The Sin of Monsieur Pettipon Part 16

"And when I come back," he went on sternly, "I want to be able to get into my own house, do you understand?"

"I warned you Pershing was a one man dog," she replied. "You'd better come back at noon while he's at lunch. You needn't worry about us."

"I shan't worry about Pershing," promised Mr. Pottle, reaching for his suit-case.

He had not overstated how busy he would be in Chicago. His second day was crowded. After a trip to the factory, he was closeted at his hotel in solemn conference in the evening with the president, a vice-president or two, a couple of a.s.sistant vice-presidents and their a.s.sistants, and a collection of sales engineers, publicity engineers, production engineers, personnel engineers, employment engineers, and just plain engineers; for a certain large corporation scented profit in his shaving cream. They were putting him through a business third degree and he was enjoying it. They had even reached the point where they were discussing his share in the profits if they decided to manufacture his discovery.

Mr. Pottle was expatiating on its merits.

"Gentlemen," he said, "there are some forty million beards every morning in these United States, and forty million breakfasts to be eaten by men in a hurry. Now, my shaving cream being edible, combines----"

"Telegram for Mr. Puddle, Mr. Puddle, Mr. Puddle," droned a bell hop, poking in a head.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," said Mr. Pottle. He hoped they would think it an offer from a rival company. As he read the message his face grew white.

Alarming words leaped from the yellow paper.

"_Come home. Very serious accident. Blossom._"

That was all, but to the recently mated Mr. Pottle it was enough. He crumpled the message with quivering fingers.

"Sorry, gentlemen," he said, trying to smile bravely. "Bad news from home. We'll have to continue this discussion later."

"You can just make the 10:10 train," said one of the engineers, sympathetically. "Hard lines, old man."

Granville's lone, asthmatic taxi coughed up Mr. Pottle at the door of his house; it was dark; he did not dare look at the door-k.n.o.b. His trembling hand twisted the key in the lock.

"Who's that?" called a faint voice. It was Blossom's. He thanked G.o.d she was still alive.

He was in her room in an instant, and had switched on the light. She lay in bed, her face, once rosy, now pale; her eyes, once placid, now red-lidded and tear-swollen. He bent over her with tremulous anxiety.

"Honey, what's happened? Tell your Ambrose."

She raised herself feebly in bed. He thanked G.o.d she could move.

"Oh, it's too awful," she said with a sob. "Too dreadful for words."

"What? Oh, what? Tell me, Blossom dearest. Tell me. I'll be brave, little woman. I'll try to bear it." He pressed her fevered hands in his.

"I can hardly believe it," she sobbed. "I c-can hardly believe it."

"Believe it? Believe what? Tell me, Blossom darling, in Heaven's name, tell me."

"Pershing," she sobbed in a heart-broken crescendo, "Pershing has become a mother!"

Her sobs shook her.

"And they're all mungles," she cried, "all nine of them."

Thunderclouds festooned the usually mild forehead of Mr. Pottle next morning. He was inclined to be sarcastic.

"Fifty dollars per pup, eh?" he said. "Fifty dollars per pup, eh?"

"Don't, Ambrose," his wife begged. "I can't stand it. To think with eyes like that Pershing should deceive me."

"Pershing?" snorted Mr. Pottle so violently the toast hopped from the toaster. "Pershing? Not now. Violet! Violet! Violet!"

Mrs. Pottle looked meek.

"The ash man said he'd take the pups away if I gave him two dollars,"

she said.

"Give him five," said Mr. Pottle, "and maybe he'll take Violet, too."

"I will not, Ambrose Pottle," she returned. "I will not desert her now that she has gotten in trouble. How could she know, having been brought up so carefully? After all, dogs are only human."

"You actually intend to keep that----"

She did not allow him to p.r.o.nounce the epithet that was forming on his lips, but checked it, with----

"Certainly I'll keep her. She is still a one man dog. She can still protect me from kidnapers and burglars."

He threw up his hands, a despairing gesture.

In the days that followed hard on the heels of Violet's disgrace, Mr.

Pottle had little time to think of dogs. More pressing cares weighed on him. The Chicago men, their enthusiasm cooling when no longer under the spell of Mr. Pottle's arguments, wrote that they guessed that at this time, things being as they were, and under the circ.u.mstances, they were forced to regret that they could not make his shaving cream, but might at some later date be interested, and they were his very truly. The bank sent him a frank little message saying that it had no desire to go into the barber business, but that it might find that step necessary if Mr.

Pottle did not step round rather soon with a little donation for the loan department.

It was thoughts of this cheerless nature that kept Mr. Pottle tossing uneasily in his share of the bed, and with wide-open, worried eyes doing sums on the moonlit ceiling. He waited the morrow with numb pessimism.

For, though he had combed the town and borrowed every cent he could squeeze from friend or foe, though he had p.a.w.ned his favorite case of razors, he was three hundred dollars short of the needed amount. Three hundred dollars is not much compared to all the money in the world, but to Mr. Pottle, on his bed of anxiety, it looked like the Great Wall of China.

He heard the town clock boom a faint two. It occurred to him that there was something singular, odd, about the silence. It took him minutes to decide what it was. Then he puzzled it out. Violet nee Pershing was not barking. It was her invariable custom to make harrowing sounds at the moon from ten in the evening till dawn. He had learned to sleep through them, eventually. He pointed out to Blossom that a dog that barks all the time is a dooce of a watch-dog, and she pointed out to him that a dog that barks all the time thus advertising its presence and its ferocity, would be certain to scare off midnight prowlers. He wondered why Violet was so silent. The thought skipped through his brain that perhaps she had run away, or been poisoned, and in all his worry, he permitted himself a faint smile of hope. No, he thought, I was born unlucky. There must be another reason. It was borne into his brain cells what this reason must be.

Slipping from bed without disturbing the dormant Blossom, he crept on wary bare toes from the room and down stairs. Ever so faint c.h.i.n.king sounds came from the dining room. With infinite caution Mr. Pottle slid open the sliding door an inch. He caught his breath.

There, in a patch of moonlight, squatted the chunky figure of a masked man, and he was engaged in industriously wrapping up the Pottle silver in bits of cloth. Now and then he paused in his labors to pat caressingly the head of Violet who stood beside him watching with fascinated interest, and wagging a pleased tail. Mr. Pottle was clamped to his observation post by a freezing fear. The busy burglar did not see him, but Violet did, and pointing her bushel of bushy head at him, she let slip a deep "Grrrrrrrrrrr." The burglar turned quickly, and a moonbeam rebounded from the polished steel of his revolver as he leveled it at a place where Mr. Pottle's heart would have been if it had not at that precise second been in his throat, a quarter of an inch south of his Adam's apple.

"Keep 'em up," said the burglar, "or I'll drill you like you was an oil-well."

Mr. Pottle's hands went up and his heart went down. The ultimate straw had been added; the wedding silver was neatly packed in the burglar's bag. Mr. Pottle cast an appealing look at Violet and breathed a prayer that in his dire emergency her blue-blood would tell and she would fling herself with one last heroic fling at the throat of the robber. Violet returned his look with a stony stare, and licked the free hand of the thief.

A thought wave rippled over Mr. Pottle's brain.

"You might as well take the dog with you, too," he said.

"Your dog?" asked the burglar, gruffly.