The Stolen Singer Part 29

"The yacht foundered."

"And that scamp walked right into your hands and you let him go?"

Agatha forced a rueful smile. "I confess I'm not much used to catching criminals."

Mr. Straker paused, lacking words to express his outraged spirit

"I don't mean you, of course. This whole outfit here--what are they doing? Think they're put on in a walking part, eh? Don't they know enough to go in out of the rain?" Getting no reply to his fuming, he came down from his high horse, curiosity impelling. "What'd he kidnap you for--ransom?"

"No. It seems that he mistook me for Miss Reynier--the lady out there on the lawn talking with Mr. Van Camp."

Mr. Straker bent his intent gaze out of the window.

"I don't see any resemblance at all." His crusty manner implied that Agatha, or somebody, was to blame for all the coil of trouble, and should be made to pay for it.

"Even I was puzzled," smiled Agatha. "I thought she was some one I knew."

"Nonsense!" growled Mr. Straker. "Anybody with two eyes could see the difference. She's older, and heavier. What did the scoundrel want with her?"

"I don't know. She's a princess or something."

Mr. Straker jumped. "She is!" he cried. "Lord, why didn't you tell me?"

"I'm trying to."

"Advertising!" he shouted joyfully. "Jimminy Christmas! We'll make it up--all this time lost. Princess who? Where from? I guess you do look like her, after all. I see it all now--head-lines! 'Strange confusion of ident.i.ty! Which is the princess?' It'll draw crowds--thousands."

Agatha escaped, leaving Mr. Straker to collect from others the details of his advertising story, which he did with surprising speed and accuracy. By the next morning he had pumped Sallie, Doctor Thayer and Aleck Van Camp, and had extracted the promise of an interview from Miss Reynier herself.

The only really unsatisfactory subject of investigation was Mr. Hand, whom Straker watched for a day or two with growing suspicion. Straker had sputtered, good-naturedly enough, over the "accident" to his racing-car, and had taken it for granted, in rather a high-handed manner, that Mr. Hand was to make repairs. His manner toward the chauffeur was not pleasant, being a combination of the patron and the bully. It was exactly the sort of manner to precipitate civil war, though diplomacy might serve to cover the breach for a time.

But the racing-car, ignominiously towed home by Miss Reynier's white machine, stood undisturbed in one of the open carriage sheds by the church. Eluded by Hand for the s.p.a.ce of twenty-four hours, and finding that the injury to the car was far beyond his own mechanical skill to repair, Mr. Straker sent peremptory word to Charlesport and to the Hillside for the services of a mechanician, without satisfaction.

Little Simon thought the matter was beyond him, but informed Mr.

Straker that perhaps the engineer at the quarry--a native who had "been to Boston" and qualified as chauffeur--would come and look at it.

"Then for Heaven's sake, Colonel, get him to come and be quick about it," adjured Mr. Straker. "And tell him for me that there's a long-yellow for him if he'll make the thing right."

"He'll charge you two dollars an hour, including time on the road,"

solemnly announced Little Simon, unimpressed by any mention of the long-yellow. Had Little Simon "liked," he could probably have mended the car himself, but Mr. Straker's manner, so effective on Broadway, was not to the taste of these country people. He thought of them in their poverty as "peasants," but without the kindliness of the born gentleman. What Aleck Van Camp could have got for love, Mr. Straker could not buy; and he was at last obliged to appeal to Hand through Agatha's agency.

"I'll look at it again," Hand replied shortly, when Agatha addressed him on the subject.

The car being temporarily out of commission, it was necessary for Mr.

Straker to adopt some other means of making himself and everybody about him extremely busy. He took a fancy for yachting, and got himself diligently instructed in an art which, of all arts, must be absorbed with the mother's milk, taken with the three R's and followed with enthusiastic devotion. In Mr. Straker every qualification for seamanship was lacking save enthusiasm, but as he himself never discovered this fact, his _amour propre_ did not suffer, and his companions were partly relieved of the burden of his entertainment.

Presently he made up his mind that it was time for him to see Jimmy.

His nose, trained for scenting news, led him inevitably to the chief actor in the unusual drama which had indirectly involved his own fortunes, and he saw no reason why he should not follow it at once.

"You'd better wait a while," cautioned Doctor Thayer. "That young man pumped his heart dry as a seed-pod, and got some fever germs on top of that. He isn't fit to stand the third degree just yet."

"I'm not going to give him any third degree, not a bit of it. 'Hero!

Saved a Princess!' and all that. That's what's coming to him as soon as the newspapers get hold of it. But I want to know how he did it, and what he did it for. Tell him to buck up."

Jimmy did buck up, though Mr. Straker's message still remains to be delivered. He gathered his forces and exhibited such recuperative abilities as to astonish the old red house and all Ilion. Doctor Thayer and each of his nurses in turn unconsciously a.s.sumed credit for the good work, and Sallie Kingsbury took a good share of pride in his satisfactory recovery.

"Two aigs regular," she would say, with all a housekeeper's glory in her guests' enjoyment of food.

There was enough credit to go round, indeed, and Jimmy presently became the animated and interesting center of the family. He might have been a new baby and his bedroom the sacred nursery. He was being spoiled every hour of the day.

"Did he have a good night?" Agatha would anxiously inquire of Mr. Hand.

"Can't tell which is night; he sleeps all the time," would be the tenor of Mr. Hand's reply. Or Sallie would ask, as if her fate depended on the answer, "Did he eat that nice piece er chicken, Aunt Susan?" And Mrs. Stoddard would say, "Eat it! It disappeared so quick I thought he'd choke. Wanted three more just like it, but I told him that invalids were like puppy-dogs--could only have one meal a day."

"Well, how'd he take that?" asked the interested Sallie.

"He said if I thought he was an invalid any longer I had another guess coming. Says he'll be up and into his clothes by to-morrow, and is going to _take care of me_. Says I'm pale and need a highball, whatever that is."

"Never heard of it," said Sallie.

"He's a good young man, if he did get pitched overboard," went on Mrs.

Stoddard. "But he doesn't need me any more, and I guess I'll be going along home."

"I don't know but what the rest of us need you," complained Sallie.

"It's more of a Sunday-school picnic here than you'd think, what with a New York press agent and a princess, to say nothing of that Mr. Hand."

"He certainly knows how to manage a sick man," said Susan.

"He don't talk like a Christian," said Sallie.

Mrs. Stoddard made her way to Agatha in the cool chamber at the head of the stairs. Agatha, in a dressing-sack, with her hair down, called her in and sent Lizzie away.

"You're not going, are you, Mrs. Stoddard?" She took Susan's two hands and held them lovingly against her cheek. "It won't seem right here, without you."

"You've done your duty, Agatha, and I've done mine, as I saw it. I'm not needed here any more, but I'll send Angie over to help Sallie with the work, after I get the crab-apples picked."

Agatha held Mrs. Stoddard's hands closely. "Ah, you have been good to us!"

"There is none good but One," quoted Mrs. Stoddard; nevertheless her eyes were moist with feeling. "You'll stay on in the old red house?"

"I don't know; probably not for long. But I almost wish I could."

"I've learned a sight by you, Agatha. I want you to know that," said Susan, struggling with her reticence and her impulse toward confession.

"Oh, don't say that to me, Mrs. Stoddard. I can only remember how good you've been to us all."

But Susan would not be denied. "I thought you were proud and vain and--and worldly, Agatha. And I treated you harsh, I know."

"No, no. Whatever you thought, it's all past now, and you are my friend. You'll help me to take care of this dear old place--yes?"