The Shriek Part 3

"Ah," murmured in the next balcony the Hon. Maude Tetherington, a cute spinster of sixty who would remember you in her will if you told her she didn't look it, "Ah!" and it was as if she were murmuring to herself.

"Once I dreamed of riding in the desert and of a great, handsome Arab pursuing me and----" it was, as stated, as if she were speaking to herself but you bet Lady Speedway got it.

"And what?" Lady Speedway demanded with a cold look in her eye.

"There was no offense to the proprieties," said the Hon. Maude with trembling accents. "I a.s.sure you I woke up in time."

The Hon. Maude drew her head within and snapped the lattices of her window shut.

But a little later as she stood at her mirror tacking on her front curls she paused, hammer in hand, to stare back in the direction she had last seen Lady Speedway.

"But there have been times when I have greatly wished I hadn't--so there!"

And she stuck out her tongue, nor', nor'west due east toward Speedway.

Thus amid a magnificent display of good-wishes, Verbeena Mayonnaise set out to satisfy her soul longings upon the somewhat dusty Sahara, under the capable guidance of Musty Ale and his equally musty camels and his mustard colored men.

Lord Tawdry had stood in his balcony shaking his finger at Verbeena and declaring if she dared set out he would be down directly and cane her severely, but she answered pertly:

"Rot, old chap!"

As Verbeena rode ahead with Musty Ale, Lord Tawdry started in pursuit on a camel which, however, refused to hump itself worthily, and although Lord Tawdry kept crying out to Verbeena: "O, I say now--it won't do! Do you hear me? Really this sort of thing simply isn't done!" it was not until Musty Ale's caravan arrived at Oasis No. 1 that Lord Tawdry was able to catch up.

But as soon as he had fallen off his camel and readjusted his monocle, he picked up a riding whip and chased Verbeena up a palm tree.

"You sickening a.s.s!" our laddiebuck--I mean heroine called to him, "you just drop that whip and I'll come down and show you who's who in Sahara!"

Action wasn't Lord Tawdry's strong point anyway except with a good deck of cards.

"Verbeena," he said, "come down peacefully and we'll have it out in talk."

"O, you Hergesheimer!" smiled she, leaping to the ground, lighting a cigarette in her descent.

"Now look here, Tawdry, what's the idea of your trailing me this way?

My mind's made up. You'll have simply missed a whole day at bridge and you know you can't afford it. I'm going to put in a month--a full month on the Sahara. I've the sand so why shouldn't I?"

Verbeena drew herself up and shot a cigarette snag squarely into a lizard's eye. Pardon--I forgot to mention the lizard was twisting in the brilliant sunshine on a nearby opalescent rock.

"Kid," said Lord Tawdry, not unkindly, "cut the proud boyish beauty stuff for half a shake, if you please. One must get down to bra.s.s tacks once in a while and just now the situation is such that I feel as if I were sitting on the points of a million."

"Talk reasonably," said Miss Mayonnaise almost effeminately, "and I will do what little I can to understand you."

"Well then, why this sudden interruption in our plans? The idea was that I was to chuck myself to America and go to Newport or some other nearby spot like Los Angeles and pluck for myself a wife somewhere between twenty to forty in age and forty to sixty in millions of American--er--buckoes--I think the bounders call 'em."

"And I," nodded Verbeena, "was to go along and subtly instruct the victim that it wasn't necessary in good society to perform so many fancy tricks as Americans do with their forks and that in acquiring an English accent one didn't say fawncy for fancy. And I was to tell her how sensitive you were about money--about ever being left without any."

"Bright chap, you are, Verbeena! It was a jolly plan. But when b.u.t.ternut and his five thousand pun' a year came along I was willing to sacrifice myself, was I not?

"I was willing," said Lord Tawdry, "to postpone America and stick to bridge until you'd a chance to snap the bally, wedding manacles on the pretty youth. And everything seemed moving perfectly until late last night. His eyes were then shining like a pair of motor car lamps with love for you.

"I saw him beg you to go out upon the balcony.

"And next a scream!

"b.u.t.ternut is carried in on a stretcher and you stroll back looking like an incense burner.

"I seek to see b.u.t.ternut. I cannot. I seek explanation from you----"

"If only you hadn't begun with that usual stuff of clubbing my curls, Tawdry!--I just made up my mind to let you remain in suspense a while.

But now I'll tell all!

"I tried to play fair, Tawdry, tried to play fair," said Verbeena earnestly, "like the square little fellow I am."

"Did b.u.t.ternut ask you to marry him out there on the balcony last night?"

"He did."

"Well then?"

"Tawdry, old chap, I overplayed my hand. I threw myself into his arms cooing 'Bertie, dearest Bertie' in as ladylike a manner as my bringing up allows. And then he hugged me. And to show him I really loved him, don't you know, I hugged him back. I just let myself go, old dear!"

"To be sure--quite right--under the circ.u.mstances."

"Stupid! I broke three of his ribs."

"My Gawd!"

"Not so amazing after all," said Verbeena with a glint of boyish pride.

"And he--since--he----?"

"At three-thirty one and a half by my wrist watch--the only piece of jewelry, by the way, you've left me--I received, Lord Tawdry, this communication from the hospital cot of the Honorable Bertram b.u.t.ternut!"

Out of the hip pocket of her smart riding breeches, Verbeena flashed a paper on her brother.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HONORABLE BERTIE b.u.t.tERNUT, WHOSE Pa.s.sION WAS CRUSHED WITH HIS RIBS.]

As he read it, he clutched wildly at his long black mustaches for support.

"'Dear old Verb,' the Hon. Bertie had written, 'I think you will be too much of a good fellow to hold me to my rash words of last night.

"'The mater and I talked it over at my bedside while the plastercasts were being fashioned.

"'Though the tears blot this letter yet through their splashes, I cannot but see that mamma's advice is good. Better, the mater says, a broken heart than a succession of fractured ribs!

"'And myself looking into the future I cannot bear to think of my children beholding a father who is nothing but a cracked and shattered pulp.