Lonesome Town Part 16

"You're not going to _take_ me?" she demanded through the down-dropped sash of the door he had closed.

"If you'll excuse me, no, Miss Sturgis. I am very sorry to miss the pleasure and sorrier if I seem discourteous. But I-I owe a duty to a friend."

She looked with a hard glance straight into his eyes, her lips thinning.

"Then you think more of your _horse_ than you do of me?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," he temporized.

She pressed the point. "You may think I lack reserve, Mr. Pape.

Sometimes I myself feel that I am too impulsive and too-too honest."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," he repeated. It was the best he could offer and he was in doubt about that.

"No, I suppose you wouldn't," she snapped. "But why don't you a.s.sume a virtue if you have it not-why not be a little bit honest yourself? Why not answer the truth? Heaven knows I might better learn it now than later. Tell me, Why-Not, is it only Polkadot for whom you are deserting me?"

Pape tried un.o.btrusively to give the chauffeur the start signal; shifted his weight; cleared his throat.

"Well, it isn't exactly-not entirely on account of the horse, although a man's cayuse is his cayuse and that's that. No, miss. You see, we were kind of late starting, owing to your change of-of habits. And I have a friend that I'm sort of committed to help because she-he--"

But his impromptu defense merged into her high-pitched scorn which, in its turn, merged into tears before she was through.

"I knew it. I _divined_ it. And me meriting a man's whole soul! Kindly tell the driver to start at once. As for you, Peter Stansbury Pape, I think you're _contemptible_!"

Grooms were caring for the horses on Pape's return to the stable. The "cripple" he miraculously cured by a word and a touch. In his dressing room, he hurried into street clothes.

Out in the park, beneath that clump of poplars--

Talking was all very well in its way. But at last he had sighted something to _do_!

CHAPTER XIII-IN HER SERVICE

Perhaps never had Peter Pape felt in more of a rush to reach any given spot. Yet, once there, he seemed in a greater rush to get away. Scarcely did he pause in his brisk walk along the pavement outside the park wall to study the details of the scene beneath the poplars which so had interested him-three laborers dressed in jeans, each equipped with pick or shovel, digging in the shade under direction of a dapper-dressed, slight-built stranger. But in the sprinkling of curious bystanders, men and women who decorated the wall like rail-birds, there was no sight of her whom he rather had expected to find among those present.

The total absence of Jane Lauderdale, either in the bonnet and black of East Sixty-third Street or in the modish morning frock which might have attired her dual self, decided his next move. By pa.s.sage of several minutes, a picked-up taxi and a dollar bill, he was mounting the front steps of the old, scaly far-East mansion. The front door standing open, he seemed tacitly invited to enter without formality of a ring. Upon undertaking the flight of stairs within he congratulated himself that he was not superst.i.tious. Every step of the weathered wood squeaked, scrooped or screeched as if in ill-omen. Never had he climbed so foreboding a stair-case, albeit never so determinedly.

Just why he had come did not matter. There was plenty of time, as he told himself, to argue that out afterward. Impulse had mastered him, the same sort of impulse that would have started him burning the trail back home to warn a pal whose mining claim had been jumped or whose cattle were being rustled toward the Canadian line. Actionful resentment had moved him, as during the previous winter when he had discovered poachers attacking the Yellowstone buffalo herd and had skied forty miles in blizzard weather to warn the Spread-Eagle Rangers. So far as he cared to figure in the emergency, a bent-back, ill-clad old lady-no matter who else or what else or whyfore else she might be-had preempted that poplar patch and owned therefore the exclusive digging rights thereto. In the event that she herself had not instigated the present activity, he was here to warn her.

Whom he should meet at the top of his climb was problematic. If it was the blond-mopped man-Well, they both might be taking chances.

A moment did he pause before the door of the fourth floor front. Suppose a maid attended his knock, for whom should he ask? "Miss Lauderdale"

might not be known in the house-mention of the name might betray an incognito. Reminding himself, however, that a servant was the difficulty least likely to be encountered in that tenement, he knuckled up his hand and knocked.

His first rap did not bring response; had to be repeated more peremptorily. He could hear low voices within. Then there was silence.

Perhaps the occupants of flats did not answer unexpected knocks. His hand was fisted for a third when the k.n.o.b turned and the door opened a crack.

No face appeared; nothing but a voice-a woman's, hard and impatient.

"Yes. What is it? Who do you want?"

Pape was returned to the quandary of the maid possibility. Before he could decide what to answer the suction of wind from the hall drew around the edge of the door a fluttery bit of black skirt.

"I want you, Jane," he hazarded.

Curiosity, surprise or exasperation ruled her-perhaps a combination of the three. Her young-white face in its old-black bonnet followed the skirt around the door edge, high as his own and so close that her breath, warm and sweet as a summer zephyr off a clover field, blew upon his cheek.

"_You_?" she gasped, as before, out under the trees.

"Again," he finished for her with the briefest of bows.

She narrowed the crack and moved across it, evidently to protect the room from his inspection. Not exactly a "welcome to our happy home" was her next offering, although in her natural tones.

"So you followed me home last night, after all! How dared you? What is the meaning of your espionage?"

His courage was lit by the blaze of her look.

"There's a particular meaning to it that I hope you won't find so unwelcome. I've whizzed hereward to inform you that a gang of grave-diggers are exercising their muscles 'neath the shade of the sheltering poplars where you and Kicko were planting bones last evening."

He felt gratified at the importance of his news, as shown by its effect on her. Her lips paled as they parted. The pansy-black irises widened within the blue of her eyes in her concentrated stare. Lines lengthened her face more suitably to the poke of the bonnet that framed it.

"Who-_who_?" she demanded, her voice scarcely more than a rasp.

"That I didn't linger to learn. I saw them as I was polkaing past upon my trusty steed just now. Thought you mightn't know."

She turned her head and spoke as if to some one within the room.

"Oh, what shall we do? If they've solved the cryptogram-if they find--"

She checked other disclosures; again faced the volunteer messenger, now frowning.

When no suggestion as to what they could do came from the person who would seem to be the other half of her "we," Pape made cheerful offering: "The taxi-hack that conveyed me cross-town is ticking time down in the street. It is at your service, miss or madam, with or without yours truly."

She gave him a startled glance, whether for his mode of address or his offer, he could not be sure; then spent a moment in urgent thought.

"_Would_ you wait for me a few minutes?" She all at once announced her decision.

Without need of his answer, without a verbal thank-you or suggestion of apology, she closed the door in his face and, by way of insult to injury, turned the key inside.

Seeing nothing better to do, Pape leisurely descended the stairs. The steps protested stridently as before, but more intelligibly now.

"She doesn't look it," shrieked the top one. And: "She doesn't-doesn't-_doesn't_!" repeated the several next. "But she wouldn't let you in-in-in," the hard-tried middle ones. "There's something queer about it all-something queer-something queer," creaked the ground-floor last.

Within the stipulated "few" minutes Jane joined him out on the Colonial portico of long-ago grandeur. Her complete change of costume-the dingy black doffed for a small, smart sailor hat and a gray tweed that did credit to her tailor as well as herself-proclaimed her something of an artist at the alias act. Also did it quash any hope which may have been left in him that the East Side flat-house was a place of temporary sojourn. Evidently she kept a wardrobe there. The man who had greeted her so tenderly last night called the shack "home." Jane was always going off on these visits to her many woman friends-so Irene had said.

Such deductions halved his attention during the reflexes of handing her into the taxi and instructing the driver regarding the return trip.