Lonesome Town Part 25

"Frisk him, Pudge!" was the concluding order.

Because Jane's automatic was first found and placed upon the desk the more personal "hardware," a 45 Colt snugly fitted into its arm-pit holster, was almost overlooked. The sparrow cop's triumph on drawing it forth was weighty as his figure.

"You go right well heeled for a guest of the hoity-toity," remarked the sergeant, also pleasurably excited. "We'll just book you for a double felony under the Sullivan law."

At the threat, "mother" took a step toward her companion, evidently appreciating that this last charge was due to the service rendered in fore-disarming without fore-warning her. She looked ready to confess her ownership of the black gun, as she was trying to get the sergeant's attention around the interposed bulk of Pudge O'Shay. But she paused when she saw Pape hand a yellow pig-skin card-case to the officer.

"Before you 'phone your friend Welch the glad news that you've got a double-barreled Sullivan on me," he requested, "calm yourself by a look at this."

The sergeant obliged; aloud read sketchily from the filled-in courtesy card signed by his chief, the commissioner of police.

"Peter S. Pape, deputy sheriff, Snowshoe County, Montana. Permitted to carry arms while in pursuit of fugitives from justice."

His pleased expression faded; rather, appeared to pa.s.s from his face to that of the prisoner. And indeed, Pape felt that he had reason to be pleased. Only that week, in preparation for any trail's-end contretemps, he had taken the precaution of presenting at Police Headquarters his credentials from the home county sheriff. Sooner than expected, if somewhat otherwise, preparedness had won.

"You're not going to tell me you thought them fugitives was buried on the far side of the park?" the sergeant grumbled.

"Wish they were. Say, if you think there's any chance of your friend Welch dropping in for a social call, I'd like to swap a few words with him."

"Leave up on Swin Welch! He's harmless-ain't been west of Weehawken in his life. Where does this old-that is to say, young lady come in?"

"She came in merely as a spectator to cheer me whilst I did my digging exercise. You can have nothing against her."

Obviously the sergeant was troubled.

"Wish the lieutenant was here," he was heard to mutter.

Adonis Moore made his way to the desk. "The sheriff is giving you the right dope, serg. All the while Pudge and I was watching, his lady friend didn't move as much as a clod."

"She wouldn't need to move more'n a clod if she'd take that bonnet off her head," his superior commented. "We can't let her out now. She's already booked. But likely she'll make short shrift of the magistrate in the morning. The sheriff I've gotta hold on the park despoliation charge. There ain't nothing in his card allowing for that. He's ent.i.tled to have his guns back, but--"

"But how about a thousand dollars cash bail for the two of us on the misdemeanor?" Pape stepped forward to propose, his hand suggestively seeking the inner pocket of his corduroy coat. "The price is a bit high just for the practice of my daily physical culture, still I'll pay."

His confident expression faded the next moment when his hand came out empty of his well-stocked wallet. In changing to rough-and-readies, he had forgotten to transfer from his tweeds the price of adventure in a great city. Except for several crumpled small bills and certain loose change in his trouser pocket, he was without financial resource. His attempt at a hopeful glance in Jane's direction weakened under the thought that, even were she not a self-declared poor relation, she wouldn't be carrying ten century notes on her person.

"I've got telephone and war-tax money, anyhow," he observed cheerfully.

"Lead me to a booth and I'll have Mr. Astor chip in the ante. Sorry on mother's account about the delay. She ain't used to late hours in police stations."

"It might take quite a while to convince the hotel that you are you,"

Jane demurred.

"As it did you, Jane?"

She ignored his _sotto voce_ aside. "Why not let me send for collateral, Mr. Sergeant? I live just across the avenue."

"Oh, you do, eh?"

"That is, my aunt does. They wouldn't have a thousand dollars in the house, but you'd take jewelry, wouldn't you, if it was worth several times the amount?"

a.s.suming his consent and thanking him with a radiant smile, she motioned Adonis Moore to one side and advised with him a moment in an undertone.

"Be sure to ask for Miss Sturgis, not Mrs." Her final direction held over Pape's protest. "Under no circ.u.mstance alarm my aunt. And don't say who is in trouble-just that a good friend of hers needs jewelry bail.

She'll be thrilled by the mystery. She'll manage."

The ensuing wait seemed to try the chief culprit more than his young-old lady "friend." While she sat at comparative ease in the absent lieutenant's desk chair behind the railing, he paced outside. His interest in the sergeant had lapsed on that worthy's refusal to discuss Swinton Welch's connection with the case and he leant only half an ear to the preferred discussion of the latest crime wave which had dashed up to park sh.o.r.es from the ocean of post-war inactivity.

The entrance of Irene Sturgis was "staged"-antic.i.p.ated, timed, well-lit.

After her first burst into the room, she stopped short beneath the electric glare, unbelievably lovely in a blush-pink evening wrap over a gown of vari-tinted tulle. Her back-thrown curls, her heightened color, her parted lips and wide eyes-all proclaimed her utter astonishment at the scene before her. Her surveying glance began with the "costumed"

Westerner standing before the high oaken desk of arraignment, swept to the bent old lady in black, on to the gray-mustached sergeant and the pompous arresting officer, then back to its starting point.

"Oh, don't you look dar-rling in those clothes?" she exclaimed on her way to Pape, "I never saw _anything_ quite so heroic. I didn't _dream_, Why-Not, that you were the 'good friend' in need of bail. I am just too _happy_ about it for anything-oh, not that you are in trouble, of course, but that you'd send for me. I've always been _crazy_ to see the inside of this a.r.s.enal. Police courts and jails and insane asylums just _fascinate_ me. Don't they you-or _do_ they? Maybe I have a morbid tendency, but I enjoy it. It's always the unexpected that really happens, isn't it? I wasn't in an expecting or hoping mood at all to-night and here you, of all people, go and get yourself arrested and send for me and-and _everything_! I forgive you for the past and love you all the more in trouble. But that's as it should be, isn't it? How could any true woman resist you in those clothes and in this--"

Of necessity she paused for breath-paused verbally, not materially.

Reaching Pape, she lifted a look of utter adoration that would have made almost any man's heart do an Immerman flop-lifted also two bare, soft-curved, elbow-dinted arms about his neck.

"I didn't mean a word of what I said this morning at the end of our ride," she confessed in an aside voiced _a la_ the histrionics of yesteryear. "Of course I couldn't seriously call you contemptible, when my deeper nature knows there's a n.o.ble reason back of all that you do.

You'll forget it except as a lover's quarrel, won't you, dar-rling? It is in need and affliction, don't you think, that one's real feelings should come to the surface? I'm not one bit ashamed to tell you that I've been perfectly _miserable_. Haven't you been, too, Why-Not?"

"I ain't just comfortable," he admitted, untieing the lover's knot at the back of his neck.

"Mother," her blue eyes on the red flame of his countenance, looked as though she believed him, but as though she didn't feel "just comfortable" either. In truth, her heart, too, had done some sort of a flop, then had dropped as if dead. She shrank further back into her rusty mourning garb, but did not miss a movement of the two baby-soft hands of her cousin, the one holding the Westerner's arm, the other stroking the same member as though to limber up its strain.

"What dire deed have you done, dar-rling?" The girl's voice was intense from the thrill of her rescue role. "Tell Rene all-at least all. It is such a revelation that you should appeal to me first in trouble. You _always_ will, won't you-or will you? But then, _of course_ you will."

With the eyes of three of the police upon him, Pape's situation would have been trying enough. Faced also by the amaze which he could better imagine than see in the shadow of that bonnet-brim, he felt desperate.

Truly, Jane's wish to avoid alarming her aunt had brought real trouble upon him-more real than any he could explain to this child vampire.

"There ain't much to tell, Miss Sturgis," he began. "Not anything serious enough to--"

_"Miss Sturgis!"_ she interrupted reproachfully. "After I've rifled my jewel box to make up the hush money and after all that's been between us! Are you _ashamed_ of the deeper feeling you showed this morning on our ride? If you don't call me Irene instantly, I'll let them lock you up in a deep, dark, dank dungeon and keep you there until you do."

With a laugh of tender cruelty, she tripped toward the desk in her tip-tilted slippers; there laid upon its flat top a limp, beaded bag which had been swinging from her arm.

"You look so kind, Mr. Chief, I don't see how you _can_ be so mean," she coaxed him. "You really didn't know you were capturing and torturing an innocent man, I feel sure. But you'll right the wrong now, won't you, for _my_ sake if not for his? See what I've brought to a.s.sure you of his worth."

The sergeant opened the bag, dumped its contents upon the desk before him and took up a piece of jewelry for examination.

"The emerald drop on that fillet is a princely ransom in itself," Irene a.s.sured him. "But I brought my mother's black pearls for good measure.

Just look at them-the platinum settings alone are more than the thousand dollars' worth that the nice-looking policeman said you required!"

Perhaps the sergeant found her pleading eyes and smile more inducing bail than the valuables offered. But he began a perfunctory examination of them. The while, the girl's gaze encompa.s.sed the bent, black figure inside the rail. With an unsmothered exclamation, she started forward, then stopped short.

"_Jane_-not _really?_" she cried. "Did he send for you, too? And how did you happen-to come-in costume? I think when you were getting up this party you _might_ have invited me. You know I _dote_ on fancy-dress almost as much as police courts."

Jane came slowly through the gate and straightened before her young relative.

"The 'party' was quite impromptu," she said, pushing back her bonnet to show a smile more grave than gay. "It was I who sent for you, not Mr.

Pape. Part of the bail is for me. You see, dear, I am arrested, too."