In And Out Part 14

"I wouldn't faint," the girl said coolly. "I'm not going to bite you, you know. And please don't make those silly faces, either, Mr. Fry.

You've brought it on yourself. I'm not here by my own choosing. I've done my level best to get out and----"

Anthony's voice returned explosively.

"Why," he cried thickly, "_why_ didn't you tell me?"

"That I was a girl?"

"Yes!"

The lovely little mystery had kicked off her slippers and was looking pensively at her bare feet. They were pink and tiny; as feet, however, they belonged anywhere in the world but in Anthony Fry's bachelor home, and he turned suddenly from them and looked at their owner, who smiled faintly.

"You look a lot saner when you're scared," she mused.

"Why didn't----"

"I'm coming to that, just because you do look saner," the girl explained. "I didn't tell you because I didn't dare. I thought you were crazy."

"What?"

"Who wouldn't, when you were talking that way about opportunity and insisting that I stay here and all that sort of thing?" the young woman inquired tartly. "It was plain enough that you were a crank, at the best of it, and I didn't know--well, it seemed better to take a chance of getting out during the night."

Second by second, normal cerebration was returning to Anthony, and although it caused him to grow colder and colder with plain apprehension it also rendered his perspective more true, for he burst out with----

"Why in Heaven's name did you, a girl, ever come here in the first place?"

"What?" The girl smiled flittingly and ruefully. "Oh, there was a reason for that, too."

"What was it?"

She of the t.i.tian hair eyed him thoughtfully and shook her head.

"Perhaps I'll tell you some other time," she said.

"Why not now?" Anthony snapped.

"You wouldn't be any happier for knowing, just now," the girl said mysteriously.

Her pajamaed legs, swathed in the mighty bathrobe, crossed comfortably Turkish fashion, and she considered Anthony with her calm, quizzical eyes--and of a sudden an overwhelming helplessness surged through Anthony Fry and he had more than a little difficulty in concealing the slight tremble of his limbs.

For if the boy David had been a nervous, frightened creature, the lady who had succeeded him was almost anything else! David had been timorous and given to shrinking; the girl was all quiet a.s.surance. David's eyes had been frightened and round; these eyes were just as round, but, as much as anything else, they seemed to express mild amus.e.m.e.nt at Anthony's discomfiture.

And that was the way of the whole s.e.x, Anthony reflected bitterly.

Having enmeshed mere man and entangled him, hands, feet, and everything else, it was woman's habit to sit and stare calmly, just as this one was sitting and staring, wordlessly inquiring just what he meant to do about it.

"Who are you?" he asked dizzily.

"Um," said the girl meditatively. "Well, if you find it necessary to call me anything, call me--er--Mary."

"Mary what?"

"Just Mary."

"But your other name----"

"You wouldn't be any happier for knowing that either," the girl a.s.sured him serenely.

"What on earth does that mean?" Anthony demanded, with almost a return of his old imperious manner.

Mary gazed fixedly at him for a moment, deeply and inscrutably and with that in her eyes which, although he could not name it, caused Anthony's chilly blood to drop several more degrees.

"Don't ask me what it means, because I might tell you, and you wouldn't be any happier for knowing _that_!" the girl said quietly.

"But the Frenchwoman?" Anthony essayed, lunging off in another direction. "Who was she?"

"Well, she was my personal maid--at least it won't hurt you to know that much," Mary dimpled. "I sent for her and asked her to bring my bag and--there's the bag."

One pink foot indicated it, and for many seconds Anthony's dumfounded eyes stared at the thing. There was an intricate monogram on one end, which he could not decipher; otherwise, it impressed him. The bag was a very, very expensive bit of luggage and his failing heart thumped a trifle harder.

No stray young woman owns a bag like that and a French maid to carry it around; no adventurous female waif of the type one might expect to find wandering about in masculine raiment speaks in the unquestionably cultivated tone that Mary was using now. And no clear-eyed, clear-skinned young female friend of Mary's type ever belonged to the demi-monde!

Mary was a person of parts and position. How she had appeared at the fight, Anthony, if he had wonderful luck, might never learn; but the fact remained that he had detained her against her will in his apartment, and possibilities loomed so swiftly and numerous before his mental vision that his throat tightened.

"You--you're a respectable young woman!" he said hoa.r.s.ely.

"Thank you, unquestionably," Mary smiled dryly.

"And--er--as such, the thing to do is to get you out of here as quickly and as inconspicuously as possible."

"I've been trying to get out inconspicuously myself," Mary suggested.

Anthony rose and his sickly smile appeared again.

"I can--can only apologize and a.s.sume all the blame," he said unsteadily. "I will have Wilkins bring you your clothes, and as soon as you are dressed we will----"

"You mean those men's clothes?" Mary asked sharply.

"Of course."

"And go out in them in _daylight_?"

"Certainly."

"I wouldn't do that for an even million dollars!" Mary informed him.

"But you'll have to do that!" said Anthony.

"But I will not have to do it, because I won't do it!" the girl said flatly and with considerable warmth. "Why, every man, woman, and child in the street would know, the very second they looked at me, and I--oh, no! I won't do that!"