In And Out Part 9

"And get his wretched togs, Wilkins. I'll dress him properly to-morrow; but get those rags away from him."

"Very good, sir," said Wilkins, as he glided down the corridor after David.

The proprietor of Fry's Imperial Liniment watched him go and smiled softly, returning to his chair to grin at Johnson Boller in a perfectly human fashion. Johnson Boller, on the other hand, did not grin at all.

He merely gazed at his old friend until, after a minute or two, Anthony asked:

"Well--what do you think?"

"I think you're a nut!" Johnson Boller said with sweet candor. "I think you're a plain da--well, I think you're unbalanced. You know what that young thug will do to you, don't you?"

"Eh?"

"If he's the crook he looks, he'll light out of here about three in the morning with everything but the piano and your encyclopaedia. If he isn't a crook, just as soon as he gets loose and talks it over with his friends, he'll have you pinched for detaining him here against his will; and I'll give you ten to one that he collects not less than twenty-five hundred dollars before he's through. You scared him stiff with your eagle eye and your crazy notions, and he pleaded guilty so he could go to bed and get away from you. I'll have to testify to that if he calls on me."

"Fiddlesticks!" said Anthony Fry.

"Is it? Wait and see, Anthony," Johnson Boller said earnestly. "That kid spells trouble. I can feel it in the air."

"You can always feel it in the air," Anthony smiled.

"Maybe so; but this feeling amounts to a pain!" Boller said warmly.

"This is a hunch--a premonition--one of those prophetic aches that can't be ignored. Why, he had a fight started before you had spoken ten words to him, and----"

"Oh, rot!" Anthony said.

Johnson Boller drew a deep, concerned breath.

"On the level," he said, "are you going to keep this kid imprisoned here?"

"By no means," Anthony laughed. "As a matter of fact, all I want to do is to talk to him in the morning. I want to know, Johnson, whether he will actually persist in fighting off the chance I'm offering him--because it's so confounded characteristic of the whole human race.

If he's as obstinate in the morning as he is now--well, I suppose I'll turn him loose with a ten-dollar bill, and look around for another subject. I'd really like to approach a dozen men, picked haphazard, and write a little paper on the manner in which they greet opportunity."

"Yes, but not while I'm with you," Johnson Boller said. "Anthony, do this--get the kid aside in the morning and tell him you'd been drinking heavily all day and didn't know what you were doing to-night. See? Make a joke of it and slip him fifty to keep quiet, and then----"

"Ah, Wilkins," Anthony smiled. "Got his togs, did you?"

The invaluable one bowed and held the shabby garments at a distance from his person.

"He pa.s.sed them out to me through a crack in the door," he reported disgustedly. "What shall I do with them? They're hardly worth pressing, sir."

"Of course not. Don't bother with them," Anthony smiled, and waved his man away. "Johnson, turn intelligent for a moment, will you?"

"Why? Intelligence has no place in this evening."

"Oh, yes it has. Let's examine the case of this David youngster and try to reconstruct his emotions and his mental impressions when confronted with opportunity such as----"

"d.a.m.n opportunity!" said Johnson Boller, rising with a jerk. "I'm going to bed!"

Only once had Johnson Boller tarried in Montreal, and on that occasion the thermometer had ranged about ninety in the shade. Yet now, as he slumbered fitfully in Anthony's Circa.s.sian guest-chamber, childhood notions of Canada came to haunt his dreams.

He saw snow--long, glistening roads of snow over which Beatrice whizzed in a four-horse sleigh, with driver and footman on the box, and beside her a tall, foreign-looking creature with a big mustache and flashing eyes and teeth. He talked to Beatrice and leaned very close, devouring her beauty with his eyes; and Johnson Boller groaned, woke briefly, and drifted off again.

He saw ice; they were holding an ice carnival in Montreal, and everybody was on skates. Beatrice was on skates, ravishing in white fur, leading some sort of grand march with the Governor General of Canada, who skated very close to her and devoured her beauty with his bold, official eyes, causing Johnson Boller to groan again and thresh over on his other side.

He saw a glittering toboggan slide; laughing people in furs were there at the head of the slide, notably Beatrice, chatting shyly with a blond giant in a Mackinaw, who leaned very close to her as they prepared to coast and devoured her beauty with his large, blue eyes. Now they settled on the toboggan, just these two, although Johnson Boller's astral self seemed to be with them. The blond giant whispered something, and they slid down--down--down!

And they struck something, and Johnson Boller was on his feet in the middle of the Circa.s.sian chamber, demanding:

"What's that? What was that?"

Somewhere, Anthony was muttering and moving about. Somewhere else, Wilkins was chattering; but the main impression was that the roof had fallen in--and Johnson Boller, struggling into his bathrobe, stumbled to the door and burst into the brilliant living-room.

In the center of the room, flattened upon the floor, was Anthony's substantial little desk. Papers were around it and blotters and letters without number, and the old-fashioned inkwell had shot off its top and set a black streak across the beautiful Oriental carpet.

Two chairs were on their sides, also, but the striking detail of the picture was furnished by David Prentiss. That young man was sprawled crazily, just beyond the desk, and beside him, holding him down with both hands, was Wilkins, tastefully arrayed in the flowered silk pajamas Anthony had discarded last year as too vivid.

"I've got him, sir!" Wilkins' pale lips reported, as his master appeared. "I have him fast."

"What'd he do?" Johnson Boller asked quickly. "Pull a knife on you, Wilkins?"

"He'd not time for that, sir," Wilkins said grimly. "I think he stumbled over a chair and took the desk along with him, trying to get out. I always wake just as the clock strikes two, and stay awake ten minutes or more, and that's how I came to hear him and get him. He was just getting to his feet when I ran in and turned on the lights, and he----"

"Let him up!" Anthony said sharply.

"But don't let go of him!" Johnson Boller said harshly. "I missed the time by an hour, but I was right otherwise, Anthony. He's got the silver and your stick-pins and rings on him, and--what the d.i.c.kens is he wearing?"

Silence fell upon them for a little, as David struggled to his feet and looked about with a strange, trancelike stare--for there was some reason for Mr. Boller's query.

David, apparently, had dressed for the street. He wore shoes not less than five sizes too long; he wore a bright brown sack coat which came almost to his knees, and blue trousers which were turned up until they all but met the coat. He had acquired a rakish felt hat, too, which rested mainly on the back of his neck.

"He got them clothes out of the junk-closet at the end of the corridor, sir," Wilkins said quite breathlessly. "He must have been roaming the place quite a bit, to have found them, and----"

"What were you trying to do, David?" Anthony snapped.

"I don't know, sir," David said vaguely, pa.s.sing a hand over his eyes in a manner far too dramatic to be convincing.

"Where did you get those clothes?"

"I have no idea, sir," David murmured.

"Don't lie to me!" Anthony snapped. "What----"

"I'm not lying, sir," David said in the same vague, far-away tone. "I must have been asleep, Mr. Fry. I remember having a terrible dream--it was about father and it seemed to me that he was dying. There were doctors all about the bed and father was calling to me, and it seemed to me that I must get to him, no matter what stood in the way. I remember trying to go to him, and then--why, I must have fallen there, sir, and wakened."

For an instant the vagueness left his eyes and they looked straight at Anthony.