Lonesome Town Part 12

More than by the beauty of Jane Lauderdale's face, he was haunted by its look of fear. The little drama at the Sturgis house that night could not have been staged for benefit of himself, whose presence there was purely accidental. Its unaccountable denouement had terrorized the aunt as well as niece. Much more was unexplained than the nature of the stolen treasure and the cause of that false report anent the severed telephone wires.

To epitomize the present state of mind of Why-Not Pape, "making 'em notice him" had boiled down into one concentrated demand that the high-strung girl whom he had self-selected and later approved by instinct instead of rule-that Jane Lauderdale should notice his readiness to do or die in her service.

He had the will. Whither was the way?

Nights and days had pa.s.sed since he had pressed that thrilling kiss of allegiance upon her finger-tips. Yet here was he strolling aimlessly down The Way, after having stabled Polkadot for an equine feast _au fait_ and himself dined at a restaurant near Columbus Circle. The bright lights could have no allurement for him. Signs were dull indeed that one didn't wish to follow.

The wish formed in his mind for some friend with whom to talk. Not that he was given to confidence with men or cared to engage any feminine ear, save one. But he would have appreciated a word or look of simple sympathy-a moment of companionship that he knew to be genuine with--

He turned squarely about and started back the way he had come. The very sort of friend he needed!

Kicko would be off duty by now and likely as glad as he to improve their acquaintance, so pleasantly begun. If Shepherd Tom was about they could smoke and talk sheep. There was a lot about woollies these B'way folk didn't know-that, for instance, they could take care of themselves for eight months of the year and cost only seven cents a day for the other four. Yes, he and Tom Hoey could talk sheep at the city's Fold. He would seek that "peace and quiet" which he hoped Jane had found in the deepening shade of the only part of Manhattan that at all resembled his West; was more likely to locate it there than along the avenue of amperes and kilowatts.

His ambition seemed to be shared before announced. Scarcely had he turned into the roadway leading from Central Park West to the Sheepfold when he met the police dog coming out. All that he had hoped for was Kicko's greeting. The more conveniently to vent his feelings, the astute, sharp-featured Belgian placed upon the ground the small tin bucket which he was carrying, evidently the lunch pail of his favorite "trick." Soon picking it up, however, he issued a straight-tailed invitation to "come along." Pape realized that he had some definite objective-probably was taking supper instead of lunch to Shepherd Tom.

He accepted.

Many a lead had the whys and why-nots of Peter Pape's nature forced him to follow, but never so interestedly had he followed the lead of a dog.

And Kicko showed that he appreciated the confidence. He would dash ahead; would stop and look back; would set down his precious pail, most times merely to yap encouragement, twice to return to his new friend and urge him on by licking his hand.

When they left the beaten path for the natural park and approached a hummock marked by rocks and a group of poplars whose artistic setting Pape had admired in pa.s.sing earlier that afternoon, the police dog's excitement grew. Beside a dark ma.s.s, hunched-over close to the ground, Kicko dropped the bucket with a final yelp of accomplishment.

At once the dark ma.s.s straightened into human shape. Pape stopped and stared. Almost at once he recognized the poke-bonneted old lady with whose forlorn appearance he had compared his own state. Then she had stood leaning against a tree at the foot of the hill. Now she looked to have been digging in the woodsy earth. A considerable mound of soil lay beside the hole over which she had crouched and she brandished a trowel against Kicko's exuberant importunities. Her back was toward Pape.

As he hesitated over whether to advance or face about, disliking both to startle her and to be caught in what might seem the retreat of a spy, he overheard what she was saying to the dog. He shivered from an odd sensation, not like either cold or heat, that pa.s.sed up his spinal column and into his neck.

"No, you don't, you wriggly wretch! I know perfectly well what you've got in that bucket of yours this time of day-nothing but the saved-up old bones that they don't want you to bury in the flower-beds about the Sheepfold."

When Kicko, as if acknowledging himself caught, seized the handle of his pail and shook it toward her appealingly, she took off the lid and laughed aloud at his ruse. In the regardless embrace which she threw around his scraggy neck, she spilled what showed to be a collection of more or less aged bones.

"Just because you're so attractive, I'll _maybe_ let you have your way,"

she informed him seriously as though addressing a human. "If I don't find what I'm after, you may bury your precious _debris_ as I scoop back the dirt. But you'll have to wait until I- Back, now! I tell you, you've got to wait until I'm sure this isn't the place where--"

Pape didn't stand still longer. Her voice-sweet, strong, familiar-lured him. He forgot his question to advance or retreat. He advanced-and rapidly. By the time he reached her he had outstrode all his consideration for her age and forlorn state. His hurry made him rough.

He stooped over the lowered poke bonnet; unclasped the two arms from about Kicko's neck; literally, jerked the woman to her feet.

Well proportioned, for so old and ill-clad a lady, did she show to be as she sprang back from him, surprised into height, straightness and lissome lines. The face within the scoop of the bonnet was pale from pa.s.sion-surprise, anger, fear-or perhaps all three. She was--

"Jane!" he exclaimed.

"_You_!" cried she.

He stared at her, his tongue too crowded with demands to speak any one of them. He continued to stare as she fell back to her knees and, with her trowel, refilled the hole she had dug. Before he realized what she was about, she had picked up a pile of wilted plants that lay nearby; had down-doubled her tallness, straightness and lissomeness into her former old-lady lines; with a rapid, shuffling walk, had started down and around the hummock.

"Just a minute, Miss Lauderdale," he called. "I didn't mean to startle you. Can't we have a word or two or three?"

She did not answer, did not turn-only hurried away from him the faster.

He set out after her; recrossed the bridle path; entered the deepening shadows toward the heart of the park.

Kicko, who had shown in his whines a spirit torn by regret to forsake either his bones or his friends, now caught up with Pape, briefly sniffed his hand, then trotted after the bent, dingy, scuttling figure merging into the gloom beyond.

The dog's appeal she heeded, but with a well-aimed stone.

"Go back," she ordered him. "Don't you dare follow me. If you do-if anybody follows me-I'll find a policeman and get you both arrested for annoying me."

Kicko, tail between legs, skulked back in the general direction of his treasure pile.

Pape, too, heeded to some extent her warning, evidently meant more for him than the dog. But, although he slackened his pace, he did not turn or skulk. There were reasons a-plenty why he felt justified in pursuit.

CHAPTER XI-DUE EAST

The greatest of parks has its bright sides, many-faceted as the Kohinoor, croquet grounds for the old, benches for the parlorless tenement young, shaded arbors for the love possessed, paG.o.das for picknickers, May poles for the youngsters, roller-skating on the Mall, rowing on the lakes. Just as a jewel catches the light from only one direction at a time, however, this emerald of the city has also its shadows.

Already Why-Not Pape had realized this of his adopted range; knew that, despite the scattering of such policemen as could be spared from pavement-beats outside and the greater number of electric lights upon whose surveillance the City Fathers appeared to place their chief dependence, serious crimes occasionally occurred in Gotham's great, green heart. Even during his short stay he had noted in the daily news tales and tales of outlawry that would have called out posses in Montana-of women held up afoot or in taxis, of men relieved of their valuables at gun-point, of children kidnapped for ransom, of a region of caves occupied by bandits, of footloose pickpockets and mashers.

An inclusive thought of the possibilities of the region in the dead dark of a moonless night was what had started him after the bent, black figure scuttling into the fast-dropping gloom ahead. She had repulsed him even more ungratefully than she had the dog-as scornfully as though there were no Metropolitan Grand Opera House at Thirty-ninth Street and Broadway, as though her Parian pallor had not turned the hue of the ardor with which, a few nights ago, his lips had pressed her hand. But, whether her denial of him was from whim or necessity, he could not permit her to cross the park unguarded at that hour.

And surely there was enough else that was strange about this, their third encounter, to have overcome the prideful hesitation of the most ill-treated man. Hours back, in mid-afternoon, he had seen her in the witch-like disguise of an old herb-hunter, trying to locate some particular spot without arousing the suspicions either of pa.s.sers-by or of the authorities. Her quest had kept her long past the most fashionable dinner hour. Doubtless she had waited until dusk before beginning the actual digging with her trowel in order to decrease the chances of interfering in what must be a violation of the most sacred park regulations.

The sagacity of the Belgian dog in bringing his bucket of bones to be buried where the burying was easy suggested that he had met up and made friends with her before in a like past proceeding. Now that she was headed in the general direction of her Fifth Avenue home, why didn't she go to one of the nearer exits, hail a taxi or take a street-car around?

Granting some reason why she preferred to walk, why not by the foot-path along Traverse Road, only a few rods below? That would have brought her out of the park almost opposite the Sturgis home.

But she was not keeping to any of the paths; seemed rather to avoid them as she hurried due east across the meadow known as "The Green."

Casting off speculation as unprofitable for the nonce, Why-Not Pape kept after her, trailing with care lest she realize that her biped protector had more doggedness than the rebuked canine. It wasn't an extremely romantic way of "Seeing Nellie Home," but certainly had speed and mystery. Perhaps, at that, romance would end the evening, as it did in books, plays, pictures!

When about halfway across the park, the girl changed her course southward toward the truck road. Pape, hoping that she meant to take the beaten track the latter part of her strange retreat, increased his pace in order to cut in ahead of her. Not that he intended to force an interview upon her in her present mood-he had too much consideration for himself to invite another command which he must break. He wished merely to conceal the bulk of himself in the first convenient shadow, there to wait until she had pa.s.sed, then again to follow at a distance discreet, but sufficiently close to enable him to be of service in case of need.

By running the last hundred yards, he realized this scheme; reached the traverse first; lowered himself over the stone abutment; dropped to the flagging at the bottom of the cut. The road he knew to be one of four which cross-line Central Park as unostentatiously as possible to accommodate the heavy vehicular traffic from East Side to West and back again. Much as he resented every reminder of the fallacy of Polkadot's pet illusion and his own-that this was a bit of home-he appreciated that Father Knickerbocker, even for the sake of giving his rich and poor this vast melting pot, could not have asked "business" to drive around an oblong extending from Fifty-ninth to One-hundred-tenth Streets. It was something to rejoice over that, while utility was served, the roadways were sunk so deep that the scenic effect of the whole was scarcely marred.

During his wait close against the shadowed side of the wall, Pape's thoughts sped along at something the recent pace of his feet. The look on Jane Lauderdale's face when he had surprised her at her digging just now was that same look of fear which had haunted him since she had opened her restored, but emptied heirloom box. The strangeness of her behavior afterward, the cruelty of her suspicion of him, her denial of him to-night-all only emphasized that pitiable, terrorized look.

Had her object then and now the sameness of her look? Was she seeking over the expanse of the park that mysterious, stolen something which formerly had been contained in a snuff-box? If so, what clew could she have found that it might be cached beneath the poplars?

Buried treasure! The _motif_ had inspired thrillers since thrills had been commercialized. But treasure buried in Manhattan's heart? So improbable was the thought that, except for one thing, he might have adjudged the eccentric-acting Miss Lauderdale to be mildly mad-the one thing being that he knew she was sane.

He did not, therefore, waste time doubting the entire defensibility of his self-selected lady. She had good reason for covering her personality by the garb and gait of a crone before essaying her hunt; for feigning to gather herbs while the daylight lasted; even for refusing to recognize him after that first startled monosyllable which had been the extent of her half of their interview. In bonnet and black she had every chance of being considered inside the law in the Irish, mother-loving eyes of most of the "sparrow cops," although literally well outside.

Dressed as the upper-crust young beauty he first had met three nights ago, she would have attracted-and deservedly-her "gallery" in no time.

Come to consider, her crooked course home was also logically straight.

Her disguise would have aroused suspicion in a taxi and made her conspicuous in a streetcar. Since she knew her park, the cross-cut home was preferable.

As the mystery of Jane and Jane's tactics decreased, however, the correlative mysteries increased-of the selective robbery, the lied-about 'phone wires, the park as a cemetery for something literally "lost" and the direction, or mis-direction of the chief mourner's search.

A culminative interrogation point to add to his collection was her next lead. She entered the Traverse quite as his trailing sense had foretold at a spot where the wall was easily negotiable. There he waited, a.s.suming that the rest of her route home would be direct and planning, now that he had been a.s.sured of her presence in town, that later in the evening he would telephone the most direct and forceful plea of which he was capable for an immediate interview.