In And Out Part 21

"But----"

"No!" Mary said quite wildly.

"There is not another thing to do," Anthony informed her, with a forlorn, heart-broken smile. "Your good name----"

"You'll find some other way of preserving my good name!" Mary said warmly. "I'm engaged now to the very finest man in the whole world!"

"You're engaged!" Anthony cried intelligently.

"Yes, and he's a sane man, too, and he doesn't cry over the prospect of marrying me!" the young woman hurtled on. "He's a _real_ man, and if he ever finds out that you made me stay here all last night, he'll ignore the circ.u.mstances and shoot you just as sure as you're sitting there!"

She stopped, breathing hard, and shook her head at Anthony Fry, so that the red-gold curls tumbled about quite riotously. Anthony, blinking, said nothing at all, but his friend Johnson Boller took to muttering, rather like a perturbed hen.

As a matter of fact, Boller was downright fond of Anthony, and the prospect of having him slain in cold blood was very distressing. Turning helpful for the first time, Johnson Boller was on the point of trying to think up ways and means of getting Mary out--but Mary herself was speaking again.

"And don't think that that ridiculous proposal lifts any responsibility from your shoulders, either!" she said, energetically. "It doesn't!"

"I had not meant to imply that it did," Anthony said dully.

"You got me here and you've kept me here," said Mary, and it was plain that her even temper had not yet returned. "You'll have to devise the way to get me out of here and what to say when I do get home."

"Yes," murmured Anthony.

"And if it will help any in rousing you out of that apathetic state,"

the girl concluded, "you may as well know that there isn't the slightest doubt in the world that the police have a general alarm for me long before this!"

"Wow!" said Johnson Boller.

"I am--trying to think!" Anthony said with difficulty.

So far as posture went, he looked it. His lean hands were gripping the edges of the table nervously, and his head was bent again; he scowled and then shook his head as if to dispel the scowl. He cleared his throat repeatedly; he glanced at Johnson Boller, whose expression was divided between irrepressible amus.e.m.e.nt and some concern--and he cleared his throat once more and stared his fried egg fixedly in its lone eye.

Thus he was sitting after five silent minutes, which both Mary and Boller had improved gastronomically, when Wilkins entered.

"Beg pardon, Mr. Fry," said he. "A gentleman to see you."

"I can't see him," Anthony said quickly.

Wilkins smiled.

"But this gentleman's on his way up now, sir," he said. "He's one of your friends, and the office allowed him to come up and merely 'phoned that he was coming. It is Mr. Robert Vining, sir!"

Anthony shook his head.

"Well, I cannot see even Mr. Vining this morning," he said. "Say, when he comes to the door, that--good gracious!"

This last being quite justified, because Mary, with one small shriek, had bounded from her chair like a frightened fawn! The chair, toppling over, b.u.mped about the floor for a bit until Wilkins caught it, and Mary, both hands clutched upon her bosom, stood poised for a full second, eyes round and horrified, lips parted.

Then, as the lightning flashes, Mary had turned, and it seemed that she floated through the air to the corridor and into the corridor and down the corridor. In rather less than another second the door of the recent David's chamber closed with a slam.

At the door the buzzer was buzzing.

"Will you see him, sir?" asked Wilkins.

"What? Yes," said Anthony. "Take away that chair and that extra plate before you open the door."

Johnson Boller stood with lips pursed gravely until Wilkins was gone.

"Are you going to let him--er--know?"

"Hardly," said Anthony. "Although--I don't know. Bob's level-headed and resourceful and reliable. Do you suppose it would be possible to--ask his aid?"

"Think of the girl!" said Johnson Boller. "Think what----"

He stopped, for Mr. Robert Vining was with them--a tall, broad-shouldered, person of a year or so past thirty, bright and steady of eye, and with the flush of health upon his carefully shaven cheek. He entered like the muscular paragon he was, lithely and easily as a tiger; and it seemed to Anthony that, if he did nothing else, fifteen minutes of his conversation might serve to restore normal thought.

Robert Vining was all of the pleasant every day that had been before their visit to the fight, and the very sight of him was stimulating.

So he clasped Vining's hand and said heartily:

"Good morning, Bob! You've breakfasted?"

"Long since," grinned young Mr. Vining. "I--who uses perfume around here?"

"No one," Anthony said, paling slightly. "Possibly----"

Vining's eyes twinkled.

"Guess I imagined it," he said. "There's a reason! Well, it's early, but I thought I'd drop in for a moment in pa.s.sing and see what you thought of the alleged battle last night. h.e.l.lo, Johnson! Heard you were here.

Did you go, too?"

"Yep," said Johnson Boller, gazing at his old friend and wondering whether Anthony thought he was looking and acting like himself.

"It was one grand lemon, Anthony, was it not?" asked Mr. Vining, sprawling comfortably for a stay and pinching the end of his cigarette.

Anthony himself settled down in his pet chair for a normal quarter-hour.

"It was all of that," he agreed almost cheerfully. "I've seen the so-called Kid in pretty bad form before; he was a howling outrage when he fought Morr two years ago, but last night----"

His voiced trailed away oddly and for cause. Wilkins, coming from nowhere in particular, was standing in the corridor. He looked straight at his master and with great meaning, and having caught his attention he rolled his eyes toward David's room and nodded slightly. Again he looked at Anthony, again he nodded; and Anthony rose abruptly.

"You--excuse me for a moment, Bob?" he asked, in the same low, husky voice that had afflicted him before this morning. "Wilkins--ah--Wilkins wishes----"

He hurried across the room and followed Wilkins as he backed into the shadows of the corridor.

"She wishes to see you, sir," the invaluable one whispered. "She rang for me and she says it's urgent."

"But----"