Against Odds Part 15

They moved on towards the shaded seats, and I took from my pocket a map of the grounds, and, standing on the lowest step of the portico, affected to study it, while the talk went on.

'Thee can go through this house while I look at the place and the people, child, and hear the music. Where is that music?'

'Oh, aunty! That horrid Esquimaux band! They've never happened to be in tune before when we came in, fortunately.'

'Fie, June! I'm sure it's very good. Now go. You know I care little for fine furnishings, but if there is anything that you think I shall like to see, you may show it to me when you have seen your fill, and I mine. There, go, child! I am going to knit.'

The Quakeress took out her knitting, and her niece, uttering a soft laugh, and giving the shoulder of the other an affectionate pat, turned away, saying over her shoulder:

'You're a wilful auntie, and you shall have your way. I'll not be long, so look and listen your fill.'

This was the chance for which I had waited, and I took advantage of it by closing my map and following her into the building and up the stairs.

I did not accost her at once, but waited until she had looked about the larger room facing the south and west, where the case of minerals, the great deer, and other western treasures and trophies were displayed, and had sauntered about the cosy and tasteful parlours, looking at the pictures and bits of decorative work; and when she had re-entered the big sunny south room again, and after a little more loitering among the exhibits went to one of the windows and stood looking down into the street, I, who had been standing near an opposite window, was about to cross the room and accost her, when a sudden shout from the street caused me to look out once more.

My window faced the bridge, and I saw that a chair-boy, coming too hastily over the bridge with his freight, and perhaps unaccustomed to his wheeled steed, had let slip his hold upon the handle at the back of the chair just as he had reached the downward slope of the bridge, and chair and occupant, a burly man looking quite able to walk, went whirling down the slope, charging into a couple of young men dressed in killing style and wearing big yellow _boutonnieres_, and overturning itself and all concerned.

They were gathering themselves up in much disorder, and I could not resist a smile at the ludicrous scene; but the smile soon left my face when I saw, pa.s.sing the scene of distress with rapid steps and without a glance toward it, and coming straight toward the entrance below, the little brunette.

With rapid steps I crossed to the opposite window, and, taking off my hat, bowed before the surprised and now somewhat haughty-looking blonde.

'Miss Jenrys?' I said interrogatively.

She bowed a.s.sent.

'May I speak with you a moment?'

She did not answer promptly, and I put my hand to my pocket and drew out my card--the same that I had proffered to the guard a few days before.

She took it and read the name aloud, and in a tone of polite inquiry:

'Carl Masters?'

CHAPTER XI.

'I DISLIKE A MYSTERY.'

I had not meant to do it, but while I stood there with her clear brown eyes, not repellent but fearless and full of dignity, fixed upon my face in polite but guarded inquiry, the determination suddenly seized me to be as frank and truthful in dealing with this frank and truthful woman as I had a right to be.

I had meant to return the bag, ask her pardon for tampering with its contents, and say no more; only keeping as much as possible an eye to her welfare and safety if I saw it menaced. Now I meant something more; and so, while she held my card in daintily gloved fingers and looked at me with level, questioning eyes, I said, with the thought of the approaching brunette underlying my words:

'Miss Jenrys, I am the person who was of some small a.s.sistance a few days ago when you came near incurring serious injury at the hands of a pair of Turks and a sedan-chair.' I saw a look of remembrance, if not of recognition, flash into her face, and I hurried on. 'I do not mention this as ent.i.tling me to your notice, but I ask you to accept my word as that of one having no personal motive save the desire to serve you, and to listen to me for a few moments.'

She was scanning my face nervously, and now she said:

'I do not recall your face, though I remember the circ.u.mstance to which you refer. If you are the gentleman who held back that reckless foreigner with a strong arm, and so saved me from something more serious than a little pain in the shoulder, I am certainly your debtor, and I am glad of this opportunity to thank you.'

A little back of the place where she stood, in a corner, hemmed in on one side by a long gla.s.s case of exhibits of various sorts, was an armchair, placed there, doubtless, for the ease of the person in charge of said case and its contents. There was no such person present, however, at that hour, and I pointed toward the chair, and said:

'If you will kindly take that seat, so that I may not feel that I am compelling you to stand, I will not detain you long.'

She turned toward the seat, looked at it, at me, and finally beyond me and across the room, as if debating, and half inclined to pa.s.s me and escape; and then I saw a sudden withdrawal of the eyes and a compression of the lips, slight but perceptible. She turned as if in haste, almost, and seated herself in the chair, first turning it toward the windows so that her back would be toward the interior of the room, and then, to my surprise, she beckoned me, with a half-smile, to a place upon the window-seat, which would narrowly serve this purpose.

I had not once looked back or about me, but I did not flatter myself that my words alone had won for me this graciousness; she had seen the little brunette, and desired to avoid her.

'Thank you,' I said, when we were both seated. 'I will now come to the point at once. You must know, then, that after you had pa.s.sed on and out of sight in the crowd I discovered at my very feet--so close that no one had ventured to pick it up, if anyone had seen it in that crowd--a black leather bag--a chatelaine, I think you ladies call it.'

'Oh! you found my bag?' The look of reserve was lost in a quick and charming smile. 'I am very glad!'

'I found it, and I tried to follow you and restore it, but you had disappeared.'

'I had indeed; in at the first gate, which happened to be the Javanese Village.'

'That explains my failure. I had given up my search, and was about to go on my way, when I was approached by a young lady, a small person with dark eyes and wearing a large plumed sailor-hat, who explained that she was a friend to the lady whose bag I had in my hand, that she had seen me pick it up, and would now restore it to her.'

'And you gave it to her?'

'Was it not right?'

'The person was an impostor.'

'Is it possible? And yet two days after, as you were entering the grounds, and I was about to approach you, I saw this same person greet you, seemingly, and walk on in your company. It made a coward of me. I dared not approach in the face of a friend of yours whom I had treated as an impostor.'

'How do you mean?'

'I mean that I doubted the person, and refused to give her the bag.'

And I hurriedly made confession, telling her how at last I was forced to read first her friend's letter and then her own, in order to learn her name, and that then her address was still a mystery. 'I had but one chance of finding you,' I concluded. 'You had informed your friend that your apartments were conveniently near the Fifty-seventh Street entrance.'

'Oh! Indeed!' I had seen the quick colour flash into her face at my mention of the letters, and of having read them, and the restraint was once more evident in face and voice when she said:

'I thank you, sir; but the contents of the bag--it was hardly worth the trouble you have taken to restore it--that is----'

'I have it with me, Miss Jenrys, and when I am sure that we are not under surveillance I will place it in your hands; and now I owe it to myself to make my own conduct in this affair and my present position clearer. At first it was with me a simple matter of returning a lost article to a lady. Failing to overtake you, I might perhaps have turned it over to some guard but for the interference of the brunette, who at once put me on the defensive and aroused my suspicion. It somehow seemed to me that the young person was more than commonly anxious to possess your bag, and then it occurred to me that the bag might contain something or some information that she especially wished to possess. My interest was aroused, and then I took the liberty of examining your bag, and having done so, I determined at least to attempt to return it to you, and to ask you to pardon the liberty I had taken with your correspondence.'

'I suppose anyone would have done the same,' she said, rather coldly.

'What I do not comprehend is why you did not return the bag to me in the presence of this person, of whom you might have warned me.'

'It is that which I am about to explain,' I replied gravely. 'And I must, for the sake of others whose interests I represent, ask you to regard what I am now about to tell you as a confidence made necessary because of the circ.u.mstances. Miss Jenrys, the card in your hand bears my real name, but few know me by it, because I so often bear others, as one of the necessities of my profession. I am known here to those who know me at all as one of those secret service men you have no doubt heard or read of. In other words----'

'A detective?' She bent forward and scanned my face narrowly.

'When I saw you in company with the little brunette, as I have since called her for want of a better t.i.tle, I was at first amazed and inclined to doubt my own sagacity; but when--I am making a clean breast of it, Miss Jenrys--when I followed you, doubtful what course to pursue, I saw you joined by a gentleman, and I saw the brunette slip away from you as she would hardly have done, as you would hardly have allowed her to do, had she been friend or acquaintance. I am enrolled here as a "special," but I came, in company with another, with a definite object in view. Within these grounds are several persons under suspicion, and whom we are hoping to capture and convict, and when I tell you that only yesterday I learned that this same little brunette who claimed your property and friendship was seen in company with two suspected persons, you will hardly wonder that what I had attempted to do from purest courtesy from one stranger to another, and that other a lady, I felt impelled to do from a sense of duty, as well as desire to save one whom I had seen to be alone, and who might, for aught I could tell, be menaced by some unsuspected danger.'

There was no fear on her face, only a slightly troubled look, as she asked: