IV
Beyond the bungalow rose a dark strip of woodland, and suddenly, as Deering’s eyes caught sight of it, he became aware that the moon, which had not appeared before that night, seemed to be lingering cosily among the trees. Even a victim of May madness hardly sees moons where they do not exist, but to all intents and purpose thiswasa moon, a large round moon, on its way down the horizon in the orderly fashion of elderly moons. He turned toward the road, then glanced back quickly to make sure his eyes were not playing tricks upon him. The moon was still there, blandly staring. His powers of orientation had often been tested; onhunting and fishing trips he had ranged the wilderness without a compass, and never come to grief. He was sure that this huge orb was in the north, where no moon of decent habits has any right to be.
With his eyes glued to this phenomenon, he advanced up the slope. When he reached the crest of the meadow the moon still hung where he had first seen it—a most unaccountable moon that apparently lingered to encourage his investigations.
He jumped a wall that separated the meadow from the woodland, and advanced resolutely toward the lunar mystery. He found Stygian darkness in among the pines: the moon, considering its size, shed amazingly little light. He crept toward it warily, and in a momentstood beneath the outward and visible form of a moon cleverly contrived of barrel staves and tissue-paper with a lighted lantern inside, and thrust into the crotch of a tree.
As he contemplated it something struck him—something, he surmised, that had been flung by mortal hand, and a pine-cone caught in his waistcoat collar.
“Please don’t spoil my moon,” piped a voice out of the darkness. “It’s a lot of trouble to make a moon!”
Walking cautiously toward the wall, he saw, against the star dusk of the open, the girl in clown costume who had danced in the meadow. She sat the long way of the wall, her knees clasped comfortably, and seemed in nowise disturbed by his appearance.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “butI didn’t know it wasyourmoon. I thought it was just the regular old moon that had got lost on the way home.”
“Oh, don’t apologize. I rather hoped somebody would come up to have a look at it; but you’d better run along now. This is private property, you know.”
“Thanks for the hint,” he remarked. “But on a night when moons hang in trees you can’t expect me to be scared away so easily. And besides, I’m an outlaw,” he ended in a tone meant to be terrifying.
She betrayed neither surprise nor fear, but laughed and uttered a “Really!” that was just such a “really” as any well-bred girl might use at a tea, or anywhere else that reputable folk congregate,to express faint surprise. Her way of laughing was altogether charming. A girl who donned a clown’s garb for night prowling and manufactured moons for her own amusement could not have laughed otherwise, he reflected.
“A burglar?” she suggested with mild curiosity.
“Not professionally; but I’m seriously thinking of going in for it. What do you think of burgling as a career?”
“Interesting—rather—I should think,” she replied after a moment’s hesitation, as though she were weighing his suggestion carefully.
“And highway robbery appeals to me—rather. It’s more picturesque, and you wouldn’t have to break into houses. I think I’d rather work in the open.”
“The chances of escape might be better,” she admitted; “but you needn’t try the bungalow down there, for there’s nothing in it worth stealing. I give you my word for that!”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of the bungalow. I had it in mind to begin by holding up a motor. Nobody’s doing that sort of thing just now.”
“Capital!” she murmured pleasantly, as though she found nothing extraordinary in the idea. “So you’re really new at the game.”
“Well, I’vestolenbefore, if that’s what you mean, but I didn’t get much fun out of it. I suppose after the first fatal plunge the rest will come easier.”
“I dare say that’s true,” she assented. There was real witchery in the girl’s light, murmurous laugh.
It seemed impossible to surprise her; she was taking him as a matter of course—as though sitting on a wall at night, and talking to a strange young man about stealing was a familiar experience.
“I’ve joined Robin Hood’s band,” he continued. “At least I’ve been adopted by a new sort of Robin Hood who’s travelling round robbing the rich to pay the poor, and otherwise meddling in people’s affairs—the old original Robin Hood brought up to date. If it hadn’t been for him I might be cooling my heels in jail right now. He’s an expert on jails—been in nearly every calaboose in America. He’s tucked me under his wing—persuaded me to take the highway, and not care a hang for anything.”
“How delightful!” she replied, but soslowly that he began to fear that his confidences had alarmed her. “That’s too good to be true; you’re fooling, aren’t you—really?”
His eyes had grown accustomed to the light, and her profile was now faintly limned in the dusk. Hers was the slender face of youth. The silhouette revealed the straightest of noses and the firmest of little chins. She was young, so young that he felt himself struggling in an immeasurable gulf of years as he watched her. Apparently such sophistication as she possessed was in the things of the world of wonder, the happy land of make-believe.
“Keats would have liked a night like this,” she said gently.
Deering was silent. Keats was a person whom he knew only as the subjectof a tiresome lecture in his English course at college.
“Bill Blake would have adored it, but he would have had lambs in the pasture,” she added.
“Bill Blake?” he questioned. “Do you mean Billy Blake who was half-back on the Harvard eleven last year?”
She tossed her head and laughed merrily.
“I love that!” she replied lingeringly, as though to prolong her joy in his ignorance. “I was thinking of a poet of that name who wrote a nice verse something like this:
‘I give you the end of a golden string;
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate,
Built in Jerusalem’s wall.’”
No girl had ever quoted poetry to him before, and he was thinking moreof her pretty way of repeating the stanza—keeping time with her hands—than of the verse itself.
“Well,” he said, “what’s the rest of it?”
“Oh, there isn’t any rest of it! Don’t you see that there couldn’t be anything more—that it’s finished—a perfect little poem all by itself!”
He played with a loosened bit of stone, meekly conscious of his stupidity. And he did not like to appear stupid before a girl who danced alone in the starlight and hung moons in trees.
“I’m afraid I don’t get it. I’d a lot rather stay by this wall talking to you than go to Jerusalem.”
“You’d be foolish to do that if you really had the end of the golden string, and could follow it to Paradise. I thinkit means any nice place—just any place where happiness is.”
He was not getting on, and to gain time he bade her repeat the stanza.
“I think I understand now; I’ve never gone in much for poetry, you know,” he explained humbly.
“Burglars are natural poets, I suppose,” she continued. “A burglar just has to have imagination or he can’t climb through the window of a house he has never seen before. He must imagine everything perfectly—the silver on the sideboard, the watch under the pillow, and the butler stealing down the back stairs with a large, shiny pistol in his hand.”
“Certainly,” Deering agreed readily. “And if he runs into a policeman on the way out he’s got to imagine thatit’s an old college friend and embrace him.”
“You mustn’t spoil a pretty idea that way!” she admonished in a tone that greatly softened the rebuke. “Come to think of it, you haven’t told me your name yet; of course, if you become a burglar, you will have a great number of names, but I’d like awfully to know your true one.”
“Why?” he demanded.
“Because you seem nice and well brought up for a burglar, and I liked your going up to the moon and poking your finger into it. That makes me feel that I’d like to know you.”
“Well, the circumstances being as they are, and being really a thief, you mustn’t ask me to tell my real name; for all I know you may be a detective in disguise.”
“I’m not—really,” she said—he found her “reallys” increasingly enchanting.
“You might call me Friar Tuck or Little John. I’m travelling with Robin Hood, you remember.”
“Mr. Tuck—that will be splendid!”
“And now that you know my name it’s only fair to tell me yours.”
“Pierrette,” she answered.
“Not really!”
His unconscious imitation of her manner of uttering this phrase evoked another merry laugh.
“Yes, really,” she answered.
“And you live somewhere, of course—not in the tree up there with your moon, but in the bungalow, I suppose.”
“I live wherever I am; that’s the fun of playing all the time,” she replied evasively. “Poste restante, the Little Dipper. How do you like that?”
“But just now your true domicile is the bungalow?” he persisted.
“Oh, I’ve been stopping there for a few days, that’s all. I haven’t any home—not really,” she added as though she found her homelessness the happiest of conditions. She snapped her fingers and recited:
“Wherever stars shine brightest, there my home shall be,
In the murmuring forest or by the sounding sea,
With overhead the green bough and underfoot the grass,
Where only dreams and butterflies ever dare to pass!”
“Is that Keats or Blake?” he ventured timidly.
“It’sme, you goose! But it’s only an imitation—why, Stevenson, of course, and pretty punk as you ought to know. Gracious!”
She jumped down from the wall, on the side toward the bungalow, and stared up at the tree she had embellished with her moon.
“The moon’s gone out, and I’ve got to goin!”
“Please, before you go, when can I see you again?”
“Who knows!” she exclaimed unsympathetically; but she waited as though pondering the matter.
“But I must see you again!” he persisted.
“Oh, I shouldn’t say that it was wholly essential to your happiness—or mine! I can’t meet burglars—socially!”
“Burglars! But I’m not—” he cried protestingly.
She bent toward him with one hand extended pleadingly.
“Don’t say it! Don’tsayit! If you say you’renot, you won’t be any fun any more!”
“Well, then we’ll say I am—a terrible freebooter—a bold, bad pirate,” he growled. “Now, may I come?”
She mused a moment, then struck her hands together.
“Come to the bungalow breakfast; that’s a fine idea!”
“And may I bring Hood?” he asked, leaning half-way across the wall in his anxiety to conclude the matter before she escaped. “He’s my boss, you understand, and I’m afraid I can’t shake him.”
“Certainly; bring Mr. Hood. Breakfast at eight.”
“And your home—your address—is there in the bungalow?”
“I’ve told you where my home is, in a verse I made up specially; and my address is care of the Little Dipper—there it is, up there in the sky, all nice and silvery.”
His gaze followed the pointing of her finger. The Little Dipper, as an address for the use of mortals, struck him as rather remote. To his surprise she advanced to the wall, rested her hands upon it, and peered into his face.
“Isn’t this perfectly killing?” she asked in a tone wholly different from that in which she had carried on her share of the colloquy.
He experienced an agreeable thrill as it flashed upon him that this was no child, but a young woman who, knowing the large world, had suddenly awakened to a consciousness that encounterswith strange young men by starlight were not to be prolonged forever. In the luminous dusk he noted anew the delicate perfectness of her face, the fine brow about which her hair had tumbled from her late exertions. Her eyes searched his face with honest curiosity—for an instant only.
Then she stepped back, as though to mark a return to her original character, and answered her own question with an air of amused conviction:
“Itisperfectly killing!”
His hand fumbled the cap in his pocket.
“Here’s something I found down yonder—your clown’s cap.”
She took it with a murmur of thanks, and darted away toward the bungalow. He heard her light step on the verandaand then a door closed with a sharp bang.
Deering walked back to the inn with his head high and elation throbbing in his pulses. He observed groups of people playing bridge in the inn parlor, and he was filled with righteous contempt for them. The May air had changed his whole nature. He was not the William B. Deering who had meditated killing himself a few hours earlier. A new joy had entered into him; he was only afraid now that he might not live forever!
Hood slept tranquilly, his bed littered with the afternoon’s New York papers which evidently he had been scissoring when he fell asleep. Deering’s attitude toward the strange vagrant had changed since his meetingwith Pierrette. Hood might be as mad as the traditional hatter, and yet there was something—indubitably something—about the man that set him apart from the common run of mortals.
Deering lay awake a long time rejoicing in his new life, and when he dreamed it was of balloon-like moons cruising lazily over woods and fields, pursued by innumerable Pierrettes in spotted trousers and pointed caps.
V
He awoke at seven, and looked in upon Hood, who lay sprawled upon his bed reading one of the battered volumes of Borrow he carried in his bag.
“Get your tub, son; I’ve had mine and came back to bed to let you have your sleep out. Marvellous man—Borrow. Spring’s the time to read him. We’ll have some breakfast and go out and see what the merry old world has to offer.”
With nice calculation he tossed the book into the open bag on the further side of the room, rose, and stretched himself. Deering stifled an impulse to scoff at his silk pajamas as hardly an appropriate sleeping garb for one who professedto have taken vows of poverty. Hood noted his glance.
“Found these in some nabob’s house at Bar Harbor last fall. Went up in November, after all the folks had gone, to have a look at the steely blue ocean; camped in a big cottage for a few days. Found a drawer full of these things and took the pink ones. Wrote my thanks on the villa’s stationery and pinned ’em to the fireplace. I hate to admit it, son, but I verily believe I could stand a little breakfast.”
“We’re going out for breakfast,” Deering remarked with affected carelessness. “I accepted an invitation for you last night. A girl up there at the bungalow asked me; I told her about you, and she seemed willing to stand for it.”
“The thought pleases me! You are certainly doing well, my boy!” Hood replied, dancing about on one foot as he drew a sock on the other.
He explained that a man should never sit down while dressing; that the exercise he got in balancing himself was of the greatest value as a stimulus to the circulation.
“She’s a very nice girl, I think,” Deering continued, showing his lathered face at the bathroom door.
He hadn’t expected Hood to betray surprise, and he was not disappointed in the matter-of-course fashion in which his companion received the invitation.
“Breakfast is the one important meal of the day,” Hood averred as he executed a series of hops in his efforts to land inside his trousers. “All great adventuresshould be planned across breakfast tables; centrepiece of cool fruits; coffee of teasing fragrance, the toast crisp; an egg perhaps, if the morning labors are to be severe. I know a chap in Boston who cuts out breakfast altogether. Most melancholy person I ever knew; peevish till one o’clock, then throws in a heavy lunch that ruins him for the rest of the day. What did you say the adorable’s name was?”
“Pierrette,” Deering spluttered from the tub.
“Delightful!” cried Hood, flourishing his hair-brushes. “Then you met the dancing-girl! I must say——”
“She had hung a moon in a tree! I followed the moon and found the girl!”
“Always the way; it never fails,” Hood commented, as though the findingof the girl had fully justified his philosophy of life. “But we can’t fool away much time at the bungalow; we’ve got a lot to do to-day.”
“Time!” cried Deering, “I’m going to stay forever! You can’t expect me to find a girl whose post-office address is the Little Dipper, and then go coolly off and forget about her!”
“That’s the right spirit, son,” Hood remarked cautiously; “but we’ll see. I’ll have a look at her and decide what’s best for you. My business right now is to keep you out of trouble. You can’t tell about these moon girls; she may have a wart on her nose when you see her in daylight.”
Deering hooted.
“And she probably has parents who may not relish the idea of having twostrange men prowling about the premises looking for breakfast. There are still a few of those old-fashioned people left in the world. It may be only a backdoor hand-out for us, but I’ve sawed wood for breakfast before now. I’ll wait for you below; I want to see how old Cassowary’s standing the racket. The boy seemed a little cheerfuller last night.”
They walked to the bungalow which, to Deering’s relief, was still perched on the ridge as he had left it. He was beset with misgivings as they entered the gate and followed a hedge-lined path that rose gradually to the house; it might be a joke after all; but Hood’s manner was reassuring. He swung his stick and praised the landscape, and when they reached the veranda bangedthe knocker noisily. A capped and aproned maid opened the door immediately.
Deering, struck with cowardice, found his legs quaking and stepped back to allow Hood to declare their purpose.
“We have come for breakfast, lass,” Hood announced, “and have brought our appetites with us if that fact interests you.”
“You are expected,” said the maid; “breakfast will be served immediately.”
She led the way across a long living-room to the dining-room beyond, where a table was set for three. The tangible presence of the third plate caused Deering’s heart to thump.
“The host or hostess—?” Hood inquired as the girl waited for them to be seated.
“The lady of the house wished me to say that she would be here—in spirit! Pressing duties called her elsewhere.”
Deering’s spirits sank. Pierrette, then, was only a dream of the night, and had never had the slightest intention of meeting him at breakfast! The maid curtsied and vanished through a swing door.
Hood, accepting the situation as he found it, expressed his satisfaction as a bowl of strawberries was placed on the table, and as the door ceased swinging behind the maid, laid his hand on Deering’s arm. “Don’t worry; mere shyness has driven our divinity away: you can see for yourself that even a girl who hangs moons in trees might shrink from the shock of a daylight meeting with a gentleman she had found amusing bystarlight. Let it suffice that she provided the breakfast according to schedule—that’s highly encouraging. With strawberries at present prices she has been generous. This little disappointment merely adds zest to the adventure.”
The hand of the maid as she changed his plate at once interested Deering. It was a slender, supple, well-kept hand, browned by the sun. Her maid’s dress was becoming; her cap merely served to invite attention to her golden-brown hair. Her coloring left nothing for the heart to desire, and her brown eyes called immediately for a second glance. She was deft and quick; her graceful walk in itself compelled admiration. As the door closed upon her, Hood bent a look of inquiry upon his brooding companion.
“Perhaps she’s the adorable—the true, authentic Pierrette,” he suggested.
Deering shook his head.
“No; the other girl was not so tall and her voice was different; it was wonderfully sweet and full of laughter. I couldn’t be fooled about it.”
“There’s mystery here—a game of some kind. Mark the swish of silken skirts; unless my eyes fail me, I caught a glimpse of silken hose as she flitted into the pantry.”
When an omelet had been served and the coffee poured (she poured coffee charmingly!) Hood called her back as she was about to leave them.
“Two men should never be allowed to eat alone. If your mistress is not returning at once, will you not do us the honor to sit down with us?”
“Thank you, sir,” she said, biting her lip to conceal a smile.
Deering was on his feet at once and drew out the third chair, which she accepted without debate. She composedly folded her arms on the edge of the table as though she were in nowise violating the rules set down for the guidance of waitresses. Hood, finding the situation to his taste, blithely assumed the lead in the conversation.
“It is perfectly proper for you to join us at table,” he remarked, “but formal introductions would not be in keeping. Still, your employer doubtless has some familiar name for you, and you might with propriety tell us what it is, so we won’t need to attract your attention by employing the vulgar ‘Say’ or ‘Listen’!”
“My mistress calls me Babette,” sheanswered, her lashes drooping becomingly.
“Perfect!” cried Hood ecstatically. “And we are two outlaws whose names it is more discreet for us to withhold, even if it were proper to exchange names with a mere housemaid.”
Deering winced; it was indecent in Hood to treat her as though she were a housemaid when so obviously she was not.
“My friend doesn’t mean to be rude,” he explained; “the morning air always makes him a little delirious.”
“I hope I know my place,” the girl replied, “and I’m sure you gentlemen mean to be kind.”
“You needn’t count the spoons after we leave,” said Hood; “I assure you we have no professional designs on the house.”
“Thank you, sir. Of course, if you stole anything, it would be taken out of my wages.”
Deering’s interest in her increased.
She rested her chin on her hand just as his sister often did when they lingered together at table. He was a good brother and Constance was his standard. He was sure that Constance would like Pierrette’s maid. He resented Hood’s patronizing attitude toward the girl, but Hood’s spirits were soaring and there was no checking him.
“Babette,” he began, “I’m going to trouble you with a question, not doubting you will understand that my motives are those of a philosopher whose whole life has been devoted to the study of the human race. May I ask you to state in all sincerity whether you considerapple sauce the essential accompaniment of roast duck?”
“I do not; nor do I care for jelly with venison,” she answered readily.
“Admirable! You are clearly no child of convention but an independent thinker! May I smoke? Thanks!”
He drew out his pipe and turned beaming to the glowering Deering.
“There, my boy! Babette is one of us—one of the great company of the stars! Wonderful, how you find them at every turn! Babette, my sister, I salute you!”
She smiled and turned toward Deering.
“Are you, too, one of the Comrades of Perpetual Youth?” she inquired gravely.
“I am,” Deering declared heartily,and they smiled at each other; “but I’m only a novice—a brother of the second class.”
She shook her head.
“There can be no question of classes in the great comradeship—either we are or we are not.”
“Well spoken!” Hood assented, pushing back his chair and crossing his legs comfortably.
“And you—do you and Pierrette think about things the same way?” Deering asked.
“We do—by not thinking,” Babette replied. “Thinking among the comrades is forbidden, is it not?”
“Absolutely,” Hood affirmed. “Our young brother here is still a little weak in the faith, but he’s taking to it splendidly.”
“I’m new myself,” Babette confessed.
“You’re letter-perfect in the part,” said Hood. “Perhaps you were driven to it? Don’t answer if you would be embarrassed by a confession.”
The girl pondered a moment; her face grew grave, and she played nervously with the sugar-tongs.
“A man loved me and I sent him away, and was sorry!” The last words fell from her lips falteringly.
“He will come back—if he is worthy of one of the comradeship,” said Hood consolingly. “Even now he may be searching for you.”
“I was unkind to him; I was very hard on him! And I’ve been afraid—sometimes—that I should never see him again.”
Deering thought he saw a glint oftears in her eyes. She rose hastily and asked with a wavering smile:
“If there’s nothing further——”
“Not food—if you mean that,” said Hood.
“But about Pierrette!” Deering exclaimed despairingly. “If she’s likely to come, we must wait for her.”
“I rather advise you against it,” the girl answered. “I have no idea when she will come back.”
They rose instinctively as she passed out. The door fanned a moment and was still.
“Well?” demanded Deering ironically.
“Please don’t speak to me in that tone,” responded Hood. “This was your breakfast, not mine; you needn’t scold me if it didn’t go to suit you! Ah, what have we here!”
He had drawn back a curtain at one end of the dining-room, disclosing a studio beyond. It was evidently a practical workshop and bore traces of recent use. Deering passed him and strode toward an easel that supported a canvas on which the paint was still wet. He cried out in astonishment:
“That’s the moon girl—that’s the girl I talked to last night—clown clothes and all! She’s sitting on the wall there just as I found her.”
“A sophisticated brush; no amateur’s job,” Hood muttered, squinting at the canvas. “Seems to me I’ve seen that sort of thing somewhere lately—Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine, and Clown—latest fad in magazine covers. We’re in the studio of a popular illustrator—there’s a bunch of proofs on the table, and those things on the floor are fromthe same hand. Signature in the corner a trifle obscure—Mary B. Taylor.”
“She may be Babette,” Deering suggested. “Suppose I call her and ask?”
Hood, having become absorbed in a portfolio of pen-and-ink sketches of clowns, harlequins, and columbines, subjects in which the owner of the studio apparently specialized, paid no heed to the suggestion. When Deering returned he was gazing critically at a sketch showing a dozen clowns executing a spirited dance on a garden-wall.
“She’s skipped! There isn’t a soul on the place,” Deering announced dejectedly.
“Not at all surprising; probably gone to join her model, Pierrette. And we’d better clear out before we learn too much; life ceases to be interesting when you begin to find the answers to riddles.Pierrette is probably a friend of the artist, and plays model for the fun of it. The same girl is repeated over and over again in these drawings—from which I argue that Pierrette likes to pose and Babette enjoys painting her. We mustn’t let this affect the general illusion. The next turn of the road will doubtless bring us to something that can’t be explained so easily.”
“If it doesn’t bring us to Pierrette—” began Deering.
“Tut! None of that! For all you know it may bring us to something infinitely better. Remember that this is mid-May, and anything may happen before June kindles the crimson ramblers. Let us be off.”
Half-way across the living-room Deering stopped suddenly.
“My bag—my suitcase!” he shouted.
A suitcase it was beyond question, placed near the door as though to arrest their attention. Deering pounced upon it eagerly and flung it open.
“It’s all right—the stuff’s here!” he cried huskily.
He began throwing out the packets that filled the case, glancing hurriedly at the seals. Hood lounged near, watching him languidly.
“Most unfortunate,” he remarked, noting the growing satisfaction on Deering’s face as he continued his examination. “Now that you’ve found that rubbish, I suppose there’ll be no holding you; you’ll go back to listen to the ticker just when I had begun to have some hope of you!”
“It was Pierrette that took it; itcouldn’t have been this artist girl,” said Deering, excitedly whipping out his penknife and slitting one of the packages. A sheaf of blank wrapping-paper fluttered to the floor. His face whitened and he gave a cry of dismay. “Robbed! Tricked!” he groaned, staring at Hood.
Hood picked up the paper and scrutinized the seal.
“S. J. Deering, personal,” he read in the wax. “You don’t suppose that girl has taken the trouble to forge your father’s private seal, do you?”
Deering feverishly tore open the other packages.
“All alike; the stuff’s gone!”
Perspiration beaded his forehead. He stared stupidly at the worthless paper.
“You ought to be grateful, son,” saidHood; “yesterday you thought yourself a thief—now that load’s off your mind, and you know yourself for an honest man. General rejoicing seems to be in order. Looks as though your parent had robbed himself—rather a piquant situation, I must say.”
He carried the wrappers to the window-seat and examined them more closely.
“Seals were all intact. ‘The Tyringham estate,’” he read musingly. “What do you make of that?” he asked Deering, who remained crumpled on the floor beside the suitcase.
“That’s an estate father was executor of—it’s a long story. Old man Tyringham had been a customer of his, and left a will that made it impossible to close the estate till his son had reacheda certain age. The final settlement was to be made this summer. But my God, Hood, do you suppose father—my father could be——”
“A defaulter?” Hood supplied blandly.
“It’s impossible!” roared Deering. “Father’s the very soul of honor.”
“I dare say he is,” remarked Hood carelessly. “So were you till greed led you to pilfer your governor’s strong box. Let us be tolerant and withhold judgment. It’s enough that your own skirts are clear. Put that stuff out of sight; we must flit.”
Hood set off for the Barton Arms at a brisk pace, talking incessantly.
“This whole business is bully beyond my highest expectations. By George, it’s almost too good to be true! Criticsof the drama complain that the average amateur’s play ends with every act; but so far in our adventures every incident leads on to something else. Perfectly immense that somebody had beaten you to the bonds!”
Deering’s emotions were beyond utterance. It was a warm morning, and he did not relish carrying the suitcase, whose recovery had plunged him into a despair darker than that caused by its loss.
At a turn in the road Hood paused, struck his stick heavily upon the ground, and drew out the slipper. He whirled it in the air three times and twice it pointed east. He thrust it back into his pocket with a sigh of satisfaction and brushed the dust from his hands.
“Once more we shall follow the pointingslipper. Yesterday it led us to the moon girl, the bungalow, and the suitcase; now it points toward the mysterious east, and no telling what new delights!”
VI
Hood and Deering found Cassowary sitting in the machine in the inn yard reading a newspaper; this Hood promptly seized and scanned with his trained eye.
“Are the bags aboard? Ah, I see you have been forehanded, Cassowary!”
Deering went to the inn office and came out with a number of telegrams which he read as he slowly crossed the yard.
“What do you think of this?” he asked weakly. The yellow sheets shook in his hand and his face was white. “I wired to a bank and a club in San Francisco last night, and they’ve answered that father isn’t in San Francisco andhasn’t been there! And I wired the people Constance was to visit at Pasadena, and they don’t know anything about her. Just look at these things!”
“Sounds like straight information, but why worry?” remarked Hood, scanning the telegrams.
“But why should father lie to me? Why should Constance say she was going to California if she wasn’t?”
“My dear boy, don’t ask me such questions!” Hood remarked with an injured air. “You are guilty of the gravest error in sending telegrams without consulting me! How can we trust ourselves to Providence if you persist in sending telegrams! If you do this again, I shall be seriously displeased, and you mustn’t displease Hood. Hood is very ugly in his wrath.”
Deering was at the point of tears. Hood was a fool, and he wished to tell him so, but the words stuck in his throat.
“We move eastward toward the Connecticut border, Cassowary,” Hood ordered and pushed Deering into the machine.
Hood was as merry as the morning itself, and talked ceaselessly as they rolled through the country, occasionally bidding Cassowary slow down and give heed to his discourse. The chauffeur listened with a grin, glancing guardedly at Deering, who stared grimly ahead with an unlighted cigar in his mouth. He was not to be disturbed in his meditations upon the blackness of the world by the idiotic prattle of a madman. For half an hour Hood hadbeen describing his adventures with a Dublin University man, whose humor he pronounced the keenest and most satisfying he had ever known. He had gathered from this person an immense fund of lore relating to Irish superstitions.
“He left me just when I had learned to love him,” Hood concluded mournfully. “Became fascinated with a patent-medicine faker we struck at a county fair in Indiana. He was so tickled over the way the long-haired doctor played the banjo and jollied the crowd that he attached himself to his caravan. That Irishman was one of the most agreeable men to be in jail with that I ever knew; even hardened murderers would cotton to him. That spire over there must be Addington.The inn is nothing to boast of, but we’d better tackle it.”
His gayety at luncheon once more won Deering to a cheerier view of his destiny. Hood called for the proprietor and lectured him roundly for offering canned-blueberry pie. The fact that blueberries were out of season made no difference to the outraged Hood; pie produced from a can was a gross imposition. He cited legal decisions covering such cases and intimated that he might bring proceedings. As the innkeeper strode angrily away an elderly woman at a neighboring table addressed the dining-room on the miserable incompetence of the pastry-cooks of these later times, winding up by thanking Hood heartily for his protest. She was from Boston, she announced, and the decliningintellectual life of that city she attributed to the deterioration of its pie.
Hood rose and gravely replied in a speech of five minutes, much to the delight of two girls at the old lady’s table. Hood wrote his name on the menu card, and bade the giggling waitress hand it to the lady from Boston. Her young companions conferred for a moment, and then sent back a card on which appeared these names neatly pencilled:
Maid Marian
The Queen of Sheba
The Duchess of Suffolk (Mass.)
“My dear boy,” Hood remarked to Deering after he had bowed elaborately to the trio, “I tell you the whole world’s caught step with us! That lady and her two nieces, or granddaughters as the case may be, are under the spell, justas you and I are and Cassowary and your Pierrette and Babette of the bungalow. If only you could yield yourself to the May spirit, how happy we might be! Just think of Cassowary; worth a million dollars and eating his lunch with the chauffeurs somewhere below stairs and picking up much information that he will impart to me later! What a bully world this would be if all mankind followed my system: stupid conventions all broken-down; the god of mirth holding his sides as he contemplates the world at play! You may be sure that old lady is a stickler for the proprieties when she’s at home; widow of a bishop most likely. Those girls have been carefully reared, you can see that, but full of the spirit of mischief. The moment I tackled thatstupid innkeeper about his monstrous pie they felt the drawing of the mystic tie that binds us together with silken cords. Very likely they, like us, are in search of adventure, and if our own affairs were less urgent I should certainly cultivate their further acquaintance.”
The lady who called herself the Duchess of Suffolk (Mass.) was undoubtedly a person of consequence and the possessor of a delightful humor. Deering assumed that she and her companions were abroad upon a lark of some kind and were enjoying themselves tremendously. Hood’s spell renewed its grip upon him. It occurred to him that the whole world might have been touched with the May madness, and that the old order of things had passed forever.It seemed ages since he had watched the ticker in his father’s office. As they sat smoking on the veranda the Duchess of Suffolk, the Queen of Sheba, and Maid Marian came out and entered a big car. The old lady bowed with dignity as the car moved off; the girls waved their hands.
“Perfect!” Hood muttered as he returned their salutations. “We may never meet again in this world, but the memory of this encounter will abide with me forever.”
“I don’t want to appear fussy, Hood,” Deering began good-naturedly, “but would you mind telling me what’s next on your programme?”
“Not in the slightest. It’s just occurred to me that it would be well to dine to-night in one of the handsomevillas scattered through these hills. Still following the slipper, we shall choose one somewhere east of the inn and present ourselves confidently at the front door. Failing there, we shall assault the postern and, perhaps, enrich our knowledge of life with the servants’ gossip.”
“There are some famous kennels in this neighborhood, and I’d hate awfully to have an Airedale bite a hole in my leg,” Deering suggested.
“My dear boy, that’s the tamest thing that could happen to us! My calves are covered with scars from dogs’ teeth; you soon get hardened to canine ferocity. We’ll take a tramp for an hour to work the fuzz off our gray matter, and then a nap to freshen us up for the evening. We shall learn much to-night; I’m confident of that.”
There seemed to be no way of escaping Hood or changing his mind once he announced a decision. The programme was put through exactly as he had indicated. The important thing about the tramp was that Cassowary accompanied them on the walk, and Deering found him both agreeable and interesting. He discoursed of polo, last year’s Harvard-Yale football game, and ice-boating, in which he seemed deeply experienced.
Hood left them to look for hieroglyphics on a barn which he said was a veritable palimpsest of cryptic notations of roving thieves.
Cassowary’s manner underwent a marked change when he and Deering were alone.
“If you’re going to give the old boythe slip,” he said earnestly, “I want you to give me notice. I’m not going to be left alone with him.”
Their eyes met in a long scrutiny; then Deering laughed.
“I don’t know how you feel about it, but, by George, I’m afraid to shake him!”
“That’s exactly my fix,” Cassowary answered. “I was in a bad way when he picked me up: just about ready to jump off a high building and let it go at that. And I must say he does make things seem brighter. He mustn’t see us talking off key, as he’d say, but I’d like to ask you this: what’s he running away from? That’s what worries me. What’s he grabbing newspapers for all the time and slashing out ads and other queer stuff?”
“You’ve got me there,” Deering repliedsoberly. “We ran into some men the other night who he said were detectives looking for him, but it didn’t seem to worry him any.”
“There’s nothing new inthat. We’ve struck a number of men who apparently were looking for somebody, and he greatly enjoys chaffing them. If he’s really a crook, he wouldn’t be exposing himself to arrest as he does.”
Hood was now returning from his investigations of the barn, and as he crossed the pasture was examining a bunch of the newspaper clippings with which his pockets were stuffed.
“You needn’t be afraid of getting into trouble with him,” Cassowary remarked admiringly. “He pulls off things you wouldn’t think could be done. He’s a marvel, that man!”
“Old Bill Fogarty’s been ripping into the country stores in these parts,” began Hood volubly; “found his mark on the barn, all right. Amusing cuss, Fogarty. Sawed himself out of most of the jails between here and Bangor. We’ll probably meet up with him somewhere. It’s about time to go back for that snooze, boys. To the road again!”
He strode off singing, in a very good tenor voice, snatches from Italian operas, and his pace was so rapid that his companions were hard pressed to keep up with him.