The Unspeakable Perk Part 20

"Why do you have them specially made?"

"Beeause they suit me better, and I can afford it."

"It's really because you want them individualized for you, isn't it?"

"Yes; I suppose so."

"Then why do you always get your mental clothes ready-made?"

"I don't think I understand, Miss Polly," he said gently.

"It seems to me that all your ideas and estimates and standards are of stock pattern," she explained relentlessly. "Inside, you're as just exactly so as a pair of wooden shoes. Can't you see that you can't judge all men on the same plane?"

"I see that you're angry with me, and I see that I'm being punished for what I said about--about Mr. Perkins. If I'd known that you took any interest in him, I'd have bitten my tongue in two before speaking as I did. As for the message, if you wish it, I'll go to him--"

"Oh, that doesn't matter," she interrupted.

"This much I can say, in honesty," continued the Southerner, with an effort: "I had a talk, almost an encounter, with him in the plaza, and I don't believe he is the coward I thought him."

His intent to be fair to the object of his scorn was so genuine that his critic felt a swift access of compunction.

"Oh, Fitz," she said sweetly, "you're not to blame. I should have told you. And you're honest and loyal and a gentleman. Only I wish sometimes that you weren't quite so awfully gentlemanly a gentleman."

The Southerner made a gesture of despair.

"If I could only understand you, Miss Polly!"

"Don't hope it. I've never yet understood myself. But there's a sympathy in me for the under dog, and this Mr. Perkins seems a sort of helpless creature. Yet in another way he doesn't seem helpless at all. Quite the reverse. Oh, dear! I'm tired of Perkins, Perkins, Perkins! Let's talk about something pleasanter--like the plague."

"What's that about Perkins?" Galpy had entered the drawing-room where the conversation had been carried on, and now crossed over to them.

"I'll tell you a good one on the little blighteh. D' you know what they call him at the Club Amicitia since his adventure on the street car, Miss Brewster?"

"What?"

"'The Unspeakable Perk.' Rippin', ain't it? Like 'The Unspeakable Turk,'

you know."

Despite herself, Polly's lips twitched; in some ways he WAS unspeakable.

"They've nicknamed him that because of his trying to help me, and then--leaving?" she asked.

"Oh, not entirely. There's other things. He's a nahsty, stand-offish way with him, you know. Don't-want-to-know-yeh trick.

Wouldn't-speak-to-yeh-if-I-could-help-it twist to his face. 'The Unspeakable Perk.' Stands him right, I should say. There's other reasons, too."

"What are they?"

She saw a quick, warning frown on Carroll's sharply turned face. Galpy noted it, too, and was lost in confusion.

"Oh--ah--just gossip--nothing at all. I say, Miss Brewster, the railway--I'm in the Ferrocarril-del-Norte office, you know--has offered your party a special on an hour's notice, any time you want it."

"That's most kind of your road, Mr. Galpy. But why should we want it?"

"Things might be getting a bit ticklish any day now. I've just taken the message from the manager to your father."

The young Englishman took his leave, and Polly Brewster went to her room, to freshen up for luncheon, carrying with her the sobriquet she had just heard. Certainly, applied to its subject, it had a mucilaginous consistency. It stuck.

"'The Unspeakable Perk,'" she repeated, with a little chuckle. "If I had a month to train him in, eh, what a speakable Perk I'd make him! I'd make him into a Perk that would sit up and speak when I lifted my little finger." She considered this. "I'm not so sure," she concluded, more doubtfully. "How can one tell through those horrid gla.s.ses, particularly when one doesn't see him for days and days?"

Without moving, she might, however, have seen him forthwith, for at that precise and particular moment, the Unspeakable Perk was in plain sight of her window, on a bench in the corner of the plaza, engaged in light conversation with a legless and philosophical beggar whom he had just astonished by the presentation of a whole bolivar, of the value of twenty cents gold.

After she had finished luncheon and returned to her room, he was still there. Not until the mid-heat of the afternoon, however, did she observe, first with puzzlement, then with a start of recognition, the patiently rounded brown back of the forward-leaning figure in the corner. Greatly wroth was Miss Polly Brewster. For some hours--two, at least--the man to keep tryst and wager with whom she had tramped up miles of mountain road had been in town and hadn't called upon her!

Truly was he an Unspeakable Perk!

Wasn't there possibly a mistake somewhere, though? A second peep at the far-away back interpreted into the curve a suggestion of resigned waiting. Maybe he had called, after all. Thought being usually with Miss Brewster the mother of the twins, Determination and Action, she slipped downstairs and inquired of the three guardians of the door, in such Spanish as she could muster, whether a Mr. Perkins, wearing large gla.s.ses--this in the universal sign manual--had been to see her that day.

"Si, Senorita"--he had.

Why, then, hadn't his name been brought to her?

Extended hands and up-shrugged shoulders that might mean either apology or incomprehension.

Straightway Miss Brewster pinned a hat upon her brown head at an altogether casual and heart-distracting angle and sallied down into the tesselated bowl of the park. Quite unconscious of her approach, until she was close upon him, her objective chatted fluently with the legless one, until she spoke quietly, almost in his ear. Then it was only by a clutch at the bench back that he saved himself from disaster on his return to earth.

"Wh--wh--what--wh--where--how did you come here?" he stuttered.

"Now, now, don't be alarmed," she admonished. "Shut your eyes, draw a deep breath, count three. And, as soon as you are ready I'll give you a talisman against social panic. Are you ready?"

"Y-yes."

"Very well. Whenever I come upon you suddenly, you mustn't try to jump up into a tree as you did just now--"

"I didn't!"

"Oh, yes. Or burrow under a rock, as you did the other day--"

"Miss B-B-Brewster--"

"Wait until I've finished. You must turn your thoughts firmly upon your science, until you've recovered equilibrium and the power of human speech."

"But when you jump at me that way, I c-c-can't think of anything but you."

"That's where the charm comes in. As soon as you see me or hear me approaching, you must repeat, quite slowly, this scientific incantation." She beat time with a pink and rhythmic finger as she chanted:--

"Scarab, tarantula, doodle-bug, flea."

The beggar rapidly made the sign that protects one from the influence of the malign and supernatural. The scientist scowled.

"Repeat it!" she commanded.