do they want?” Gladwin addressed Bateato.
“You, sair,” replied the Jap. “They say you come to door one minute.”
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“Two ladies to see me? Are you sure?” Travers Gladwin was both bewildered and embarrassed.
“Ees, sair!” Bateato assured him.
“Did you tell them that I was here?”
“They no ask. They say, ‘Please, Mr. Gladwin come to door!’”
“Well, you tell them Mr. Gladwin is not at home––that I’m out, away––in Egypt.”
“Ees, sair,” and Bateato was about to skim out into the hallway again when Barnes stopped him.
“Wait a minute, Bateato––what do they look like?”
“Look nice, sair,” and Bateato’s moon-like grin returned in full beam.
“You’re sure?” asked Barnes, gravely.
“Oh, fine,” uttered the Jap, enthusiastically.
“Young?” inquired Barnes.
“Ees, sair––much young––come in autbile. I tell them you no home?” turning to Gladwin.
“No, wait,” responded Gladwin, his curiosity taking fire. “You tell them to come in.”
“They say you come door.”
“Very well,” but Whitney Barnes stopped him.
“Better see them in here, Travers. If they really want to see you they’ll come in. Ask them to come in, Bateato.”
The little Jap was gone with the speed and noiselessness of a mouse.
“Who in heaven’s name can it be?” whispered79Travers Gladwin as Bateato could be heard lisping in the vestibule. Before Whitney Barnes managed to frame a reply a swift, muffled step was audible and Helen Burton stood framed in the narrow space between the portières. Her timid cousin stopped behind her, staring timidly over her shoulder. She was manifestly surprised and startled as she paused and regarded the two young men.
In point of startled surprise, however, Travers Gladwin’s emotion matched hers. He stared at her almost rudely in his amazement and involuntarily he turned to Whitney Barnes and said under his breath:
“The grapefruit girl!”
Whitney Barnes’s lips merely framed: “No! You don’t mean it!”
He was going to add something more, when the two girls came on into the room diffidently and stood by the great carved table, close together, as if prepared to cling to one another in case something extraordinary happened. Travers Gladwin was the first of the two young men to come to their rescue.
“Pardon me! Did you wish to see me?” he said with his best bow.
“No,” replied Helen Burton quickly, her lips trembling; “we want to see Mr. Gladwin, please.”
The young man did not recover instantly from this staggering jolt, and a clock somewhere in the great hall nearby ticked a dozen strokes before he managed to mumble:
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“Well––er––I am”––
“Isn’t he here?” broke in the brown-haired beauty, breathlessly. “His man just asked us to come into this room to see him.”
“What Mr. Gladwin did you want?” asked that young man incoherently.
“Why, Mr. Travers Gladwin!” exclaimed the girl indignantly, the color mantling to her forehead. “Is there more than one?”
“Well––er––that is,” the young man turned desperately to his friend, “do you know Mr. Gladwin?”
“Do I know him?” cried Helen Burton, and then, with a hysterical little laugh as she turned to her cousin, “I should think I did know him. I know him very, very well.”
Sadie Burton appeared both distressed and frightened and slipped limply down into one of the great chairs beside her. As Travers Gladwin’s features passed through a series of vacant and bewildered expressions and as the attention of Whitney Barnes seemed to be focussed with strange intensity upon the prettiness of the shy and silent Sadie, anger flashed in Helen’s expressive eyes as she again addressed the young man, who felt as if some mysterious force had just robbed him of his identity.
“You don’t suppose,” she said, drawing herself to the full height of her graceful figure, “that I would come here to see Travers Gladwin if I didn’t know him, do you?”
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“No, no, no––of course not!” sputtered the young man. “It was stupid of me to ask such a question. Please forgive me. I––er”––
Helen turned from him as if to speak to Sadie, who sat with erect primness suffering from what she sensed as a strange and overpowering stroke. She had permitted herself to look straight into the eyes of Whitney Barnes and hold the look for a long, palpitating second.
While Sadie was groping in her mind for some explanation of the strange thrill, Whitney Barnes had flung himself headlong into a new sensation and was determined to make the most of it, so when Travers Gladwin turned to him and asked:
“I rather think Gladwin’s gone out, don’t you?” Barnes nodded and answered positively:
“He was here only a few minutes ago.”
This reply drew Helen’s attention immediately to Barnes and taking a step forward she said eagerly:
“Oh, I hope he’s here. You see, it’s awfully important––what I want to see him about.”
Whitney Barnes nodded with extraordinary animation and turning to Gladwin impaled that young man with the query:
“Why don’t you find out if he’s in?”
While Gladwin had come up for air he was still partially drowned. Turning to Helen Burton, he forced an agreeable smile and said hurriedly:
“Yes, if you’ll excuse me a moment I’ll see, but may I give him your name?”
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It was Helen’s turn to recoil and stepping to where Sadie had at last got upon her feet, she whispered:
“Shall I tell him? They both act so strangely.”
“Oh, no, Helen, dear,” fluttered Sadie. “It may be some awful trap or something.”
While this whispered conclave was going on Travers Gladwin made a frantic signal to Whitney Barnes behind his back and mumbled:
“Try and find out what it’s all about?”
“I will––leave that to me,” said Barnes confidently.
Leaving her cousin’s side, Helen again confronted the two young men and said tremulously:
“I’d rather not give my name. I know that sounds odd, but for certain reasons”–––
“Oh, of course, if you’d rather not,” answered Gladwin.
“If you will just say,” Helen ran on breathlessly, “that I had to come early to tell him something––something about to-night––he’ll understand and know who I am.”
“Certainly, certainly,” said the baffled young millionaire. “Say that you want to see him about something that’s going to happen to-night”–––
“Yes, if you’ll be so kind,” and Helen gave the young man a smile that furnished him the thrill he had hunted for all over the globe, with a margin to boot.
“I’ll be right back,” he gasped, spun on his heel and passed dizzily out into the hallway.
83CHAPTER XIV.THRILL BEGETS THRILL.
Gladwin’s exit from the room served as a signal for the agile-witted Barnes to strike while the iron was hot. His friend had hardly vanished through the portières when he turned to Helen with an air of easy confidence, looking frankly into her eyes, and said:
“It’s singular that my friend doesn’t know what you referred to––the object of your call,” and he nodded his head with a knowing smile.
“Why, do you?” asked Helen eagerly, coming toward him.
Whitney’s knowing smile increased in its quality of knowingness and he spoke with an inflection that was quite baffling.
“Well,” he said, in a confiding whisper, “I have an idea; but he”––jerking his thumb over his shoulder where Travers Gladwin was last seen departing from view––“is Travers Gladwin’s most intimate friend.”
The astonishing character of this information served only further to confuse the beautiful Miss84Burton’s already obfuscated reasoning faculties and hypnotize her into that receptive condition where she was capable of believing any solemnly expressed statement.
“Really!” she said with a little start of surprise.
“Oh, yes,” ran on the glib Barnes, “they are lifelong chums––love each other like brothers; one of those Castor and Pollox affairs, you know––only more so. Never have any secrets from each other and all that sort of thing.”
Helen dropped back into her chair and her brow wrinkled with perplexity.
“That’s curious,” she said. “I don’t think Travers ever spoke to me about that kind of a friend.”
The idea was just burgeoning in her mind to ask for the friend’s name when Barnes hastened on:
“Well, now that is singular. Are you sure that”––
The sudden brisk return of Travers Gladwin saved Barnes from an immediate excruciating tax upon his ingenuity.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Gladwin, going to Helen and shaking his head regretfully, “but I couldn’t find him.”
“Oh, dear! That’s very provoking!” cried Helen. “He didn’t say he was going out, did he?”
“No; I could have sworn he was here a few minutes ago,” spoke up Barnes, turning his head away for fear his smile would suddenly get out of control.
“Well, is his man here?” demanded the girl.
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“Why, he let you in,” blurted Gladwin.
“I don’t mean the Japanese.”
“You mean the butler, perhaps,” Gladwin corrected.
“Yes,” Helen answered mechanically.
Travers Gladwin felt it was time for Barnes to take a hand again, as his mental airship was bucking badly in the invisible air currents.
“Is Gladwin’s butler here?” he inquired sharply, frowning at Barnes.
“No,” said Barnes promptly.
“I am sorry, but he is not here,” Gladwin communicated to Helen.
“Well, where is he?” cried the exasperated Helen.
“Where is he?” Gladwin asked Barnes.
Whitney Barnes went down for the count of one but bobbed up serenely.
“Where is he?” he said with a nonchalant gesture. “Oh, he’s giving a lecture on butling.”
The bewildered Miss Burton did not catch the text of this explanation. In her increasing agitation she wrung her hands in her muff and almost sobbed:
“I’m sure I don’t know what to do. I simply must get word to him somehow. It’s awfully important.”
Whitney Barnes saw the trembling lip and the dampening eye and strove to avert a catastrophe that would probably double the difficulty of probing into the mystery. Turning to Gladwin, but half directing his remarks to Helen, he said:
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“I’ve just been telling the ladies that you and Travers are bosom pals.”
Travers Gladwin flashed one look of amazement and then caught on.
“Oh, yes,” he cried, “we are very close to each other––I couldn’t begin to tell you how close.”
“And I have also hinted,” pursued Barnes, “that you never have any secrets from each other, and that I felt sure that you knew all about––all about––a––a er––to-night.”
“Oh, of course,” assented Gladwin, beginning to warm up to his part and feel the rich thrill of the mystery involved. “Yes, yes––of course––he’s told me all about to-night.”
“Has he?” gasped Helen, looking into the young man’s brown eyes for confirmation, feeling that she liked the eyes, but uncertain that she read the confirmation.
“Yes, everything,” lied Gladwin, now glowing with enthusiasm.
All this while the shy and silent Sadie had remained demurely in her chair looking from one to the other and vainly endeavoring to catch the drift of the conversation.
Sadie was too dainty a little soul to be possessed of real reasoning faculties. The one thought that had been uppermost in her mind all day was that Helen was taking a desperate step, probably embarking upon some terrible tragedy. She had hungered for87an opportunity to compare notes with some sturdier will than her own and the instant she heard Travers Gladwin admit that he “knew all about to-night” she rose from her chair and asked, breathlessly, turning up her big, appealing eyes to Travers Gladwin:
“Then won’t you––oh, please, won’t you––tell her what you think of it?”
There was something so naïve and innocent in Sadie’s attitude and expression that Whitney Barnes was charmed. It also tickled his soul to see how thoroughly his friend was stumped. So to add to Travers’s confusion he chimed in:
“Oh, yes, go on and tell her what you think of it.”
“I’d rather not,” said Gladwin ponderously, trying to escape from the appealing eyes.
“But really you ought to, old chap,” reproved Barnes. “It’s your duty to.”
“Oh, yes, please do!” implored Sadie.
The victim was caught three ways. Both young ladies regarded him earnestly and with looks that hung upon his words, while Barnes stood to one side with a solemn long face, elbow in one hand and chin gripped tightly in the other, manifestly for the moment withdrawn from rescue duty. There was nothing for the badgered young man to do but mentally roll up his sleeves and plunge in.
“Well, then,” with exaggerated sobriety, “if you must know––I think––that is, when I was thinking of it––or I mean, what I had thought of it, when I88was thinking of it––turning it over in my mind, you know––why, it didn’t seem to me––I am afraid”––turning squarely on Helen––“what I am going to say will offend you.”
“On the contrary,” cried Helen, flushing to her tiny pink ears, “if you are Travers’s best friend, I should like to know just what you think of it.”
“Well, then,” said Travers Gladwin desperately, “if you must know the truth, I don’t like it.”
“There!” breathed Sadie, overjoyed, and dropped back in her chair.
But Helen Burton was far from pleased.
“You don’t like what?” she demanded.
“Why––this thing to-night,” he groped.
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew Mr. Hogg,” the indignant girl flung out.
“There, Gladwin––that’s a clincher––you don’t know Hogg.”
Whitney Barnes was up to his ears in clover.
“How do you know I don’t know him?” asked Gladwin, a little wildly.
“Why, how could you?” said Helen, accusingly.
“How could I know Mr. Hogg?”
“Yes.”
“Why, just go out to his pen, introduce yourself and shake his tail.”
Helen failed to see the humor of this sally and again the tears struggled for an outlet.
“Now you’re making fun of me,” she said, turning away. “I think it’s very unkind.”
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Travers Gladwin felt a sharp pang of remorse and hated himself for his break. In his eagerness to repair the wound, he stepped to the young girl’s side and said with great seriousness:
“I wouldn’t hurt you in any way for the world.”
Helen looked up at him and read the soul of sincerity and sympathy in his eyes. She was both reassured and embarrassed by the intensity of his look.
“Really?” she managed to murmur, backing away and sitting down again.
The mention of Mr. Hogg had inflamed Whitney Barnes’s curiosity, and he desired to know more of that unknown.
“Well, I don’t see what Mr. Hogg has to do with it,” he spoke up.
“Why, Auntie insists upon my marrying him.”
Helen blurted this out involuntarily
“That’s dreadful!” exclaimed Whitney Barnes, and Helen rewarded him with a smile of gratitude.
90CHAPTER XV.HEROISM, LOVE AND SOMETHING ELSE.
The embarrassment of both the girls had begun to wear off. The two strange young men, notwithstanding the unaccounted-for absence of the object of Helen’s quest, began to appear less strange. Both possessed potent attractions and undeniable magnetism.
The shy and shrinking Sadie was sure she liked that tall and slender young man with the easy drawl and bright, humorous eyes immensely. The boldness of his glances made her heart beat pleasantly. To her he seemed to possess the master will and wit of the pair, and she felt she could repose perfect confidence in him.
For her part Helen was uncertain just how to sense the situation. One side of her will urged her to leave a message for her betrothed and hurry away. Another strain of consciousness held her fast.
Travers Gladwin’s psychic waves that had so utterly failed in the grill room of the Ritz may or may not have had something to do with this. He felt inspired with a desire to prolong the interview indefinitely.91He could not recall ever having been so attracted by the charming personality of any girl as he was by this distressed maiden who was so eager to see her Travers Gladwin.
He was flattered, even by the compliment of having the same name as the unknown. As a further expression of sympathy with Helen in the matter of Mr. Hogg he said earnestly:
“Do you mean to tell me that your aunt insists upon you marrying this––hog?”
“Yes,” replied Helen, passionately. “And he’s awful, and I hate him, and I won’t––I just won’t.”
“I think you’re absolutely right,” Gladwin agreed with her.
“Oh, you do?” cried the delighted Helen. Then, turning triumphantly upon her cousin she exclaimed:
“There!”
But Sadie’s one idea did not include Mr. Hogg. She considered the elopement as a separate matter in which Mr. Hogg was in no way involved, wherefore she said:
“But you’ve only known Mr. Gladwin two weeks.”
“I know,” retorted Helen, “but I’ve loved him for four years.”
“You’ve loved Travers Gladwin four years,” said that young man in a voice hollow with wonder.
“And only known him two weeks,” cut in Whitney Barnes. “By Jove, he must be one of those retroactive soul-mates.”
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“I’ve loved him four years,” said Helen stiffly.
“You’ve loved him four years in two weeks,” said Barnes in the tone of one trying to do a sum. “I give up. I can’t do it.”
Helen faced the heretic Barnes and announced impressively:
“Ever since the time he so bravely risked his own life to save that girl. It was splendid, noble!”
Travers Gladwin decided it was time to call a halt on the borrowing proclivities of the unknown double. It was bad enough for some one to appropriate his name, but also to take unto his bogus self the glory of the real one’s heroism was too much.
“You mean that time at Narragansett?” he opened.
“Yes,” said Helen. “Four years ago when he dashed into the roaring surf”–––
“Yes, and fished out a cross-eyed colored lady,” said Gladwin hotly.
“That’s just it,” returned Helen with flashing eyes and heaving bosom. “If she had been beautiful or some one dear to him, it wouldn’t have been half so noble. Oh, it was fine of him!”
“And he told you about that?” asked Gladwin, numbed for the moment.
“No, he didn’t. He’s much too modest. I knew of it the day it happened, and he has been my ideal ever since. But would you believe it, when I first spoke to him about it he could hardly remember it. Imagine doing such a brave thing, and then forgetting all about it.”
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“Oh, I’ve forgotten lots of such things,” said the unrecognized hero.
Helen’s lips curled with scorn.
“Yes,” the young man was stung to go on, “and what Travers Gladwin did wasn’t brave at all.”
“What!” Helen gasped.
“She was so fat she couldn’t sink,” derided Gladwin, “so I swam out to her.”
“Yes,” bubbled over the young man, overjoyed at the opportunity of discounting his own heroism, “I swam out to her. I told her to lie on her back and float. Well, she did, and I”–––
“You!”
“Why, yes––er––you see, I was with him. He pushed her to shore. Simplest thing in the world.”
Helen rose angrily. There was both indignation and reproach in her voice.
“It’s shameful to try and belittle his courage, and you say you’re his dearest friend.” She paused for a moment, then went closer to the young man and said in a different tone:
“Oh, I understand you now––you’re saying that to try and make me change my mind. But I shan’t––not for anybody.”
Helen crossed the room to her cousin and gave Sadie the benefit of the look of defiance with which she had confronted Travers Gladwin.
“Oh, please, please don’t say that, Helen,” cried Sadie, all a-flutter. “I know he will agree to a postponement.”
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“But I don’t want any postponement,” protested Helen. “I told you what I intended doing and I’m going to do it.”
“Go on, tell her again––we’d all like to hear it,” broke in Gladwin.
Helen swung around and said dramatically:
“I’m going to marry Travers Gladwin to-night.”
Travers Gladwin reeled a little where he stood, met and turned from the beaming stare of Whitney Barnes. As he did so Helen came very close to him, laid her hand on his arm and said tremulously:
“You are his best friend. Tell me honestly, don’t you think I’m right in wanting to marry him?”
This was a poser, but when he did summon an answer it came right out from the heart, his eyes devouring the beautiful girl before him as he spoke.
“Nothing on earth would please me so much as to have you marry Travers Gladwin, and I promise you now that I am going to do everything in my power to persuade you to do it.”
“Oh, I am so glad!” Helen thanked him. A moment later she added with a perplexed smile: “But why did you talk about his bravery as you did?”
“Well, you see”––the young man stopped.
“I suppose,” Helen suggested brightly, “being so very fond of him, you hated the idea of his marrying. Was that it?”
“Yes, but that was before I saw you. I hope you are going to like his best friend just a little.”
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There was no mistaking the ardent emphasis on the last sentence and Helen studied the young man’s face curiously. She turned away with a blush and walked across the room.
96CHAPTER XVI.THE TORMENT OF OFFICER 666.
Meantime Officer 666, on his aristocratic beat, four blocks up and four blocks down the Fifth avenue pave, was sticking to the east side of the street and vainly trying to keep his eyes to the front.
It was excruciating duty, with the raven-haired Rose wheeling her perambulator along the opposite way and keeping, by way of feminine perversity, on a latitudinal line with the patrolling of Michael Phelan.
There she was just opposite, always, never twisting her head an inch to give him so much as a glance or a smile. It made him wild that she should discipline her eyes in that fashion, while his would wander hither and yon, especially yon when Rose was in that direction.
The daintiness of Rose in cap and apron with a big white fichu at her throat, with one red cheek and the corner of the most kissable mouth on the avenue maddeningly visible, soon drove all memory of the Gladwin mansion and the suspicious antics of the “rat-faced little heathen” out of his mind. His one thought was that Rose would have to cross over the97way at the fall of dusk and trundle her millionaire infant charge home for its prophylactic pap. There would be a bare chance for about seven or ten words with Rose. But what was he going to say?
For one hundred and nine days’ running, his days off inclusive, Michael Phelan had intercepted Rose at that particular corner and begged her to name the day. The best he ever got was a smile and a flash of two laughing eyes, followed by the sally:
“Show me $500 in the bank, Michael Phelan, and I’ll talk business.”
And why didn’t Michael Phelan save up $500 out of the more than $100 a month the city paid him for his services? Rose didn’t get a quarter of that, and she had already saved $300, besides which she sent a one-pound note home to Ireland every month.
The reason was this––Michael Phelan turned in his wages each month to his mother, and out of what she allowed him to spend he couldn’t have saved $500 in five hundred years, at least not to his way of thinking. The trouble was that Rose had more than an inkling of this, and it galled her to think that her gallant brass-buttoned cop should permit himself to be still harnessed to his mother’s apron strings.
Yes, down in the invisible depths of Rose’s heart she was very fond of the faithful and long-suffering Michael, but even so she couldn’t bring herself to marry a milksop who was likely to make her play second fiddle to his mother. And when Rose once made98up her mind, she was as grimly determined as she was pretty.
The sun had swung down behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the trees that bordered the Park wall had begun to trace their shadows on the marble fronts of the mansions across the way when Rose suddenly wheeled the gig containing Master Croesus and walked demurely toward Officer 666.
Michael Phelan blushed till he could feel his back hair singeing, but he stopped stock still and waited. Rose gave no sign until she was within half a dozen feet of him. Then she looked up pertly and exclaimed:
“Why, if it ain’t Michael Phelan!”
“It is, Rose, an’ with the same question pantin’ on his lips,” broke out the young man, his bosom surging and his heart rapping under his shield.
“And what is that same question, Mr. Phelan?” asked the tantalizing Rose.
Officer 666 choked with emotion.
“Will ye name the day, d-d-d-ar”–––
He stopped and looked round about him fearfully, for Sergeant McGinnis was due on his rounds and Sergeant McGinnis, though married, had an eye like a hawk for a pretty girl and a tongue like an adder for a patrolman caught sparking.
Rose’s eyes flashed and her lips drew taut. She started forward, but turned her head to face Phelan as she walked away.