Captivating Mary Carstairs Part 6

Whereupon Peter begged to introduce himself as an ardent amateur statesman, a student of good government from New Hampshire to New Zealand and from Plato to Lincoln Steffens, who had--er--come to Hunston hoping to see something of the fight for reform. The candidate, in turn, produced cards. It became apparent that he bore the name of J. Pinkney Hare. And the upshot of the colloquy was that the two young men presently found themselves invited to call upon Candidate Hare next morning, and learn something of the situation.

"I'll be delighted," accepted Peter promptly,--"delighted."

"That's settled then. Good-night--and thanks awf'ly for your a.s.sistance."

He pivoted on his trim heels, abruptly, and went away up the side street.

Peter turned to Varney with a faint grin. "That chap gets his first lesson in the art of being a reformer to-morrow. Curious, wasn't it?--stumbling right into the heart of the agitation an hour after we hit the town."

Varney, who had followed Peter's activities of the last five minutes with considerable disapproval, did not answer his smile.

"Give me a hasty sketch of your conception of a quiet onlooker, will you, Peter?"

"Tush!" said Peter. "Why, can't you see that this sort of thing will make the finest kind of blind? St! Here's our little friend coming back again."

"I say," called the voice of J. Pinkney Hare out of the gloom.

"Yes?" said Peter.

The candidate drew nearer.

"Our city is not plentifully supplied with amus.e.m.e.nts," he began in his somewhat pompous manner. "It just occurred to me that, in lieu of anything better, you gentlemen might care to go home with me now. I should be happy to have you--and to reciprocate your courtesy in any way within my power."

Peter, doubtless remembering the slow time he had been having on the yacht, brightened instantly and visibly.

"Why, _thanks_. I'll be awfully glad to come. I--er--I'm tremendously interested in your situation here, I a.s.sure you."

Then, catching a warning glance from Varney, who politely declined the invitation, he apologized to the candidate and drew his captain briefly aside.

"I'll pick up all the information I can--understand?" he murmured hurriedly. "And don't you worry. A little flurry in politics will make the best sort of a cover for you while you sneak around after Mary."

On that the two friends parted. Peter hurried on after the little reformer, and Varney, turning, continued his way down Main Street toward the river and the _Cypriani_, not entirely displeased, after all, that Peter had found some congenial diversion for the evening.

The street was almost a desert. If the unmistakable sounds of revelry by night meant anything, nearly the whole population was behind him in the Ottoman bar. But in the middle of the next block, two ragged men, standing idly and talking together, turned at the sounds of the young man's steps. One of them, revealed by a near-by shop-light, had straggly gray whiskers, vacant eyes, and a bad foolish mouth. Both of them stared at Varney with marked intentness. He had to go quite out of his way to get round them.

"They don't see strangers every day, I take it," he thought absently; and suddenly he cast an inquiring eye at the heavens.

The night, so shining half an hour before, was becoming heavily overcast. Clouds had rolled up from nowhere and blotted out the moon.

About him the night breeze was freshening with a certain significance; and now unexpectedly there fell upon his ear the faint far rumble of thunder. Decidedly, there would be rain, and that right soon. Varney quickened his pace.

At the end of that quiet block he came upon a crimson-cheeked lady, somewhat past her first youth and over-plump for beauty, who was engaged in putting up the shutters at her mother's grocery establishment.

Glancing around casually at his approach, her glance became transfixed into a stare.

"Well!" she exclaimed in surprise and not without coquettishness--"if it ain't Mr. Ferris!"

"If it ain't Mr. Ferris--what then?" asked Varney. "For, madam, I a.s.sure you that it ain't."

The woman, taken aback by this denial, only stared and had no reply ready. But the young man, walking on, was set to thinking by this second encounter, and presently he mused: "I'm somebody's blooming double, that's what. I wonder whose."

And on that word, as though to get an answer to his speculation, he suddenly halted and turned.

He had now progressed nearly a block from the buxom young woman of the grocery. For some time, even before that meeting, he had been aware of light, steady footsteps behind him on the dark street, gaining on him.

By this time they had come very near; and now as he wheeled sharply, with a vague antic.i.p.ation of Peter's "old duck in a felt hat," he found himself face to face with quite a different figure--that of a thin young man whom he recognized.

"Bless us!" said Varney urbanely. "It's the student of manners again."

The pale young stranger stopped two paces away and gave back his look with the utmost composure.

"Still on my studies," said he, in his flat tones--"though I doubt," he added thoughtfully, "if that fully explains why I have followed you."

"Ah? Perhaps I may venture to ask what would explain it more fully?"

"Oh, certainly. My real motive was to suggest, purely because of a paternal interest I take in you, that you leave town to-morrow morning--you and your ferocious friend."

Varney eyed him amusedly. "But is not this somewhat--er--precipitate?"

"Oh, not a bit of it. In fact, you hardly require me to tell you, Beany, that you were a great fool to come back at all."

"Beany!"

"You don't mind if I sit down?"

A row of packing-cases clogged the sidewalk at the point where they stood, and the young man dropped down wearily upon one of them, and leaned back against the store-front.

"Beany?" repeated Varney.

"It was dark down on the river," observed the other slowly, "but the instant I saw you on the square, I recognized you, and so, my friend, will everybody else."

"With even better success, I trust, than you have done. For my name is not Beany, but indeed Varney--Laurence Varney--permit me--"

"Ah, well! Stick it out if you prefer. In any case--"

"But do tell me the name of this individual to whom I bear such a marked resemblance. I naturally--"

"The individual to whom you bear such a marked, I may say such a very marked, resemblance," said the stranger, mockingly, "is a certain Mr.

Ferris Stanhope, a prosperous manufacturer of pink-tea literature. You never heard the name--of course. But never mind about that. I should advise you both to leave town anyway."

"Is it trespa.s.sing too far if I ask--"

"Any one who a.s.sociates with little Hare, as I have a premonition that you two will do if you stay, is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward."

Varney came a step nearer and rested his foot on the edge of the packing-case.

"Now that," said he, "is by all odds the best thing you've said yet.

Elucidate it a bit, won't you? I admit to some curiosity about that little tableau in the square--"

"Yes? Well, I owe you one for that box of matches, Beany--er--Mr.--and it would be rather asinine for you or your pugilistic partner to begin monkeying with our buzz-saw. I happened, you see, to overhear part of your talk with J. Pinkney Hare just now. How others might view it I know not, but to me it seemed only fair to warn you that that interesting young man must be shunned by the wise. As to the mayoralty, he has as much chance of getting in as a jack-rabbit has of b.u.t.ting a way through the Great Wall of China. For we have a great wall here of the st.u.r.diest variety."

He meant, as he briefly explained, the usual System, and back of it the usual Boss: one Ryan, owner of the Ottoman saloon and the city of Hunston, who held the town in the hollow of his coa.r.s.e hand, and was slowly squeezing it to death.